Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“The enemy will never realize how much I thank them for taking everything material away from me, and reducing me to the point where I didn't have anything but faith in God. I had a chance to look at myself, and realize that you can do things you never realized were possible.”

– Nick Rowe

“Half of the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it."

– Robert Frost

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

– Eleanor Roosevelt

1. The Military’s Phantom ‘Extremists’

2. Confusion, uneven reporting hurting Pentagon effort to combat extremism

3. How Hamas Built an Army

4. Strengthen the Military-Rhetorical Complex

5. China Is Pressing Women to Have More Babies. Many Are Saying No.

6. Israel is pulling thousands of troops from Gaza in a possible precursor to a scaled-back offensive

7.India Is Chasing China’s Economy. But Something Is Holding It Back.

8. The Problem With De-Risking

9. Russia’s War on Woke

10. The West must abandon weakness and commit to Ukraine’s victory

11. More Americans Think Foreign Policy Should Be a Top U.S. Priority for 2024

12. Suspicious of China, Philippines Expands US Military Presence

13. Inside the tunnels of Gaza

14. The Wages of Neglect in Syria

15. China’s Taiwan Nightmare Has Come True

16. Unmasking Digital Deception – OpEd

17. Wartime Command & Control

18. Asian American Officials Cite Unfair Scrutiny and Lost Jobs in China Spy Tensions

19. Taiwan president says ties with China must be decided by will of the people

20. The world should fear 2024

21. Analysis | Two Gaza Wars: Why the Gulf Between Israelis and Outsiders Is So Vast, and Jarring

1. The Military’s Phantom ‘Extremists’

Excerpts:

This is a welcome rebuke to the narrative that the military is a breeding ground for domestic terrorism. The press carried that story everywhere in 2021, including calls for tips: “Have You Witnessed Far-Right Extremism Inside the Military?”

But the press interest in military extremism has outstripped the actual extremists available to cover. A Rand survey found that, among veterans, support for “extremist groups and extremist ideals” is similar to or less than the general public.

The U.S. military reflects the strengths and weaknesses of American society. But it has a strong culture that keeps men and women from joining the political fringes: Uniting members of all races and creeds in a common purpose, and steeping them in the military’s rich tradition of duty, honor, country.

The Military’s Phantom ‘Extremists’

An independent study puts to rest another false media narrative.

By The Editorial Board

Jan. 1, 2024 5:45 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/military-extremists-report-institute-for-defense-analyses-pentagon-lloyd-austin-97619f4d

Good news: The U.S. military isn’t packed with violent extremists. That’s the gist of a new report commissioned by the Pentagon in 2021 and released quietly with little notice in December. The result won’t surprise Americans who have spent time in uniform, but it should calm the media frenzy about right-wing radicals in the armed forces.

After reports that some service members participated in the Jan. 6 riot, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered an independent study to get “greater fidelity” on extremism in the ranks. The think tank tasked with the report, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), “found no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate” to U.S. society. A review of Pentagon data suggested “fewer than 100 substantiated cases per year of extremist activity by members of the military in recent years,” the report says.

That figure could include a range of conduct and ideological bent, not simply the white supremacy floated in the press. Take court martials. Researchers found that “the prevalence of extremist and gang-related activity that are reflected in court-martial opinions is limited to fewer than 20 cases” since 2012. Gang activity isn’t typically political and, excluding those cases, the number falls to one a year.

One useful conclusion is that the military doesn’t need a new section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to punish what few “extremist” criminal cases exist. Researchers note that commanders can rely on Article 116 (riot or breach of peace); Article 88 (contempt toward officials); Article 109 (destruction or damage to property); Article 115 (communication of threats), among others such as assault.

Even the Jan. 6 story isn’t what you’ve heard. IDA found that “of the more than 700 federal cases in which charges were publicly available a year after these events, fewer than ten” were in the military at the time. There’s “no evidence that service members were charged at a different rate than the members of the general population.” The picture changes when veterans are included, though the Pentagon doesn’t command former service members who are civilians.

But the inquisition into extremism does polarize the active force. Researchers deserve credit for noting that “the risk to the military from widespread polarization and division in the ranks may be a greater risk than the radicalization of a few service members.”

This is a welcome rebuke to the narrative that the military is a breeding ground for domestic terrorism. The press carried that story everywhere in 2021, including calls for tips: “Have You Witnessed Far-Right Extremism Inside the Military?”

But the press interest in military extremism has outstripped the actual extremists available to cover. A Rand survey found that, among veterans, support for “extremist groups and extremist ideals” is similar to or less than the general public.

