Quotes of the Day:

"When will our conscience grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" 

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"A person who possesses deep wisdom, derives valuable insights from observing their struggles, faced by others, using them as a guide, to avoid encountering similar predicaments." 

-Seneca

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity." 

- George Orwell

1. Behind the Curtain: Inside Biden's slow-walking Middle East strategy

2. Where is the moral compass of the campus?

3. Net outflow of funds from China hits 7-year high in September

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 24, 2023

5. Iran Update, October 24, 2023

6. Jamie Dimon: 'The most serious thing facing mankind is nuclear proliferation'

7. Hamas is Using North Korean Weapons Against Israel

8. What Happens if Israel Strikes Iran?

9. M39 Missile: Made In the USA, Smashing Putin Hard in Ukraine War

10. Ukraine’s American-Made M39 Missiles May Have Wrecked 21 Russian Helicopters In A Single Operation

11. US troops were attacked 13 times in Iraq and Syria in past week, Pentagon confirms

12. The Return of Nuclear Escalation: How America’s Adversaries Have Hijacked Its Old Deterrence Strategy

13. From Risk to Resilience: How Economies Can Thrive in a World of Threats

14. Washington should brace for new Polish preferences in arms suppliers

15. China said the US is a disruptor of peace in response to Pentagon report on China’s military buildup

16. Army Air Defense Units from 3 Bases Are Deploying to Middle East After 13 Drone Attacks

17. Governments and hackers agree: the laws of war must apply in cyberspace

18. Hamas operatives used phone lines installed in tunnels under Gaza to plan Israel attack over 2 years, sources familiar with intelligence say

19. Putin and Xi: Beijing Belt and Road meeting highlighted Russia’s role as China’s junior partner

20. The Sources of American Power: A Foreign Policy for a Changed World By Jake Sullivan

21. How the DC Metro is a tool for the military industrial complex

22. Secret U.S. War in Lebanon Is Tinder for Escalation of Israel–Gaza Conflict

23. Violent videos and ‘brutal voyeurism’ are redefining modern war

24. Congress must scrutinize the US spending spree on global crises

25. 11 Cases of Psychological Warfare Throughout History

1. Behind the Curtain: Inside Biden's slow-walking Middle East strategy

Interesting analysis. Oh, to be a fly on the wall in Israel listening to the discussions between IDF and American military leaders.

18 mins ago - Politics & Policy

Column / Behind the Curtain

https://www.axios.com/2023/10/25/biden-israel-hamas-strategy-gaza-invasion?utm_source=newsletter&utm

Behind the Curtain: Inside Biden's slow-walking Middle East strategy

• Jim VandeHei
• ,
• Mike Allen

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

President Biden, despite his full-throated support for Israel and its right to strike Hamas, has methodically and meticulously delayed the looming invasion of Gaza, U.S. officials tell us.

Driving the news: Biden dangled high-level visits (including his own), military support and public backing to buy time in Gaza. He also made plain that America doesn't want Israel to act impulsively, or without considering U.S. concerns.

Why it matters: The slow-walking strategy flows from five strategic worries, U.S. officials tell us and Axios Middle East expert Barak Ravid.

1. Biden wants more aid delivered to as many Palestinians as possible, to limit a humanitarian crisis and massive global backlash.
2. He wants the estimated 500+ U.S. citizens trapped in Gaza to get out before the fighting intensifies. Half a dozen attempts to get them out since the Hamas attack have failed — partly because Hamas prevented Americans from leaving, officials say.
3. He needs more time to fortify America's military presence in the Middle East, given rising fears that Iran or Iran-backed terrorist groups will attack Israel.
4. He fears a quick, impulsive assault on Gaza will land Israel in a long, bloody street battle that could kill tens of thousands of people — and still not destroy Hamas. It could also push Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies to join the war — with deployed Americans likely in harm's way.
5. He wants to buy time for Benjamin Netanyahu, who has his own reasons to delay. Netanyahu, despite political pressure to move fast against Hamas, has always been risk-averse. He has a somewhat skeptical view of the Israeli military plans — and wants time. So he's entertaining other opinions. He's also willing to give more time for hostage-release talks while the Israel Defense Forces better prepare for a ground assault.

The big picture: Israeli military leaders are growing impatient with the delay. IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said Tuesday the IDF is ready for the ground operation and only awaits an order from the government.

• Top military leaders want to strike by land — on top of constant aerial bombings — to avenge the Hamas terror attack that killed 1,400 Israelis and left 200 held hostage.

• But America's calculation is more complicated. Biden wants to free the remaining American hostages and win the release of more captive Israelis. U.S. officials feel progress is being made.

Between the lines: Biden shares Bibi's concerns about Israel's plan. Biden wants an Israeli invasion to be more Mosul 2016 and less Fallujah 2004. That's why he sent three-star Marine Lt. Gen. James Glynn — a veteran of Mosul — to advise the Israelis on their military planning, U.S. officials say.

• Axios has learned that Secretary of State Tony Blinken told a group of Jewish American leaders on Monday: "We're not limiting Israel or telling it what to do. We're asking hard questions and giving our best advice based on our own experience."

"Behind the Curtain" is a new column by Axios CEO Jim VandeHei and co-founder Mike Allen, based on regular conversations with White House and congressional leaders, CEOs and top technologists.

• Go deeper: Read our first and second columns.

2. Where is the moral compass of the campus?

Is it just Harvard or the entire academy? So troubling and disappointing.

Where is the moral compass of the campus? - JNS.org

If Harvard cannot unequivocally condemn Hamas’s terrorism, we will know that it has abdicated its mission to preserve Western civilization.

JULIANA GERAN PILON

Juliana Geran Pilon is a senior fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. Her latest book is An Idea Betrayed: Jews, Liberalism, and the American Left (2023). She has taught at the National Defense University, the Institute of World Politics, American University, St. Mary’s College of Maryland and George Washington University.

https://www.jns.org/where-is-the-moral-compass-of-the-campus/

jns.org · 

 · October 24, 2023

(October 24, 2023 / JNS)

The photos, the videos, the babies’ screams can never be erased from memory. Not even the ideologically inoculated, the brainwashed and the cynical can be entirely immune to human empathy. That Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities were all committed with ostentatious audacity, even panache, surpasses reason: Weren’t the perpetrators concerned that the brutality might backfire? Apparently not. The psychopaths videotaped their crimes complete with a soundtrack of satanic laughter.

It’s payback time. By committing atrocities so nonchalantly and on such a scale, the Islamist Iranian proxy has likely signed its own death warrant. Their spree of war crimes may well prove to have been a suicide mission, like so many before.

More than 300,000 IDF soldiers were instantly mobilized. Hundreds returned by air, sea and land from around the world—soldiers on leave or retired and ordinary people alike, all determined to help. Israelis are united as never before. They won’t rest until their rabid enemy is wiped off the map. Every family in Israel, the tiny Jewish haven, the only country they can call their own, is mourning. After this pogrom, no one will ever be the same. All are prepared to give their all. Determined to defy extinction once again, they share a sacred promise: The Holocaust will never be repeated.

But Israel was not the only target of the hate-filled hordes. So was every human worthy of the name. Hamas meant to sow universal fear. Now it falls to each of us to reveal who has the moral compass and who does not. It’s about us.

Above all, it’s about our “best and brightest.” The scare quotes are deliberate, for our brightest have turned out to be anything but the best. Most disappointing, but entirely predictable, has been the one institution whose purported mission is the preservation, nurturing and advancement of Western civilization, the most prestigious university in the world—Harvard.

First came the letter signed by over 30 Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups on the Situation in Palestine (HPSGSP) denouncing Israel as “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

Harvard Hillel reacted immediately, issuing a statement blasting this monstrous statement as “completely wrong and deeply offensive. There is no excuse for the terror we have seen over the weekend.”

Hillel pledged to “stand unwaveringly behind Israel and the Jewish people in these unprecedented times.” It was joined by 18 other organizations, most of them Jewish, and a few others such as the Harvard Ice Hockey Club, the Harvard College Polish Society, the Harvard Behavioral Strategy Group and the Harvard Business School’s Conservative Club, plus 330 faculty and staff (out of 19,639).

A day later, President Claudine Gay finally weighed in, saying she was “heartbroken by the death and destruction unleashed by the attack by Hamas that targeted citizens in Israel this weekend, and by the war in Israel and Gaza now underway.” She then called on Harvard “as an academic community to deepen our knowledge of the unfolding events and their broader implications for the region and the world.”

Her letter contained no reference to HPSGSP’s anti-Israel, pro-terrorist letter.

When an uproar followed, Gay and her administration backtracked. Her revised statement, published by The Harvard Crimson, urged restraint: “We will all be well served in such a difficult moment by rhetoric that aims to illuminate and not inflame. And I appeal to all of us in this community of learning to keep this in mind as our conversations continue.”

She expressed her hope “that, as a community devoted to learning, we can take steps that will draw on our common humanity and shared values in order to modulate rather than amplify the deep-seated divisions and animosities so distressingly evident in the wider world. Especially at such a time, we want to emphasize our commitment to fostering an environment of dialogue and empathy, appealing to one another’s thoughtfulness and goodwill in a time of unimaginable loss and sorrow.”

There was still no condemnation of the pro-terrorism letter and its signatories.

This prompted a second letter to Gay signed by 350 faculty members. It urged the administration to send another, more “important message to the Harvard community and beyond that the university rejects any support of terrorism or false equivalences between the targeted killing of civilians and collective self-defense.”

Other prominent individuals connected with Harvard expressed their outrage through media, personal letters and other means.

Only one student organization denounced the administration’s timidity: The Harvard Club of Israel, whose 1,000 members are alumni of Harvard’s schools and executive programs currently in Israel. They work in a variety of professions, including business, academia, government and civil society. Their letter, sent on Oct. 11 and signed by its 15-member board, declared simply that the administration’s backpedaling was “too little, too late. In the face of evil, Harvard must proclaim that pro-terrorism statements like those published by the student groups on Sunday have no place in civil discourse at Harvard or elsewhere. If Harvard wishes to be a moral leader for the world, its administration must speak out immediately and forcefully. Anything less than full support for Israel’s right to defend itself and its citizens and unequivocal denunciation of this terrorism is unacceptable and is wholly inadequate for an institution of Harvard’s caliber.”

Yet another statement, a third retraction, followed later that day on video. “Harvard University rejects terrorism,” said Gay. She conceded that this “includes the barbaric atrocities perpetrated by Hamas,” but hastened to add that there was plenty of blame to go around. She pronounced, “The University rejects hate—hate of Jews, hate of Muslims, hate of any group of people based on their faith, their national origin or any aspect of their identity.”

What about all the other students? Several eventually signed the Hillel letter, some 5,000 by Oct. 14, 25,000 all told. The Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics Student Advisory Committee considered issuing a statement condemning Hamas’s attacks, but since fewer than a fifth of its members favored adopting a statement of any kind, the initiative failed. This prompted the group’s chair and two co-chairs to resign.

“To say we are disgusted is an understatement,” their resignation letter stated. “Silence is complicity. Silence is irreconcilable with the principle of moral conviction. Silence is why many students do not feel safe at Harvard right now.”

They have good reason not to feel safe. It’s hard to feel safe at a school whose speech climate has just been rated “abysmal” by the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Harvard’s score, lower than all other colleges by far, actually fell below zero—it was -10.69.

According to FIRE’s findings, “Just over a quarter of Harvard students reported they are comfortable publicly disagreeing with their professor on a controversial political topic; only roughly a third think it is ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ clear the administration protects free speech on campus; and an alarming 30% think using violence to stop a campus speech is at least ‘rarely’ acceptable, an increase from the 26% of Harvard students who felt this way last year.”

Where is Harvard’s moral compass? It should be found before it is too late. If it is not, we will know who is really preserving, nurturing and advancing Western civilization. And we will know that Harvard is not among them.

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jns.org · by Benjamin Kerstein · October 24, 2023

3. Net outflow of funds from China hits 7-year high in September

Net outflow of funds from China hits 7-year high in September

Foreign companies scaling back, rich people shifting funds abroad drives trend

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Net-outflow-of-funds-from-China-hits-7-year-high-in-September?utm

IORI KAWATE, Nikkei staff writer

October 25, 2023 17:55 JST

BEIJING -- Outflows of investment capital from China are growing, marking their biggest net decline in seven years and eight months in September. The trend is driven by foreign companies scaling back their operations in China and wealthy Chinese shifting funds abroad, analysts say.

The government is nervously eyeing the capital flight, imposing new restrictions on investors, as downward pressure on the Chinese currency grows.

According to China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which tracks monthly international financial transactions by domestic banks on behalf of businesses and households, the net outflow reached $53.9 billion in September. This is the largest amount since January 2016, when China logged a net outflow of $55.8 trigged by a sudden devaluation of the yuan called the "renminbi shock," among other factors.

The exodus of funds related to direct investment, such as construction of manufacturing plants, was noticeable in the September figures. The net outflow in that category reached $26.2 billion, roughly half the total and the largest amount since 2010, when comparable data first became available.

"Foreign companies may have accelerated the outflow of capital as they wrote down or sold their assets as a result of their retreat from China," said Toru Nishihama, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute in Tokyo. The number of foreign companies in manufacturing and other industrial sectors reached its lowest point since November 2004 at the end of July, and it has remained flat since then.

The U.S. has moved to restrict American investment in mainland China. And Beijing's revision of its anti-espionage law in July, which expanded the scope of targets for espionage, may have contributed to capital fleeing the country.

The statistics do not indicate whether foreign or Chinese companies were main contributors to the transfer of funds from China. It may be that the drain in capital increased because Chinese companies are moving funds overseas in order to move into or expand in foreign markets.

Portfolio investment in stocks, bonds and other securities declined by a net $14.6 billion. As the Chinese economy struggles to bounce back from the pandemic, many foreign investors have grown leery of investing in the country. The balance of yuan-denominated bonds held by foreign investors through such means as Bond Connect, which allows investors from mainland China and overseas to trade in each other's bond markets through a link in Hong Kong, totaled about 3.2 trillion yuan ($436.93 billion) at the end of September, down some 20% from its peak at the end of January 2022.

Wealthy Chinese are also shifting their assets abroad out of concern over the future of China, according to many analysts. "Customer demand for transferring funds to real estate and other markets in developed nations began rising this spring," said an employee in the investment department of a Chinese financial institution.

In addition to the flight of investment capital, stagnant Chinese exports are weighing on the yuan. In the July to September quarter, sales of yuan to buy foreign currencies outpaced the reverse transaction by $38.6 billion, the largest figure in five years.

"Given strong expectations for the yuan's depreciation in light of the gap in interest rates between the U.S. and China, chances are high that businesses and others are increasing their holdings of foreign currencies without immediately changing receipts from exports into yuan," said Naoki Tsukioka, chief economist at Mizuho Research & Technologies.

The government is worried about the growing exodus of capital

The yuan remains

4. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 24, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-24-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in eastern and southern Ukraine on October 24 and advanced south of Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Russia appears to be increasingly supplementing the use of Shahed-131/136 drones with cheaper and lighter domestically produced drone variants during strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure.
• Russian authorities are intensifying mobilization efforts targeting Central Asian migrant communities in Russia.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky highlighted diminishing Russian control over the Black Sea and Ukraine’s temporary grain corridors during a speech at the Crimean Platform summit on October 24.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Avdiivka on October 24 and made confirmed advances northeast of Avdiivka.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD)-affiliated "Redut" private military company (PMC) is reportedly trying to recruit women into combat roles.
• Russian occupation authorities continue to establish programs to forcibly deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 24, 2023

Oct 24, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 24, 2023

Angelica Evans, Nicole Wolkov, Karolina Hird, and Frederick W. Kagan

October 24, 2023, 5:00pm ET

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:00pm ET on October 24. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the October 25 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in eastern and southern Ukraine on October 24 and advanced south of Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast. Geolocated footage published on October 23 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced east of Andriivka (10 km southwest of Bakhmut), and geolocated footage published on October 24 indicates that Ukrainian forces marginally advanced west of Robotyne.[1] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported on October 24 that Ukrainian forces continued offensive actions south of Bakhmut and achieved partial success near Robotyne.[2]

Russia appears to be increasingly supplementing the use of Shahed-131/136 drones with cheaper and lighter domestically produced drone variants during strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure. Russian media speculated on October 23 that Russian forces used new long-range "Italmas" drones and Italmas variants for the first time in Ukraine during a drone attack on Kyiv Oblast.[3] Russian sources noted that Italmas drones are lighter than Shaheds and are harder to detect and shoot down. Russian milbloggers noted that Italmas drones are cheaper than Shaheds, which means that they can be more widely manufactured and used, but that they deliver lighter payloads, which restricts their usefulness in isolation.[4] Russian sources noted, therefore, that Russian forces will likely use the Italmas drones in tandem with Shaheds.[5] ISW previously assessed that Russia is likely trying to expand and diversify its arsenal of drones, missiles, and guided bombs for strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure in advance of the fall-winter season, and increased use of Italmas drones is likely part of the wider munitions diversification effort.[6]

Russian authorities are intensifying mobilization efforts targeting Central Asian migrant communities in Russia. Russian Internal Affairs (MVD) Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev met with the MVD board to discuss “migration problems” and “ethnic crime” and insinuated that migrants commit crimes at a higher rate than natural born Russian citizens.[7] Kolokoltsev defended recent Russian law enforcement mobilization raids on migrant communities and claimed that Russian law enforcement is enforcing standard legal norms.[8] A Russian insider source claimed that the Russian Investigative Committee is conducting investigations into naturalized migrants with Russian citizenship and is reopening previously terminated and canceled criminal cases in order to mobilize migrants to fight in Ukraine.[9] The insider source also claimed that the Russian Investigative Committee will now investigate migrants for committing any offense, even minor ones, and will expand that individual’s investigation to include their friends and family. The insider source claimed that unspecified actors, possibly the MVD or MVD Head Alexander Bastrykin, ordered Russian state media to increase reporting about ethnic crime in Russia, likely to set informational conditions for further mobilization raids on migrant communities.[10] Bastrykin has continually advocated for the targeted mobilization of migrants with Russian citizenship, in line with Russian law enforcement’s recent expansion of its efforts to detain and forcibly register migrants with Russian citizenship for military service.[11]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky highlighted diminishing Russian control over the Black Sea and Ukraine’s temporary grain corridors during a speech at the Crimean Platform summit on October 24. Zelensky stated that Russia attempted to create the illusion that Russian dominance of the Black Sea was insurmountable but said that this illusion is fading as the Russia Black Sea Fleet (BSF) gradually "flees" Crimea and increasingly struggles to operate in the western Black Sea.[12] Zelensky stated that the Russian authorities recently announced the creation of a new naval base for BSF assets in occupied Ochamchire, Abkhazia, far from the reach of long-range Ukrainian missiles and naval drones. ISW has previously reported on the impact of Ukraine’s strike campaign against Crimea and BSF assets and the construction of a permanent Russian naval base in Abkhazia.[13] Zelensky added that Russian forces no longer have a completely reliable logistical route between Crimea and mainland Russia. Zelensky noted that Ukraine has launched new temporary export routes from the Danube port in Odesa Oblast through the Black Sea and the overland “Solidarity Lanes” through Europe.[14]

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in eastern and southern Ukraine on October 24 and advanced south of Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Russia appears to be increasingly supplementing the use of Shahed-131/136 drones with cheaper and lighter domestically produced drone variants during strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure.
• Russian authorities are intensifying mobilization efforts targeting Central Asian migrant communities in Russia.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky highlighted diminishing Russian control over the Black Sea and Ukraine’s temporary grain corridors during a speech at the Crimean Platform summit on October 24.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Avdiivka on October 24 and made confirmed advances northeast of Avdiivka.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD)-affiliated "Redut" private military company (PMC) is reportedly trying to recruit women into combat roles.
• Russian occupation authorities continue to establish programs to forcibly deport Ukrainian children to Russia.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on October 24 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled unsuccessful Russian attacks in the Kupyansk area near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk) and Ivanivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk) and in the Svatove area near Makiivka (20km southwest of Svatove) and Nadiya (15km west of Svatove).[15] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces continued offensive operations in the direction of Kupyansk, and one [16] One Russian [17] Another [18]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on October 24 and marginally advanced. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Synkivka, Ivanivka, and Serhiivka (12km southwest of Svatove), as well as west of Kreminna near Yampolivka and Dibrova.[19] A Russian [20]

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

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut on October 24 and made confirmed advances. Geolocated footage published on October 23 indicates that Ukrainian forces advanced east of Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut) beyond the railway line.[21] A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced slightly east of Andriivka and that Ukrainian forces are near [22] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack and struck Ukrainian forces near [23] A Russian [24] Ukrainian military analyst Colonel Petro Chernyk stated that Ukrainian forces hold positions on all the dominant heights near Bakhmut.[25]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut on October 24 and did not make confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near [26] A Russian [27] Another Russian [28] Footage published on October 23 purportedly shows units of the “Lynx” Spetsnaz Detachment and elements of the 1st “Wolves” Airborne (VDV) Infantry Brigade repelling a Ukrainian attack in an unspecified area along the E40 Slovyansk-Bakhmut highway and elements of the 106th VDV Division operating near Vasyukivka.[29] Footage published on October 24 purportedly shows drone operators of the BARS-13 Battalion (Russian Combat Reserve) operating south of Bakhmut.[30]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Avdiivka on October 24 and made confirmed advances. Geolocated footage published on October 23 and 24 indicates that elements of the 114th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st Donetsk People's Republic [DNR] Army Corps) advanced to part of the waste heap (northeast of Avdiivka) and that Russian forces advanced southwest of Krasnohorivka (5km northeast of Avdiivka) and north of the railway line near Krasnohorivka.[31] Some Russian sources claimed that Russian forces completely captured the waste heap, though geolocated footage only confirms that Russian forces have advanced to the northwestern area of the waste heap.[32] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Avdiivka, Stepove (8km northwest of Avdiivka), Keramik (10km northwest of Avdiivka), Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka), and Tonenke (5km west of Avdiivka).[33] A Russian [34] Chernyk and Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets reported that elements of the 15th, 21st, and 30th Motorized Rifle Brigades (all of the 2nd Combined Arms Army [CAA], Central Military District) are deployed near Avdiivka and that the Russian military may deploy additional elements of the 2nd Combined Arms Army to the Avdiivka direction.[35] Mashovets suggested that the Russian military may also deploy additional Central Military District units to the Avdiivka direction, including elements of the 41st Combined Arms Army.[36] ISW previously observed elements of the 41st CAA operating in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction and has assessed that elements of the 41st CAA may have deployed to the Kherson direction but has not yet observed visual confirmation of the 41st CAA operating near Avdiivka.[37]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully counterattacked near Avdiivka on October 24. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked near Pisky (9km southwest of Avdiivka), [38]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations west and southwest of Donetsk City on October 24 but did not make claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Nevelske (directly west of Donetsk City), Marinka (on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City), Pobieda (5km southwest of Donetsk City), and Novomykhailivka (10km southwest of Donetsk City).[39] Footage published on October 24 purportedly shows elements of the 5th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st DNR Army Corps) operating in the Marinka direction.[40]

Neither Ukrainian nor Russian sources reported Ukrainian attacks southwest of Donetsk City on October 24.

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

Ukrainian forces did not conduct any claimed or confirmed attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on October 24.

Russian forces continued ground attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on October 24 and made a confirmed advance. Geolocated footage published on October 23 indicates that Russian forces advanced north of [41] A Russian [42] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) and [43]  A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces attacked near Novodonetske (11km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) and Novomayorske (18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) on October 23.[44] A Russian [45]

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 24 and made a confirmed advance. Geolocated footage published on October 24 indicates that Ukrainian forces marginally advanced west of Robotyne.[46] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified partial success south of Robotyne.[47] A prominent Russian [48] Another Russian source noted that Ukrainian forces have increased the intensity of their attacks towards both Kopani and Novoprokopivka but claimed that Ukrainian forces have not advanced in the area.[49] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces launched several unsuccessful mechanized assaults near Robotyne and Novoprokopivka.[50] A Russian [51]

Russian forces counterattacked in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 24 but did not make confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks southeast of Mala Tokmachka (9km southeast of Orikhiv).[52] A Russian [53] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces counterattacked northwest of [54] Russian milbloggers published footage on October 24 claiming to show elements of the 71st Motorized Rifle Regiment (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) operating near Verbove.[55]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces [56] Another Russian [57] The milblogger claimed that a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group landed near [58] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces have transferred reserves to the islands in the Dnipro River delta and are attempting to break through to Poyma (10k southeast of Kherson City and 4km from the Dnipro River) and Pishchanivka (14km east of Kherson City and 3km from the Dnipro River).[59] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces continue transporting small groups of personnel across the Dnipro River in boats at various points.[60] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attempted to capture positions on the east bank of the Dnipro River.[61]

Russian sources, including the Russian MoD, claimed that Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF) assets repelled an attack by Ukrainian underwater sabotage forces and naval drones on Sevastopol on the night of October 23-24.[62]

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

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD)-affiliated "Redut" private military company (PMC) is reportedly trying to recruit women into combat roles. An investigation by Russian opposition outlet Vazhnye Istorii found on October 23 that Redut's "Borz" Battalion began to advertise recruitment for women for combat roles such as snipers and drone operators.[63] Vazhnye Istorii noted that the majority of women currently serving in the Russian armed forces are operating in combat support roles, including predominantly as medics and cooks, so the appearance of more women in combat roles that are traditionally held by men is noteworthy.[64] Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced in March 2023 that around 1,100 female personnel were serving the combat zone in Ukraine, and it appears that the Russian MoD has intensified recruitment efforts targeting women in recent months.[65]

Russian military commanders are trying to guard against disobedience amongst low-quality Russian troops through threats of violence and detention. Vazhnye Istorii and the independent investigative outlet Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) reported on October 24 that Russian commanders at training grounds in Russia have dug "pits" for the detention of soldiers who refuse to perform training tasks or to go fight in Ukraine.[66] The investigation examined satellite imagery that reportedly shows such pits near the parade grounds at the Prudboy training ground in Volgograd Oblast and the Totsky training ground in Orenburg Oblast.[67] Vazhnye Istorii reported that commanders will throw soldiers in the pits and detain them there for extended periods of time for disobedience or refusal to fight in Ukraine, particularly as Russia mobilizes greater numbers of low-quality and poorly-disciplined convict recruits.[68] Russian opposition outlet ASTRA relatedly reported on October 24 that Russian commanders have placed at least 173 soldiers in illegal detention areas throughout Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts for refusing to participate in costly infantry assaults with little to no preparation and without proper equipment.[69] ASTRA related the story of one soldier who refused to participate in attacks on Makiivka, Luhansk Oblast and whom Russian commanders detained in a basement in Zaitseve, Luhansk Oblast.[70] ASTRA reported that all the men detained in Zaitseve will soon be forced into Russian operations near Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast, as punishment.[71]

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

Russian occupation authorities continue to establish programs to forcibly deport Ukrainian children to Russia. Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo reported that 1,400 children from occupied Kherson Oblast will participate in the Russian Federal Agency for Youth Affairs ([72]

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) continues to consolidate its influence in occupied Ukraine. Crimean occupation head Sergei Aksyonov met with Metropolitan Kirill (Leonid Pokrovsky) of Stavropol and Nevinnomyssk and Chairman of the ROC Synodal Department for Cooperation with the Russian Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Agencies on October 24.[73] Aksyonov claimed that he and Metropolitan Kirill discussed support for the Russian military and strengthening cooperation between the Crimean occupation administration and the ROC.[74] ISW has previously observed reports that ROC representatives collect information on civilians to provide to Russian special services and has long assessed that the ROC is involved in persecution against religious communities in occupied Ukraine.[75]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Prominent Russian cultural and political figures amplified several long-standing lines of Kremlin rhetoric during a meeting of the "All-Russian Ideological Forum of the World Russian People's Council on October 23-24. Russian businessman and Tsargrad outlet board member Konstantin Malofeev claimed that the event was dedicated to the "Holy War" that Russia is "forced to wage against the West."[76] Forum participants discussed Russian ideology, the concept of "the Russian world," the ideologies of Russian foreign policy, and "the ideological foundations of demographic and family policy," particularly emphasizing the importance of military-patriotic education of Russian youth.[77] The forum particularly emphasized the Kremlin's ideological justifications for Russia's war in Ukraine and amplified narratives that pose Ukraine and the collective West as antithetical to Russian sovereignty and patriotism.[78]

Russia continues efforts to institute Kremlin-approved revisionist history in the Russian school system. Russian outlet RBC reported on October 23 that the Russian Ministry of Education sent the Congress of the Karachay People (from the [79]

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

The Belarusian Ministry of Defense announced on October 24 that the Belarusian military command staff, including Belarusian Defense Minister Lieutenant General Viktor Khrenin, met to plan the training and organization of Belarusian forces.[80]

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

5. Iran Update, October 24, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-october-24-2023

Key Takeaways:

1. Hamas and its allies are preparing the information environment to blame Israel for the possible deaths of hostages in the Gaza Strip, especially if Hamas begins killing hostages. Palestinian militias continued attacks at their usual rate from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
2. Clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces have decreased significantly in the West Bank. Hamas has repeatedly tried to incite violence against Israel in the West Bank since the war began.
3. Iranian-backed militants, including Lebanese Hezbollah (LH), conducted six attacks as part of an ongoing attack campaign targeting IDF radar and sensor sites and military targets. These attacks are consistent with Western and Israeli reports that LH is trying to “keep Israeli forces busy.”
4. The Islamic Resistance of Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—has claimed daily attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria since October 18. These attacks are part of the Iranian-led effort to deter the United States from providing meaningful support to Israel.
5. Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Alwiya Waad al Haq (the Righteous Promise Brigades) threatened to attack US forces in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
6. Iran is setting informational conditions to blame the United States and Israel for any further escalation of the war and deflect any responsibility from itself. This narrative that Iran is pushing ignores the fact that Iran has already facilitated the expansion of this war to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen by directing its proxy and partner militias in these countries to attack US and Israeli targets.

