Quotes of the Day:

“Let me remind you that you must never think of yourselves as an elite. To do so, would be bad for you and bad for your relations with the army, and it would undermine those splendid qualities, to which you are wedded, of humility in success, and of a constant sense of humour. No, you are not an elite force. You are something more distinguished. Something of which you can be far more proud. The SAS establishment constitutes the smallest Corps in the British Defence Forces but with a special strategic role which is probably unique among all the armies of the world, and one which could save an incalculable number of lives. Hence the need for you to keep a ‘low profile,’ for reticence, and for the practice of security at all times.” 

- David Stirling

“We are all ready to be savage and some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.” 

- William James

“Whatever is currently happening to humanity, it is happening to all of us. No matter how hidden the cruelty, no matter how far off the screams of pain and terror, we live in one world.” 

- Alice Walker

1. Old Dogs, New Tricks: Why Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Needs to Take Primacy Over Special Forces in Great Power Competition

2. Foreign Affairs Article Provides Insight Into the Mind of the Enemy

3. Washington's Looming Middle Eastern Quagmire

4. The Russian Way of War

5. Japan’s Intervention in a Taiwan Contingency: It Depends

6. Our warnings on Hamas were ignored, Israel’s women border troops say

7. Bad history makes for bad policy on UkraineBad history makes for bad policy on Ukraine (Quincy Institute)

8. ChatGPT Is Apparently a Great Surveillance ToolChat

9. First hostages released — 13 Israeli, 12 Thai — after pause in fighting begins, officials say

10. Myanmar military says drone attack by ethnic armed groups in northeast destroyed about 120 trucks

11. Liberal Arts and the Future of the University – Yael Hungerford

12. #WTH: TikTok & Osama bin Laden & Hamas

13. Gen Z Turns Against Osama Bin Laden After Discovering Problematic Tweets

1. Old Dogs, New Tricks: Why Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Needs to Take Primacy Over Special Forces in Great Power Competition

No ruffled feathers here but I think it is a false equation PSYOP versus SF but it hopefully gets attention and gets people thinking critically. The real question is when will we learn to lead with influence? And by "we" I mean the US national security community writ large. Until we recognize the importance of influence as a (and sometimes the) major line of effort we are always going to be reacting to the revisionist, rogue, and revolutionary powers and violent extremist organizations.

From an irregular warfare campaign perspective with SOF contributing its special warfare capabilities to support irregular warfare, which is the military contribution to political warfare (i.e., strategic competition in the gray zone) we should consider the SOF trinities as the application of SOF special warfare.

The Two Special Operations Trinities

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/two-special-operations-trinities

The first "trinity:"

1. irregular warfare

2. unconventional warfare 

3. support to political warfare

The second "trinity" and the comparative advantage of SOF:

1. influence

2. governance

3. support to indigenous forces and populations

I agree with 99% of Brad Carr's conclusion here. We have to learn to lead with influence. But this is not a n SF versus PSYOP issue. They are both/and and not either/or or one before the other. They are complementary and mutually supporting and reinforcing. But, again, the important thing is that we need to learn to lead with influence at the tactical level, at the campaign level, and at the strategic level. We need to invest in and effectively employ PSYOP - all other forces are merely amateurs at influencing target audiences.

The United States stands at a strategic inflection point, where the imperatives of modern warfare demand a reconfiguration of military priorities. The argument for a substantial investment in PSYOP, both in terms of funding and manpower, is not a matter of choice but a strategic necessity. As the great power competition intensifies, the ability to control the narrative and influence the information environment will significantly dictate the trajectory of this global contest. The transition from the primacy of Special Forces to a pronounced emphasis on PSYOP is a pragmatic response to the evolving threats and a step towards ensuring a strategic advantage in the face of advanced information warfare strategies employed by formidable adversaries like China and Russia.

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Old Dogs, New Tricks: Why Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Needs to Take Primacy Over Special Forces in Great Power Competition

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/old-dogs-new-tricks-why-psychological-operations-psyop-brad-carr-okwze%3FtrackingId/

Brad Carr

USSOCOM Special Activities / Strategic Planner | Executive Management Consultant / Coach | Owner at Carr Media Productions, LLC | Futurist | Retired Army Colonel | Disabled Veteran

21 articles Following

November 7, 2023

Open Immersive Reader

**The views expressed in this article are my own and may not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Special Operations Command, United States Army Special Operations Command, Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.**

The global geopolitical landscape has witnessed a paradigm shift from warfare emblematic of the post-9/11 era, to a new frontier defined by information warfare, underpinning great power competition. China and Russia, as formidable adversaries in this arena, have strategically integrated information warfare within their military doctrines, thereby changing the rules of engagement. Against this backdrop, the United States stands at a pivotal juncture, necessitating a radical recalibration of its Army Special Operations Force structure, from a Special Forces-centric approach to a pronounced emphasis on Psychological Operations (PSYOP). This shift is not merely a tactical repositioning, but strategically supported by the US Code Title 10 Section 167j, which recognizes PSYOP as a special operations capability in its own right.

Historically, PSYOP in the U.S. military predates the establishment of Special Forces with the roots of modern day PSYOP founded in World War I. Additionally, the very schoolhouse where Green Berets and PSYOP soldiers are trained was originally the Psychological Warfare School established in 1950 at Fort Reiley Kansas then moved to Fort Bragg in 1952. As such, the institutional legacy of PSYOP reflects a rich heritage of psychological and special warfare expertise that predates the official creation of Green Berets. This historic precedence underscores the intrinsic value and the independent operational capability of PSYOP within the U.S. military structure and modern warfare itself.

As we venture into a future operating environment characterized by complex information warfare, the nature of warfare has not changed, but the character definitely has. The previous diminished role where PSYOP was poorly understood and perceived as an enabler to Special Forces (as unfortunately propagated by many in the ARSOF and greater SOF community over the years) is evolving into a strategic framework where Special Forces should now play a supporting role to PSYOP. China is taking such steps with their intelligentized warfare construct. This shift underscores the criticality of equipping and prioritizing PSYOP to navigate the intricacies of information warfare, thereby effectively countering the sophisticated information warfare strategies employed by adversaries in great power competition. The ensuing discourse delves into the rationale behind this strategic shift, advocating for a substantial investment in PSYOP in terms of funding and manpower, juxtaposed against the backdrop of evolving threats and the imperatives of modern and future warfare.

The Imperative of Information Warfare:

The essence of contemporary great power competition lies in the control of information for cognitive, perception, and behavior manipulation. The ability to shape perceptions, influence decisions, and control narratives is not merely a matter of countering adversarial propaganda, but a strategic endeavor to proactively dictate the terms of engagement in this global contest. China and Russia have adeptly integrated information warfare within their military doctrines. The finesse with which these nations employ a blend of cyber operations, disinformation campaigns, and legal and psychological warfare to undermine the U.S. and its allies often occurs without firing a single bullet. The modernization of PSYOP, would be a step towards regaining the advantage in this contested domain. However, this modernization necessitates a significant infusion of resources. The investment in technological infrastructure, advanced analytic capabilities, and specialized training for personnel is indispensable for operating effectively in the complex information environment. In a recent Business Insider article, the commander of United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) stated how critical PSYOP is to the modern battlefield. It is now time to back those statements with prioritizing PSYOP over other ARSOF formations.

 Comparative Analysis: Special Forces vs PSYOP:

The United States’ military strategy in the aftermath of 9/11 was chiefly characterized by a heavy reliance on Special Forces. Their expertise in counterterrorism and direct action proved indispensable in addressing the threats posed by non-state actors like Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. Special Forces were the tip of the spear in the global war on terror, adeptly navigating the complex battlefields of Afghanistan, Iraq, and other regions. Their capabilities were well-suited to the exigencies of the time, where the objective was the dismantlement and degradation of terrorist networks. This operational paradigm necessitated a significant allocation of resources to Special Forces, ensuring they were well-equipped and well-manned to execute their missions.

However, the geopolitical narrative has evolved significantly since then. The re-emergence of great power competition, marked by the strategic posturing of China and Russia, has brought to the fore a different kind of warfare - information warfare. Unlike the war on terror, where the primary battleground was physical even though there was a significant rise and development of terrorist propaganda, the primary arena of conflict in great power competition is the information environment. The objective is no longer merely the destruction of enemy combatants but the control of narratives, the influence of perceptions, and the manipulation of information to achieve strategic ends. Physical actions are many times developed and executed because of their psychological effect. This shift necessitates a re-evaluation of the traditional roles and resource allocation between Special Forces and PSYOP.

PSYOP, with its focus on influencing, disrupting, and countering adversarial information campaigns, emerges as a critical domain in this evolved battle space. The ability to influence the cognitive domain, shape behaviors, and guide decision-making processes among target audiences is paramount in a world where information is as potent a weapon as any piece of military hardware. The adversaries have recognized this potency, integrating sophisticated information warfare capabilities into their military doctrines. China’s Three Warfares Strategy is a stark representations of this integration. These doctrines aim to achieve strategic objectives not through the barrel of a gun, but through the manipulation of the information spectrum.

The modern threat landscape, therefore, demands a transition to a strategy that prioritized an information warfare capability with kinetics and other activities in support. While the Special Forces continue to play a vital role in various military engagements, the primacy they enjoyed in resource allocation post 9/11 needs a reevaluation. The emphasis should transition towards building a robust PSYOP capability that can navigate the murky waters of information warfare. The argument for prioritizing PSYOP over Special Forces in funding and manpower allocation is reinforced by the necessity to gain a first-mover advantage in the information domain, to pre-empt, counter, and discredit adversarial information campaigns before they can gain traction. The Chinese are even evolving their Three Warfares Strategy to informationized and then intelligentized warfare; something that is very telling in how they see the operational environment. Around 2015 with the creation of the Strategic Support Force (a new military service where the core of Chinese PSYOP resides), China elevated the importance of information warfare to the very core of its national military strategy.

Moreover, engagement in the information domain with enhanced PSYOP capabilities is not a standalone endeavor but should be seen as complementary to Special Forces. Looking at future conflicts through the lens of the strategic importance of information warfare, the future environment will be one where Special Forces are in support of PSYOP missions where cognitive and informational objectives are driving overall military operations. Special Forces could execute timed and synchronized Psychological Operations Actions (PSYACTS – actions or activities conducted primarily for their psychological impact); a concept previously codified in Special Operations Force (SOF) doctrine. The ability to engage effectively in both the physical and information domains will be crucial in countering the sophisticated information warfare strategies employed by adversaries like China and Russia.

The comparative analysis underscores a crucial imperative. In great power competition it may now be insufficient to say Special Forces are the special operations force of choice in the face of evolved threats characterized by advanced information warfare capabilities. A strategic rebalancing is necessary, where PSYOP is accorded a pronounced emphasis in terms of funding and manpower to enhance the U.S military’s ability to operate effectively in the complex, information-centric modern battle space. This rebalancing will equip the U.S. military with the requisite capabilities to confront and neutralize the multifaceted threats posed by the sophisticated information warfare strategies of its geopolitical adversaries.

Conclusion:

The United States stands at a strategic inflection point, where the imperatives of modern warfare demand a reconfiguration of military priorities. The argument for a substantial investment in PSYOP, both in terms of funding and manpower, is not a matter of choice but a strategic necessity. As the great power competition intensifies, the ability to control the narrative and influence the information environment will significantly dictate the trajectory of this global contest. The transition from the primacy of Special Forces to a pronounced emphasis on PSYOP is a pragmatic response to the evolving threats and a step towards ensuring a strategic advantage in the face of advanced information warfare strategies employed by formidable adversaries like China and Russia.

#SpecialOperations #PSYOP #NationalSecurity #SpecialForces #InformationWarfare #GreatPowerCompetition #innovation #military

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Brad Carr

USSOCOM Special Activities / Strategic Planner | Executive Management Consultant / Coach | Owner at Carr Media Productions, LLC | Futurist | Retired Army Colonel | Disabled Veteran

Published • 2w

21 articles

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I know this article may ruffle a few feathers and that is okay. I think it is necessary for a needed dialogue on the future strategic and operational environment and what capabilities are most critical in competition to prevent conflict from even happening, or to allow the rapid cessation of hostilities and consolidation of gains. The article outlines a strategic shift in U.S. special operations focus in response to the changing nature of global conflict. It advocates for a transition from a Special Forces-centric model to one that places a greater emphasis and priority on Psychological Operations (PSYOP). This shift is rooted in the recognition that contemporary great power competition is increasingly playing out in the information and cognitive environments, where narrative and perception management are actually critical, and not just overused buzzwords. It argues for significant investment in PSYOP to counter the sophisticated information warfare tactics of adversaries like China who are giving strategic primacy to PSYOP in their intelligentized warfare constructs that suggests future military engagements will be driven more by cognitive and informational objectives than by kinetic actions. **The views expressed in this article are my own and may not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Special Operations Command, United States Army Special Operations Command, Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.** #specialoperations #PSYOP #nationalsecurity #specialforces #informationwarfare #greatpowercompetition #innovation #military

2. Foreign Affairs Article Provides Insight Into the Mind of the Enemy

I forwarded the referenced Foreign Affairs article yesterday. It may be worth re-reading that article based on Francis Sempa's analysis here.

Conclusion:

Wang’s article is for the CCP a timely follow-up to President Xi Jinping’s recent meeting with President Biden and Xi’s meeting with hundreds of America’s top business leaders in San Francisco. As the great political analyst James Burnham noted in his book The Machiavellians, political rhetoric, like Wang’s in his Foreign Affairs essay, must be viewed in the context of the real world time and place so that we can separate its “formal” meaning from its “real” meaning. China’s real world goal is not better relations with the United States; it is to achieve political control of Taiwan. Wang’s rhetoric about suggestions to improve relations must be viewed in the context of China’s increasingly militaristic approach to Taiwan and China’s growing nuclear arsenal. The real meaning of Wang’s article is: China as the rising power intends to control Taiwan and the United States as the declining power risks an intensifying Cold War and a catastrophic hot war if it stands in China’s way. Let us have Taiwan and you will have peace and your corporations will get wealthier. Foreign Affairs has inadvertently allowed us to see the mind of our enemy.

Foreign Affairs Article Provides Insight Into the Mind of the Enemy - The American Spectator 

spectator.org · by Francis P. Sempa · November 24, 2023

 Foreign Affairs Article Provides Insight Into the Mind of the Enemy

China Watch

Foreign Affairs Article Provides Insight Into the Mind of the Enemy

The message here is that the United States no longer has the military supremacy to deter or deny China’s forcible reunification with Taiwan.