The U.S. military reflects the strengths and weaknesses of American society. But it has a strong culture that keeps men and women from joining the political fringes: Uniting members of all races and creeds in a common purpose, and steeping them in the military’s rich tradition of duty, honor, country.

Confusion, uneven reporting hurting Pentagon effort to combat extremism

taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton · December 30, 2023

More than a year and a half after it was due, the Department of Defense finally released its report examining extremism within the ranks of the armed forces. And although there is “no evidence” that violent extremism is “disproportionate” in the military compared to the wider American populace, it remains an issue with active-duty troops and veterans. However even after extensive study, there is still confusion and unclear policies throughout the military when it comes to finding and dealing with extremism.

The report, commissioned by the Pentagon and conducted by the think tank the Institute for Defense Analysis, found that the military needs to have a comprehensive change in its culture to both better identify current extremists and to prevent troops and DoD civilian employees from becoming radicalized. The IDA’s review found no evidence “that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate to the number of violent extremists in the United States as a whole, although there is some indication that the rate of participation by former service members is slightly higher and may be growing. IDA also found no evidence of violent extremist behavior by DOD civilians.”

Titled ”Prohibited Extremist Activities In the U.S. Department of Defense,” the report noted that despite there not being a disproportionate amount of extremism within the military, there is a potentially growing rate of veterans participating in extremism groups or activities. Those include participation in what it outlined as the four main types of extremist views: left- and right-wing extremism, single-issue extremism and politico-religious extremism.

The Institute for Defense Analysis was supposed to finish its report by June 2022 but still had not completed it by summer 2023, according to reports by CNN. The 262-page report was only released this week, in the time between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve.

The IDA report was commissioned by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in response to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The study was one of several moves taken by the Department of Defense in the wake of that attack; other moves included a standdown to address the issue within the military, as well as other measures to better screen recruits for such views.

The IDA’s team interviewed more than 100 DoD officials and others, visited bases belonging to different branches and studied internal reports from the armed forces. This research was done between June 2021-June 2022. The researchers found that issues including social media can be a pathway to increasingly extreme views, while for veterans, a “loss of military identity appears to have a strong association with difficult adjustments to civilian life that can in turn contribute to negative behaviors.”

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However, as with past studies, the IDA’s report found that there are inconsistent methods of data collection and reporting across the military, with each service branch having their own approaches. Another problem outlined by the IDA is that there is no clear, Department of Defense-wide definition for what constitutes extremist ideology or activity. That in turn makes it harder to collect data, as well as come up with clear courses of action to stop extremism.

“Until these policies are appropriately updated, they are likely to contribute to continued confusion over the scope of prohibited activities,” the report said.

The IDA report, again conducted between June 2021-June 2022, doesn’t reflect the most recent data from the last year. However, a DoD Inspector General’s report, the “Annual Report to Congress Pursuant to FY 2021 NDAA, Section 544,” released at the end of November, offers more recent information. According to the Inspector General, the Pentagon investigated 183 different allegations of military members engaging in or advocating for extremist action in the 2023 fiscal year. That included 44 alleged cases of “Advocating, engaging in, or supporting

terrorism within the United States or abroad” and 78 alleged instances of people “Advocating for, engaging in, or supporting the overthrow of the U.S. Government.” However, as with the IDA report, different branches of the military reported their own individual challenges in collecting data, compiling it into a single report and other issues, meaning there is still a lack of clarity and unified reporting systems when it comes to extremism.

Ongoing threats of extremism

Extremism in the military has been an issue before the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection and continues to be one. Groups often try to recruit veterans for their military experience or have members join the armed forces to learn those skills. As the IDA noted, “participation in violent extremist activities of even a small number of individuals with military connections and military training, however, could present a risk to the military and to the country as a whole.”

In recent years there have been several instances of attempted or successful violent actions by members of the military. One Army soldier tied to a Satanic Neo-Nazi group planned to ambush his unit while deployed. An Air Force sergeant shot and killed a federal agent and later a local law enforcement officer in 2020 in an attempt to start a second American civil war. Meanwhile there are also many cases involving veterans. One group, involving at the time active-duty Marines and a National Guardsman all linked to Neo Nazis, was caught after an attack on an electrical substation and while planning a similar terrorist attack. These attacks on electrical substations in attempts to disrupt or cripple the American power grid have become increasingly common among right-wing extremist groups.

However, the IDA noted that violent extremism “does not appear to be any more prevalent among service members than it is in American society as a whole,” based on the admittedly uneven data it studied.

Recommendations and push back

The IDA’s report outlines several recommendations to counter extremism. The first is standardizing language and collection policies when it comes to what constitutes extremist activity. Clear, department-wide definitions can avoid confusion and make it easier for units and officials to point out cases, and collect data. Additionally, the security clearance process needs to be updated to better understand and protect against domestic extremist views, rather than outside threats from what the IDA called “Cold War threats.”