IRAN UPDATE, OCTOBER 24, 2023

Oct 24, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, October 24, 2023

Brian Carter, Peter Mills, Andie Parry, Amin Soltani, Annika Ganzeveld, Johanna Moore, and Nicholas Carl

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments and in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Key Takeaways:

1. Hamas and its allies are preparing the information environment to blame Israel for the possible deaths of hostages in the Gaza Strip, especially if Hamas begins killing hostages. Palestinian militias continued attacks at their usual rate from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
2. Clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces have decreased significantly in the West Bank. Hamas has repeatedly tried to incite violence against Israel in the West Bank since the war began.
3. Iranian-backed militants, including Lebanese Hezbollah (LH), conducted six attacks as part of an ongoing attack campaign targeting IDF radar and sensor sites and military targets. These attacks are consistent with Western and Israeli reports that LH is trying to “keep Israeli forces busy.”
4. The Islamic Resistance of Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—has claimed daily attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria since October 18. These attacks are part of the Iranian-led effort to deter the United States from providing meaningful support to Israel.
5. Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Alwiya Waad al Haq (the Righteous Promise Brigades) threatened to attack US forces in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
6. Iran is setting informational conditions to blame the United States and Israel for any further escalation of the war and deflect any responsibility from itself. This narrative that Iran is pushing ignores the fact that Iran has already facilitated the expansion of this war to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen by directing its proxy and partner militias in these countries to attack US and Israeli targets.

Gaza Strip

Hamas and its allies are preparing the information environment to blame Israel for the possible deaths of hostages in the Gaza Strip, especially if Hamas begins killing hostages. Hamas military spokesperson Abu Ubaida said on October 9 that Hamas would kill hostages in response to Israeli airstrikes, indicating Hamas’ willingness to do so for perceived military and/or political gains.[1] Tasnim News Agency—an Iranian outlet affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—reported on October 22 that Israel’s “clandestine goal” is to “cause the killing of captive Israelis,” according to “informed sources.[2] Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) spokesperson Abu Hamza said on October 24 that Israel does not “pay attention” to the lives of hostages.[3]

Hamas and allied Palestinian militias took hostages during the October 7 attack likely to discourage an Israeli ground operation into the Gaza Strip and/or to secure concessions of some kind. Israeli actions and rhetoric suggest that Hamas and allied militias will fail to generate those desired effects, however. Israel is continuing to prepare for a possible ground operation into the Gaza Strip, and the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel-Hamas hostage negotiations collapsed after Hamas demanded that Israel allow fuel deliveries into the Gaza Strip.[4] The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said that fuel will not enter the strip because Hamas uses fuel for its military infrastructure.[5] Israeli sources said that Israel estimates that Hamas and allied militias are low on fuel and will need to leave their tunnel networks underneath the Gaza Strip once their fuel is depleted.[6]

Recorded reports of rocket attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Palestinian militias continued attacks at their usual rate from the Gaza Strip into Israel on October 24. The al Qassem Brigades—Hamas’ militant wing—claimed responsibility for 11 indirect fire attacks.[7] Saraya al Quds—the militant wing of PIJ—claimed responsibility for six mortar and rocket attacks.[8] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade—the militant wing of Fatah—claimed responsibility for two rocket attacks.[9] The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades—the militant wing of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—claimed responsibility for three mortar attacks.[10] Axis of Resistance-affiliated media and IDF outlets reported two other unclaimed rocket attacks.[11] This rate of attacks is consistent with the rate that CTP-ISW has observed in recent days.

CTP-ISW[12] The al Qassem Brigades claimed that its forces clashed with the IDF near Zikim after the attempted infiltration.[13] Other Palestinian sources said that fifteen Hamas fighters infiltrated into the Zikim naval base, where they clashed with the IDF.[14] The IDF wounded six Hamas fighters, according to Palestinian media.[15]

Recorded reports of rocket attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

West Bank

Clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces have decreased significantly in the West Bank on October 24. CTP-ISW[16] [17] Hamas has repeatedly tried to incite violence against Israel in the West Bank since the war began.[18]

• The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade claimed responsibility for an ambush targeting the IDF in Burqa, Nablus.[19] Militants lured the IDF before throwing an IED and opening fire at them. Israeli media reported that one IDF soldier was wounded in the fighting.[20]
• The Jabaa Battalion—a component of PIJ’s al Quds Brigades—claimed responsibility for shooting down an Israeli drone in Jaba, Jerusalem. LH-controlled al Manar reported that Jabaa Battalion militants shot down the drone while engaging IDF soldiers in small arms combat.[21]
• The Nablus Brigade—a unit of PIJ’s al Quds Brigades—reported that it attacked at least one IDF patrol in Nablus.[22]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Iranian-backed militants, including Lebanese Hezbollah (LH), conducted six attacks as part of an ongoing attack campaign targeting IDF radar and sensor sites and military targets.[23] LH claimed two anti-tank guided munition (ATGM) attacks on IDF positions along the northern Israeli border.[24] LH also released a compilation video of previous attacks on IDF radar and sensor sites.[25] LH has continued to suffer casualties in the fighting around the border as the IDF targets ATGM squads preparing to fire into Israel.[26]  An LH-affiliated journalist claimed that the group intends to destroy the IDF’s ”espionage capacity” and limit all mechanical and personnel movement along the border through these attacks.[27] These attacks are consistent with Western and Israeli reports that LH is trying to “keep Israeli forces busy.”[28] This campaign also creates opportunities for further LH attacks into Israel and increases the risk of further escalation, as CTP-ISW previously noted.[29]

Unidentified militants in southwestern Syria launched two rockets into the Golan Heights on October 24.[30] CTP-ISW has recorded five attacks into the Golan Heights from Syria since the war began.[31] This most recent attack is inconsistent with the attack pattern that CTP-ISW has observed during the war so far. Unidentified militants have only fired into the Golan Heights from Syria after Israeli airstrikes on Syrian airports up until this point.[32] The IDF has conducted five airstrikes on the Damascus and Aleppo international airports since October 7 to disrupt possible Iranian efforts to transfer military equipment and personnel to Syria.[33]

LH and Lebanese government officials have opposing messages about the possibility of the war expanding to Lebanon. The Lebanese prime minister and Lebanese army commander visited southern Lebanon on October 24 to discuss de-escalating and restoring stability with United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFL) leaders.[34] The Lebanese Army commander stated the Lebanese army is following developments and maintaining readiness at the southern border, while the Lebanese prime minister called Lebanon a peace-loving country. The Lebanese prime minister and the army commander do not control LH forces in southern Lebanon and cannot meaningfully enforce de-escalation, however. LH Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem warned on October 24 that LH is at the heart of the battle to defend the Gaza Strip and that the group’s “hand is on the trigger.”[35]

Iran and Axis of Resistance

The Islamic Resistance of Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—has claimed daily attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria since October 18. The group has claimed 15 drone and rocket attacks in this time. The group continues to expand the location of its attacks against US forces in Syria. These attacks are part of the Iranian-led effort to deter the United States from providing meaningful support to Israel, as CTP-ISW previously assessed.[36]

• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed that it used drones to attack US forces at al Omar and al Shaddadi in eastern and northeastern Syria respectively on October 23.[37] The group claimed the drones “hit their target”. The group has not previously claimed attacks on US forces in al Omar and al Shaddadi.
• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed that it fired two rockets at US forces in Ain al Asad airbase in Iraq on October 24.[38] The group released a video showing the rocket launch but did not include footage of any impact.[39] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed five attacks on US forces at Ain al Asad airbase since October 18. The leader of the Iranian-backed militia Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba condemned the Iraqi government over its refusal to expel US forces from Iraq on October 24.[40] Nujaba previously threatened to attack US forces in Iraq in May 2023.[41] London-based, Qatar-funded al Araby al Jadeed reported that Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani met with the heads of Iranian-backed proxies in Iraq in an effort to [42] Nujaba and another Iranian-backed Iraqi militia, Kataib Hezbollah, refused to meet with Sudani and rejected calls for de-escalation.[43]

Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Alwiya Waad al Haq (the Righteous Promise Brigades) threatened to attack US forces in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates on October 24.[44] Alwiya Waad al Haq previously claimed drone attacks targeting the Saudi royal palace in January 2021 and ”vital facilities” in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates in February 2022.[45] CTP-ISW previously assessed that this group was likely a front for Kataib Hezbollah.[46] Pro-Iran Telegram channels affiliated with Iraqi proxy groups echoed the group’s threat to attack US forces in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.[47] This threat and its amplification in pro-Iran channels suggest that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias are willing to escalate regionally beyond Iraq and Syria.

Iran is setting informational conditions to blame the United States and Israel for any further escalation of the war and deflect any responsibility from itself. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s official website accused Israel of trying to ignite “a direct war against Iran with US support.”[48] Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani stated on October 24 that Iran is seeking to preserve regional “stability and security” despite “war-mongering” from the United States and its allies.[49] IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency argued on October 24 that Axis of Resistance attacks on American bases in Iraq and Syria are only meant to deter further American involvement in the Israel-Hamas war.[50] Nine unspecified Iranian officials told the Qatari-owned, London-based al Araby al Jadeed that Iran only supports “limited” and “small-scale” militia attacks on Israel and US positions in the region but would not seek to open a ”major new front in the war” on October 24.[51] Iran’s Ambassador to Russia Kazem Jalali lastly stated that the responsibility for ”any escalation” of the conflict would fall on the United States and Israel during an interview with Russian state media on October 24.

This information operation that the Iranian regime is conducting is meant to frame the United States and Israel as the antagonists in the war and especially in the event that it escalates further. This information operation also frames the regime as responsible and non-escalatory to its population. This narrative that Iran is pushing ignores the fact that Iran has already facilitated the expansion of this war to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen by directing its proxy and partner militias in these countries to attack US and Israeli targets.

Iranian state media is seizing on Israeli and Western reports of divisions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and IDF generals and between Israel and the United States to revive pre-war narratives about Netanyahu’s and Israel’s isolation and weakness. State-run outlet IRNA recirculated Israeli reporting on October 23 about “disagreements” between Netanyahu and the IDF and about Israel’s “inability to decide” on a ground operation into the Gaza Strip.[52] [53] Iranian officials and media repeatedly claimed throughout 2023 that Israel was at its “weakest point” due to protests over Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms and internal political fissures.[54] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei stated in April 2023, for example, that Israel was in its worst position and “in a hurry” to collapse.[55]

IRNA separately recirculated Israeli and American reporting on October 24 that some US officials doubt the IDF’s readiness to conduct a ground operation into the Gaza Strip.[56] The regime’s emphasis on disharmony between Israel and the United States contrasts with its emphasis on Muslim unity against Israel. Tehran has historically—and particularly since the start of the war on October 7—sought to rally Muslim countries against Israel and frame itself as a champion of the Palestinian cause, as CTP-ISW previously reported.[57]

Iranian media exaggerated the scope and losses of the IDF’s October 22 raid on Khan Younis as part of its ongoing efforts to deter an Israeli ground operation into the Gaza Strip. Israel conducted a limited raid on Khan Younis to gather information about Israeli hostages and to prepare for a ground operation into the Gaza Strip.[58] The IDF announced that one Israeli soldier was killed during the raid but did not acknowledge Hamas’ claim that it had destroyed Israeli military equipment.[59] State-controlled, English-language Press TV claimed on October 23 that Hamas forced 20 Israeli tanks to retreat during the clashes at Khan Younis.[60] Press TV also claimed that Israeli forces were “caught in an ambush” near Rafah on October 22, which forced them to abandon 10 tanks. IRGC Deputy Commander Brigadier General Ali Fadavi similarly referred to the Khan Younis raid when warning Israel on October 23 that a ground operation into the Gaza Strip would precipitate a “regrettable answer from” the Axis of Resistance. Iranian media and officials’ framing of the Khan Younis raid as a defeat for Israel is consistent with previous Iranian rhetoric that the IDF will face “significant challenges” if it launches a ground operation.[61]

6. Jamie Dimon: 'The most serious thing facing mankind is nuclear proliferation'

Although not discussed here this is why

It seems that most in the national security community and the broader international community minimize the real threats of

Remember that

Excerpts:

The CTBT, which was opened for signatures in 1996, prohibits "any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion" anywhere in the world. It was signed by 187 nations and ratified by 178, but cannot officially come into force until 44 specific countries ratify it, including China, the United States, North Korea, India, Israel and Iran. Still, no country has carried out nuclear testing since the CTBT opened for signatures, except North Korea.

Jamie Dimon: 'The most serious thing facing mankind is nuclear proliferation'

KEY POINTS

• “The risk of a nuclear weapon being used is currently higher than at any time since the depths of the Cold War,” the United Nations wrote in a statement this year.
• 
  
• Earlier in October, the JPMorgan CEO warned that “this may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades.”
• 
  

CNBC · by Natasha Turak · October 24, 2023

In this article

Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co speaks on September 25,2019 in New York, US.

Misha Friedman | Getty Images News | Getty Images

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is asked routinely where he sees the greatest threats to the global economy — and to mankind in general. Speaking on a panel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the veteran financier stressed the gravity of the spread of nuclear weapons, which he placed ahead of climate change and other widely-referenced threats.

"I hear people talking about ESG all the time," Dimon said Tuesday, referring to the environmental, social and governance concerns and mandates for governments and companies.

"I just would put on your table the most serious thing facing mankind is nuclear proliferation. If we're not sitting here 100 years from now, it will be nuclear proliferation. It's not our climate."

International bodies and proliferation experts warn that the danger of nuclear weapons use is higher than it's been in decades, amid wars involving nuclear powers like Russia and the weakening of adherence to international nuclear treaties.

"The risk of a nuclear weapon being used is currently higher than at any time since the depths of the Cold War," the United Nations wrote in a statement in March 2023.

It said that the Russia-Ukraine war represents "the most acute example of that risk," and that "the absence of dialogue and the erosion of the disarmament and arms control architecture, combined with dangerous rhetoric and veiled threats, are key drivers of this potentially existential risk."

Russia meanwhile is revoking its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace calls "one of the most consequential international agreements for global security."

The CTBT, which was opened for signatures in 1996, prohibits "any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion" anywhere in the world. It was signed by 187 nations and ratified by 178, but cannot officially come into force until 44 specific countries ratify it, including China, the United States, North Korea, India, Israel and Iran. Still, no country has carried out nuclear testing since the CTBT opened for signatures, except North Korea.

Iran, meanwhile, has for the past few years ramped up its uranium enrichment to what the International Atomic Energy Agency says is an "alarming" level, and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has vowed to develop nuclear weapons for his country if Iran does, sparking fears of a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race.

Earlier in October, Dimon said in a statement that came with JPMorgan's earnings release that "this may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades."

In addition to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, Dimon cited — as he did again in Riyadh — the surging national debt and "the largest peacetime fiscal deficits ever."

"I've been generally an optimist," Dimon said on the panel, but added: "I think you'd be foolish not to look at some of these things taking place today in Ukraine, the Middle East – obviously my heart goes out for Ukraine, but also it's affecting oil, food, food prices, gas prices, migration, potential starvation – it's probably the most serious thing we've faced."

watch now

VIDEO2:4902:49

Some of Wall Street's biggest leaders gather in Saudi Arabia

Capital Connection

CNBC · by Natasha Turak · October 24, 2023

7. Hamas is Using North Korean Weapons Against Israel

Dr. Bruce Bechtol is one of the world's foremost experts tracking north Korean global proliferation activities. His forthcoming book (next summer I think) which he is co-authoring with an Iran expert will expose even more proliferation activities and collaboration between north Korea and Iran than his 2018 book.

Consider this article along with Jamie Dimon's recent statement on the greatest global threat is nuclear proliferation. (https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/24/jamie-dimon-nuclear-proliferation-is-most-serious-thing-facing-mankind.html )

Conclusion:

What does all of this mean? First, it means North Korea will sell anything to anybody, including to terrorist groups. Second, it means the governments of Israel and the U.S. must consider North Korea’s military proliferation as an existential national security threat. More proactive means of thwarting it must begin immediately. Third, it means that North Korea’s strong ties to Iran extend to the proxy state and non-state actors Iran supports. Thus, the road to destroying North Korea’s illicit arms networks in the Middle East runs through Iran.

Hamas is Using North Korean Weapons Against Israel

What capabilities has North Korea actually contributed to Hamas? According to a source within the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, “some of the multiple rocket launchers found near the Israel border that Hamas militants reportedly used had ‘Bang-122’ written in Korean.”

19fortyfive.com · by Bruce E. Bechtol Jr. · October 24, 2023

In 2021, I wrote a piece in which I outlined reported arms deals between North Korea and Hamas. These transfers helped Hamas increase its stockpile of rockets and upgrade its technology and other military capabilities. At the time, Hamas was launching thousands of rockets into Israel, but most of these were destroyed by the Iron Dome system, and the Israeli people largely considered themselves safe from attack.

Fast forward to October of 2023 and the threat perception has changed. Hamas’ actions are so horrifying that most Israelis agree the group needs to be completely destroyed. The Oct. 7 terrorist attacks targeting civilian communities in Israel were carried out with an extreme level of brutality. Hamas militants were seen using weaponry from several sources, but shockingly to some, an analysis of weapons seen in footage of the attacks shows several systems with North Korean origins.

North Korea-Gaza Go-Betweens

In 2009, arms shipments consisting largely of rockets and rocket-propelled grenades were interdicted in Thailand and the United Arab Emirates. The Israeli government at the time stated that these shipments were probably bound for Hamas and Hezbollah. The go-between was almost certainly Iran. Since interdicted shipments are often only the smallest portion of what is being sent, the find was quite disturbing.

According to reporting by The Telegraph in July of 2014, North Korea had entered into a deal with Hamas to sell the terrorist organization rockets and communications gear. The deal was reportedly worth several hundred thousand dollars, so it likely involved the sale of thousands of North Korean rockets to Hamas. It was reportedly brokered through a Lebanese front company with ties to Hamas, located in Beirut. In addition, by the time the article was published, a downpayment had already been made, making it likely that rockets and communications gear were shipped in late 2014.

In 2018, Palestinian Fadi al-Batsh, a reported Hamas operative, was assassinated in Malaysia. a country that North Korea used to operate many of its front companies for arms deals. Those deals spanned the globe but focused especially on the Middle East and Africa. According to press reporting, intelligence officials from the West and the Middle East had evidence that al-Batsh was part of negotiations with the North Koreans for arms deals being run out of Malaysia, including for communications components used in rocket guidance systems. According to Egyptian officials, a shipment seized in 2018 contained North Korean communications components used for guided munitions, and it was destined for Gaza.

How North Korea Nurtured Hamas’ Capabilities

What capabilities has North Korea actually contributed to Hamas? According to a source within the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, “some of the multiple rocket launchers found near the Israel border that Hamas militants reportedly used had ‘Bang-122’ written in Korean.” The source elaborated, “Lately, we have repeatedly detected North Korea exporting various weapons to Middle East countries and militant organizations, including the 122-millimeter multiple rocket launchers found along the border near Israel. We believe these weapons were used by Hamas or an organization that supports Hamas.”

The F-7 North Korea-made rocket-propelled grenade was also photographed in possession of the Hamas fighters attacking Israel on Oct. 7. Further, according to the Associated Press and confirmed by numerous photos, “Hamas propaganda videos and photos previously have shown its fighters with North Korea’s Bulsae guided anti-tank missile.” The Bulsae is a laser-guided anti-tank missile that could be effective against Israeli armor as it moves through Gaza.

Finally, The Telegraph reported in 2014 that “Israeli military commanders supervising operations against Gaza believe North Korean experts have given Hamas advice on building the extensive network of tunnels in Gaza that has enabled fighters to move weapons without detection by Israeli drones, which maintain a constant monitoring operation over Gaza.”

These tunnels continue to be a major challenge to the IDF and will complicate a ground campaign in Gaza.

What does all of this mean? First, it means North Korea will sell anything to anybody, including to terrorist groups. Second, it means the governments of Israel and the U.S. must consider North Korea’s military proliferation as an existential national security threat. More proactive means of thwarting it must begin immediately. Third, it means that North Korea’s strong ties to Iran extend to the proxy state and non-state actors Iran supports. Thus, the road to destroying North Korea’s illicit arms networks in the Middle East runs through Iran.

Dr. Bruce E. Bechtol Jr. is a professor of Political Science at Angelo State University. He is also the president of the International Council on Korean Studies and a fellow at the Institute for Corean American Studies. The author of five books dealing with North Korea, his latest work is entitled North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa.

In this article:

Written By Bruce E. Bechtol Jr.

Bruce E. Bechtol, Jr. (Ph.D. Union Institute), is an award-winning professor of political science at Angelo State University and a retired Marine. He was formerly on the faculty at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College (2005–2010) and the Air Command and Staff College (2003–2005).

19fortyfive.com · by Bruce E. Bechtol Jr. · October 24, 2023

8. What Happens if Israel Strikes Iran?

Excerpts:

Iran is primed for regime change, but that change cannot be enforced down the barrel of a gun. It will be an indigenous movement led by Iranians for Iranians. There will be little to no role for Iranians outside the country. If Israel feels forced to act by Iran’s growing aggression, it should remember that those who suffer the most from the Islamic Republic’s terror infrastructure are Iranians themselves.

No Iranian wants to be bombed, but if military action is inevitable, it should not only punish the regime, but also remove impediments to the empowerment of ordinary Iranians.

What Happens if Israel Strikes Iran?

19fortyfive.com · by Michael Rubin · October 24, 2023

Nir Barkat, Israel’s minister of economy and industry, did not mince words.

“The Ayatollahs in Iran are not going to sleep good at night,” Barkat declared.

“We are going to make sure they pay a heavy price if, God forbid, they open the northern front” by having Hezbollah attack Israel,

The threat of an Israeli strike on Iran is real.

While Qatar finances Hamas and Turkey provides it with diplomatic support, its command-and-control lies with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Iranian budget has included open-line items for support to Palestinian movements. The Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force conducts training for Palestinians in Iran and Lebanon. IRGC commanders help with training and logistics, even if Palestinians run operations. This continuous Iranian support for Palestinian terror groups has long been the basis for the U.S. State Department’s designation of Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Top Biden administration officials may argue they have seen no smoking gun to implicate Iranian involvement in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. But they ignore how Iran’s longstanding support facilitates these operations while giving the Islamic Republic plausible deniability.

If Israel were ever able to strike militarily in Iran, the Iranian regime’s major response would come via Hezbollah, which has accumulated more than 100,000 rockets and missiles, even under the watchful eye of the United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon. Indeed, when the UN secretary-general complains about Israeli actions in Gaza, he might consider how the UN’s false promises after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war vaporized the UN’s credibility in Israel. If Hezbollah chooses to launch missiles in solidarity with Hamas, Israeli strategists will conclude that, since Israeli civilians have already suffered retaliation even without a strike on Iran’s nuclear program, there remains no downside to striking at Iran directly.

An Israeli attack on Iran would not be easy. Strikes on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 and a Syrian plutonium plant near Deir ez-Zor in 2007 affected single targets, but the Iranian government has widely dispersed its nuclear program. Iran is also farther away from Israel, and it is four times the size of Iraq. Even if Israeli jets entered Iranian airspace with stealth, they would lose the element of surprise once they dropped their ordnance. Because Israeli pilots are not suicidal, this means they would first need to strike at Iranian airfields, command-and-control centers, and anti-aircraft batteries. All told, the Israeli Air Force would need to plan on at least 1,500 sorties.

How Would Iranians React?

I have always opposed bombing Iran. Such a campaign would delay rather than eliminate the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Even this gain would come at tremendous cost, and because Iranians are nationalistic, any overt military action by the United States or Israel against Iran would allow the Iranian regime to rally ordinary Iranians around the flag. Indeed, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolutionary regime was beginning to crumble when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded with the aim to decapitate the Islamic Republic and seize the oil-rich, ethnic-Arab province of Khuzestan. Saddam’s actions preserved the regime and gave Khomeini and the nascent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps time to consolidate.