November 23, 2023, 11:20 PM

Coffeemill/Shutterstock

The featured article on the Foreign Affairs website on Thanksgiving Day was by Wang Jisi, identified as “Founding President of the Institute of International Studies at Peking University.” The article is entitled “America and China Are Not Yet in a Cold War,” and Wang’s essay provides advice to America’s leaders and people on how to avoid a Cold War. Much of the article reads like many such essays in Foreign Affairs written by American and other Western writers, intellectuals, and policymakers: moderate in tone, seemingly fair-minded, thoughtful, prudent, and scholarly. Yet, tucked in the middle of Wang’s essay is a recommendation to U.S. and Taiwanese officials to encourage the “peaceful reunification” of Taiwan with China. Wang, you see, is also a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of China’s Foreign Ministry. He is, in other words, a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Wang decries the fact that the “two powers seem to be moving into an intensifying strategic competition that carries some features of the Cold War” but may even be more dangerous. China and the United States, he writes, both have their “hard-liners.” “Washington today sees its rival as an ideological foes,” Wang notes, and the “CCP holds high the banner of Marxism.” Wang acknowledges that the CCP “dominates China’s politics, economy, and society and does not allow any deviation that might challenge its authority.” And while Americans loathe communism, Chinese elites “view the United States as a sinister challenge to China’s internal political security and to the CCP’s authority.”

Wang writes that Beijing views itself as a “developing,” i.e., rising power, and views America as a declining power. And he points out that China “has achieved a rough military balance of power with Washington thanks to the growing Chinese nuclear arsenal.” The message here is that unlike in the 1950s and even as late as the 1990s, the United States no longer has the military supremacy, including nuclear supremacy, to deter or deny China’s forcible reunification with Taiwan. So, let China do peacefully what it otherwise will do militarily. Avoid both a Cold War and a hot war by abandoning Taiwan.

That stern message is camouflaged by Wang’s detentist semantics, where he urges America’s political and business leaders to ensure that the two nations’ “economies … remain intensively intertwined,” that both nations’ leaders to set up a “hotline between their operational military headquarters” and “hold discussions about reducing the potential risks posed by artificial intelligence,” “work together” on global health issues, and coordinate “climate change” policies. These are the moderate, prudent-sounding suggestions that serve to mask the real purpose of the article, which is to convince America’s leaders to avoid worsening bilateral relations over Taiwan. That, in the end, is the only way to avoid slipping into a Cold War and possibly a hot war, according to this CCP spokesperson.

Wang writes that we are in a different era despite similarities between the old Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union. The message to U.S. leaders here is that while you may have won the old Cold War, you will not win a new Cold War with China. China’s challenge is more multifaceted than the Soviet challenge. There are no Chinese Gorbachevs.

Wang’s article is for the CCP a timely follow-up to President Xi Jinping’s recent meeting with President Biden and Xi’s meeting with hundreds of America’s top business leaders in San Francisco. As the great political analyst James Burnham noted in his book The Machiavellians, political rhetoric, like Wang’s in his Foreign Affairs essay, must be viewed in the context of the real world time and place so that we can separate its “formal” meaning from its “real” meaning. China’s real world goal is not better relations with the United States; it is to achieve political control of Taiwan. Wang’s rhetoric about suggestions to improve relations must be viewed in the context of China’s increasingly militaristic approach to Taiwan and China’s growing nuclear arsenal. The real meaning of Wang’s article is: China as the rising power intends to control Taiwan and the United States as the declining power risks an intensifying Cold War and a catastrophic hot war if it stands in China’s way. Let us have Taiwan and you will have peace and your corporations will get wealthier. Foreign Affairs has inadvertently allowed us to see the mind of our enemy.

3. Washington's Looming Middle Eastern Quagmire

The 180 pivot to Asia ends up being a 360 degree pirouette like it has been for the past decade. 

Excerpts:

Moreover, Washington can offset its diminished presence and further buttress the region against Iranian influence by doing more to reduce the dependence of regional allies and partners on the United States. Washington should empower regional actors such as Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other U.S. partners to establish coalitions that address high-priority regional security needs and manage regional tensions with limited U.S. involvement. This approach would not only reduce the burden placed on U.S. forces but also mitigate the broader security risks caused by backlash against the United States’ military presence in the region and create a more stable foundation for the U.S. relationship with these countries.

Accordingly, Washington’s focus will need to shift away from pricey arms transfers and efforts to build interoperability with U.S. forces toward activities that help regional partners operate independently with the large arsenals they already have, and to do so alongside their neighbors. In the past, U.S. efforts to forge regional security coalitions in the Middle East have failed due to ideological and personal rivalries between Arab states, with the long-running spat between Saudi Arabia and Qatar being the starkest example, as well as diverging perceptions about how best to manage the threat from Iran and its proxies. Despite some softening, these tensions are likely to endure, but the United States can work around them by emphasizing and incentivizing narrower forms of cooperation around high-priority issues where interests do align, such as maritime security and air defense. Washington could also consider encouraging the formation of so-called minilaterals—small groups of three to five states with limited objectives—which states in Southeast Asia have used successfully to manage regional security issues, such as piracy and illegal fishing, on their own without relying on either the United States or China.

These changes would amount to a major shift for U.S. policy in the Middle East, away from a U.S.-led security-heavy model toward a more balanced approach that carries less of a risk of escalation or overstretch and that allows regional powers to take the lead. This new approach would not be a guarantee against future regional security crises, but it would protect Washington’s military and diplomatic flexibility, reduce the odds Washington ends up embroiled in another Middle East war, and preserve greater military capacity for other national security priorities. If Washington fails to alter its course, though, it could end up going down an all-too-familiar road.

Washington's Looming Middle Eastern Quagmire

The War in Gaza, American Overstretch, and the Case for Retrenchment

By Jennifer Kavanagh and Frederic Wehrey

November 24, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Jennifer Kavanagh and Frederic Wehrey · November 24, 2023

The aftermath of Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack on Israel, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, has prompted what is arguably the most severe challenge to U.S. strategy in the Middle East since the uprisings and civil wars that rocked the Arab world beginning in 2011. Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip and the massive loss of life it has incurred—over 12,000 Palestinians have died as a result, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry—have spurred widespread anti-Americanism across the region and prompted attacks by Iranian proxies on U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Syria. How U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration manage the actions of Israel, a close U.S. ally, as well as the broader geopolitical reverberations of the war, will have far-reaching consequences for regional stability as well as for Washington’s ability to confront and deter adversaries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

That the stakes are high is evident in the rapid flow of additional U.S. military forces into the region over the past month, including aircraft carriers, fighter aircraft, over 1,000 troops, and the deployment of additional air defense systems to Arab partners such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. These moves were intended to signal U.S. resolve and deter Iran from seeking to escalate the crisis in Israel by using its network of proxies, such as Hezbollah, to launch attacks on Israel from Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere. But by expanding its military presence in the Middle East, Washington may aggravate regional tensions and raise the risk and costs of miscalculation—and thus inadvertently provoke the very conflict it is desperate to avoid.

Washington’s injection of military hardware and personnel could also end up entangling the United States in open-ended security commitments to a region from which it had, until recently, been trying to extricate itself. By the time U.S. forces finished withdrawing from Afghanistan and ended combat operations in Iraq in 2021, the United States’ habitual security-first approach to the Middle East had proved both costly, in terms of dollars and lives lost, and devastating for the region, having contributed to years of war, insurgency, and economic ruin. As the United States’ presence increases once again, its deepened military involvement in the Middle East could endure beyond the end of the current crisis and contribute to an overstretch that would create dangerous gaps elsewhere over the longer term, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. In that scenario, much of the Biden administration’s work to pivot toward the Indo-Pacific to counter China would be undone—and key strategic arenas such as Taiwan would be left more vulnerable to Chinese aggression.

Given these hazards, Washington’s Middle East policy is in desperate need of a course correction. This was true before October 7, and it is even more so now. The Biden administration, however, has not signaled any short- or long-term adjustments aimed at addressing the failures and risks of the current strategy. Instead, it has recommitted to a heavily securitized approach based on ever-larger U.S. military deployments and the normalization of relations between Israel and Arab countries as the foundation for a new U.S.-led security bloc in the Middle East.

Although the consequences of Israel’s war in Gaza remain uncertain, it is not too soon to sketch the outlines of a more sustainable U.S. Middle East policy. Most important, as soon as the current crisis begins to stabilize, Washington should work to rapidly withdraw the forces it has rushed back into the Middle East—and go further, substantially downsizing and realigning the U.S. military presence in the region. At the same time, Washington should invest in building the capabilities and resilience of its regional partners so that they can operate together more effectively to maintain stability and manage security challenges with less U.S. support. Only this two-pronged approach can move the United States toward a balanced Middle East policy that avoids overextension but can still reassure partners and stave off future catastrophes.

NO QUESTIONS ASKED

The United States’ response to the current crisis has been rapid and extensive. In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, Biden ordered two carrier strike groups—naval forces each numbering roughly 7,500 personnel—into the Mediterranean and the Red Sea and sent an Ohio-class nuclear-capable submarine; advanced fighter and close-air-support aircraft such as the F-16, the F-15, the F-35, and the A-10; and over 1,200 additional troops into the region, on top of the approximately 45,000 U.S. military personnel who are already stationed across the Middle East. In addition, the United States has sent Patriot air defense battalions to longtime regional partners including Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and it has deployed at least one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to the region. This U.S. military surge marks the first time some of these weapons systems have been deployed to the Middle East since the United States’ 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.

This flood of U.S. forces and assets has been accompanied by a significant influx of military assistance to Israel, on top of the nearly $4 billion that the country receives annually from the United States. (The United States has provided Israel with more military aid than any other country in the world since World War II, amounting to more than $124 billion since Israel’s founding, in 1948.) After October 7, Biden submitted a request to Congress for a $14.3 billion emergency arms package to Israel—a request that has remained in limbo not due to lack of support for Israel but owing to the United States’ own political dysfunction.

The swift and decisive nature of this response stands out, especially given Biden’s reputation for deliberative, sometimes plodding decision-making. It also makes for a sharp contrast with the incremental approach to providing military aid to Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion, especially given the more limited military threat posed by Iran and its proxies compared to that of Russia. And unlike the transparency provided on aid to Ukraine, the seeming unconditional arms transfers to Israel have been veiled in secrecy, which has prompted consternation in Congress and the resignation of a State Department official named Josh Paul, who insisted in a public statement that the scale of Washington’s support for Israel was “not in the long-term American interest.”

THINKING IT THROUGH

As the Biden administration has doubled down on the surge of additional U.S. arms and forces to the Middle East, however, it is not clear that U.S. policymakers have thought through the second- and third-order effects of amplifying the United States’ security role in the region and how it will be perceived by adversaries and allies alike. Specifically, there are three risks that the Biden administration must acknowledge and address: escalation, backlash, and overstretch.

First, although the Pentagon has argued that deployments since October 7 are intended to prevent a wider war, it seems equally likely the surge in U.S. forces could end up triggering an escalatory spiral rather than preventing one. Since October 7, attacks by Iranian proxies on U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq and Syria have mounted, even as the United States has augmented its regional presence and launched retaliatory strikes on militia infrastructure targets in Syria. Neither these additional forces nor the multiple rounds of airstrikes, including some that have reportedly killed militia members, appear to have done much to deter U.S. adversaries. If anything, rather, such attacks have become more brazen; the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, for instance, recently shot down an unmanned American drone over the Red Sea, and have been launching strikes aimed at Israel since the start of the current conflagration.

It is possible that the United States’ augmented military presence has dissuaded more significant provocations by Iran and its proxies—but more likely is the prospect that neither Iran nor Hezbollah desire escalation, as both would stand to lose if a regional war broke out. This calculus could change, particularly should Palestinian casualties continue to mount or should Israel choose to occupy Gaza for an extended period of time. In a situation where each side’s redlines are unclear, an increased U.S. military presence in the region raises the risk for miscalculation and provocation. It also gives hard-liners in Tehran and among Iran’s proxy groups—who see as Washington as a co-conspirator in Israel’s military campaign—a rationale to continue their own military buildup and threaten escalation.

Washington has recommitted to a Middle Eastern strategy based on ever-larger U.S. military deployments.

Second, it is not just among adversaries where this new U.S. military influx could spawn unforeseen challenges. It could also undermine relationships with key American allies and partners such as Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, and others. Washington has long relied on the provision of security guarantees and military assistance as the core of its engagement in the Middle East. But the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the waves of anti-Americanism sweeping across the Arab world, and the very real divergence between Arab governments and Washington over Israel’s prosecution of its campaign risk eroding the bedrock of U.S.-Arab security cooperation—especially as the United States’ military presence in the region becomes both more visible and more controversial.

At the very least, Arab states will want to carry out any future security cooperation more discreetly, and Washington may find its freedom of action increasingly constrained by the need to protect U.S. forces operating in partner countries. In more extreme cases, partner regimes may suspend certain activities, such as joint exercises, or pause certain defense purchases. Although no state will sever its ties with the United States, the conflict is undoubtedly upending several of the Biden administration’s assumptions about its partners and complicating relationships that the United States has come to rely on in the region for military access and to protect U.S. economic interests. And although wider great-power competition with China and Russia should not be a main driver of U.S. policy in the region, it is possible that regional partners may turn to Beijing or Moscow if they find cooperation with Washington too troublesome.

Finally, this renewed U.S. posture in the region could herald a return to bad habits on the part of the United States—a retread of its habitual strategy of leaning on large U.S. military deployments and arms transfers to underwrite the region’s security against external threats. This approach has not made the region safer. Instead, decades of U.S. military involvement have exacerbated regional rivalries and fueled arms races that have worsened local conflicts, to say nothing of the disastrous repercussions of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which included hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), and the deterioration of the United States’ global reputation. Moreover, years of unconditional U.S. security assistance to Middle Eastern partners have often emboldened these regimes to act in ways that have severely undermined regional stability and human rights—including, for instance, Saudi Arabia’s backing of the Yemeni government in its fight against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, or the United Arab Emirates’ intervention in the conflict in Libya.

Looking beyond the region, the more Washington is compelled to deploy forces and transfer arms and hardware to the Middle East the more it runs the risk of becoming overstretched in ways that will leave the United States unable to meet its commitments and deter adversaries elsewhere—especially in the Indo-Pacific, where the United States faces an increasingly assertive China. Many of the weapons systems in highest demand by Washington’s Middle Eastern partners—such as Harpoon missiles and Patriot air defense systems—are also ones that Taiwan desperately needs to bolster its defenses against Chinese aggression. Similarly, many of the U.S. naval and air assets now deployed in the Middle East would likely be needed for a conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Over time, extended deployments in the Middle East may wear down these systems, leaving them unavailable—and the United States under-resourced—if a crisis in Asia were to occur. These tradeoffs will only grow if the Israel-Hamas conflict swells to include Iran, as the United States might feel pressure to provide Israel with long-range strike missiles that are already in short supply; and if greater numbers of U.S. forces and systems remain in the theater over the long term.

