Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

- Leonardo da Vinci

“Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.”

- Albert Camus

“We live in a world where the intelligent must keep quiet so the stupid will not be offended.”

- Internet Meme

1. Netanyahu Announces Second Phase of Gaza Operations

2. Israel: Beyond Deterrence by Sir Lawrence Freedman

3. The President Should Approve this last weapon system and it will help win the war: M26/M26A1 HIMARS Rockets

4. Israel Pounds Gaza Strip, Dismissing Calls for Cease-Fire

5. Allies Fear US Is Overextended as Global Conflicts Spread

6. US-China stuck in a cycle of tit-for-tat ironies

7. China, U.S. Look to a Biden-Xi Summit While Wrestling Tensions

8. ASEAN joint military drills pointed daintily at China

9. What Would Teddy Roosevelt Say About Russia, Hamas, and China?

10. The culture war over the Gaza war

11. Fog of war: Myanmar’s armed conflict is not a stalemate

12. Israel’s new plan to encircle Hamas

13. China to tighten its state secrets law in biggest revision in a decade

14. Ukraine War Rages in Shadow of Israel Conflict

15. Task force to combat false reports (Taiwan)

16. Taiwan takes security lessons from Hamas, Ukraine surprise attacks

17. I Might Have Once Favored a Cease-Fire With Hamas, but Not Now by Dennis B. Ross

18. The U.S. Military: Second-Rate and Loving It

19. How the Left Overestimates US Power

20. Why MAGA scares me so much | Column by Robert Bruce Adolph

21. The Israel-Hamas War Has Entered a ‘New Phase.’ Here’s What to Expect.

22. Otto K. Liller Obituary, A Cherished Soul Has Passed Away

23. What is the 'axis of resistance' of Iran-backed groups in the Middle East?

24. Interactive Map: Israel’s Operation in Gaza

25. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 28, 2023

26. Iran Update, October 28, 2023

1. Netanyahu Announces Second Phase of Gaza Operations

Will the "second war of independence" resonate and be useful in the information war?

Excerpts:

“This is our second War of Independence,” Netanyahu said in his first public remarks since the military expanded ground operations in Gaza late Friday. “We are only at the beginning.”

Netanyahu’s statements were echoed by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who said, “This will not be a short war.”

Netanyahu Announces Second Phase of Gaza Operations

Prime minister calls conflict Israel’s ‘Second War of Independence’ as fears deepen about the high cost borne by Palestinians

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-it-has-killed-one-of-planners-of-oct-7-attack-e3a11758

Israel: Beyond Deterrence

https://samf.substack.com/p/israel-beyond-deterrence?r=7i07&utm

LAWRENCE FREEDMAN

OCT 29, 2023

Israeli tanks and troops move near the border with Gaza on October 28th. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images).

Israelis describe their strategy as being based on deterrence. To avoid fighting wars they must show how well they can fight if necessary. Potential adversaries must be persuaded not to take aggressive action by warning them of the consequences if they do.

The conceptual framework surrounding deterrence developed around nuclear weapons. This is deterrence of a special kind, because of the absolute nature of the weapons and how hard it is to use them to win a war because of the threat of retaliation in kind. We can see the caution this induces at work in the Russo-Ukraine War. NATO has not engaged directly on Ukraine’s behalf; Russia has not attacked NATO countries.

Israel also practices nuclear deterrence. It has its own arsenal, which it prefers not to talk about. It is one geared to deterring Arab governments, and now Iran, from starting wars intended to destroy the Jewish state. As with all nuclear deterrence, it does not require demonstrations of what the weapons can do or a readiness to use them. All that is required is that potentially hostile governments are aware of what could happen if an inter-state war escalates too far.

For lesser contingencies, including the threats posed by Hamas, operating out of Gaza, and Hezbollah, operating out of Lebanon, deterrence looks quite different. It is not based on absolute weapons and nor does it offer constant relief from danger. There is no guarantee of success and so when it fails, if only slightly, it must be restored, more like a fence that easily breaks but can then be mended than a solid brick wall. So, unlike nuclear deterrence, there can be no sole reliance on threats but instead a readiness to respond forcefully to any challenge to bring home to adversaries the folly of attacking Israel.

It is this deterrence that failed on 7 October 2023 and which may now never be restored. An enemy so irredeemably hostile that it will always be looking for ways to attack, whatever the severity of the likely response, appears beyond deterrence. Instead of deterring Hamas, Israel now wants to eliminate it as a political and military force, but any relief achieved by this approach might also be only temporary.

Why Deterrence?

Prior to becoming so dependent on deterrence Israel sought to control the threats directly by maintaining a substantial presence in the territories, which it did in both Gaza and Lebanon. The costs of maintaining that presence was too high.

In the case of Lebanon, Israel became fully engaged in the 1970s after the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) took up residence there, after being kicked out of Jordan in 1970. Because Lebanon was being used to mount raids, Israel occasionally went into Lebanon in response to push the guerrilla bases further away from its northern border. Then, in 1982, it entered in force, moving up the country, until it laid siege to Beirut. The aim was to push the PLO out (where they had some success) and also to install a government willing to make peace with Israel (where they failed completely). Hezbollah in its current form is a lasting consequence of those events.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) eventually withdrew until they reached a strip of southern Lebanon, which they policed with a Christian militia. In 2000, after Prime Minister Ehud Barak decided that the Israeli presence there was doing more harm than good, they withdrew unilaterally. Hezbollah concluded that this was a great victory because this was the result of their constant harassment.

Five years later Israel left Gaza, again unilaterally. Ariel Sharon, a hardliner who had made his career by being tough on Arabs and was most responsible for the debacle in Lebanon, now as Prime Minister decided that the effort to hold on to Gaza was futile because Israel’s position could only be sustained an at inordinate cost. He ordered withdrawal. The IDF closed down the settlements, in the face of protests from their residents. (Sharon went into a coma before he could reveal what he had in mind for the West Bank).

The withdrawal was not negotiated with the Palestinians. No plans were made for what could follow. There were hopes that Gaza might turn a corner, replacing its seething resentment at occupation with economic development, but such hopes did not last long. Within two years Hamas was in control, first as a result of an election victory and then having won a short civil war with the Palestinian Authority.

With only rejectionist parties active in the territory, and no interest in coexistence with Israel, Hamas turned Gaza into its base for continuing its struggle, using all available resources, including those obtained from Iran, to manufacture rockets and build tunnels for smuggling and getting fighters into Israel.

Deterrence by Denial or Punishment

With two implacably hostile neighbours in positions to attack Israel at any time, and having abandoned the idea that they could be occupied, deterrence became the centrepiece of Israeli strategy.

Conceptually deterrence is usually described as taking one of two forms. The first is deterrence by denial, which basically means that, whatever the target’s aggressive intent, it is unable to act upon it because it will be thwarted if it tries. The other is deterrence by punishment. In this case the target can act on hostile intent and even do some real harm, but the punishment will be severe, and whatever the gains the costs suffered will be far higher. When an adversary is not deterred, and decides to attack, the costs must be sufficient to ensure that it does not try again. In this way deterrence can be restored.

Israel follows both forms of deterrence. For denial it constructs large fences to prevent incursions into its territory. Against the rockets of both Hamas and Hezbollah the fences were useless. So Israel also developed an elaborate and advanced air defence system – the Iron Dome – to prevent rocket attacks doing too much damage. The population can also access air raid shelters to protect them from those rockets that are not intercepted. The success rate of this system is impressive but not complete, and the attacks are cheaper to mount than to stop. So Israel normally seeks to add to the price for the perpetrators with air raids against the places from where they have been launched. There is always an element of punishment.

The punishment comes in three forms. First, it attempts to assassinate those responsible, whether political or military. Israel has conducted many ‘targeted killings’ over the years. These may have had short-term effects in disrupting the enemy’s command structures and operations, but their long-term effects are at most marginal. Others step up to take the place of those killed, and there is no guarantee that these replacements will be less capable or effective.

Second, it targets the military assets that make this possible. Again, in the short-term this can make a difference but in the long-term more rockets can be built, more tunnels dug, and more fighters recruited.

Third, because these assets are to be found in the middle of urban areas, often deliberately by schools and hospitals, civilians will suffer. Israel denies that it engages in collective punishment and the deliberate targeting of civilians. It is not a war crime to attack areas where civilians may be present if armed units are also there in the name of self-defence and military necessity. Hamas can be blamed for fighting out of such populated areas and Israel urges civilians to move away from areas where fighting is likely to be intense.

But intense strikes against military targets, especially when this includes tunnels believed to be below occupied buildings, or against individuals hiding in residential areas, are going to involve many civilian casualties and wider suffering. For onlookers the distinction between collateral and deliberate damage is often one without much difference.

Another feature of deterrence is that it appears as all stick and no carrot. There is no reason in principle why negative threats cannot be combined with positive inducements, but it is not a requirement of the strategy. And if the threats are working there is less reason to find incentives to encourage a potential adversary to coexist peacefully.

Does it Work? (i) Hezbollah

In July 2006 Hezbollah conducted a raid into Israel, combining rockets being fired into border towns and an attack on an Israeli patrol which left three soldiers dead and two abducted and taken into Lebanon. A failed rescue attempt led to three more deaths. Israel refused Hezbollah’s demand to swap Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails for the abducted soldiers. Instead it responded with air and artillery strikes, not only against Hezbollah military targets but also civilian targets including Beirut airport. It also launched a land attack into southern Lebanon, which turned out to be costly and difficult as Hezbollah had well prepared positions.

Eventually the UN arranged a cease-fire. Much later the remains of the two soldiers were returned as part of a prisoner exchange. The operation was widely considered a failure in Israel, having exposed the country’s weaknesses to rocket attacks and a determined militia. Yet in an interview not long after the cease-fire, Hezbollah’s’ leader Hassan Nasrallah, acknowledged that the Israelis had killed up to 12 of his commanders. He went on to make an interesting comment about the initial operation.

‘If there was even a 1 percent chance that the July 11 capturing operation would have led to a war like the one that happened, would you have done it? I would say no, absolutely not, for humanitarian, moral, social, security, military, and political reasons.’

He then followed that up by saying that Israel was just waiting for an excuse for a planned attack, yet this admission, and the fact that there have been clashes since but nothing quite comparable, has been taken as evidence that perhaps deterrence can work.

But while Hezbollah is undoubtedly antagonistic towards Israel, it is not to the same degree as with Hamas. One reason for this is that Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese political system. While the most substantial force in the country, it still has to be responsive to other factions and persuasions who are less interested in its feud with Israel, and present itself as serving Lebanese interests. With the country in an economic mess, aggravated by the massive blast at the Beirut port in 2020, and only a caretaker government, it is not in a position to cope well with a war with Israel. Nor is Israel angling for a war with Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s agenda is as much set by Iranian considerations as Lebanese. For example it sent its fighters into Syria during the civil war there, where they worked with Iranian and Russian forces to prop up the Assad regime, although they were not assessed to have performed particularly effectively. (It is perhaps worth noting that the Sunni Hamas did not support Assad). It depends on Iran for its military assets, including its large number of missiles, which are much more capable than those of Hamas. This is therefore not straightforward Israeli deterrence. Hezbollah has no particular incentive to go to war with Israel other than as part of a larger Iranian project.

Does it Work? (ii) Gaza

The Gaza experience has been different. Ever since Hamas took over the territory there have been few periods of calm on the border. The clashes have varied in intensity and frequency, with big ones every few years. In all cases there was rocket fire from Hamas (and its junior partner Islamic Jihad) and air and artillery strikes from the Israelis; in all the casualties were starkly asymmetric with those on the Palestinian side far greater than those on the Israeli, especially civilians; in all the suffering of Palestinians led to Israel being denounced by international organizations, governments, as well as campaigning groups, for acting disproportionality. Other than in in 2021, when unrest spread even to Arab communities in Israel, there were always supporting protests elsewhere in the West Bank and elsewhere, but not much more. In all, after weeks of fighting there was a cease-fire of some sort and nothing much changed once the fighting subsided.

Given the regularity of the clashes, deterrence has worked poorly. From the Israeli perspective the priority was mainly to show that it was not rattled by any provocations and would respond forcefully each time. These responses were described as ‘mowing the lawn’ – which captured the idea of an indefinite conflict but one which could be contained through occasional forceful action.

Part of the shock of 7 October was that the Israeli government had convinced itself that this was working, to the extent that they were starting to ease the restrictions on Gaza. There was a problem with Islamic Jihad but Hamas did not seem too interested in any more violence. What happened then, in Israeli eyes, was not only a failure of intelligence but also of deterrence, and the extent of the failure meant that restoring deterrence no longer seemed an option.

The response followed the same pattern as before, except with more intensity - many individuals connected with the organisation and in particular the attacks of 7 October have been targeted and killed. Military infrastructure has been hit mercilessly, and the consequences of Hamas’s actions have been brought home to the suffering population, far more ferociously than in past episodes and with far more civilian casualties and general distress. This has led to international anger and demands for a cease-fire, despite the original provocation from Hamas.

So we can question whether deterrence was ever very much in operation with Hamas but it certainly is not now. Israel has no interest in persuading Hamas not to attack again. It wants to make sure that it can never do so again.

But it does need to deter Hezbollah, and in practice Iran. And a lot of effort has gone into that, including by the US, which has sent warships to the region. All of Iran’s network has been busy, including the Houthis in Yemen. Much of this so far has been largely posturing with the aim of demonstrating what might happen if the war continues at its current pace. In this respect it might be argued that from the Iran/Hezbollah perspective, deterrence has failed, because Israel has pressed on regardless with its ground war. They might still claim that they are tying down Israeli forces that might otherwise be used against Hamas.

If Hezbollah wanted to get involved it would have had more effect if it had sone so early on. Israel is now geared up for a two-front war, including evacuating people from the border with Lebanon and restocking the Iron Dome. This does not mean that it won’t get involved, especially if the accusations of letting Hamas down start to get to the leadership. The key decisions will be taken in Teheran, which will have to consider whether this is the issue on which to take on the US. A tweet from Iran’s President, Ebrahim Raisi, suggests that no decision has yet been made: ‘Zionist regime’s crimes have crossed the red lines, which may force everyone to take action.’

The pressure will also grow on other Arab countries to do more than issue statements, especially those who have already are, or were preparing to, ‘normalise’ relations with Israel. It is hard to assess how they will act, but if they look ahead, for reasons I come to below, they should see a significant role for themselves in shaping the new order that might yet emerge.

Next Steps

Israel’s land invasion of Gaza, that began on Friday evening, was undertaken despite US misgivings and in the face of strong Saudi objections, one a country upon which it relies and another which it has been courting. The Foreign Ministry has insulted the numerous countries supporting the cease-fire resolution in the General Assembly, and refused to talk to the UN Secretary- General because he saw equivalence between the unprovoked attacks on its people and it ruthless response undertaken in the name of self-defence.

Israel can note that it is hardly the only state in the region that puts its security needs above humanitarian considerations. The past decade has seen extraordinary loss of life in the battles against ISIS, and in the civil wars in Syria and Yemen (the last two with hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths). But the pressure on it to stop is only to grow. Israel is used to treading a lonely path, and it may find its position gets lonelier. As with its previous wars it will be resisting pressure for a cease-fire until its objectives have been achieved.

Can its objectives be achieved? That is not yet a given. Information on what is going on in the battles in northern Gaza and towards Gaza City are sketchy so it is unwise to speculate. It is also unclear how much humanitarian assistance will be able to get into Gaza in these conditions, and whether countries like Qatar are still playing a role as potential mediators, including in their efforts to get hostages released. In all of this, the biggest uncertainty away from the battlefield and the potential widening of the war is the future governance of Gaza.

Israel now has been forced to look beyond deterrence. It has now concluded that it is dealing with an entity that has never truly been deterred and can’t be deterred in the future. Wilder elements in Israel may fantasise about pushing all the Gazans out of the territory but that is not a serious option. This where the other flaw in Israel’s past deterrence strategy becomes painfully evident. It has not been accompanied by a more positive political strategy. The only long-term vision Israel offers is a Gaza without Hamas. The chaos and instability that would result if Gaza was turned into an ungovernable space without anyone in charge would serve nobody’s interests. A way will have to be found to fill the space.

The way that Israel has defined its objectives, success for Hamas simply requires surviving in a commanding position in Gaza. Even if is forced to evacuate its positions, Hamas will not disappear. It represents a strong political tradition in the Arab world and whatever happens to it over the coming weeks it will have the capacity to regenerate, and return to power if there is no alternative government in place.

There is no evidence of great love for Hamas among Gazans and at some point they will reflect on the missed opportunities to develop the territory and the wisdom of constantly provoking Israel into attacks which it is unable to mitigate. Nor is there much respect for the Palestinian Authority, which is generally considered to be inept and corrupt and unable to stand up at all to the Israelis. Though constitutionally the PA’s return to Gaza would seem the best option, this would be greeted suspiciously in the best of circumstances and even more so if it arrived behind Israeli tanks. Any government installed by Israel would lack legitimacy and would be a natural target for assassins.

So if Israel can’t find a government for Gaza someone else will have to. Here the main initiative will have to come from the Arab world, probably in concert with the US. This seems to be the conclusion of many of the analyses of those thinking about the aftermath of this war. It is possible, for example, to imagine at some point a multilateral conference including the main Arab and Western players, with Israel on the sidelines, tasked to come up with a viable government for Gaza, and manage the influx of aid necessary if the territory is to recover from the traumas of the past weeks as well as look to the possibilities for future development. It would also need to consider both Gaza’s internal security and how to stop it causing trouble to its neighbours (Egypt as well as Israel) in the future.

In principle this could be confined to Gaza but Arab governments are unlikely to go along with this unless the future of the West Bank is also addressed. The trade Israel faces in return for insisting that Hamas plays no part in the territory’s government is that the ‘two-state solution’ is put back on the agenda. Most western governments have already been quite explicit on this matter.

Netanyahu has been around long enough to know not to dismiss the two-state solution out of hand, even though he has built his career on subverting the idea, which is why up to now he was content to leave the rejectionist Hamas in charge in Gaza as he made life difficult for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The encroachment of settlements on the West Bank has made the prospect of a viable Palestinian state there seem even more remote. All one can say is that this war changes a lot. Up to now when the issue has come up, as it did for example in the pre-war talks with Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu has paid lip service to the idea while intending to do nothing to make it come about, pointing to the rivalry between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as why progress is impossible.

But that excuse won’t work if a way can be found to get Hamas to evacuate Gaza. Netanyahu is unlikely to be on the scene for much longer. After all this Israel’s Western and Arab partners are not going to want to let the situation drift away into catastrophe again. In the end if there is to be any resolution of the current conflict the starting point will be taking the fate of Gaza away from both Hamas and Israel.

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3. The President Should Approve this last weapon system and it will help win the war: M26/M26A1 HIMARS Rockets

Sun, 10/29/2023 - 8:11am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/president-should-approve-last-weapon-system-and-it-will-help-win-war-m26m26a1-himars

The President Should Approve this last weapon system

and it will help win the war: M26/M26A1 HIMARS Rockets

By Dan Rice, President American University Kyiv

The United States can help Ukraine win the war with one final decision: Send the short to mid-range HIMARS cluster rockets in large quantities. We have tens of thousands of these rockets, and they are all being scheduled for destruction. They are obsolete. But they remain lethally effective.

I’m extremely proud that the United States finally passed over the threshold of sending cluster munitions, first on July 7 when President Biden agreed to send 155mm Howitzer shells. The 155mm howitzer it the primary diameter for all NATO heavy artillery so that was a big step forward. Then in October, the decision was made quietly to provide longer ranger cluster missiles, called ATACMS, M39 with a ranger of 165km and 950 submunitions. These are much larger missiles, come 1 per pod, and are rarer in the US arsenal. Unconfirmed sources claim that 20 ATACMs M39 had been delivered.

So we sent short range, 155mm howitzers, AND long range 165km ATACMs. But we failed to send the ‘workhorse” of the cluster family, the M26 series of rockets. These come in the same “pod” as an ATACMS but are smaller and narrower. 6 M26’s fit into the same pod that a MM39 ATACMS fits. There are two types of M26s- the M26 30 km range, 644 submunitions and the M26A1 45km range, 512 submunitions. They are all fired from HIMARS.

The most important point for these M26/M26A1 rockets is that we have hundreds of thousands of them. And they are all scheduled to be destroyed by Congress- so they have no value. This is the most lethal and cost-free arsenal in world history!

Once this decision is made, the execution is even more simple. The US and Ukrainian logistics system is working perfectly and smoothly. Even if we shipped 400 pods for the back of a HIMARS that would take a week. The HIMARS crews are the best in the world- no training necessary. There are roughly 200 Russian front line battalions. Living in trenches and out in the Open. In some areas that might be dug in better than others and in some cases be underground. Even in those cases most of their vehicles, gear, ammo, fuel and living quarters are still exposed.

Public data estimates Ukraine has around 50 HIMARS M142 or M270 Multiple Rocket Launchers (that is tracked and has two pods). They both fire the same rockets and missiles.

If 400 pods were shipped in that would be 2,400 rockets. For 200 Russian front-line battalions- that’s 12 rockets per battalion. We know from satellite images, drone reconnaissance, and other measures exactly where they are and their usual formations. A ten-rocket spread would take two minutes and decimate the battalion.

A Russian battalion might take up 500-1000 meters of front. They would likely be dug in zigzag trenches and be living a miserable life as winter approaches. But all their equipment can’t be buried. Their vehicles, tanks, armored vehicles, cannon, fuel, ammunition, food trucks, generators, porta potties, everything they need to live, is above ground. Usually, it’s hidden as best as possible in the tree lines. But the Russian artillery is set as far back as possible, it is this increased range for the M26A1 to be able to reach out 45 km as counter-battery fire, that makes this even more critical to Ukraine. Russian artillery is brutal, especially covering the minefields from far back. We need to give Ukraine the right tools to take out the Russian artillery and this is it.

The Russians have lost over 300,000 killed in action. Most of their best units have been destroyed. There are reports of Russians shooting retreating Russians. Blood is in short supply. Doctors are in short supply. Ukraine now has fire superiority for the first time in the war. Originally Russia was firing 63,000 artillery rounds per day vs Ukraine defending with only 4,000 rounds per day. Due to a series of factors, that trend has now reversed! Ukraine firing 9,000 per day versus 7,000 for the Russians. But most of the Ukrainian is cluster munitions, with 88 submunitions, so that is nearly 800,000 explosions within the Russian ranks. This has been a massive transformation for fire superiority.

When these rockets hit a Russian army unit it will be in total chaos. The rocket bursts in the air and the 644 submunitions spray over a circular area. These bomblets, the size of a D sized battery, fall to earth trailing a canvas trailer that helps keep the bomblet pointed down. As the bomblets hit, they explode downward and outward. Downward they fire a plasma burst that can destroy the thin skin of an armored vehicle, tank or cannon. Outward to destroy personnel or equipment. To cause secondary explosions by hitting fuel, ammo, canvas, weapons. The bursts also tear up the tree line and the trees become fragments themselves. All these explosions in the tree line often act as a defoliant and therefore allow Ukrainian drones to better identify Russian Armor or Pillboxes to have other direct weapons attack.

Now is the time to capitalize on this situation and to approve the last two rocket types needed to win the war: The M26 and M26A1 rockets for HIMARS. The US has tens of thousands of these, and again, they are scheduled to be destroyed. Send then to Ukraine until the war is over.

About the Author(s)

Daniel Rice

Dan is the President American University Kyiv and Co-President Thayer Leadership and a 1988 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He served his commitment as an Airborne-Ranger qualified Field Artillery officer. In 2004, he voluntarily re-commissioned in the Infantry to serve in Iraq for 13 months. He has been awarded the Purple Heart, Ranger Tab, Airborne Badge and cited for ‘courage on the field of battle” by his Brigade Commander.

SCHOLARLY WORK/PUBLICATIONS/AWARDS

Dan has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Small Wars Journal, and Chief Executive magazine. In 2013, he published and co-authored his first book, West Point Leadership: Profiles of Courage, which features 200 of West Point graduates who have helped shape our nation, including the authorized biographies of over 100 living graduates.. The book received 3 literary awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association plus an award from the Military Society Writers of America (MSWA). Dan has appeared frequently on various news networks including CNN, FOX News, FOX & Friends, Bloomberg TV, NBC, MSNBC, and The Today Show.

EDUCATION

Ed.D., ABD, Leadership, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education (graduation expected 2023)

MS.Ed., Leadership & Learning, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education, 2020

M.S., Integrated Marketing Communications, Medill Graduate School, Northwestern University, 2018

M.B.A., Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, 2000

B.S., National Security, United States Military Academy, 1988

Full bio here: https://www.thayerleadership.com/about/founders/daniel-rice

4. Israel Pounds Gaza Strip, Dismissing Calls for Cease-Fire

A rollup of a lot of the issues and activities taking place.

Israel Pounds Gaza Strip, Dismissing Calls for Cease-Fire

'This is the moment of truth,' said the UN's Secretary-General. 'History will judge us all'

Published 10/28/23 05:45 PM ET|Updated 4 min ago

Associated Press

themessenger.com · October 28, 2023

Israel entered a new phase of its war on Hamas on Saturday, expanding its ground attacks after blacking out nearly all communication in the Gaza Strip with increased bombardment and artillery fire. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a war for Israel's existence, and said “'Never again' is now.”

Gaza residents described the massive bombardment from the land, air and sea as the most intense of the 3-week-old Israel-Hamas war. Other countries and aid agencies say 2.3 million lives are in peril with Gazans cut off from the outside world and international help blocked at the border.

The Palestinian death toll passed 7,700, most of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, more than 110 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids.

More than 1,400 people were slain in Israel during a surprise incursion by Hamas militants, including at least 310 soldiers, according to the Israeli government. At least 229 hostages were taken into Gaza, and four hostages have been released.

Fire and smoke rise following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 28, 2023.(AP Photo/Ilan Assayag)

Here’s what is happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:

RED CRESCENT SAYS BLACKOUT KEEPING AID OUTSIDE GAZA

JERUSALEM — No international aid entered the Gaza Strip on Saturday, as the communications blackout created by Israel continued.

Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent, told The Associated Press that no aid trucks entered Gaza on Saturday because communication was impossible and teams inside Gaza couldn't connect with Egyptian Red Crescent or United Nations personnel.

Before Saturday, a total of 84 aid trucks were let into Gaza, a tiny amount for a population of 2.3 million people in need of power, food, medical supplies and clean drinking water.