Would Iranians react to an Israeli strike any differently?

Perhaps. Saddam Hussein sought to dismantle Iran. He wanted to play the ethnic separatist card, be it with regard to Arabs in Khuzestan or by amplifying the Azeri separatism expressed in the so-called South Azerbaijan movement. This was a gift to the ayatollahs. The first rule when confronting a nationalist people who love their country is to limit attacks to the regime, never striking at the legitimacy of the country itself.

While the Iranian regime promotes the myth that the 1953 countercoup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was an assault on democracy, they ignore key factors. First, the clergy aligned with the shah against Mosaddegh’s Tudeh Party. Further, constitutionally Mosaddegh was in the wrong. Curiously, they ignore in their revisionism the World War II-era occupation of Western Iran by the United States and the United Kingdom. The Soviet Union was a different story, however. Moscow later refused to withdraw from Iranian Azerbaijan, and decades later, that slight to sovereignty continues to fuel popular distrust toward Russia.

The schism between the regime and the Iranian people today is at its greatest since the first days of the Revolution, when many Iranians fled for their lives from the arbitrary purges and summary executions that marked the regime’s early years. The regime may have survived the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, but its claim to legitimacy perished.

Perilous Options

Israel, meanwhile, faces a volatile situation. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is 84 years old, partially paralyzed, and a cancer survivor. He has dedicated his life to the eradication of the Jewish state, but Israel continues to thrive. Psychologically, he may want to see Israel’s destruction in the limited time he has left. While some analysts argue he would never risk the regime itself for this aim, he is surrounded by sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear, so he might believe the clerical grip on the country is stronger than it actually is.

The only thing that separates the Iranian people from a better future once Khamenei goes is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They are not ideologically homogeneous, but many are true believers, having entered the Guard Corps bubble in myriad children’s programs that begin at age eight. Others will side with the IRGC in any transition for greed, as the IRGC’s economic wing is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Should Israel strike at Iran openly, perhaps targeting Khamenei and senior IRGC leaders, it might mitigate nationalist reaction in four ways.

First, it should pamphlet and broadcast extensively. It must communicate that Israel considers Iranians natural friends. The only targets are senior regime officials with Iranian and Israeli blood on their hands. It should broadcast that IRGC members who no longer embrace an illegitimate regime should desert immediately.

Second, it should target only IRGC sites away from civilian centers such as universities, unless IRGC or paramilitary Basij facilities in such locations can be hit precisely.

Third, it should also target the walls and guard towers of symbols of repression like Evin Prison.

Fourth, it should make clear there will be no occupation, and that Iran’s sovereignty is sacrosanct.

Iran is primed for regime change, but that change cannot be enforced down the barrel of a gun. It will be an indigenous movement led by Iranians for Iranians. There will be little to no role for Iranians outside the country. If Israel feels forced to act by Iran’s growing aggression, it should remember that those who suffer the most from the Islamic Republic’s terror infrastructure are Iranians themselves.

No Iranian wants to be bombed, but if military action is inevitable, it should not only punish the regime, but also remove impediments to the empowerment of ordinary Iranians.

Now a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, Dr. Michael Rubin is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics, including “Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?” (AEI Press, 2019); “Kurdistan Rising” (AEI Press, 2016); “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter Books, 2014); and “Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos” (Palgrave, 2005).

19fortyfive.com · by Michael Rubin · October 24, 2023

9. M39 Missile: Made In the USA, Smashing Putin Hard in Ukraine War

Imagine what our Army will do with this system in a full combined arms and joint operation (with the air power Ukraine does not have) in large scale combat operations (LSCO). It will wreak havoc on our enemies.

But I do hope we can learn from how Russia will try to counter this system. Our counter to their counter must be multiple redundant mutual supporting and reinforcing systems and capabilities (air, land, and sea) combined with EW and cyber and space operations, again multi-domain operations.

Excerpt:

All of this simply goes to show that no weapons system is invincible or infallible. Time will tell how long it will take Putin’s troops to figure out how to negate or mitigate the M39 … and how many more grievous losses they’ll incur in terms of manpower and materiel alike before they finally figure it out.

M39 Missile: Made In the USA, Smashing Putin Hard in Ukraine War

19fortyfive.com · by Christian Orr · October 24, 2023

In the alphanumeric naming conventions for weapons systems, the label “M1” has been applied to more killer gizmos than you can shake a stick at, from the M1 Garand battle rifle to the M1 .30 Carbine to the M1 Thompson submachine gun (aka the “Tommy Gun”) to the M1 Abrams main battle tank.

However, one should not overlook another letter and number combo that’s also been applied to its fair share of combat-proven weapons: M39. As in the Smith & Wesson Model 39, the first traditional double-action (TDA) semiauto pistol to be adopted by a domestic U.S. law enforcement agency – that being Illinois State Police in 1967 – which has been used to terminate the criminal careers of quite a few dangerous felons. Then there’s the M39 autocannon, which was used on a goodly number of U.S. Air Force fighter aircraft from the early 1950s through the 1980s and immortalized in the song “F-5E” by Vietnam War fighter pilot turned professional musician Dick Jonas (Lt. Col, USAF, Ret.).

Now, thanks to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, there’s one more addition to the list of killing machines bearing the M39 designation: the M39 missile.

The Basics

The news on the M39 missile’s lethal handiwork comes to us courtesy of Forbes’ staff writer David Axe: “I write about ships, planes, tanks, drones, missiles, and satellites” quoth his byline – in an October 22, 2023 article titled “Ukraine’s American-Made M39 Missiles May Have Wrecked 21 Russian Helicopters In A Single Operation.” To wit:

“The damage from Ukraine’s first-ever strike with American-supplied M39 missiles, targeting a pair of helicopter bases in Russian-occupied southern and eastern Ukraine, likely resulted in greater damage than even the Ukrainian defense ministry initially claimed. *Far* greater. The Ukrainians claimed the Oct. 17 attack, which reportedly saw three of the M39s strike airfields outside Berdyansk in southern Ukraine as well as in Luhansk Oblast in the east, destroyed nine Russian helicopters. In fact, the M39 raid put out of action 21 helicopters, according to an analysis of commercial satellite imagery by GeoConfirmed, an open-source intelligence practitioner on the social-media site formerly known as Twitter. ‘This is probably the biggest blow to the Russian air force since the beginning of the war,’ GeoConfirmed commented.”

Mr. Axe doesn’t specify in the above-quoted article which helicopter types were destroyed, but in article he penned five days prior, he mentions the Kamov Ka-52 (NATO reporting names “Alligator” and “Hokum-B”) and the infamous Mil Mi-24 (NATO reporting name “Hind”); moviegoers will recognize the latter gunship from films such as “Charlie Wilson’s War” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” whilst international thriller bookworms will remember it from Ken Follett’s bestselling novel “Lie Down With Lions.”

M39 Missile History and Specifications

Many of our readers might better recognize the M39 by its more publicized moniker: ATACMS, i.e., the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems. Initially designed in 1986 by the now defunct Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) conglomerate – the same firm which produced the A-7 Corsair II attack aircraft – and entered into official operational service in 1991, the system is now manufactured by Lockheed Martin, whose official info page describes it as “a conventional surface-to-surface artillery weapon system capable of striking targets well beyond the range of existing Army cannons, rockets and other missiles. ATACMS missiles are fired from the HIMARS and MLRS M270 platforms.”

Specifications include a weight of 3,690 pounds, a length of 13 feet, a diameter of 24 inches, a wingspan of 55 inches, a max speed in excess of Mach 3, a range of 103 miles, a solid rocket motor, and a warhead wielding 950 submunitions.

Where to From Here?

Among other things, the Russo-Ukraine War (or “special military operation” as Vladimir Putin continues to insist on euphemistically terming it) has been an ongoing deadly game of back-and-forth technological one-upmanship. For instance, early in the war, Ukraine used the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones to devastating effect against Russian armor, until the Russians figured out a way to mitigate these UAVs, and now you hardly hear about them. Fast-forward to the first half of the current year, and Ukraine was making effective use of the Anglo-French-made Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missile (ALCM), but, assuming for argument’s sake that the Russian Defence Ministry is to be believed, apparently, the Russkies figured out a way to intercept the Storm Shadows.

All of this simply goes to show that no weapons system is invincible or infallible. Time will tell how long it will take Putin’s troops to figure out how to negate or mitigate the M39 … and how many more grievous losses they’ll incur in terms of manpower and materiel alike before they finally figure it out.

Christian D. Orr is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch and The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS).

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19fortyfive.com · by Christian Orr · October 24, 2023

10. Ukraine’s American-Made M39 Missiles May Have Wrecked 21 Russian Helicopters In A Single Operation

Excerpts:

It’s not for no reason that, when it tested the M39, the U.S. Army aimed the missile at a mock airfield where the service parked old helicopters and trucks. Footage of the test depicts submunitions tearing into the vehicles.

Accurately aim an M39 at an airfield the size of the one outside Berdyansk, and you’ll sprinkle submunitions across half of it. “This whole airfield is covered with little holes,” GeoConfirmed explained.

The Russians flew dozens of helicopters from Berdyansk alone: it’s possible most of them were on the ground as the bomblets rained down. That’s why GeoConfirmed and Frontelligence Insight were comfortable standing by their new, much higher tallies of Russian losses from the Oct. 17 raids.

The M39, when used as the Americans intend, is perfect for wrecking helicopters. And the Russians offered the Ukrainians ideal targets: two airfields fewer than a hundred miles from the front line, and packed with rotorcraft.

Ukraine’s American-Made M39 Missiles May Have Wrecked 21 Russian Helicopters In A Single Operation

Forbes · by David Axe · October 22, 2023

Submunition damage to a Russian helicopter.

Via social media

The damage from Ukraine’s first-ever strike with American-supplied M39 missiles, targeting a pair of helicopter bases in Russian-occupied southern and eastern Ukraine, likely resulted in greater damage than even the Ukrainian defense ministry initially claimed.

Far greater.

The Ukrainians claimed the Oct. 17 attack, which reportedly saw three of the M39s strike airfields outside Berdyansk in southern Ukraine as well as in Luhansk Oblast in the east, destroyed nine Russian helicopters.

In fact, the M39 raid put out of action 21 helicopters, according to an analysis of commercial satellite imagery by GeoConfirmed, an open-source intelligence practitioner on the social-media site formerly known as Twitter.

“This is probably the biggest blow to the Russian air force since the beginning of the war,” GeoConfirmed commented.

A second analysis, by Ukrainian analysis team Frontelligence Insight, aligns with GeoConfirmed’s assessment. “While their number slightly exceeds our team's public estimate, it's important to note that their estimate is based on solid grounds.”

To confirm a destroyed or significantly damaged helicopter, the analysts looked for satellite imagery depicting scorch marks around the known recent location of a parked helicopter. They cross-referenced the overhead imagery with photos and videos from Russian social media—and also looked for evidence of the Russians hauling away, from either airfield, damaged and unflyable helicopters.

Some observers have questioned the analysts’ tallies. “The challenge arises from the limitations of commercially available imagery, which do not provide the resolution needed to detect hundreds of small scorch marks around helicopters in Berdyansk,” Frontelligence Insight conceded. “In the case of Luhansk airport, it's much easier since you can clearly see it from our higher-resolution imagery.”

And GeoConfirmed stressed that its count, while perhaps shockingly high, is consistent with the destructive power of the M39 missile.

The M39 Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, is a two-ton, 13-foot ballistic missile with a solid rocket motor and a warhead containing 950 Msubmunitions. Fired by a tracked or wheeled launcher, the 1990s-vintage missile ranges as far as 100 miles under inertial guidance.

An M39 usually should strike within 50 yards or so of its aim-point. This isn’t super-accurate by modern standards, but it’s accurate enough considering that the M39 is an area weapon.

As the missile plummets toward its target, it spins and pops open, scattering 950 steel-and-tungsten bomblets across an area of potentially tens of thousands of square feet. Each M74 submunition has the explosive power of a hand grenade.

A submunition warhead is perfect for striking large installations crowded with unprotected equipment. An airfield, for example, with its fragile airplanes, helicopters, fuel bowsers and support equipment.

It’s not for no reason that, when it tested the M39, the U.S. Army aimed the missile at a mock airfield where the service parked old helicopters and trucks. Footage of the test depicts submunitions tearing into the vehicles.

Accurately aim an M39 at an airfield the size of the one outside Berdyansk, and you’ll sprinkle submunitions across half of it. “This whole airfield is covered with little holes,” GeoConfirmed explained.

The Russians flew dozens of helicopters from Berdyansk alone: it’s possible most of them were on the ground as the bomblets rained down. That’s why GeoConfirmed and Frontelligence Insight were comfortable standing by their new, much higher tallies of Russian losses from the Oct. 17 raids.

The M39, when used as the Americans intend, is perfect for wrecking helicopters. And the Russians offered the Ukrainians ideal targets: two airfields fewer than a hundred miles from the front line, and packed with rotorcraft.

Forbes · by David Axe · October 22, 2023

11. US troops were attacked 13 times in Iraq and Syria in past week, Pentagon confirms

Will the entire Middle East soon be designated a combat zone?

US troops were attacked 13 times in Iraq and Syria in past week, Pentagon confirms

Stars and Stripes · by Doug G. Ware · October 24, 2023

Soldiers deployed to al-Tanf garrison in Syria watch for the impact of a mortar round from an observation point during a readiness exercise on April 22, 2020. (William Howard/U.S. Army)

WASHINGTON — American and coalition troops have been attacked more than a dozen different times at bases in Iraq and Syria in the past week amid rising tensions in the Middle East, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

U.S. forces have seen attacks in recent days at the al-Tanf garrison in southeastern Syria and the al Asad and al-Harir air bases in Iraq. While the attacks have resulted in only minor injuries, the Defense Department said troops at the bases are repeatedly being targeted.

“Between Oct. 17 and [today] U.S. and coalition forces have been attacked at least 10 separate times in Iraq and three separate times in Syria via a mix of one-way attack drones and rockets,” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesman. “Those are the initial numbers. We are continuing to work to ensure we get you the facts.”

U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for American military operations in the Middle East, said 24 military personnel sustained minor injuries Oct. 18 in drone attacks at al-Tanf and al Asad. CENTCOM officials said they all quickly returned to duty. That same day at the Syria garrison, an American contractor died of a heart attack and an attack destroyed an aircraft hangar and small airplane.

The Defense Department declined to specifically identify what groups are launching the attacks but said they are supported by Iran.

“We know that the groups conducting these attacks are supported by [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and the Iranian regime. What we are seeing is the prospect for more significant escalation against U.S. forces and personnel across the region in the very near term,” Ryder said. “We know these groups are Iranian proxy groups.”

While all 13 attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria came within a couple of weeks of a surprise attack by Hamas militants against Israel on Oct. 7, the Pentagon has been hesitant to establish a clear connection. Military officials have said they are looking at the drone and rocket attacks as separate incidents, along with the firing of several rockets and drones by Houthi rebels in Yemen toward Israel that were shot down by the USS Carney operating in the Red Sea. It’s still not confirmed the Houthis were shooting at Israel, though Ryder said the missiles could travel roughly 1,200 miles, which would have put them well within the range of Israel.

The New Jersey Air National Guard’s 119th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron arrived within U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility, bolstering U.S. posture to defend U.S. forces and deter further aggression in the region. (Amy Rangel/U.S. Air National Guard)

U.S. officials also said Tuesday that additional air power has arrived in the region — F-16s from the New Jersey Air National Guard’s 119th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, known as the “Jersey Devils.”

“The arrival of these airmen strengthens our ability to support our allied, coalition and regional partners as we work together to enhance regional stability and security,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander of the 9th Air Force and Combined Forces Air Component Command.

The arrival of the fighter jets comes as other U.S. forces were ordered during the weekend to the Middle East, including the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group, a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery and more Patriot battery battalions. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also gave pre-deployment orders to more service members, in addition to 2,000 troops who received the same orders several days earlier. None of the troops have been activated for deployment, Ryder said Tuesday.

The White House said Monday that President Joe Biden continues to work toward the release of all American hostages taken by Hamas and keeping up a steady flow of aid into the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military has delivered airstrikes into the Palestinian-held territory and is believed to be planning a ground incursion.

“We have made very clear that Palestinians are not Hamas and Hamas are not Palestinians. And it is very, very unfortunate that we see a terrorist group who embeds themselves within a civilian population,” Ryder said. “At the end of the day, what everyone is trying to do here is protect innocent, civilian lives … [and] ensuring that groups like Hamas cannot continue to do what they have done.”

Stars and Stripes reporter J.P. Lawrence contributed to this report.

Stars and Stripes · by Doug G. Ware · October 24, 2023

12. The Return of Nuclear Escalation: How America’s Adversaries Have Hijacked Its Old Deterrence Strategy

All the major threats addressed. I will highlight the north Korean threat (as I am wont to do due to my national security bias.).

Excerpts:

Pakistan has approximately 170 nuclear warheads, a third of which are tactical. Pakistani officials have made clear that the country’s nuclear posture is designed to deter or halt an Indian invasion. The former head of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, explained in 2015 that “by introducing the variety of tactical nuclear weapons in Pakistan’s inventory, . . . we have blocked the avenues for serious military operations by the other side.” In May 2023, he reiterated that the purpose of Pakistan’s diverse arsenal is to give it a “strategic shield” to blunt India’s conventional military superiority. To this end, Pakistan has focused on being able to rapidly assemble, mobilize, and disperse nuclear weapons at the outset of any conflict. Of course, Pakistan could not hope to win a nuclear war against India—which has a comparable number of nuclear warheads and sophisticated delivery systems capable of retaliation—but Pakistan could inflict tremendous pain on its neighbor, coercing India to halt a conventional military campaign.

North Korea has adopted a similar strategy. Pyongyang’s conventional military is vastly outmatched by the combined forces of South Korea and the United States. North Korea’s army is large, but its military equipment is decrepit, and its troops rarely conduct training beyond simple small-unit exercises. Lacking the resources to compete militarily, Pyongyang leans heavily on its nuclear weapons. As the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un explained in 2022, although the primary mission of his country’s nuclear arsenal is to deter an attack, he would use nuclear weapons to repel an attack if deterrence failed. “If any forces try to violate the fundamental interests of our state, our nuclear forces will have to decisively accomplish [this] unexpected second mission,” Kim said.

U.S. and South Korean military planners, like their Indian counterparts, must now grapple with the same problem the Soviets once faced: how to capitalize on conventional military advantages against an enemy that may be willing to use nuclear weapons. The United States has more than enough nuclear weapons to respond to North Korean nuclear escalation, as leaders in Pyongyang surely know. But if there is a war on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea will be desperate. The country’s leaders fear succumbing to the same fate as recent rulers who lost conventional wars, such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, who were killed after being ousted. With their regime and lives on the line, Pyongyang’s leaders would face enormous pressure to start a perilous tit-for-tat nuclear exchange—at first striking targets in the region, and then possibly in the United States—to compel their opponents in Seoul and Washington to accept a cease-fire.

But this is most troubling and the following comments will upset both the authors and US military planners. And per the comment above, north Korea has no intention of seeking a cease fire, if it attacks it will be all in to accomplish ist single strategi aim, domination of the entire Korean peninsula under the rule of the Guerrilla Dynasty and Gulag State. To allow anything less will mean the end of the regime. A cease fire will undermine and lead to the collapse of the regime; therefore the regime will not seek one.

Excerpt:

 Similarly, U.S. planners have encouraged their South Korean allies to consider wartime objectives far short of complete victory, to avoid pushing the Kim regime to the edge of nuclear war. For example, if North Korea launches a major artillery attack on South Korea, the wisest response may be to destroy or seize those artillery positions but not continue the campaign north to Pyongyang.

These comments illustrate both a lack of understanding by the authors of the combined military defense plans and the function of the ROK/US Combined Forces Command as well as a lack of understanding of the nature, objectives, and strategy of the Kim family regime. The above recommendation is dangerous. It is based on the unspoken assumption that if we do not threaten Pyongyang the regime will not escalate the use of nuclear weapons. Once the ROK/US alliance conducts any cross border attack in response to a north Korean attack, targets throughout the breadth and depth of north Korea will be struck both to neutralize the north Korean IADs as well as to eliminate all the north;s missile capabilities from SRBMs to ICBMs (as well as all C4ISR capabilities of the regime). There is no "local attack" or limited atack of north Korea's frontline artillery forces.

And to "counsel" South Korean counterparts to pursue objectives far short of complete victory is not only politically problematic it is morally wrong. To argue for a return to the status quo after hundreds of thousands of South Korean casualties (civilian and military) and thousands of American casualties is so wrong that I cannot find words to describe it. But again, "limited objectives" comes from ivory tower theorists who are making erroneous assumptions based on a lack of understanding of the nature, objectives, and tragedy of the Kim family regime and the wishful thinking that Kim Jong Un will first recognize our limited objectives and then accept them and will thus be inclined to not escalate nuclear use. First, it will be difficult for Kim to even recognize our "limited objectives" and despite us making them public, he will not be inclined to believe our statements.  

Lastly, the idea that US planners have "encouraged" South Koreans to consider limited objectives seems to imply there will be some sort of unilateral ROK military only defense of South Korea with the US simply overlooking the fight while trying to restrain the ROK military into only seeking limited objectives. Again, this is a misunderstanding to the ROK/US alliance and combined military planning is based on a combined military defense of the ROK.

And really lastly, once north Korea initiates it campaign plan to dominate the peninsula, the ROK/US alliance must execute not only the defense of South Korea but must achieve what was called for in paragraph 60 of the Armistice as well as the ROK constitution, which is the end to the unnatural division of the peninsula. Anything less will be not only a tragedy but also a continuation of instability in Northeast Asia and will dishonor the memory of the perhaps millions who will have perished on the Korean peninsula on both sides of the former DMZ. Does anyone advocate for the expenditure of such treasure and blood only to return to a status quo? And this is all based on the erroneous assumption that Kim will not escalate nuclear use if we telegraph that we have limited objectives and are willing to allow him to remain in power. Anyone who advocates for the above course of action should begin their representation with the following statement: "I am going to provide a presentation that supports the Kim family regime remaining in power indefinitely and will show the path to returning to the status quo after suffering millions of casualties in Korea."

Needless to say, the excertped statements in the essay above make me mad and I worry that there are some who support this kind of dangerous thinking.

The Return of Nuclear Escalation

How America’s Adversaries Have Hijacked Its Old Deterrence Strategy

By Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press

November/December 2023

Published on October 24, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press · October 24, 2023

Nuclear weapons once again loom large in international politics, and a dangerous pattern is emerging. In the regions most likely to draw the United States into conflict—the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan Strait, eastern Europe, and the Persian Gulf—U.S. adversaries appear to be acquiring, enhancing, or threatening to use nuclear weapons. North Korea is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the United States; China is doubling the size of its arsenal; Russia is threatening to use nuclear weapons in its war in Ukraine; and according to U.S. officials, Iran has amassed enough fissile material for a bomb. Many people hoped that once the Cold War ended, nuclear weapons would recede into irrelevance. Instead, many countries are relying on them to make up for the weakness of their conventional military forces.

Still, optimists in the United States argue that the risk of nuclear war remains low. Their reasoning is straightforward: the countries that are building up and brandishing their nuclear capabilities are bluffing. Nuclear weapons cannot paper over conventional military weakness because threats to escalate—even by a desperate enemy—are not credible. According to the optimists, giving credence to the nuclear bluster of weak enemies is misguided and plays squarely into their hands.

Unfortunately, the optimists are wrong. The risk of nuclear escalation during conventional war is much greater than is generally appreciated. The conundrum that U.S. adversaries face today—how to convincingly threaten escalation and bring a nuclear-armed opponent to a stalemate—was solved decades ago by the United States and its NATO allies. Back then, the West developed a strategy of coercive nuclear escalation to convince the Soviet Union that NATO allies would actually use nuclear weapons if they were invaded. Today, U.S. rivals have adopted NATO’s old nuclear strategy and developed their own options for credible escalation. The United States must take seriously the nuclear capabilities and resolve of its foes. It would be tragic for Washington to stumble into nuclear war because it discounted the very strategy that it invented decades ago.

NATO’S NUCLEAR PLAYBOOK

In the late 1950s, the forces of the Warsaw Pact, an alliance of the Soviet Union and seven other satellite states, outnumbered those of NATO in terms of manpower by about three to one. Up to that point, NATO’s response to Soviet conventional superiority had been simple. If the Soviets invaded Western Europe, the United States would launch an all-out nuclear bombing campaign against the Soviet Union. The message to Moscow was brutal but credible: the Soviets might have conventional superiority, but the next European war would not remain conventional.

But this strategy began to fall apart merely a decade into the Cold War. The Soviet Union was on the cusp of fielding a strong nuclear arsenal of its own, a vast improvement over the small and vulnerable force it had deployed up to that point. Soon, NATO’s strategy would no longer make sense. The alliance could not credibly threaten to respond to a conventional invasion with a full-blown nuclear strike on the Soviet Union because the Soviets would have the capability to retaliate in kind. During a war, NATO would face a lose-lose choice: lose a fight with conventional weapons or initiate a mutually catastrophic nuclear exchange. In other words, in the latter decades of the Cold War, NATO faced the same challenge that many U.S. adversaries face today: it had little hope of prevailing in a conventional war, and no hope of winning a nuclear one.

NATO found an answer to this problem. The alliance made plans to use nuclear weapons in the event of war, but in a different way. Instead of relying solely on the threat of a massive U.S. nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, NATO would respond to an invasion by using nuclear weapons coercively. That is, they would launch a few nuclear weapons—probably tactical ones, which have small yields and short ranges—against military targets to convince Soviet leaders that the war was spinning out of control, pressuring them to stop the invasion. Such a use of nuclear weapons could deliver a heavy blow to a Soviet advance, but more important, it would demonstrate to Soviet leaders that they were courting nuclear disaster. NATO had solved what had seemed to be an intractable problem: how to use nuclear threats to stalemate an enemy they could not beat at the conventional or nuclear level.

In contests of resolve, the side that cares the most has the advantage.

To back up this strategy, the United States deployed thousands of tactical nuclear weapons to Europe so that Washington could escalate in a manner that was distinguishable from an all-out strike on the Soviet Union. The alliance also created a “nuclear sharing” arrangement, whereby U.S. weapons based in Europe would be given to several NATO allies during a war, so that the countries the Soviet Union hoped to overrun would have their own nuclear defenses.

The details of NATO’s strategy evolved over time, but the core rationale remained constant. NATO would not keep its nuclear weapons holstered as its member states were being conquered; nor would it launch a suicidal nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. Instead, the alliance would escalate gradually and coercively, ensuring that the risks of continuing the conflict were too great for the Soviets to bear.