REDUCE AND REALIGN

The rupture caused by the Hamas attack offers an opportunity to develop a more sustainable and lower-risk U.S. approach to the Middle East. The current crisis illustrates that as long as Washington retains tens of thousands of soldiers in the Middle East, the chances remain high that the United States could be dragged into an extended, costly regional conflict, even when it has few interests at stake. To avoid this outcome, the United States needs to reduce and realign its military presence in the region. Without such downsizing, there is no way the United States can break free from the legacy of its ill-fated security-first approach. The small contingents of U.S. forces still in Iraq and Syria are a case in point. Their stated military objective—the enduring defeat of ISIS—is open-ended and largely unachievable, but keeping these troops in place indefinitely requires the continual deployment of more forces and more advanced systems for their protection, draining U.S. military resources with little appreciable benefit.

The United States can draw down its Middle Eastern military presence gradually and without leaving regional partners in fear of abandonment, although this downsizing may need to wait until current hostilities in the region settle. First, as an easy starting point, the additional forces and platforms sent to the region since October 7 should be redeployed. Second, most or all U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria should be withdrawn. U.S. deployments in these two locations seem to feed rather than deter regional escalation by Iran and its proxies. Furthermore, U.S. military commanders have indicated that U.S. partners in Iraq and Syria are now leading effective counter-ISIS operations on their own, suggesting that there is less need for a continued U.S. ground presence in these locations and reducing the risk of an ISIS resurgence in the absence of U.S. forces.

Finally, the United States should begin to reduce its presence across the rest of the region by consolidating U.S. forces across fewer installations. For instance, the United States could focus specifically on bases in Bahrain, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, and invest more heavily in prepositioned stocks of equipment and logistics capabilities that would allow the U.S. military to ramp up operations if needed. Some observers argue that this consolidation would embolden U.S. adversaries—in particular Iran—to expand its regional operations. But despite the real risks Iran poses, the country’s limited military capabilities do not warrant the extensive American military presence currently in the Middle East. A smaller number of U.S. forces dispersed in key locations combined with Washington’s demonstrated ability to surge forces to the region—also on display after October 7—should be sufficient to manage Iran’s provocations.

The United States needs to reduce and realign its military presence in the Middle East.

Such a reduction would also lower the risk of military overstretch and create space for Washington to develop a more holistic economic and political approach to the region. With less U.S. military involvement, the United States would have more time and resources to reorient its Middle East policies toward diplomacy, societal engagement, and economic statecraft—tools that will help address the emerging challenges, including climate change and the transition toward clean energy, with which people in the region are already grappling.

Moreover, Washington can offset its diminished presence and further buttress the region against Iranian influence by doing more to reduce the dependence of regional allies and partners on the United States. Washington should empower regional actors such as Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other U.S. partners to establish coalitions that address high-priority regional security needs and manage regional tensions with limited U.S. involvement. This approach would not only reduce the burden placed on U.S. forces but also mitigate the broader security risks caused by backlash against the United States’ military presence in the region and create a more stable foundation for the U.S. relationship with these countries.

Accordingly, Washington’s focus will need to shift away from pricey arms transfers and efforts to build interoperability with U.S. forces toward activities that help regional partners operate independently with the large arsenals they already have, and to do so alongside their neighbors. In the past, U.S. efforts to forge regional security coalitions in the Middle East have failed due to ideological and personal rivalries between Arab states, with the long-running spat between Saudi Arabia and Qatar being the starkest example, as well as diverging perceptions about how best to manage the threat from Iran and its proxies. Despite some softening, these tensions are likely to endure, but the United States can work around them by emphasizing and incentivizing narrower forms of cooperation around high-priority issues where interests do align, such as maritime security and air defense. Washington could also consider encouraging the formation of so-called minilaterals—small groups of three to five states with limited objectives—which states in Southeast Asia have used successfully to manage regional security issues, such as piracy and illegal fishing, on their own without relying on either the United States or China.

These changes would amount to a major shift for U.S. policy in the Middle East, away from a U.S.-led security-heavy model toward a more balanced approach that carries less of a risk of escalation or overstretch and that allows regional powers to take the lead. This new approach would not be a guarantee against future regional security crises, but it would protect Washington’s military and diplomatic flexibility, reduce the odds Washington ends up embroiled in another Middle East war, and preserve greater military capacity for other national security priorities. If Washington fails to alter its course, though, it could end up going down an all-too-familiar road.

• JENNIFER KAVANAGH is a Senior Fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
• FREDERIC WEHREY is a Senior Fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
• MORE BY JENNIFER KAVANAGHMORE BY FREDERIC WEHREY

Foreign Affairs · by Jennifer Kavanagh and Frederic Wehrey · November 24, 2023

4. The Russian Way of War

And not just miitartilty but politically as well.

Excerpts:

Given Putin’s bloody determination, NATO and the EU must accept that they will be in a state of deep cold war with the Kremlin as long as Putin is president of Russia—and perhaps afterward, too. The West needs to be war-gaming scenarios to avoid future conflicts and seeking out measures to blunt Russia’s attempts to weaken its societies and the international order. The West needs to be mindful of global tactics that Putin could unleash, such as cyberattacks on a scale never before seen, fomenting violence in the Balkans, or cutting Internet cables and energy pipelines in Europe’s seas.

These acts would keep the West consumed by Russia, draining its resources and weakening its ability to address other international threats. They would certainly make it harder for the United States to respond to challenges from its other main competitors: China and Iran. As with the Soviet Union, both states have revolutionary heritages and, like Russia today, integrated approaches to conflict. Beijing, for example, weaponizes trade to its advantage, much as Moscow has manipulated energy exports. Like Russia, China engages in cyberattacks along with intellectual property theft. Beijing is also seeking to expand its territorial waters in the South China Sea. Iran, for its part, uses religious loyalty, propaganda, and paramilitary and terrorist violence to extend its power without launching traditional wars. Tehran may soon use nuclear threats, as Russia does now.

These countries’ styles of fighting show that conflict is rarely a binary—either war or peace. It is, instead, a continuum that involves multiple aspects of state power. In reality, Russia’s military doctrine is not so much a doctrine for war as it is a doctrine for statecraft, one that it and other states will use to undermine the Western alliance and the international order. Stopping these revisionist powers is essential to protecting democracies from authoritarian countries. But it will not be easy. Like Tsunami’s soldiers on the frontline, we have many miles left to travel.

The Russian Way of War

Moscow Wants to Weaken NATO in Ukraine, Not Just Win Battles

By Bob Seely

November 24, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Bob Seely · November 24, 2023

In September, I visited the command post of Ukraine’s Tsunami regiment: a volunteer unit of several thousand soldiers fighting in the east of the country. It was the first time I had been inside a post since serving in the United Kingdom’s armed forces during its campaign against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in northern Iraq seven years earlier. From a cramped basement near the city of Kramatorsk, I watched on screens as Tsunami frontline teams crept between rubble-strewn houses, clearing a village of Russian soldiers. Lieutenant-Colonel Olexandr Gostyschev, the regiment’s commander, deliberated, via gaming software, with his frontline, mortar line, and drone line as his team prepared to strike the shell of a house hiding three Russian soldiers. The Russians were lying prostrate, as if willing themselves to meld in with the ruins around them. Eventually, Tsunami hit the house with a single mortar shell. Once the smoke drifted away, we could see the Russians were no longer moving. There were no celebrations from the Ukrainians. Instead, the men edged forward to the next Russian position.

A week later, after I had returned to the United Kingdom, the regiment texted to say that it had recaptured the village—the latest in a series of small victories. That month, Tsunami had liberated just under a mile of Ukraine, but at the cost of 15 lives and many injuries. (The soldiers are coy about exact figures.) That translates into one fatality for every 300 feet of land. The regiment has many miles yet to travel.

For the first year of Ukraine’s war against Russia, the endeavors and sacrifices of regiments like Tsunami served as inspiration for Western populations. Millions of people across Europe and the United States flew Ukrainian flags and cheered as desperate Ukrainian defenders halted Russia’s brutal advance. Weapons flowed to Kyiv, and Western militaries trained thousands of Ukrainian soldiers. The European Union gave the country billions of dollars in economic support.

But recently, Ukraine’s momentum has slowed. “Our briefings are sobering,” said Mike Quigley, the co-chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Ukraine Caucus, in an August interview with CNN. Another Western official told the outlet that it was “highly unlikely” Kyiv could “change the balance of this conflict.” Some politicians have even called for their countries to stop helping Ukraine. Washington cannot agree on a new funding package to aid Kyiv.

Over the last six months, many prominent Western analysts have said Russia and Ukraine should begin negotiations. According to these proponents, a settlement with Russia is inevitable. There is little indication that the Kremlin will consider withdrawing, and it is willing to expend an extraordinary number of lives to hold the land it occupies. Its armies have laid too many square miles of land mines for Kyiv to retake all it has lost. And a negotiated settlement would still be—relative to the West’s initial expectations—a Ukrainian triumph. As the political scientist Samuel Charap wrote in these pages in July, a divided Ukraine that is “prosperous and democratic with a strong Western commitment to its security would represent a genuine strategic victory.”

Yet to assume a cease-fire would hold, or that Russia would ever stop trying to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, misunderstands Moscow’s objectives and, with it, Russia’s way of war. Although U.S. and European analysts may think about warfare in terms of relative wins and losses on the battlefield, for Moscow, conflict is a much more flexible term. It is a spectrum of activity that includes many tools of state power—including religion, disinformation campaigns, energy supplies, assassinations, and grain exports—along with standard tools like artillery barrages.

For Russia, the goal of conflicts is not always to defeat an enemy army. It may also be to give Russia more power over its neighbors, or to weaken states or alliances it opposes, such as NATO. In the case of this conflict, Putin is trying not only to stifle Ukraine’s independence but also, he claims, to weaken NATO in a generational struggle to save Russia. This conflict that has been ongoing for nearly 20 years, and Russia’s targets include Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield, Ukrainian civilians, and Western populations and leaders.

Russia’s approach to conflict, born of its revolutionary Soviet inheritance, extends beyond Moscow. It is a template for how other potential Western adversaries might confront the United States, Europe, and their partners in other regions. China and Iran, for instance, have similarly comprehensive approaches to conflict—ones they are already using in their neighborhoods. Grasping Russia’s way of war is therefore crucial not only to supporting Ukraine, but also for protecting the entire rules-based international order.

WAR AND STRUGGLE

Russia has long been home to creative thinking in both conventional and nonconventional warfare. In the conventional arena, during the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet military thinkers generated novel ideas such as the concept of deep battle—breaking through enemy lines and creating a continuous moving front. These ideas shaped, and continue to shape, NATO thinking.

In the unconventional space, Soviet influence was even more profound. From its founding days, Soviet leaders developed a body of ideas and practices about subversive conflict, including forging documents, co-opting agents abroad, and establishing disinformation campaigns. An early example was the groundbreaking Operation Trest. Carried out in the 1920s, Trest operatives established fictitious underground political cells in Europe in the 1920s to infiltrate anti-Bolshevik groups and lure their members back to the Soviet Union, where they were executed. It combined front organizations, disinformation operations, espionage, and physical assassination. It established a pattern the Soviet Union would deploy throughout the twentieth century.

The Soviet Union was, therefore, responsible for significant developments in two ways of war: traditional warfare and subversive warfare. In Soviet terminology, conventional war (“traditional war” in U.S. military terminology) has been generally referred to as voina—war—and unconventional forms of conflict as bor’ba—struggle. War was the province of the Red Army, whereas struggle was that of the KGB secret service and the Communist Party. Voina depended on the usual tools of combat, such as tanks, aircraft, and soldiers in uniform. Bor’ba, by contrast, entailed tools such as espionage, blackmail, and paramilitary and terror violence. Although these two ways of war were theoretically integrated, they were not in practice.

For Moscow, conflict is a flexible term.

After the Soviet Union’s collapse at the end of the 1980s, Moscow briefly put aside these ideas as its budget shrank and it retreated from much of the world. But beginning in the late 1990s, the Russian state again began to plan for the threats and potential conflicts it faced. The security establishment, motivated in part by victimhood and lingering Soviet paranoia, concluded that the primary threats came from being outclassed in both direct conventional warfare and indirect psychological conflict by the United States and its allies. The Kremlin knew it could not match NATO in exerting hard power, even in its own backyard. So, it dusted off its old tactics. The result was the development of a Russian military doctrine that has integrated Russia’s two ways of war into a single way of war, closely aligned to its political goals. This doctrine, broadly speaking, uses all the tools of the state to maximize Russia’s power.

And there are many such tools. In my own research, I have found just over 100 outside the narrow confines of conventional military operations. They include, for example, using the Russian Orthodoxy to ensure the population remains loyal, taking hostages, blackmailing, publishing war poetry and weaponizing supplies of energy. Not every tool is used in every conflict. The tools that worked in Syria will not be identical to disinformation campaigns in Europe or the United States. When each one is deployed depends on the context of the conflict.

But nowhere have more of these tools been used than in Ukraine. Moscow has, in fact, been using them against Kyiv for nearly two decades. Although many analysts believe that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict began with Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion or with the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the starting date of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is the 2004 Orange Revolution, when Ukrainian activists prevented the corrupt, pro-Russian candidate Victor Yanukovych from becoming president after his fraudulent election. The Kremlin responded by using political, economic, and informational tactics to undermine Yanukovych’s opponents. Moscow, for example, gave money and gas deals to sympathetic Ukrainian oligarchs, enabling them to buy parts of Ukraine’s eastern industries and fund pro-Russian politicians. The Kremlin engaged in espionage and corruption to hollow out Ukraine’s spy agencies and ministry of defense. (The heads of both organizations, at various times, were Russian passport holders.) It spread online disinformation. And Russian television broadcast shows into Ukraine with the message, as one Ukrainian put it to me, that Moscow “has the right to interfere in the affairs of neighboring countries.”

Russia’s tactics seemed to pay off: in 2010, six years after the revolution, Yanukovych won the presidency. He then set about switching Kyiv’s alliances. In late 2013, Yanukovych abandoned a long-planned treaty with the European Union. In its place, he announced a pact with Russia. Had Ukraine signed it, the pact would have been a truly extraordinary Kremlin coup, proof of the power of indirect conflict. But before the agreement was formalized, thousands of civil society activists flooded the center of Kyiv to begin three months of protests. Dozens of people were killed by Ukrainian police officers, but the violence could not stop the movement. Eventually, Yanukovych was forced from office.