One common refrain was focusing on intervention and deradicalization rather than punitive measures. The Department of Defense, the IDA said, should “avoid steps that risk unnecessary polarization or division in the ranks.” Although the threat of extremism is serious, there is a risk that a harsh crackdown instead of interventions with the intent of deradicalizing troops could potentially cause a wider backlash.

“DOD has used a wide variety of terms, phrases, and concepts to describe prohibited extremist behaviors and activities. As a result, service members at all levels told the IDA team that they are unaware of or confused about existing definitions and standards,” the report read. “In the absence of a clear and consistent message, there is a risk that misinterpretations could lead to a significant division in the force along political and ideological lines, with some members of the military believing that they are being targeted for their views.”

The IDA report is not the first set of proposals for addressing extremism in the military. The Pentagon’s Countering Extremism Working Group, formed in April 2021 after the Capitol insurrection, released a series of six recommendations on how to address the problem. Like the IDA study, they focused on clarity of language for what constitutes extremism, and also recommended better screening processes for recruits. However in May, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters that so far only the policy on educating recruits on what constitutes extremist views and activity had been put into effect. CNN reported that political backlash from Congress had stalled the sense of urgency.

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taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton · December 30, 2023

3. How Hamas Built an Army

Excerpt:

Hamas has shown a significant degree of military capability deployed on October 7 to enable it to commit the atrocities of that day. It leveraged its training and experience using irregular tactics. Hamas has so far not performed well as an urban defender and relied more on information warfare and its hostages to keep the IDF from advancing.

How Hamas Built an Army - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Ido Levy · January 2, 2024

On October 7, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and its allies entered Israeli territory to commit atrocities against civilian communities near the Israel-Gaza border. With about 1,200 dead, including children and the elderly slaughtered in their beds or burned to death, and at least 239 abducted to Gaza as hostages, the day will be remembered in infamy—“Israel’s 9/11,” or worse.

To enable its genocidal atrocities, Hamas created a conventional army able to overrun Israel Defense Forces (IDF) posts on its way to the border communities. Having seized multiple positions as far as 25 kilometers into Israel from the 60-km Gaza border, some of the Hamas cadres held their ground and attempted to defend against the coming IDF counter, which defeated them within several days and initiated a ground incursion into Gaza. The IDF says that at least 278 Israeli soldiers were among the dead of October 7. Indeed, this war has featured a clash of military forces to seize or defend territory and followed defined frontlines and orders of battle. It is now clear that Hamas possesses and is willing to use conventional military power alongside its traditional terrorist tactics.

Hamas acquired its military capabilities through years of fighting experience, training, Iranian tutelage, and resource accumulation. It learned to adapt irregular and terrorist tactics for conventional warfare. I trace the development of Hamas’s conventional warfighting capabilities and place it within a larger pattern of armed nonstate actors seeking to form armies. Because Hamas is now clearly an army, and not only a terrorist group, the ongoing IDF conventional campaign against it must continue until the group can no longer control territory.

This is not to say that Hamas follows international law, nor that it possesses state-of-the-art equipment. None of these is true of Hamas: it does not have tanks, aircraft, or warships. Its members do not all wear distinguishable uniforms, and they certainly do not adhere to the law of armed conflict. Rather, like many nonstate actors seeking control over territory, the group has developed an—albeit limited—capability to dispute, seize, and hold territory openly, which is the key method of conventional warfare. The fact that it is a nonstate actor with no regard for international norms should not obscure this important truth.

When Armed Groups Form Armies

In my book on the Islamic State (IS), Soldiers of End-Times, I challenge the notion that armed nonstate actors remain “irregular,” or opt for guerrilla and terrorist tactics by default. Groups like IS that espouse ambitious ideologies and goals necessitating the seizure and governance of large territories must find the means to achieve such lofty aims. An essential part of the solution is conventional fighting power, i.e. the ability to physically destroy opposing forces and hold ground using massed combat power.

An organization does not need all the trappings of a modern Western military to fight conventionally. Basic infantry tactics, small arms and explosives, and other combat essentials are increasingly available to savvy militants in an era of greater access to information and goods. IS, for example, implemented a series of innovations and improvements to its suicide bombing tactics to adapt them to the needs of its conventional campaigns in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere, even when facing modern state armies. A group can use suicide bombs for enhanced firepower; motorcycles, weapons caches, and tunnels for communications and logistics; and pickup trucks for increased mobility. Popularly recognizable features like tanks and destroyers are not necessary—in fact, venerable military theorists Carl von Clausewitz, Baron de Jomini, and Niccolò Machiavelli concur on the essential character of infantry versus the supplementary (if sometimes crucial) character of cavalry and artillery.