At the time, analysts criticized many aspects of NATO’s strategy. They argued, for example, that nuclear strikes on Soviet military targets would trigger retaliation against NATO’s forces, thus negating any advantage of using nuclear weapons in the first place. But the point of NATO’s escalation was not to change the military balance per se, but to use the shock of nuclear strikes to generate fear and compel the Soviets to accept a cease-fire. Other critics asked why NATO should expect that, once both sides escalated, the Soviets would be the party to blink first. But deterrence strategists noted that in a defensive war, the NATO allies would care more about defending their own freedom and territorial independence than the Soviets would care about waging a war of aggression. In contests of resolve, after all, the side that cares the most has the advantage.

Critics disapproved of NATO’s strategy for other reasons—threatening to start a potentially civilization-ending nuclear war seemed immoral, and assuming that escalation could be controlled once started appeared foolish. NATO leaders could not allay such criticisms, but the alliance nevertheless relied on the logic of deliberate escalation to defend itself from an otherwise overwhelming foe. NATO’s strategy made nuclear weapons the ultimate weapons of the weak, the perfect tool for holding off powerful rivals.

COPYCATS

This strategy of nuclear escalation did not disappear when the Cold War ended. Around the world today, several nuclear-armed countries that find themselves outmatched at the conventional military level lean on nuclear weapons to stave off catastrophic military defeat.

Pakistan is a prime example. Its principal adversary, India, has five times the population, nine times the GDP, and spends six times as much on its military. To make matters worse, most of Pakistan’s largest cities are less than 100 miles from the Indian border, and the terrain in the most likely corridors of an Indian invasion is difficult to defend. Unable to build sufficient conventional defenses, Pakistan’s leaders worry that a major war would lead to the destruction of its army and the seizure or isolation of its major cities. And so they rely on nuclear weapons to keep their next-door neighbor at bay.

Pakistan has approximately 170 nuclear warheads, a third of which are tactical. Pakistani officials have made clear that the country’s nuclear posture is designed to deter or halt an Indian invasion. The former head of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, explained in 2015 that “by introducing the variety of tactical nuclear weapons in Pakistan’s inventory, . . . we have blocked the avenues for serious military operations by the other side.” In May 2023, he reiterated that the purpose of Pakistan’s diverse arsenal is to give it a “strategic shield” to blunt India’s conventional military superiority. To this end, Pakistan has focused on being able to rapidly assemble, mobilize, and disperse nuclear weapons at the outset of any conflict. Of course, Pakistan could not hope to win a nuclear war against India—which has a comparable number of nuclear warheads and sophisticated delivery systems capable of retaliation—but Pakistan could inflict tremendous pain on its neighbor, coercing India to halt a conventional military campaign.

North Korea has adopted a similar strategy. Pyongyang’s conventional military is vastly outmatched by the combined forces of South Korea and the United States. North Korea’s army is large, but its military equipment is decrepit, and its troops rarely conduct training beyond simple small-unit exercises. Lacking the resources to compete militarily, Pyongyang leans heavily on its nuclear weapons. As the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un explained in 2022, although the primary mission of his country’s nuclear arsenal is to deter an attack, he would use nuclear weapons to repel an attack if deterrence failed. “If any forces try to violate the fundamental interests of our state, our nuclear forces will have to decisively accomplish [this] unexpected second mission,” Kim said.

U.S. and South Korean military planners, like their Indian counterparts, must now grapple with the same problem the Soviets once faced: how to capitalize on conventional military advantages against an enemy that may be willing to use nuclear weapons. The United States has more than enough nuclear weapons to respond to North Korean nuclear escalation, as leaders in Pyongyang surely know. But if there is a war on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea will be desperate. The country’s leaders fear succumbing to the same fate as recent rulers who lost conventional wars, such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, who were killed after being ousted. With their regime and lives on the line, Pyongyang’s leaders would face enormous pressure to start a perilous tit-for-tat nuclear exchange—at first striking targets in the region, and then possibly in the United States—to compel their opponents in Seoul and Washington to accept a cease-fire.

Unlike Pakistan and North Korea, China has declined to use nuclear threats to compensate for its conventional military inferiority relative to the United States. China’s reluctance to depend on nuclear threats is particularly notable given the high stakes of a major war over Taiwan. Defeat in such a conflict might lead to formal independence for the island—a major blow to China’s conception of its sovereignty. Perhaps more important, the loss of Taiwan would humiliate the Chinese Communist Party and could stoke a nationalist backlash or internal coup. Nevertheless, China has focused on improving its conventional military rather than readying its nuclear arsenal for wartime coercion. In fact, Beijing asserts that it will never be the first side in a conflict to use nuclear weapons.

To be clear, China’s nuclear doctrine is not as simple as it sounds. According to Chinese military documents, Beijing would consider exceptions to its no-first-use policy if China faced a major military defeat in a high-stakes conventional war. And Chinese strategists have considered how low-yield nuclear weapons could be used coercively. Additionally, around 2019 China began updating its nuclear forces in ways that would support a coercive strategy. It has increased the size, readiness, and diversity of its arsenal to increase its survivability; this would allow Beijing to initiate wartime escalation without fear that the United States could respond by destroying its nuclear force. Finally, China’s leaders could change their official stance during a war and use nuclear weapons if a conflict against the United States went badly. But as of now, China remains committed in its rhetoric to eschewing a nuclear first use and in addressing its military weaknesses by strengthening its conventional military power.

China’s current no-first-use policy aside, the pattern is dangerous to ignore: nuclear-armed countries that fear catastrophic military defeat frequently adopt escalatory doctrines to keep their enemies at bay. For NATO during the Cold War, Pakistan or North Korea today, and perhaps even China in the future, nuclear escalation on the battlefield makes sense if the only alternative is a regime-threatening defeat. Coercive nuclear escalation is a competition in pain—both inflicting it and suffering it—which is a type of conflict that invariably favors the desperate.

ALL IN

Russia is another country that embraces the strategy of coercive nuclear escalation. When the Cold War ended, the Western allies—suddenly freed from the fear of major military defeat in Europe—quickly soured on nuclear forces. Russia, acutely aware of its newfound conventional military inferiority, did the opposite, adapting NATO’s old ideas about nuclear escalation to Russia’s new circumstances.

Analysts debate the details of Russia’s current nuclear doctrine, but most agree that it calls for escalation to deter or stop the most serious military threats to Russian security. Like other conventionally weak but nuclear-armed countries, Russia has integrated into its conventional war-fighting plans and exercises many tactical nuclear weapons, including air-delivered bombs, cruise missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles. If the fighting in Ukraine shifts significantly in favor of Kyiv, and Russian President Vladimir Putin decides that defeat in Ukraine threatens his regime, Russia appears capable—and likely willing—to initiate a coercive nuclear war.

Putin has always portrayed the war in Ukraine as a core national security interest, based on historic territorial claims and the perceived threat of Ukraine’s membership in NATO. He has publicly framed the war in nearly existential terms. Perhaps most important, complete defeat in Ukraine would be humiliating and particularly dangerous to a leader who has built his power on a reputation for strength, acumen, and restoring Russian greatness. Preventing military catastrophe would be of paramount importance to Putin, and nuclear escalation would be one of his few remaining cards to play. No enemy army stands poised to invade Russia. But if Putin believes that complete defeat in Ukraine will lead to his being toppled—and killed or detained—he will likely see the stakes as sufficiently high to use nuclear weapons.

Russian leaders have made the links between the war in Ukraine and nuclear escalation clear. One of Russia’s most senior defense officials and former president, Dmitry Medvedev, said in July 2023 that Russia “would have to use nuclear weapons” if Ukraine’s counteroffensive succeeded in retaking Russian-held territory. “There simply wouldn’t be any other solution,” he said. Putin claimed in February 2023 that Western countries “intend to transform a local conflict into a phase of global confrontation,” adding that Russia “will react accordingly, because in this case we are talking about the existence of our country.” And in September 2022, he said that Russia would use “all means at its disposal” to defend its territorial annexations in Ukraine.

NATO’s strategy made nuclear weapons the ultimate weapons of the weak.

Perhaps these nuclear threats are mere bluffs aimed at convincing the West to end its support for Ukraine. In fact, some Western observers discount the plausibility of escalation, noting that if Russia’s military position in Ukraine starts to collapse, nuclear escalation would not solve Moscow’s problem. Ukraine’s military forces are dispersed, so even a handful of Russian tactical nuclear strikes would do limited damage to Kyiv’s forces. Moreover, Russian escalation would only make the Kremlin’s problems worse because NATO would probably respond with conventional attacks against Russian forces in Ukraine. In short, according to the skeptics, Russia’s nuclear threats are hollow.

Those who downplay Russia’s nuclear options misunderstand the logic of coercive escalation. Russia’s goal would not be to rectify the conventional military imbalance but to demonstrate in a shocking fashion that the war is spinning out of control and must be ended immediately. The aim would be to raise the prospect of a wider nuclear war and convince people and their leaders in the West that given what is at stake for Russian leaders, Moscow will keep inflicting pain to forestall defeat.

If Russian escalation triggered a large-scale conventional NATO attack on Russia’s forces in Ukraine, as many analysts expect it would, Moscow could just use nuclear weapons again—much as NATO would have done in the face of a Soviet invasion. Had the Soviet Union invaded a NATO member, the balance of wills would have favored NATO because the allies would have been fighting to protect their own freedom and territory. Now, if defeat in Ukraine endangers Putin’s regime, the Kremlin would have the most to lose. The reasoning behind escalation is brutal, similar to that for blackmail or torture. But self-interested leaders facing a defeat that could cost them their lives may have no other option.

To be sure, Russian nuclear escalation is only one possible course. The current battlefield stalemate may drag on until the two sides grudgingly agree to a cease-fire. Perhaps Russian forces will regain the initiative and seize larger swaths of Ukrainian territory. Or maybe Putin’s domestic opponents will remove him from power, opening the door to a better settlement for Ukraine. It is even possible that if Russia’s leaders order nuclear escalation, military commanders may refuse to carry it out, instead launching a coup to end Putin’s regime. The future of the conflict is uncertain, but the logic and history of the nuclear age is clear: when a conventionally superior army backs a nuclear-armed enemy against a wall, it risks nuclear war.

TABLES TURNED

Hawkish policy analysts suggest that the United States can stare down its adversaries’ nuclear threats if Washington has enough military power, a resolute mindset, and a strong nuclear deterrent. But those attributes will not deter an enemy that is cornered. The United States will be in grave danger if it underestimates the will of desperate, nuclear-armed adversaries.

The good news is that the Biden administration appears to understand the risk of escalation in the Ukraine war. Early statements made by U.S. President Joe Biden suggesting that Putin “cannot remain in power” have been replaced with more moderate rhetoric, and U.S. leaders have limited the kinds of weapons they provide Ukraine in large part to manage the dangers of escalation. Similarly, U.S. planners have encouraged their South Korean allies to consider wartime objectives far short of complete victory, to avoid pushing the Kim regime to the edge of nuclear war. For example, if North Korea launches a major artillery attack on South Korea, the wisest response may be to destroy or seize those artillery positions but not continue the campaign north to Pyongyang.

A military drill in North Korea, March 2023

Central News Agency (KCNA) / Reuters

But it is impossible to know for sure how an enemy will react in war, especially because leaders are incentivized to misrepresent their actual redlines. Fighting nuclear-armed adversaries is a dangerous game of brinkmanship. There are military steps the United States can take to reduce these dangers. For potential conflicts on the Korean Peninsula and across the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. military should be developing strategies for waging conventional war in a manner designed to reduce the risks of escalation. For example, the U.S. military should minimize attacks that undermine an enemy leadership’s situational awareness and hold on power, such as strikes on national command-and-control networks, nuclear forces, and leadership targets themselves. Enemies who rely on nuclear weapons to stalemate U.S. military power will, of course, adapt as well; they will likely entangle the conventional and nuclear domains to prevent the United States from safely waging a conventional war. But the United States can make plans to escalate conventionally without threatening the survival of an enemy regime, thereby reducing the risk that a desperate leader will employ a nuclear weapon.

The United States must take the growing threat of coercive nuclear escalation seriously. After the Cold War, the United States became more ambitious in its foreign policy objectives. It spread Western political values and free markets and forged military ties around the world. But such objectives are opposed by nuclear-armed adversaries in China, North Korea, Russia, and perhaps soon in Iran. U.S. policymakers would be wise to not discount the potential power of their enemies. And if they need to be reminded of what their foes may be able to do, they need turn only to their own history.

• KEIR A. LIEBER is a Professor in the School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University.
• DARYL G. PRESS is Director of the Initiative for Global Security at the Dickey Center for International Understanding and Professor of Government at Dartmouth College.

Foreign Affairs · by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press · October 24, 2023

13. From Risk to Resilience: How Economies Can Thrive in a World of Threats

Excerpts:

The world is facing enormous challenges, from great-power rivalry to the climate crisis. To survive and thrive as best they can, countries will need to understand the drivers of risk, reward, and resilience; how these forces are connected; and what tradeoffs and synergies they create. Great-power competition may undermine cooperation on climate change while supercharging the clean energy race. Efforts to increase resilience may require reducing interdependence among rivals while accelerating it among allies. Resilience may sometimes require rebuilding national capabilities and other times require forging alliances.

Taking a systemic approach to resilience will not be easy, particularly in a world characterized by polarization and specialization. Government officials are often focused on the next election, while their departments are busy engaging in bureaucratic turf wars. But failing to embrace systemic resilience will not just mean forgoing many of the rewards of economic integration; it will also mean creating new vulnerabilities that could prove catastrophic down the road.

From Risk to Resilience

How Economies Can Thrive in a World of Threats

By Anthea Roberts

November/December 2023

Published on October 24, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Anthea Roberts · October 24, 2023

In recent years, a fierce debate has raged among scholars and policymakers about the risks and rewards of economic interdependence. On one side are globalists who argue that economic globalization remains the best route to peace and prosperity, even if it comes with some risks. On the other are nationalists who contend that Western countries must decouple their economies from China and other authoritarian powers to avoid dangerous dependencies and reduce the vulnerability of their critical infrastructure and supply chains.

These debates tend to frame the tradeoffs in black-and-white terms: globalization versus deglobalization and interdependence versus decoupling. But such binaries have never been realistic. The COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and rising tensions between the United States and China have all made Western companies and countries more wary of the risks associated with economic interdependence. Few, however, are prepared to make the sacrifices that full-scale decoupling would entail.

No wonder that “de-risking” has entered the policy lexicon as a softer alternative to decoupling. In January 2023, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen coined the term as she laid out the EU’s strategy for reducing critical vulnerabilities while maintaining economic relations with China. The United States and the rest of the G-7 have since embraced de-risking, in part to assuage growing fears of a painful economic divorce from China. The idea is to differentiate connections that are high risk, for which selective decoupling is appropriate, from those that are low risk, for which it makes sense to maintain ties while also diversifying.

But inherent to de-risking is the idea that policymakers need to accept a zero-sum tradeoff between the risks and rewards of interconnection. There is a better way to understand the problem. Companies and countries need to embed calculations about risk and reward in a broader framework of systemic resilience—that is, the characteristics of a system that determine its ability to survive and thrive over time. Although resilience is commonly understood as the ability to withstand shocks and stressors, it is about more than just effectively responding to risks. It is also about evolving to better capture future rewards and cope with change.

To achieve systemic resilience, governments and firms must strike the right balance between risk and reward. If they always aim to minimize risks, they will not only reduce their rewards but also create new vulnerabilities over time. Likewise, if they always aim to maximize rewards in the short term, they may overlook existing risks and create new ones that could cost them dearly later. As a framework for weighing these competing objectives, systemic resilience can help policymakers and business executives think through questions of economic interdependence. It can help them decide when they should take risks in search of rewards and how they should prepare for potentially transformative changes—none more pressing than the coming energy transition.

THE BINARY BIAS

The rewards of economic connection can be immense. Global markets create extraordinary opportunities for economies of scale and enable companies and countries to develop their capabilities by specializing in what they do best and trading for the rest. Trade and investment treaties facilitate access to such markets, as do improvements in infrastructure, communications, and transportation. In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, global supply chains proliferated as the rewards of international trade and investment seemed to far outstrip any potential risks. But by the first decade of the next millennium, the dangers of international connectedness had become manifest. The global financial crisis of 2008 stoked fears about financial contagion. China’s economic rise and growing assertiveness fueled Western capitals’ concerns about economic coercion. And Western sanctions made Moscow and Beijing more worried about weaponized interdependence.

Risks arise when a vulnerable system is exposed to threats or hazards. Interconnection exposes countries to intentional threats, such as economic coercion, as well as unintentional hazards, including financial crises and pandemics. Specialization creates additional vulnerabilities in the form of dependencies and concentration risks, such as when a country relies on critical goods manufactured by a foreign country or by a small group of suppliers in a region that is subject to extreme weather events. But because the same things that promise economic rewards often pose security risks, interdependence creates a dilemma. “Just in time” global supply chains that enable companies to reduce costs by storing minimal inventory can be tremendously efficient. But as the COVID-19 pandemic revealed, they can also leave societies dangerously exposed to disruptions, including in the supply of vital medical goods. The United States’ deep economic integration with China has produced enormous economic rewards, but it has also created vulnerabilities and dependencies for both countries, for example, in access to active pharmaceutical ingredients and semiconductors.

Interdependence does more than create tradeoffs between risk and reward; sometimes an increase in rewards can lead to a reduction in risks—a classic win-win outcome. Trade is often thought to promote peace and prosperity because rich and economically interdependent countries have powerful incentives to avoid war. But the effect is more ambiguous: interdependence may reduce the probability of conflict, but it can also make the consequences of conflict more dire if it does break out—since strong economic ties can be weaponized to devastating effect.

Few are prepared to make the sacrifices necessary for full-scale decoupling.

Efforts to mitigate one risk can also create or exacerbate others. Reshoring global supply chains may make countries less vulnerable to international disruptions while making them more vulnerable to domestic ones. Insulation from international supply chains can cause its own problems. For example, the United States generally manufactures enough baby formula to meet its own needs. But in 2022, a major U.S. baby formula plant was shut down because of bacterial contamination, causing nationwide shortages and forcing the Biden administration to take emergency actions to secure international supplies. People often struggle to acknowledge such tradeoffs because doing so is cognitively taxing. Rather than attempting to weigh the necessary multiple factors, people overwhelmed by that exercise tend to lump them together and simply declare that their chosen course of action is preferable on all counts. The psychologist Adam Grant calls this the “binary bias”—the tendency to collapse shades-of-gray spectrums into black-and-white categories. The result is tradeoff denialism: one side argues for globalization because it promotes peace and prosperity, while the other argues for decoupling on the grounds that it reduces the risks of coercion and stimulates the economy through reshoring.

The rhetorical shift from decoupling to de-risking is important because it represents an effort to move past the binary bias and tradeoff denialism. In this vein, Europe’s new economic security strategy, released by the European Commission in June 2023, begins by noting “the inherent tensions that exist between bolstering our economic security, and ensuring that the European Union continues to benefit from an open economy.” Policymakers must acknowledge those tensions instead of obfuscating them if their goal is to manage risk, not just minimize it.

In some sectors, the rewards from economic globalization are high and the risks are comparatively low. “Most of our trade in goods and services remains mutually beneficial and ‘un-risky,’” von der Leyen said in March 2023. Decoupling in these areas makes little sense. In other sectors, the risks arising from interdependence are high and the rewards are low. For example, trade in sensitive military technologies is too high a risk for the reward. In cases such as these, decoupling seems sensible. The hardest cases are where both the risks and rewards of economic interdependence are high. Here, focusing on systemic resilience is particularly helpful.

BOUNCING BACK

Resilience is a rich concept, with applications in engineering, psychology, disaster management, climate change adaptation, and more. In engineering, resilience describes the ability of a substance to return to its original shape after bending or stretching. Applied to people, communities, corporations, and countries, it describes the ability to absorb and adapt to changes. Scholars call this “socioecological resilience.”

Absorbing shocks means enduring them without incurring lasting damage or undergoing minor adaptations or major transformations. When countries stockpile semiconductors and other goods that are critical for manufacturing, they aim to create a cushion against supply chain disruptions. Building in redundancies such as multiple suppliers, some onshore and some offshore, helps systems weather shocks without suffering harm or disruption.

A port in Hamburg, Germany, November 2019

Fabian Bimmer / Reuters

Adapting to shocks or stressors involves making incremental changes. When stocks of hand sanitizer ran low during the COVID-19 pandemic, some gin manufacturers adjusted their operations to produce needed supplies. Companies that specialized in three-dimensional printing began producing face masks and oxygen valves, while still others responded to shortages of medical supplies by finding alternative vendors. Adaptive changes are often small and short in duration. For example, schools shifted their classrooms online during the height of the pandemic, but most have since returned to in-person learning.

Transforming in the face of shocks is even more radical. It involves making more permanent structural changes that either reduce exposure and vulnerability to risks or increase the ability to capture rewards. Whereas adaptation can be achieved through incremental adjustments that largely preserve the status quo, transformation involves dramatic change to a new and better state. COVID-19 vaccines enabled governments to transform their response to the pandemic, fundamentally changing the risk-reward calculus for lockdowns and allowing countries to open their economies. Clean energy will prove even more transformative in the future. Governments will be able to use green technology to remake their economies in response to climate change.

These three modes of resilience—absorption, adaptation, and transformation—can operate alone or in combination. Often, they work on different timelines. For example, when China abruptly cut off exports of rare-earth elements to Japan in 2010 amid tensions in the East China Sea, Japan used all three modes of resilience to minimize harm. In the short term, it used careful inventory management to absorb the initial shock of the disruption and stretch existing supplies as far as possible. In the medium term, it adapted by recycling old rare-earth elements and finding substitutes for them. And in the long term, it took advantage of a transformation in the market for rare-earth minerals as new mines opened outside China.

THE RISE OF RESILIENCE

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, policymakers are beginning to appreciate the importance of resilience, which requires weighing polarities such as centralization and decentralization, diversification and concentration, and independence and interdependence. When it comes to free trade, for instance, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai has said that it is “critical” to “incentivize resilience as opposed to just efficiency.” Sabine Weyand, the European Commission’s director general for trade, has identified a similar rebalancing of priorities in policymaking, arguing that “it is not just about efficiency in trade relations today; it’s about resilience.”

The key is to strike a balance between two extremes. Whereas optimizing for efficiency can create too many risks, optimizing for resilience can generate too few rewards. The scholar and former management consultant Roger Martin has characterized the dilemma well: “Pursuit of all resilience and no efficiency is as problematic as pursuit of efficiency with no resilience. The only difference is in the nature of the death.” By death, he meant the eventual demise of the system. Systems that are not resilient tend to die suddenly. They work well in the short term and sometimes the medium term, producing impressive rewards. But over time, they accumulate systemic vulnerabilities, eventually reaching a state of extreme fragility caused by factors such as excessive concentration and lack of diversity. When a shock disrupts such a system, its lack of absorptive and adaptive capacities can cause it to fail spectacularly. Inefficient systems, however, tend to die gradually as they compete unsuccessfully against more efficient ones.

To thrive over the long term, systems need to find a middle ground between efficiency and resilience and between the desire to minimize risks and maximize rewards. Countries that aim to minimize risks in the short term often leave themselves vulnerable to long-term threats. Just as children who grow up without being exposed to viruses can end up with weak immune systems, countries that have never experienced pandemics or other public health emergencies can be ill-prepared for them. During the COVID-19 pandemic, countries that had previously dealt with respiratory viruses such as SARS and MERS—for example, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan—mounted the most effective initial responses to the new disease. The risk analyst Nassim Nicholas Taleb uses the term “antifragile” to refer to systems that grow stronger when exposed to moderate levels of stress as opposed to ones that atrophy when they are shielded from all risks.

Likewise, countries that aim to maximize short-term rewards often make themselves vulnerable to future shocks. Maximizing rewards from just-in-time supply chains may seem economically efficient in the short term, but as the pandemic showed, it can eventually prove catastrophic. Similarly, countries that seek to accelerate their development by offshoring low-cost manufacturing and pivoting their domestic economies to high-end services could wind up forfeiting the industrial capacity needed to power the sectors of the future, including clean energy. And countries that rely heavily on their most profitable industry risk creating a monoculture that makes money in the short term but is vulnerable to the effects of environmental or market changes.

WALK THE LINE

So what is the right balance between peril and payoff? Where high risks promise high rewards, countries should abide by a simple rule: run the risk only when the relevant system has sufficient resilience to absorb, adapt, or transform if that risk becomes reality.

With 5G networks, for example, countries have taken clear steps toward decoupling because they perceive high risks and low resilience. The Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei is a cheap provider of leading 5G technologies that have the potential to generate strong economic rewards. But for many Western governments, the risks that the Chinese government would abuse access to 5G networks to engage in espionage or sabotage were too high to discount. Laying 5G networks is also expensive, and 5G network providers are almost always the service providers. These features of the technology mean that it would be extremely difficult for a government to adapt and find a new 5G supplier should Beijing weaponize Huawei’s networks. In areas where countries cannot adapt during a crisis, they often seek to reduce their exposure, even if that means forsaking possible rewards.

By contrast, where countries have sufficient resilience—for instance, in the trade of basic commodities, where global markets are deep and diversified—they are more likely to maintain interdependence, despite the risks of economic coercion. Many Australian exporters depended heavily on the Chinese market before Beijing instituted trade bans and other coercive economic measures in 2020, following Australia’s call for an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19. But not all these exporters proved resilient. Those selling high-end products such as lobsters and fine wines struggled to find alternative markets, whereas those trading basic commodities such as coal, barley, and cotton were able to adapt and redirect their inventory to global markets.

Currency exchange rates in Moscow, October 2023

Evgenia Novozhenina / Reuters

It is telling that Australia’s response to Chinese economic coercion was not to decouple. Even after the risks had been laid bare, the potential rewards of continued economic engagement were too great. Australia continued to trade in goods that were unaffected by the bans, such as iron ore, while seeking to reopen export markets with China in the industries that were affected. But the Australian government also advised exporters to adopt a more diversified “China plus” strategy to make pivoting markets easier in the event of future disruptions. When resilience is high, countries can take greater risks in pursuit of rewards because they have something to fall back on if their fears are realized. For many traded goods, including agricultural products and raw resources, diversification rather than decoupling is the more practical and prudent path.

Another advantage of systemic resilience is that it can help governments and firms proactively adapt to changing circumstances. Greater resilience often makes it easier to maintain something close to the status quo. But sometimes the status quo is the problem, in which case more transformational approaches are needed to ensure long-term resilience. That is why many Western countries are turning to industrial policy—official encouragement of specific domestic economic sectors—as they attempt to address climate change and heightened threat perceptions from increased geopolitical tensions.

In some cases, governments are using industrial policy to promote transformative innovations that will reduce risks and build resilience. For example, the U.S. government has invested in developing Open Radio Access Networks, new mobile network technology that runs on the cloud and would break the connection between 5G network providers and 5G service providers, allowing users to mix and match providers. If successful, this technology would reduce some of the risks inherent in 5G networks and increase resilience. The 5G markets would be more open and competitive, making it easier for countries and companies to switch service providers if networks are weaponized.