The Kremlin knew it could not match NATO in exerting hard power.

Undeterred, Putin began to move closer to voina—traditional war—by sending unmarked Russian troops into eastern Ukraine and Crimea. But this operation was still irregular, relying heavily on paramilitary groups and intelligence operatives. It had echoes of 1990s conflicts that Russian operatives had curated in Moldova and Georgia, if on a larger and more professional scale. In fact, the operational plan for Ukraine broadly followed a template written in 2013 by Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, which, in turn, closely resembled earlier KGB templates on staging coups.

The curated uprising succeeded completely in Crimea and partially in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Russian operatives, organized crime groups, and local thugs established two “people’s republics” that were ostensibly independent but actually controlled by Moscow. Yet elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, including in cities such as Kharkiv and Dnipro, the coups failed. In the southern port city of Odessa, Russia’s efforts literally went up in flames: the 40-person core of Moscow’s cell was burned alive in a trade union building.

But despite its failure to engineer the political collapse of Ukraine, even this modest success enabled Russia to create a managed conflict—blocking any potential Ukrainian moves toward EU or NATO membership. Moscow then tried to parlay this partial gain into a wider political victory. So as the Kremlin pocketed Crimea, it dangled Donetsk and Luhansk as leverage in negotiations. The provinces could rejoin Ukraine, Moscow said, but only under conditions that would force Kyiv to effectively accept pro-Russian paramilitary forces and political parties on its soil. The resulting arrangement would have locked Ukraine into an ever-tighter relationship with Russia, slowly strangling the country’s genuine independence.

Kyiv saw through this gambit, and the peace talks flopped. By 2020, it was clear that Putin’s strategy was failing. Russia and Ukraine were still negotiating over the east, but Kyiv was simultaneously deepening its Western relationships. Russia remained in de facto control of the seized territory, but it had destroyed its “soft” power and degraded its international influence in the process. In his drive to subjugate Ukraine, Putin had created exactly the united Ukrainian identity he wanted to squelch. As one Kyiv resident told me, “We have such an expression: thanks to Putin, Yanukovych, for creating the Ukrainian nation.”

CONTINUED OBSESSION

Despite the defeats, Putin remained obsessed with controlling Ukraine. And so, having exhausted his nonmilitary and paramilitary options, he ordered a major invasion of the country in February 2022. The third stage of the conflict began: outright voina.

Putin’s primary goal—swiftly suppressing Kyiv’s government—was akin to Soviet actions in Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, where Moscow sent in troops and tanks to suppress opposition and reassert its rule. But unlike in those two states, Russia’s military performed poorly. Indeed, Putin’s shambolic but brutal invasion was the very opposite of the integrated plans Russian doctrine endorses. Yet over the course of this year, Russia’s strategy has evolved. Although still centered on large-scale conventional war, Putin has established three interlocking objectives. To attain them, he is once again using a mix of traditional and nontraditional warfare.

On the conventional warfare front, Moscow is focused on holding its defensive lines. It is doing so by extracting such a high price from Ukraine’s attacking forces that regiments like Tsunami are bled dry. This strategy may work because Kyiv, unlike Moscow, is sensitive to losses. Putin would willingly shed half a million Russian lives for half the number of Ukrainians.

Russia has combined this conventional military strategy with irregular techniques. One is to use drones and missiles to destroy Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure—in particular, its water and electricity—in order to make wartime life unbearable for the country’s people. So far, Ukrainians have refused to yield. Putin’s attacks have, however, ravaged Ukraine’s economy, which has shrunk by 25 percent since the war began.

Putin would willingly shed half a million Russian lives for half the number of Ukrainians.

And then, Putin has engaged in renewed bor’ba. He has, for example, tried to blockade Ukraine’s Black Sea grain exports to press the developing world to demand an end to the conflict. The blockade is also designed to fan inflation in Europe, in hopes of prompting the continent’s people to push Ukraine to concede. He is, separately, magnifying Western voices that want a quick settlement. His disinformation campaigns are designed to show that Ukraine cannot win— and that it should sue for peace. Together, these strategies are designed to fray and weaken the financial and military umbilical cord that stretches between Ukraine and the West.

So, what should the Western alliance be doing? Its first task is to clearly understand Russia’s strategy and see that Moscow’s aims extend beyond the ground war and toward damaging U.S. and European support for Ukraine. Indeed, reducing this support may be Russia’s primary goal. Western support to Kyiv is what soldiers would call the conflict’s center of gravity: the one thing, that if successfully attacked by Russia, would cause all others to fail.

Once Western officials recognize this fact, they must recommit to supporting Kyiv. Putin’s latest budget puts the Russian economy on a war footing. He is engaged in a conflict of attrition against Ukraine’s soldiers, against Ukraine’s population, and against Ukraine’s supporters. To stop him from winning, U.S. and European production lines need to consistently provide arms to Ukraine, and U.S. and European militaries need to offer systematic, large-scale training to modernize Ukraine’s army. France, the United Kingdom, and the United States must also persuade the developing world that Ukraine’s struggle is just and that the oppressive power is Russia. That way, they do not lose the battle for the global South.

Russia’s military doctrine is not so much a doctrine for war as it is a doctrine for statecraft.

As they take these steps, Western officials must recognize that supporting Ukraine’s fight for independence is overwhelmingly in their interests. Any outcome that leaves Putin with a substantial part of Ukraine will enable him to claim he fought NATO to a standstill at the gates of Russia. He will declare victory and rearm for new waves of direct or indirect conflict.

Given Putin’s bloody determination, NATO and the EU must accept that they will be in a state of deep cold war with the Kremlin as long as Putin is president of Russia—and perhaps afterward, too. The West needs to be war-gaming scenarios to avoid future conflicts and seeking out measures to blunt Russia’s attempts to weaken its societies and the international order. The West needs to be mindful of global tactics that Putin could unleash, such as cyberattacks on a scale never before seen, fomenting violence in the Balkans, or cutting Internet cables and energy pipelines in Europe’s seas.

These acts would keep the West consumed by Russia, draining its resources and weakening its ability to address other international threats. They would certainly make it harder for the United States to respond to challenges from its other main competitors: China and Iran. As with the Soviet Union, both states have revolutionary heritages and, like Russia today, integrated approaches to conflict. Beijing, for example, weaponizes trade to its advantage, much as Moscow has manipulated energy exports. Like Russia, China engages in cyberattacks along with intellectual property theft. Beijing is also seeking to expand its territorial waters in the South China Sea. Iran, for its part, uses religious loyalty, propaganda, and paramilitary and terrorist violence to extend its power without launching traditional wars. Tehran may soon use nuclear threats, as Russia does now.

These countries’ styles of fighting show that conflict is rarely a binary—either war or peace. It is, instead, a continuum that involves multiple aspects of state power. In reality, Russia’s military doctrine is not so much a doctrine for war as it is a doctrine for statecraft, one that it and other states will use to undermine the Western alliance and the international order. Stopping these revisionist powers is essential to protecting democracies from authoritarian countries. But it will not be easy. Like Tsunami’s soldiers on the frontline, we have many miles left to travel.

• BOB SEELY is a member of Parliament in the United Kingdom and a former officer in the U.K. Armed Forces. He lived in Ukraine from 1990 to 1994. His book, 101 Tools of Modern Russian Warfare: A Blueprint for 21st Century Conflict, will be published next year.
• MORE BY BOB SEELY

Foreign Affairs · by Bob Seely · November 24, 2023

5. Japan’s Intervention in a Taiwan Contingency: It Depends

The four most important words in national security: "It's complicated" and "It depends."

Excerpts:

In essence, this is a primary goal of Japan’s decision to augment its defense capabilities: to deter not only an invasion against the home islands, but also “unilateral changes to the status quo by forces and attempts in the Indo-Pacific region.” This statement in Japan’s NDS document, released in December 2022, is the logical outworking of deterrence by denial. Writ large, this is not only a Japanese undertaking. Other U.S. allies are seeking to change China’s cost-benefit calculus using deterrence by denial.

Australia, for example, is considering long-range strike options, in the event that an adversary establishes a presence in its near region from where it can target Australia or isolate it from its partners and allies. In one case, China could “horizontally escalate’ a conflict with the U.S. to stretch its military resources. In this sense, Marcus Hellyer and Andrew Nicholls argue, that a long-range strike capability is not primarily about a Taiwan or South China Sea contingency.

Given that the Biden administration’s improvements to its regional posture have been modest when compared to its Indo-Pacific rhetoric, U.S. allies such as Australia and Japan are concerned that the U.S. may be unwilling or unable to invest in more forward-deployed military position and deterrence by denial. This is precisely the approach being pursued by Japan and Australia.

In the end, the question over Japan’s involvement in a Taiwan contingency might be less about whether Tokyo intervenes in extremis, but whether, like Australia, it would be able to achieve success in its strategy of deterrence by denial.

Japan’s Intervention in a Taiwan Contingency: It Depends

thediplomat.com

How a conflict starts, and how the United States responds, would weigh heavily into Tokyo’s considerations.

By William Choong

November 24, 2023

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, second right, back, Vice President William Lai, right, and Speaker of the Legislature Yu Shyi-kun, third right, wave to Japanese lawmakers during National Day celebrations in front of the Presidential Building in Taipei, Taiwan, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023.

Credit: AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying

In recent years, Japan has faced increased threats from various directions: from Russia to the north, and from North Korea and China to the west. No wonder, as John Mearsheimer once put it, Japan’s defense posture needs to be more like Godzilla and less like Bambi.

This quandary is not new. In fact, for decades, Japan has been on a trajectory of adopting a more muscular defense posture. What is new, however, is Japan’s focus on Taiwan, and the possibility that Tokyo could intervene in a future conflict in the Strait.

The shift toward Taiwan was given fresh impetus in 2021, when Abe Shinzo argued forcefully that a Taiwan emergency would constitute a Japanese emergency, and therefore a contingency for the Japan-U.S. alliance. Last month, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio appointed two new ministers who are more hawkish and inclined towards Taiwan.

But the biggest change in Japan’s defense posture, with significant consequences for Taiwan, is its Defense Buildup Program for FY2023-2027, which will see defense spending increase to 43 trillion yen (nearly $286 billion), a 56 percent increase over the corresponding FY2019-2023 period. Apart from the 9 trillion yen that will be set aside for the repair of defense equipment, the procurement of stand-off defense capabilities is the biggest item in the program, with 5 trillion yen allocated for this purpose. These weapons can be fired at long distances of 1,000-1,500 kilometers, with the mobility and survivability that would enable Japanese forces to reduce the risk of counterattack. They would be instrumental in any Taiwan crisis.

Possible Scenarios

On the surface, Japan certainly looks primed to intervene in a Taiwan crisis, say, if China were to launch an amphibious invasion of the island. If Taiwan put up a fight, this would likely engender U.S. intervention, an intervention that would not be possible without Japan’s assistance. This would involve providing U.S. forces with access to bases in Japan, supporting U.S. forces in rear-end support operations, and even conducting offensive operations further away from Japanese shores.

This in itself is the real-life application of Japan’s overhaul of its security legislation in 2014-15, when the Cabinet decided that Japan’s defense included collective self-defense, that is, going to an ally’s defense when it is attacked.

That said, however, Japan’s response in a Taiwan contingency really depends on the particular scenario, and particularly on whether the U.S. intervenes and what form that intervention takes.

Consider two extreme sets of scenarios. In the first, Taiwan declares independence, prompting a Chinese invasion. Since it was Taiwan that had carried out such a declaration, U.S. intervention – and by extension, Japanese involvement – would be unlikely. The U.S. and Japan have always sought to preserve the status quo across the Strait; a declaration of independence by Taiwan would disturb this delicate balance.

In the second instance, China launches an unprovoked invasion of Taiwan. In this scenario, the U.S. and Japan would be much more likely to intervene. But intervention by the U.S. would have to depend on whether Japan allows American access to U.S. bases in Japan. If Japan did so, it would raise the possibility of China launching attacks on such bases in Japan.

Between these two extremes, Japanese intervention is less likely.

Take, for example, a scenario in which China decides to capture Taiwan’s outlying islands. According to a Japanese scholar I spoke to, this would be akin to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, where the antagonist grabs a smaller slice of territory before taking a bigger chunk. “This kind of salami slicing would align Taiwan even closer to the United States,” the scholar said. “In this instance, the likelihood of the Chinese operating in Japanese waters and its EEZ is low. Hence, Japanese involvement would be limited.”

A similar outcome might apply in the event of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan. If the U.S. decided to run the blockade, this might engender Japanese forces targeting Chinese assets along the country’s coastline. Again, however, Japanese involvement would be unlikely, given that Tokyo might deem this to be escalatory in the eyes of the Chinese.

The nightmare scenario, as indicated in the widely-reported wargame at the Center of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) are instances in which Japan takes a more restrained position. Here, Tokyo prevents the U.S. from any military activity on Japanese soil or limits the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to defensive operations. This, CSIS noted, would have a “decisive or fundamental” change in the nature of the battle in favor of the Chinese.

There is no precedent to the U.S. asking Japan for direct or indirect support in contingencies, argues Jeffrey Hornung, a political scientist at RAND. As Hornung observes, none of the critical decisions about Japanese assistance to U.S. operations are “legally automatic.” These decisions are “political, resting with the prime minister at any given moment.”

The Japanese scholar I spoke to talked about another scenario in which Japan and China come to a grand bargain. Under such a deal, China agrees not to attack Japan if the latter fulfills three conditions: it does not attack China; does not support U.S. operations; and does not deploy long-range strike capabilities. The implicit Chinese threat here, the scholar said, would be that Beijing would regard Japan and the U.S. as the same entity if the former provides assistance to Washington.

The third condition is not possible, given that Japan has already embarked on an ambitious program of deploying stand-off missile capabilities and would be very unlikely to decide to stop its deployment. The first and second conditions are plausible, but if Japan decides to decline support to Washington, this would mark the death knell of the alliance.

Political and Operational Considerations

Any Japanese involvement in a Taiwanese contingency would also have to take the country’s domestic politics into account. Some analysts note that Japanese involvement should not be taken for granted and is not popularly supported in Japan beyond the conservative end of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

As Jeffrey Kingston at the Temple University in Tokyo notes, there is much admiration in Japan for Taiwan. But there is a “big gap between that sort of warm and fuzzy ‘we like you, admire you’ and all that, and sending troops into harm’s way.” Other analysts note that in one wargame, it took two weeks for the prime minister to declare that there had been an “armed attack on Japan.” This was done out of a desire to avoid a conflict with China. This would tie American hands in its prosecution of any military options.