Indeed, one finds myriad examples of armed groups creating armies throughout history. Communist rebels in China, Cuba, Korea, and Vietnam met the United States and other powerful actors on the battlefield. The U.S. Armed Forces was itself once a rebel group—the Continental Army of George Washington—and the IDF began as the underground Zionist organization known as the Haganah. Today’s jihadist groups, such as IS, the Taliban, al-Qaeda and its affiliates, Hezbollah, and Hamas have demonstrated a special penchant for developing armies. Often, these groups adapt irregular tactics, such as suicide bombing for IS, to enable conventional operations.

Aspects of Hamas Military Power

In its 1988 founding “Covenant,” Hamas explicitly prescribes violent “jihad” as the means to reverse the “Jews’ usurpation of Palestine.” It presents as models for its actions the military campaigns of the vaunted medieval Muslim generals Salah al-Din ibn Ayyub and Baybars. As the militant Palestinian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’s primary goal is, through armed struggle, to replace the State of Israel with a Palestinian state governed under Hamas’s interpretation of Islamic law. Military strength is an obvious requirement for achieving this aim.

An important component of Hamas’s strength is Iranian support. Despite ideological divergences, Iran and Hamas established connections starting in the early 1990s, as Iran provided Hamas with training in Lebanon and funding to the tune of millions of dollars. Iran and Hezbollah, Iran’s powerful Lebanese proxy, taught Hamas how to conduct suicide bombings, fueling Hamas terrorist campaigns in Israel in the 90s and through the 2000-2005 “Second Intifada,” which killed more than 1,000 Israelis. Moreover, Hezbollah provides strategic advice: the October 7 assault largely resembled Hezbollah’s “Conquering the Galilee” plan (that Israel discovered in 2012), which included deploying elite units to seize northern border communities and take hostages while simultaneously launching massive rocket salvos and attacks from the sea.

Iran and Hezbollah have smuggled weapons to Hamas overland through Sinai via Sudan and Libya, as well as by sea. Intensive military training and accumulated weapons have allowed Hamas to gradually organize regional units as large as brigades containing 2,500-3,500 fighters each. Joint exercises since 2020 (such as this one) conducted with other Gazan armed factions like Palestinian Islamic Jihad have habituated units to operating in a coordinated fashion, supported Hamas command and control, and facilitated cooperation between Hamas and smaller factions. Such efforts began in earnest once Hamas seized power in the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Iran has since supplied materiel and know-how for Hamas to build a sizable rocket arsenal, with more than 10,000 rockets and mortar shells fired in the current conflict. With Iran’s help, Hamas has developed a robust domestic rocket-making industry that uses pipes, electrical wiring, and other everyday materials for improvised production. Hamas and other Gazan armed factions have terrorized Israeli population centers with rocket attacks, forcing border communities into bomb shelters for significant stretches and drawing the IDF into major conflicts in Gaza in 2008-2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021. Although Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system has complicated rocket attacks due to its 90% interception rate, Hamas’s rockets, together with incendiary balloons, fire-bearing kites, and kamikaze drones, have been a crucial feature of the group’s arsenal.

Militant tunnel-digging in Gaza dates back to 1967 at least, and Hamas has drawn on this tradition and Hezbollah’s tunneling techniques on the Israel-Lebanon border to bolster its capabilities. Extensive tunnel networks conceal and cover Hamas assets from air attack while attack tunnels aid infiltration into Israel. In 2006, Hamas kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit via tunnel, whom the group traded in 2011 for 1,027 prisoners held in Israel. Israel has since developed strong technology and tactics to find and neutralize attack tunnels.

Furthermore, Hamas has probed the Gaza border fence directly with its 2018 “Great March of Return” riots, dubbed by Hamas and organizers as demonstrations meant to draw international attention to the plight of the Palestinians. The weekly protests mobilized tens of thousands of Gazans on the border with Israel; terrorist operatives with Molotov cocktails, firearms, and other weapons were embedded in crowds of civilians, whom Hamas sometimes encouraged to deploy burning tires and incendiary kites. Some also tried to infiltrate into Israel. Dozens, including civilians, died as the IDF responded, giving Hamas a propaganda victory. This is also an example of how Hamas uses civilians as human shields to cover its terrorist activities while observing how Israel responds to its provocations.