Wounded Palestinians lie on the floor at the al-Shifa hospital, following Israeli airstrikes, in Gaza City, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023.(AP Photo/Abed Khaled)

2nd US AIRCRAFT CARRIER GROUP MOVES INTO MEDITERRANEAN

WASHINGTON — The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier and its strike group has moved through the Strait of Gibraltar, putting two American carriers in the Mediterranean Sea, a rare sight in recent years.

The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group is already in the eastern Mediterranean, part of a buildup of forces as the U.S. supports Israel in its war against Hamas.

The Eisenhower sailed into the Mediterranean on Saturday and is slated to move through the Suez Canal to the U.S. Central Command region as the American forces expand their presence in the Middle East to deter Iran and its proxy militant groups from trying to widen the war.

COMMUNICATIONS BLACKOUT HAS PALESTINIANS PANICKING

Now that Israeli bombs have cut off cellular and internet service for most of the 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip, it has fallen to a rare few Palestinians with international SIM cards or powered-up satellite phones to get the news out.

They described scenes of panic and confusion as Israel’s military attacks from the air, land and sea in the most intense bombing yet in the three week war. Without social media to share their plight with the world, many seem consumed with fear and hopelessness.

Reached by WhatsApp, freelance photojournalist Ashraf Abu Amra in northern Gaza said the international community must intervene to save the people of Gaza from immediate death. Palestinian journalist Hind al-Khoudary reported that some 50,000 people have converged on Gaza’s largest hospital, where doctors are exhausted from operating on patient after patient using dwindling fuel and medical supplies.

GOP CANDIDATES OFFER UNBRIDLED SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL

LAS VEGAS — Republican presidential candidates are professing unbridled support for Israel in speeches to an influential GOP Jewish group in Las Vegas. The campaign stop came as Israel entered a new phase of its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Former Vice President Mike Pence suspended his campaign and used his last speech as a candidate to called on Democratic President Joe Biden to unconditionally support Israel’s response to a Hamas attack that killed more than 1,000 Israelis.

Candidates Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy also said Israel’s right to defend itself is unequivocal. Nikki Haley noted that former President Donald Trump had lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Hamas attack and referred to the militant group Hezbollah as “very smart.” Trump, the frontrunner, called himself “the best friend Israel ever had.”

Israelis take cover in an underground car tunnel as a siren warns of incoming rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, during a protest calling for the return of more than 220 people captured by Hamas militants, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, Oct. 28, 2023.(AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

ISRAEL CALLS HAMAS PRISONER SWAP OFFER ‘PSYCHOLOGICAL TERROR’

JERUSALEM — Hamas’s top leader in Gaza Yehiyeh Sinwar said the Palestinian militant groups are ready to release Israeli hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s jails.

“We are ready immediately to have an exchange deal that includes releasing all prisoners in the prisons of the Zionist occupation enemy in return for the release of all prisoners held by the resistance,” he said in a comment posted Saturday evening on Hamas media groups.

The Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, dismissed the offer as “psychological terror” andsaid Israel is working on multiple channels to free the hostages.

ISRAEL SAYS ITS WARPLANES HIT 150 UNDERGROUND TARGETS

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said Saturday that its warplanes struck 150 underground Hamas targets in northern Gaza, including tunnels, combat spaces and other infrastructure. But the extensive labyrinth of tunnels built by Hamas is believed to stretch for hundreds of miles (kilometers), hiding fighters, an arsenal of rockets and now more than 200 Israeli hostages.

Clearing and collapsing those tunnels is crucial to dismantling Hamas. But Israeli’s military could be at a serious disadvantage underground. Urban warfare experts say the militants can be hiding in millions of places, choosing when and where to ambush their enemies.

Former Israeli soldier Ariel Bernstein described urban combat in northern Gaza as a mix of ambushes, traps, hideouts and snipers in tunnels so disorienting that it was like he was fighting ghosts.

ISRAELI PM SAYS GAZA WAR IS EXISTENTIAL, ‘NEVER AGAIN IS NOW’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war against Hamas will be “long and difficult,” calling it a battle of good versus evil and a struggle for Israel’s existence.

Netanyahu told the nation in a televised news conference Saturday night that Israel has opened a “new phase” in the war – by sending ground forces into Gaza and expanding attacks from the ground, air and sea. He said these activities would only increase as Israel prepares for a broad ground invasion.

The goal, he said, is the complete destruction of Hamas.

“We always said, ‘Never again,’” he said. “'Never again' is now.”

ROCKETS, AIR STRIKES AND ANOTHER HOSPITAL HIT

A Palestinian militant group in Gaza said it fired barrage of rockets Saturday evening on Tel Aviv and on Ashkelon and Ashdod in southern Israel. The rockets by Al-Quds Brigades, the military arm of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was the latest in a series of rocket attacks on Israel on Saturday.

Israeli forces continued a relentless bombardment. One Israeli airstrike late Saturday afternoon damaged the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, according to freelance journalist Anas al-Sharif, one of the few journalists in Gaza able to connect to the outside world. He shared images of the hospital's damaged roof.

The Israeli strikes cut off telecommunications and internet access for Gaza's 2.3 million people, disrupting ambulances and aid groups and enabling Israel to control the narrative in the new stage of fighting.

Earlier Saturday, Israeli videos showed columns of armored vehicles moving slowly inside Gaza, the first visual confirmation of ground troops.

Pro-Palestinian supporters hold banners and wave a Palestinian flag near the Colosseum during a demonstration to call for a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 28 in Rome.Antonio Masiello/Getty Images

PROTESTS SPREAD, CALLING ON ISRAEL TO STOP GAZA WAR

PARIS — Police encircled hundreds of people who defied a ban on a pro-Palestinian demonstration Saturday in central Paris. The officers tried to contain the protest but fired tear gas when tensions rose as a breakaway group tried to march.

The protest collective known as Urgence Palestine called for a cease-fire in the increasingly intense war between Israel and Hamas. Other pro-Palestinian demonstrations were held in Marseille and Strasbourg in the east.

Demonstrations also took place Saturday in Turkey, London, Indonesia, Pakistan, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and New York, where protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge a day after filling Grand Central Station, many wearing black T-shirts saying “Jews say cease-fire now” and “Not in our name.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a rally of hundreds of thousands that Western nations are responsible and that “Israel, we will proclaim you as a war criminal to the world."

ISRAEL DISMISSES CALLS FOR CEASE-FIRE AND HOSTAGE-SWAP

JERUSALEM — As Israeli airstrikes and an intensified ground attack pounded northern Gaza on Saturday, a representative for the families of the hostages held by Hamas told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu they support a prisoner swap.

“As far as the families are concerned, a deal of a return of our family members immediately in the framework of “all for all” is feasible, and there will be wide national support for this,” said MeIrav Gonen, the representative. Her daughter, RoMi, is one of the hostages.

Israel’s government has not yet commented on Hamas’s offer to free all the hostages in exchange for Israel releasing all Palestinians held in Israeli jails. It was unclear if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the possibility of a prisoner swap during the meeting with the families, or if he specified any military or diplomatic plan to achieve the release of hostages.

Israel’s military has said it will be able to continue its devastating campaign on Gaza while rescuing the hostages, and has dismissed the possibility of a Hamas-proposed cease-fire deal in exchange for their release. Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Saturday that by proposing the cease-fire, Hamas was engaged in a “cynical exploitation” of their famililes' anxieties.

NETANYAHU MEETS FAMILIES OF HOSTAGES AS TUNNELS ARE BOMBED

TEL AVIV, Israel -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he told representatives of the families of hostages that Israel will exhaust every possibility to bring them home.

The Israeli military says Hamas militants kidnapped more than 200 people on Oct. 7 and took them into a network of tunnels inside the densely populated Gaza Strip. In the night from Friday to Saturday, Israeli war planes bombed Hamas tunnels and underground bunkers in dozens of strikes, heightening the concerns of relatives of hostages over the fate of their loved ones.

Netanyahu and his wife Sara told the families in Tel Aviv that getting abductees released is one of the goals of the war and that the greater the pressure, the greater the chances for bringing them home.

Hundreds of family members had demonstrated in Tel Aviv earlier Saturday, expressing fears that military leaders are being cavalier with the lives of the hostages. “The families feel like they’re they’re left behind and no one is really caring about them," said Miki Haimovitz, a former lawmaker.

UN LEADER RENEWS CEASE-FIRE PLEA: ‘HISTORY WILL JUDGE US ALL’

CAIRO — U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has reiterated his appeal for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, the unconditional release of hostages and a delivery of humanitarian aid the strip’s 2.3 million people.

“This situation must be reversed,” he said Saturday in a statement following his meeting in Doha with Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani. “This is the moment of truth. Everyone must assume their responsibilities. History will judge us all.”

He warned that the ongoing escalation, including relentless Israeli bombardment and a communication blackout, would have devastating impacts and undermine “the referred humanitarian objectives.”

OMAN ACCUSES ISRAEL OF WAR CRIMES, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

CAIRO — Oman's Foreign Ministry says Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Omani ministry said in a statement that a wide-scale Israeli ground invasion of Gaza would have “serious catastrophic consequences on the region and the world, and the prospects of achieving peace and stability.”

Oman has a long record of serving as a key broker between Iran and the West when regional tensions flare.

The ministry called for the international community to immediately intervene to stop the Israel-Hamas war and to speed humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza.

A Red Crescent volunteer carries an injured Palestinian child to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza following an Israeli airstrike.Youssef Alzanoun /Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

HAMAS REPORTS FIRING ROCKETS AT ISRAELI CITY OF DIMONA

BEIRUT — A top Hamas official said Saturday that by shutting down most communications, Israel aims to prevent “the truth” about what is happening in the Gaza Strip from reaching the world.

Speaking to reporters in Beirut, Ghazi Hamad said Israel has made “baseless claims and lies” about Hamas militants hiding in tunnels under the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza "to justify the targeting of the hospital.”

He said that Israel has forced Palestinians south with plans to try to push them to move to Egypt.

“We strongly reject that and say that our Palestinians will stay in their land,” Hamad said.

But he called on the international community to allow humanitarian aid to reach Gaza from Egypt, specifically medical equipment and fuel.

Meanwhile, Hamas’ military arm, Qassam Brigades, said Saturday afternoon it fired a barrage of rockets on Dimona, a southern Israeli city on the edge of the Negev Desert.

ISRAEL REPORTS STRIKING HEZBOLLAH SITES IN LEBANON

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military says it is striking Hezbollah military infrastructure in Lebanon after “several anti-tank missile and mortar shell launches were identified from Lebanese territory toward Israel," including Israeli military posts along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said a shell fired by Israeli troops hit the wall surrounding the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping force in the Lebanese coastal border town of Naqoura.

Andrea Tenenti, a spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL, confirmed that the shell only caused some damage and no injuries.

There has been concern that the Israel-Hamas war could expand into Lebanon and northern Israel if Hezbollah decides to join the conflict.

GAZA HEALTH MINISTRY: ISRAELIS KILLED 377 SINCE FRIDAY NIGHT

BEIRUT — The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said 377 people have been killed since Israel expanded its large ground offensive on Friday evening.

Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra told reporters Saturday that Israel “totally paralyzed” the health network in Gaza by cutting off internet and cellular service.

“Israel has turned Gaza into pieces of fire,” al-Qedra said, adding that the bombardment is the most intense since Hamas' deadly incursion in southern Israel three weeks ago.

Al-Qedra said the 377 people killed in the past day raises the death total in the Gaza to 7,703 people, including 3,195 children and 1,863 women.

He called on people in Gaza to donate blood, requested delivery of all blood types from the International committee of the Red Cross and urged the opening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt to allow medical supplies and fuel to enter and the evacuation of seriously wounded people.

themessenger.com · October 28, 2023

5. Allies Fear US Is Overextended as Global Conflicts Spread

Not just allies, but I think most Ameorcians as well.

Ironically the answer to this problem for allies is....allies. One important thing the Biden administration has gotten very right in its foreign policy is the building of alliance relationships and multilateral organizations that can contribute to collective security. If allies believe the US is stretched thin then they need to provide some "thickness" in the security domain by stepping up to fill gaps. And some are.

Allies Fear US Is Overextended as Global Conflicts Spread

Allies fear US power may be overtaxed as Mideast war spreads
US says it can handle Ukraine, Mideast wars, China tensions
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/mideast-ukraine-china-conflicts-raise-fears-of-us-overreach?utm

By Peter Martin, Courtney McBride, and Cindy Wang

October 27, 2023 at 6:33 PM EDT

Joe Biden came to office declaring America is back. Now, facing hot wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and a simmering cold one with China, the US is beginning to look overextended.

The US defense industry — Biden’s “arsenal of democracy” — is struggling to produce enough artillery shells to ensure Ukraine can keep firing them at Russian forces. The Pentagon is bombing targets in Syria as it rushes air defenses to the region to protect troops in case Israel’s war against Hamas prompts new attacks by enemies. Taiwan, another American ally, has stepped up orders for American weapons as China confronts it over strategic sea lanes.

In capitals across Europe and Asia, officials are growing worried that some partners might ultimately be shortchanged as the surge in simultaneous challenges strains the US ability to respond and its defense industry struggles to produce enough weapons for all these conflicts. Rivals in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran, they fear, won’t miss the openings that creates.

Adding to the alarm is the presidential election just over a year from now that may return Donald Trump to the White House with his talk of pulling out of alliances, making deals with Russia and openly confronting Iran and China. Already, Biden’s $106 billion budget request for aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan is running into headwinds from Republicans in Congress.

Biden has raced to reassure leaders around the world that the US would be able to confront all the threats at once and deliver on its promises of support.

Privately, however, administration officials concede that the crisis in the Middle East has upended what had been a key tenet of their global approach – that the long-tumultuous region was finally heading into a period where it wouldn’t require such a big US commitment, allowing Washington to focus more on the threat from China. That eastward pivot is likely to be slowed, officials said.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had to hastily recast the online version of his 7,000-word essay for Foreign Affairs on “The Sources of American Power” this week to delete a reference to the Middle East as “quieter than it’s been in decades.”

The US had been pulling resources out of the region to send them to confront China and Russia, confident that Israel, having reached historic rapprochements with key Arab countries, would be able to ensure its security without as big a presence from its main ally, according to a person involved in the discussions. That’s now all in question and the US has pushed Israel to delay its ground offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip as it shores up defenses in the region. Israel’s failure to detect the Hamas assault and defend itself once it started has also raised questions about its vaunted military capability, according to US officials.

Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken and Joe Biden meet with Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on October 18.Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, the US has been rushing forces back to the Middle East. Biden dispatched two aircraft carrier groups and air-defense systems to the region, and put thousands of troops on heightened alert, in what officials call a signal to Iran and other rivals in the region not to join the fight when Israel launches a widely expected ground invasion of Gaza.

But that message of deterrence doesn’t seem to have gotten through. This week, the US sent warplanes to strike targets in Syria – its first military action in the region since Oct. 7 – after a string of attacks by Iran-backed militias had injured more than a dozen troops at US bases there and in Iraq.

Administration officials underline there are no plans at the moment to have US troops fight on the ground in the Middle East. But Biden, who even as vice president was known for telling aides in the Situation Room that superpowers don’t bluff, is fully aware of the risks that the American forces may be drawn in if efforts to contain the conflict fail.

In Ukraine, the US has been adamant from even before Russia’s February 2022 invasion that it wouldn’t get directly involved in the fighting, instead marshaling allies and providing military and financial support that’s been essential to Kyiv’s ability to push back Moscow’s forces.

Beyond stopping Russia from taking over its neighbor, that effort sent a signal globally, helping dispel any illusions that China may have had that US power was on the decline after highly visible setbacks like the chaotic pullout from Afghanistan in 2021, one US official argued.

Ukrainian servicemen unload military supplies provided by the US to Ukraine in 2022.Photographer: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images

But now, with Ukraine’s counteroffensive this year making slow progress against Russia’s defenses and questions in Congress growing about the continued commitment to support Kyiv as the war settles into a standoff, the global message looks less clear. The Kremlin, for its part, is betting that it will be able to outlast the US and its allies.

Already, Moscow seems to be winning the race in artillery shells, which have become a key weapon in the conflict. Ukraine has depleted limited US and allied stocks and efforts to escalate production, especially in Europe, have faced setbacks.

Top Five Recipients of US Foreign Aid in 21st Century

Annual economic and military assistance

Source: US Agency for International Development, State Department

Note: Numbers are in 2021 dollars, based on obligations including economic and military aid. 2023 data is incomplete

The conflict in Ukraine has “exposed the fragility” of the US’s defense supply chain, the Army Science Board warned last month, saying that the US is “struggling to ramp up the production of munitions.” Recent war games, some of them classified, have shown that that US stocks of key precision and standoff weapons could be exhausted in as little as a few days in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the report said.

Now, Israel is also seeking some of the same kinds of shells Ukraine needs for its war against Hamas. Taiwan, at the same time, has ordered some of the same air-defense weapons that both Israel and Ukraine use.

“Our industrial base was not prepared to have to restock so many different types of weapons for multiple different partners at the same time,” said Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary of Defense for policy. “In all three cases, our ability to equip train and support these partners is really the primary means by which we can safeguard our own interests,” she said.

US defense spending has been shrinking as a share of GDPSource: OMB Budget of the US Government (FY2024), Bloomberg Economics. Note: Real dollar values based on the OMB’s defense-sector deflator.

With military spending at the lowest level as a share of the economy in more than two decades, the defense industry isn’t ready for a sudden buildup. There are now only five so-called prime contractors, the top of the defense food chain. In 1993, just after the end of the Cold War, there were 51.

Even if the stars were to align in Washington for a major boost in expenditures on defense, US government finances are already under intense pressure with borrowing costs rising.

“The US risks overreaching at a dangerously complicated and uncertain time in the world during a time when we see historic American dysfunction, incompetence and division in our ability to govern,” said former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

— With assistance by Jennifer Jacobs

6. US-China stuck in a cycle of tit-for-tat ironies

Excerpts:

In another layer of irony, however, China appears to be duplicating this American error as it raises the priority for security relative to economic development.

For three decades, the leaders of China and America wisely created perhaps the greatest generation of peace and development in human history. There were differences, conflicts, tensions and risks, and there always will be. But currently, both sides are magnifying the problems rather than managing them.

Both sides are avoiding difficult domestic dilemmas by blaming problems on the other. Both are pursuing geopolitical aspirations in ways that harm their domestic economies and popular welfare. In both cases, doing this actually weakens their long-term geopolitical prospects.

A reset will require not just diplomatic adjustments, but also fundamental shifts in the management of domestic politics.

US-China stuck in a cycle of tit-for-tat ironies

US-China created perhaps greatest ever generation of peace and progress but are now magnifying rather than managing their problems and dilemmas

asiatimes.com · by William H. Overholt · October 27, 2023

This is the last of three parts. Read part 1 and part 2.

Successful development like China’s leads to a crucial international transition. When countries are poor and weak, they receive special forbearance to encourage their development. All successful developing countries, including the US, stole intellectual property, denied foreigners access to their markets, and heavily subsidized their companies.

Rich countries reluctantly tolerate this and celebrate successful growth in poorer countries. For instance, the US and Europe complained about but took minimal action against Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore during the early and middle levels of their development. There is still substantial tolerance for extensive trademark theft by Malaysia, Thailand and India.

In my youth, I bought most of my books as knockoffs at Caves bookstore in Taipei and most of my CDs and video disks as knockoffs in Singapore, and later I bought clothes for my family at the Silk Market in Beijing.

But success brings huge scale that begins to distort global markets and create intolerable damage. That threshold occurred in the 1980s for Japan and later for South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Japan’s subsidized and protected cars and consumer electronics threatened to destroy all competitors through unfair competition. The US and EU reacted strongly with tariffs, quotas and other measures.

After a difficult decade, Japan (mostly) accepted the rules of fair competition. Since then, Toyota has often been the world’s biggest car company, but Americans and Europeans welcome Toyotas because Toyota’s victories are achieved by building better cars, not by theft and subsidies.

Developing country victim – or superpower global leader?

China’s success has reached that transition point. Take just one of many examples: When the Chinese fishing industry was small and poor, subsidies were acceptable. Now the coasts of North Korea, Africa and India have very extensive communities that have been impoverished by China’s huge, government-supported fishing fleet.

China’s formerly impoverished fishermen are now depleting fishing stocks and creating hunger along the coasts of South Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Chinese fishing boats heading out to sea from Zhoushan in Zhejiang province. Photo: US Naval Institute

Likewise, when China was poor, copying American CDs brought a noisy but in practice minimal response. But now the costs to the US of intellectual property theft are estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and even small venture firms report over 100,000 computer intrusions per day from China.

When CATL and Huawei threaten to destroy all European competitors because they have access to all world markets while the Europeans are constrained in China, the damaaged parties react. Chinese spokesmen often characterize these reactions as attempts to keep China down. No, they are demands that China accept the responsibilities of success.

In the view of an exceptional range of neighbors, as well as their friends and allies in the US and EU, China has evolved from a victim to a predator – because policies that were acceptable or tolerable when China was weak cause serious damage to neighbors and global markets now that China has become a great power.

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China, a country nearing the World Bank’s “high income” status, now demands all the special privileges of a weak, impoverished country while simultaneously asserting itself as a powerful global leader that will reshape the world into a community of common interest as interpreted by China. This contradiction is unsustainable.

China’s international contradiction reflects a domestic contradiction. In space exploration, in military technology and in many aspects of manufacturing industry, China is a modern superpower. Shanghai, especially Pudong, is a world-leading 21st century city. China’s trains, ports, airports, telecommunications and universal wi-fi access make the United States look backward by comparison.

Simultaneously, however, China’s rural healthcare systems, its systems to care for the aged, its pension systems, its insurance systems and its rural financial systems are those of a developing country rather than a modern superpower. China’s poverty reduction has been one of the greatest triumphs of human history, but the standard of living for several hundred million people remains very low.

A left-behind elder in the Chinese countryside. Photo: Hong Kong Heifer

Its fiscal system, which places most social burdens on local governments while retaining most revenues for the central government, has worked because local governments were allowed to be extremely creative, rule-breaking, financially risky and corrupt. Now, the effort to impose strict rules and financial accountability and to eliminate corruption is mak- ing the skewed distribution of responsibilities and revenues an untenable contradiction.

These contradictions arise because China has chosen in the 21st century to emphasize urban modernity and geopolitical glory over universal well-being for its citizens.

If China refocuses on its domestic social challenges, it will have a solid foundation for global economic and geopolitical competition. If China accepts responsibility for international stability, its fishing boats will be as acceptable globally as France’s. CATL and Huawei could enjoy accepted global preeminence, as Toyota does.

US overreaction

The US overreacts to the damage from these transitions, and it reacts fearfully to a challenge to its global primacy. Its unwillingness to accept massive intellectual property theft and destructive unfair competition is rational and reasonable. But, faced with a rival, America’s status insecurity becomes a triumph of passion over calculation.

US political elites often think and talk as if US global leadership, US global dominance, were some kind of moral right. The prospect that some other system might outperform US-style democracy is perceived as a mortal threat.

Faced with a rival, the US consistently exaggerates the capability and potential – and hence the “threat” – of the rival, which led to the extreme overestimates during the Cold War of the size and capabilities and prospects of the Soviet economy and also, in the late 1970s and 1980s, to extreme fear in important quarters of what was seen as Japan’s imminent superiority.

With Japan four decades ago and with China now, much of the Congressional reaction is populist, emotional, ideological and disproportionately fearful.

Faced with a serious competitor, the US is abandoning its strengths. During the Cold War, the US triumphed by creating a coalition of mutual prosperity, based on the Bretton Woods institutions, which triumphed over a Soviet Union that was autarkic and squeezed its citizens and its allies in the service of an overwhelming priority for the military.

In the competition with China, the US has crippled the expansion and modernization of the Bretton Woods institutions because expansion and reform would greatly enhance China’s role. Ironically, this has created a vacuum into which China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its development banks, its industrial standards and its currency swap system have moved. Every attempt by the US to pretend that China is not a big and equal player has backfired.

The US has undermined its own institutional system, refusing to join the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the International Criminal Court, preventing the appointment of judges to the World Trade Organization dispute system and abusing WTO rules by falsely arguing that tariffs on things like steel and aluminum are vital matters of national defense.

By abusing the rules-enforcing systems and ignoring the rules, the US undercuts its own core argument for a rules-based system.

By turning inward when the rest of the world is developing the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a more consolidated EU, a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (delayed, for the time being) and the all-time most comprehensive open trade agreement in Africa, the US risks being left behind by the rest of the world.

Leaders of ASEAN member states, Australia, China, Japan, Republic of Korea and New Zealand witnessed the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement online on November 15, 2020. Photo: Asia Times Files

Tariffs on steel, aluminum solar panels and much else damage the US more than China. They exemplify the contradictions at the core of Washington’s China policy.

Even more fundamentally, the US responds to a challenge as if it were primarily a military challenge, whereas the whole experience of twentieth-century geopolitics is that the key to long-run geopolitical success is the economic superiority of oneself and one’s coalition.

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Military power of course remains important, but Beijing has seemed to understand better than Washington that the path to global leadership lies primarily through economic preeminence, both domestically and in international relationships. The Belt and Road Initiative embodies that understanding, just as US emphasis on the Bretton Woods system once did.

The two countries’ contrasting strategies in Africa (building infrastructure versus providing anti-terrorist military teams) symbolize that difference. America’s inward turn weakens its own economic performance and increases tensions with allies and partners. Gutting its diplomatic arm, its aid programs and, in 1999, its information service (the United States Information Service) has combined with its meager support for the Bretton Woods institutions to weaken its global leadership role and raise the risk of military conflict.

Ironically, the current administration in Washington justifies all this as “a foreign policy for the middle class,” based on the manufacturing jobs fallacy analyzed at the beginning of this essay.

Tit for tat ironies

In another layer of irony, however, China appears to be duplicating this American error as it raises the priority for security relative to economic development.

For three decades, the leaders of China and America wisely created perhaps the greatest generation of peace and development in human history. There were differences, conflicts, tensions and risks, and there always will be. But currently, both sides are magnifying the problems rather than managing them.

Both sides are avoiding difficult domestic dilemmas by blaming problems on the other. Both are pursuing geopolitical aspirations in ways that harm their domestic economies and popular welfare. In both cases, doing this actually weakens their long-term geopolitical prospects.

A reset will require not just diplomatic adjustments, but also fundamental shifts in the management of domestic politics.

William H Overholt (william_overholt@harvard.edu) is senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.

This article, first published in the China International Strategy Review, is slightly abridged and republished under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 international license.

asiatimes.com · by William H. Overholt · October 27, 2023

7. China, U.S. Look to a Biden-Xi Summit While Wrestling Tensions

Excerpts:

In media briefings about Wang’s visit, however, U.S. officials have glossed over summit preparations and instead focused on a lengthy list of international hot spots and two-way disagreements—the Middle East, Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, North Korea, China’s involvement in the production of the opioid fentanyl and its assertive behavior in the East and South China Seas.