In other cases, governments are using industrial policy so they can reap future rewards as well as limit risks. The United States is subsidizing the development and deployment of green technologies not just to address the dangers of a changing climate but also to ensure that American companies capture a sizable share of important emerging markets, including the one for electric vehicles. The CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to boost the domestic semiconductor industry; the Inflation Reduction Act, which made historic investments in clean energy; and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which has upgraded infrastructure in areas such as bridges, rail, and broadband are also designed to transform the U.S. economy and society. These laws, passed in 2021 and 2022, reduce supply chain vulnerabilities; provide incentives to manufacturers of renewable energy, batteries, electric vehicles, and semiconductors; and enhance access by building a national network of electric vehicle chargers and overhauling the nation’s power grid to improve clean energy transmission.

NO MAGIC FORMULA

There is no magic formula for balancing risk, reward, and resilience. The best calibration is subjective; different actors have different risk appetites. What countries see as the right balance also depends on how optimistic they are about the future. Expectations are important because decisions that may be optimal in stable and predictable environments can be disastrous in turbulent and unpredictable ones. When turbulence is low and predictability is high, countries can often focus on maximizing rewards. This is what they did after the Cold War, a placid period when globalization was on the march. But when turbulence is high and predictability is low, they turn to resilience.

Standard approaches to risk management focus on calculating the probability and likely impact of different risks. But many risks and rewards involve events whose probability and impact are unknowable. It is impossible to calculate the odds or likely effects of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, for instance. When uncertainty is high, actors often prefer to stay flexible and minimize potential losses. As the world becomes (or is perceived to become) riskier and more turbulent, countries are increasingly adopting these kinds of conservative strategies. As a result, they are focused on protecting their most important needs—critical infrastructure, critical supply chains, critical minerals, and critical technologies. This approach reflects a pessimistic outlook that prioritizes mitigating risks in bad times over maximizing rewards in good times.

The world is facing enormous challenges, from great-power rivalry to the climate crisis. To survive and thrive as best they can, countries will need to understand the drivers of risk, reward, and resilience; how these forces are connected; and what tradeoffs and synergies they create. Great-power competition may undermine cooperation on climate change while supercharging the clean energy race. Efforts to increase resilience may require reducing interdependence among rivals while accelerating it among allies. Resilience may sometimes require rebuilding national capabilities and other times require forging alliances.

Taking a systemic approach to resilience will not be easy, particularly in a world characterized by polarization and specialization. Government officials are often focused on the next election, while their departments are busy engaging in bureaucratic turf wars. But failing to embrace systemic resilience will not just mean forgoing many of the rewards of economic integration; it will also mean creating new vulnerabilities that could prove catastrophic down the road.

• ANTHEA ROBERTS is Professor of Global Governance at the Australian National University and Founder of Dragonfly Thinking. She is the co-author of Six Faces of Globalization.

Foreign Affairs · by Anthea Roberts · October 24, 2023

14. Washington should brace for new Polish preferences in arms suppliers

Washington should brace for new Polish preferences in arms suppliers

Defense News · by Peter Doran · October 24, 2023

The recent ouster of Poland’s government at the ballot box signals some significant potential changes to the security posture of NATO’s strongest ally in Eastern Europe. Under the next Polish government, U.S. defense firms may find tougher competition from European industry for big-ticket arms purchases by Warsaw. The total size of Polish defense spending may be smaller. Washington should take note and respond.

Poland’s Law and Justice, the leading party within the country’s previous ruling coalition, won the most seats of any single party in the Oct. 15 election — but not enough to hang onto power. In claiming victory, opposition leader and former Polish President Donald Tusk celebrated his party’s success. “Never in my life have I been so happy about seemingly taking second place,” he said.

Tusk’s excitement might be short lived. Without an outright majority in parliament, a future government under his centrist Civic Coalition party is likely to be weak and wobbly. Tusk will need the support of smaller leftist parties to form a government — and their interests will not always be aligned with his. Keeping these bedfellows within his political fold will almost certainly require the dispensation of large domestic spending programs, likely at the cost of Poland’s mighty defense budget, which is currently 3.9 percent of the country’s GDP. It may also require a reversion to Poland’s previous preference for “splitting the baby” on arms deals between the United States and European firms.

On the campaign trail, Tusk promised voters a return to pro-European Union policies. The last time that his party was in power it regularly divided major defense purchases between American firms and their EU competitors. The practice was intentional. Mega-deals with the United States, like the fielding of the Patriot air defense system, maintained a strong link with Washington. Other purchases from the EU allowed Warsaw to burnish its reputation as a “team player” in Brussels. While the outgoing government broke with this approach, Poland’s next government will likely return to it. As the former president of the European Council, Tusk might even have a greater affinity for the EU than before.

In the near term, the greatest potential for a change in Polish defense could occur in the air. Under the outgoing government, Warsaw spent big to purchase 32 F-35 fighters from the United States in 2020. It is now looking to acquire two additional squadrons of multi-role fighter aircraft. The lead candidates in this competition are the Eurofighter Typhoon, made by a consortium led by Europe’s Airbus, and the F-15EX Eagle II, made by America’s Boeing. If the next government decides to proceed with this purchase, the two companies will need to make a compelling political and geostrategic case for their option in addition to the capabilities of their aircraft.

On the ground, additional changes could be coming for Poland’s ambitious plans to field state-of-the-art main battle tanks. Earlier this year, the outgoing government signed a $5.8 billion deal with South Korea to acquire 1,000 K2 tanks from that country. This was in addition to $6.1 billion in deals with Washington to acquire hundreds of America’s M1A2 Abrams tanks over the next two years. While this sizable expansion of Poland’s heavy armor was meant to bolster Warsaw’s plans for a 300,000-person military in the coming years, the total bill might be too large for the incoming government to stomach.

New Polish governments traditionally revel in axing or modifying the defense decisions of their predecessors. When the Law and Justice party came to power in 2015, Poland incurred the “fury” of France when it cancelled a multibillion-dollar deal to purchase 50 Caracal multi-role helicopters from Airbus. Warsaw opted instead to build a Polish-made version of America’s Blackhawk. While major reversals in Poland’s strategic approach to its defense are not in the cards, it’s very possible that the incoming government will reshuffle Poland’s defense-industrial ties and scale down plans for a military buildup.

What is unlikely to change under the next government is Poland’s broader geopolitical orientation. The country will continue to take seriously threats from dangerous and destabilizing neighbors like Russia and Belarus. Meanwhile, it will remain a constant target for malign Chinese influence. For decades, Poland has leaned on its security relationship with the United States to mitigate these risks. That relationship benefits both sides. The White House can and should use all available diplomatic leverage with Poland to ensure that our defense-industrial relationship remains ironclad.

Meanwhile, Washington can expect Warsaw to maintain its support for Kyiv. However, a major test could occur if Ukraine faces stronger pressure to negotiate a settlement with Russia in the months ahead. In that event, the next Polish government may align closer with the positions of Germany or France instead of the expected strong line taken by allies like the United Kingdom, Lithuania, and Romania. Navigating these tensions will not be easy for Warsaw, and it will look to the United States for guidance.

Having won victory, the challenge for Tusk’s party will not only be in keeping it — but also paying for it.

Peter Doran is Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

15. China said the US is a disruptor of peace in response to Pentagon report on China’s military buildup

China doth protest too much (and makes counteraccusations)

China said the US is a disruptor of peace in response to Pentagon report on China’s military buildup

AP · by HUIZHONG WU · October 25, 2023

FILE - United States and Chinese flags are set up before a meeting between Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, on July 8, 2023. China said the United States is the “biggest disruptor of regional peace and stability” in the world in a scathing response Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023 to a Pentagon report on China’s growing military buildup. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool, File)

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BANGKOK (AP) — China said the United States is the “biggest disruptor of regional peace and stability” in the world in a scathing response Wednesday to a Pentagon report on China’s growing military buildup.

The annual report that is required by Congress is one way the Pentagon measures the military capabilities of China, which the U.S. government sees as its key threat in the Asia-Pacific region and America’s primary long-term security challenge.

The statement China’s Ministry of Defense issued in response called the Pentagon report’s findings false and used it in turn to hit back at the U.S.’ recent actions in helping Israel and Ukraine, as well as its buildup of military installations worldwide.

“The U.S. has sent depleted uranium munitions and cluster bombs to Ukraine, sent its carrier battle groups to the Mediterranean and weapons and munitions to Israel, is this the so-called ‘gospel’ the ’human rights defender is bringing to the area?” said Wu Qian, the spokesperson for China’s defense ministry.

The Pentagon report builds on a warning last year that China was expanding its nuclear force rapidly, in line with a general buildup of its military. The earlier warning said Beijing was on track to nearly quadruple the number of warheads it has to 1,500 by 2035.

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi will visit the United States on Thursday ahead of a possible meetup between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in November. U.S.-China relations have deteriorated since 2018, initially over a trade dispute but expanding to the pandemic, China’s actions in Xinjiang and over Taiwan.

China also made sure to address Taiwan in its response. The Pentagon report said China is intensifying military, diplomatic and economic pressure toward the self-ruled island.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has become more overt with this claim in recent years. This claim has become one of the main points of tension between China and the U.S. as U.S. support for Taiwan has grown. The U.S. has also sold billions of dollars in weapons to Taiwan, which the island’s government has said is for self-defense and deterrence.

“We urge the U.S. to stop using any excuse, any method to strengthen U.S.-Taiwan military links and illegally arm Taiwan in any way,” the spokesperson said.

The U.S. provides Taiwan sales under the Taiwan Relations Act, passed by Congress in 1979 to ensure the island is able to defend itself.

HUIZHONG WU

China correspondent based in Taiwan

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AP · by HUIZHONG WU · October 25, 2023

16. Army Air Defense Units from 3 Bases Are Deploying to Middle East After 13 Drone Attacks

One of our Army's "high demand low density " capabilities. These soldiers already experience one of the highest optempos in the US military. And I cannot see any reduction in requirements in the near (or long term) future and given the fact that our Army is at the smallest size since WWII we cannot add to this critical capability any time soon - both in terms of personnel and equipment. I am not sure if we have any increased force structure plans for air defense capabilities.

Army Air Defense Units from 3 Bases Are Deploying to Middle East After 13 Drone Attacks

military.com · by Konstantin Toropin · October 24, 2023

The Army air defense units deploying to the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war come from Fort Bliss in Texas, Fort Liberty in North Carolina, and Fort Sill in Oklahoma, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The units are bringing Patriot missile batteries and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery to the region after more than a dozen drone and rocket attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria over the past week that the Pentagon has blamed on Iranian proxies. NBC News reported Tuesday evening that two dozen American military personnel were wounded in the attacks, but that could not be immediately confirmed by Military.com.

Although Pentagon officials didn't name the Army units being deployed, Fort Bliss is home to the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, Fort Liberty hosts the 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, and Fort Sill is home to the 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade.

The units are among the latest deployments to the Middle East following two aircraft carrier strike groups earlier this month; F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jets this week -- adding to jets and A-10 Thunderbolt II planes already sent; and military advisers including a Marine Corps general versed in urban warfare to aid Israel as it wages war on Hamas.

Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the top Pentagon spokesman who briefed reporters Tuesday, would not say how many troops are deploying with the air defense units or give their specific destinations. He did say that a THAAD battery was coming from Fort Bliss and the Patriot battalions would come from Fort Liberty and Fort Bliss.

More than 2,000 U.S. troops were also put on ready-to-deploy orders by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as yet another show of support for Israel, which declared war against Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, after its sudden and brazen terrorist attack on Oct. 7 killed about 1,400 Israelis.

The deployment of the air defenses came as Pentagon officials disclosed new details about an uptick in drone and missile strikes on U.S. bases in the region since last week. On Monday, the Pentagon blamed the attacks on Iran and groups it supports in the region, and said it expected the threat to grow as the bloody war in Israel and Gaza drags on.

Ryder said that between Oct. 17 and Oct. 24, "U.S. and coalition forces have been attacked at least 10 separate times in Iraq and three separate times in Syria via a mix of one-way attack drones and rockets."

The Pentagon had revealed some of these attacks last week as they occurred, but Ryder stressed that 13 attacks are "initial numbers."

Defense officials have also stepped up the rhetoric around the attacks, telling reporters Monday that they "see a prospect for much more significant escalation against U.S. forces and personnel in the near term and, let's be clear about it, the road leads back to Iran."

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith was even more direct. Defense officials said last week that the Marine Corps' 26th Expeditionary Unit was heading "to the waters off of Israel" as a result of the crisis after it abruptly ended pre-scheduled training in Kuwait.

A Navy spokesperson told Military.com on Monday that the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group, which transports the 26th MEU, was in the Gulf of Oman area conducting freedom of navigation operations.

The Marines now deployed to the area "bring with them the weapons of war, if needed," Smith told a crowd Monday while speaking at a memorial for the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.

"For those that are in the area, if that MEU has to go in, if you target them, someone else will raise your children," Smith added.

Meanwhile, at sea, the destroyer USS Carney shot down drones and Houthi-launched cruise missiles on Thursday. The incident has been framed as a self-defense move by the Pentagon since last week, when officials wouldn't say whether the threat they posed was to the ship or Israel.

Ryder told reporters Tuesday that the land attack cruise missiles that the Carney shot down had a range that "was likely in excess of 2,000 kilometers," making them quite capable of striking Israel.

Another addition to the Middle East besides the Army's air defense missiles will be more F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jets from the New Jersey Air National Guard's 119th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron. Ryder said that the unit arrived in the Middle East on Tuesday.

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on X at @ktoropin.

military.com · by Konstantin Toropin · October 24, 2023

17. Governments and hackers agree: the laws of war must apply in cyberspace

Governments and hackers agree: the laws of war must apply in cyberspace

theconversation.com · by Professor Johanna Weaver

There are rules in war. International humanitarian law regulates what combatants can and can’t do, with the goal of protecting civilians and limiting suffering.

Most of these laws were developed during the 19th and 20th centuries. But in our own century a new kind of battlefield has emerged: the domain of cyberattacks, digital campaigns and online information operations. All these have played a heightened role in Russia’s war in Ukraine and, increasingly, in the current Israel–Hamas conflict.

There is a persistent myth that cyberspace is a lawless wild west. This could not be further from the truth. There is a clear international consensus that existing laws of war apply online.

In the past month, we have seen three significant developments in this area. Rules for “civilian hackers” have begun to gain traction. A new international humanitarian report has recommended ways forward for governments, tech companies and others. And the International Criminal Court has for the first time signalled that it considers cyber warfare to fall within its jurisdiction.

Rules for hacktivists

On October 4 2023, two advisers to the International Committee of the Red Cross proposed a set of rules for “civilian hackers” during war. The proposals include things like “do not conduct any cyber operation against medical and humanitarian facilities” and “when planning a cyber attack against a military objective, do everything feasible to avoid or minimize the effects your operation may have on civilians”.

The authors were motivated by evidence of online attacks disrupting banks, companies, pharmacies, hospitals, railway networks and civilian government services.

Cyber, digital and information operations – used alongside “real-world” military operations – have risen into the mainstream during Russia’s war in Ukraine. Many operations are carried out by civilian groups not formally connected to the military.

These manoeuvres are not spectacular. However, as Jeremy Fleming (former head of GCHQ, United Kingdom’s electronic spy agency) put it:

it was never our understanding that a catastrophic cyberattack was central to Russia’s use of offensive cyber in their military doctrine. To think otherwise, misjudges how cyber has an effect in military campaigns. That’s not to say that we haven’t seen cyber in this conflict. We have – and lots of it.

After the proposed rules for civilian hackers were published, something extraordinary happened.

Two of the largest hacktivist groups actively engaged on opposite sides of the war in Ukraine are the Russian-affiliated Killnet and the Ukrainian IT Army. Spokespeople for both groups vowed to the BBC they would uphold the rules.

Digital threats during armed conflict

It is not just actors in Ukraine, and not just hacktivist groups, who must comply with the laws of war in cyberspace.

On October 18, the International Committee of the Red Cross published the final report of its global advisory board on digital threats during armed conflicts.

The report is the culmination of two years of work. The board comprises a diverse group of experts spanning the geopolitical spectrum, including the United States, Russia, China, South Africa, Mexico, India and Australia (including me).

We worked on “the international consensus that the established principles and rules of [international humanitarian law] apply to all forms of warfare and to all kinds of weapons, be they new or old, digital or physical”.

To safeguard civilians against digital threats, the report includes 25 action-oriented recommendations for belligerents, states, tech companies and humanitarian organisations.

United Nations agreements recognise that the laws of war apply to cyber operations. Eduardo Munoz / EPA

Since 2013, negotiated agreements at the United Nations have recognised that existing international law applies to what states do in cyberspace.

In 2021, Russia, China, the US, Australia and every country in the United Nations went one step further, explicitly recognising the application of the laws of war to cyber operations.

The International Committee of the Red Cross – its mission being “to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles” – has also affirmed this many times, including via the reports above.

The International Criminal Court weighs in

Of course, agreeing to the rules doesn’t prevent irresponsible actors from breaking them. And this is where the third significant development comes in.

In September 2023, Karim A.A. Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, signalled the court would begin “collecting and reviewing” evidence of cyber warfare. It will also examine “misuse of the internet to amplify hate speech and disinformation, which may facilitate or even directly lead to the occurrence of atrocities”.

Karim Khan, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, is taking an interest in cyberwarfare and ‘misuse of the internet’. Neil Hall / EPA

This is the first time the International Criminal Court has expressly indicated cyber warfare and misuse of the internet fall within its jurisdiction. This puts governments, militaries, tech companies and hacktivists on notice that they do not act with impunity in cyberspace.

As the war drags on in Ukraine and conflict escalates between Israel and Hamas (including increasing reports of hacktivism), all parties would do well to reflect that the rules of cyber warfare are clear.

Bombs or bytes, missiles or malware, international humanitarian law applies.

Author

Professor Johanna Weaver

Director, ANU Tech Policy Design Centre, Australian National University

Disclosure statement

Professor Johanna Weaver was a member of the ICRC Global Advisory Board on Digital Threats During Armed conflict referred to in this article.

theconversation.com · by Professor Johanna Weaver

18. Hamas operatives used phone lines installed in tunnels under Gaza to plan Israel attack over 2 years, sources familiar with intelligence say

I wonder why this seems like a suprise or news to anyone. Radio communications is a challenge underground. Land lines are probably the most effective communications capability in tunnels.

Hamas operatives used phone lines installed in tunnels under Gaza to plan Israel attack over 2 years, sources familiar with intelligence say

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/24/politics/intelligence-hamas-israel-attack-tunnels-phone-lines/

By Pamela Brown and Zachary Cohen, CNN

 4 minute read 

Updated 12:33 AM EDT, Wed October 25, 2023

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She has been inside tunnels built by Hamas under Gaza. Hear why they might matter now

02:59 - Source: CNN

CNN — 

Intelligence shared with the United States suggests a small cell of Hamas operatives planning the deadly surprise attack on Israel communicated via a network of hardwired phones built into the network of tunnels underneath Gaza over a period of two years, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The phone lines in the tunnels allowed the operatives to communicate with one another in secret and meant they could not be tracked by Israeli intelligence officials, the sources told CNN.

During the two years of planning, the small cell operating in the tunnels used the hardwired phone lines to communicate and plan the operation but stayed dark until it was time to activate and call on hundreds of Hamas fighters to launch the October 7 attack, the sources said.

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They avoided using computers or cell phones during the two-year period to evade detection by Israeli or US intelligence, the sources said.

“There wasn’t a lot of discussion and back and forth and coordination outside of the immediate area,” one of the sources said.

The 'Gaza metro': The mysterious subterranean tunnel network used by Hamas

The intelligence shared with US officials by Israel reveals how Hamas hid the planning of the operation through old-fashioned counterintelligence measures such as conducting planning meetings in person and staying off digital communications whose signals the Israelis can track in favor of the hardwired phones in the tunnels. It offers new insight into why Israel and the US were caught so flat-footed by the Hamas attack, which saw at least 1,500 fighters pouring across the border into Israel in an operation that killed at least 1,400 Israelis.

CNN has not seen the specific intelligence but spoke to sources familiar with it. The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment and the Israeli embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

CNN previously reported that a series of strategic warnings from US and Israeli intelligence agencies did not lead officials from either country to anticipate the events of October 7.

The Israel Defense Forces colloquially refers to the tunnels built by Hamas over the last fifteen years or so as the “Gaza metro.” The tunnels make up a vast labyrinth that is used to store rockets and ammunition caches, as well as provide a way for militants to move about unnoticed. The IDF also says it contains vital Hamas command and control centers.

Yocheved Lifshitz, an 85-year-old grandmother who was one of two hostages released by Hamas on Monday, said after she was kidnapped, she was taken into the network of tunnels and slept on a mattress on the floor in one of them.

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Released hostage reveals how Hamas treated her in captivity

01:42 - Source: CNN

According to the sources briefed on the Hamas assault, the small cell waited until just before the attack was launched to prep a larger group of fighters above ground to carry out the specific operation. One of the sources said that though ground unit commanders and fighters were being trained for many months and kept at a state of general preparedness, they were only informed of the specific plans in the days leading up the operation.

“That’s how you compartment and keep something that’s tight,” the source added, noting that’s what happened in this case.

US intelligence warned of the potential for violence days before Hamas attack

One of the sources said some of the training above ground was observed but did not ring major alarm bells. The thinking was, “oh they always train people like this. It didn’t look different,” the source said.

A third source familiar with the latest intelligence said Iran has helped Hamas develop their operational security tactics over the years, though US intelligence does not believe Iran played a direct role planning the October 7 attack itself.

Israel was aware that Palestinian militants had been using hardwired communication systems prior to the October attack.

It encountered what appeared to be a similar kind of communication system when the Israeli military raided the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank this summer, according to an Israeli official. When Israeli troops moved in as part of what was dubbed “Operation Home and Garden,” the Israel Defense Forces discovered secure, hardwired communication lines and closed-circuit surveillance cameras to give advance warning of Israeli troop movements.

At the time, the IDF said it had struck a joint operational command center used by militant cells in Jenin, noting that it was used for “advanced observation and reconnaissance.” It was, the IDF said, a “hub for coordination and communication among the terrorists.”

CNN’s Oren Liebermann contributed reporting.

19. Putin and Xi: Beijing Belt and Road meeting highlighted Russia’s role as China’s junior partner

At an event yesterday I made a comment that my favorite "threesome of convenience" (Chian, Russia, and north Korea) is a transactional relationship. While there was some agreement with that broadly and among the three, some Russia and China experts pointed out that the China- Russia relationship is not simply transactional. There is substantial alignment on diplomatic and security issues and it is correct to call Russia the junior partner. (I wonder if that pisses off Putin?)

Putin and Xi: Beijing Belt and Road meeting highlighted Russia’s role as China’s junior partner

theconversation.com · by Marcin Kaczmarski and Natasha Kuhrt

The third Belt and Road Forum held in Beijing recently attracted fewer heads of state or senior officials than the previous forums in 2017 and 2019. There were 11 European presidents and prime ministers at the 2019 forum. But last week’s forum attracted only three.

This is understandable, given that the two-day meeting took place against the backdrop of high tension in the Middle East caused by the conflict between Israel and Hamas as well as the war in Ukraine – both wars which have highlighted differences in views on regional and global order between the west and a number of non-western countries.

One enthusiastic participant was the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. For Putin, the forum provided an opportunity to meet other leaders without fear of arrest, given his indictment by the International Criminal Court for war crimes which had kept him away from September’s Brics summit in South Africa.

While Putin was just one among 20 or so world leaders at the Forum, he was photographed at Xi Jinping’s right hand and given a prominent place in proceedings. Delivering a speech at the forum immediately after the Chinese president and staging a press conference for the Russian media before boarding the plane to Moscow, Putin attempted to convey the message of tight cooperation with China.

He was keen to remind his audience of Russia’s credentials as a UN security council member, together with China, responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security. He also noted that he and Xi had discussed both the situation in Gaza and the events in Ukraine, describing these situations as “common threats” which strengthen Sino-Russian “interaction”.

Putin drew particular attention to the high bilateral trade volume between Russia and China, which has reached nearly US$200 billion (£163 billion). This sounds impressive until you remember that the bulk of this trade consists of export of Russian hydrocarbons and other raw materials to China. This is nothing new – in fact trade in hydrocarbons between Russia and China have been boosted by western sanctions.

Perhaps the most instructive aspect of the visit was Putin’s explicit acknowledgement of the different roles played by Moscow and Beijing in international politics. Putin described the Russia-dominated Greater Eurasian Partnership (GEP) – a concept Moscow has promoted as a response to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that would fuse the Eurasian Economic Union with the BRI – as a regional or “local” project. Meanwhile he happily described the BRI as “global” in scale.

For the past decade, Russian policymakers and experts have consistently held up the GEP as symbolising Russia’s equality with China. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has described it as “the creation of a continent-wide architecture”.

Putin’s words, coupled with the lack of any meaningful results of the meeting (bar a contract on food and agricultural products which has yet to be confirmed by Beijing), illustrate the extent to which Russia’s war against Ukraine has deepened the asymmetry between the two powers.

Holding back?

The lack of genuine progress on the issue of the Power of Siberia-2 pipeline, which will transport gas from Russia’s Yamal gas fields, which used to supply Europe, via Mongolia to China, was further evidence of this asymmetry. Xi was kind enough to express hope that the project could proceed quickly. But he did not outline any concrete steps in that direction.

China’s agreement, if confirmed by a contract, would have been the most clear signal of Beijing’s strategic support for Russia, especially given Gazprom’s shrinking European market. By prolonging negotiations, China seems to be trying to extract specific concessions from Russia, related to the price of gas, possible Chinese ownership of gas fields in Russia, or Beijing’s acquisition of shares in Gazprom.

Meanwhile, in May 2023, China revived the prospect of building the so-called section “D”, enlarging the capacity of the Central Asia-China gas pipeline system, which will bring gas from Turkmenistan via Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to China, emphasising China’s other sources of energy supplies.

While continuing to offer Moscow political support and not interfering with Chinese companies’ attempts to take advantage of the exodus of western companies to increase their presence in the Russian market, Beijing has clearly attempted to prevent any embarrassment related to Russia. A gas contract would have overshadowed the BRI summit and generated a strong reaction in the US and Europe, potentially strengthening China hawks in the west.

Beijing making its move

Putin’s delegation was full of ministers and CEOs of key Russian enterprises, from Rosneft and Gazprom to Novatek, so the conclusion of commercial agreements can’t be ruled out, but the probability is low. It is clear that Beijing does not want to be seen to be openly supporting Russia in resisting and bypassing western sanctions.

In the 1990s, Russian officials regularly warned of the dangers of becoming a “raw materials appendage” to China. Today the economic benefits that Russian elites gain from hydrocarbons mean this danger has now become a reality. Russia has locked itself into an economic partnership in which it is the supplicant, a role that Moscow seems happy to play.