More importantly, there is no joint operational command between U.S. and Japanese forces. While U.S. Forces Japan is empowered to manage the alliance and keep troops ready, it has no operational role, given that U.S. warfighting commanders are based in Hawai’i. This is quite unlike the South Korea-U.S. alliance, under which both nations are primed to fight on the Korean Peninsula at any time, under the slogan “Fight Tonight.”

Deterrence By Denial

The bigger question is whether Japan would carry out deterrence by denial, which in essence means fostering an environment where any attempts by China to change the status quo by force are unlikely to succeed.

In fact, this is the premise of stand-off weapons, which, as mentioned above, form a big chunk of Japan’s defense spending in the next five years. Given that they can operate from land, sea, or air platforms, the Type 12 SSM (surface-to-ship) missile will have higher wartime survivability. Currently, Type 12 SSMs have a range of 200 kilometers, but upgrades could see their ranges improving to 900 kilometers and eventually to 1,500 kilometers.

The 1,500-kilometer range, notes Japanese scholar Ken Jimbo, is incidentally the range from Kyushu in the south of Japan to the Taiwan Strait. In essence, these weapons could alter the cost-benefit calculus of Chinese strategists.

“I think Chinese landing craft are the prime target of the ‘standoff capability’ that features in the new NSS and NDS,” said Prof Jimbo, referring to recently released Japanese National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy documents.

The logic is pretty straightforward: if China contemplates a full-scale invasion of Taiwan, it would have to accept the possibility of counter-attacks by Japanese forces. With a thousand or so missiles deployed in Kyushu and Okinawa, Japan would be in a good position to launch attacks on China’s landing aircraft headed towards the Taiwanese coast.

In essence, this is a primary goal of Japan’s decision to augment its defense capabilities: to deter not only an invasion against the home islands, but also “unilateral changes to the status quo by forces and attempts in the Indo-Pacific region.” This statement in Japan’s NDS document, released in December 2022, is the logical outworking of deterrence by denial. Writ large, this is not only a Japanese undertaking. Other U.S. allies are seeking to change China’s cost-benefit calculus using deterrence by denial.

Australia, for example, is considering long-range strike options, in the event that an adversary establishes a presence in its near region from where it can target Australia or isolate it from its partners and allies. In one case, China could “horizontally escalate’ a conflict with the U.S. to stretch its military resources. In this sense, Marcus Hellyer and Andrew Nicholls argue, that a long-range strike capability is not primarily about a Taiwan or South China Sea contingency.

Given that the Biden administration’s improvements to its regional posture have been modest when compared to its Indo-Pacific rhetoric, U.S. allies such as Australia and Japan are concerned that the U.S. may be unwilling or unable to invest in more forward-deployed military position and deterrence by denial. This is precisely the approach being pursued by Japan and Australia.

In the end, the question over Japan’s involvement in a Taiwan contingency might be less about whether Tokyo intervenes in extremis, but whether, like Australia, it would be able to achieve success in its strategy of deterrence by denial.

Authors

Guest Author

William Choong

William Choong is a senior fellow at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, and managing editor of Fulcrum, the institute’s commentary and analysis website focused on Southeast Asia and its wider environment.

thediplomat.com

6. Our warnings on Hamas were ignored, Israel’s women border troops say

Excerpts:

In an interview with CNN earlier this month, Netanyahu refused to answer when asked whether he took responsibility for failing to prevent the attack, saying there would be a time for such “difficult” questions once the war was over. “We’re going to answer all these questions,” he said. “Right now, I think what we have to do is unite the country for one purpose: to achieve victory.”

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said there was plenty of blame to go around — he described the attack as a collective failing — but put the courtship of Hamas squarely on Netanyahu.

“In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas,” he told POLITICO. “Gaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza.”

“But we all thought we could flirt with Hamas, [that] they would behave according to our expectations of them. And it all blew up in our faces.”

Our warnings on Hamas were ignored, Israel’s women border troops say

Testimony from members of mainly female look-out units adds fuel to accusations that Netanyahu badly misread the dangers from Gaza.

Politico · by Jamie Dettmer · November 21, 2023

TEL AVIV — Did Israel’s security chiefs brush off warnings from women border surveillance soldiers who had evidence that something was brewing in Gaza ahead of the murderous attacks by Hamas militants on October 7?

That’s the explosive accusation coming from several soldiers in Israel’s predominantly female border surveillance forces — known as the tatzpitaniyot, or look-outs in Hebrew. The soldiers are telling the media that their superiors did not heed warnings of unusual activity inside Gaza, such as Palestinian guerrillas training with explosives or rehearsing attacks on a replica tank and a mock observation post.

Their statements to the media are piling pressure on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing a firestorm over last month’s catastrophic intelligence blunder. The country’s fabled spy services ultimately failed to detect an impending Hamas onslaught, in which an estimated 3,000 Palestinian fighters killed some 1,200 Israelis and abducted about 240.

In addition to the implications of sexism, the charges feed a sense that Netanayahu and his security services were complacent, believing they had nothing to fear from Hamas in Gaza. Netanyahu’s opponents even argue he was actively boosting Hamas in Gaza, with support from Qatar, in a risky game of “divide-and-rule” that played the Islamists off against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The women’s warnings, made over several months, did not correspond to the received wisdom that Hamas had been tamed. In what may transpire to be another major mistake in a series of cascading errors, the women say mainly male top commanders dismissed their concerns, insisted Hamas had no plans to go to war, and ordered them to stop being so alarmist.

Known as the “eyes of the army,” the tatzpitaniyot use security cameras and sensors to monitor a 15 to 30 kilometer stretch of land they’re each responsible for. The surveillance includes any small changes in activity, including farmers altering their routines. The work requires great patience, concentration and hours spent monitoring screens.

Frontline testimony

The tatzpitaniyot, especially those at a base in Nahal Oz, one of several kibbutzim overrun on October 7, reported unusual signs along the Gaza border. The activity was not just minor, and included Hamas sending up drones several times a day in the weeks leading up to the attack.

One of the soldiers, identified only only by her first name Ilana, told the Haaretz newspaper they observed Hamas fighters training for assaults. “A month and a half before the war, we saw that in one of the Hamas training camps they had built an exact, scaled model of an observer’s position, like the one we operate. They started training there with drones to hit the [machine gun] shooter,” Ilana said.

“In the last two months, they started sending up drones every day, sometimes several times a day, right near the border, some 300 meters from the fence, and sometimes less than that,” she added.

Other tatzpitaniyot reported that Hamas gunmen were rehearsing attacks on armored vehicles using a replica of a Merkava Mark 4 tank, or that Hamas fighters were digging holes and placing explosives along the border. Israel’s Kan public broadcaster and the country’s Channel 12 television have aired interview with border lookouts complaining they were ignored and told to stop raising alarms.

The interviews are adding to claims last month by two women surveillance soldiers, Yael Rotenberg and Maya Desiatnik, who told Kan that in the months before the attack, they had flagged a lot of border behavior that worried them. Both were based at Nahal Oz, where 20 tatzpitaniyot were killed on October 7. Desiatnik was one of only two surveillance soldiers at the base on the day who was not killed or abducted.

At Nahal Oz 20 tatzpitaniyot were killed on October 7 | Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images

“It’s infuriating. We saw what was happening, we told them about it, and we were the ones who were murdered,” she said.

One of the reasons the tatzpitaniyot were dismissed was that they “did not fit into the narrative that Hamas had evolved from being a revolutionary movement and had moderated and become more institutionalized and pragmatic,” said Michael Milshtein, head of the Department for Palestinians Affairs in Israel’s Defense Intelligence agency.

Milshtein faulted Netanyahu not only for misjudging Hamas, but also for allowing Qatar to channel hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to Gaza, much of it likely spent on the faction’s military wing. (Netanyahu himself told a Likud party conference in 2019 that “anyone who wants to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas.”)

“But it wasn’t only Bibi,” Milshtein added. “Senior politicians from across the political spectrum, including Naftali Bennett, Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid, bought into the idea, and it was also promoted by the Israel Defense Forces. Shabak [Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service] was skeptical at first but then toes the line,” he told POLITICO.

“The narrative become entrenched in the upper echelons of Israeli politics and was subscribed to by top military and intelligence chiefs. Governing was meant to moderate Hamas and the warnings didn’t fit in. But it was all wishful thinking.”

The Israel Defense Forces had no immediate comment on the testimony of the tatzpitaniyot when contacted by POLITICO.

Who will take the blame?

Israel’s military and intelligence chiefs have accepted overall responsibility for failing to prevent the October 7 attack. “The Military Intelligence Directorate, under my command, failed to warn of the terror attack carried out by Hamas,” said General Aharon Haliva, head of military intelligence, in an open letter. “We failed in our most important mission.”

A string of other defense officials, including the head of Shin Bet, the IDF chief of staff, and the air force chief, have also stepped up and admitted responsibility, as has Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. They have declined to respond to specific allegations, however, saying that while the time will come for investigations, the focus should now be on winning the war.

In an interview with CNN earlier this month, Netanyahu refused to answer when asked whether he took responsibility for failing to prevent the attack, saying there would be a time for such “difficult” questions once the war was over | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

That position has been widely accepted by opposition parties and lawmakers, who also say the war and freeing the hostages held by Hamas should take precedence.

Netanyahu has also taken that line, but unlike his defense and intelligence chiefs, the prime minister has failed to accept any blame for the failings that contributed to the Hamas attack. Instead, he has insisted that his responsibility is only to see Israel through the war.

In an interview with CNN earlier this month, Netanyahu refused to answer when asked whether he took responsibility for failing to prevent the attack, saying there would be a time for such “difficult” questions once the war was over. “We’re going to answer all these questions,” he said. “Right now, I think what we have to do is unite the country for one purpose: to achieve victory.”

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said there was plenty of blame to go around — he described the attack as a collective failing — but put the courtship of Hamas squarely on Netanyahu.

“In the last 15 years, Israel did everything to downgrade the Palestinian Authority and to boost Hamas,” he told POLITICO. “Gaza was on the brink of collapse because they had no resources, they had no money, and the PA refused to give Hamas any money. Bibi saved them. Bibi made a deal with Qatar and they started to move millions and millions of dollars to Gaza.”

“But we all thought we could flirt with Hamas, [that] they would behave according to our expectations of them. And it all blew up in our faces.”

Politico · by Jamie Dettmer · November 21, 2023

7. Bad history makes for bad policy on UkraineBad history makes for bad policy on Ukraine (Quincy Institute)

I will defer to my Russian expert friends to assess this from the Quincy Institute.

Excerpts:

With a looming crisis in efforts to keep Kyiv supplied with munitions, it is useful to look closer at American arms production in WWII, when the “arsenal of democracy” was in certain respects more like Putin’s economy than Biden’s. But today Washington faces a complex set of institutional obstacles: “least-cost production models,” contractor aversion to stockpiling, export restrictions, and environmental regulations the likes of which do not trouble Putin.

A final lesson from WWII’s “armaments race” is a caution against technological hubris such as that seen in today’s gushing about the superiority of Western Leopard or Abrams tanks over the Russian T-72 and T-80. Germany’s Tiger tank was clearly superior to the Soviet T-34 in WWII, but the latter was cheap, reliable, and easy to produce in numbers; at Kursk, Soviet tanks outnumbered German ones by 2:1.

So as NATO planners and media pundits take up the “cannon fodder” refrain again with reference to the heavy losses Russians are taking as they advance in the battle for Avdiivka, these planners and pundits would do well to consider a quip famously attributed to Soviet wartime leader Josef Stalin: “Quantity has a quality all its own.”

Bad history makes for bad policy on Ukraine

responsiblestatecraft.org · by Robert English · November 24, 2023

To contend with Russia the West needs a deeper understanding of its military past, and world view.

1. regions europe
2. ukraine war

Nov 24, 2023

With the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive despite billions in armaments and months of training, the post mortems have begun.

They follow: The West was too slow in providing missiles and aircraft; Russia had too much time to prepare trenches and minefields; Ukraine needed more time to learn combined-arms tactics and employ Western armor effectively. Yet underlying all these excuses was a broader analytical failing that has yet to be acknowledged: flawed and often facile historical analogies led defense planners to underestimate Russia’s resilience.

Even today, with the horrific costs of overconfidence plain to all and Ukraine at a crucial crossroads, the same flawed analysis of the Russian adversary persists.

Time and again, policymakers and pundits based their expectations of the war based on flawed historical parallels. One example is Russia’s acceptance of mass casualties and use of “human wave” attacks where they lose three or more soldiers for every Ukrainian casualty.

Time and again — right up to the present — commanders and commentators cite this as a sign of severe Russian weakness. Whether discussed in the jargon of an “asymetrical attrition gradient,” or simply referring to Russian soldiers as “cannon fodder,” analysts frequently note that such profligacy with human lives is a legacy of ponderous Soviet and Tsarist armies.

But what they fail to note is that this tactic often brought victory. Tsarist armies took massive casualties in battles with Swedish, Persian and Turkish forces as they built the Russian empire. In defeating Napoleon, the Russians suffered as many casualties as the French despite the advantage of fighting on their home ground and their familiarity with the Russian winter.

Soviet Marshal Zhukov absorbed 860,000 casualties to the Germans’ 200,000 at the Battle of Kursk in World War II. He also lost 1,500 tanks to the Germans’ 500, yet Kursk is remembered as a great triumph that crushed Hitler’s final hopes of victory. Can one imagine Germany celebrating its superior casualty ratio while being defeated by Stalin’s hordes?

However shocking this tactic may be, it is a resource that Moscow has and Kyiv does not. Consider the battle for Bakhmut and the daily bulletins trumpeting Ukraine’s success in killing thousands of Russians, right up to the moment that Bakhmut fell to Wagner Group mercenaries — weirdly reminiscent of the Pentagon’s body-count bulletins in the Vietnam war.

At Bakhmut Ukraine lost the indispensable cream of its army to hordes of dispensable Russian convicts-turned-storm troopers in doomed defense of a strategically insignificant town that President Zelenskyy vowed would not fall. The average age of Ukrainian soldiers is now 43.

Losing Bakhmut hurt Ukrainian morale, but it is Russian morale that pundits say is shot. And they remind us that military disasters sparked Russian uprisings in the past — in 1905 after defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, or the debacle of WWI that led to the collapse of the Romanov dynasty in 1917.