On most of those issues, Washington and Beijing have struggled to find common ground. On Thursday, the Pentagon released video footage of what it said was a Chinese J-11 jet fighter coming within 10 feet of a B-52 bomber in international airspace above the South China Sea—the latest instance of what the U.S. said is a concerted People’s Liberation Army strategy to conduct dangerous intercepts to try to scare off American forces.

In the Israel-Hamas war, Beijing, while calling for a cease-fire, has presented itself as an alternative to Washington, refusing to condemn Hamas and giving more full-throated support for a Palestinian state. China vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution Wednesday that called for a humanitarian pause in fighting but recognized Israel’s right to self-defense at the U.N. Security Council this week; China called the text “unbalanced.”

A summit, while not resolving these disagreements, would show commitment to managing tensions and restraining them from devolving into head-to-head conflict, some officials and China specialists said.

At their last meeting in Bali last year, Biden and Xi agreed to try to restore regular high-level communications that had dwindled during the Covid pandemic and been all but stopped by Beijing in anger over U.S. support for Taiwan. Instead of rebuilding relations, the two governments redoubled recriminations, first over a Chinese balloon the U.S. said was spying over North America before shooting it down and then over China’s increasingly close relationship with Russia in the Ukraine war.

China, U.S. Look to a Biden-Xi Summit While Wrestling Tensions

Hot spots in the Middle East and South China Sea are on the agenda as China’s foreign minister visits Washington

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/china-u-s-look-to-a-biden-xi-summit-while-wrestling-tensions-bf05690c?mod=Searchresults_pos3&page=1

By Charles Hutzler

Updated Oct. 27, 2023 4:54 pm ET

‘China and the United States need to have dialogue,’ Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at the start of talks with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. PHOTO: SAUL LOEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

WASHINGTON—President Biden held a pivotal meeting with China’s foreign minister on Friday as both governments try to brighten the way for a presidential summit and keep in check the gamut of issues driving the countries’ tensions.

Both sides confronted a lengthy agenda, including over two hot spots, during the talks between administration officials and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that began Thursday. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged Beijing’s help in keeping the Israel-Hamas war from widening. China’s harassment of Philippine ships trying to resupply a South China Sea outpost also drew a sharp warning from Biden earlier this week not to attack a U.S. ally.

Friday’s White House meeting between Biden and Wang was seen as an integral step in moving toward a summit that would cap a monthslong push to stabilize deeply contentious U.S.-China relations. Early in that effort, Blinken got an audience with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing in a fence-mending signal. Biden seeing Wang reciprocates the gesture, and, officials and China specialists said, would be another marker that both sides are on track for a summit next month.

In Biden’s view, “this was a positive development and a good opportunity to keep the conversation going,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, describing the president’s one-hour meeting with Wang.

Kirby deflected questions about whether both sides have agreed to a Biden-Xi summit, though he said, “We’re confident that that’s going to happen.” China’s Foreign Ministry has also sidestepped questions about it.

China’s harassment of Philippine ships in the disputed South China Sea has drawn criticism from President Biden. PHOTO: TED ALJIBE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

A summit is almost certain to take place alongside a gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders in San Francisco, some U.S. officials said. If it occurs, the meeting would be their first face-to-face talks in a year, repairing what U.S. and Chinese officials see as an indispensable channel to manage their countries’ fractious global rivalry and try to forge cooperation amid deep distrust.

U.S. officials privately say that Wang’s trip is intended to set up a Biden-Xi summit but that they don’t expect Beijing to confirm Xi’s participation until shortly before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting in mid-November.

“The game the Chinese are playing is that they won’t say ‘yes’ until they wring everything they can out of the administration,” said Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University and a former U.S. intelligence officer.

Administration officials have denied making concessions during the months of rapprochement and point to a recent tightening of restrictions on semiconductor exports to China as evidence of a tough-on-Beijing policy.

In media briefings about Wang’s visit, however, U.S. officials have glossed over summit preparations and instead focused on a lengthy list of international hot spots and two-way disagreements—the Middle East, Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, North Korea, China’s involvement in the production of the opioid fentanyl and its assertive behavior in the East and South China Seas.

On most of those issues, Washington and Beijing have struggled to find common ground. On Thursday, the Pentagon released video footage of what it said was a Chinese J-11 jet fighter coming within 10 feet of a B-52 bomber in international airspace above the South China Sea—the latest instance of what the U.S. said is a concerted People’s Liberation Army strategy to conduct dangerous intercepts to try to scare off American forces.

China’s Ambassador to the United Nations Zhang Jun spoke during the Security Council meeting earlier this month on the situation in the Middle East. PHOTO: JOHN LAMPARSKI/GETTY IMAGES

In the Israel-Hamas war, Beijing, while calling for a cease-fire, has presented itself as an alternative to Washington, refusing to condemn Hamas and giving more full-throated support for a Palestinian state. China vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution Wednesday that called for a humanitarian pause in fighting but recognized Israel’s right to self-defense at the U.N. Security Council this week; China called the text “unbalanced.”

A summit, while not resolving these disagreements, would show commitment to managing tensions and restraining them from devolving into head-to-head conflict, some officials and China specialists said.

At their last meeting in Bali last year, Biden and Xi agreed to try to restore regular high-level communications that had dwindled during the Covid pandemic and been all but stopped by Beijing in anger over U.S. support for Taiwan. Instead of rebuilding relations, the two governments redoubled recriminations, first over a Chinese balloon the U.S. said was spying over North America before shooting it down and then over China’s increasingly close relationship with Russia in the Ukraine war.

Aside from a reboot, a summit now gives the Biden administration a chance to persuade Beijing to restore talks between the militaries and reduce the risk of accidents between naval and air forces operating near to each other, officials said. Another ask for the administration, they said, is eliciting Beijing’s help in cutting off supplies of chemicals made in China to Mexican drug cartels, which use them to make fentanyl.

With the Chinese economy struggling with lower growth and falling investment from overseas, a summit would give Xi an opportunity to show that China wants to put tensions aside, potentially boosting business confidence. Xi is also likely to seek assurances from Biden on Taiwan, long the central flashpoint in ties, China specialists said. Taiwan holds presidential elections in January, and Beijing wants Washington to stay neutral and not help the ruling party’s candidate, whom China distrusts.

For Beijing, the optics of U.S. summits are important, with a chance for a Chinese leader to be seen as a respected peer of the American president. Both sides have been negotiating over where to hold the meeting, scouting out venues other than where APEC leaders will meet.

China’s Foreign Minister Replaced After Unexplained Absence

ASEAN joint military drills pointed daintily at China

ASEAN Solidarity Exercise was first exclusive to SE Asian bloc but was just as notable for its selective kowtowing to China

asiatimes.com · by Collin Koh · October 29, 2023

The ASEAN Solidarity Exercise in Natuna 2023 (ASEX-01N), hosted by Indonesia in September 2023, was the first joint military exercise exclusive to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The exercise was called a major accomplishment as ASEAN member states considered to be “pro-Beijing” such as Cambodia attended.

This is not the first intra-ASEAN military drill held against a backdrop of tensions in the South China Sea. The ASEAN Multinational Naval Exercise (AMNEX) took place in Thailand in 2017, shortly after the South China Sea arbitration ruling. The second AMNEX was held in the Philippines in May 2023 amid renewed tensions between the Philippines and China.

AMNEX 2023 saw seven of 10 ASEAN member states contribute naval vessels — the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar sent observers. Despite the exercise being held facing the South China Sea, no sensitivities over the disputes emerged that could hamstring the event.

Unlike AMNEX, which involves only ASEAN navies, ASEX-01N engaged armies, air forces and navies. Announcing plans for ASEX-01N in June 2023, commander of the Indonesian National Armed Forces Admiral Yudo Margono said he hoped the exercise, planned to take place in the North Natuna Sea, would strengthen ASEAN’s centrality and preserve regional stability.

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Margono’s Cambodian counterpart, General Vong Pisen, later contradicted him — stating that the exercise was proposed by Indonesia when they were the ASEAN chair, but that Phnom Penh and several other ASEAN members did not respond. Cambodian defense authorities further claimed that all nine other ASEAN members had yet to respond to Margono’s announcement.

The core issue was the exercise location, as it involved the North Natuna Sea. This area includes Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone, which overlaps with Beijing’s “nine-dash line” claim. Cambodia and Myanmar were absent in the initial planning conference, likely to avoid provoking China.

Given the wariness of ASEAN member states, Indonesia shifted the location of ASEX-01N from the North Natuna Sea to areas that “include Batam and the waters of South Natuna”, with priority given to “areas that are prone to [natural] disasters” — especially the Lampa Strait and Sabang Mawang Island.

An Indonesian naval officer at sea. Image: Antara Foto / Twitter

ASEX-01N involved five warships — two from Indonesia and one each from Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore. Indonesia also contributed air assets, while the remaining ASEAN countries and prospective new member Timor-Leste sent observers.

The Philippines and Vietnam did not send assets. This could be due to Manila’s limited capacity, given its earlier participation in training exercises with foreign partners, and the need to maintain assets in the South China Sea amid tensions with China.

Vietnam did not provide a reason for the absence of participating assets, though Hanoi may be balancing its South China Sea interests with maintaining ties with Beijing.

Indonesia emphasized the non-combat nature of the exercise, which included humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, search and rescue, and maritime security.

Margono avoided mentioning the South China Sea disputes during the ASEX-01N opening ceremony, instead stressing intra-ASEAN unity. But he later remarked that “those who carry out any exploration or activities in that area must not violate state territory.”

When asked if ASEAN was sending a stronger message against Beijing’s South China Sea claims, he replied, “we have had a firm stance”, adding that ASEAN has agreed to hold military exercises annually and future iterations will be expanded to full war drills involving the armies, navies and air forces of member states.

While ASEX-01N’s turnout was modest compared to AMNEX 2023, Margono’s remarks signal the potential for institutionalized and greater intramural participation. But the controversies leading up to the drill suggest it is difficult for an ASEAN member to use the exercise to push for its interests in the South China Sea.

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The exercise is likely to be confined to non-traditional threat scenarios typically seen in pre-existing ASEAN-centric exercises. If Margono’s vision of future full war drills is to be realized, it is likely to include just a handful of ASEAN militaries, since members with closer ties to Beijing would refrain from meaningful participation.

There is also an often overlooked practical aspect. Upscaling joint training exercises requires resource and manpower commitments, which could strain ASEAN militaries’ limited capacities — especially in the context of economic and security challenges at home. ASEAN militaries have to be judicious in the exercises they choose to commit troops and assets to.

ASEX-01N symbolizes ASEAN’s commitment to strengthening the bloc’s centrality and represents a bold effort to promote tri-service joint military training beyond existing interactions.

To increase its prospects of institutionalization and expansion, future iterations of the exercise must contend with the expectations of individual ASEAN member states — meaning that future exercises will remain fraught with uncertainty.

Collin Koh is Senior Fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

This article was originally published by East Asia Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons license.

asiatimes.com · by Collin Koh · October 29, 2023

9. What Would Teddy Roosevelt Say About Russia, Hamas, and China?

Excerpts:

Roosevelt set forth the logic underwriting such a court in his 1910 address accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. He declared that “it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others.” I should point out that TR did not espouse universal membership in such a league. Hence his reference to great powers honestly bent on peace. Members needed to be likeminded for a league to flourish. Spoilers could ruin it.

...

So there’s your wisdom from beyond the grave. TR still renders good service a century after his passing.

What Would Teddy Roosevelt Say About Russia, Hamas, and China?

I think Theodore Roosevelt would be dismayed at the state of global order today. It seems to be in retreat, or rather under concerted assault, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East to East Asia.

19fortyfive.com · by James Holmes · October 27, 2023

Remarks delivered at Theodore Roosevelt Association Annual Symposium, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Washington, DC, October 26, 2023.

I think Theodore Roosevelt would be dismayed at the state of global order today. It seems to be in retreat, or rather under concerted assault, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East to East Asia. But TR would not be surprised or daunted. His goal was a world presided over by an international League of Peace, a kind of superempowered world tribunal with the authority to enforce its decisions. But he understood that the journey toward that destination would be a long and uneven one. Progress would be fitful; reverses were far from unthinkable along the way. In fact, he prophesied that the time when societies could set aside their differences, constitute a world fellowship, and consent to such a league was “eons distant.”

He went on. However worthy, the international tribunal at The Hague suffered from “the lack of any executive power, of any police power to enforce the decrees of the court.” TR reminded listeners that in any community “the authority of the courts rests upon actual or potential force: on the existence of a police, or on the knowledge that the able-bodied men of the country are both ready and willing to see that the decrees of judicial and legislative bodies are put into effect.”

So for him the dearth of a “police power” was the main defect in efforts to bring about world order. The idea of a police power—the power to protect and serve, to quote the slogan on your local police cruiser—was a recurring theme throughout TR’s public life, from his tenure as New York police commissioner through his handling of labor relations and public administration. And he applied the concept to the international realm as president, seeing enforcement authority as the substructure for future world order.

To get more traction on how he related the police power to foreign policy, we have to look back before the Nobel speech to his first term in the White House. President Roosevelt spelled out his concept of an “international police power” most fully in his 1904 message to Congress, while laying out the case for intervention in a debt-collection dispute between the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo and European bankers and their governments. His statement came to be known as the “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. Here’s how he put it:

Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly . . . to the exercise of an international police power.

Let’s unpack this grammatically correct but rather longwinded sentence to see what Roosevelt was saying and what it may reveal about foreign policy in our own time:

– Chronic wrongdoing referred to an American government’s repeated refusal to honor its international agreements, especially loan agreements with foreign banks. Defaults threatened U.S. geopolitical interests, which was TR’s chief worry. Common practice for the day was for bankers to appeal to their governments for help recovering debts, whereupon the government sent the navy to seize the customs house in the defaulting country and use tariff revenue to pay back the bank. Roosevelt objected to this practice because it would leave Caribbean territory in European hands in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine. Worse, a European navy might build a base on that territory from which its warships could menace the approaches to the Panama Canal once that artificial waterway went into service. It behooved Washington to act preemptively, denying a potentially hostile great power an excuse to intervene. Preemption would deny a possible foe a naval redoubt in southern waters. For TR, in other words, inaction meant compromising the United States’ strategic position in its own environs.

– If chronic wrongdoing was deliberate malfeasance, impotence meant the defaulting government was unable to honor its international agreements, whether because of revolution, corruption, or simple incompetence. From there the logic of preventive U.S. intervention took largely the same course.

– By civilized society he meant the duty of developed nations to help developing nations even as the intervenors tended to their own interests.

– In America, as elsewhere asserted the United States’ claim to step in when chronic wrongdoing or impotence occurred, raising the specter of Europeans’ seizing American ground or otherwise threatening U.S. interests. But Roosevelt allowed that other developed nations might exercise an international police power under similar circumstances in their own home regions. Elsewhere he specifically mentioned Japan and Europe as powers worthy and capable of performing police duty.

– By intervention he meant deploying the least force possible consistent with achieving his strategic and political goals. In Santo Domingo, which precipitated the Roosevelt Corollary, intervention involved mounting a small-scale naval demonstration to deter European aggression plus stationing a customs agent on the island to apportion revenue between the government and its foreign creditors. No shots were fired. Roosevelt took pride in this.

– In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine meant that, since the Monroe Doctrine forbade external great powers to wrest away land in the Americas, the United States must mediate or no one would do justice to Europeans who deserved to have their loans repaid.

– By reluctantly he set the bar high for intervening in the affairs of sovereign states. He affirmed that this was a decision with potentially grave consequences. It should not be taken lightly.

– By international police power he meant the authority to use force to preserve order—that’s the protect part—while promoting the health, welfare, and morals of the populace of a country in which the United States had intervened—that’s the serve Proper, self-restrained deployment of the police power would allow Washington to defend U.S. interests while gradually helping developing nations join the developed world. Humanity as a whole would benefit as the advanced world grew to encompass the entire planet.

TR gave us a set of standards grounded in law, diplomacy, and military strategy for thinking about when and how to intervene in sovereign states’ affairs, then and now. I think the paramount pointers from his 1904 message are:

– S. geopolitical interests come first. For him those were safeguarding the canal approaches—which would become the United States’ gateway to the Pacific Ocean for commercial, diplomatic, and naval endeavors—from hostile outsiders looking to ensconce themselves in the Americas. TR insisted the U.S. Navy must remain predominant in American waters to protect the nation’s seaborne pursuits.

– While upholding U.S. interests, intervention should also help a targeted state become more fully sovereign, able to take its station among developed peers.

– At the same time intervention must be as circumspect as possible. He implied there should be a kind of Hippocratic credo for intervention: do no harm.

That’s not a bad mix between self-interest and altruism. Nevertheless, skeptics voiced concerns about the Roosevelt Corollary even back then. A unilateral, extralegal doctrine that abridges sovereignty, the most basic principle underlying the Westphalian international system, is a dangerous tool to hand any policymaker. Not everyone is a Theodore Roosevelt, an enlightened statesman who can be trusted to wield such a tool with precision and restraint. There is a reason that by the 1920s presidential administrations started distancing themselves from the Corollary. They muffled it into irrelevance to help make way for the inter-American system we have known since the 1930s. We should look to the lifetime of TR to help us think through vexing questions; we should revive his ideas only with extreme care, if at all.

Let me close with three observations inspired by TR and the Roosevelt Corollary:

– First, an interventionist foreign-policy doctrine needs a TR to preside over it, as I noted a minute ago. Police work is subject to abuse. How you guard against unenlightened and unaccountable leadership remains as pressing a question as ever in politics, diplomacy, and military affairs.

– Second, TR seemed to assume the developed powers, the regional “policemen,” would be at least roughly likeminded. In other words, they would enforce similar rules in their home regions, helping narrow differences in worldviews among peoples, establish common standards of conduct, and thus usher the world along toward a League of Peace. The world wars, the Cold War, and the traumas of our own time call that assumption into doubt if not debunk it altogether. A multipolar world with the likes of China, Russia, or Iran making the rules in key regions would be a dark world indeed. Deadlock in the UN Security Council—a body descended from Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Policemen” and, I believe, ultimately from TR’s notion of regional policemen—underscores the limits to concerted great-power action. One imagines TR’s dream remains eons distant. And how to move forward is unclear beyond agreeing to stand together for the current rules-based order.

– And three, what happens when one policeman has vital and enduring interests in another’s “jurisdiction”? I refer of course to the U.S. alliance system, in which the United States maintains intimate commercial, diplomatic, and military ties with allies deep within spheres of interest dominated by fellow great powers. We should ask ourselves whether TR’s vision of a world where great powers keep order and foster uplift among their neighbors is achievable without dismantling our alliances. I would certainly never advocate cutting and running from East Asia, Western Europe, or the Middle East. That would amount to abandoning allies, partners, and friends of long-standing to crooked cops. But that is where Theodore Roosevelt’s logic takes you. He was writing for a different America. I wish we could summon him up and ask him about these matters.

So there’s your wisdom from beyond the grave. TR still renders good service a century after his passing.

About the Author

Dr. James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College, a Distinguished Fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare, Marine Corps University, and the author of Theodore Roosevelt and World Order. The views voiced here are his alone.

19fortyfive.com · by James Holmes · October 27, 2023

10. The culture war over the Gaza war

A key key point in the excerpts. My daughter (now a high school 10th grade English teacher in northern Virginia) informed me that the students in her high school are planning a walkout for Palestine on Tuesday. It will be interesting to see how the school and parents handle it because she explains that the outspoken parents are evenly divided between extreme conservatives and extreme progressives.

Excerpts:

But there is an important demographic wrinkle. As Tim Malloy, a polling analyst at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, says, younger Americans are much less inclined to back Israel than are their elders. They also think more favourably of the Palestinian people. According to surveys by Pew, this gap in sympathy between American generations is widening (see chart).

Many young voters do not have direct memories of the attacks of September 11th 2001, a calamity which shaped older Americans’ views of Islamist terrorists such as Hamas. Their diverging outlook also reflects the third force swaying Western attitudes: a binary ideology that emerged from American universities to win converts far and wide.

The culture war over the Gaza war

The conflict is raging on streets and screens in the West

Oct 28th 2023

The Economist

The imagery is enticing, the rhythm and rhyme are propulsive. “From the river to the sea,” runs the popular slogan, “Palestine will be free!” In recent days that couplet has resounded in squares from Toronto to Berlin. Wearing chequered keffiyeh scarves, Californian pupils declaimed it as they swept down school corridors. Activists projected the words onto a wall of a university in Washington, DC.

What do they mean? Superficially an idealistic vow of liberation, the decades-old expression also contains a threat: the river is the River Jordan, the sea is the Mediterranean and freedom, in this case, implies the destruction of the state of Israel. That is certainly the sense in which Hamas uses the phrase. The children chanting it at the base of Nelson’s column in London on October 21st, during a big pro-Palestinian march, may not have grasped the menace. But several marchers who were yelling the words, or bearing them on placards, seemed aware of it, clamming up defensively when asked to explain them.

“Anyone who’s paying attention knows exactly what that means,” says Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League, an American anti-hate group which, like watchdogs in Britain and elsewhere, has documented a steep rise in antisemitic incidents since Hamas’s bloody raid on Israel on October 7th. (Islamophobic incidents have multiplied in several countries, too.) The ubiquity of this deceptively hardline mantra points up an important shift in Western attitudes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Three related forces are driving it: technology, demography and ideology.

The Western left once sympathised with Zionism. That changed markedly after the six-day war of 1967 and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Especially since the end of apartheid in South Africa, the Palestinian cause has been a talismanic issue for left-leaning Westerners. Why it acquired this status is a matter of debate. In some analyses, Israel serves as an avatar for American power, or for bygone colonial struggles. Jewish groups and others have wondered why the casualties in, say, Syria or Afghanistan—where the perpetrators as well as the victims are Muslim—stir less bien-pensant concern.

After a period in which the issue receded in prominence in Western diplomacy and headlines, Gaza’s plight is now inspiring protests and disputes as never before. A glut of open letters by artists and other luminaries have decried Israel’s bombardment and Western leaders’ acquiescence to it. (Counter-petitions mourn the atrocities of October 7th and affirm Israel’s right to self-defence.) Pro-Palestinian rallies have been held in many cities, including some where they were notionally banned.

The recriminations flow both ways. In Britain the BBC’s reluctance to refer to Hamas as “terrorists” led to an outcry and a partial climbdown. Dave Chappelle, an American comedian, reportedly had a spat with punters at a gig in Boston after he lamented the crisis in Gaza. Some American students have been hounded for their stridently anti-Israel views; talks by Palestinian authors have been cancelled. Palestine Legal, which supports pro-Palestinian activists in America, says they are “facing a wave of McCarthyite backlash targeting their livelihoods and careers”.

Painful viewing

“Silence is violence”, runs another popular protest slogan, a position taken by some on all sides. A range of institutions, from universities to unions, have been berated for the wording of their public statements, or for failing to issue one. Calls for peace have been likened to appeasement. And supporters of both Israel and Palestine make analogies with Ukraine to demonstrate the supposed hypocrisy of the opposing camp. Backers of the Palestinians see Gaza as the victim (like Ukraine) of invasion by a bullying neighbour. Pro-Israelis point to Hamas’s incursion and liken its barbarity to Russian war crimes.

The polarised passions and viral slogans are in part a sharp manifestation of the echo-chamber effect of social media. Millions of people have watched footage of Hamas’s depredations in horror. Many others are transfixed instead by images of Gaza’s agony. In Germany, for instance, where a synagogue has been firebombed and stars of David daubed on Jewish homes, some Islamists exist in “parallel societies”, relying on digital and overseas news, says Felix Klein, the federal commissioner for antisemitism. So, he adds, do many on the far right, which commits most of the country’s antisemitic crimes. (There, as in America, the two groups have made common cause online.)

Worse, the heart-rending clips and pictures sometimes come from the wrong country or the wrong war, or even from video games. Like the echo-chamber effect, online disinformation is a familiar problem that has seemed as acute as ever in the ongoing crisis.

The blast at the Ahli Arab hospital on October 17th was a supreme example of the reach and clout of falsehoods. Swiftly picked up by major news outfits, misleading reports contributed, in short order, to the cancelling of a summit between Arab leaders and President Joe Biden. Demand for disinformation, reckons Peter Pomerantsev of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is an even bigger problem than supply. In wartime, “people are looking for reasons to confirm their biases,” he says glumly. “It isn’t about the facts.”

Screen habits encourage another striking feature of reactions to the war: the “gamification” of news, whereby irony and taboo-busting are prized, even amid the gravest calamities. The paragliders on which some Hamas murderers flew to Israel were, for a few onlookers, irresistibly meme-worthy. Black Lives Matter Chicago briefly posted an image of a paraglider with the words, “I stand with Palestine.” “From Chicago to Gaza,” runs another of its messages, “from the river to the sea.”

As for demography: immigration is one factor skewing the culture war in the West over the tragic one in the Middle East. Muslim populations in Western countries are both growing and changing in composition. In the past, notes Yunus Ulusoy of the Centre for Turkish Studies and Integration Research in Essen, the Muslim population in Germany was of predominantly Turkish origin. Now, he says, around 2.1m Muslims in the country have roots in Syria, Iraq and other places that are hostile to Israel. They brought their views of the conflict with them—shaped, says Mr Ulusoy, by a sense of solidarity with the ummah, or global Muslim community.

Awareness of Nazism and the Holocaust, meanwhile, which for decades coloured German attitudes to Israel and antisemitism, is waning. Some Muslims, says Professor Julia Bernstein of the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, think this awful past “is not our history”, and that they are now the real victims of prejudice in Germany.

France, notes Dominique Moïsi, an eminent French commentator, is home to both the largest Muslim population in western Europe and the biggest Jewish one. It has a traumatic recent history of Islamist terrorism, and a more distant one of collaboration with the Nazis, both of which tend to bolster support for Israel. But it also harbours contrary strains of anti-Americanism and guilt over French colonialism in the Arab world. The result, says Mr Moïsi, is a “conflict of memories” that plays out in politics and on the streets.

In America, the most influential depiction of Israel in popular culture is probably “Exodus”. A novel by Leon Uris published in 1958, it dramatises the birth of the state and became a film starring Paul Newman. (“As a piece of propaganda,” said David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, “Exodus” was “the greatest thing ever written” about the country.) Overall, Americans remain much more supportive of Israel than are Europeans. Polls conducted since October 7th show a hardening of support for it among Democrats in particular.

image: The Economist

But there is an important demographic wrinkle. As Tim Malloy, a polling analyst at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, says, younger Americans are much less inclined to back Israel than are their elders. They also think more favourably of the Palestinian people. According to surveys by Pew, this gap in sympathy between American generations is widening (see chart).