But the BRI is not just about economics. It is also a key part of Beijing’s bid to project itself as a “global responsible power”. Beijing has recently outlined what it calls its “Global Security Initiative” which explicitly rejects the Western rules-based order. This comes alongside a “Global Development Initiative” and, nested within these, a “Global Civilisation initiative”. Taken together these question western universalist ideas about human rights and democracy.

China’s thinking has gained traction among many countries of the global south, providing a developmental path without lectures on human rights. China speaks to these countries using its dual identity as both a rapidly developing power and a member of the UN security council. By comparison, notwithstanding its security council position, Russia has few tangible benefits to offer these countries. Last week’s BRI forum has driven this point home.

Authors

Marcin Kaczmarski

Lecturer in Security Studies, University of Glasgow

Natasha Kuhrt

Senior Lecturer in International Peace & Security, King's College London

Disclosure statement

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

theconversation.com · by Marcin Kaczmarski

20. The Sources of American Power: A Foreign Policy for a Changed World By Jake Sullivan

The "third phase" or "third era."

Excerpts:

The United States has reached the third phase of the global role it assumed following World War II. In the first phase, the Truman administration laid the foundation of American power to accomplish two objectives: strengthening democracies and democratic cooperation and containing the Soviet Union. This strategy, carried on by subsequent presidents, included a comprehensive effort to invest in American industry, especially in new technologies, from the 1950s to the 1970s. This commitment to national strength through industrial investment began to erode in the 1980s, and there was little perceived need for it after the Cold War. In the second phase, with the United States having no peer competitor, successive administrations sought to enlarge the U.S.-led rules-based order and establish patterns of cooperation on critical issues. This era transformed the world for the better in a variety of ways—many countries became more free, prosperous, and secure; global poverty was slashed; and the world responded effectively to the 2008 financial crisis—but it was also a period of geopolitical change.

The United States now finds itself at the start of the third era: one in which it is adjusting for a new period of competition in an age of interdependence and transnational challenges. This does not mean breaking with the past or giving up the gains that have been made, but it does mean laying a new foundation of American strength. That requires revisiting long-held assumptions if we are to leave America stronger than we found it and better prepared for what lies ahead. The outcome of this phase will not be determined solely by outside forces. It will also, to a large extent, be decided by the United States’ own choices.

The Sources of American Power

A Foreign Policy for a Changed World

By Jake Sullivan

November/December 2023

Published on October 24, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Jake Sullivan · October 24, 2023

Nothing in world politics is inevitable. The underlying elements of national power, such as demography, geography, and natural resources, matter, but history shows that these are not enough to determine which countries will shape the future. It is the strategic decisions countries make that matter most—how they organize themselves internally, what they invest in, whom they choose to align with and who wants to align with them, which wars they fight, which they deter, and which they avoid.

When President Joe Biden took office, he recognized that U.S. foreign policy is at an inflection point, where the decisions Americans make now will have an outsize impact on the future. The United States’ underlying strengths are vast, both in absolute terms and relative to other countries. The United States has a growing population, abundant resources, and an open society that attracts talent and investment and spurs innovation and reinvention. Americans should be optimistic about the future. But U.S. foreign policy was developed in an era that is fast becoming a memory, and the question now is whether the country can adjust to the main challenge it faces: competition in an age of interdependence.

The post–Cold War era was a period of great change, but the common thread throughout the 1990s and the years after 9/11 was the absence of intense great-power competition. This was mainly the result of the United States’ military and economic preeminence, although it was widely interpreted as evidence that the world agreed on the basic direction of the international order. That post–Cold War era is now definitively over. Strategic competition has intensified and now touches almost every aspect of international politics, not just the military domain. It is complicating the global economy. It is changing how countries deal with shared problems such as climate change and pandemics. And it is posing fundamental questions about what comes next.

Old assumptions and structures must be adapted to meet the challenges the United States will face between now and 2050. In the previous era, there was reluctance to tackle clear market failures that threatened the resilience of the U.S. economy. Since the U.S. military had no peer, and as a response to 9/11, Washington focused on nonstate actors and rogue nations. It did not focus on improving its strategic position and preparing for a new era in which competitors would seek to replicate its military advantages, since that was not the world it faced at the time. Officials also largely assumed that the world would coalesce to tackle common crises, as it did in 2008 with the financial crisis, rather than fragment, as it would do in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic. Washington too often treated international institutions as set in stone without addressing the ways in which they were exclusive and did not represent the broader international community.

The overall effect was that although the United States remained the world’s preeminent power, some of its most vital muscles atrophied. On top of this, with the election of Donald Trump, the United States had a president who believed that its alliances were a form of geopolitical welfare. The steps he took that damaged those alliances were celebrated by Beijing and Moscow, which correctly saw U.S. alliances as a source of American strength rather than as a liability. Instead of acting to shape the international order, Trump pulled back from it.

This is what President Biden was faced with when he took office. He was determined not just to repair the immediate damage to the United States’ alliances and its leadership of the free world but also to pursue the long-term project of modernizing U.S. foreign policy for the challenges of today. This task was brought into stark relief by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as well as by China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea and across the Taiwan Strait.

The essence of President Biden’s foreign policy is to lay a new foundation of American strength so that the country is best positioned to shape the new era in a way that protects its interests and values and advances the common good. The country’s future will be determined by two things: whether it can sustain its core advantages in geopolitical competition and whether it can rally the world to address transnational challenges from climate change and global health to food security and inclusive economic growth.

At a fundamental level, this requires changing the way the United States thinks about power. This administration came to office believing that international power depends on a strong domestic economy and that the strength of the economy is measured not just by its size or efficiency but also by the degree to which it works for all Americans and is free of dangerous dependencies. We understood that American power also rests on its alliances but that these relationships, many of which date back more than seven decades, had to be updated and energized for the challenges of today. We realized that the United States is stronger when its partners are, too, and so we are committed to delivering a better value proposition globally to help countries solve pressing problems that no one country can solve on its own. And we recognized that Washington could no longer afford an undisciplined approach to the use of military force, even as we have mobilized a massive effort to defend Ukraine and stop Russian aggression. The Biden administration understands the new realities of power. And that is why we will leave America stronger than we found it.

THE HOME FRONT

After the Cold War, the United States underweighted the importance of investing in economic vibrancy at home. In the decades following World War II, the country had pursued a policy of bold public investment, including in R & D and in strategic sectors. That strategy underpinned its economic success, but over time, the United States moved away from it. The U.S. government designed trade policies and a tax code that placed insufficient focus on both American workers and the planet. In the exuberance at “the end of history,” many observers asserted that geopolitical rivalries would give way to economic integration, and most believed that new countries brought into the international economic system would adjust their policies to play by the rules. As a result, the U.S. economy developed worrying vulnerabilities. While at an aggregate level it thrived, under the surface, whole communities were hollowed out. The United States ceded the lead in critical manufacturing sectors. It failed to make the necessary investments in its infrastructure. And the middle class took a hit.

President Biden has prioritized investing in innovation and industrial strength at home—what has become known as “Bidenomics.” These public investments are not about picking winners and losers or bringing globalization to an end. They enable rather than replace private investment. And they enhance the United States’ capacity to deliver inclusive growth, build resilience, and protect national security.

The Biden administration has enacted the most far-reaching new investments in decades, including the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. We are promoting new breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology, clean energy, and semiconductors while protecting the United States’ advantages and security through new export controls and investment rules, in partnership with allies. These policies have made a difference. Large-scale investments in semiconductor and clean energy production are up 20-fold since 2019. We now estimate that public and private investment in these sectors will total $3.5 trillion over the next decade. And construction spending on manufacturing has doubled since the end of 2021.

U.S. foreign policy was developed in an era that is fast becoming a memory.

In recent decades, the United States’ supply chains for critical minerals had become heavily dependent on unpredictable overseas markets, many of which are dominated by China. This is why the administration is working to build resilient, durable supply chains with partners and allies in vital sectors—including semiconductors, medicine and biotechnology, critical minerals, and batteries—so that the United States is not vulnerable to price or supply disruptions. Our approach encompasses minerals that are important to all aspects of national security, understanding that the communications, energy, and computing sectors are as essential as the traditional defense sector. All this has put the United States in a position to better absorb attempts by external powers to limit American access to critical inputs.

When this administration took office, we found that although the U.S. military is the strongest in the world, its industrial base suffered from a series of unaddressed vulnerabilities. After years of underinvestment, an aging workforce, and supply chain disruptions, important defense sectors had become weaker and less dynamic. The Biden administration is rebuilding those sectors, doing everything from investing in the submarine industrial base to producing more critical munitions so that the United States can make what is necessary to sustain deterrence in competitive regions. We are investing in the U.S. nuclear deterrent to ensure its continued effectiveness as competitors build up their arsenals while signaling openness to future arms control negotiations if competitors are interested. We are also partnering with the most innovative labs and companies to ensure that the United States’ superior conventional capabilities take advantage of the latest technologies.

Future administrations may differ from ours on the details of how to harness the domestic sources of national strength. That is a legitimate topic for debate. But in a more competitive world, there can be no doubt that Washington needs to break down the barrier between domestic and foreign policy and that major public investments are an essential component of foreign policy. President Dwight Eisenhower did this in the 1950s. We are doing it again today, but in partnership with the private sector, in coordination with allies, and with a focus on today’s cutting-edge technologies.

ALL TOGETHER NOW

The United States’ alliances and partnerships with other democracies have been its greatest international advantage. They helped create a freer and more stable world. They helped deter aggression or reverse it. And they meant that Washington never had to go it alone. But these alliances were built for a different era. In recent years, the United States was underutilizing or even undermining them.

President Biden was clear from the moment he took office about the importance he attached to U.S. alliances, especially given his predecessor’s skepticism of them. But he understood that even those who supported these alliances over the past three decades often overlooked the need to modernize them for competition in an age of interdependence. Accordingly, we have strengthened these alliances and partnerships in material ways that improve the United States’ strategic position and its ability to deal with shared challenges. For example, we have mobilized a global coalition of countries to support Ukraine as it defends itself against an unprovoked war of aggression and to impose costs on Russia. NATO has expanded to include Finland, soon to be followed by Sweden—two historically nonaligned nations. NATO has also adjusted its posture on its eastern flank, deployed a capability to respond to cyberattacks against its members, and invested in its air and missile defenses. And the United States and the EU have dramatically deepened cooperation on economics, energy, technology, and national security.

We are doing something similar in Asia. In August, we held a historic summit at Camp David that cemented a new era of trilateral cooperation among the United States, Japan, and South Korea while bringing the United States’ bilateral alliances with those countries to new heights. In the face of North Korea’s dangerous and illicit nuclear and missile programs, we are working to ensure that the United States’ extended deterrence is stronger than ever so that the region remains peaceful and stable. That is why we concluded the Washington Declaration with South Korea and why we’re advancing extended trilateral deterrence discussions with Japan, as well.

Sullivan and Biden after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Kyiv, Ukraine, February 2023

Evan Vucci / Reuters

Through AUKUS—the trilateral security partnership among the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom—we have integrated the three countries’ defense industrial bases to produce conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines and increase cooperation on advanced capabilities such as artificial intelligence, autonomous platforms, and electronic warfare. Access to new sites through a defense cooperation agreement with the Philippines strengthens the United States’ strategic posture in the Indo-Pacific. In September, President Biden traveled to Hanoi to announce that the United States and Vietnam were elevating their relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership. The Quad, which brings together the United States, Australia, India, and Japan, has unleashed new forms of regional cooperation on technology, climate, health, and maritime security. We are also investing in a twenty-first-century partnership between the United States and India—for example, with the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology. And through the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, we are deepening trade relationships and negotiating first-of-their-kind agreements on supply chain resilience, the clean energy economy, and anticorruption and tax cooperation with 13 diverse partners in the region.

The administration is strengthening U.S. partnerships outside Asia and across traditional regional seams. Last December, at the first U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit since 2014, the United States made a series of historic commitments, including supporting the African Union’s membership in the G-20 and signing a memorandum of understanding with the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat, an effort that would create a combined continent-wide market of 1.3 billion people and $3.4 trillion. Earlier in 2022, we galvanized hemispheric action on migration through the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection and launched the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, an initiative to drive the Western Hemisphere’s economic recovery. We also stood up a new coalition with India, Israel, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates, known as I2U2. It brings together South Asia, the Middle East, and the United States through joint initiatives on water, energy, transportation, space, health, and food security. This September, the United States joined with 31 other countries across North America, South America, Africa, and Europe to create the Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation to invest in science and technology, promote the sustainable use of the ocean, and stop climate change. We have formed a new global cyber-partnership, bringing together 47 countries and international organizations to counter the scourge of ransomware.

These are not isolated efforts. They are part of a self-reinforcing latticework of cooperation. The United States’ closest partners are fellow democracies, and we will work vigorously to defend democracy across the globe. The Summit for Democracy, which the president first convened in 2021, has created an institutional basis for deepening democracy and advancing governance, anticorruption, and human rights—and getting fellow democracies to own the agenda alongside Washington. But the range of countries supporting Washington’s vision of a free, open, prosperous, and secure world is broad and powerful, and it includes those with diverse political systems. We will work with any country prepared to stand up for the principles of the UN Charter even as we shore up transparent and accountable governance and support democratic reformers and human rights defenders.

We are also growing the connective tissue between U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific and in Europe. The United States is stronger in each region because of its alliances in the other. Allies in the Indo-Pacific are staunch supporters of Ukraine, while allies in Europe are helping the United States support peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. The president’s efforts to strengthen alliances are also contributing to the greatest amount of burden sharing in decades. The United States is asking its allies to step up while also offering more itself. Roughly 20 NATO countries are on track to meet the target of spending two percent of their GDPs on defense in 2024, up from just seven countries in 2022. Japan has promised to double its defense budget and is purchasing U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles, which will enhance its deterrence of nuclear-armed competitors in the region. As part of AUKUS, Australia is making the biggest single investment in defense capability in its history while also investing in the U.S. defense industrial base. Germany has become the third-largest supplier of weapons to Ukraine and is weaning itself off Russian energy.

A BETTER DEAL

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic showed that if the United States is unwilling to lead efforts to solve global problems, no one else will step into the breach. In 2020, many world leaders were barely on speaking terms. The G-7 struggled to coalesce when COVID-19 struck. Instead of coordinating closely, countries undertook disparate efforts that made the pandemic more severe than it might otherwise have been. President Biden and his team have always believed that the United States has a crucial role to play in spurring international cooperation, whether on the global economy, health, development, or the environment. But the shocking experience of a global crisis without global leadership seared this into the president’s worldview. As we looked at the daunting array of global challenges, we realized that we would not just have to restore U.S. leadership; we would also need to up our game and offer the world, especially the global South, a better value proposition.

Much of the world is not preoccupied with geopolitical contests; most countries want to know that they have partners that can help them address the problems they confront, some of which feel existential. For these countries, the complaint is not that there is too much America but too little. Yes, they say, we see the pitfalls of getting closer to major authoritarian powers, but where is your alternative? President Biden understands this. Where the United States was absent, it is now competitive. Where it was competitive, it is now leading with urgency and purpose. And it is doing that in partnership with other countries, figuring out how to solve pressing problems together.

The United States has maintained its long-standing leadership on global development, sustained its vital investments in health and food security, and remained the leading provider of humanitarian assistance and emergency food aid at a time of unprecedented global need. President Biden is now leading a global effort to raise ambitions even higher. The United States is placing priority on driving progress toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. It is scaling up multilateral development banks, mobilizing the private sector, and helping countries unlock domestic capital. As a cornerstone of this effort, the administration is modernizing the World Bank so it can address today’s challenges with sufficient speed and scale, and we are working with partners to significantly increase the bank’s financing, including to low- and middle-income countries. We are also pressing for solutions to help vulnerable countries quickly and transparently address unsustainable debt, freeing up resources for them to invest in their futures rather than make backbreaking debt payments.

In recent years, China’s Belt and Road Initiative was dominant, and the United States lagged behind in large-scale infrastructure investment in developing countries. Now, the United States is mobilizing hundreds of billions of dollars in capital through the G-7 Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment to support physical, digital, clean-energy, and health infrastructure across developing countries.

The Biden administration understands the new realities of power.

The United States has led the way on global health. It is investing more than ever to end epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria as public health threats by 2030. It donated almost 700 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to more than 115 countries and nearly half of all global pandemic response funds, and it remains vigilant about emerging threats. It is helping 50 countries prepare, prevent, and respond to the next health emergency. Most people likely have not heard about the recent outbreaks of Marburg virus disease or Ebola, because we learned the lessons of the 2014 West African Ebola epidemic and responded before outbreaks in East, Central, and West Africa went global.

No country can offer a credible value proposition to the world if it is not serious about climate change. The Biden administration inherited a massive gap between ambition and reality when it comes to carbon mitigation. The United States is now driving the global deployment of clean energy technology at scale. For the first time, the country will meet its national commitment under the Paris agreement to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions and the global commitment to mobilize $100 billion a year for developing countries to deal with climate change. It has launched joint initiatives such as the Just Energy Transition Partnership with Indonesia, which will accelerate that country’s power sector transition with support from public and private sources.

New fit-for-purpose partnerships are not meant to replace existing international institutions. The Biden administration is working to reinforce and reinvigorate those institutions, updating them for the world we face today. In addition to modernizing the World Bank, the president has also proposed giving developing countries a greater say at the International Monetary Fund. The administration will continue to try to reform the World Trade Organization so it can drive the clean energy transition, protect workers, and promote inclusive and sustainable growth while continuing to uphold competition, openness, transparency, and the rule of law. The president has called for far-reaching reforms to the UN Security Council to expand the number of members, both permanent and nonpermanent, and make it more effective and representative.

The president also knows that countries need to be able to cooperate on challenges that were unfathomable not that long ago. That need is particularly urgent with respect to artificial intelligence. This is why we brought together the leading U.S. businesses responsible for AI innovation to make a series of voluntary commitments to develop AI in ways that are safe, secure, and transparent. It is why the U.S. government itself has made commitments to this end, issuing in February a declaration on the responsible military use of AI. And it is why we are building on these initiatives by working with U.S. allies, partners, and other countries to develop strong rules and principles to govern AI.

Delivering a better value proposition is a work in progress, but it is a vital pillar of a new foundation of American strength. Not only is it the right thing to do; it also serves U.S. interests. Helping other countries get stronger makes America stronger and more secure. It creates new partners and better friends. We will continue to build America’s affirmative offering to the world. It is absolutely necessary if the United States is to win the competition to shape the future of the international order so that it is free, open, prosperous, and secure.

PICK YOUR BATTLES

In the 1990s, U.S. defense policy was dominated by questions about whether and how to intervene in war-torn countries to prevent mass atrocities. After 9/11, the United States shifted its focus to terrorist groups. The risk of great-power conflict appeared remote. That began to change with Russia’s invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, as well as with China’s breakneck military modernization and its growing military provocations in the East China and South China Seas and the Taiwan Strait. But America’s priorities had not adapted fast enough to the challenges of deterring great-power aggression and responding once it occurred.

President Biden was determined to adapt. He ended U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history, and freed the United States from sustaining military forces in active hostilities for the first time in two decades. This transition was unquestionably painful—especially for the people of Afghanistan and for the U.S. troops and other personnel who served there. But it was necessary for preparing the U.S. military for the challenges ahead. One of those challenges came even more quickly than we had anticipated, with Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. If the United States were still fighting in Afghanistan, it is highly likely that Russia would be doing everything it could right now to help the Taliban pin Washington down there, preventing it from focusing its attention on helping Ukraine.

Even as our priorities shift away from major military interventions, we remain ready to deal with the enduring threat of international terrorism. We have acted over the horizon in Afghanistan—most notably with the operation that killed the head of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri—and we have taken other terrorist targets off the battlefield in Somalia, Syria, and elsewhere. We will continue to do so. But we will also avoid the protracted forever wars that can tie down U.S. forces and that do little to actually reduce the threats to the United States.

With respect to the Middle East more generally, the president inherited a region that was highly pressurized. The original version of this article, written before the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel, emphasized the progress in the Middle East after two decades marked by a massive U.S. military intervention in Iraq, a NATO military campaign in Libya, raging civil wars, refugee crises, the rise of a self-declared terrorist caliphate, revolutions and counterrevolutions, and the breakdown in relations among key countries in the region. It described our efforts to return to a disciplined U.S. policy approach that prioritized deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region through joint infrastructure projects, including between Israel and its Arab neighbors. There was material progress. The war in Yemen had reached its 18th month of a truce. Other conflicts had cooled. Regional leaders openly worked together. In September, the president announced a new economic corridor that connects India to Europe through the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel.

Biden holding a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam, September 2023

Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters

The original version of this article emphasized that this progress was fragile and that perennial challenges remained, including tensions between Israel and Palestinians and the threat posed by Iran. The October 7 attacks have cast a shadow over the entire regional picture, the repercussions of which are still playing out, including the risk of significant regional escalation. But the disciplined approach in the Middle East that we have pursued remains core to our posture and planning as we deal with this crisis.

As President Biden demonstrated when he traveled to Israel in a rare wartime visit on October 18, the United States firmly supports Israel as it protects its citizens and defends itself against brutal terrorists. We are working closely with regional partners to facilitate the sustainable delivery of humanitarian assistance to civilians in the Gaza Strip. And the president has repeatedly made clear that the United States stands for the protection of civilian life during conflict and respect for the laws of war. Hamas, which has committed atrocities that recall the worst ravages of ISIS, does not represent the Palestinian people, and it does not stand for their right to dignity and self-determination. We are committed to a two-state solution that does. In fact, our discussions with Saudi Arabia and Israel toward normalization have always included significant proposals for the Palestinians. If agreed, this component would ensure that a path to two states remains viable, with significant and concrete steps taken in that direction by all relevant parties.

We are alert to the risk that the current crisis could spiral into a regional conflict. We have conducted extensive diplomatic outreach and enhanced our military force posture in the region. Since the beginning of this administration, we have acted militarily when necessary to protect U.S. personnel. We are committed to ensuring that Iran never obtains a nuclear weapon. And while military force must never be a tool of first resort, we stand ready and prepared to use it when necessary to protect U.S. personnel and interests in this important region.

Our approach in Ukraine is sustainable.

The crisis in the Middle East does not change the fact that the United States needs to prepare for a new era of strategic competition—in particular by deterring and responding to great-power aggression. When we found out that Russian President Vladimir Putin was preparing to invade Ukraine, we were confronted with a challenge: the United States was not committed by treaty to Ukraine’s defense, but if Russia’s aggression went unanswered, a sovereign state would be extinguished, and a message would be sent to autocrats around the world that might makes right. We sought to avert the crisis by making it clear to Russia that the United States would respond by supporting Ukraine and by displaying a willingness to engage in talks on European security, even though Russia was not serious about doing so. We also used the deliberate and authorized public release of intelligence to warn Ukraine, rally U.S. partners, and deprive Russia of the ability to create false pretexts for its invasion.

When Putin invaded, we implemented a policy to help Ukraine defend itself without sending U.S. troops to war. The United States dispatched massive quantities of defensive weapons to the Ukrainians and rallied allies and partners to do the same. It coordinated the immense logistical undertaking to deliver those capabilities to the battlefield. This assistance has been divided into 47 different packages of military assistance to date, which were structured to respond to Ukraine’s needs as they evolved over the course of the conflict. We cooperated closely with the Ukrainian government on its requirements and worked through technical and logistical details to make sure its forces had what they needed. We also increased U.S. intelligence cooperation with Ukraine, as well as training efforts. And we imposed far-reaching sanctions on Russia to reduce its ability to wage war.

President Biden also made it abundantly clear that if Russia attacked a NATO ally, the United States would defend every inch of allied territory, backing that up with new force deployments. We started a process with U.S. allies and partners to help Ukraine build a military that could defend itself on land, at sea, and in the air—and deter future aggression. Our approach in Ukraine is sustainable, and, contrary to those who say otherwise, it enhances the United States’ capacity to meet every contingency in the Indo-Pacific. The American people know a bully when they see one. They understand that if they were to pull U.S. support from Ukraine, it would not just put Ukrainians at a severe disadvantage as they defend themselves but also set a terrible precedent, encouraging aggression in Europe and beyond. American support for Ukraine is broad and deep, and it will endure.

THE COMPETITION TO COME

It is clear that the world is becoming more competitive, that technology will be a disruptive force, and that shared problems will become more acute over time. But it is not clear precisely how these forces will manifest themselves. The United States has been surprised in the past (with the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990), and it will likely be surprised in the future, no matter how hard the government works to anticipate what is coming (and U.S. intelligence agencies have gotten a lot right, including accurately warning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022). Our strategy is designed to work in a wide variety of scenarios. By investing in the sources of domestic strength, deepening alliances and partnerships, delivering results on global challenges, and staying disciplined in the exercise of power, the United States will be prepared to advance its vision of a free, open, prosperous, and secure world no matter what surprises are in store. We have created, in Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s words, “situations of strength.”

The coming era of competition will be unlike anything experienced before. European security competition in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was largely a regional contest between midsize and proximate powers that ultimately ended in calamity. The Cold War that followed the most destructive war in human history was waged between two superpowers that had very low levels of interdependence. That ended decisively and in America’s favor. Today’s competition is fundamentally different. The United States and China are economically interdependent. The contest is truly global, but not zero-sum. The shared challenges the two sides face are unprecedented.

We are often asked about the end state of U.S. competition with China. We expect China to remain a major player on the world stage for the foreseeable future. We seek a free, open, prosperous, and secure international order, one that protects the interests of the United States and its friends and delivers global public goods. But we do not expect a transformative end state like the one that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union. There will be an ebb and flow to the competition—the United States will make gains, but China will, too. Washington must balance a sense of urgency with patience, understanding that what matters is the sum of its actions, not winning a single news cycle. And we need a sustained sense of confidence in our capacity to outcompete any country. The past two and a half years have upended assumptions on the relative trajectories of the United States and China.

The coming era of competition will be unlike anything experienced before.

The United States continues to enjoy a substantial trade and investment relationship with China. But the economic relationship with China is complicated because the country is a competitor. We will make no apology in pushing back on unfair trade practices that harm American workers. And we are concerned that China can take advantage of America’s openness to use U.S. technologies against the United States and its allies. Against this backdrop, we seek to “de-risk” and diversify, not decouple. We want to protect a targeted number of sensitive technologies with focused restrictions, creating what some have called “a small yard and a high fence.” We have faced criticism from various quarters that these steps are mercantilist or protectionist. This is untrue. These are steps taken in partnership with others and focused on a narrow set of technologies, steps that the United States needs to take in a more contested world to protect its national security while supporting an interconnected global economy.

At the same time, we are deepening technological cooperation with like-minded partners and allies, including with India and through the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, a forum created in 2021. We will keep investing in the United States’ own capacities and in secure, resilient supply chains. And we will keep advancing an agenda that promotes workers’ rights in pursuit of decent, safe, and healthy work at home and abroad to create a level playing field for American workers and companies.