Given their hardships and suffering, why wouldn’t Russians do it again and overthrow Putin? Pundits often ignore that, after a decade of economic chaos and global humiliation in the 1990s, Putin is respected for restoring stability and national pride. Tsar Nicholas II, by contrast, was rather more like Boris Yeltsin — weak and out of touch, reliant on hated advisers, presiding over chaos.

It’s also likely that, unlike a distant debacle with Japan or European carnage triggered by an Austro-Serbian dispute, many Russians believe in this war because they see Crimea and Donbas as historically and culturally Russian.

Whether it stems more from deep-seated imperial attitudes or a decade of anti-Western propaganda, Russians still back Putin and even take pride in standing up to the best NATO can throw at them. An effort to appreciate the views of Putin and his people is not being “pro Russian” even if we find those views wrong or repugnant.

On the contrary, such an approach is key to “thinking in time” with accurate historical analogies, and vital to avoiding the conceit of assuming that Russian soldiers or citizens will behave as we would.

On the eve of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, U.S. Joint Chiefs chairman General Mark Milley declared that Russians “lack leadership, they lack will, their morale is poor, and their discipline is eroding.” Of course, if your main historical lesson is that Russian armies crack under strain, then you look closely for signs of dissent and soon find a looming collapse.

This is how superficial history joins with confirmation bias to produce flawed analysis. Stymied by fierce Russian fighting, Ukrainians troops themselves told Milley he was wrong: “We expected less resistance. They are holding. They have leadership. It is not often you say that about the enemy.”

As Kyiv’s crisis deepens and recriminations spill out in public, commanders at all levels of the Ukrainian Armed Forces agree that they and their NATO advisers badly misjudged Russian tenacity: “This big counteroffensive was based on a simple calculation: when a Moskal [slur for ethnic Russian] sees a Bradley or a Leopard, he will just run away.”

But what about taking the fight to Russia? Former CIA Director General David Petraeus predicted that Russian resolve could “crumble” in response to Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow. Such strikes “bring the war to the Russian people” and might convince Putin’s regime that, like the USSR’s Cold War quagmire in Afghanistan, Russia’s current war in Ukraine is “ultimately unsustainable.”

In fact the old Soviet elite did not see the Afghan war as unsustainable, nor were they much concerned about public opinion. It took both a generational transition and a bold new leader who prioritized improving ties with the West — Mikhail Gorbachev — to finally manage an exit.

The point is not that war isn’t costly. The Afghan war was, and the Ukraine war is even more so. The point is that accepting defeat in a major war that was justified as a vital national interest is unlikely until there is both a new leader and turnover in the ruling elite.

As for “bringing war to the Russian people” by bombing Moscow, when did that ever work? NATO brought the Kosovo War to the Serbian people in 1999 by bombing Belgrade, and it only rallied them to the side of dictator Slobodan Milošević; 25 years later, Serbs remain strongly pro-Russian and anti-NATO. And when Chechen rebels bombed Moscow and other Russian cities in the early 2000s, it only rallied Russians around Putin and helped justify his increasingly authoritarian rule.

These aren’t mere historical quibbles, but illustrations of flawed analogies that framed both strategic expectations and tactical decisions. And they have cost dearly, in both Ukrainian lives and now Western support. Confidence in Washington-Brussels elites falls even as officials still claim that Ukraine is winning and Putin “cannot outlast” the West.

In fact, as NATO empties its warehouses of equipment and misses deadlines for producing new munitions, it’s hard to conclude otherwise unless one is trapped in another oversimplified WWII analogy: that America as the “arsenal of democracy.”

Many have contrasted America’s innovative private arms producers with Russia’s technology-starved state factories, predicting that Moscow would soon exhaust its munitions. Instead, Russia has consistently belied the “all brawn and no brains” narrative, not only outproducing the West in tanks, artillery and shells but defying sanctions to develop new precision-guided bombs, drones and missiles. Perhaps those discounting Russian ingenuity forgot the Katyusha multiple-rocket launcher, a legendary artillery weapon that both the Germans and Americans copied in WWII.

With a looming crisis in efforts to keep Kyiv supplied with munitions, it is useful to look closer at American arms production in WWII, when the “arsenal of democracy” was in certain respects more like Putin’s economy than Biden’s. But today Washington faces a complex set of institutional obstacles: “least-cost production models,” contractor aversion to stockpiling, export restrictions, and environmental regulations the likes of which do not trouble Putin.

A final lesson from WWII’s “armaments race” is a caution against technological hubris such as that seen in today’s gushing about the superiority of Western Leopard or Abrams tanks over the Russian T-72 and T-80. Germany’s Tiger tank was clearly superior to the Soviet T-34 in WWII, but the latter was cheap, reliable, and easy to produce in numbers; at Kursk, Soviet tanks outnumbered German ones by 2:1.

So as NATO planners and media pundits take up the “cannon fodder” refrain again with reference to the heavy losses Russians are taking as they advance in the battle for Avdiivka, these planners and pundits would do well to consider a quip famously attributed to Soviet wartime leader Josef Stalin: “Quantity has a quality all its own.”

From Your Site Articles

• The trouble with telling history as it happens ›
• Writing the Ukraine War history, as it happens ›

Related Articles Around the Web

• What history shows: How will the war in Ukraine end? | Russia ... ›

Robert English

Professor Robert English specializes in Russian and Post-Soviet Politics at the University of Southern California. A former Defense Department analyst, he also teaches courses on Technology and Conflict and the Political Economy of Post Communism. English is currently PI on a National Science Foundation project analyzing the collision of geopolitics and the environment in the Arctic. He has written widely on the Cold War's end and aftermath.

Photo credit: Soviet troops of the Voronezh Front counterattack behind T-34 tanks during the Battle of Kursk. (Unknown Red Army photographer/ CC BY 4.0)

8. ChatGPT Is Apparently a Great Surveillance Tool

I guess they have me. I have been trying out ChatGPT.

ChatGPT Is Apparently a Great Surveillance Tool

Gizmodo · November 18, 2023

Photo: Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto (Getty Images)

Welcome to AI This Week, Gizmodo’s weekly roundup where we do a deep dive on what’s been happening in artificial intelligence.

This week, Forbes reported that a Russian spyware company called Social Links had begun using ChatGPT to conduct sentiment analysis. The creepy field by which cops and spies collect and analyze social media data to understand how web users feel about stuff, sentiment analysis is one of the sketchier use-cases for the little chatbot to yet emerge.

Social Links, which was previously kicked off Meta’s platforms for alleged surveillance of users, showed off its unconventional use of ChatGPT at a security conference in Paris this week. The company was able to weaponize the chatbot’s ability for text summarization and analysis to troll through large chunks of data, digesting it quickly. In a demonstration, the company fed data collected by its own proprietary tool into ChatGPT; the data, which related to online posts about a recent controversy in Spain, was then analyzed by the chatbot, which rated them “as positive, negative or neutral, displaying the results in an interactive graph,” Forbes writes.

Obviously, privacy advocates have found this more than a little disturbing—not merely because of this specific case, but for what it says about how AI could escalate the powers of the surveillance industry in general.

Rory Mir, associate director of community organizing with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that AI could help law enforcement broaden their surveillance efforts, allowing smaller teams of cops to surveil larger groups with ease. Already, police agencies frequently use fake profiles to embed themselves in online communities; this kind of surveillance has a chilling effect on online speech, Mir said. He added: “The scary thing about stuff like ChatGPT is that they can scale up that kind of operation.” AI can make it “easier for cops to run analysis quicker” on the data they collect during these undercover operations, meaning that “AI tools are [effectively] enabling” online surveillance, he added.

Mir also noted a glaring problem with this kind of use of AI: chatbots have a pretty bad track record of messing up and delivering bad results. “AI is really concerning in high-stakes scenarios like this,” Mir said. “It’s one thing to have ChatGPT read a draft of your article so that you can ask it ‘How acceptable is this?’ But when it moves into the territory of, say, determining if somebody gets a job, or gets housing, or, in this case, determines whether someone gets undue attention from police or not, that is when those biases become, not just a thing to account for, but a reason not to use it in that way [at all].”

Mir added that the “black box” of AI training data means that it’s hard to be sure whether the algorithm’s response will be trustworthy or not. “I mean, this stuff is trained on Reddit and 4chan data,” he chuckles. “So the biases that come from that underlying data are going to reappear in the mosaic of its outputs.”

9. First hostages released — 13 Israeli, 12 Thai — after pause in fighting begins, officials say

First hostages released — 13 Israeli, 12 Thai — after pause in fighting begins, officials say

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/23/israel-hamas-war-news-hostages-gaza-palestine/

Updated 7 min ago

The first 13 Israeli hostages were freed from Hamas captivity Friday as part of the captive exchange deal between Israel and Hamas. Separately, Hamas also released 12 Thai nationals who were being held hostage. A pause in fighting in Gaza went into effect Friday morning — the first respite in seven weeks of war — as aid trucks entered the Palestinian enclave and people in southern Gaza ventured out, filling streets after weeks of fighting and Israeli airstrikes. Fifty Israeli hostages are expected to be freed over a four-day pause in fighting in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners in Israel under the agreement, which resulted from weeks of Qatar-mediated negotiations.

Key updates

• 13 Israeli hostages freed after tense day of waiting
• The International Committee of the Red Cross has picked up the 13 Israeli hostages, an Israeli...
• Twelve Thai nationals who were being held hostage by Hamas have been released, Thailand’s prime minister,...

Skip to end of carouselHere's what to know

Hamas is expected to release women and children held in Gaza, and Israel is due to release women and teenagers held in Israeli prisons. Families of the more than 200 hostages held by militants have raised pressure in Israel for their release. Israel has said that for every 10 hostages released after the first 50, the pause in fighting would be extended for an additional day.

The Israeli military warned Gaza residents that “the war is not over yet,” in an online video ahead of the start time of the temporary pause early Friday. Israel also dropped leaflets in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis warning that moving to the north, from where hundreds of thousands have fled the heaviest fighting, was “forbidden.”

Updated 7 min ago

The first 13 Israeli hostages were freed from Hamas captivity Friday as part of the captive exchange deal between Israel and Hamas. Separately, Hamas also released 12 Thai nationals who were being held hostage. A pause in fighting in Gaza went into effect Friday morning — the first respite in seven weeks of war — as aid trucks entered the Palestinian enclave and people in southern Gaza ventured out, filling streets after weeks of fighting and Israeli airstrikes. Fifty Israeli hostages are expected to be freed over a four-day pause in fighting in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners in Israel under the agreement, which resulted from weeks of Qatar-mediated negotiations.

Key updates

• 13 Israeli hostages freed after tense day of waiting
• The International Committee of the Red Cross has picked up the 13 Israeli hostages, an Israeli...
• Twelve Thai nationals who were being held hostage by Hamas have been released, Thailand’s prime minister,...

Skip to end of carouselHere's what to know

Hamas is expected to release women and children held in Gaza, and Israel is due to release women and teenagers held in Israeli prisons. Families of the more than 200 hostages held by militants have raised pressure in Israel for their release. Israel has said that for every 10 hostages released after the first 50, the pause in fighting would be extended for an additional day.

The Israeli military warned Gaza residents that “the war is not over yet,” in an online video ahead of the start time of the temporary pause early Friday. Israel also dropped leaflets in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis warning that moving to the north, from where hundreds of thousands have fled the heaviest fighting, was “forbidden.”

10. Myanmar military says drone attack by ethnic armed groups in northeast destroyed about 120 trucks

Respect the resistance.

As far as I know the resistance is not receiving any significa support from outside governments. It is only receiving support from civil society and committed individuals.

As much as the revolutionary unconventional warfare romantic in me would love to see US Green Berets and PSYOP and CA forces helping them there's a lesson that may be learned when the resistance is successful and we study what happened in Burma. That will be that organic resistance works. Bottom up indigenous led resistance works. We may want to coerce and disrupt but the indigenous forces want to overthrow and establish their new social contract with a new government. This is why I advocate one of the most important things that SF, SPYOP and CA do is to conduct assessments: To gather information to gain appreciation for the context and a deep understanding of the conditions and situation and possible outcomes.

If I were king for a day I would establish standing "UW PIR" for all deployed SOF. Regardless of their mission wherever they are in the world they should always be observing for this PIR.

UW Standing “PIR” For Resistance

•Assessments – Special Forces Area Study/Area Assessment, PSYOP Target Audience Analysis, and Civil Affairs Civil Reconnaissance

•Who is the resistance?

–Leaders, groups, former military, in or out of government, etc.

•Why is there a resistance or the potential for resistance?

–What are the underlying causes/drivers?

•What are the objectives of the resistance?

–Do they align with the US and friends, partners, and allies? If not, who with?

•What is the resistance narrative?

–How is it shaping the information environment?

•Where is it operating?

–From where is it getting support?

•When did it begin?

–When will it/did it commence operations?

•How will it turn out?

–E.g., what is the assessment of success or failure of the resistance?

•Most important - An expert recommendation: Should the US support or counter the resistance and if so how?

Myanmar military says drone attack by ethnic armed groups in northeast destroyed about 120 trucks

The Washington Post · by Grant Peck | AP · November 23, 2023

BANGKOK — Myanmar ’s military-controlled government said Thursday that almost half of more than 250 cargo trucks stranded by fighting against ethnic minority armed groups near the northeastern border with China have been destroyed in a fire caused by bombs dropped by drones.

Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, spokesperson of the ruling military council, said in a statement phoned to state television MRTV that trucks parked in a compound near a trade zone in Muse township caught fire after drones belonging to ethnic armed organizations launched an attack at about 9:45 a.m. on Thursday.

The action was one of the most dramatic, and in terms of property damage, most extensive since the self-styled Three Brotherhood Alliance of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and the Arakan Army launched a coordinated offensive in northern Shan state on Oct. 27. The trucks are used to carry goods to and from China.

Zaw Min Tun said about 120 of 258 trucks, which were parked near the Kyin-San-Kyawt Border Gate, were destroyed in the fire, which he blamed on the alliance. He said the fire was put out after about six hours but made no mention of casualties.

Le Kyar Win, the spokesperson of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, denied the alliance carried out the attack, blaming the military itself.

“To be honest, this is an act that harms the people. And that place is not our military target. So there is no reason for us to attack,” Le Kyar Win said.

The alliance has claimed widespread victories, and the military government acknowledged soon after fighting began that it had lost three towns. The fighting has included destroying bridges and cutting key roads from Myanmar’s interior, Zaw Min Tun said. The fighting of the past three weeks appears to have stopped almost all legal cross-border trade with China, a major economic disruption for Myanmar.

It also has put pressure on the military government in its struggle against the armed pro-democracy forces that are challenging it in other parts of the country, where new attacks were carried out after the Oct. 27 offensive.