Many young voters do not have direct memories of the attacks of September 11th 2001, a calamity which shaped older Americans’ views of Islamist terrorists such as Hamas. Their diverging outlook also reflects the third force swaying Western attitudes: a binary ideology that emerged from American universities to win converts far and wide.

Beyond good and evil

Seeing the world in Manichean terms can be comforting. It turns confounding issues into simple clashes of good and evil, conferring a halo of virtue on those who pick the right side. As Yascha Mounk, author of “The Identity Trap”, argues, the emerging ideology offers just this form of comfort, sorting the world into opposing categories—coloniser and colonised, oppressors and oppressed—often along racial lines. In essence it transposes the terms of American debates over race onto other places and problems. “The American brand of anti-colonialism”, quips Mr Mounk, “is astonishingly colonialist.”

In a polarised age, lots of people infer their opinions from their political allegiance rather than the other way round. This, thinks Mr Mounk, is part of the new ideology’s appeal: it furnishes an all-purpose vocabulary to apply to any conflict. In this schema, the powerless can do no wrong, least of all to the powerful—and nobody can be both. Liberation movements of all kinds are linked, as communist insurgencies purported to be during the cold war. As flares in the colours of the Palestinian flag were set off at Piccadilly Circus, a protester in London holding a “Queers for Palestine” sign explained that “All the struggles are connected.”

This philosophy is tailor-made for the posturing and character-limits of social-media posts, perhaps one reason it is gaining adherents. But it prohibits the balance and nuanced judgments that intractable real-world hostilities demand. In particular, because the Palestinians are cast as powerless, and Israel is classed as powerful, it follows that Israelis cannot qualify as victims. Never mind the exile of Mizrahi Jews from Arab countries to Israel. The Holocaust is ancient history.

The schema shows up glaringly in references to Hamas’s crimes as a form of “resistance” or “decolonisation”, and in the statement by some Harvard students that held Israel “entirely responsible” for the slaughter of its own citizens. Many Jews, in Israel and the diaspora, perceive a wider disregard for Israel’s suffering—not just less sympathy than it received during, say, the Entebbe hostage crisis of 1976, but a void. If the issue is morally simple, meanwhile, for many Western activists the remedy is blunt and drastic: not the two-state solution of yore, but a Palestine that stretches “from the river to the sea”.

Friends like these

In the left-leaning political elite, the picture is starkly different. Both Mr Biden and Sir Keir Starmer, leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, have offered Israel staunch support. All the same, the escalation in some rank-and-file attitudes to the war may have a lasting fallout—both in the Middle East and in the West.

Mr Biden, Sir Keir and other leaders have been lambasted by some in their parties for declining to call for a ceasefire. This disapproval—often motivated by natural compassion for Palestinian civilians rather than ideology—may cost them votes, Muslim and otherwise, in what may be tight elections next year. (Mr Biden may have weighed that risk against the potentially higher cost of supporting a ceasefire.)

That may not be the only form of political blowback. Plenty of liberal voters are dismayed by the responses of people with whom, in the past, they felt broadly aligned. Their coalition with more radical voters was already under pressure; for some liberals, the bedrock of common values that they thought underpinned it seems to have crumbled. If the debate over Gaza has been a symptom of polarisation in the West, it may yet prove to be a cause of realignment, too.

The consequences for Israel and the Middle East are unpredictable. At least in the short term, revulsion for Hamas seems to outweigh any qualms Americans might have had before the war over Israel’s rightward lurch under Binyamin Netanyahu. Most Americans, including most Democrats, tell pollsters that supporting Israel is in American interests. How far and how long that remains the case depends on a series of unknowns—starting with the conduct and outcome of a ground invasion of Gaza, and the new dispensation that may follow. Developments in domestic politics will matter, including the fervour of the Republican embrace of isolationism.

From an Israeli point of view, though, the long-term trajectory of opinion in America is worrying. And in Europe, as the second world war recedes from living memory and the clout of Muslim voters grows, support for Israel may continue to soften, especially on the left.

Even as the disaster in Israel and Gaza unfolds, one of its morals is already clear. Amid the unchecked flow of images and ideas, Western public opinion and geopolitical conflicts are entangled in new and explosive ways. Culture wars and real wars are no longer separate struggles. ■

The Economist

11. Fog of war: Myanmar’s armed conflict is not a stalemate

Who in DOD is tracking this irregular war? Anyone anticipating the potential outcome postulated below? While this conflict is too much for the US plate, are we helping our allies and friends in the region to be prepared to address this conflict and the fallout? What is the role of the UN in this conflict?

Excerpts:

It could be three months from now, or six, or even 24; though given the speed with which the trajectory of conflict has shifted over 2023, a timeframe stretching out over another three years or longer is difficult to envisage.

What is not in doubt at the end of 2023 is the trajectory itself, and the near inevitability of a black swan event that may well catch opposition forces themselves off-guard.

Myanmar’s neighbors and the international community more generally would be well-advised to prepare diplomatic, humanitarian and judicial responses for a morning-after in which a smooth transition to a new federal-democratic order would hardly be guaranteed.

Fog of war: Myanmar’s armed conflict is not a stalemate

The widely accepted notion that Myanmar’s civil war is stuck in stalemate is conceptually facile, analytically lazy and dangerously flawed

asiatimes.com · by Anthony Davis · October 29, 2023

Amid the last torrential storms of the 2023 monsoon, the fog of war is thickening over Myanmar. And growing numbers of observers monitoring the country’s unfolding implosion are in danger of getting lost in the gloom.

No one doubts that hostilities between the country’s embattled State Administration Council (SAC) coup regime and a plethora of armed opposition forces are escalating sharply, punctuated by a steady string of atrocities visited on the civilian population by the military.

But against the backdrop of a bitterly fought information war playing out in social and mainstream media, making sense of the daily rash of clashes, raids and airstrikes is proving more challenging than at any time since the February 2021 coup.

In response, many in newsrooms, embassies and foreign ministries around the region and beyond are increasingly falling back on an interpretation of events beguiling in its overarching simplicity: the war is locked in an inevitably extended “stalemate” that denies either side any prospect of military victory and sooner or later will require a negotiated settlement.

Viewed from these echo chambers, the plausibility of the stalemate narrative rests on some indisputable realities: Myanmar’s military faces unprecedented challenges, but remains ruthless, disciplined and well-resourced.

And its monopoly of air power and heavy artillery appears to ensure its indefinite grip over urban areas and the essential levers of state power: civilian ministries, airports, seaports, and, crucially, the central bank and army headquarters.

Born of a national uprising that followed the coup, the armed opposition has now grown too large to be crushed in line with the military’s preferred playbook. But it remains fragmented between a seemingly anarchic patchwork of people’s defense forces (PDFs) and ethnic armed groups, and is conspicuously lacking in charismatic leaders, strategic cohesion or external support.

There is no denying these baseline facts. However, the now widespread interpretation of a stalemated conflict that they have encouraged remains conceptually facile, analytically lazy and, in terms of encouraging shoulder-shrugging inaction on the part of regional governments, dangerously flawed.

It confuses a purported military stasis with what attention to ground detail and historical precedent indicates is something entirely different and far more complex: an inevitably protracted but dynamic conflict in which the current imbalance in armaments imposes – unsurprisingly – a temporary military stand-off around major urban centers.

Such stand-offs litter the histories of guerrilla conflicts in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia and other old Cold War theaters.

Serious analysis indicates that in Myanmar today, as in those struggles, rural-based insurgency involves a wider and constantly shifting interplay of military, political, economic and ultimately psychological factors. That fluid mix translates into an overarching trajectory of conflict in which one side is gaining advantage, however incremental, over the other.

In this sense, the war’s trajectory through 2023 has become clear in a manner that was not apparent in the first two years of the conflict, but which should now serve to dispel any analytical fog. In most key respects, it is a trajectory that favors forces opposed to the Naypyidaw regime.

Guns galore

Three facets of opposition strength driving this shift have grown in salience this year. One, reported in Asia Times in May, has been the striking transformation in the availability of modern small arms and light weapons now in the hands of anti-SAC forces when compared to 2021 and 2022.

The consequences of this change have proved critical over the rainy season now ending. Even though supplies of ammunition often remain inadequate, the improved tactical organization demanded by greater firepower has driven significant new offensive capabilities.

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Opposition forces have overrun a growing number of outlying regime positions, thereby capturing more and heavier weaponry. And, as importantly, they have also eroded the SAC’s hold on urban areas.

One Western intelligence analyst monitoring daily conflict at the level of Myanmar’s 330 townships and below noted to Asia Times that in the bitterly contested region of Sagaing, approximately 30% of PDF operations are now taking place inside urban areas, rising from 20% at the beginning of the year. He added that in neighboring Magwe in September 2023, 28% of attacks occurred inside towns.

Well-armed People’s Defense Force members are seen on a front line in Kawkareik, Myanmar, December 31, 2021. Image: Twitter / Screengrab

In short, in key swathes of central Myanmar near the national and commercial capitals, regime control is now less about urban areas as a whole and more about strongpoints inside towns that are vulnerable to PDF attacks using small arms and mortars and, increasingly, drones operated from suburbs.

Against the backdrop of the strategic stand-off visible from embassies in Yangon, at the tactical level, SAC control over many township centers is crumbling.

Unity is the emerging second facet of opposition resilience. From the earliest months of the war, much has been made of the fragmentation among hundreds of local PDFs and of the purported distrust among ethnic armed groups of the anti-coup National Unity Government (NUG) perceived as dominated by mainly ethnic Bamar National League for Democracy (NLD) figures that won the elections of 2020. Both issues miss essential points.

Remarkable in the Myanmar context when set against numerous other post-World War II guerrilla conflicts has been precisely the absence of organized infighting between factions opposed to the incumbent military regime.

This striking unanimity of purpose provides no guarantees for the future but for the time being, it is a dynamic that sees PDFs – some affiliated with the NUG, others independent – forming loose operational coalitions against the regime that are not squabbling among themselves.

Equally, notwithstanding predictable divide-and-rule efforts by the SAC aimed at breaking the Bamar-ethnic compact, the core Kachin, Karen, Karenni and Chin ethnic allies of the NUG – the so-called “K3C” – have remained steadfastly committed to the anti-coup “Spring Revolution.”

To imagine that decades of ethnic distrust of Myanmar’s dominant Bamar have been overtaken by newfound affection would be naive. Clear, however, is that each ethnic resistance organization (ERO) has made a cold calculation that active participation in the dismantling of military dictatorship serves its fundamental interests and, indeed, that the war is being won.

There is little reason to suppose SAC blandishments might prompt a revision of these assessments, least of all as regular regime air strikes massacre ethnic civilian communities.

Finally, 2023 has brought clear evidence of strategic planning underpinning a new level of operational effectiveness. This shift has turned largely on joint operations between EROs and PDFs at the regional rather than national level.

Targeted nationwide on key arteries of communication and supply, these campaigns are clearly not happening by accident and almost certainly imply a high degree of strategic liaison.

The most striking of these campaigns has been the latest: a joint offensive launched October 27, 2023, by the so-called Brotherhood Alliance across northern Shan state.

The Brotherhood allies, namely the Kokang Chinese Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the ethnic Palaung Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Rakhine Arakan Army (AA), overran the Kokang town of Chin Shwe Haw on the Chinese border simultaneous with a rash of attacks along the highway between Mandalay and the border hub of Muse that has severed traffic on Myanmar’s main land link with China.

TNLA soldiers march to mark the 51st anniversary of Ta’ang National Resistance Day in Homain, Nansan township, in northern Myanmar’s Shan state. Photo: Asia Times Files / AFP

Powerful alliances

Probably not by coincidence, the same day saw heavy fighting in the town of Kawkareik on the Asia Highway linking Yangon to Myawaddy on the Thai border where a powerful alliance of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and PDF forces it has trained and mentored has stepped up attacks dramatically this year.

In recent months, the same KNLA-PDF alliance has also extended operations into Mon state interdicting the highway between Yangon and the port city of Mawlamyine, while to the northwest another KNLA-led campaign has targeted the Sittang river valley along which lie the road and rail lines connecting Yangon and central Mandalay.

At the northern end of the Sittang Valley, operations have also extended into the Naypyidaw Capital Region. In August, air force jets conducted close air support missions for regime troops under pressure from joint KNLA-PDF forces probing the NCR in strength for the first time and unlikely the last.

Further north, on the border of Sagaing and Kachin state, a Kachin Independence Army-PDF alliance continues to tighten its stranglehold along the Ayeyarwady River lifeline linking regime forces in the north to their Mandalay logistics hub.

On the other side of Myanmar’s divide, it is difficult to see what additional strategic assets a regime already fighting a defensive war can marshal to halt, let alone reverse, the conflict’s current trajectory.

The SAC’s essential strength rests on the institutional centrality it derives from control over key loci of state power. But politically, a widely despised regime appears trapped in a cul de sac, its exit strategy via a military-managed election and purported return to democracy now pushed back from 2023 to 2025.

Economically, the SAC faces an unprecedented crisis characterized by rising commodity prices, chronic electricity shortages and a banking sector crippled by sanctions.

Diplomatically, meanwhile, the SAC’s sole committed ally remains Russia, which is fully bogged down in Ukraine and neither willing nor able to rescue a floundering protege as it did in Syria in 2015.

On the military front, the army, while still operationally cohesive, remains beset by a shrinking manpower pool and stark recruitment shortfalls.

In 2023, understrength force levels stretched everywhere too thin have driven a notable drop in large-scale offensives, growing reliance on untrained militias and a well-documented resort to airpower and artillery that is hardly winning any hearts and minds.

When in August the army attempted an offensive to box in the Kachin “capital” of Laiza on the Chinese border, the concentration of forces it managed to muster was an underwhelming 1,000–1,500 troops drawn from several commands. Against a daily hemorrhaging of casualties, the regime’s Kachin campaign has had little, if any, strategic impact.

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More typically, recent ground operations have involved hastily devised counteroffensives to retake positions lost to the resistance – south of the Thai border town of Myawaddy and in Kayah state in July, in northern Shan state in September, and around Mogok in Mandalay division earlier in October.

The current desperate struggle to respond to the setbacks in northern Shan state and reopen the roads to China will stretch army resources to the hilt.

Expecting black swans

Against this backdrop, Myanmar’s near- to medium-term future hinges on one central question: how long can the current stand-off between an increasingly aggressive resistance coalition and a hollowed-out military defending a political and economic house-of-cards be sustained?

The answer is impossible to predict. But a “black swan event” – an unforeseen incident with cascading consequences – that will impact an increasingly fragile edifice and terminate today’s strategic stand-off is all but certain.

By definition, a “black swan event” defies prediction. But in Myanmar of late 2023, it is not difficult to imagine a range of credible and possibly overlapping scenarios. A return to war by the powerful Arakan Army in Rakhine state culminating in a disastrous loss of territory and body-blow to regime morale arguably sits at the top of the list.

Myanmar’s insurgent Arakan Army could turn the war’s tide. Photo: Twitter

The complete loss of northern Shan state to the Brotherhood is now also plausible, compounded conceivably by a sudden coup de main by the hitherto neutral but powerful United Wa State Army aimed at extending its control over eastern and southern Shan state.

After any one of these “Stalingrad” disasters, the possibility of violent conflict in the upper echelons of the military triggered by the successful or attempted removal of SAC chairman and coup-maker Senior General Min Aung Hlaing scarcely stretches credulity.

Equally, it is impossible to know at what point in time the edifice of SAC control will have become sufficiently fragile to succumb to an event that it might earlier have survived.

It could be three months from now, or six, or even 24; though given the speed with which the trajectory of conflict has shifted over 2023, a timeframe stretching out over another three years or longer is difficult to envisage.

What is not in doubt at the end of 2023 is the trajectory itself, and the near inevitability of a black swan event that may well catch opposition forces themselves off-guard.

Myanmar’s neighbors and the international community more generally would be well-advised to prepare diplomatic, humanitarian and judicial responses for a morning-after in which a smooth transition to a new federal-democratic order would hardly be guaranteed.

asiatimes.com · by Anthony Davis · October 29, 2023

12. Israel’s new plan to encircle Hamas

Conclusion:

A slower war, coupled with a serious effort to provide humanitarian aid, could ease some of the pressure on Israel. But it would not solve the strategic dilemma of how to uproot Hamas or what to replace it with—questions which Israeli officials admit they have yet to answer. And it is little comfort to civilians in Gaza, who would be fated to endure months of displacement and despair.

Israel’s new plan to encircle Hamas

The unfolding invasion could take months or even a year

Oct 28th 2023 | JERUSALEM

The Economist

AS NIGHT FELL over the Gaza Strip on October 27th, the Palestinian mobile-phone networks in the coastal enclave stopped working. Rumours soon spread that Israel had begun a ground invasion of the territory. A terse statement from the army confirmed that ground operations were “expanding” but offered no other details. The few cameras that offered a view into Gaza captured some of the fiercest bombardment yet in the three-week war between Israel and Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls the strip.

Sunrise brought a bit more clarity. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had indeed entered Gaza from two points: around Beit Hanoun, a town in the north, and Bureij, near the narrow midpoint of the 45km-long strip. Relentless air strikes and artillery had provided cover for dozens of tanks and other armoured vehicles carrying infantry and combat-engineering troops.

The incursion seemed bigger than the raids of the previous two nights, which were small and lasted only a few hours before troops returned to Israeli territory. This time they remained inside and established temporary strongholds within Gaza’s borders. Still, it was hardly the division-sized attack that the Israeli army had been signalling for the past few weeks, since Hamas murdered more than 1,400 Israelis (mostly civilians) on October 7th.

In interviews over the past several days, IDF officials said the aims of the war remain unchanged: to isolate and destroy Hamas’s military infrastructure, particularly its network of underground tunnels, and to remove it from control of Gaza’s government. But the army’s tactics are not what they were assumed to be in the days after the massacre. The two locations where Israel entered on October 27th—north and south of Gaza city, the enclave’s largest urban area—suggest a gradual plan to encircle it. One senior officer describes the ground offensive as a campaign that will take months, perhaps a year.

Some Israeli politicians have begun to argue that a big ground offensive would play into Hamas’s hands, drawing the IDF into urban fighting for which Hamas has surely prepared ambushes and booby traps. It would also cause significant civilian deaths and damage to infrastructure in Gaza, which would create international pressure for a ceasefire. Israeli strikes have already killed more than 7,000 Palestinians in the enclave, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. “I don’t want us to get bogged down there without achieving our goal of dismantling Hamas,” says Naftali Bennett, who served a one-year stint as prime minister until June 2022.

A slower campaign would rely, in effect, on siege tactics. Hamas has stockpiled fuel, food and other essentials in its labyrinth of tunnels. At some point, though, supplies will run out: a lack of fuel for generators would mean no fresh air or lights underground, which would force Hamas to surface. “Hamas doesn’t expect this at all. It expects a ground invasion for three to six weeks,” Mr Bennett argues.

Israel’s tactics are constrained already by the more than 220 hostages abducted on October 7th by Hamas and other factions. Their families have put pressure on the Israeli government to prioritise their release. So have foreign governments: at least 41 countries have citizens in captivity (around a quarter of the hostages are thought to be migrant farm workers from Thailand). Hamas has released just four women thus far. There are ongoing talks, mostly via Qatar, the Gulf state which is one of Hamas’s patrons, to free more.

One Israeli official says the limited size of the ground campaign is an effort to balance competing priorities: to show that Israel is prepared to attack, while leaving room for a hostage deal. Still, even the incursion on October 27th was enough to anger the families. They called it “the worst of all nights” in a statement the next morning, which bemoaned the “complete uncertainty regarding the fate of the abductees who are being held there and are also subject to the heavy bombardment”.

The presence of so many Palestinian civilians is another constraint. On October 13th the IDF told the residents of northern Gaza, more than 1m people, to flee south. Around two-thirds of the civilian population is thought to have heeded that order—which still leaves a vast number of people in the area Israel is encircling. The mobile-phone outage during the October 27th bombardment made it impossible to call ambulances. Witnesses in Gaza say people brought the dead and wounded to hospitals on tuk-tuks.

Even in the “safe” zone, conditions are intolerable. Israel has continued air strikes in the south (though they are less intense than those in the north). It has not allowed any supplies to enter Gaza via its border. Aid began to trickle across from Egypt on October 21st, after Israel lifted a veto on the deliveries, but it is woefully inadequate. Just 84 lorries of food, water and medicine have entered in the past week; the United Nations says 100 lorries a day are needed.

Israel still refuses to allow fuel into Gaza. The IDF said this week that Hamas’s underground headquarters is located beneath Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest, and that the same generators which provide electricity for medical treatment also power ventilation systems and communication networks in the tunnels below (Hamas denies these claims). For Israel, then, the blockade on fuel is a military necessity.

For civilians, though, it is a source of growing misery. Gaza’s sole power station shut down on October 11th. Overcrowded hospitals rely on generators for electricity (several have run out of fuel). There are hours-long queues for meagre supplies of bread at the few bakeries that still have fuel for their ovens. Israeli politicians insist they will not send any aid to Gaza until all of the hostages are freed. Army officials have begun to acknowledge this position is untenable, saying a prolonged war will require them to oversee a humanitarian effort.

On October 27th the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution that called for an immediate “humanitarian truce”. The vote was 120-14, with 45 abstentions. America, which rejects any talk of a ceasefire, was one of the “no” votes. “We’re not drawing red lines for Israel,” said John Kirby, a White House spokesman, on October 27th. Still, it has started pushing Israel for “humanitarian pauses”, temporary lulls that would allow more aid to enter and let people with foreign citizenship leave Gaza through Egypt. Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat, has also endorsed the idea.

Army officials also hope a more gradual war will keep other fronts quiet. Iran continues to make threats—and not only to Israel. “If the US continues what it has been doing so far, then new fronts will be opened up against the US,” said Hossein Amirabdollahian, the foreign minister, in an interview with Bloomberg on October 27th. Iranian-backed militias have already carried out at least 19 drone or missile attacks against American bases in Syria and Iraq. On October 26th the Pentagon said it had conducted retaliatory air strikes against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria.

None of this is unusual, however. Those militias have been attacking American bases for years, although such attacks had subsided since March with an undeclared truce linked to prisoner-swap talks between America and Iran. The events of the past few weeks are a reversion to the norm, in other words, not a major escalation.

Worries about a second front in northern Israel have also subsided. In the days after the Hamas attack Israel called up 360,000 reservists, many of whom were sent to reinforce the border with Lebanon amid fears of a similar assault by Hizbullah, the Shia militant group and political party. Though tensions remain high, Israel believes Hizbullah and Iran, its patron, are wary of broadening the conflict. Both Israeli and Arab officials say Hizbullah has suffered more casualties than expected—it admits around 50 of its militants have been killed so far—and may be reassessing its tactics. The Israeli army may consider sending home some of its reservists, whose mobilisation is a heavy burden on the economy.

A slower war, coupled with a serious effort to provide humanitarian aid, could ease some of the pressure on Israel. But it would not solve the strategic dilemma of how to uproot Hamas or what to replace it with—questions which Israeli officials admit they have yet to answer. And it is little comfort to civilians in Gaza, who would be fated to endure months of displacement and despair. ■

The Economist

13. China to tighten its state secrets law in biggest revision in a decade

Spy versus spy.

China to tighten its state secrets law in biggest revision in a decade

A dozen new clauses have been added to Law on Guarding State Secrets under draft revision
It has raised concern among foreign business community and investors, with calls for clarity
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3239340/china-tighten-its-state-secrets-law-biggest-revision-decade?utm_source=pocket_saves

Phoebe Zhang

+ FOLLOWPublished: 6:00am, 27 Oct, 2023

October 27, 2023

View Original

All state employees with access to classified information will be banned from travelling overseas without prior approval – and even for a period after they leave the job or retire – under a draft revision of China’s state secrets law.

A dozen new clauses have been added to the Law on Guarding State Secrets in the revision, the details of which were made public on Wednesday.

The revision – the first in a decade – expands the depth and reach of the law’s coverage, ranging from education, technology and internet use to military facilities. The sweeping changes come as Beijing is locked in an intelligence war with the US and its allies and reflects that national security remains a top policy priority for the leadership.

All state employees with access to confidential information will have to get approval to travel overseas, including for a period after they leave the job or retire. Photo: AP

The revised law is set to be passed by the National People’s Congress after a second reading in the near future. It has raised concerns among the foreign business community and investors who fear it could increase the risks of doing business in China. Many were already spooked by a new law on espionage and data security.

There have been calls for more clarity – including on what constitutes a state secret.

“Clarity on relevant terms … is essential for businesses to know where China’s red lines are – this should be a consideration when revising laws related to national security,” the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said on Thursday.

He Zhiwei, a criminal lawyer in Beijing, also said there was not enough information on how a state secret was defined. “It might lead to the situation where a scenario is branded a ‘state secret’ by a random government entity, violating people’s rights,” he said.

Dr Matthieu Burnay, reader in global law at Queen Mary University of London, said the amendment would increase the risk of foreign firms having to face conflicting legal obligations in China and their home jurisdiction.

“It is a strong reminder that everyone, [be it] individuals or corporations, are responsible for upholding national security in China,” he said.

Burnay said the amendment restricting people from leaving China for a period after leaving jobs that “involved secrets” introduced a “very high level of uncertainty” because of vaguely defined terms such as “state secrets”, “national security” and “national interests”.

He said it would be up to those enforcing the law to determine how it would be applied. “In that process, national interests and national security will clearly take precedence over individual rights and corporate interests.”

He said corporate due diligence and other measures that aim to make global corporate activities more transparent were likely to conflict with the party-state’s tightened control over data and information flows.

China’s new Foreign State Immunity law marks major legal change

1 Sep 2023

The Ministry of State Security on Wednesday dismissed the concerns. It did not mention the revision, but said criticism of China’s anti-spying law was misguided.

In an article posted to its WeChat social media account, the ministry said that the anti-espionage law protected suspects’ human rights and it clearly set out the process for investigating state security cases.

“In the past three months since the new law took effect there has not been a single case of so-called arbitrary detention of foreigners, nor a single case of administrative review or administrative litigation targeting the national security offices,” the article said.

The draft revision is the first major update to the state secrets law since 2010 and only the second revision since its introduction in 1988.

The current law places restrictions on the employment of personnel who had access to state secrets, during a confidentiality period after they leave their position. Under the draft revision, they would also be banned from travelling overseas without approval as employees – something that currently applies to some staff under the current law – and during that confidentiality period after they leave the job. But the law does not clearly define who is regarded as an employee involved with state secrets.