Culmination on October 7

This collection of irregular tactics culminated on October 7 in a conventional assault on Israel. It began with a massive rocket barrage of more than 3,000 rockets over the first minutes of the war, evidently overwhelming Israeli defenses, which Hamas had been testing with rocket strikes for years. At the same time, Hamas’s strike force, led by elite fighters from its Nukhba unit that received Iranian training, penetrated the border fence in tandem with attempts to infiltrate from the sea. Operatives on the border jammed IDF communications and sniped surveillance systems. Training and intelligence paid off as attackers overran unsuspecting military positions. Some attackers arrived via paraglider, following years of Hamas special training with the devices; Hamas likely learned from having previously deployed incendiary balloons and kites—comparably low-tech flying objects that tested Israeli border defenses under similar circumstances.

Lessons likely gleaned from the March of Return appeared as well. Images emerged after Hamas breached the border fence of Gaza residents coming across it. Despite ample evidence of its atrocities, Hamas used this to claim that its members did not attack or kidnap civilians, and that it was rather frenzied ordinary Gazans who did so. In addition, the March of Return likely helped Hamas assess the level of force and equipment required to break through the fence.

Although tunnels have not appeared in existing accounts of the assault, they are now a major objective for the IDF. Experts anticipated that Hamas’s tunnel network would pose unique challenges; the difficulty with destroying tunnels with airstrikes and the risks they present in urban environments created heightened uncertainty that, together with Hamas’s possession of Israeli hostages, possibly delayed the start of Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza.

The ground incursion has nonetheless made rapid progress, so far occupying much of northern Gaza and killing some 7,800 Hamas members in exchange for about 502 Israeli troops (including about 280 killed on October 7), according to the IDF. Despite the shock of the initial attack, Hamas’s military power appears to have culminated when the IDF repelled the October 7 attackers. Thus, while Hamas has achieved what few armed groups could ever hope to, one should not overstate its battlefield prowess.

Conclusion

Hamas has shown a significant degree of military capability deployed on October 7 to enable it to commit the atrocities of that day. It leveraged its training and experience using irregular tactics. Hamas has so far not performed well as an urban defender and relied more on information warfare and its hostages to keep the IDF from advancing.

However, an underperforming army is still an army, and conventional ground operations must continue to completely dislodge Hamas from the territory it holds. A counterterrorism approach centered on precision strikes on high-value targets and special forces raids, as some officials and observers have called for, will not suffice for the task of collapsing Hamas’s combat brigades. Once Hamas can no longer hold territory, Israel can shift back to such an approach to hunt down terrorist remnants that attempt to carry on an insurgency. As long as Hamas controls Gaza, it will continue to regenerate combat power and improve its military capabilities, as it has done following previous more limited Israeli campaigns against it. For example, the United States and its allies are able to execute a counterterrorism-centered strategy against IS in Iraq and Syria now because they prevailed in the predominantly conventional 2013-2019 war to dismantle the group’s territorial “caliphate.”

Hamas is the latest armed nonstate actor to develop conventional military capabilities. As with the rise of IS in 2014 or the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Hamas’s military and terrorist actions on October 7 came as a surprise. This is perhaps indicative of an Israeli failure of imagination leading to a lack of preparation. And that would fall into a historical pattern of powerful states failing to discern the possibility of their nonstate adversaries conventionalizing.

Ido Levy is an associate fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a PhD student at American University. He is the author of Soldiers of End-Times: Assessing the Military Effectiveness of the Islamic State. Follow him on X @IdoLevy5.

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

4. Strengthen the Military-Rhetorical Complex

Conclusion:

While little to no polling has been done on this question, most participants will tell you that the average speech and debate participant will lean further to the left on the political spectrum than the average high school student. Attend any tournament in the nation, and you are likely to hear more speeches advocating for left-leaning than conservative political initiatives and ideas. But this does not mean recruiters will necessarily face a hostile audience. For the pilot program I mentioned earlier, the reception from students and coaches has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, by pure chance, the coach with whom we have been working to facilitate airmen judging at debate tournaments is a former all-source intelligence analyst. On the occasions where students and judges may interact — for example, while waiting for the next speaker to arrive from another event — the students always seem to be fascinated by intelligence work.

Ultimately, debate offers an opportunity for U.S. schools and the military to work together in order to raise the level of thinking, inquisitiveness, and talent in their institutions. Both organizations should cooperate so that more debaters can have the opportunity to serve their country that I did.

Strengthen the Military-Rhetorical Complex - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Andrew Bary · January 2, 2024

One of the six goals stated in the National Intelligence Strategy is to recruit, develop, and retain a talented and diverse workforce that operates as a united community. The U.S. military and the intelligence community at large are constantly seeking the right talent pool of candidates ready to take on the intelligence problems of the modern era.

There is a stream of practiced critical thinkers, talented speakers, and proficient writers graduating from high schools and colleges every year going largely untapped by the Department of Defense. I know, because as a high school and collegiate debater, I was part of it. In 2007, with a new child and a struggling income, I walked into a U.S. Air Force recruiting center. I shared my research, speechwriting, and public speaking skills in the hopes that the service had a place for me.