Armed resistance arose after the army seized power in February 2021 from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and has tenaciously carried on against the military regime’s better-armed and more numerous security forces. The pro-democracy People’s Defense Force has joined hands with several of the well-organized, battle-hardened ethnic armed groups that have been fighting Myanmar’s central government for greater autonomy for decades.

“The escalation is now the largest in scale and most extensive geographically since the early 2021 military takeover, impacting multiple areas, particularly northern and southern Shan, Sagaing, Kayah, Rakhine, and southern Chin,” areas in northern, central, eastern and western Myanmar, said a situation report circulated Wednesday by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA.

It also said that “key transport routes in townships with active fighting” had been blocked by both the army and the ethnic armed groups, “restricting people’s movements to safer locations, as well as hampering humanitarian access.”

The report by the U.N. agency said that 187 civilians have reportedly died and 246 others have been injured while more than 286,000 people have been displaced by the fighting that began late October. According to its estimates, more than 1.8 million people have been displaced since the army’s 2021 takeover.

The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army is besieging the town of Laukkaing, which is the administrative capital of what is officially called the Kokang Self-Administered Zone.

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

Laukkaing is notorious for hosting major organized criminal enterprises including cyber-scam operations controlled by Chinese investors in collusion with local Myanmar warlords.

Beijing is embarrassed by the large-scale criminality and has vowed to eradicate it. In recent weeks, as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army has gained ground, thousands of Chinese nationals involved in such operations have been repatriated into police custody in China.

The Washington Post · by Grant Peck | AP · November 23, 2023

11. Liberal Arts and the Future of the University – Yael Hungerford

For weekend reflection for those who understand what is a liberal education. 

Conclusion:

Citizens who are attached to liberty should have nothing to fear by reforms that fit into the framework here discussed. As Peirce taught, by expanding and elevating the sentiments, a proper liberal arts education has a liberalizing effect on the soul. A republic will benefit when its citizens—and especially its leaders—have been formed by a genuinely liberal education. This is why those who love liberty ought to protect properly oriented institutions of higher learning—those that pursue knowledge for its own sake and seek to educate students in the art of thinking, without agenda or prejudice.

Liberal Arts and the Future of the University – Yael Hungerford

lawliberty.org · by Yael Hungerford · November 24, 2023

After decades of conservatives bemoaning the moral decline of the university, there is now widespread agreement that serious reforms are needed. The last couple of years have seen a proliferation of thoughtful, strategic, and bold efforts to reform or rebuild higher education. Some are more defensive in nature, such as steps to eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices from public universities. Others aim to build better institutions—whether through new institutional leaders or founding of new universities altogether.

These efforts are often portrayed in the media as “conservative” reactions to “liberal” or “progressive” university policies and culture. The leaders spearheading these reforms—chief among them Florida governor Ron DeSantis—are indeed self-described conservatives. This is not an accurate framing of the issue, though.

As Manhattan Institute senior fellow and New College of Florida Board member Christopher Rufo recently noted in the New York Times, the real dichotomy is between those who understand the university to be a place of truth-seeking and those who understand it as a vehicle for social-justice promotion. This distinction is rooted in the disagreement between modern and post-modern thought: whether there is a truth to be uncovered, or whether there is no truth but only power. If there is no text but only narrative, then—so the argument goes—it is up to those who understand to change the narrative and undermine reigning power structures and social institutions. Higher education reforms that seek to turn institutions’ focus away from promoting social justice and instead toward the dispassionate pursuit of truth, where individuals are judged by the quality of their ideas, are indeed in the spirit of a liberal arts education.

Some at the forefront of these efforts have made comments, however, that ought to give liberty-loving conservatives some pause. Consider, for example, the reported comments of the then-Florida Speaker of the House, remarking on the passage of Florida’s 2022 Postsecondary Education Bill (Senate Bill 7044):

[Chris] Sprowls said it would prevent students from signing up for a class on “socialism and communism” when they thought they were signing up for “Western democracy” and classes about “what it means to be an actual American.”

The implication is that critics of or alternatives to Western democracy should not be examined in a class on the subject. But how can students understand the American regime, its strengths and limitations, and what civic flourishing requires, if critics of democracy are not carefully examined? That an elected state official involved in higher education reform would make such a suggestion makes clear how easy it would be for reforms to go too far—to become dogmatic and illiberal, in a manner that would diminish rather than cultivate the next generation’s appreciation for our form of government.

Given the interest in reforming and rethinking higher education, now is the time to carefully consider the purpose and potential of a properly structured university and liberal arts education. An examination into what higher education ought to consist of and what its goals ought to be can help provide important guardrails to ensure reform efforts remain liberal in nature and sound in scope. And if some institutions decide to veer away from a liberal arts model in favor of an alternative—vocational or religious training, for example—at least they will do so with open eyes as to the costs.

Both history and past thinkers who thought deeply about these matters are apt guides for such an examination. Charles S. Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism, is one such thinker to consult. As a late modern philosopher of science, he wrestled with articulating a defense of the pursuit of truth in a post-Kantian age—in an age of extreme skepticism in our ability to know the world around us. In political and practical matters, Peirce was also a self-described conservative who gave much consideration to the role of the university and a proper liberal arts education in shaping leaders of a modern republic. His questions are still very much live questions for us today.

Peirce is perhaps best known for his epistemological maxim, the defining precept of American pragmatism:

Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.

He articulated a human-centered but objective notion of truth. There is a reality to which we have access, and which does not depend on particularities of individual perception. By testing hypotheses against the world and building on and critically examining existing theories, the community of scholars uncovers this reality.

Peirce was writing and teaching at an earlier inflection point for American universities. In the late nineteenth century, the Humboldtian research university model was introduced on our shores, first at Johns Hopkins (where he taught) and soon after at schools like the University of Chicago. Such an orientation was in stark contrast to that of the Ivies, which began as schools of theology and for the purpose of training religious figures. The introduction of this new model raised fundamental questions for institutions and scholars alike about the purpose of a university, of what education ought to consist of, and the connection between scholarship and the public good.

Peirce weighed in on the debate by arguing that an education in the liberal arts was the best way to train citizens and future statesmen for practical decision-making and political leadership. Peirce understood a proper liberal arts education to center around the subjects of the medieval trivium—the study of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. It is one that involves extensive reading, examining multiple points of view, and training in the analytical methods of observation and experimentation. Such an education promotes mental strength, flexibility, and openness. It cultivates, in short, “the art of thinking.”

This is not to say that Peirce thought academic inquiry neatly translates into or provides easy maxims for living—in fact, quite the opposite. Peirce warned that theoretical inquiry is a bad guide for practical decision-making because it is too unsettled. Science is an activity of progressive discovery. Its propositions at any given time have the strength of past inquiry and may always give way to future experiments or theories. They are necessarily provisional. The study of logic and the scientific method, in fact, ought to lead to intellectual humility.

It is for this reason that Peirce was a conservative on practical matters. He taught it would therefore be “unwise” and “exceedingly dangerous” for man to base his conduct in life on the conclusions of pure reason. By the same token, separating theory and practice is essential for genuine scholarly inquiry: a scholar needs to be able to pursue doubt where it leads, without fear of the immediate practical implications.

When it comes to practical decision-making, tradition, custom, and instinct are the proper guides. They have, after all, been honed through time in accordance with human nature and the external world—they are the results of “sentimental induction summarizing the experience of all our race.”

A republic will benefit when its citizens—and especially its leaders—have been formed by a genuinely liberal education.

Given this practical conservatism, why did Peirce think that society’s leaders need sharpened critical thinking skills? Why is teaching tradition alone not enough? Old wisdom is not enough because, first, change is inevitable—chance drives evolution. Old traditions and lessons cannot always be applied straightforwardly to new situations that are bound to arise.

Secondly, tradition alone is not sufficient because tradition is not infallible. Peirce cited the example of suttee to illustrate that tradition can be horrifyingly flawed. Indeed, he says, the example of burning a widow alive on her husband’s funeral pyre raises doubts regarding the soundness of the conservatism he has expounded: it “tempts” the conservative “to become a radical” and reject all received wisdom. Evidence that tradition can be flawed does not dissuade Peirce from his conservatism, though it does temper his conservatism with the recognition that tradition might sometimes need to be discarded. As in his epistemological claims, Peirce showed humility in his practical conservatism as well.

Good judgment is needed to navigate new situations and flawed customs. How does a proper liberal arts education aid in forming this good judgment? A flexible and well-trained mind, as developed through the study of logic and training in analytical methods, sharpens one’s faculties. This aids in decision-making but is by itself not enough. Prudence is also required when critically examining what to maintain and what to reject from received wisdom. Prudential judgment can be cultivated in an environment of truth-seeking.

Though it does not produce simple formulas for acting, philosophy influences the instincts, slowly and indirectly, according to what is universal. Peirce expected that an acquaintance with knowledge of the whole would have a liberalizing effect on the soul. The study of logic reveals that humans are highly dependent on one another for knowledge. Man as an individual is marked by his ignorance; it is only as a member of a community that he can hope to be part of the uncovering of eternal truth.

The scholar’s recognition of his dependence on other men is connected to the generosity inherent in his investigations. The true investigator recognizes that he can only play a small role in the discovery of truth. His actions aim at benefitting future inquiry and inquirers—at benefiting the development of knowledge in the long run. By encountering scholars motivated by the noble goal of furthering knowledge for its own sake, Peirce thinks ordinary pupils will have their sights raised—they will recognize there are goals beyond mere utility and individual success and comfort. As Peirce taught, by expanding and elevating the sentiments, a proper liberal arts education has a liberalizing effect on the soul. An academic institution comprised of scholars thus motivated can provide an important antidote to the tendency of modern life to focus on physical security, wealth, and well-being.

Here is a key element of Peirce’s argument that should inform today’s conversation: A proper liberal arts education—not one aimed at developing vocational skills or promoting social justice or simply regurgitating established truths, but at careful reflection and understanding—aids the development of good judgment. By uncovering eternal truths and encountering a community of genuine scholars pursuing that truth, students’ sights are lifted and their instincts refined. A proper liberal arts education, then, sharpens mental faculties while enlarging and ennobling the instincts, producing the sound and careful judgment that is needed for prudently interpreting old wisdom and navigating the difficult decision-making inherent in a practical life.

What does this translate to today?

Peirce’s insights do not—by themselves—answer the question of how to reform higher education today. Peirce would be the first to say that there are no easy formulas and that reformers and founders need to consider their specific context in their decision-making.

By considering the purpose of a liberal arts education in training citizens for active lives in a modern republic, this examination does, however, offer a framework for guiding these reform efforts. By reminding us of the noble potential of the scholarly pursuit of knowledge and institutions so dedicated—a point seemingly absent from today’s conversation—this framework is consistent with a recognition of the need for reform today, while being robust enough to challenge reforms that are illiberal or excessive. I suggest it offers several provisional lessons.

First and foremost, we need institutions and faculty dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake—who are prompted to inquiry by doubt and the desire for clearer understanding, free from agenda and partisanship. The unprejudiced scholar dedicated to expanding our understanding is a noble antidote in our democratic age.

Administrative offices tasked with educating students and faculty on how to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion do not belong in academia. Bureaucracies that police how faculty and students speak through trainings and investigations are particularly pernicious. As Tocqueville noted, there is already a strong tendency in democracies toward groupthink. All the more reason why, if universities as institutions ought to have any agenda, it should be to rigorously protect and promote the scholarly virtues of open inquiry, logical analysis, and empirical testing.

What about academic disciplines that develop and promote the same social justice agendas? The post-modern entrenchment in the academy poses a serious challenge for reformers, not least because academic departments have historically been self-governing. Peirce reminds us that political goals compromise the scholarly pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. On the other hand, if academic centers are co-opted by social activists, it might ultimately fall to leaders from outside the academy—politicians and trustees among them—to recenter departments on sound academic footing.

For these efforts to be successful, we must resist the urge to replace post-modern departments and schools with conservative fortresses. Encouraging students to parrot truisms is not the way to cultivate their critical thinking skills nor raise their sights. New departments and institutions ought to be characterized by what Peirce called fallibilism—intellectual humility rooted in the recognition that no one can be certain they have a hold on the truth.

Citizens who are attached to liberty should have nothing to fear by reforms that fit into the framework here discussed. As Peirce taught, by expanding and elevating the sentiments, a proper liberal arts education has a liberalizing effect on the soul. A republic will benefit when its citizens—and especially its leaders—have been formed by a genuinely liberal education. This is why those who love liberty ought to protect properly oriented institutions of higher learning—those that pursue knowledge for its own sake and seek to educate students in the art of thinking, without agenda or prejudice.

lawliberty.org · by Yael Hungerford · November 24, 2023

12. #WTH: TikTok & Osama bin Laden & Hamas

#WTH: TikTok & Osama bin Laden & Hamas

Rep. Mike Gallagher on your kids and their Chinese overlords

https://whatthehellisgoingon.substack.com/p/wth-tiktok-and-osama-bin-laden-and?r=7i07&utm

DANIELLE PLETKA

NOV 24, 2023

4

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Before anything, the whole WTH family wishes you and yours a very happy holiday… We hope your Thanksgiving was full of love and gratitude and not too terribly much turkey and stuffing. Among our thanks, we’re very grateful for all of our listeners and subscribers…. Thank you for being part of our weekly adventures — Clara, Marc, and Dany. And now the bad news…

You can’t have missed the insane trending of Osama bin Laden’s two decade old “letter to America” on TikTok. Here’s the New York Post’s cover:

Indeed, if you only got your news from TikTok, here’s what you’d probably think:

1. Hamas was justified in its attacks of October 7, if they happened at all.
2. Israel killed the concert goers on October 7.
3. Osama bin Laden understood Jewish control of America better than its own government.

TikTokers with hundreds of thousands of followers all over the United States have approvingly cited the dead terrorist leader of al Qaeda. Here are a couple of excerpts, in case you’re interested:

Your former president warned you previously about the devastating Jewish control of capital and about a day that would come when it would enslave you; it has happened.

And another:

…you continue to support the oppressive Israelis in their occupation of our Palestine in response to pressures on your administration by a Jewish lobby backed by enormous financial capabilities.

LISTEN

You might say to yourself, these are the ravings of a pretty average antisemite; you’d be right. But that antisemite ordered the most lethal attack on America in its history, murdering 3000 in New York and Washington. Context, you know?

Here was TikTok user Goddess, who has over 70k followers. “This letter is so well-written and so reasonably structured in an argument.” And “everything he said was valid.”