There were some 7.16 million civil servants in China as of 2016, according to official news agency Xinhua. But the total number of people employed by the state – including state-owned enterprises, public institutions and agencies – is estimated at 31 million.

The revision also requires all levels of government – from county level up – to set aside funds in their annual budget for keeping information confidential.

China charities to be overseen by police, spy agencies under proposed law change

26 Oct 2023

The National Administration of State Secret Protection, an office under the State Council, and its branches at various levels have also been given fresh power to investigate cases related to state secrets.

They will have the power to check all files, question all personnel and confiscate devices and files deemed related to state secrets when looking into such cases or carrying out regular checks. Under the current law, its officers can only urge other law enforcement agencies to do this or coordinate with them.

The revised law also states that public education on keeping state secrets will be part of the national system, and calls for specialised education for cadres. The media is also encouraged to improve public awareness.

Regular checks of all tech products used to protect state secrets will also be required. And the revision stipulates government support for the research and application of key technologies in the field of information security.

The Chinese government considers the increasingly difficult task of protecting online data from attack as one of the greatest threats to confidentiality. In the past, one official solution to this issue had been quantum communication, which takes advantage of quantum physics to share data in a way that is thought to be unhackable and impossible to “eavesdrop” on, making it a powerful tool to protect sensitive data compared to the current methods.

China launched the first quantum communication satellites in 2016 and the first integrated network from Beijing to Shanghai in 2021. While China is developing core technologies to support national quantum communications, the technology still requires significant development.

State Security Minister Chen Yixin has called for a crackdown on the theft of state secrets. Photo: Weibo

As geopolitical tensions rise, President Xi Jinping earlier this year highlighted China’s “more complex” security concerns, urging officials to prepare for “worst-case and most extreme scenarios”.

State Security Minister Chen Yixin has also called for a crackdown on the theft of state secrets and for stricter national security measures, citing risks from a more unpredictable global environment. Chen’s ministry has made public multiple espionage cases this year, breaking its long tradition of working mostly in the shadows.

Draft revision of the Law on Guarding State Secrets

14. Ukraine War Rages in Shadow of Israel Conflict

Excerpt:

It’s not yet clear how the events in the Middle East will impact the conflict in Ukraine, but for now, both brutal wars continue to grind on.

Ukraine War Rages in Shadow of Israel Conflict

What you've been missing in the war in Ukraine over the past three weeks

Published 10/28/23 07:00 AM ET|Updated 18 hr ago

Joshua Keating

themessenger.com · October 28, 2023

For the past three weeks, the world’s attention has been focused on the tragic and violent events unfolding in Israel and Gaza. Among other things, this has meant that the conflict that has dominated headlines for the better part of the last two years, the war in Ukraine, has gone somewhat under the radar.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s been less any eventful, or violent. After months of heavy fighting–but few gains to show for it–Ukraine’s counteroffensive appears to be winding down, while fighting elsewhere is heating up. Here’s a look at the major developments from the last three weeks of the war.

Ukraine offensive

The Ukrainian counteroffensive that launched over the summer continues to grind on, one slow mile at a time. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, reported this week that Ukrainian forces had made small advances south of the city of Bakhmut, which Russia took after months of heavy fighting last spring, as well as in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia.

Ukrainian forces have also been launching periodic raids across the Dnipro River near the southern city of Kherson. While Ukrainian troops have penetrated Russian defensive lines in several places, very little actual territory has changed hands, and the counteroffensive–which Ukrainian leaders and many in the West had hoped might change the course of the war–may wrap up soon, as winter weather makes maneuvering more difficult.

Air and sea

While Ukraine’s recent military advances may not look impressive on a map of the battlefield, the country has been having more success away from the front lines.

Russia has withdrawn much of its Black Sea fleet from Sevastopol, a key port in Crimea, amid increasing missile and drone attacks. Sevastopol has been a strategically and politically important base for Russia since the 18th century. Earlier this week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the withdrawal a “historic achievement” for Ukraine, adding, “The Russian fleet is no longer capable of operating in the western part of the Black Sea and is gradually retreating from Crimea.”

Ukrainian special operations troops have also conducted increasingly bold raids into Crimea itself, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.

On Oct. 17, a strike using newly supplied U.S.-made ATACMS missiles destroyed at least nine Russian helicopters. Ukraine had been lobbying for these long-range weapons for months (more on the ATACMS below). Given the Russians’ recent heavy reliance on helicopters, the British Defense Ministry predicted that it is “highly likely these losses will have an impact on Russia’s ability to both defend and conduct future offensive activity."

Russia strikes back

On Oct. 10, after months of defending its positions and launching airstrikes on Ukrainian cities, Russian forces launched a major assault on Avdiivka, a small city in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

British officials called it “the most significant offensive operation undertaken by Russia since at least January 2023,” and it appeared to take Ukrainian leaders by surprise. Russian forces have made some gains around the city, and President Vladimir Putin boasted, "Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this space, which is quite vast."

But the Russians have also been taking heavy losses and appear to be using the “human wave” tactics used in the battle of Bakhmut. According to the British ministry of defense, the Avdiivka assault has contributed to a recent 90 percent increase in Russian casualties; Ukraine’s armed forces estimate that some 5,000 Russian personnel have been killed in the fighting. Satellite imagery has confirmed the destruction of at least 109 military vehicles.

And in a gruesome report on the Avdiivka battle, the White House this week accused Russia of executing its own soldiers for retreating in the face of Ukrainian artillery fire on the city.

Despite the losses, the Russians have continued to press around Avdiivka this week, indicating that even after months of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, they believe they still have sufficient reserves to launch offensive operations of their own.

Russia is also expected to step up its missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this winter, just as it did last year, putting a further strain on Ukraine’s supply of air defense ammunition.

An infantry soldier fires an RPG at movement he sees in the morning fog, as the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade 'Edelveys' operate at the zero frontline with infantry holding fire at positions 100 meters below Russian positions.Kostya Liberov/Libkos via Getty Images

Weapons deliveries-for both sides

The arrival of the ATACMS, after months of debate in Washington, was this month’s most headline-grabbing story on the all-important weapons supply front. The Pentagon also announced a new $150 million aid package for Ukraine this past week, including air defense missiles and artillery ammunition.

In another way, the biggest recent developments in the Ukraine war may have happened in Washington.

U.S. supplies won’t continue indefinitely unless Congress allocates new funding, and that may be difficult with increasing skepticism about the war, particularly among Republicans. President Joe Biden has proposed a huge new national security funding package, which includes $61.4 billion for Ukraine in addition to money for Israel, Taiwan, and border security. The Ukraine portion of the bill would include both ongoing military assistance and economic aid for Ukraine’s government.

But new House speaker Mike Johnson says the Ukraine funding should be negotiated separately. Johnson has opposed Ukraine aid packages in the past and received an “F” grade on a report card from the advocacy group Republicans for Ukraine, but some advocates have expressed hope that his views on the topic are “evolving.” On top of that uncertainty, thousands of American artillery shells that were intended for Ukraine are now being rerouted to Israel.

The politics of Ukraine aid have gotten more complicated in Europe as well, with the election of Robert Fico, a pro-Russian leftist who opposes military assistance to Kyiv, as prime minister of Slovakia. Fico has joined ranks with Hungary’s Viktor Orban, the most vocal Ukraine skeptic in the EU, who met with Putin in Beijing this month, in opposing further aid to Kyiv.

On the Russian side, around 1,000 containers of weapons from North Korea arrived in Russia this month, according to U.S. intelligence. Russia also claimed recently that it no longer needs to comply with U.N. Security Council restrictions on providing or receiving missile technology from Iran, after U.N. sanctions expired this month. Analysts say Russia has also been able to ramp up its domestic production of long-range missiles despite international sanctions.

Gaza to the Donbas: Tricky politics

After Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Zelenskyy was quick to compare the terrorist group’s actions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying the “essence is the same,” and noting the Iranian role in both attacks.

In an attempt to push his proposed funding bill through Congress, Biden made the same comparison, saying during a televised address last week that while Russia and Hamas represent different types of threats, they share a desire to “completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.”

That line might make political sense in Washington, where lawmakers have strongly supported Israel for much longer than Ukraine, but it will be a tough sell in many other countries, which see hypocrisy in the fact that the U.S. is staunchly supporting Israel, despite the mounting death toll in Gaza.

“Many U.N. members are asking why the U.S. seems less worried by Palestinian civilian deaths than Ukrainian fatalities,” Richard Gowan, U.N. Director at the International Crisis Group, told The Messenger. “The Russians are openly playing on the idea that the U.S. is demonstrating double standards in their approach to the two wars.”

Russia’s role in the Mideast conflict has been complicated. Russia and Israel have maintained fairly good relations in recent years. Israel has not yet joined in sanctions against Russia or provided military aid to Ukraine, much to Kyiv’s frustration, and Putin spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the attacks.

But Putin has also been even-handed in his remarks on the conflict, saving his harshest criticism for U.S. meddling. This week, Russian officials hosted Hamas representatives in Moscow. This prompted Zelenskyy to suggest that Putin is benefiting from the emergence of a second major crisis to divert attention and resources to the Middle East.

It’s not yet clear how the events in the Middle East will impact the conflict in Ukraine, but for now, both brutal wars continue to grind on.

themessenger.com · October 28, 2023

15. Task force to combat false reports (Taiwan)

Sun, Oct 29, 2023 page3

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/29/taiwan-takes-security-lessons-from-hamas-ukraine-surprise-attacks

Task force to combat false reports

RAPID RESPONSE: The task force on disinformation is to respond to false news within four hours of finding it, using fact-based clarification and online videos, an official said

By Chen Yu-fu, Tsai Chang-sheng and Jake Chung / Staff reporters, with staff writer
The Mainland Affairs Council has reached out to temples across Taiwan to promote awareness of Chinese misinformation campaigns, after national security agencies reported a “high occurrence” of election disinformation being spread among the religious community, a senior government official said.
The Executive Yuan has established a special task force on preventing the spread of false news and disinformation ahead of next year’s presidential election, headed by Executive Yuan member Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) and spokesman Lin Tzu-lun (林子倫), the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
China has been building a network within Taiwan’s religious community by treating Taiwanese temple members visiting China with food, board and other amenities, the source said.

President Tsai Ing-wen speaks at an event hosted by the Taiwan Temple Jin Lan Party in New Taipei City on Sunday last week.

Photo: Tsai Chang-sheng, Taipei Times
China is known to spread disinformation among networks in Taiwan, especially during election season, the official said.
On Sunday last week at an event in Hsinchu City, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) urged temple organizations and members to be aware that misleading or false information could be circulating through their ranks, and they should verify information before spreading it.
The government cannot limit speech in a way that would go against the spirit of democracy, but with the help of Taiwanese, the nation can do its best to prevent social instability brought about by misinformation and false news, Tsai said.
Some of the misinformation is being spread through the efforts of hostile foreign forces and domestic organizations, and some of that disinformation has distinct political motives, the official said.
They said the Executive Yuan’s efforts would focus on recognizing, exposing and suppressing false news, and identifying those spreading such information.
The task force is to respond to false news and provide factual clarification within four hours of it being discovered, they said.
The task force’s responses should not only be issued as news releases, but also on multiple platforms, including online with short videos, the official said.
The Criminal Investigation Bureau and the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau are using technology such as artificial intelligence software to identify false news, the government said.

16. Taiwan takes security lessons from Hamas, Ukraine surprise attacks

Any tunnels from the mainland to Taiwan under the sea? (note sarcasm).

Taiwan takes security lessons from Hamas, Ukraine surprise attacks

Taiwan considers its ability to counter a Chinese invasion attempt with lessons learned from Israel-Gaza war and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Al Jazeera English · by Frederik Kelter

Taichung, Taiwan – On October 7, the Palestinian armed group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, firing thousands of rockets that quickly overwhelmed Israel’s state-of-the-art Iron Dome air defence system while thousands of fighters infiltrated southern Israel by air, sea and land.

The significance of Hamas’s surprise attack was not lost on Taiwan’s military, which lives with a promise by Beijing’s political leaders to unify self-ruled Taiwan with China, by force if necessary.

How prepared is Taiwan for a war with China?

In the week after Hamas’s raid on Israel, the Taiwanese defence ministry announced the establishment of a task force to draw lessons from the Israel-Gaza war.

Taiwan’s defence minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, has said that an initial lesson is that intelligence gathering will be key to counter China’s threats.

Taiwan also has the sea, said 42-year-old Tony Wei, who is a member of the Taiwanese reserves and a dentist by profession.

Taiwan is separated from China’s east coast by a 130-kilometre (81-mile) stretch of ocean known as the Taiwan Strait which acts as a natural barrier and early warning system should Beijing try to overwhelm Taiwan in a surprise attack.

“To invade Taiwan, they (the Chinese military) have to gather a very large fleet,” Wei told Al Jazeera.

China’s mobilisation of such a naval force would probably be detected by Taiwan, giving the self-ruled island time to ready for an invasion or even launch a preemptive attack, Wei said.

Still, the Hamas raid – largely considered unimaginable by military analysts before it happened – has made Wei question whether Taiwan truly possesses the capabilities necessary to counter a potentially determined Chinese military.

“The Israelis have a very powerful military, an effective intelligence service and a lot of American support,” Wei said. “If even Israel can be surprised and overwhelmed, then what about Taiwan?”

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen has sought to modernise Taiwan’s military with new weapons and strategies [File: Chiang Ying-ying/AP Photo]

The Israel-Gaza war is the second time the world has recently been taken aback by a military operation considered improbable until it was carried out.

“They said that President Putin wouldn’t attack Ukraine, but he did, and they said that Hamas couldn’t attack Israel, but they did,” Wei said, referring to the Russian invasion of February 2022.

“Taiwan needs to learn from these attacks in case our island becomes the next place where the unthinkable happens.”

Surprise attacks: Knowing before, responding after

“Hamas’s attack achieved strategic, operational, and tactical surprise against the Israelis,” Eric Chan, a non-resident research fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute, told Al Jazeera.

“Taiwan has a vested interest in avoiding this type of surprise, especially because their adversary has greater powers than Hamas,” Chan said.

“The Russian invasion, as well as the surprise attack by Hamas, was an object demonstration that while you may think that the adversary is deterred by high costs, the adversary may actually not care,” he added.

Fang-Yu Chen, an assistant professor at Soochow University in Taipei who researches political relations between Taiwan, China and the US, said that Taiwan’s announced establishment of a task force in the aftermath of the Hamas attack was an attempt to learn lessons in order to prevent a Taiwanese intelligence failure with regards to China.

“Taiwan is constantly picking up a lot of information about China’s activities, but such information has to be verified, analysed and passed on to the right people,” Chen told Al Jazeera.

According to Chen, Taiwan might look to strengthening its intelligence gathering in order to ensure that credible threats from China are clearly identified before a potential disaster strikes.

“The next major consideration is what to do after an attack has already taken place,” he said.

Taiwan’s government has taken steps in that direction, too.

More money is being allocated to the military; compulsory military service for Taiwanese citizens is being extended from four months to one year; the purchase of new missile systems was announced, and the island’s first domestically built submarine was also unveiled earlier this month.

In its preparations, Taiwan has also looked to and learned from the war in Ukraine, according to Chen.

A major lesson of Russia’s invasion is the importance of not only strengthening the island’s conventional military and intelligence but also its capabilities within the field of information warfare in order to win the battle of the narrative, he said.

War of narratives

Chen has observed that China’s information operations directed at Taiwan have adjusted since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Before the Ukraine war, the propaganda was often about how the US will abandon Taiwan, but after the war, it has been about how the US is pushing China towards war,” he said.

At the same time, Chen has detected a polarisation of public opinion in Taiwan with people who were already willing to fight against Chinese aggression becoming more willing to confront Beijing while those who were unwilling to fight have become even less willing.

Amid this battle for public opinion and efforts to influence personal resolve among the Taiwanese, Taiwan’s government last year launched a ministry of digital affairs which has since introduced a range of measures to combat disinformation directed at the island and its population.

In the battle of narratives it is not just a matter of countering disinformation that reaches Taiwan, said Wei, the military reservist, but also about how Taiwan obtains the backing of other countries.

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen has also taken certain preliminary steps to accomplish this by encouraging the island to tell its own story to the world. Through the “Give Taiwan a Voice” campaign, her administration has protested against Taiwan’s exclusion from the United Nations and sought to highlight the island’s contributions to the international community.

At the same time, Tsai has sought to reach out to and integrate Taiwan more extensively with countries in South and Southeast Asia through a so-called “southbound policy” under the slogan of “Taiwan helps Asia, Asia helps Taiwan”.

Wei believes such initiatives are important if Taiwan is to win over world opinion in the face of increasing pressure from China.

Taiwan’s military took part in drills last month to simulate integrated ground and air combat [File: Chiang Ying-ying/AP Photo]

For Wei, the importance of winning the narrative was highlighted in the information battle that broke out between Israel and Hamas over responsibility for the deadly explosion at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza.

The fight to convince the world of the magnitude and responsibility for the hospital atrocity had far-reaching consequences as meetings between US President Joe Biden – Israel’s staunchest ally – and several Arab leaders were cancelled amid a global outcry over the attack.

As Wei said, no one supports someone who bombs hospitals, and no one can win a war without assistance from the outside.

Winning the information war, he said, will be crucial for Taiwan in any potential confrontation with China.

“So, we must win the war of words so that we can count on international support if Chinese bombs strike Taiwan.”

Al Jazeera English · by Frederik Kelter

17. I Might Have Once Favored a Cease-Fire With Hamas, but Not Now

I Might Have Once Favored a Cease-Fire With Hamas, but Not Now

By Dennis B. Ross

Mr. Ross is a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East.

nytimes.com · by Dennis B. Ross · October 27, 2023

The aftermath of an Israeli strike on Gaza City on Oct. 26.Credit...Omar El-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

For 35 years, I’ve devoted my professional life to U.S. peacemaking policy and conflict resolution and planning — whether in the former Soviet Union, a reunified Germany or postwar Iraq. But nothing has preoccupied me like finding a peaceful and lasting solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

In the past, I might have favored a cease-fire with Hamas during a conflict with Israel. But today it is clear to me that peace is not going to be possible now or in the future as long as Hamas remains intact and in control of Gaza. Hamas’s power and ability to threaten Israel — and subject Gazan civilians to ever more rounds of violence — must end.

After Oct. 7, there are many Israelis who believe their survival as a state is at stake. That may sound like an exaggeration, but to them, it’s not. If Hamas persists as a military force and is still running Gaza after this war is over, it will attack Israel again. And whether or not Hezbollah opens a true second front from Lebanon during this conflict, it, too, will attack Israel in the future. The aim of these groups, both of which are backed by Iran, is to make Israel unlivable and drive Israelis to leave: While Iran has denied involvement in the Hamas attack, Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has long talked about Israel not surviving for another 25 years, and his strategy has been to use these militant proxies to achieve that goal.

Given the strength of Israel’s military — by far the most powerful in the region — the aims of Iran and its collaborators seemed implausible until a few weeks ago. But the events of Oct. 7 changed everything. As one commander in the Israeli military said, “If we do not defeat Hamas, we cannot survive here.”

Israel is not alone in believing it must defeat Hamas. Over the past two weeks, when I talked to Arab officials throughout the region whom I have long known, every single one told me that Hamas must be destroyed in Gaza. They made clear that if Hamas is perceived as winning, it will validate the group’s ideology of rejection, give leverage and momentum to Iran and its collaborators and put their own governments on the defensive.

But they said this in private. Their public postures have been quite different. Only a few Arab states openly condemned the Hamas massacre of more than 1,400 people in Israel. Why? Because Arab leaders understood that as Israel retaliated and Palestinian casualties and suffering grew, their own citizens would be outraged and they needed to be seen as standing up for the Palestinians, at least rhetorically.

Nowhere was the instinct to cater to the mood of the street more vividly revealed than in the quick denunciations of Israel after Hamas claimed that Israel bombed Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. Israel has denied hitting the hospital but in several Arab countries, Hamas’s claims were accepted. At this point, multiple national intelligence agencies have said it was most likely a Palestinian rocket that hit the hospital.

Nevertheless, people across the region — and the world — saw Israel bombing Gaza and were ready to believe this, too, was deliberately done. Even the United Arab Emirates, which had condemned the Hamas attack, issued a later statement condemning “the Israeli attack that targeted Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the Gaza Strip, resulting in the death and injury of hundreds of people.” It went on to call on “the international community to intensify efforts to reach an immediate cease-fire to prevent further loss of life.”

As Israel's aerial bombardment of Gaza picks up in pace and civilian casualties rise, international calls for an immediate cease-fire are mounting. Some are calling for Israel to call off a ground invasion. But ending the war now would mean Hamas would win. At present, its military infrastructure still exists, its leadership remains largely intact, and its political control of Gaza is unchallenged. As Hamas did after conflicts with Israel in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021, the group will almost certainly rearm and restore. It will be able to add to its system of tunnels running under the enclave. The strip will remain impoverished, and the next round of war will be inevitable, holding both Gazan civilians and much of the rest of the Middle East hostage to Hamas’s aims.

An Israeli ground campaign would come at an extremely high cost. If it proceeds, invading Israeli soldiers will surely lose their lives, and there will be even more Palestinian casualties, a tragedy Hamas has ensured by embedding itself and its military capability in communities, using hospitals, mosques and schools to store its ammunition. But defeating Hamas cannot be done only with strategic strikes from the air, any more than we were able to root out ISIS in Mosul, Iraq, or Raqqa, Syria, from the air. In that fight, the United States had local partners who did the terrible and costly ground fighting in cities while our forces largely devastated them from above.

What would a defeat of Hamas mean? It would mean its military infrastructure, much of which is physically connected to civilian infrastructure, was largely destroyed and its leadership decimated, leaving the group without the capacity to block a reconstruction for demilitarization formula for Gaza, as it did in the past. In essence, this would mean there would be no war-making capacity in Gaza and that capacity could not be rebuilt.

That formula must guide the day-after reality in Gaza. It would require Israel to remain in Gaza after the fighting ends until it could hand over to some kind of an interim administration to prevent a vacuum and begin the enormous task of reconstruction. That administration should be largely run by Palestinian technocrats — from Gaza, the West Bank or the diaspora — under an international umbrella, which would include Arab and non-Arab nations. The United States would need to mobilize and organize the effort, possibly using an umbrella like the United Nations or the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee donor group to the Palestinians or even acting on the proposal by President Emmanuel Macron of France to use the international anti-ISIS coalition to counter Hamas. Such a coalition could help create the division of labor that would be necessary.

For example, Morocco, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain could provide police — not military forces — to ensure security for the new civil administration and those responsible for reconstruction. Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E and Qatar could provide the bulk of the funding for reconstruction, explaining their roles as necessary to relieve the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza and help them recover. Canada and others could provide monitoring mechanisms to ensure that assistance would go to its intended purposes.

Of course, the mood in Gaza after the fighting is over will be grim and angry. Thousands of civilians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry. Vast swaths of the enclave are uninhabitable. But it is worth noting that polls taken not long before the Oct. 7 attack revealed that 62 percent of Gazans were against Hamas breaking the cease-fire at the time with Israel. Getting aid into Gaza quickly and starting the reconstruction effort as soon as the fighting stops could help show residents that life can get better when Hamas is no longer preventing the rebuilding of Gaza.

How Israel would conduct a ground campaign would affect all of this and even whether such a day-after reality could materialize. For Israel to reduce the pressure from its neighbors and the international community to stop its attack, it must demonstrate more convincingly that it is fighting Hamas and is not trying to punish Palestinian civilians. It must create safe corridors for humanitarian assistance, including from Israeli territory through the Kerem Shalom crossing point. To alleviate the suffering, it should allow international groups, such as Doctors Without Borders, to operate safely there and include Israeli doctors who can set up field hospitals — something they have experience doing in Syria and Ukraine.

Israel’s political leaders need to clearly and publicly emphasize they will leave Gaza and lift the siege after Hamas has been militarily defeated and largely disarmed. They must communicate that they understand a political resolution is needed with the Palestinians more generally. That is not a message Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now conveying, given the shock in Israel and the makeup of his government. But it is one Israel’s partners in the region need to hear — and soon.

There are no easy solutions to Gaza, but there is only one path forward in this war. An outcome that leaves Hamas in control will doom not just Gaza but also much of the rest of the Middle East.

Dennis Ross is a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East. He is now the counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and teaches at Georgetown University.

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

nytimes.com · by Dennis B. Ross · October 27, 2023

18. The U.S. Military: Second-Rate and Loving It

This article is suddenly making the rounds on social media. The web site (and "Foundation") seems to consist of one person, the founder, Ryan Sweazey, Lt Col (ret), USAF. At least no one else is mentioned anywhere on the web site. Here is the link describing the "Foundation's" mission. https://walkthetalkfoundation.org/about-us/

The U.S. Military: Second-Rate and Loving It

walkthetalkfoundation.org · September 30, 2023

As a Chicago native and Gen X’er, one indelible part of my childhood was the 1985 Bears. The Super Bowl Shuffle, the Fridge, Coach Ditka – it was a magical season, capped off with a dominating win in Super Bowl XX. Despite some brief glints of greatness, the Bears, since that season, have never been able to recapture the glory of that epic season; most would argue they haven’t even come close. But that doesn’t stop us, the diehard fans of the Monsters of the Midway, from reminiscing about that incredible season, from playing our Super Bowl Shuffle record, from foolishly thinking we will return to greatness someday, and that we are still, at least in some ways, awesome. And then there’s reality… The Bears have the 4th-worst record of any NFL team over the last decade, with a 61-101 record. As of the writing of this article, they currently have the longest active losing streak of any NFL team and have begun this season after much hype and promise at 0-4. Awesome, we are most decidedly no longer.

The Pinnacle (and the beginning of decline) of the American Military

If you have never been to Normandy, France, I would highly recommend you visit it. There, on the windswept beaches of northwestern France, unfolded the scenes of quite possibly the pinnacle of the modern-day American civilization.

In one brutal but magnificent day, the inimitable powers of freedom and democracy joined together in the greatest combined operation of modern warfare in order to confront the evil forces of Nazi Germany. Never in the post-industrial era have we endeavored to do something as momentous as Operation Overlord. We will likely never do so again. Since that generation, with the toppling of fascism in Europe followed shortly by the confronting of Communism in Korea, the U.S. military has been in steady decline. Some periods of that decline have been masked by a spike in patriotism, or renewed calls to service, but from a macro-level perspective, our grand military is but a shell of its former great self.