The recruiter had no recommendation for what jobs fit the skills of a practiced critical thinker and vocal communicator. As a result, I signed up for an “open general” slot for basic training, which left me at the mercy of the “needs of the Air Force.” I was fortunate enough to volunteer and be selected for the Air Force Honor Guard in Washington, DC, where I spent my first years as an enlisted airman. But it wasn’t until I attended the Air Force’s foundational noncommissioned officer training that I met an intelligence analyst and discovered an Air Force career for which I felt custom-built.

Become a Member

I signed up to retrain into the operations intelligence career field in 2013 and began working as an analyst with Air Force Special Operations Command at Hurlburt Field, Florida. By June 2023, I had graduated from National Intelligence University with a master of science degree in strategic intelligence, written a thesis on U.S. intelligence community measurements of whole-of-society defense preparedness, and had the opportunity to brief multiple generals, combatant commanders, and the secretary of the Air Force.

My background is not unique, and my career trajectory shouldn’t be either. By making a concerted effort to engage with high school and college debaters, military recruiters can help more people follow it.

Unrealized Potential

The National Speech and Debate Association counts 134,000 speech and debate participants across 2,863 member high schools. These speech and debate teams engage in thoughtful, serious argumentation on topics of national and international importance. U.S. Code currently mandates that the Library of Congress prepare materials related to the National University Extension Association’s national high school policy debate topic and the American Speech Association’s national college debate topic. The 2022–23 high school topic centered on the U.S. government increasing security cooperation with NATO in one or more of the areas of AI, biotechnology, or cybersecurity. Topics in previous years included water resources and foreign arms sales from the United States. Simply put, thousands of America’s high school students are engaged in serious policy argumentation and debate over some of the most pertinent and pressing issues facing the intelligence community.

Debaters are not beholden to only one idea or one side of an argument. Indeed, at every tournament, debaters will be placed in both “affirmative” and “negative” positions, arguing for their case in some rounds and against any number of cases in other rounds. Formulating arguments is a key intellectual exercise for intelligence analysis, and these kids are doing it on a daily basis, often as an extracurricular activity outside of school hours. Every year, U.S. high school and collegiate speech and debate programs produce diverse individuals able to critically think, understand complex ideas and structures, and communicate them to warfighters and decisionmakers.

My interviews with representatives of the National Speech and Debate Association and multiple debate organizations across the country revealed no evidence of intelligence community or military recruitment at the high school debate levels. That is not to say the potential hasn’t been noticed. A representative from the National Speech and Debate Association explained that “speech and debate lays a strong foundation of transferable skills. Individuals who have participated in speech and debate are often well-equipped to excel in roles that involve research, analysis, communication, and critical thinking. Additionally, involvement in speech and debate can demonstrate a commitment to intellectual pursuits and ethical conduct, qualities highly valued in the intelligence community.”

Better Recruiting

The military, and indeed the intelligence community at large, would do well to institutionalize better practices in bringing these individuals into service for the United States, particularly in uniform. There are two paths the Department of Defense should pursue to meet this end.

First, military recruiters should form relationships with local speech and debate organizations and visit area tournaments for direct recruiting. The increasing gap in culture and familiarity between civilian and military worlds has left a vast majority of students unaware of the basics of military service. This gap also leads to students walking by recruiting tables and driving past recruiting offices completely unaware of the career paths that utilize their speech and debate skills.

The military has for decades pursued high school athletes as a source for healthy, fit recruits who are likely to succeed in enlisting and complete basic training courses. As the force has diversified its talent base, it has altered many physical training requirements to accommodate more potential students. To be sure, there are still far too many students that will not qualify for military service, but the responsibility of recruiters to maximize opportunity for the right talent pool has not diminished.

Second, local intelligence units should take up the opportunity to form regular relationships with speech and debate teams. This includes volunteering to support the teams, coach speakers, and judge at speech and debate competitions. Establishing these relationships serves multiple purposes. It builds familiarity for high school students with military service. It offers those same students more opportunities to grow in their speaking and thinking skills. For the servicemembers, stepping into training, coaching, and evaluation roles is hugely beneficial for individual growth.

At my intelligence squadron on Nellis Air Force Base, we have been instituting something of a pilot program for the second initiative. We have solicited volunteers to attend the fall and winter tournaments of the Golden Desert Speech and Debate League, the confederation of speech and debate programs across the Las Vegas area. Fewer than a dozen members, most of them airmen, have so far volunteered, but those few airmen have already contributed well over 100 hours of judging to three tournaments and filled critical gaps for the programs desperate for well-informed adults to judge their students and provide valuable feedback for growth.