At times, the competition will be intense. We are prepared for that. We are pushing back hard on aggression, coercion, and intimidation and standing up for the basic rules of the road, such as freedom of navigation in the sea. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it in a speech in September, “America’s enlightened self-interest in preserving and strengthening this order has never been greater.” We also understand that the United States’ competitors, particularly China, have a fundamentally different vision.

But Washington and Beijing need to figure out how to manage competition to reduce tensions and find a way forward on shared challenges. That is why the Biden administration is intensifying U.S. diplomacy with China, preserving existing channels of communication and creating new ones. Americans have internalized some of the lessons of the crises of decades past, especially the potential to stumble into conflict. High-level and repeated interaction is crucial to clear up misperception, avoid miscommunication, send unambiguous signals, and arrest downward spirals that could erupt into a major crisis. Unfortunately, Beijing has often appeared to have drawn different lessons about managing tensions, concluding that guardrails can fuel competition in the same way that seat belts encourage reckless driving. (It is a mistaken belief. Just as the use of seat belts cuts traffic fatalities in half, so do communication and basic safety measures reduce the risk of geopolitical accidents.) Recently, however, there have been encouraging signs that Beijing may recognize the value of stabilization. The real test will be if the channels can endure when tensions inevitably spike.

Biden speaking on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Anchorage, Alaska, September 2023

Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters

We should also remember that not everything competitors do is incompatible with U.S. interests. The deal that China brokered this year between Iran and Saudi Arabia partially reduced tensions between those two countries, a development that the United States also wants to see. Washington could not have tried to broker that deal, given the lack of U.S. diplomatic relations with Iran, and it should not try to undermine it. To take another example, the United States and China are engaged in a rapid and high-stakes technological competition, but the two sides need to be able to work together on the risks that arise from artificial intelligence. Doing so is not a sign of going wobbly. It reflects a clear-eyed assessment that AI could pose unique challenges to humanity and that great powers have a collective responsibility to deal with them.

It is only natural that countries aligned with neither the United States nor China will engage with both, seeking to benefit from the competition while endeavoring to protect their own interests from any spillover effects. Many of these countries see themselves as part of the global South, a grouping that has a logic of its own and a distinct critique of the West that dates back to the Cold War and the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement. Unlike during the Cold War, however, the United States will avoid the temptation to see the world solely through the prism of geopolitical competition or treat these countries as places for proxy contests. It will instead continue to engage with them on their own terms. Washington should be realistic about its expectations when dealing with these countries, respecting their sovereignty and their right to make decisions that advance their own interests. But it also needs to be clear about what is most important to the United States. That is how we will seek to shape relations with them: so that on balance they have incentives to act in ways consistent with U.S. interests.

In the decade ahead, U.S. officials will spend more time than they did the past 30 years talking with countries that they disagree with, often on fundamental issues. The world is becoming more contested, and the United States cannot talk only with those who share its vision or values. We will keep working to shape the overall diplomatic landscape in ways that advance both U.S. and shared interests. For instance, when China, Brazil, and a group of seven African countries announced that they would pursue peace efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, we did not reject these initiatives on principle; we called on these countries to talk with Ukrainian officials and offer assurances that their proposals for a settlement would be consistent with the UN Charter.

Some of the seeds we are planting now—investments in advanced technology, for instance, or the AUKUS submarines—will take many years to bear fruit. But there are also some issues on which we can and will act now, what we call our “unfinished business.” We have to ensure a Ukraine that is sovereign, democratic, and free. We have to strengthen peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. We have to advance regional integration in the Middle East while continuing to check Iran. We have to modernize the United States’ military and defense industrial base. And we have to deliver on infrastructure, development, and climate commitments to the global South.

UP TO US

The United States has reached the third phase of the global role it assumed following World War II. In the first phase, the Truman administration laid the foundation of American power to accomplish two objectives: strengthening democracies and democratic cooperation and containing the Soviet Union. This strategy, carried on by subsequent presidents, included a comprehensive effort to invest in American industry, especially in new technologies, from the 1950s to the 1970s. This commitment to national strength through industrial investment began to erode in the 1980s, and there was little perceived need for it after the Cold War. In the second phase, with the United States having no peer competitor, successive administrations sought to enlarge the U.S.-led rules-based order and establish patterns of cooperation on critical issues. This era transformed the world for the better in a variety of ways—many countries became more free, prosperous, and secure; global poverty was slashed; and the world responded effectively to the 2008 financial crisis—but it was also a period of geopolitical change.

The United States now finds itself at the start of the third era: one in which it is adjusting for a new period of competition in an age of interdependence and transnational challenges. This does not mean breaking with the past or giving up the gains that have been made, but it does mean laying a new foundation of American strength. That requires revisiting long-held assumptions if we are to leave America stronger than we found it and better prepared for what lies ahead. The outcome of this phase will not be determined solely by outside forces. It will also, to a large extent, be decided by the United States’ own choices.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Before this article was posted online, a passage in it about the Middle East was updated to address Hamas's attack on Israel, which occurred after the print version of the article went to press.

• JAKE SULLIVAN is U.S. National Security Adviser.

Foreign Affairs · by Jake Sullivan · October 24, 2023

21. How the DC Metro is a tool for the military industrial complex

Wow: the old MICC (include congress why don't you Quincy!)

This is quite the conspiracy. (note sarcasm).

I did some confirmation research over the last two days on my metro travels and sure enough I saw a lot of advertisements for defense contractors. (again, note sarcasm).

How the DC Metro is a tool for the military industrial complex

Weapons firms and tech giants skirt rules for ads to win big contracts and influence policymakers.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/sergei-sivokho-dead/

REPORTING | MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

BRETT HEINZ

OCT 23, 2023

The first thing commuters saw when stepping into the Metro station beneath the Pentagon in late August was a poster for RTX: the world’s second largest defense contractor, formerly known as Raytheon.

RTX made $30.3 billion in sales to the U.S. government last year, 45% of its total income. To advertise to its biggest customer, why not target government decision-makers in the places they visit most? Thus, the thousands of commuters entering the Pentagon station each day were greeted by more than 60 RTX advertisements plastered across the walls, floors, escalators, and fare gates such that it was physically impossible to pass through the station without seeing one.

This ad campaign wasn’t the company’s first rodeo, either. Ten years ago, RTX placed advertisements in the Pentagon station to promote a satellite control system. That same project is now seven years late and billions of dollars over-cost.

The catch is that, technically, advertisers aren’t supposed to be able to do this, as the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA, which operates the greater D.C. metro system) forbids advertisements that “are intended to influence public policy.” But government contractors, reliant on public policy for their survival, are nonetheless allowed to promote their brands and hawk their products to the officials responsible for deciding whether or not to buy from them. A closer investigation into their marketing tactics reveals how companies like RTX and Google have taken advantage of this lax enforcement to hijack DC’s public transportation system for their own gain. WMATA is not just allowing it, they’re profiting from it.

Notes from Underground

As the home to countless government agencies, Washington DC’s population is dense with people whose choices at work can affect the entire world. This has made the capital metro system a magnet for government contractors and other advertisers looking to shape policymakers’ activities.

Yet a systematic analysis of that advertising has proven difficult. WMATA does not make advertising data available to the public, and has yet to respond to multiple requests for the data. A similar request was denied by Outfront Media, the private marketing firm contracted by WMATA to handle transit ads.

So, I obtained what information I could the old-fashioned way — I rode the Metro, a lot. For five consecutive weeks, I visited 11 WMATA Metro stations and recorded the names of every advertiser. All were located within one mile of major policymaking institutions: Capitol Hill, the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.

The survey recorded 75 different advertisers, excluding transit agencies. Fifteen received at least $5 million in financial awards from the federal government in fiscal year 2023. Four of those were universities and another was United Airlines, while the remaining 10 were government contractors. Altogether, these 10 contractors received approximately $83.1 billion from the federal government in FY2023.

Nine of the 10 advertising contractors count the Department of Defense (DOD) as their largest government customer: Boeing, CACI, General Dynamics, Google, IBM, KPMG, L3Harris, RTX, and SourceAmerica. Ads for McKesson, which does the vast majority of its government contracting for the Department of Veterans Affairs, were spotted only within the McPherson Square station — two blocks away from the VA headquarters.

While this survey was being conducted, Congress was preparing to meet in committee to negotiate the final version of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which annually authorizes hundreds of billions of dollars that ultimately go to Pentagon contractors.

The data suggests that contractors are most focused on targeting the Pentagon and Capitol Hill. Contractors made up just 6% of all advertisers in Foggy Bottom-GWU, the only stop near the State Department. In the four stops around the White House, they averaged 9%. Among the three stops closest to Capitol Hill, this number rises to 21%. In the three stations closest to the Pentagon, an average of 46% of all advertisers were contractors.

The Pentagon station, less than 200 feet from the building’s entrance, was 100% occupied by government contractors. In Capitol South, similarly close to the offices of the House of Representatives, one-third of advertisers were contractors. The focus on these two institutions illustrates their importance in keeping contract money flowing: a slim majority of the massive DOD budget goes to contractors each year, and the institution plays a major role in shaping its own budget. The House, meanwhile, is where all budget bills begin. In short, contractor advertising appears to be explicitly targeted at those with the greatest sway over government spending.

Speaking in Tongues

This pattern goes well beyond correlation. Many contractor ads are designed to steer a small number of commuters — agency acquisition officers and congressional appropriations staffers — towards specific government policies. To accomplish this, contractors often use niche language that only their customers would understand. One ad spotted in four stations near Capitol Hill and the Pentagon displayed the tail of a jet above two screens of text: “ENABLES BEYOND BLOCK 4 / ALL THREE F-35 VARIANTS” and “THE SMART DECISION.”

(Photo: RTX ad at the Pentagon City Metro station. Sept. 7, 2023 via Brett Heinz)

This bizarre message, which caught the attention of social media earlier this year, is promoting RTX’s F135 engine. Estimated to cost $26 million each, these upgrades can be added to “all three” versions of the F-35 jet, whose astronomical cost overruns have helped turn it into the most expensive weapons program in human history. Years ago, Lockheed Martin advertised this same plane in stations near the Pentagon with its own twist on a classic neoconservative slogan: “Peace through strength. Lots of strength.” Today, RTX promises that its add-on goes “beyond” the Block 4 upgrade for these planes (which itself is running $5.9 billion over previous cost estimates).

RTX has bragged to investors about the expensive contracts for its F135 engines, but it still faces competition from other contractors. The conflict between the two is set to be addressed by Congress during conference negotiations for this year’s NDAA. To help secure its new revenue stream, RTX placed ads promoting it in places where the people working on the NDAA will most likely see them, using language that only they would understand. RTX did not reply to a request for comment.

In the past, some firms have been transparent about their narrow audiences. Controversial contractor Palantir, which has handled many confidential contracts, once advertised in the Pentagon station with materials reading: “THOSE WITH A NEED TO KNOW, KNOW.

Total Brand Experience

Outfront Media’s pitch to advertisers for the DC market area highlights its large audience of “political leaders, government employees, and corporate contractors.” To help reach them all, they offer a “Rail Station Domination” deal in 13 Metro stations to allow one advertiser to occupy much of the available space within, an opportunity, it says, to “transform commuters’ daily ride into a total ‘brand experience.’”

Outfront’s list of “Domination” stations includes brief descriptions of why they might be attractive to marketers: “US Dept of Defense” for the Pentagon station, and “Capitol Hill” for Capitol South. Two other stations located near various regulatory agencies are listed simply as places to target “Government.” Contractors have long taken advantage of these deals, such as Lockheed Martin’s 2020 “domination” of Capitol South.

The Pentagon station, a prime target for reaching DOD staffers, was one of a kind. The Pentagon is the most expensive station to “dominate” according to Outfront Media data which I obtained, even though it has substantially fewer riders than some of the others. Advertising to the 665,786 commuters estimated to visit the Pentagon station in a four week period costs $198,000 (about 30 cents per commuter), before fees. Yet in Gallery Place-Chinatown, a station in downtown DC farther away from government buildings, it costs only $120,000 to reach more than three times as many people (5 cents per commuter).

These pricing differences suggest that there is a unique value attached to commuters visiting the Pentagon. Another factor is the Pentagon’s unique layout, in which one advertiser can occupy the entire station for weeks on end, without any competition from others on digital screens. The five “domination” stations visited during this survey averaged 13.6 different advertisers over five weeks; the Pentagon featured only two. In the last week of August, every ad space inside the Pentagon station was occupied by RTX. For the entirety of September, it was Google.

(Photo: Lockheed Martin ad at Capitol South Metro station Sept. 26, 2023 via Tori Bateman)

Despite earning little from government contracts last year, Google ran a highly aggressive marketing campaign this September to attract more. Its domination of the Pentagon station featured over 60 ads about their commitment to partnering with the government on cybersecurity policy, one of which implied that the company was already acting in concert with the military: “The U.S. Department of Defense and Google are securing American digital defense systems.”

The company shied away from its nascent attempts to break into government contracting in 2018 after a controversial AI drone deal provoked employee protests. Google executives have more recently reversed course, increased their presence in northern Virginia, and unveiled “Google Public Sector” to fight for more defense contracts. Google Public Sector’s current managing director served as Chief Information Officer at the U.S. Navy until passing through the revolving door in March. The company’s success in winning part of a major software contract late last year suggests its efforts are already paying off.

(Photo: Google ad at Pentagon Metro station. Sept 28, 2023 via Brett Heinz)

At the same time that Google was dominating the Pentagon station, a second ad campaign downtown promoted the “Google Public Sector Forum,” where company executives spoke alongside current Pentagon officials. Reached for comment, the Defense Department emphasized that guidelines were in place to ensure that "DoD personnel participating in public engagements” acted in ways “appropriate and consistent with DoD and U.S. government policies.”

Google’s apparent dual advertising strategy reflects its diverse goals in reaching policymakers: accessing the deep pool of DOD contracting funds, lobbying Congress on a wide variety of legislation, and burnishing its image in the face of a historic anti-trust lawsuit filed against it by the Justice Department earlier this year.

Google and Outfront Media did not reply to a request for comment.

Defining “Influence”

Sitting awkwardly with this phenomenon is a strange fact: according to WMATA policy, “Advertisements that are intended to influence public policy are prohibited.” Ads for specific military equipment are clearly meant to “influence” government acquisitions, which are “public policy” by definition. Nonetheless, Pentagon contractors appear to flaunt this rule with impunity.

While WMATA has declined a number of political ads before, it is still quite common for advertisers to push the limits of what qualifies as “intended to influence public policy.” No one pushes this boundary further than contractors. Prior to the ban’s creation in 2015, contractors openly acknowledged that they hoped to influence public policy. When Northrop Grumman advertised its Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) system in the Pentagon station in 2007, a company spokesman said: “There is an ongoing campaign to win the BAMS contract… The Washington, D.C., area is where our customer base is, and we do want to build awareness for our products and services.”

WMATA declined to comment on questions related to the rule due to “pending litigation on this issue.” The American Civil Liberties Union has sued over this and other WMATA policies as violations of advertisers’ free speech rights, and the case was recently approved to move forward.

Further complicating matters is a federal law banning contractors from spending public funds on “influencing or attempting to influence” government officials towards providing them with additional contracts. The rule does not seem to have dissuaded contractors, even those who derive the majority of their revenues from the federal government, from targeted advertising campaigns. (DOD spokesman Jeff Jurgensen emphasized that the agency complies with all relevant acquisitions regulations.)

Advertisers subsidize the DC Metro system by providing revenue that would otherwise need to come from either commuters or the government. WMATA hired Outfront Media to “maximize the revenue potential” of public transit assets, incentivizing the company to always go with the highest bidder. Still, WMATA’s budget for next year projects that Metro ads will only bring in $10.3 million, roughly 0.75% of the system’s total funding. This might save money on the front end, but advertisements encouraging billions in inefficient government spending could easily wind up costing taxpayers more over time, such that direct subsidies to replace WMATA’s revenues from contractor ads could ultimately save money.

The seemingly arbitrary enforcement of WMATA’s ban on ads influencing public policy allows contractors to recycle government funds back into efforts to acquire more government funds. This cycle encourages public officials to make choices based on power and reach, rather than cost-efficiency, fairness, or a rational defense strategy. As long as companies making money from policymakers’ decisions are allowed to advertise in the DC transit system, this corrupt process will continue to thrive.

Brett Heinz

Brett Heinz is a policy researcher currently serving as a National Security and Foreign Influence Intern at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He previously served as a program assistant at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, where his work focused on analysis of US-Latin America relations.

The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.

Google ad in the Pentagon Metro station, Sept. 7, 2023 via Brett Heinz.

22. Secret U.S. War in Lebanon Is Tinder for Escalation of Israel–Gaza Conflict

Speaking of conspiracies: "Off the books commandos."

Secret U.S. War in Lebanon Is Tinder for Escalation of Israel–Gaza Conflict

Billions in security aid to Lebanon, along with off-the-books commandos, could embroil the U.S. in a regional conflagration.

Nick Turse

October 24 2023, 1:22 p.m.

The Intercept · by Nick Turse · October 24, 2023

The State Department urged U.S. citizens to leave Lebanon on Sunday “due to the unpredictable security situation.” The warning followed clashes between protesters and Lebanese security forces in a Beirut suburb near the U.S. Embassy after hundreds of Palestinians were killed last week in a blast at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. The unrest seems to confirm the fears of almost eight in 10 Americans that the war between Israel and Hamas will lead to a broader conflict in the Middle East.

But few Americans realize that the United States has long been embroiled in a wider war in Lebanon, and that U.S. forces may be a target there, as well. The U.S. has, over decades, poured billions of dollars in security assistance into Lebanon and conducted counterterrorism efforts against Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Shia group with political and military wings. Lebanon’s dominant political and military force, Hezbollah has long been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S.

In the shadow of that conflict, the U.S. has waged another “secret war” in Lebanon against Sunni terror groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, according to a former four-star commander who oversaw the effort, declassified documents, former special operators with knowledge of the program, and analysts who have investigated U.S. Code Title 10 § 127e — known in military parlance as “127-echo” — which allows Special Operations forces to use foreign military units as proxies.

Related

Before They Vowed to Annihilate Hamas, Israeli Officials Considered It an Asset

Attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East have already ramped up with drone strikes on American troops in multiple locations across Iraq and Syria, and drone and missile attacks from Yemen on a U.S. Navy destroyer in the northern Red Sea. Experts say that secrecy surrounding the 127e program in Lebanon, known as Lion Hunter, whose existence The Intercept revealed last year, could embroil the U.S. in a wider war in the Middle East and pose an additional threat to U.S. troops.

Neither Special Operations Command nor Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the greater Middle East, will comment on Lion Hunter and the number of U.S. troops who have been, and may still be, involved. But in a June “war powers” letter to Congress, President Joe Biden noted that “approximately 89 United States military personnel are deployed to Lebanon to enhance the government’s counterterrorism capabilities and to support the counterterrorism operations of Lebanese security forces.”

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict makes it all the more crucial that secret wars like the one carried out via the 127e program in Lebanon are subject to congressional oversight, said Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program and author of the most comprehensive analysis of the 127e authority. “Already, we have seen U.S. forces in the region targeted over the United States’s political support for and arms transfers to Israel,” Ebright said. “Congress and the public must know where U.S. forces are deployed in the region and whether those forces are at risk of attack, particularly as Hezbollah in Lebanon contemplates joining the conflict against Israel.”

View of the destruction and damage at the scene of the suicide bombing of the American Embassy, Beirut, Lebanon, on April 18, 1983.

Photo: Peter Davis/Getty Images

A $3 Billion Partnership

The U.S. military has a long and checkered history of engagement in Lebanon, including a 1958 intervention by U.S. Marines to forestall an insurrection there. In 1983, during a civil war that lasted 15 years, bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut killed more than 300 people. The United States blames Hezbollah for both attacks.

On Monday, during a speech to honor those killed in the barracks bombing 40 years before, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy C. Shea called out Hamas and Hezbollah for trying to “rob Lebanon and its people of their bright future,” saying that the U.S. and the Lebanese people “reject the threats of some to drag Lebanon into a new war.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, meanwhile, has signaled a willingness to widen the current conflict. “I think Hezbollah is playing with fire,” he said. “And I want to make clear, we are not looking for a confrontation in our northern border … but if Hezbollah will drag us into war, it should be clear that Lebanon will pay the price.”

America has a long-standing relationship with the Lebanese Armed Forces, or LAF. In a country where 80 percent of the population lives in poverty, the U.S. has provided more than $3 billion in military aid since 2006. “The United States is committed to a relationship that reinforces Lebanon’s security and stability,” said Lt. Col. Karen Roxberry, a Central Command spokesperson. “The Department of Defense provides training and security assistance to help support the LAF’s counterterrorism operations and border security.”

The U.S. routinely decries “Iran’s continuing arms transfers to Hezbollah,” even as it works to arm the LAF with sophisticated weaponry. The U.S. government has facilitated almost $2 billion in Lebanese purchases through the Foreign Military Sales program, including light attack aircraft, helicopters, and Hellfire missiles. Through another program, the U.S. provided 130 armored and tactical ground vehicles. From 2016 to 2021, the United States also authorized the export of more than $82 million in U.S. military equipment to Lebanon, including $12 million in “firearms and related articles.”

The State Department did not respond to detailed questions about the full extent of U.S. security assistance to Lebanon prior to publication.

More than 6,000 members of the LAF have received training in the United States since 1970, including 120 members in 2020. Under the 127e authority, the U.S. trained, armed, advised, and directed an elite unit known as the G2 Strike Force. “The U.S. supporting proxy forces in Lebanon is part of a decades-long, overly militarized policy towards the Middle East that has ignored the root causes of the region’s turmoil and struggles and not brought the peace or stability Americans have been promised,” said Seth Binder, director of advocacy at the Project on Middle East Democracy.

The U.S. is ramping up its military presence in the Middle East, sending the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group and its roughly 7,500 sailors, along with the USS Bataan amphibious ready group, which consists of three ships carrying thousands of troops from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

“By posturing these U.S. naval assets and advanced fighter aircraft in the region, we aim to send a strong message intended to deter a wider conflict,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder on Thursday. Binder warned that it threatens to do the exact opposite. “The administration’s rush to move forces into the region in order to ‘bolster deterrence’ is a dangerous response that puts the United States at greater risk of what the majority of Americans are afraid of: a broader war.”

A demonstration supporting Palestinians in Beirut on October 20, 2023.

Photo: Joseph Eid/AFP via Getty Images

Exempt From Vetting

Roxberry, the Central Command spokesperson, said that U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Lebanon are primarily aimed at Hezbollah. A formerly secret document obtained by The Intercept stops just short of revealing the target of the Lion Hunter program, noting only that its “activities serve to identify, isolate, and deny safe haven to [redacted].” Gen. Joseph Votel, who headed Special Operations Command from 2014 to 2016 and then Central Command until 2019, filled in the blank, noting that the effort was especially focused on Sunni extremist organizations, including the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and affiliated terror groups.

The 127e program in Lebanon was one of 20 in operation as recently as 2019, according to the formerly secret Special Operations Command document obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. Votel said it was one of the most effective proxy war efforts of the last decade. “We often held this program up as the gold standard,” he told The Intercept, calling America’s proxies in Lebanon “motivated and capable partners who were well led and very effective at what they were doing.”

Central Command would not comment on the 127e program or proxies employed in Lebanon more generally. “We have no details to share specifically to G2 Strike Force,” said Roxberry, noting only that the Defense Department “supports broader efforts to build the LAF’s institutional capacity to train and operate its forces in a professional manner.”

Votel, who observed the G2 Strike Force firsthand, praised their capability and prowess. “In comparison to other LAF units, they had a more direct chain of command, were smaller and thus more agile and responsive and were focused specifically on offensive operations. Their mission set was smaller and better defined than normal LAF organizations,” he told The Intercept.

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According to the formerly secret document, members of the G2 Strike Force undergo “comprehensive assessment” by U.S. Special Operations forces and are “subjected to counter-intelligence screening, polygraph testing, and physical and mental challenges before being selected.” But 127e programs have long been exempt from a vetting process required of other U.S. efforts supporting foreign forces under the “Leahy law.” The measure, named after former U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, requires the U.S. to scrutinize the human rights records of forces receiving U.S. security aid.

Without such vetting, Brennan Center’s Ebright told The Intercept, the Pentagon “can end up supporting groups and individuals whose conduct may cause civilian harm, undermine U.S. credibility, and even create U.S. legal liability.”

“Congress, not the president, has the constitutional role of deciding when, where, and against whom the nation is at war,” Ebright said. “By overclassifying basic information about 127e programs, the Department of Defense hinders Congress’s ability to fulfill this role and potentially to stave off undemocratic, unaccountable U.S. involvement in a new war in the Middle East.”

Contact the author:

Nick Turse @nickturse

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The Intercept · by Nick Turse · October 24, 2023

23. Violent videos and ‘brutal voyeurism’ are redefining modern war

We have not heard much about the CNN effect (what is shown on CNN will influence foreign policy and national security (intervention) decisions like we did during the 1990s.

How will these even more brutal videos influence decision making (and public support or opposition) for activity.

Imagine if these capabilities existed when Giap was executing his Dau Tranh strategy in the Vietnam War.

(Douglas Pike, in his seminal work on the Vietnam War details the Vietnamese strategy of Dau Tranh (the “Struggle”) emphasizing that the strategy was beyond a purely military strategy but one which mobilized the entire population – a political struggle with the three now famous action programs (or “vans”): action among the enemy; action among the people, and action among the military. This was a comprehensive political-military strategy that had as a key element the psychological influence of its own people, its military, and that of the enemy. But the focus was not just on the enemy’s military force; it struck right at the heart of the enemy: the will of the enemy government leadership and its population.)

Violent videos and ‘brutal voyeurism’ are redefining modern war

The Israel-Gaza and Ukraine wars have flooded the web with grisly content. One researcher says, ‘It’s like there are suddenly many more movie theaters in town, and some of them are much more friendly toward snuff films.’

By Drew Harwell

October 24, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Drew Harwell · October 24, 2023

The first-person video released by the Israeli military shows navy fighters on a gunboat using assault rifles and grenades to blast away at people floating in the water. Military officials said the targets were Hamas terrorists who’d tried to storm the Israeli coast during the rampage that sparked the Israel-Gaza war; all now are presumed dead.

Such graphic footage once was shared mainly in dark and morbid corners of the internet, hidden away from casual viewers. But the navy video bounced across social media feeds and discussion forums, including Reddit’s 1.6-million-follower subreddit r/CombatFootage, where it was one of dozens of violent scenes posted that day.

In a discussion of the video, one commenter said in a since-deleted post they were living in the “golden age of brutal voyeurism.”

The wars in Israel and Ukraine have fueled an explosion in videos online showcasing the horrors of modern war, bringing killings and cruelty to a global audience of viewers who are unprepared — or all too willing — to watch.