With increasing frequency, the plight of the military’s ability to recruit has emerged into the public spotlight, to include the mainstream media. The leadership of the military has been quick to point at factors external to the institution: the state of the economy[i] [ii] [iii], the lack of able-bodied men and women[iv] [v], and a shrinking military footprint throughout the nation due to Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) decisions. Far more infrequently discussed by the Pentagon’s brass, however, is the myriad of factors internal to the armed forces, which dissuade Americans from serving, or continuing to serve: the high rate of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) especially among women[vi] [vii], the rate of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and suicides amongst veterans[viii] [ix] [x], the corrupted systems of justice and redress that fail to protect the individual service member[xi], and an ever-increasing self-serving leadership corps especially amongst senior military officers and civil service personnel[xii] [xiii]; these are just a few factors that have combined for an inconvenient and un-confronted truth in the Pentagon: it is the military itself that is at least partly, if not mostly, responsible for its own recruiting woes.

But this article is not about the decline of the prestige and trust the military used to enjoy, it is ultimately about the decline of capability. And what we at the Foundation find far more disconcerting than the decline of our military’s readiness, is that very few in positions to alter that downward vector really seem to give a damn, whether that be the Congress or the military institution’s leadership.

Everyone Sees the Train Approaching, but No One is Flinching

In the nearly two years we have been in operation, we have dealt with many levels of Congress, from individual staffer, to major committees. From those interactions, here is what we assess, with a preponderance of the evidence, “moves the needle” in Congress with respect to military issues:

Big defense contract dollars
Hot-button social agenda items
Embarrassing press

Markedly absent in that list are:

Oversight of the military, especially its leadership,
Accountability of a Department of Defense that consistently violates laws and regulations,
Rights and protections of the individual service member,
Issues that impact readiness, military industry contracts notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, we, as a nation and especially as a military, are approaching a confluence of two converging paths:

A potential future conflict with a peer adversary

-and-

A military that can no longer recruit and retain an adequate amount of talent in order to conduct that conflict

If you believe the above two to be true, you should be writing your Congressmen now. And in that letter, the message should be simple: you, Representative / Senator X, are not doing enough now in order to avoid what could be a catastrophic collision of events in the future. Their inadequacy comes through because, aside from the above-listed three issues, our Congress is not doing its Constitutionally-mandated job of executing checks and balances on the Executive branch, mainly our armed forces.

To highlight Congress’ failures, let us view a list, taken from various sources, as to why America has lost trust in the military institution:

Fruitless conflicts that have cost an inordinate amount of American lives and money[i] [ii] [iii],
A consistent lack of transparency [iv] [v],
Unchecked assault, abuse, and harassment of its members,
An uncurbed mental health and suicide epidemic[vi],
A lack of a truly independent and uncorrupted system of justice,
Leaders who are increasingly self-serving and sycophantic.

It is here where the question is begged: what measures is Congress and our Commander-in-Chief enacting in order to address the above six ailments of our military? The answer is: little to nothing, at least nothing to little of substance. Instead, they invest their energies into one of their priorities: big defense dollars (which just so happen to equate to big campaign dollars), or pursuing their party’s social issue du jour which has little to do with readiness and defense of the nation in the slightest. And with this lies the ever-present hypocrisy: how can our government espouse the importance of military readiness while it at the same time refuses to address so many of the problems that directly affect it?

The Infinite Loop

Time and time and time again, we at the Foundation see this pattern with our Executive and Legislative branches:

A systemic problem arises in the military which impacts readiness,
Service members attempt to address it, to include taking their concerns to Congress,
Congress carries out one of the following:

Defers the corrective action(s) back to the Department of Defense, which inevitably does nothing,
Attempts to effect policy change which an uncooperative Department simply out-waits,
Effects policy change which the Department either disregards with impunity or does enough to placate any short-lived oversight entities.

Repeat.

The most salient example we can provide of this phenomenon is that of the ongoing issue of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) in the Armed Services. Despite over 20 years of attention, the military has made veritably zero progress in this fight: rates of MST have not declined, service members’ trust of the system’s handling of cases is at an all-time low[i], and moreover, the institution that has attempted to cover the issue up is continuing to be exposed in a manner which America’s youth sees[ii] [iii]. The Walk the Talk Foundation has dealt with a handful of cases recently which involve elements of MST. The military’s conduct in these cases has been as surprising as deplorable: consistently scoffing DoD regulations and Title 10 law in their handling of the allegations, not to mention the unchecked retribution of the victims. And with each case, we are forced to cogitate: how is it that the military would continue to conduct itself in this manner? Have they learned nothing? All crassness and cynicism aside, we believe the answer really is “yes” – they in fact have learned nothing. In military speak, we would call this a “lesson identified”, not a “lesson learned.” One in three women in today’s military have been or will be sexually harassed or assaulted while serving[iv]. One in three. And that is after two decades of the military “confronting” the issue. If you had a service-aged daughter that inquired about serving in the military, what would you say to her, given that statistic? But why is this problem not going away? Why does it remain a “lesson identified” in perpetuity? The answer is simple: because it can. And this problem, like so many others, won’t be fixed of the institution’s own accord – they gain nothing by doing so. After all, how many Generals and Admirals have had their career impacted by not addressing MST? Zero. So, what’s the motivation level to really fix MST? Also zero. And this axiom can be applied to hundreds of issues across the DoD today amongst our top brass: doesn’t affect me or my career? Don’t really care. But remember: “people are our most valuable resource,” so says the leadership cabal.

Check Out That Sound System!

After the Defense Intelligence Agency was highlighted in a February 2022 Wall Street Journal Article for not addressing rampant toxicity in the workplace, its Director, in an effort to launch a PR counter-offensive, was quick to address the members of the Agency highlighting all the good things people were doing there. He wasn’t wrong – there were people doing great things in DIA, and there still are. But his response was akin to when you try to return a lemon of a used car because the transmission is blown out and the salesman retorts “just listen to this sound system!” One has nothing to do with the other, and, even more germane to this discussion: the good aspects simply don’t nullify the bad ones. To highlight this common DoD deflection tactic as it applies to the answering the wrong question with the wrong answers, here is what our military leadership asserts are the roots of its recruiting problems:

Out-of-shape youth,
A healthy economy,
A reduced military footprint throughout the nation.

Now look at the list of 6 factors in the previous paragraph that are contributing to the decline of trust vis-a-vis our military institution. You’ll note there are no commonalities in the “he-said-she-said” discussion about why our youth find the military to be less and less trustworthy and hence less attractive as a career.

Referring back to the MST epidemic, should the military not list in “barriers to recruiting” the fact that if a woman enlists, she is statistically more likely to be raped while serving in the military? The answer to that is an undeniable yes – that absolutely should be a concern which is discussed candidly. But it isn’t. It’s easier and more palatable for our military leadership to talk about exogenous boogeymen instead of addressing the ugly truths staring at them in the mirror. In short, the military is trying to discuss only the metaphorical sound system, without even mentioning the blown out transmission. But again, who cares? The blaring unaddressed problems internal to the military like unchecked MST don’t get more than a veritable shoulder shrug form our short-attention-spanned Congress, and perhaps something only slightly more from a relatively disinterested press. In short, the military is sucking at defeating these “domestic enemies”, or perhaps more accurately just plain chooses not to defeat them (unable to defeat enemies sadly being an emerging trend) and no one that could change that really gives a damn.

Where are All Those Unicorns?

One of those entities that could effect change that doesn’t is our flaccid General Officer / Flag Officer (GOFO) corps. General officer revisionist history has become some of our favorite reading as of late. A perfect exemplar of that General Officer nonsense comes from the now well-known quote about raising mavericks in the service.

“Take the mavericks in your service, the ones that wear rumpled uniforms and look like a bag of mud but whose ideas are so offsetting that they actually upset the people in the bureaucracy. One of your primary jobs is to take the risk and protect these people, because if they are not nurtured in your service, the enemy will bring their contrary ideas to you.”

-GEN James Mattis

Right.

Where are those in the GOFO ranks? When have we seen them speak out against the institution? The answer: not until they’ve exited it with all the pomp and circumstance (with follow-on contractor/advisor positions lined up to boot) they came to expect as a GOFO. GEN McKenzie’s lamenting about the Afghanistan evacuation is a perfect exemplar:

“I have a lot of regrets about how it ended in Afghanistan. I have a regret with the basic decision, which I think was the wrong decision.”

-GEN Frank McKenzie, former commander of CENTCOM, on the Afghanistan withdrawal

I wonder where his dissension was while he was serving as commander of CENTCOM? I wonder what stand he took two years ago while still in uniform? Not knowing for certain, the law of probability would say that General McKenzie was following suit and singing the company line as that is what is rewarded (with additional stars) in our military today. And where are those mythical mavericks Mattis purported to have protected and nurtured along the way? Mavericks like those that spoke out and questioned the lawfulness of the COVID vaccine mandate much like its dubious counterpart of years past (Antrhax)? Or those that challenged the fact that the Department was capriciously denying service members their due religious accommodations? We can’t say for sure where those renegades are now, but we can say for certain where they are not: the GOFO ranks of today, and of the future.

Nothing to See Here!

While on the topic of COVID… Over the course of the vaccine debacle of the last two years, over 8,000 service members were ushered out of the military due to refusing the vaccine[i]. Of those who applied for a religious exemption to the vaccine (a process guided by DoD policy), zero were approved. None. And in the relative blink of an eye, nearly two armored brigades worth of men and women were shuffled out, their skills and talents not to be replaced for a long time coming (if ever, based on the military’s recruiting epidemic). And just like the 7,000+ American service members that died in wars of the last 20 years, our Congress barely batted an eye. Sure, they capitalized on the bungled Afghanistan evacuation in order to sling mud across the aisle in a political kangaroo court[ii], but real answers, real accountability, real learning, and most importantly: real improvement in capability and readiness — those just don’t happen any more of our own volition. And again, most everyone seems to be hunky-dory with that, at least, most everyone who is empowered to be able to incite real progressive change.

Bleeding Out

And so, we arrive at the theme of this article: our military is sucking – on quite a few levels, actually – and the proverbial “we” seem to be happy with that. Whether it be unchecked abuses or uncurbed assaults or shit living conditions for service members and/or families or corruption in the upper ranks or the total failure of redress/justice systems (or… or… or… there really are too many to list), three things seem to be holding true:

The situation is getting worse, almost without exception,
People who could change it don’t feel necessarily compelled to change it so long as their (next) careers are progressing,
The military is no longer able to hide its own unraveling.

Sure, there are the advocates for change and the one-off Congressmen and press outlets that make a concerted effort in this endeavor. But the stakeholders with the power – they seem to be fine with both the current situation and the not-so-promising trajectory we seem to be on, because to really change would entail one of two great evils for them:

Admitting culpability
Relinquishing power/authorities/ego

And so long as the institution’s true priorities lie with a) assuring its own continued existence, and b) never committing one of the two above-listed ‘cardinal sins of senior leadership,’ nothing substantive will ever change – at least on our own terms (another reference to Mattis’ rhetoric). (In this vein, we hereby trademark the official name change from Department of Defense (DoD) to the Department of Defense of Itself (DoDoI), as that seems to be its true lasting mission).

It is important to make a distinction now and highlight that the message here is not everything about the U.S. military is bad and not every leader is a self-serving egomaniac. Just the opposite, in fact: there is an innumerable number of redeeming qualities about service in our military and a number of great people and leaders. The issue, however, is that those positives are currently being completely tainted (and with good reason) by the negatives. Further, those negatives are making good people who served, and enjoyed the positive traits of that service, and alienating them and disenfranchising them at an alarming rate – so much so that fewer and fewer veterans are recommending service to their friends and family, especially their own children[i]. In essence, our nation’s leaders are applying bandaid measures where metaphorical tourniquets are required and in several critical aspects such as manning and readiness, because of the inadequacy of response, the military is figuratively bleeding out.

No Longer Are We Better Than ‘Them’

Many veterans who serve as advisors on the Walk the Talk Foundation recall the times when we would look down our noses at other militaries: those who seemed to be more for show than for substance. They were bloated, usually rank-heavy, and performed poorly in operations. Many of them organizationally appeared to serve more as a socialized jobs program than a fighting force. And now, here we are in 2023 appearing very much like those once-laughing-stocks. Yes, we arguably remain one of the most tactically-competent armies in the world. Yes, we are a nuclear power. Yes, we have all the latest and greatest gadgets (which are then stolen and copied with whiplash speed for pennies on the dollar).

However,

We are incredibly bloated: more and more bureaucrats belly up to the government feed trough of the military, especially in the GS and SES systems. And these oxygen consumers are not our future military leaders nor are they the trigger-pullers and bomb-droppers of the next war. Further, they are almost impossible to dislodge from their positions once anchored there.

At the same time, beyond bloated,

We have become more and more top-heavy in terms of our misplaced senses of self-importance and entitlement seeping down lower and lower into the ranks of our officer corps.

And finally,

Need we discuss further our performance in the last decade in combat operations?

So, is it a huge leap to say we’ve become what we used to mock? That we’ve also become a second-rate military which is degenerating into a socialized jobs protection program (those protections many times ironically not afforded to our warfighters and enablers)? We at the Foundation say yes and we say our military’s leadership and Congress refuse to acknowledge it and/or change it.

What’s a ‘Hubris’??

Aside from the intrinsic prices to be paid in order to change, another part of the refusal to confront this inconvenient truth of self-destruction seems to be the “1985 Chicago Bears Phenomenon,” introduced at the beginning of this article: the hubris, defined as excessive pride or misplaced self-confidence, that comes from days (and wars) long-since past; the inability to come to terms with a bitter present: that you have fallen a long way from those glory days of yore. Hell, the U.S. Army went so far as to change their Class A uniform back to the 1940s-era uniform [i], perhaps as an homage to that time, more likely perhaps to remind everyone that they won a war 80 years ago.

Sorry, Department of Defense (aka “DoDoI”) and Congress, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a retro “pinks and greens” uniform to get America back onboard to trusting you again and seeing your military as an attractive career; it will take much more to deter our future adversaries; it will take much more to make our military truly great again – and you all know it. You just are simply content with not really fixing it.

walkthetalkfoundation.org · September 30, 2023

19. How the Left Overestimates US Power

A critique of the left from someone from the left.

How the Left Overestimates US Power

Despite the military and non-military assistance it provides to Ukraine and Israel, the United States still can’t determine outcomes on the ground.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-israel-ukraine

The United States is the most powerful country on the Earth. If you add together its nuclear arsenal, its unmatched array of conventional weaponry, and its global economic reach, America might be the mightiest country in the history of the planet.

The United States has been responsible for destroying countries (Germany, Japan) and raising them from the rubble (Germany, Japan). It continues to hold sway in international financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank. The dollar remains the global currency of choice. Wall Street is the Mecca of capitalism; Hollywood is a creator of global tastes; virtually everyone drinks Coca-Cola and eats Big Macs or dreams of doing so.

And yet U.S. power has serious limits. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 was a punishing reminder of just how little the U.S. military and the provision of U.S. security and humanitarian assistance can do to defeat a determined guerrilla force and liberalize a brutalized society. The earlier defeat of U.S. forces in Vietnam, the inability to prevent countries like North Korea from going nuclear, the embarrassing failures of “drug wars” in various countries: These are but some of the indicators that U.S. reach exceeds its grasp.

The decline of U.S influence should not feed the narrative that anarchy has been loosed upon the world. The choice is not between a U.S.-led world and a Joker-led world.

The left, in particular, has often identified these very same limits when pushing for a more modest U.S. presence around the world. This is a reasonable demand. The limits of military force should indeed spur a reduction of U.S. military bases abroad, the budget that sustains them, and the arms exports that expand the capacities of U.S. allies.

Sometimes, however, these lessons learned about the limits of U.S. power are forgotten or willfully ignored.

In both Ukraine and Israel, the United States currently wields a measure of influence because of the military (and non-military) assistance it provides. This assistance can occasionally fool the Pentagon and the State Department into thinking that it can determine outcomes on the ground in both regions. That’s not surprising, given the arrogance of American power.

What is surprising, however, is that the left, which is so often mindful of the limitations of U.S. power, sometimes makes the same mistake.

End the War in Ukraine?

I recently participated in a public forum that pitted proponents of a “cease-fire now” against those of us who support Ukraine and its efforts to resist occupation.

Like every Ukrainian—and Russian dissident who stands with them—I desperately want peace in the region. Ukraine cannot afford this war. And neither can the world at large.

But Ukraine did not ask for this war. It was invaded. And Russia didn’t simply want to secure territorial gains in previously occupied lands in the Donbas and Crimea. It aimed to seize the entire country and extinguish Ukraine by absorbing it into a “Russian world.” At the beginning of its intervention in 2022, it committed horrifying war crimes. With its continued aerial assaults on Ukrainian cities, Russia continues to kill civilians on a regular basis. Ukrainians are very clear about the consequences of losing this war. It’s not just a matter of territory or culture. It’s a matter of life and death.

Why on Earth would a left that is deeply skeptical of how the United States has played power politics with smaller countries endorse a strategy of negotiating with a right-wing authoritarian power to dictate policy options to a smaller, struggling, occupied democracy?

Those who call for a “cease-fire now” do so out of a willful ignorance of the realities of the current war. Ukraine doesn’t support a cease-fire now because it hopes to push out all Russian occupiers. Russia doesn’t want a cease-fire now because it still harbors hopes of seizing all of the Donbas, perhaps taking the entire southern coast of Ukraine, maybe even reviving the original goal of displacing the current government in Kiev.

Rather than bring their demand to Moscow, which could indeed end the war tomorrow by withdrawing its troops from occupied territory, proponents of the “cease-fire now” position are trying to persuade the United States to use its influence over Ukraine to force a pause in the hostilities. This campaign has involved lobbying U.S. policymakers and even occupying the office of the country’s most progressive senator, Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“Use its influence” would, in realistic terms, mean cutting off military assistance to Ukraine, negotiating over its head with the Kremlin, and bullying Kyiv into accepting some kind of armistice agreement. Ukraine might one day conclude that it can’t win on the ground against Russian forces, something that the two Koreas ultimately realized in 1953. But at the moment, Ukraine believes that it can expel Russian forces, with U.S. assistance, much as the Croatian army did against Serbian forces in Operation Storm in 1995.

The ”use its influence” argument suffers from both pragmatic and ethical shortcomings.

The pragmatic problem is that, although the United States provides the lion’s share of military aid to Ukraine—a little over 50% through July 2023—it doesn’t direct Ukrainian operations. Ukraine’s military leadership doesn’t always inform the United States about the timing of its operations, often disregards the strategic advice of the Pentagon, and has conducted targeted attacks within Russia such as assassinations that have “complicated its collaboration with the CIA,” according to The Washington Post.

Even if Washington were to cut off assistance to Kyiv, Ukraine would continue to fight with whatever resources it could muster because it understands that the current Russian offensive—and any future military intervention—poses a continued threat to the survival of the country and its citizens. U.S. assistance is welcome, even essential. But it is not a light switch that, if turned to the off position, would shut down Ukrainian resistance.

The ethical problem runs deeper. Why on Earth would a left that is deeply skeptical of how the United States has played power politics with smaller countries endorse a strategy of negotiating with a right-wing authoritarian power to dictate policy options to a smaller, struggling, occupied democracy? Why would a left committed to human rights avert its eyes from the shocking (and ongoing) human rights violations that Russia has committed? How can a left endorse peace without any measure of justice?

I was not the first choice of the organizers of the aforementioned public forum on Ukraine. The other proponents of my position were not available. The organizers, who supported the “cease-fire now” position, asked me for suggestions of another panelist of my persuasion. I asked if they had reached out to any Ukrainians in the area. They hadn’t. They didn’t have any contacts either.

A debate about Ukraine without any Ukrainians? That has been a recurrent problem with the “cease-fire now” position. It fundamentally doesn’t take into consideration what Ukrainians—or the Russian left—has to say. It spreads misinformation that denies Ukrainian agency, such as the myth of a “U.S.-engineered coup” in 2014 and the myth of a “proxy war” run by the United States today. And it proposes “solutions” that involve the United States forcing “peace” down the throats of Ukrainians as if they were infants incapable of making independent decisions.

It seems that this segment of the left has forgotten the well-worn recommendation of nihil de nobis, sine nobis—nothing about us without us.

End the War in Israel?

U.S. policy toward North Korea once suffered from a peculiar fallacy. According to this fallacy, China could and should use its considerable influence over the North Korean leadership to restrain the latter’s nuclear ambitions and push it toward an incrementally more open society. China and North Korea, after all, were allies dating back to the Korean War. North Korea was heavily dependent on Chinese economic assistance. The leadership of the two countries met on a semi-regular basis. Surely this was evidence of potential Chinese leverage.

This superficial friendship fooled U.S. analysts into thinking that China could, with a little pressure, make the North Koreans do their bidding. If Beijing refused to apply such pressure, then it must in fact support its neighbor’s nuclear program and erratic economic and political policies.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. The North Korean government seemed to take almost perverse pleasure in ignoring Chinese advice and resisting Chinese pressure. All of that preferential treatment bought Beijing precious little influence in return.

Certainly the U.S. government can do more to push Israel in the direction of respecting basic human rights. But by itself, the United States has limited influence over Israeli decision-making.

Israel similarly ignores U.S. advice and seemingly U.S. pressure as well. In 2010, I described Israel as a “rogue ally” of the United States because it went behind the back of the Obama administration in an attempt to buy out North Korea’s nuclear program for a billion dollars. That was only one of many such examples of Israel’s flouting of its ally’s preferences.

For instance, Israel built a nuclear weapons program in secret and ignored pressure from the Kennedy administration for inspections. It pushed forward with an aggressive settlement policy in the West Bank despite concerns from the Obama administration. And it more recently ignored similar criticisms from the Biden administration about the expansion of these settlements.

Israel has acted this way because it has calculated that it can do pretty much anything without jeopardizing U.S. assistance. It has even cultivated spies within the United States—Jonathan Pollard was only the most prominent—and still Washington has delivered several billion dollars a year.

The problem, then, lies not only with Israel. The United States has not made serious efforts to back up its recommendations—and its threats—with serious costs. As a result, prior to the latest outbreak of violence in the region, some prominent mainstream figures like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof began to talk of conditioning U.S. aid and even phasing it out.

But frankly, as Tariq Kenney-Shawa wrote in The Nation back in August, such U.S.-imposed conditions would not likely have changed Israeli policy. “Because even if the U.S. conditioned or outright cut the funding it provides to Israel on account of its treatment of Palestinians, it would likely not be enough to deter Israel’s increasingly extremist leaders,” he wrote. “Only by conditioning U.S. aid alongside more assertive punitive measures such as divestment and sanctions can the U.S. effectively pressure Israel to bring an end to occupation and apartheid.”

Certainly the U.S. government can do more to push Israel in the direction of respecting basic human rights. But by itself, the United States has limited influence over Israeli decision-making, whether Likud or Labor is in charge. The bottom line is that Israel is a wealthy country that doesn’t need U.S. largesse—the essence of Kristof’s argument—and so it can “go rogue” more effectively than the comparatively impoverished North Korea.

By all means, let’s continue to press the Biden administration to demand an immediate cease-fire, to pressure the Netanyahu government not to invade Gaza, and to call for new negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. But let’s not be naïve about how much influence the Biden administration could have even if it unambiguously committed to those positions.

What Role Can America Play?

Sometimes, like the proverbial stopped clock, the United States does the right thing with its foreign policy, like the current support for Ukraine. More frequently, it makes terrible decisions, like providing unconditional support for an increasingly right-wing and human-rights-abusing Israel. The conventional progressive approach to U.S. foreign policy is to campaign for Washington to abide by the ideals it (often) professes about democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

But let’s face it: a United States that suddenly “sees the light” will still not be able to determine outcomes on the ground. That’s a reality of a post-Cold War era characterized by the “rise of the rest” and the limits of military power.

At the same time, the decline of U.S influence should not feed the narrative that anarchy has been loosed upon the world. The choice is not between a U.S.-led world and a Joker-led world. The United States should build up global institutions even as it relinquishes its supremacy. It’s not America that ideally should be saving Ukraine and constraining Israel. That should be task of international institutions committed to human rights and the rule of law. The decline of U.S. power isn’t a problem; it is a call to global action.

JOHN FEFFER

John Feffer is the author of the dystopian novel "Splinterlands" (2016) and the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His novel, "Frostlands" (2018) is book two of his Splinterlands trilogy. Splinterlands book three "Songlands" was published in 2021. His podcast is available here.Full Bio >

20. Why MAGA scares me so much | Column by Robert Bruce Adolph

A critique of MAGA from someone who is likely a conservative. Posted for political insight and not for partisan purposes.

I look forward to a column with the same five points applied to the radical progressive left.

Why MAGA scares me so much | Column

Tampa Bay Times · by Robert Bruce Adolph · October 25, 2023

The political landscape in the United States has always been marked by diverse ideologies and philosophies. In recent years, the rise of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) political movement has garnered significant attention and stirred debates. While some view it as a patriotic and empowering movement, it is crucial to unpack the potential dangers it poses to American democracy — our republic.

Robert Bruce Adolph [ Provided ]

First, at the core of the MAGA philosophy lies a destructive brand of populist nationalism. Its rhetoric often portrays those who align with the Trump-created movement as “true patriots,” creating an us versus them mentality that fosters divisions. The emphasis on protecting U.S. interests above all else leads to a distorted sense of nationalistic pride, potentially fueling xenophobia and eroding the principles of inclusivity that underpin American plurality. All of this is, of course, exacerbated by Fox News, which, despite having been proven to be liars in a court of law, continue to successfully monetize anger. In the Dominion Voting Systems defamation settlement, Fox blandly admitted that, “We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false,” the statement said. This is a damning example of corporate greed.

Second, MAGA’s relentless attacks on established institutions and the media weaken the public’s trust in the pillars of our republic. The framers built our political institutions as a protection against our own worst impulses. By consistently labeling media sources as “fake news” and questioning the validity of democratic processes, this movement perpetuates doubt and erodes the foundation of government. A strong democracy thrives on diversity of opinion and an informed citizenry, both of which suffer when trust is undermined. A sad example is the unprecedented inability of the Republican Party, currently in the majority in the U.S. House, to select a speaker, for three weeks and rounds of voting, finally settling on Michael Johnson a few days ago.

Third, MAGA acolytes rely heavily on emotional appeals and simplistic solutions instead of evidence-based policy making. This phenomenon impairs the effectiveness of governance, as policy decisions are based on perceptions of reality rather than research and diverse expert opinions. Danger arises when policy decisions are made without a firm grounding in facts and are instead driven by ideological preferences or biases. The lies embraced by MAGA adherents have little tolerance for truth.