On a grander scale, this may provide a potential avenue for reaching students the Department of Defense can’t reach in many U.S. schools. Military recruiters have cited lack of access to high schools as a foundational hurdle to recruitment for years. But that problem grew exponentially during the Zoom era, brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. As students have returned, high schools have had to relearn how to integrate with guests, including military recruiters. Some high schools, not to mention colleges and universities, have administrations that oppose military recruitment in their spaces for a plethora of reasons. Some have student bodies or parents that oppose seeing uniforms in their schools. Whatever the reason, recruiters are now faced with developing novel ways for getting their messages to students. Tournaments and partnerships with some of America’s best and brightest are one way to work with administrations, teachers, students, and parents in a previously unexplored way.

Of course, recruiting students from speech and debate teams in high schools will not address shortfalls among many combat-focused specialties such as infantry, armor, artillery, and security forces. Speech and debate teach intellectual and communicative skills and do not prepare the participating students with any specialized talents for combat. To be sure, there are myriad programs offered in high schools across the United States that can. Speech and debate just aren’t among them. The strategy proposed in this article is aimed toward raising the initial, base talent pool for military intelligence recruits. It ensures that instructors will be spending less time struggling through concepts of spoken and written communication and critical thinking with students arriving at technical training. It would help ensure that the youngest soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and guardians coming into the intelligence community are ready to deal with complexity.

The United States does not need to recruit unprecedented numbers of new recruits to accomplish this task. It only needs to focus its sights on the best qualified talent. Despite the relatively small impact on the quantity of recruits, this plan will almost certainly have a drastically outsized impact on quality of intelligence recruits, and therefore the quality of intelligence produced throughout the Department of Defense.

Conclusion

While little to no polling has been done on this question, most participants will tell you that the average speech and debate participant will lean further to the left on the political spectrum than the average high school student. Attend any tournament in the nation, and you are likely to hear more speeches advocating for left-leaning than conservative political initiatives and ideas. But this does not mean recruiters will necessarily face a hostile audience. For the pilot program I mentioned earlier, the reception from students and coaches has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, by pure chance, the coach with whom we have been working to facilitate airmen judging at debate tournaments is a former all-source intelligence analyst. On the occasions where students and judges may interact — for example, while waiting for the next speaker to arrive from another event — the students always seem to be fascinated by intelligence work.

Ultimately, debate offers an opportunity for U.S. schools and the military to work together in order to raise the level of thinking, inquisitiveness, and talent in their institutions. Both organizations should cooperate so that more debaters can have the opportunity to serve their country that I did.

Become a Member

Master Sgt. Andrew Bary is an analysis flight chief at the 547th Intelligence Squadron on Nellis Air Force Base, NV, and a 2023 graduate of National Intelligence University’s Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence program.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Andrew Bary · January 2, 2024

5. China Is Pressing Women to Have More Babies. Many Are Saying No.

Will this have the same long term national security issues like Korea and Japan?

Excerpts:

In October, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping urged the state-backed All-China Women’s Federation to “prevent and resolve risks in the women’s field,” according to an official account of the speech.

“It’s clear that he was not talking about risks faced by women but considering women as a major threat to social stability,” said Clyde Yicheng Wang, an assistant professor of politics at Washington and Lee University who studies Chinese government propaganda.

...

Demographers and researchers predict that data will show Chinese births dipping below 9 million in 2023. The United Nations forecasts 23 million births in India, which in 2023 passed China as the world’s most populous country. The U.S. will have around 3.7 million babies born in 2023, the U.N. estimated.

The one-child policy brought much of China’s demographic gloom: There are fewer young people than in the past, including millions fewer women of childbearing age every year. Those women are increasingly reluctant to marry and have children, accelerating the population decline.

In China, 6.8 million couples registered marriages in 2022, compared with 13 million in 2013. The country’s total fertility rate in 2022—the average number of babies a woman has in her lifetime—is approaching one birth per woman, or 1.09. In 2020, it was 1.30, well below the 2.1 needed to keep a population stable.

The campaign for a “birth-friendly culture” has taken on the tone of an urgent national mission, with government-organized matchmaking events and a program encouraging military families to have more babies.

“Soldiers win battles. When it comes to giving birth to second or third children and implementing the national fertility policy, we are also taking the lead and charging to the front,” Zeng Jian, a top obstetrician-gynecologist at a military hospital in Tianjin, told state media in 2022.

...

Wang Feng, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine, said there have been two conflicting shifts in Chinese society: a rising awareness of women’s rights and increasingly patriarchal policies.