The supply of new graphic videos has boomed as fighters use cellphones and GoPro cameras to record or live-stream footage from a point-blank perspective, either for purposes of military strategy or propaganda. So, too, has demand, as internet users flock to loosely moderated video sites, message boards and private groups where they can see and share extreme footage to sate their curiosity or score political points.

Our “increasingly fragmented online media system means there are many more outlets for this kind of content and a wider variety of content moderation schemes to pick from,” said Colin Henry, a researcher at George Washington University who has studied political violence and the internet. “It’s like there are suddenly many more movie theaters in town, and some of them are much more friendly toward snuff films.”

In both wars, military leaders and digital-native soldiers eager to document the reality of their conflict or push for international support have released videos directly via group-messaging services such as Telegram or had them republished to social media platforms such as X, formerly Twitter.

On Telegram, Hamas’s military wing has posted training montages showing Hamas militants preparing for combat as well as uncensored videos of bloody skirmishes, drone-grenade attacks and killed Israeli soldiers. A Hamas military spokesman also pledged to broadcast hostage executions online.

Basem Naim, the leader of Hamas’s international relations arm, told The Washington Post in an interview that the footage was shared on social media both to gain global attention and to embolden Hamas militants for the war ahead.

“Who is terrorizing whom? We are the victims … of this huge killing machine,” he said. The videos “show that we can do something. It is not only we who are beaten all the time. No, sometimes we can also hit back.”

For many people far from the battlefield, the risk of such videos suddenly appearing on auto-playing websites or social network feeds has become a persistent fear, leading some schools and education groups to coach parents to monitor or block their children’s use of social media. Psychiatrists have warned that the repeated viewing of such visceral imagery can lead to what’s known as “vicarious trauma,” damaging people’s mental health.

Others, however, actively seek it out — and are aided by the combatants themselves. Ukraine’s 110th Mechanized Brigade, an infantry unit specializing in drone-dropped explosives, has posted more than 100 videos to its Telegram channel, many of which show Russian soldiers being blown to pieces alongside a heavy-metal soundtrack.

The videos are often republished with English-language descriptions to subreddits like r/UkraineWarVideoReport, where they’ll often receive thousands of comments and views.

Some commenters there say the videos offer a grisly lesson. They have “basically taken all the ‘glory’ out of war,” one Redditor said in a thread discussing a video of an injured Russian soldier taking his own life. “I wish politicians would watch these vids as they had their morning coffee.”

Others there celebrate the violence or riff on the strange banality of seeing such carnage from home. “I’m eating coco puffs watching this,” one Redditor said on a video showing Russians soldiers killed with grenades.

Graphic footage has long played a role in shaping the public’s understanding of current events. Haunting images from battles and massacres broadcast on TV news helped mobilize Americans against the Vietnam War. The looping videos of jets smashing into the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, marked a pivotal moment for mainstream viewership of atrocities; so, too, did the footage from journalists embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan during the years of war that followed.

But such videos have also been used to sow terror and provoke an emotional overreaction that could enrage onlookers, expand a conflict or play into the attackers’ hands, said Amanda E. Rogers, a research fellow at the Century Foundation think tank who has studied extremist propaganda. Nearly a decade ago, she said, the Islamic State’s video-recorded beheadings of aid workers, journalists and others helped mark a turning point for terrorists who saw the value in publishing footage so heinous many viewers felt they couldn’t ignore it.

“People don’t understand that you can be recruited into a conflict by propaganda unwittingly to help the side you think you’re opposing,” Rogers said. “Now these videos have spilled over into social media environment, where the lowest common denominator and the sound bite become consumable as a partisan team sport.”

Some of the grisly videos have proved valuable for investigators and journalists seeking to find hostages or document war crimes. And moderators of the CombatFootage subreddit, which has seen its subscriber base more than double since the start of 2022, said they evaluate videos for their “combat footage to propaganda ratio.” Clips with too little focus on actual combat are removed.

But the lines between such videos and propaganda are not always clear-cut. White supremacists have for years spread videos showing violent acts committed by people of color to inflame racial animus in hopes of winning potential recruits, Henry said. In recent conflicts, such gruesome videos have been used to dehumanize the enemy and get international viewers feeling more invested in the fight.

“Violent content, especially war footage, can be really traumatizing to people, but it can also be a great mobilizer,” he said. “When any of the various Ukraine war influencers share videos of Russian soldiers dying from drone attacks, part of the strategy is to appeal to American or European audiences who see Russian soldiers as part of a wider hated out-group and Ukrainian soldiers as sort of like themselves.”

Major social media platforms generally block or restrict videos showing death or lurid violence. X’s rules permit violent videos if they’re hidden behind a warning disclaimer, but the company bans “gratuitous gore” except in cases where the imagery is “associated with newsworthy events,” saying that “research has shown that repeated exposure to excessively graphic content online may negatively impact an individual’s well-being.”

Some violent videos from the Israel-Gaza war, however, remain viewable in an unrestricted way on X, including the gunboat footage and other clips from the Israeli military purporting to show Hamas militants gunned down by a tank on the Israeli border.

In some cases, the wars have also sparked a shifting of long-held rules when it comes to speech. Facebook last year said it would temporarily allow violent messages related to the Ukraine war, such as “death to the Russian invaders,” because they represented protected political expressions. Credible calls for violence against Russian civilians remained banned, the company said.

The Ukrainian government last year began posting photos and videos of captured and killed Russian soldiers to Telegram, Twitter and YouTube in hopes of inflaming Russian protests over the war’s human costs. Military-justice experts told The Post that some of the images likely violated the Geneva Conventions, which demand governments shield prisoners of war from “insults and public curiosity.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has adopted a similar tactic to enrage Western audiences by running hundreds of haunting YouTube ads, including videos in which Israeli medical examiners describe what they saw in their autopsies of the bodies of children purportedly killed during the Hamas attack, according to YouTube’s ad library.

One YouTube ad shows a colorful scene of smiling unicorns and rainbows that quickly pivots to a darker message: “We know that your child cannot read this … 40 infants were murdered in Israel by the Hamas terrorists (ISIS),” the ad reads. “Just as you would do everything to protect your child, we will do everything to protect ours.”

A spokesman for YouTube, whose ad rules ban violence and “shocking content,” said the ads are not shown on children-focused content and do not warrant any enforcement action.

Officials with the Foreign Ministry, which did not respond to requests for comment, also posted a photo earlier this month showing a dead baby soaked with blood, its face blurred, onto its 1.4-million-follower X account, calling it “the most difficult image we’ve ever posted.”

On Monday, the Israeli military attempted to reach an audience of foreign correspondents, screening a graphic 40-minute video showing “scene after scene of appalling violence,” according to the British newspaper the Times. Some of the video was taken from Hamas fighters’ phones, cars and helmets,

Military officials also shared instructions they said were recovered from Hamas fighters detailing how they should “live broadcast” the killings: “Do not waste the camera battery and storage but use them as much as possible.”

Daniel Hagari, a military spokesman, told the crowd the videos would serve as “a collective memory for the future.” “We will not let the world forget about who we are fighting,” he said, according to the Times.

The Washington Post · by Drew Harwell · October 24, 2023

24. Congress must scrutinize the US spending spree on global crises

There can be no blank checks. Maybe there is for treasure if it prevents writing blank checks for blood. But we still need to be judicious with our treasure.

And if I were a conspiracy theorist I would believe that the revisionist, rogue, and revolutionary powers and violent extremist organizations were working together to attack the US economy and try to bankrupt the US by creating multiple crises for which we are willing to expend treasure.  Watch for continued attacks on the dollar.

Congress must scrutinize the US spending spree on global crises

federaltimes.com · by Emma Ashford · October 24, 2023

The Biden administration is attempting one of its most ambitious foreign policy moves yet: convincing the American people and a divided Congress to authorize a $105 billion supplemental spending bill to deal with a diverse set of global crises.

The president’s address to the nation on Thursday night framed this spending as a response to the vicious Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel, linked it to the ongoing war in Ukraine, and reasserted America’s global role as the “indispensable nation.” Israel featured heavily. Biden, seated in the Oval Office, promised that this spending would cement America’s “unprecedented commitment to Israel’s security” and make sure that Israel has “what they need to protect their people, today and always.”

But for all of Biden’s high-flying rhetoric, it’s hard to disguise the reality of this proposed supplemental. The administration – faced with congressional pushback on foreign policy priorities – is proposing a truly epic logroll in which more popular spending priorities like Israel are lumped together with increasingly less popular ones like Ukraine, stitching together enough things that the bill might pass even our monumentally dysfunctional congress.

The Biden administration may be right that this tactic will work. Much is dependent on whether Republicans in the House prove capable of electing a new speaker in the coming days – and on how willing that speaker is to bring this legislation to the floor.

Regardless of the ongoing speaker drama, however, the breakdown of the supplemental – and the president’s rather unconvincing attempt to rhetorically link the Israeli and Ukrainian conflicts in the minds of American voters – tells us a lot about Biden’s priorities and suggests that the administration’s foreign policy continues to drift away from strategic planning, and into a reactive, all-encompassing approach to the world.

Take a moment to consider the stunning amounts we’re talking about here. The proposed supplemental will include over $60 billion for Ukraine, around $14.5 billion for Israel, $13 for the border, and a couple of billion dollars for Indo-Pacific initiatives, including AUKUS. An additional $10 billion is being requested for flexible humanitarian response across these areas. The grand total – $105 billion dollars – is equivalent to a whopping 12% of the last DOD budget.

The move to bundle together all these priorities is reflective of a growing shift inside the Biden administration towards the idea that America can do everything, an idea that contrasts strongly with the early days of Biden’s presidency, where the administration made efforts to withdraw from Afghanistan, and to stabilize the relationship with Russia and the question of European security in order to focus on the Indo-Pacific.

Instead, the administration today pays most of its attention to Europe and, now, to the Middle East. There is no denying that Biden’s initial response to the Russian war in Ukraine was effective, helping to bolster support to Ukraine in a way that undermined Russian capabilities without risking broader conflict. But as the war in Ukraine has ground into a battle of attrition over increasingly tiny pieces of land, it has become clearer that the administration doesn’t have a good exit plan from this conflict, nor any strategy other than simply staying the course.

The breakdown of the supplemental funding request suggests that this is likely to continue. Indeed, the amount of Ukraine aid in the supplemental request is not only substantially larger than the aid request for all other contingencies in the package, but also almost as much as the United States has already sent to Ukraine since the start of the war. And as a recent publication from the Council on Foreign Relations highlights, aid to Ukraine now dwarfs that sent to any other recipient of U.S. aid, and towers over historic cases where the United States sent funds to support Israel, Taiwan, or others in wartime.

It is no surprise then that Congressional Republicans and China hawks are increasingly concerned that support for Ukraine is eating into the American ability to focus on a rising China. The president – attempting to preempt these criticisms – argued in his Oval Office speech that this spending will be broadly useful in bolstering the U.S. industrial base, regardless of where the armaments produced end up. But as recent reports have made clear, there are increasingly clear tradeoffs in U.S. support for different conflicts. The Pentagon has struggled to source ammunition to send to Israel, thanks to stockpiles depleted for Ukraine, and can expect to face more difficult choices in the future, when it faces overlap between weapons required for Ukraine, Israel, or a Taiwan or other contingency.

Perhaps the biggest problem here is the increasingly grandiose and global nature of the Biden administration’s approach to national security. Bundling together Israel, Ukraine, the border and even Taiwan in the budget supplemental may reinforce the arguments Biden made in his speech: that “there is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity,” and that America is the “essential nation.”

But the actual breakdown of the supplemental request shows the reality: the United States does face trade-offs in foreign policy. In prioritizing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is in practice deprioritizing the Indo-Pacific, perhaps the region with the most genuinely pressing security threats for the United States itself. Congress would be wise to consider whether the breakdown of this supplemental spending bill is really the most efficient and strategic use of America’s limited resources.

Ashford is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center’s Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program.

25. 11 Cases of Psychological Warfare Throughout History

All warfare is psychological.

Reference PSYOP in the Korean War see my chapter (9) in Dr Bruce Bechtol's book (The Quest for a Unified Strategies for the Cultural and Interagency Process) at this link: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/FEDLINK_-_United_States_Federal_Collection_%28IA_questforunifiedk00bech%29.pdf

Excerpt:

Bottom Line

From cats to fake ghosts, and now, social media—these are all instruments in psychological warfare throughout history.

It may sound like they have nothing in common, but there are at least two similar grounds: one, they were all implemented with creativity, and two, they appeal to people’s emotions.

Psychological warfare continues to this day, with a more modern and more dangerous approach, as social media can easily shape millions of people’s opinions and outlooks.

11 Cases of Psychological Warfare Throughout History

historydefined.net · by Carl Seaver · October 25, 2023

When people talk about war, they immediately relate it to the use of guns and other available weapons at the time. While this is not necessarily incorrect, war is not limited to one type of physical violence.

Guns and ammunition are just one element of war. It also involves complex political strategies and intricate tactical operations across various countries over decades or centuries of history. War is an art, and it can be fought psychologically, too.

In this article, we will discuss psychological warfare and the most famous examples of it in human history from 500 BC to the present.

What Is Psychological Warfare?

Encyclopedia Britannica describes psychological warfare as the use of propaganda that is generally intended to demoralize the enemy or break their will. No war can be fought on a psychological level alone, as it always comes with military and political tactics.

Also known as psywar, this tactic has been used in wars for centuries.

Why does a warring party use psychological warfare? It’s one way to gain an advantage without losing lives or using too many guns and other valuable resources. According to Stanford University, the goal of a psywar is to take advantage of the most personal characteristics of humans in a scientific manner.

Psychological warfare leverages the following:

• Deceit
• Fear
• Hate
• Humiliation
• Loneliness
• Pain

When these human emotions are exploited, those affected will be too demoralized to continue fighting. This is what psychological warfare strategies center on.

The specifics of these tactics vary greatly. There are so many ways to hit different human emotions. This will become even clearer once we discuss the various cases of psychological warfare through hundreds of years of historic battles and wars.

Cases of Psychological Warfare Throughout History

From elephants to viral Facebook posts, psychological warfare has changed throughout history. But one thing has remained the same: the creativity.

As Sun Tzu said in The Art of War: “The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”

The following are the most famous examples of psychological warfare leveraged in various battles over the years:

1. Battle of Pelusium (525 BCE)

The Battle of Pelusium is remembered as the war won by cats. According to Greek Historian Herodotus, the war between the Achaemenid Empire, or ancient Iranian Empire, and ancient Egypt started with a doctor.

The two empires used to be on good terms, which prompted Persian King Cambyses II to ask Egyptian Pharaoh Amasis II for an ophthalmologist. In good faith, Amasis II sent an Egyptian doctor to Persia—he was not amused by the forced labor.

Meeting Between Cambyses II and Psammetichus III

To get back at his pharaoh, the doctor advised Cambyses II to ask Amasis II for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Amasis did not want to lose his daughter to Persia. So instead, he sent the daughter of another pharaoh named Nitetis and claimed her as his own. Once Nitetis was in Persia, she divulged the trickery, and Cambyses was predictably insulted.

Persia then declared war against Egypt. With Persia’s experience in warfare, their success was expected. The country also leaned on Egyptians’ well-known religiosity.

Egyptians venerated animals, especially cats. One of their goddesses is Bastet, who was often depicted with the body of a woman and the head of a cat. Bastet protects the home and is the goddess of fertility and childbirth. Cats were considered Bastet’s own, which is why they cannot be harmed. People would risk going into burning buildings just to save cats.

Armed with that knowledge of their reverence for cats’ lives, Cambyses had his advancing soldiers armed with shields painted with the likeness of Bastet. Moreover, the frontlines brought cats and other animals Egyptians considered sacred: dogs, sheep, and ibises. The Egyptians did not want to hurt the animals, so some of them ran away from the battle as others were massacred.

This is how one can technically say that cats led the victory of the Achaemenid Empire.

2. King Alexander the Great of Macedon (336 – 323 BCE)

Alexander III of Macedon, or Alexander the Great, is one of the most successful conquerors in history. He was king of Macedon between 336 and 323 BCE.

He was just 20 when he started ruling, and by the time he was 30, he had created one of the largest empires in the world, which stretched from Greece to northwestern India. Alexander the Great got his name because he was largely undefeated in battle.

But part of his success is due to psychological warfare—he was known as one of the best to do it. Alexander the Great was known for his political and cultural manipulation. He enforced Hellenistic ideologies in his conquests to encourage unity among diverse peoples.

When Alexander the Great invaded Persia, he married the late Persian King Darius III’s daughter Roxana. He also commanded eight of his officers to marry Persian women. All of his soldiers who married locals were paid to do so. This way, Alexander had many eyes within the country, and any talks of rebellion were quickly quelled.

Spanish conquistadors of the 15th and 16th centuries copied this strategy of marrying locals from the Macedonian king’s playbook.

Near the river Granicus, Alexander the Great killing Mithridates, son-in-law of the King of Persia 220 BC

3. Second Punic Wars (218 – 201 BCE)

War horses were mainstays in wars for centuries. Some warring groups in the global south still use horses in fights.

However, there is nothing like war elephants when it comes to warfare. They are effective means of transportation as they could ferry people along with large equipment and supplies. War elephants also stomp on soldiers in their way and hurt people with their tusks.

A war elephant’s sheer size alone already has a psychological impact on its foes.

The first record of war elephants was in 331 BCE, during the Battle of Gaugamela between Alexander the Great and the Army of Macedon and King Darius III and the Persian Army. The Persians had 15 Asian war elephants but still lost the battle.

The most famous and successful use of war elephants happened in the Second Punic War. Hannibal, a Carthaginian general, led 90,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry across the Ebro River into Saguntum to declare war against Rome.

Hannibal crossing the Rhône (1878), by Henri Motte

Around 40 war elephants joined the troops, but half of them perished during the march from Spain through the Alps and Italy. The remaining elephants successfully caused panic in the Roman cavalry and Gallic allies, which led to Hannibal’s victories in Ticinus, Trebia, and Trasimene.

After years of facing various elephantine invasions, the Romans learned their lesson. By 202 BCE, they simply allowed the elephants to pass through to inflict minimal damage. In their succeeding battles, the Romans also began to use war elephants.

4. Mongol Empire (13th – 14th century)

Genghis Khan is one of the most feared and famous military leaders and strategists in history.

He founded the Mongol Empire. This became the largest contiguous land nation in the 13th and 14th centuries. Khan successfully invaded tribes, and a large part of China and Central Asia, without using a large military force.

Khan and the Mongols implemented intense psychological warfare throughout their invasions. They spread terror and fear in towns and cities. This was in a bid to make them surrender instead of becoming victims of aggression. Many surrendered and paid tribute for fear of being ransacked. This would mean losing many lives and destroying many structures within their cities.

For those who refused to surrender, the Mongols would destroy their homes and kill many people. A few are allowed to flee so they can spread the word about the terror brought by Khan and the Mongol Empire. By the time the Mongols reached a new town, the residents had already heard of their propensity for massacre, so they would instead surrender peacefully.

A depiction of a Mongol siege, from the 14th century work Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh by Rashid al-Din. Early 14th century

Of course, psychological warfare was also complemented by the Mongols’ top-notch military skills. They were adept horsemen who had well-rounded capabilities, including archery and tactical formations. They were terrific scouts and spies.

The Mongols were also great at deception, which is another form of psychological warfare. A group would flank its enemies on all fronts, which would give the impression the invading army is so much larger than reality. The Mongols were skilled at luring the enemy into vulnerable situations to force them to surrender.

5. World War I (1914 – 1918)

War pundits consider World War I as the beginning of modern psychological warfare. The Great War was one of the deadliest conflicts in the world.

It was the war between the Allies, which consisted of France, the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States, Italy, and Japan, against the Central Powers of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria.

Both parties, particularly the Germans and the British, made use of newspapers, leaflets, and other means to publish propaganda against the other side. British pilots dropped postcards on German lines. The postcards were supposedly written by German prisoners of war who claimed to have been treated fairly well by the enemy.

Germans, for their part, tried to stir up trouble with Ireland and India, both of which had a tumultuous relationship with the British. It didn’t work.

The British successfully incited the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, which weakened the Central Powers. Other factors led to Quadruple’s loss in World War I, and the Arab Revolt certainly didn’t help its cause.

6. Nazi Germany (1933 – 1945)

The Germans didn’t take their defeat in World War I well. It was humiliating, and there were “frantic efforts” to save the prestige of the German Army.

When Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party introduced dictatorship in Germany, their image became everything. They utilized mass media to show off the Nazi’s military skills. Hitler, who was known for his gift of public speaking, was also heavily showcased to sway public opinion.

The Nazis kept a tight hold on their country and threatened neighboring territories. They seized Austria and Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. And other countries ceded territories to the Nazis out of fear.

Hitler created the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, which shaped public opinion. While the Nazis were feared, the Jews were persecuted.

Picture postcard with propaganda painting of a Adolf Hitler by Ludwig Hohlwein (German poster artist 1874–1949), Munich, Nazi Germany

Nazi messaging was successfully propagated through books, films, and theater. Radio broadcasts only communicated what the Nazis wanted the public to hear. Even art and music were controlled by Hitler and his military. Pundits said Hitler was greatly influenced by the psychological warfare the British employed during World War I.

While the Nazis were feared, the massacre and maltreatment of Jews eventually sparked international condemnation. This was the prelude to World War II.

7. World War II (1939 – 1945)

The Second World War was the deadliest conflict in history, with an estimated 70 to 85 million fatalities. The two sides were the Allies, which was composed of the United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union, and China, and the Axis, which was led by Germany and had Italy and Japan as partners.

As deadly as it was, the psychological war between the two parties was also quite intense. The British sharpened its propaganda machine during World War I, and Nazi Germany had been a pro at it for years.

The United States also upped its propaganda machine with General Douglas MacArthur at the helm. He was the head of the Psychological Warfare Branch.

He organized the distribution of leaflets in the Philippines castigating Japanese soldiers’ presence in the country. The branch also dropped leaflets in Japan to blast its government’s role in World War II while praising Americans’ position in the war.

A leaflet addressed to Japanese civilians read: “Do not believe falsehoods about American cruelty. See for yourselves! Select representatives to come forward and observe the treatment they will receive. Then these representatives can return and guide you to safety. You will receive food, water, clothing, and medical treatment.”

The British also employed deception in their psychological warfare. The British military released fictional orders to confuse Axis soldiers and provided faux visuals. Double agents were deployed, which earned mastermind Dudley Clarke the moniker “the greatest British deceiver of WW2.”

The Allies eventually won the psychological warfare and the war.

8. Cold War (1947 – 1991)

The end of World War II was also the beginning of the decades-long rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, known as the Cold War.

Unlike World War II, there was minimal bloodshed but heightened psychological warfare. It was a fierce battle between freedom and communism. Fatalities were indirectly attributed to the Cold War through the superpowers’ participation in proxy wars.

The American psychological warfare during the Cold War was both covert and overt. In 1947, President Harry Truman requested $400 million from Congress to provide economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey so they could remain independent amidst Communist threats. It set off a chain of psyops from both parties and their allies.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) launched the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) in 1948. Its role was to highlight Russian values through music and art while promulgating U.S. aggression. To ensure Cominform’s message was undeterred, CPSU limited locals’ communication with foreigners and the outside world.

In 1950, Truman launched the Campaign of Truth. He urged media leaders to combat every “communist lie” with the truth about freedom and democracy. So it went, the American and Soviet leaders trading propaganda disparaging the other, continuing to this day.

9. Korean War (1950 – 1953)

The Korean War is said to be a byproduct of the Cold War. It was a battle between the Soviet-backed Korean People’s Army, which eventually became North Korea, and the U.S.-backed Republic of Korea or, South Korea.

The Americans feared that the North Korean invasion was the beginning of the communist efforts of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies consisting of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.

Meanwhile, South Korea had U.S. support and the Western Alliance. This consisted of North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, such as France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain, the United Kingdom, and many more.

United Nations leaflet attempting to demoralize North Korean enemy by asking why they would die for China or Russia, 1951

The U.S. had a propaganda team during the Korean War, which received advice from a member of the psywar team against Japan during World War II.

According to a document by Major Albert C. Brauer, they prepared many anti-communism leaflets for the Korean War. But many of the recipients were illiterate, so they had to change the strategy and create leaflets with cartoons and illustrations instead of words.

The Korean War ended with the creation of a two-mile-wide demilitarized zone. This serves as a boundary between North and South Korea and is maintained to this day. The nations are wholly independent, with South Korea remaining a democracy and North Korea continuing to be a communist country.

10. Vietnam War (1955 – 1975)

The Vietnam War was between North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. It is considered another proxy of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and its communist allies supported the North, and the U.S. supported the South.

This time, the U.S. lost the proxy war despite the extensive use of psyops. Vietnam also won, as it united the North and South under one Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

While the U.S. lost, its psyops known as Operation Wandering Soul became infamous. In Vietnamese culture, it is important to show respect for the dead through a proper burial. The lack of decent or honorable burial would cause the soul to wander around aimlessly on earth after death.

Armed with this knowledge, American engineers created Ghost Tape Number Ten with the help of South Vietnamese soldiers who dubbed eerie sounds of wandering ghosts. The tape was broadcast late at night in areas controlled by Viet Cong soldiers.

The operation was only briefly successful, as the Viet Cong eventually realized it was just a recording and started firing in the general direction of the broadcast.

11. Social Media

Social media is the current medium for various psyops.

For example, there has long been criticism against Israel for its mistreatment of Palestinians. Hamas and Hezbollah are militant groups that have been adept at showcasing their causes on social media.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), for its part, created a social media team comprising young tech-savvy individuals who monitor Hamas and Hezbollah’s internet activities. The IDF releases its own propaganda to counter these sentiments and get people to join their side.

And who could forget the Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. elections? According to intelligence reports, Russian President Vladimir Putin masterminded Project Lakhta. This was a psyop meant to elevate Donald Trump’s candidacy and harm former U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

The operation involved troll farms that created thousands of social media accounts to promote discord online, provide support for Trump, and vilify Clinton. Since Trump prevailed in the 2016 elections, one may say Putin’s turn at psychological warfare triumphed.

Another attempt was made in the 2020 U.S. elections, but Microsoft got wind of the operation.

The militant group ISIS also knows how to leverage social media effectively. In 2014, the group only had 1,500 members with second-hand weapons they stole or bought from the black market. But the group was able to sow fear and attract new members online. They had passionate supporters who followed their propaganda promoted by bots. The group even had a hashtag: #AllEyesOnISIS.

Then there’s Ukraine, which is still fighting a war with Russia. According to psychologists, half of the war Ukraine is fighting is online. Russia, after all, has become a master of the online game.

Bottom Line

From cats to fake ghosts, and now, social media—these are all instruments in psychological warfare throughout history.

It may sound like they have nothing in common, but there are at least two similar grounds: one, they were all implemented with creativity, and two, they appeal to people’s emotions.

Psychological warfare continues to this day, with a more modern and more dangerous approach, as social media can easily shape millions of people’s opinions and outlooks.

historydefined.net · by Carl Seaver · October 25, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com