Fourth, MAGA’s true believers discourage dissent and stifle critical voices. Public figures, on both sides of the aisle, who voice opposition or criticism are frequently targeted and subjected to personal attacks or branding as unpatriotic. This hostile environment inhibits healthy discourse and shrinks the space for constructive criticism. Our republic needs dissent, which plays a pivotal role in fostering innovation, accountability and ensuring checks and balances.

Fifth, MAGA’s emphasis on “America first” policies inevitably leads to the erosion of alliances and productive relationships. By prioritizing narrowly defined national interests, this position risks diminishing America’s role as a global leader, and currently threatens our support of Ukraine. Such isolationism weakens international cooperation, endangers vital global economic interests and security agreements, such as NATO. A strong democracy balances national interests with active global engagement.

Tragically, while MAGA resentment resonates with a significant portion of the population, it is essential to recognize the potential danger it poses to our form of government. Polarization, erosion of institutional trust, diminished evidence-based policy making, suppression of dissent and the assault on international alliances all threaten the health and vibrancy of processes crucial for our nation’s future. There are no doubt reasons for right-wing anger. However, burning the house down, which seems to be a MAGA predilection, is not the answer.

Robert Bruce Adolph – a former university lecturer on American History and Government – is a retired Army senior Special Forces soldier and UN security chief. He is author of the book, “Surviving the United Nations.” Learn more at robertbruceadolph.com.

Tampa Bay Times · by Robert Bruce Adolph · October 25, 2023

21. The Israel-Hamas War Has Entered a ‘New Phase.’ Here’s What to Expect.

Excerpts:

Israel will face even more fundamental challenges when it seeks to end military operations. One difficulty in uprooting Hamas is the question of who—or what—would take its place. The Palestinian Authority is barely hanging on to the West Bank, and it would damage its already weak credibility among Palestinians if it collaborated with Israel in running Gaza in the aftermath of an invasion. Egypt and other Arab states are reluctant to take in Palestinian refugees, let alone take on the messy task of administering Gaza.

But if Israel simply strikes hard and leaves, Hamas will reassert itself, with no one to contest its control. Polls show that Hamas is not popular, but they also show that its Palestinian rivals are even less so—and they lack the military assets and the social and economic networks that Hamas has in Gaza.

Anger in Israel is white-hot, demanding Hamas’s destruction, but Israeli leaders know that operations will be risky and could easily prove counterproductive. The risk of further Israeli casualties and other concerns are probably leading some in the Israeli government, perhaps including the prime minister himself, to tread cautiously.

The final result may involve some ground operations, but is likely to be a more cautious approach in general than the all-out invasion and long-term occupation that seemed likely in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks. Such an approach would not destroy Hamas and will still lead to Israel casualties and far more suffering on the Palestinian side, but it would allow Israeli leaders to minimize many of the most difficult dilemmas that they face in Gaza.

The Israel-Hamas War Has Entered a ‘New Phase.’ Here’s What to Expect.

As Israel shifts from an air-only approach to one involving its ground forces in Gaza, it will face new challenges and dilemmas.

By Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Foreign Policy · by Daniel Byman · October 28, 2023

Israel has entered “a new phase in the war” against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Saturday. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has sent tanks and other ground forces into Gaza and kept them there while continuing its intense artillery attacks and aerial bombardment, but for now it has held off on an all-out ground invasion. It is not clear if there will ever be a formal D-day for such an operation, but Israel is steadily increasing its ground operations within Gaza, conducting raids into the strip and severing telecommunications there.

As Israel shifts from an air-only approach to one involving its ground forces, it is coming face-to-face with many challenges and even more dilemmas, some of which involve risks to Israeli troops while others concern broader strategic and humanitarian objectives. Already, these challenges may have delayed a full-scale invasion of Gaza, and they could cause Israeli leaders to limit the scope and scale of military operations in other ways as well.

The first challenge is the very nature of the fighting. Gaza is built-up and densely populated, with a population per square mile comparable with London. In its warren of narrow streets and tightly packed buildings, many of the Israeli military’s advantages in speed, communications, surveillance, and long-range firepower are neutralized.

Instead, the IDF will need to break up its forces, which will then be vulnerable to small bands of Hamas gunmen. The rubble created by Israeli bombing also offers opportunities for small groups of fighters to find cover against Israeli troops, set up sniper positions, and plant booby traps.

The U.S. military found urban operations in Fallujah, Iraq, difficult and highly destructive. Gaza is likely to be even harder. Unlike the Iraqi insurgents that the United States was fighting in Fallujah in 2004, who had only recently taken control of the city, Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2007 and has fought Israel there several times since. The group probably anticipated a tough Israeli response to its Oct. 7 attack, but even if it didn’t, Hamas has long prepared for an Israeli incursion.

Hamas has collocated military supplies and assets in civilian facilities such as schools, according to the United Nations as well as Israeli forces. The group has also built a vast tunnel network, thought to be larger than the London Underground. It can use these tunnels to hide supplies and leaders, as well as to ensure communication during conflict.

Tunnel fighting is a nightmare. The former head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Joseph L. Votel, compared it with the Islamic State’s use of a tunnel network in Mosul, Iraq—which was a fraction of the size of Hamas’s tunnels)—and warned, “It will be bloody, brutal fighting.” Hamas fighters may use the tunnels to pop up behind Israeli forces, ambushing them or even capturing more hostages. Israel has tried to bomb these tunnels, but they are difficult to find and destroy from the air.

Israel seeks to destroy Hamas, which in practice means killing its leaders. They are proving difficult to find, however. They can hide in tunnels and blend in with the civilian population. Some will choose to fight, but the organization is well-institutionalized, and it will undoubtedly seek to preserve much of its leadership cadre, including key figures such as Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif.

Israel, in the past, has successfully targeted Hamas and other leaders, but this was a slow process, and even an occupation of northern Gaza would mean that Israel would not control large parts of the strip, allowing Hamas leaders to hide there. What’s more, many of Hamas’s senior political leaders don’t live in Gaza at all, but rather spend their days in much safer locales in countries such as Qatar, Turkey, and Lebanon.

Making this even harder are the more than 200 hostages Hamas has taken, which include many foreign nationals, including 54 Thai workers and around 10 Americans. At the very least, this will complicate the fighting: A building where Hamas leaders are hiding may also have hostages in it, as might a tunnel where Hamas supplies are kept. Sending troops in to attack these locations, let alone simply blowing them up, could kill the hostages.

In addition, Hamas has threatened to kill the hostages in response to Israeli attacks. It has not yet fulfilled this vow, as far as we know, but it could do so in the future. Indeed, the more successful that Israel’s ground operation is at striking Hamas, the more likely the organization would resort to desperate measures.

Israel also must consider the civilian cost in Gaza. Its operations there have already killed almost 7,000 Palestinians, according to the strip’s Hamas-run health ministry, and ground operations may be far bloodier. In the past, international outrage at civilian casualties has, eventually, led Israel to stop operations, though the exceptionally high Israeli death toll from Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack may change this calculus. This concern will complicate combat as Israel tries to balance the civilian toll with the risk to its troops, as well as the likelihood that Hamas is mixing fighters and military assets among the civilian population.

Outside of its immediate operations, Israel has denied fuel, electricity, and other civilian necessities to Gaza on the grounds that Hamas will use these for military purposes. Already, this has created a massive humanitarian crisis, and this will only worsen as the days go on. If Israel bows to U.S. and international pressure to provide basic services and ensure that food and medicine flow into the strip for civilians, it will be in the unusual position of providing aid and waging war in the same area. Yet if it fails to do so, the already-high human cost will skyrocket, with children, older adults, and other noncombatants paying the price.

Although Israel’s own strategic interests and its leaders’ desire to assuage a shocked and angry public will be the primary shapers of military operations, Israeli leaders also must care about international, and especially U.S., opinion. Many Arab leaders privately loathe Hamas and would be delighted if Israel destroyed it.

Their publics, however, are pleased that Israel has been hit hard and outraged at the destruction that Israel is raining down on Gaza. Israeli operations have led to protests throughout the Arab world, including in countries such as Bahrain and Egypt, which have normalized relations with Israel. This normalization is a top diplomatic goal for Israel, and it will not jeopardize this lightly. Even Saudi Arabia, which until the war broke out was in intense negotiations with the United States to cement a normalization deal with Israel, has issued increasingly strident statements condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Even more important is U.S. opinion. President Joe Biden and his administration have embraced Israel publicly but privately seem to be urging restraint. In addition to seeking to limit the human cost on the Palestinian side, officials in Washington are concerned about the risk to American hostages and the danger that the conflict will spread throughout the region and threaten U.S. forces and allies. As these worries mount, U.S. pressure on Israel to curb its operations may grow.

U.S. fears are well-founded, as it is possible this war may spread from Israel and Gaza to much of the Middle East. Already, Hezbollah has threatened to join the fray and stepped up attacks on Israel from Lebanon, unrest is growing in the West Bank, the Houthis in Yemen have launched missiles at Israel, and U.S. bases in the Middle East have suffered attacks from Iranian proxies, leading the United States to strike Iran-linked sites in Syria. A broader war involving Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed groups would pose a grave threat to Israel, increase the risk of international terrorism, and implicate many U.S. interests.

Israel will face even more fundamental challenges when it seeks to end military operations. One difficulty in uprooting Hamas is the question of who—or what—would take its place. The Palestinian Authority is barely hanging on to the West Bank, and it would damage its already weak credibility among Palestinians if it collaborated with Israel in running Gaza in the aftermath of an invasion. Egypt and other Arab states are reluctant to take in Palestinian refugees, let alone take on the messy task of administering Gaza.

But if Israel simply strikes hard and leaves, Hamas will reassert itself, with no one to contest its control. Polls show that Hamas is not popular, but they also show that its Palestinian rivals are even less so—and they lack the military assets and the social and economic networks that Hamas has in Gaza.

Anger in Israel is white-hot, demanding Hamas’s destruction, but Israeli leaders know that operations will be risky and could easily prove counterproductive. The risk of further Israeli casualties and other concerns are probably leading some in the Israeli government, perhaps including the prime minister himself, to tread cautiously.

The final result may involve some ground operations, but is likely to be a more cautious approach in general than the all-out invasion and long-term occupation that seemed likely in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks. Such an approach would not destroy Hamas and will still lead to Israel casualties and far more suffering on the Palestinian side, but it would allow Israeli leaders to minimize many of the most difficult dilemmas that they face in Gaza.

Foreign Policy · by Daniel Byman · October 28, 2023

22. Otto K. Liller Obituary, A Cherished Soul Has Passed Away

Otto K. Liller Obituary, A Cherished Soul Has Passed Away

inlovingmemoriesnews.com · by David · October 28, 2023

Otto K. Liller Obituary, Death – It is with a profound sense of loss and heavy hearts that we announce the passing of Brigadier General (Retired) Otto K. Liller. Otto, aged 51, passed away on October 27, 2023, while hiking in Utah. He was a distinguished and highly respected member of the Special Forces community, and his untimely departure has left an indelible void in our lives. Brigadier General Liller’s passing is a loss felt deeply not only by his family but also by the broader military community. He was a dedicated and committed officer whose service to our country was marked by excellence, integrity, and unwavering dedication.

Otto’s military career was marked by exceptional leadership and selfless service. He rose through the ranks with distinction and made significant contributions to our nation’s defense. His tenure in the Special Forces exemplified the highest standards of professionalism, courage, and commitment to duty. Brigadier General Liller’s unexpected passing while pursuing a personal passion, hiking, reminds us of the unpredictability of life. It serves as a poignant reminder of the sacrifices made by military personnel and their families in service to our nation. In his memory, we recognize the profound impact he had on the lives of those he served with and those he left behind.

During these difficult times, we extend our deepest condolences to Otto’s family, friends, and loved ones. Your loss is our loss, and we share in your grief. Please know that our thoughts and prayers are with you as you navigate this period of mourning and adjustment. Otto’s legacy will live on in the hearts and minds of all who had the privilege of knowing him. He will be remembered as an exemplary soldier, a beloved friend, and a cherished family member. His contributions to our country, his unwavering dedication to duty, and his legacy of service will forever inspire those who follow in his footsteps.

As we come to terms with this immense loss, we will ensure that you receive information about memorial arrangements and tributes to honor Otto’s memory. It is our duty and privilege to pay our respects to a fallen hero who gave his all in service to our nation. In these trying times, may you find solace in the knowledge that Otto’s legacy is a beacon of honor and service. He will be greatly missed, but his memory will forever remain in our hearts, reminding us of the valor and commitment that define our military community.

inlovingmemoriesnews.com · by David · October 28, 2023

23. What is the 'axis of resistance' of Iran-backed groups in the Middle East?

We should not be letting Iran and the terrorist organizations it supports hijack the concept of resistance. It is not the same as the Ukrainian resistance. These groups are conducting terrorirsm an not resistance.

By painting these organizations as part of a resistance western youth "romanticize" the conflict and support the perceived "underdog" against those who seek peace, security, and prosperity.

It would be useful to attack the strategy behind the use of the resistance stream as well as to educate populations about the proper use of resistance. (that said I know the use of resistance can be justified for these groups academically, theoretically, and doctrinally)

What is the 'axis of resistance' of Iran-backed groups in the Middle East?

NPR · by By · October 26, 2023

People carry Palestinian flags, Iranian flags and Hezbollah flags at Tehran's Revolution Square during an anti-Israel rally on Oct. 18. Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images

LONDON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a warning this week that the United States would act "swiftly and decisively" if it came under attack from Iran or its proxies in the Middle East, amid growing concerns of the Israel-Hamas war spreading.

His warning came as the White House accused Iran of facilitating attacks on U.S. military bases in Syria and Iraq in the last week. Questions about the extent of Iran's involvement in Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel have shone a spotlight on Iranian influence in the Middle East and raised major concerns about the prospect of a wider war engulfing the region.

The U.S. has said there is no direct evidence that Iran was involved in the Hamas attack against Israel. However, analysts and regional experts say there are evident links between Iran and the attacks carried out by Hamas.

"Hamas and Iran have a long-standing but not always easy relationship," says Kim Ghattas, author of Black Wave, a book about the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. "Hamas gets funding and weapons from Iran. So whether or not it approved of the Oct. 7 attack, Iran is complicit."

Ali Barakeh, a senior Hamas official based in Lebanon, told NPR earlier this month that while "Iran knows that Hamas fights Israel and offers us support, which we do not deny ... we don't take orders from anyone."

What is the link between Iran and Hamas?

Hamas, a Sunni Islamist movement, is an autonomous Palestinian group with military and political wings. Hamas has ruled more than 2 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since 2007. Gaza has not had elections since Hamas seized power that same year from the Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank.

Hamas receives funding and weapons from Iran. The two have had rifts in the past, and do not always agree. Most recently, they fell out over Syria's civil war. Tehran withdrew funding from Hamas when the group chose to stand with protesters against Syria's leader Bashar Assad, whom Tehran supports. Hamas also has other backers, including Turkey.

Palestinian fighters of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, march in a military parade to mark the anniversary of the 2014 war with Israel, near the border in the central Gaza Strip on July 19, 2023. Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images)

What is the "axis of resistance"?

Hamas comes under the so-called "axis of resistance," a multi-pronged network of different forces across the region, supported to varying degrees by Iran.

The term "axis of resistance" is believed to have emerged in response to President George W. Bush's use of the term "axis of evil" — referring to Iran, Iraq and North Korea — in his 2002 State of the Union address. There are conflicting reports about who first coined the term, which is often used by Iranian officials.

The "axis of resistance" is an informal, loose-knit alliance that includes both Sunni and Shia Muslim groups and governments in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq, with differences and varying levels of proximity to one another and to Tehran.

The Iranian regime and its Quds Force, a subset of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps, have grown this network more on the basis of shared resistance to Western powers and Israel.

The axis includes the Lebanese militant group and Shia political party Hezbollah, the Syrian regime and Shia militias in Syria, which Tehran has built up and trained.

Yemen's Houthi rebels also come under the axis. The Houthis have fought a civil war against Yemen's government — which is backed by Saudi Arabia — for nearly a decade. The Pentagon said last week it had shot down missiles from Yemen that were potentially headed for Israel.

People pass a poster featuring Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of the Hezbollah party, during parliamentary elections in Beirut, Lebanon, on May 15, 2022. Francesca Volpi/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The axis also comprises militias in the influential Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, which were formed to help fight ISIS in 2014.

In Lebanon, Iran-backed Hezbollah operates both as a Shia Muslim political party and militant group. Hezbollah wields significant power, especially in southern Lebanon, and is active along Israel's northern border, where tensions have been building since the Oct. 7 attacks.

Each axis group has a different relationship with Iran. They also have differences with one another. In Gaza, both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — a smaller, rival militant group that does not engage in the political process — are considered part of the alliance. Unlike Hamas, however, the PIJ receives most of its budget from the Islamic Republic.

"It is important to remember that Hamas is not a proxy of Iran in the way that Hezbollah is," says Ghattas, who is also a distinguished fellow at the Columbia Institute of Global Politics and spent two decades covering the region as a journalist for the BBC and the Financial Times.

"Hezbollah has become an extension of [the] Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force," Ghattas says. "Hamas keeps its own separate identity and it has other backers, aside from Iran."

But despite their differences, Ghattas says, their interests often converge, as is the case this month.

"Their agendas still align in an anti-American, anti-Israel worldview, and they come together again when necessary," Ghattas says.

"Unity of fronts" and more coordination between Iran-backed groups

According to reports in the international media, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah met senior officials from Hamas in Beirut Wednesday to discuss the situation in the Middle East. A statement following the meeting said their goal was to achieve "a real victory for the resistance in Gaza and Palestine" and halt Israel's "treacherous and brutal aggression against our oppressed and steadfast people in Gaza and the West Bank."

Earlier this year, Nasrallah began referring to a "unity of fronts." The idea was that these disparate groups — all benefiting from Iran's support — would coordinate in their opposition to Israel.

Experts say there has been more cross-border coordination between these groups in recent years, even before Nasrallah specifically called for this.

"Over the past couple of years, Iran has been working to coordinate its proxies in what it describes as a 'unification of fronts,' surrounding Israel on all fronts," says Ghattas. "It is a more logistically coordinated operation, rather than each group doing its own thing."

This includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and other, less direct proxies, like Hamas in Gaza, Ghattas says.

Smoke billows from Israel following a rocket a from Gaza City on Oct. 7. Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images

Paul Salem, president of the Middle East Institute in Washington, told NPR's Ailsa Chang, "It's quite likely that Hezbollah knew of the preplanning [for the Oct. 7 attacks] and probably participated in training and planning with Hamas, and all of them sort of are part of this Iranian proxy force deployment that you have in Lebanon, in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq and in Gaza as well."

How the Iran-backed alliance might influence the war

Mohanad Hage Ali, a Beirut-based senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, told NPR's Scott Simon that the "unity of fronts" of Iranian-backed proxy groups is "a kind of NATO for militant groups" in the region, requiring allied organizations to step in and provide military support should any other member groups face an existential threat.

"I would suppose that Hezbollah would find it difficult not to intervene, although it remains a challenge given the cost of the conflict and what it means for Lebanon," Hage Ali told NPR.

And preventing a broader war consuming the region similarly requires coordination and tight control over the battlefield, Ghattas says.

"More cross-border coordination allows the Iranians to tightly control escalation and deescalation," she says.

NPR · by By · October 26, 2023

24. Interactive Map: Israel’s Operation in Gaza

At the link:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/2e746151991643e39e64780f0674f7dd

Interactive Map: Israel’s Operation in Gaza

storymaps.arcgis.com

Interactive Map: Israel's Operation in Gaza

This interactive map complements the static Israel war maps that ISW-CTP daily produces with high-fidelity and, where possible, street level assessments of the war in Israel.

ISW’s and CTP's daily campaign assessments of the war in Israel, including our static maps, are available at understandingwar.org and criticalthreats.org ; you can subscribe to these daily reports and other updates here . For additional insights and analysis from ISW and CTP, follow us on Twitter @TheStudyofWar and @CriticalThreats . For media inquiries, please email press@understandingwar.org .

Note for iPhone, iPad, and iOS users: This map does not work if lockdown mode is enabled. Turn off lockdown mode to view this map.

Reported Israeli Ground Operations in the

Gaza Strip as of October 28, 2023, 3:30 PM ET

25. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 28, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-28-2023

Key Takeaways:

Remnants of the Wagner Group appear to be fighting in the Avdiivka direction subordinate to Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) controlled formations.
Commander of the “Akhmat” Spetsnaz forces Apty Alaudinov confirmed that Rosgvardia is recruiting former Wagner fighters into Chechen “Akhmat” Spetsnaz units.
Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 28.
Russian forces conducted a series of missile strikes against Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the night of October 27 to 28.
Russian authorities are capitalizing on domestic ethnic tensions by increasing public coercion of Central Asian migrants into Russian military service, likely to appeal to Russian ultranationalists ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expected presidential campaign announcement.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas.
A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that he personally heard Russian President Vladimir Putin express his decision to send Russian conscripts to serve in the Russian Border Service.
Pro-Ukrainian actors reportedly conducted a cyber attack against Russian telecom operators in occupied Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 28, 2023

Oct 28, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 28, 2023

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

October 28, 2023, 7:50pm ET

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

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:30pm ET on October 28. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the October 29 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Remnants of the Wagner Group appear to be fighting in the Avdiivka direction subordinate to Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) controlled formations. A Russian military correspondent published an interview on October 25 with the commander of the Russian “Arbat” Separate Guards Special Purpose Battalion that is serving the Avdiivka direction, who claimed that an element of the Arbat Battalion is almost entirely composed of former Wagner personnel.[1] The commander claimed that the Avdiivka direction is the Arbat Battalion’s “main direction” because the unit is part of the “Dikaya Division of Donbas” and the “Pyatnashka” Brigade — a Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) formation that is responsible for the defending Donetsk City.[2] The commander noted that the Wagner-staffed unit sends drone operators, electronic warfare (EW) specialists, and other fighters to other units in different frontline sectors as needed. The correspondent also indicated that the Arbat Battalion is part of the Russian Armed Forces, and it is likely that the brigade consists of former Wagner personnel who signed military contracts directly with the Russian MoD following Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion and or his death.

A Ukrainian military observer also stated on October 25 that Wagner Group remnants are fighting near Avdiivka.[3] Ukrainian and Russian sources have previously stated that small groups of former Wagner personnel, possibly under Russian MoD-controlled formations, are deployed to the Bakhmut area.[4] It is too early to determine what role former Wagner personnel may play in Russian offensive operations against Avdiivka. The Arbat Battalion’s commander noted that the battalion’s situation on the front line is “good but not great” due to heavy personnel losses near Avdiivka.[5] Ukrainian military observers expressed concern about continued Russian operations in the Avdiivka direction, however.[6]

Commander of the “Akhmat” Spetsnaz forces Apty Alaudinov confirmed that Rosgvardia is recruiting former Wagner fighters into Chechen “Akhmat” Spetsnaz units. Alaudinov stated in an interview published on October 28 that a “massive” number of Wagner soldiers have joined various detachments of the “Akhmat” forces and are operating in several unspecified sectors of the front in Ukraine.[7] Alaudinov claimed that former Wagner soldiers are following their former commanders to the “Akhmat” units. Alaudinov noted that Wagner fighters have “always spoken very respectfully about [‘Akhmat’],” likely in an attempt to stifle discussions of possible tension between the Wagner and Chechen forces after the feud between deceased Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov.[8] ISW continues to assess that former Wagner forces fragmented between the Russian MoD and Rosgvardia Chechen units across various sectors of the front are unlikely to reemerge as an effective military organization as they will lack the strength Wagner had drawn from being a unitary organization under clear and coherent leadership.[9] They may be tactical combat power multipliers for the units they embed with in some circumstances, however.

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 28. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations south of Bakhmut and in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction.[10] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked near Robotyne, Nesteryanka (12km northwest of Robotyne), Kopani (6km northwest of Robotyne), Rivne (8km west of Robotyne), Novoprokopivka (3km south of Robotyne), and Verbove (9km east of Robotyne).[11] A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed on October 27 that Ukrainian forces achieved “minor successes” during attacks near Robotyne.[12]

Russian forces conducted a series of missile strikes against Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the night of October 27 to 28. Ukrainian military sources reported on October 28 that Ukrainian air defenses downed three of four Iskander-K cruise missiles that Russian forces launched from Crimea.[13] The fourth missile reportedly did not reach its target.[14] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces struck Ukrainian infrastructure in Kryvyi Rih and Dnipro City, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and Izmail, Odesa Oblast.[15]

Russian forces are reportedly using a new version of the “Lancet” kamikaze drone that can autonomously identify targets. Russian sources claimed that Russian forces began using the new “Izdeliye-53” kamikaze drone as of October 21.[16] The sources claimed that the “Izdeliye-53” drone reportedly has an automatic guidance system that can distinguish types of targets and increase strike success rates.[17] Russian forces are reportedly not using the “Izdeliye-53” drones on a wide scale yet, but Russian sources claimed that Russian forces are currently testing the drones for mass synchronized swarm strikes.[18] ISW previously reported on October 24 that Russian forces also allegedly recently used the new “Italmas” (also known as “Izdeliye-54”) drones during a drone strike on Kyiv Oblast.[19] ISW also previously assessed that the Russian command may believe that a large number of strike drones will allow Russian forces to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, although the payload of the “Izdeliye-53” drones, which is reportedly between three and five kilograms, may not be sufficient to significantly damage most critical military targets.[20]

Russian authorities are capitalizing on domestic ethnic tensions by increasing public coercion of Central Asian migrants into Russian military service, likely to appeal to Russian ultranationalists ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expected presidential campaign announcement. The Moscow Investigative Committee announced on October 27 that it began 12 criminal investigations against naturalized migrants for evading military service and claimed that this number rose on October 28 to 22 opened investigations with 80 migrants already sent to military service.[21] Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and Rosgvardia agents detained 40 migrant taxi drivers during a raid at the Norilsk airport in Krasnoyarsk Krai on October 27 for allegedly failing to register with Russian military registration and enlistment offices.[22] These announcements are part of a series of recent measures and statements that highly publicize Russian intent and efforts to mobilize Central Asian migrants likely aimed to appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ultranationalist constituency, which has long expressed hatred for Central Asian migrants and increasingly called for these migrants to serve in the Russian military.[23]

The Kremlin maintains a relatively measured stance on alleged migrant crimes against ethnic Russians, likely unintentionally establishing a cycle that keeps these ethnic tensions in frequent Russian ultranationalist dialogue. Russian ultranationalist milbloggers expressed anger on October 28 over criticisms of footage that shows a Russian man insulting migrant children while breaking up an alleged fight between 10 migrant children and an ethnic Russian child in Rostov-on-Don.[24] The milbloggers insulted the children and the wider migrant community, with some even claiming that the migrant children intended to kill the ethnic Russian child, but largely praised the Russian man for intervening.[25] The milbloggers claimed that such incidents are commonplace and that no one cares or steps in to mitigate the incidents.[26] Russian Investigative Committee Head Alexander Bastrykin announced an investigation into the Rostov-on-Don incident on October 27 as well as claims of separate incidents in Chelyabinsk Oblast on October 25 and Novosibirsk and Novgorod oblasts on October 28.[27]

Key Takeaways:

Remnants of the Wagner Group appear to be fighting in the Avdiivka direction subordinate to Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) controlled formations.
Commander of the “Akhmat” Spetsnaz forces Apty Alaudinov confirmed that Rosgvardia is recruiting former Wagner fighters into Chechen “Akhmat” Spetsnaz units.
Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 28.
Russian forces conducted a series of missile strikes against Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the night of October 27 to 28.
Russian authorities are capitalizing on domestic ethnic tensions by increasing public coercion of Central Asian migrants into Russian military service, likely to appeal to Russian ultranationalists ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expected presidential campaign announcement.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas.
A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that he personally heard Russian President Vladimir Putin express his decision to send Russian conscripts to serve in the Russian Border Service.
Pro-Ukrainian actors reportedly conducted a cyber attack against Russian telecom operators in occupied Ukraine.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line but did not make any confirmed advances on October 28. A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian “White Wolves” Battalion successfully attacked near Kreminna.[28] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces advanced near Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna), and attacked near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk) and Kyslivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk) on October 27.[29] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 28 that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Synkivka and Ivanivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk) and that Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations in the Lyman direction.[30] Ukrainian 15th Border Detachment Press Service Head Ivan Shevtsov stated that there are about 100,000 Russian soldiers in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions (likely implying both frontline and rear troops) and that inclement weather has recently affected the intensity of Russian operations in these directions.[31]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances on October 28. The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Synkivka, Nadiya (16km west of Svatove), Torske (15km west of Kreminna), Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna), and Hryhorivka (11km south of Kreminna).[32]

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

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations south of Bakhmut on October 28.[33]

Ukrainian forces are reportedly complicating Russian artillery use on Bakhmut’s southern flank by effectively using drones. Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov amplified a Russian video interview with a Russian tank company commander known under the alias “Tomsk” operating near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) who claimed that Ukrainian drone strikes are inhibiting Russian use of tanks during the day.[34] “Tomsk” added that Russian forces shell Ukrainian positions during the night to avoid Ukrainian drones, which he claimed are unable to operate at night. Butusov interpreted “Tomsk’s” statements as an indication that Russian artillery is operating far from the frontline to avoid Ukrainian kamikaze drones, which impedes Russian forces‘ ability to carry out direct fire.