A video by @ajunie_bee with over 320k followers noted that “Bin Ladin’s Letter to America Serves as proof that the Palestianian War and The fight to free Palestine is deeper than we think. Hamas is Bin Ladin & 9/11 Could’ve been avoided!” It’s true, Junie Bee can’t spell. But she knows what she thinks.

A video by @_leslierae with more than 147.4k followers explained that: “Trying to go back to life as normal after reading Osama Bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ and realizing everything we learned about the Middle East, 9/11, and ‘terrorism’ was a lie.”

We share these gems because although TikTok has now removed them, they are a reflection of what TikTok’s algorithm was promoting until protests from the United States finally caused the parent company, ByteDance, to take all of them down.

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Nonetheless, reams of antisemitic content remains on TikTok. And in China, the Communist Party government too has chosen a side in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, coming down firmly on Hamas’ side. On the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, antisemitic content is reaching millions, promoted both by government-blessed “influencers” and government spokesmen. Israel has been removed from the two major Chinese map platforms.

What do we care? Isn’t there a first amendment, at least in the United States? Sure, and libertarians have been active on social media insisting that pro-Hamas content is protected speech. That it is. Nonetheless, neither Twitter (X) nor Instagram nor Facebook are foreign companies. Their algorithm is in the United States, and while it may be driven by left-wing bias, it isn’t driven by a foreign totalitarian agenda.

Pew reports that 32% of Americans aged 18-29 regularly get their news from TikTok. 43% of all TikTok users say they regularly get news from the site, up from 33% in 2022. Simply, ask yourself: If TikTok can herd hundreds of thousands of Americans towards Osama bin Laden, what could they do in the event of a war with Taiwan? How about in a US election?

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: It’s time to ban TikTok.

HIGHLIGHTS

Why is the TikTok problem different from other social media?

MG: Just saying social media in general is a cesspool is an admission that we have a problem with social media use in general, but the peculiar problem of TikTok is twofold. One is the basic ownership structure. You might hate Instagram and all these other American social media companies, you may think that we need to remove section 230 or break them up and they're acting like monopolies, blah, blah, blah, but these are American companies. They may not always reflect American values, but they're subject to a certain system in America that TikTok, because it's owned by a Chinese company, which is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, is not.

And as TikTok becomes the dominant social media company and it becomes the dominant news platform in America, we now have to ask ourselves this question, do we want to let the CCP, albeit transitively via ByteDance, to control the dominant media platform in America when we know for a fact they have a desire to pit Americans against Americans and stoke division? Because they do it overtly on our social media platforms. They elevate and intensify all of the worst rhetoric about how America is an evil, racist country that's responsible for every problem in the world, particularly the problems in the Middle East, and it must constantly apologize for its past sins.

Why was the Chinese reaction to October 7 so strange?

MG: So now then, if you do a comparison, and there's a couple analyses that are not yet ready for prime time, just looking at the October 7th phenomenon and reaction and comparing TikTok to other platforms, there does seem to be something unusual going on with TikTok. Now, there could be something confounding the data, but right now, it just seems like the algorithm itself is optimizing to intensify antisemitic rhetoric. And Dany, I'll pause here and let you comment. The fact that we have Americans looking at Osama bin Laden's letter to America, the TLDR version of which is the evil Jews control everything in America and they and America must be destroyed is crazy. It is so crazy, it's hard to wrap your head around.

Is something changing in China?

MG: The bias I now bring into this is, increasingly, it looks like there is a proper axis of bad guys right against us. We can call them an authoritarian axis, or an anti-American axis, or the new axis of evil, whatever. I haven't settled on the right term, but the dominant partner in this de facto alliance is China. They have strange bedfellows in terms of their junior partners, Iran and Russia, but the shared interest that is currently keeping them all together is to undermine, if not destroy, the American-led global order.

And therefore, when one of the junior partners decides they're going to, let's say, invade Ukraine, though China may not have scripted that, they backed them. They backed them and they backed their rhetoric around concerns over color revolutions globally. They blame America. Perhaps they benefit from the chaos in Europe in terms of their primary ambition, which is to take Taiwan by force if necessary. And similarly, in the Middle East, China was perfectly content to develop an economic relationship with not only Israel, but also Iran. They signed this 25-, 30-year economic partnership agreement with Iran. China has severe energy needs, Iran has energy resources. I think, for at least the last 18 months, if not longer, China's been the biggest purchaser of Iranian oil, which also, by the way, presents an opportunity to de-dollarize the global economy.

So there's a variety of things going on, but it all comes back simply to their ultimate ambition, which is to become the regional hegemon and ultimately the dominant power globally, and that requires taking America down a few notches.

What specifically is going on with the bin Laden letter and the antisemitism on TikTok?

MG: Here's what we know. We know that in the past they've suppressed content related to subjects that are sensitive for the Chinese Communist Party, most notably the genocide in Xinjiang province. [By the way,] India notably has banned TikTok completely. They're not an international pariah. There's no domestic crisis related to the banning of TikTok in India. It hasn't slowed down their economy. I think now it's surpassed China as the biggest country in the world, certainly the biggest democracy in the world. They banned TikTok. So, we know in the past that they've had bad behavior.

I think the analyses that are about to come out with respect to this specific incident will suggest that something strange is going on unique to TikTok, in terms of there may be antisemitic propaganda all over social media, but it's unusually pronounced on TikTok. But I can't say that this was definitively a test run. But if nothing else, and this was sort of where you started with the question, the fact that it is a news source gets to something critical because TikTok always claims that, "This is just fun. It's about entertainment. It's about dance videos, et cetera, et cetera. It's just user-generated content." Well, I don't think that's tenable anymore, given that a third of adult users get their news from it, the numbers are more pronounced the younger you get. One in six American teens say they're on the platform almost constantly. It has significance far beyond short, stupid dance videos.

Put differently, also, it's not just about the data. It's not just about their ability to track your location or see what websites you visit and spy on you effectively. It's about the propaganda power. It's about their ability to control what information you get and what you think is true and what you don't think is true. And even if you don't think there's any evidence that the CCP has influenced ByteDance to influence TikTok to do bad things, what about the CCP's behavior over the last two decades would make you think that we should give them the opportunity to do this in the future?

So TikTok may be using this to see whether it can control U.S. public opinion?

MG: If you just listen to things Xi Jinping talks about... He talks constantly about the smokeless battlefield, which is his phrase for the information war, the ideological war, which he views to be the most important part of this competition. And we had all this momentum to tackle this issue in the form of either a ban or a for sale, but then we completely lost it because of two things, a massive multimillion dollar lobbying campaign that TikTok has paid for. If you remember, in the Republican debates, they ran two ads in, I think the first two debates, I don't remember in the third one, that position TikTok as like the champion of small business. It's American flags, and apple pie, and dairy farms.

And the other thing is the Senate tried to take action. They didn't quite get their construct right. It was viewed as a grant of excessive authority to the executive branch. And so, now people are gun shy about doing anything. But if we don't do anything and if we allow the status quo to continue, TikTok will become the dominant media platform in America, perhaps the dominant news source in America. And the fact that in the past, the Chinese Communist Party has refused to allow a sale to an American entity, tells you everything you need to know. Because they clearly want to maintain control of this tool, this weapon going forward. So, it would be an act of national suicide to allow the status quo to continue. We have to act before it's too late.

Will the White House do anything about TikTok?

MG: [W]hen asked about TikTok, cabinet level officials, notably Gina Raimondo in the past have said, "Well, we can't do anything because we don't want to anger younger voters." I mean, she almost explicitly put it in those terms. My kids are three and below, so I haven't quite gotten to this phase. I understand that the angering 14-year-olds is not a fun thing to do, but the fear of angering 14-year-olds can't be the basis of our foreign policy.

What could be done?

MG: A sale to an American company would alleviate most of my concerns and I think would be an acceptable outcome. But the CCP, as I said before, in the past has balked at allowing that. TikTok and its algorithm are on what is effectively their export control list, which I think provides evidence that they realize how valuable this tool is.

Do you see TikTok playing a role in the disastrous reaction to the attack on Israel on American campuses?

MG: When you have Ivy League professors out there saying that they were overjoyed on October 7th and encouraging this stuff, [it’s clear] that some of our institutes of higher education have completely lost their way. They're not equipping these kids with the skills they need, the critical thinking skills to survive in the real world. A lot of them are going to be unemployable, by the way, given that this stuff is not going to disappear.

But you’re still cautiously optimistic?

MG: I actually think the bin Laden fiasco as well as more generally the glut of antisemitic content on TikTok has given us an opportunity that we didn't have a few months ago to do the right thing. In fact, I've been fielding calls from people that are... I never would've expected, would've been eager to do something both from my colleagues in Congress and people in positions of influence in the private sector or in the entertainment industry. So I think we have to seize the current moment to go forward with a bill that, again, doesn't repeat the mistakes of the Senate bill that went forward that's more narrowly tailored, but actually does the thing that we want to do, which is either ban TikTok or force a sale. I'm cautiously optimistic that we can get that bill through the relevant committee in Congress and on the House floor, and I think there's an opportunity for us to have a bipartisan vote that sends it to the Senate.

What about the next president?

MG: I think DeSantis and Haley probably would take action. Vivek, obviously not. Trump's a total wildcard, right? I honestly don't know. I don't know. I don't know what he would do, but at least half the people that are on the stage would right now. So again, it's a very narrow window, but I do think we have to act before it's too late. Take your pick of issue that the CCP could use to just turn Americans against Americans and create chaos. Think of all the uncertainty we were dealing with related to the origins of the pandemic, right? I mean, multiply that by 20X the next time we're in a crisis, or think about the ability to give them to meddle in our elections, which presumably is an issue that everybody cares about.

Full transcript here.

SHOWNOTES

Why Do Young Americans Support Hamas? Look at TikTok. (Rep Mike Gallagher, The Free Press, November 1, 2023) 

Harvard CAPS Poll 

Israel Goes Unnamed on China Online Maps (WSJ, November 1, 2023)

TikTok Spreads Disinformation in Israel-Gaza War as It Rises as Primary News Source for Youth (Yahoo, November 17, 2023)

More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend seen on most other social media sites (Pew Research Center, November 15, 2023) 

Osama bin Laden's infamous 'Letter to America' after 9/11 promoted by TikTok influencers, goes viral (Fox News, November 16, 2023) 

TikTok will SCRUB videos of anti-Israel Gen-Zer's fawning over Bin Laden's vile 2002 'Letter to America' because it 'clearly violates our rules on supporting any form of terrorism' (Daily Mail, November 16, 2023) 

Videos About Bin Laden’s Criticism of U.S. Surge in Popularity on TikTok (New York Times, November 16, 2023) 

Jewish Celebrities and Influencers Confront TikTok Executives in Private Call (New York Times, November 16, 2023) 

TikTok’s Osama bin Laden Fiasco (Wall Street Journal, November 16, 2023)

Sen. Josh Hawley renews efforts to ban TikTok, citing app's influence on Israel-Hamas war opinions (NBC News, November 7, 2023)

The truth about TikTok hashtags and content during the Israel-Hamas war (TikTok, November 12, 2023)

Osama bin Laden, Antisemitism and a Viral Tweet: Why TikTok Is Facing Its Biggest Threat (Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2023)

Want to Know What’s Bedeviling Biden? TikTok Economics May Hold Clues. (New York Times, November 17, 2023) 

Nepal bans TikTok and says it disrupts social harmony (AP News, November 13, 2023)

ICYMI: WTH is Tik Tok So Dangerous? Klon Kitchen on How the Chinese Communist Party is Reading Your Keystrokes and Collecting Your Data (November 30, 2022)

13. Gen Z Turns Against Osama Bin Laden After Discovering Problematic Tweets

I do not normally send out Duffelblog posts but this one really does show how satire and humor can be useful in critical analysis by using an actual current event to highlight absurdity (one absurdity: the thinking that if we had read bin Laden's Letter to America we could have avoided 9-11 or the last 2 decades of the GWOT as well as Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel - it is unbelievable to me that there are some who take such an absurdity seriously). I doubt this will influence Gen Z but I think it is useful in trying to understand Gen Z through satire. This seems to describe our "cancel culture" to a T.

Gen Z Turns Against Osama Bin Laden After Discovering Problematic Tweets

Vibe check! OBL was living rent free in these simps and stans heads!

https://www.duffelblog.com/p/gen-z-turns-against-osama-bin-laden-after-discovering-problematic-tweets?utm

BYOBooyah

November 24, 2023

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Last week, TikTok users flooded the app, first praising and then denouncing Osama Bin Laden, the architect of the 9/11 attacks on America. The eventual online outrage, predominantly from members of Gen Z, had little to do with terrorism and instead centered on insensitive, problematic tweets.

Bin Laden first leaped back into the news cycle last week when multiple TikTok users posted clips discussing Bin Laden’s “Letter to America,” a document authored by the terrorist leader in an attempt to justify the September 11, 2001 attacks on America for which he is best known.

According to insiders, screenshots of old Bin Laden tweets started appearing online on the evening of November 17, 2023. The reposted tweets were mainly run-of-the-mill “Death to America” messages and declarations of various Jihads. But a tweet stating “Fat chicks are not halal #Blech” immediately set off a firestorm only made worse by several that followed, including one stating “Mermaids should be white! #GoWokeGoBroke,” which was surprising considering Bin Laden died twelve years before the Little Mermaid remake.

“I read his Letters to America and I was like, why are we teaching US school kids about George Washington and not having them read this letter,” said online influencer BarryBongs6969. “But that was when I assumed his punctuation meant he was an ally to the body-positive community.” BarryBongs6969’s reaction mirrors the rapidly shifting tides of Gen Z online opinion, which initially seemed very much in Bin Laden’s favor. However, as users began looking through tweets from the former head of Al Qaeda's verified account, many did not like what they found.

“I first saw his old tweet about how the Jews are the problem and I was like, ok, ok, let’s hear him out, for real,” said TikTok Influencer VibesWhore420. “But then he said that Beyonce ain’t a boss bitch and I was all like, uh-uh, no way, I’m glad he’s dead. Bet.”

Reactions to the scandal and subsequent backlash within the Al Qaeda community have been mixed. Insiders report that predominantly rank-and-file members were curious about just what American teenagers think Sharia Law entails. But as anger continued to mount online, the terror group also issued a statement.

“The tweets by our martyred leader were taken out of context by the Great Satan of America,” per the terror group’s press release. “If he had not been murdered by your fascist government he would also have explained that on several of these, he was quoting rap lyrics.”

Despite the statement, the majority of Gen Z seems unwilling to excuse Bin Laden and has instead moved on to posting about Joseph Stalin and Communism under the hashtag #LiterallyTheBestIdeaEver

BYOBooyah strongly suspects you’re sus AF.

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