Russian forces continued to counterattack Ukrainian positions north and south of Bakhmut on October 28 but did not make any claimed or confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Klishchiivka and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[35] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces attacked Ukrainian forces near Dubovo-Vasylivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut), Khromove (immediately west of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka, and Andriivka on October 27.[36]

Russian forces continued offensive operations near Avdiivka on October 28 but did not make any confirmed territorial gains. A Russian news aggregator also claimed that Russian forces advanced near Novokalynove (7km north of Avdivka) on October 27.[37] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed on October 28 that Russian forces advanced near Stepove (8km northwest of Avdiivka) and attacked near Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka) and on the southern approaches to Avdiivka.[38] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are fighting and shifting their attacks towards the Avdiivka Coke Plant just south of Stepove, control the waste heap near the Avdiivka Coke Plant, and are involved in fierce battles along the railway southeast of Stepove and northwest of the waste heap.[39] Butusov stated on October 26 that Russian forces have advanced within 600 meters of the northern industrial area of Avdiivka in hopes of using the industrial area to enter the city itself.[40] A Russian source published footage on October 28 of Russian forces conducting airstrikes against Ukrainian positions at the Avdiivka Coke Plant.[41] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 28 that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Stepove, Avdiivka, Keramik (10km northwest of Avdiivka), Tonenke (5km west of Avdiivka), Opytne (3km southwest of Avdiivka), and Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka).[42]

The Russian military command appears to have committed most of the 8th Combined Arms Army (CAA) of the Southern Military District (SMD) and transferred elements of the Central Military District (CMD) for offensive operations in the Avdiivka area. Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets assessed that Russian command committed the main body of the 8th CAA, namely the elements of the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DNR) 1st Army Corps, Luhansk People’s Republic’s (LNR) 2nd Army Corps, 20th Motorized Rifle Division, and the 150th Motorized Rifle Division.[43] Mashovets added that Russian forces also likely laterally redeployed elements of the 2nd CAA of the CMD from the Lyman direction to the Avdiivka direction, to which it has also committed at least elements of the 21st Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade and 15th Separate Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade. Mashovets noted that Russian forces also redeployed elements of the 55th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (41st CAA, CMD) from the Kupyansk-Lyman line to positions near Vodyane (7km southwest of Avdiivka). Mashovets concluded that Russian forces in the Avdiivka direction have elements of 12 separate motorized rifle brigades, 16 separate rifle regiments of the mobilization reserve, 22 separate rifle battalions of the mobilization reserve, 11 separate tank battalions, a separate motorized rifle battalion, and three consolidated tactical detachments of the battalion level including BARS (Russian Combat Army Reserve) and Storm Z units. Mashovets added that Russian forces likely have three motorized rifle regiments, seven reserve motorized rifle battalions, and two BARS units available in reserve in the Avdiivka direction. ISW is unable to verify this reported order of battle independently. The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD), however, assessed only that Russian forces have committed elements of up to eight brigades to the Avdiivka frontline.[44] ISW has routinely assessed that Russian military units are likely generally undermanned and may be battalions, brigades, or regiments in name only with much smaller personnel complements than their echelon designations would suggest. The irregular DNR and LNR forces, which have been formally integrated into the Russian Armed Forces in 2023, may also lack conventional organizations and complements.

Western and Ukrainian sources continue to report that Russian forces are suffering significant casualties around Avdiivka. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov told US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that Russian losses in the Avdiivka area totaled around 4,000 servicemen in an unspecified timeframe likely in October 2023.[45] The UK MoD added that Russian forces have likely suffered some of Russia’s highest casualty rates so far in 2023.[46] Ukrainian military observers, however, noted that Russian forces continue to attack and advance in the Avdiivka area despite these manpower losses.[47]

Russian forces continued localized attacks west and southwest of Donetsk City line but did not make confirmed advances on October 28. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults on Marinka (just west of Donetsk City) and Novomykhailivka (12km southwest of Avdiivka).[48] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced in a forest area near Novomykhailivka and attacked Ukrainian positions near Marinka and Krasnohorivka (3km north of Marinka).[49]

Russian forces launched limited ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on October 28 but did not advance. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Vodyane (6km northeast of Vuhledar).[50]

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

Ukrainian forces did not conduct any claimed or confirmed attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on October 28.

Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on October 28. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) and south of Zolota Nyva (11km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[51] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces counterattacked near Staromayorske and from Novodonetske (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) on October 27.[52] A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are consolidating positions northeast of Pryyutne (16km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[53]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast but did not make any confirmed advances on October 28. A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked Nesteryanka (12km northwest of Robotyne), Kopani (6km northwest of Robotyne), and Rivne (8km west of Robotyne) and near Novoprokopivka (3km south of Robotyne) and Verbove (9km east of Robotyne).[54] A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful armored assaults between Robotyne and Verbove.[55] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces also repelled Ukrainian attacks near Robotyne.[56] A Russian milblogger claimed that small groups of Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful armored assaults with artillery support near Robotyne.[57] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked from the Novoprokopivka direction to the west of Robotyne.[58] The milblogger claimed on October 27 that Ukrainian forces have been unsuccessfully attempting to advance west of Robotyne for five days.[59] A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces achieved ”minor successes” during attacks near Robotyne, however.[60] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces repelled several Ukrainian attacks near Kopani on October 27.[61]

Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 28. The Ukrainian General Staff and Tavriisk Press Center reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attempted to regain lost positions northwest of Verbove.[62]

Ukrainian forces maintain positions in Krynky (30km northeast of Kherson City and 2km from the Dnipro River) amid continued operations on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast on October 28. Russian milbloggers acknowledged that Ukrainian forces maintained unspecified positions in Krynky on October 27 and 28.[63] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed on October 28 that there were meeting engagements near Poyma (11km east of Kherson City and 4km from the Dnipro River), Pishchanivka (14km east of Kherson City and 3km from the Dnipro River), Pidstepne (16km east of Kherson City and 4km from the Dnipro River), and Krynky.[64] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces attempted to advance in the direction of Pishchanivka.[65] A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed on October 27 that Ukrainian forces also unsuccessfully attacked in the direction of Pishchanivka on the evening of October 26.[66] Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Captain First Rank Nataliya Humenyuk stated on October 28 that Ukrainian forces are conducting unspecified combat operations on various “appropriate” sectors of the front in the Kherson direction and destroying Russian positions and observation posts on the Dnipro River delta islands.[67]

Geolocated footage published on October 28 indicates that Russian forces marginally advanced east of Krynky.[68]

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

A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that he personally heard Russian President Vladimir Putin express his decision to send Russian conscripts to serve in the Russian Border Service.[69] ISW has observed reports of Russian conscripts serving in border areas prior to the milblogger‘s claim, and other milbloggers have previously criticized the Russian military command for relying on inexperienced conscripts for border protection.[70]

A Russian Telegram source claimed that the Chechen Republic is recruiting volunteers for the Russian MoD and Rosgvardia.[71] The source claimed that the Chechen Republic has formed three battalions and three regiments subordinate to the MoD since the start of the war, as well as three detachments of 5,000 personnel total within Rosgvardia.[72] The source claimed that volunteers first sign contracts with the Chechen Republic before reissuing into contracts with the Russian MoD and Rosgvardia.[73] The source claimed that Chechen commander and Ministry of Emergency Situations Advisor Daniil Martynov and “Akhmat” Special Forces Commander Apti Alaudinov are also recruiting former Wagner Group fighters to Chechen “Akhmat” detachments, as discussed above.[74]

Russian milbloggers struggle to compensate for the Russian military command’s failure to adequately provide for Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. A Russian milblogger defended other milbloggers who received criticism for raising a large sum of money for an expensive vehicle to deliver aid to frontline Russian soldiers.[75] The milblogger defended the need for such a vehicle, claiming that transporting military aid to frontline soldiers is dangerous and often requires volunteers to drive on bad roads. The milblogger added that failing to deliver the aid on time has resulted in injured Russian soldiers dying due to lack of immediate care.[76]

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

Pro-Ukrainian actors reportedly conducted a cyber-attack against Russian telecom operators in occupied Ukraine. Ukrainian Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov stated that a Ukrainian “IT army” conducted a cyber-attack against major Russian telecom operators “Krymtelecom,” “Miranda-media,” and “MirTelecom,” impairing Russian communications in occupied Crimea and occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts.[77]

The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) reportedly claimed credit for the October 27 assassination attempt against Russian-backed former separatist Ukrainian politician Oleg Tsaryov. Multiple Ukrainian newswires cited an unnamed source within the SBU on October 28 as claiming responsibility for the assassination attempt.[78] Ukrainian officials have not publicly confirmed these reports, however. Tsaryov reportedly remains in intensive care as of October 28.[79]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

The Kremlin may be reviving its narrative falsely portraying Ukraine as an unsafe and incapable nuclear actor. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) accused Ukraine of conducting a drone strike against the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant on October 28 and damaging the walls of a nuclear waste storage area.[80] Russian officials have long accused Ukrainian forces of endangering nuclear assets in an attempt to undermine Western support for Ukraine and justify the Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) despite Russia’s own militarization of the ZNPP, as ISW has previously reported.[81]

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

Additional Russian instructors reportedly arrived in Belarus to begin training Belarusian drone operators. The Ukrainian Resistance Center stated on October 28 that Russian instructors arrived at the 927th UAV Training Center (military unit 92504) in Byarova, Brest Oblast, and will conduct exercises in UAV operations.[82]

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

26. Iran Update, October 28, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-october-28-2023

Key Takeaways:

Palestinian militias continued attacks at their usual rate from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The al Qassem Brigades claimed to fire rockets at Dimona for the first time since the war started.
Israeli ground forces advanced into the Gaza Strip. The al Qassem Brigades claimed to attack advancing IDF forces in Beit Hanoun and east of Bureij. Palestinian militias, including Hamas, are framing the IDF advances into the Gaza Strip as a failure likely to encourage civilians to stay rather than try to evacuate toward the southern part of the strip.
The Lions’ Den—a West Bank-based Palestinian militia—appeared to implicitly call for further mobilization and violence against Israel in the West Bank after the IDF conducted ground operations into the Gaza Strip. Iranian and Palestinian sources are describing Israeli settlers in the West Bank as legitimate military targets. Palestinian militants clashed with Israeli forces and held large, anti-Israel demonstrations at their usual rate across the West Bank.
Iranian-backed militants, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted 12 attacks into Israel as part of an ongoing attack campaign targeting IDF radar and sensor sites and military targets.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed to attack US forces at al Tanf Garrison in eastern Syria.
Iran is conducting a messaging campaign (1) to signal to the United States the potential for further Iranian-backed attacks against US forces in the region and (2) to reassure members of its Axis of Resistance, especially LH, of Iran’s commitment to supporting them in the event that the United States enters the war in support of Israel.
IRGC-affiliated media is continuing to provide the informational cover for Iran and the Axis of Resistance to conduct attacks against US positions on the false grounds that the United States is directing Israeli operations into the Gaza Strip.

IRAN UPDATE, OCTOBER 28, 2023

Oct 28, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, October 28, 2023

Ashka Jhaveri, Andie Parry, Annika Ganzeveld, Amin Soltani, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 3:00 pm EST

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

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

Key Takeaways:

Palestinian militias continued attacks at their usual rate from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The al Qassem Brigades claimed to fire rockets at Dimona for the first time since the war started.
Israeli ground forces advanced into the Gaza Strip. The al Qassem Brigades claimed to attack advancing IDF forces in Beit Hanoun and east of Bureij. Palestinian militias, including Hamas, are framing the IDF advances into the Gaza Strip as a failure likely to encourage civilians to stay rather than try to evacuate toward the southern part of the strip.
The Lions’ Den—a West Bank-based Palestinian militia—appeared to implicitly call for further mobilization and violence against Israel in the West Bank after the IDF conducted ground operations into the Gaza Strip. Iranian and Palestinian sources are describing Israeli settlers in the West Bank as legitimate military targets. Palestinian militants clashed with Israeli forces and held large, anti-Israel demonstrations at their usual rate across the West Bank.
Iranian-backed militants, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted 12 attacks into Israel as part of an ongoing attack campaign targeting IDF radar and sensor sites and military targets.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed to attack US forces at al Tanf Garrison in eastern Syria.
Iran is conducting a messaging campaign (1) to signal to the United States the potential for further Iranian-backed attacks against US forces in the region and (2) to reassure members of its Axis of Resistance, especially LH, of Iran’s commitment to supporting them in the event that the United States enters the war in support of Israel.
IRGC-affiliated media is continuing to provide the informational cover for Iran and the Axis of Resistance to conduct attacks against US positions on the false grounds that the United States is directing Israeli operations into the Gaza Strip.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Palestinian militias continued attacks at their usual rate from the Gaza Strip into Israel on October 28. The al Qassem Brigades—Hamas’ militant wing—claimed responsibility for nine indirect fire attacks. The al Qassem Brigades claimed to fire rockets at Dimona for the first time since the war started.[1] Israeli news reported that the Iron Dome air defense system intercepted three of the rockets and one fell in an open area.[2] The Israeli Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center is based outside of Dimona in southern Israel.[3] Iran and its Axis of Resistance have threatened to attack the facility previously, which has prompted Israel to reinforce the reactor, according to the head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission head.[4] Saraya al Quds—the militant wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—separately claimed responsibility for nine mortar and rocket attacks.[5]

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

Israeli Ground Operations in the Gaza Strip

Israeli ground forces advanced into the Gaza Strip on October 27. IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said IDF ground forces supported by heavy fire entered the Gaza Strip to dismantle Hamas, secure the border, and return hostages.[6] IDF Southern Command Fire Center Commander Lieutenant Colonel Gilad Keinan stated that Israel is using fire “from the air, from the ground, or from the underground.”[7] IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that Israeli troops entered the northern Gaza Strip with ground troops, armor, and artillery.[8] The IDF released footage of tanks entering along the beach in the northwestern Gaza Strip.[9] Hagari added that the ground operation was supported by "very significant, massive attacks from the sea."[10] The IDF Air Force struck 150 underground targets in the northern Gaza Strip overnight, which included striking Hamas militants, tunnels, and other subterranean infrastructure.[11] Hamas maintains around 480 kilometers of tunnels under the strip.[12]

The al Qassem Brigades claimed to attack advancing IDF forces in Beit Hanoun and east of Bureij overnight.[13] Hamas official Ali Bakara said Palestinian militants used anti-tank missiles to repel the attack and that it has been preparing defensive plans since the beginning of the battle.[14] Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said overnight that Israel completed a phase in the war and that Israel will continue to be strong and precise.[15] CTP-ISW cannot independently verify the locations of these Israeli ground operations.

Palestinian militias, including Hamas, are framing the IDF advances into the Gaza Strip as a failure likely to encourage civilians to stay rather than try to evacuate toward the southern part of the strip.

Hamas claimed that the Israeli ground attack into the Gaza Strip was a failure.[16] A Saraya al Quds official said that the IDF received painful strikes on the points of advance.[17] Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine militant wing spokesman Abu Jamal said the IDF suffered heavy losses.[18] An Israeli spokesperson said Israel had no casualties in Friday night's fighting.[19]
Israel issued an urgent message for residents of the Gaza Strip and Gaza City to temporarily relocate south until intense hostilities end.[20] Israel dropped flyers in the northern part of the strip with a similar message. Hamas previously urged locals to stay in Gaza, describing the Israeli warnings on October 12 as “psychological warfare” against Palestinians.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Hamas continues to use civilians as human shields, which intentionally puts these civilians in harm's way, to protect Hamas’ military infrastructure and weapons.[21] Civilians leaving the northern Gaza Strip en masse would risk depriving Hamas of the ability to use regular civilian activity to mask its military activities.

Iranian officials and media continued to argue on October 28 that Israeli ground operations into the Gaza Strip are failing and will not achieve their aim of destroying Hamas. IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency claimed that on October 27 that the IDF ground operations inside the Gaza Strip were unsuccessful.[22] IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency similarly argued that Israel has had to repeatedly retreat after conducting limited operations inside the Gaza Strip and that Israel has not been able to do much more than launch a media campaign justifying these retreats.[23] State-controlled Islamic Republic News Agency recirculated Hamas’ statement that the IDF operations failed as Hamas inflicted significant casualties and damage on the IDF.[24] IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami argued that Israel is incapable of defeating Hamas, claiming that the Gaza Strip will become the grave for many Israeli soldiers.[25]

This Iranian messaging ignores the fact that much of the IDF activity into the Gaza Strip in recent days had been raids.[26] US military doctrine defines a raid as “an operation to temporarily seize an area in order to secure information, confuse an enemy, capture personnel or equipment, or to destroy a capability culminating with a planned withdrawal.”[27] The IDF withdrawals after their operations were consistent with the US military doctrinal definition of a raid, which includes a planned retrograde at the end of the mission.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

The Lions’ Den—a West Bank-based Palestinian militia—appeared to implicitly call for further mobilization and violence against Israel in the West Bank after the IDF conducted ground operations into the Gaza Strip on October 27. The group posted on its Telegram for the first time since October 25, saying “long live jihad.”[28] The Lions’ Den has repeatedly called for mobilization in the West Bank in support of Hamas since the war began. The group claims to be unaffiliated with any specific Palestinian faction.[29] The Lions’ Den released a statement indicating increasing alignment with Hamas on October 25, however.[30] CTP-ISW previously reported that the group appeared to briefly trigger an uptick in violence after previous calls to mobilize.

Iranian and Palestinian sources are describing Israeli settlers in the West Bank as legitimate military targets. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s official website pushed the narrative that Israeli settlers are armed and contribute to Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians on October 27.[31] Hamas Political Bureau member Musa Dudin similarly stated on October 27 that “it is time for the West Bank to attack the security of the settlements.”[32] The statements come amid heightened tension between Palestinians and settlers in the West Bank.[33] The Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank said an Israeli settler shot and killed a Palestinian on October 28.[34] Hamas responded to the shooting on Telegram, hailing the Palestinian as a martyr, who was killed “during the confrontations of the al Aqsa Flood battle.”[35]

Palestinian militants clashed with Israeli forces and held large, anti-Israel demonstrations at their usual rate across the West Bank on October 28.

CTP-ISW recorded 11 distinct clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces across the West Bank. CTP-ISW recorded four instances of Palestinian militants using IEDs, which has become increasingly common since October 18.[36] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade's Rapid Response Groups claimed to attack IDF soldiers stationed at Netzanei Oz on the border between Israel and the West Bank.[37]
CTP-ISW recorded five anti-Israel demonstrations in major cities across the West Bank, including Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, and Tulkarm. Many shops closed in Jenin as part of a general strike against Israeli attacks into the Gaza Strip.[38] Local Telegram channels called for general mobilization in the West Bank on October 28, which is consistent with repeated Hamas calls for further resistance in the West Bank.[39]

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

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Iranian-backed militants, including Lebanese Hezbollah (LH), conducted 12 attacks into Israel as part of an ongoing attack campaign targeting IDF radar and sensor sites and military targets. LH claimed five anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) and rocket attacks on IDF positions along the border with Lebanon on October 28, which is consistent with its rate of attacks prior to October 26.[40] The IDF responded with multiple airstrikes and artillery strikes into southern Lebanon and on the Israel-Lebanon border, including against LH ATGM squads.[41] LH claimed that one of its attacks caused IDF casualties along the border.[42] LH fired an Iranian-designed 358 surface-to-air missile at an Israeli drone on October 28.[43] IDF air defense intercepted the missile over Tiberias in northern Israel.[44] The 358 missile is an Iranian-origin missile widely used by the Houthi movement in Yemen.[45]

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed to attack US forces at al Tanf Garrison (ATG) in eastern Syria on October 27.[46] The group claimed to attack the base with two one-way attack drones, marking the group’s third attack on ATG since October 19.[47] Local media reported two other unclaimed drone and rocket attacks on US forces stationed at bases in eastern and northeastern Syria.[48] Iranian-backed militias were responsible for these attacks, according to local anti-Syrian regime media.[49] Iranian-backed militias transported short range rockets to a town two miles from a US base in Deir ez Zor Province on October 28.[50] This is the eleventh consecutive day of Iranian-backed militia attacks on US forces in the Middle East. All three attacks occurred after Israel’s expanded operation into the Gaza Strip.[51]

Iran is conducting a messaging campaign (1) to signal to the United States the potential for further Iranian-backed attacks against US forces in the region and (2) to reassure members of its Axis of Resistance, especially LH, of Iran’s commitment to supporting them in the event that the United States enters the war in support of Israel.

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian warned on October 27 that continued US support to Israel will result in the “opening of new fronts against the United States,” according to Bloomberg TV.[52] Abdollahian spoke with Bloomberg TV, as well as other Western outlets, while visiting New York City for an emergency UNGA session on the Israel-Hamas war.[53] Iranian state media heavily recirculated the headline of “new fronts against the United States” in its coverage of Abdollahian’s interview.[54] This warning diverges slightly from his previous warnings, which have mentioned the possibility for the war to expand geographically but had not framed this expansion as directed specifically against the United States.[55] Abdollahian separately pushed during his interviews with Western outlets the Iranian information operation asserting that the United States and Israel would be responsible for any further escalation and expansion of the war. Abdollahian stated in his interview with NPR on October 27, for example, that the continuation of Israeli attacks on Hamas could drive Iranian-backed Lebanese and Palestinian groups to implement plans “more powerful and deeper than what [the United States] has witnessed.”[56] The narrative that the United States and Israel would be responsible for the escalation of the war ignores the fact that Iran has already facilitated the expansion of this war to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen by directing its proxy and partner militias in these countries to attack US and Israeli targets.
IRGC spokesperson Brigadier General Ramazan Sharif warned of further attacks on US positions in the region during an interview with LH-affiliated al Mayadeen on October 28.[57] Sharif warned that “those who cannot reach Israel [in battle] may be able to reach the US forces that are managing this war.”[58] He added that Iran is monitoring US bases in the region and US missile transfers to Israel. Al Mayadeen published the interview in Arabic and English, suggesting that Sharif meant to address local and Western audiences.[59] Sharif’s interview was firstly likely part of Iranian efforts to deter the United States from providing further military support to Israel. Sharif also likely sought to reassure the Axis of Resistance that Iran would support them, especially LH, in light of reports that the United States would intervene if LH attacked Israel.[60]

IRGC-affiliated media is continuing to provide the informational cover for Iran and the Axis of Resistance to conduct attacks against US positions on the false grounds that the United States is directing Israeli operations into the Gaza Strip. Tasnim and Fars news agencies claimed that 5,000 American soldiers participated in the IDF’s October 27 ground operations into the Gaza Strip.[61] Tasnim also repeated its earlier claim from October 16 that American military commanders have taken over command of Israeli operations in the area.[62] Several elements in Iran’s Axis of Resistance, including various Iraqi militias and the Houthi movement, have threatened to attack the United States and Israel if the United States intervenes in support of Israel.

The Artesh—Iran's conventional military—held its annual exercise near Esfahan on October 27-28. The Artesh regularly holds this exercise around the same time every year.[63] Senior armed forces officials assessed the Artesh’s missile, drone, armored combat, electronic warfare, helicopter transport, and engineering capabilities.[64] The Artesh also unveiled a series of purportedly new capabilities, including “a multi-rotor smart bomber,” a cruise-missile equipped helicopter, and other unspecified “operational and tactical equipment.”[65] Artesh Ground Forces Passive Defense and Engineering Deputy Commander Brigadier General Miser Arjoumandi stated that the Artesh implemented projects for a “five-kilometer fire wall” for coastal defense operations.[66] Khatam ol Anbia Central Headquarters Deputy Coordinator Brigadier General Ali Shadmani assessed that the Artesh Ground Forces are in “excellent” condition in all areas on the sidelines of the exercise on October 28.[67] Artesh Commander Major General Abdol Rahim Mousavi and Artesh Ground Forces Commander Brigadier General Kiomars Heydari similarly stated that the Artesh is fully prepared for defending Iran’s borders and responding to any threats.[68]

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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