For the first time in a quarter-century, no women are among the top two dozen officials on the Politburo. Since Xi took power in 2012, China has fallen 38 places in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report to No. 107 in the 2023 ranking of 146 nations.

In the Mao era, the party promised to end Confucian traditions that discriminated against women. Xi has instead stressed Confucian values, including the filial duty to have children. Families also pressure women into traditional roles.

China Is Pressing Women to Have More Babies. Many Are Saying No.

The population, now around 1.4 billion, is likely to drop to around half a billion by 2100—and women are being blamed

By Liyan QiFollow

and Shen LuFollow

Jan. 2, 2024 12:01 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-population-births-decline-womens-rights-5af9937b?mod=hp_lead_pos7

Chinese women have had it. Their response to Beijing’s demands for more children? No.

Fed up with government harassment and wary of the sacrifices of child-rearing, many young women are putting themselves ahead of what Beijing and their families want. Their refusal has set off a crisis for the Communist Party, which desperately needs more babies to rejuvenate China’s aging population.

With the number of babies in free fall—fewer than 10 million were born in 2022, compared with around 16 million in 2012—China is headed toward a demographic collapse. China’s population, now around 1.4 billion, is likely to drop to just around half a billion by 2100, according to some projections. Women are taking the blame.

In October, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping urged the state-backed All-China Women’s Federation to “prevent and resolve risks in the women’s field,” according to an official account of the speech.

“It’s clear that he was not talking about risks faced by women but considering women as a major threat to social stability,” said Clyde Yicheng Wang, an assistant professor of politics at Washington and Lee University who studies Chinese government propaganda.

The State Council, China’s top government body, didn’t respond to questions about Beijing’s population policies.

Party lectures on “family values” are having little effect, even in rural parts of China.

Outside a mall in Quanjiao, a county in Anhui province, He Yanjing, a mother of two, said she has gotten several calls from community officials to encourage her to have a third child. She has no such plans. The preschool her son attended cut the number of classrooms in half because there aren’t enough children to fill them, she said.

Her friend, Feng Chenchen, the mother of a 3-year-old girl, said relatives are pressuring her to have more children, hoping she has a baby boy.

“Having had one child, I think I’ve done my duty,” Feng said. A second child, she said, would be too expensive. She said she tells relatives, “I can have another kid as long as you give me 300,000 yuan,” around $41,000.

Many young people in China,disheartened by a weak economy and high unemployment, seek alternatives to their parents’ lives. Many women view the prescribed formula of marriage and children as a raw deal.

Molly Chen, 28 years old, said the demands of caring for aging relatives and her job as an exhibition designer in Shenzhen leave no room for kids or a husband. All she wants to do in her free moments is read or scroll through pet videos.

Chen followed the story of Su Min, a retiree who video-blogged about her solo road trip around China to escape a bad marriage. Chen said that the story, as well as online videos that women post about their lives, have deepened her impression that many men choose wives mostly as caretakers—for children, husbands and both sets of aging parents.

She lamented that she doesn’t have time even for a pet. “I can’t afford to take care of anything else outside of my parents and work,” Chen said.

A couple this fall taking pre-wedding photos in Beijing. PHOTO: KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES

Shrinkage

When Beijing said it would abolish its 35-year-old one-child policy in 2015, officials expected a baby boom. Instead, they got a baby bust.

New maternity wards were built only to close a few years later. Sales of baby-care products, including formula and diapers, have dropped. Businesses that focused on babies now target seniors.

New preschools built to make child-rearing more affordable struggle to fill classrooms and many have closed. In 2022, the number of preschools in China fell 2%, the first decline in 15 years.

Demographers and researchers predict that data will show Chinese births dipping below 9 million in 2023. The United Nations forecasts 23 million births in India, which in 2023 passed China as the world’s most populous country. The U.S. will have around 3.7 million babies born in 2023, the U.N. estimated.

The one-child policy brought much of China’s demographic gloom: There are fewer young people than in the past, including millions fewer women of childbearing age every year. Those women are increasingly reluctant to marry and have children, accelerating the population decline.

In China, 6.8 million couples registered marriages in 2022, compared with 13 million in 2013. The country’s total fertility rate in 2022—the average number of babies a woman has in her lifetime—is approaching one birth per woman, or 1.09. In 2020, it was 1.30, well below the 2.1 needed to keep a population stable.

The campaign for a “birth-friendly culture” has taken on the tone of an urgent national mission, with government-organized matchmaking events and a program encouraging military families to have more babies.

“Soldiers win battles. When it comes to giving birth to second or third children and implementing the national fertility policy, we are also taking the lead and charging to the front,” Zeng Jian, a top obstetrician-gynecologist at a military hospital in Tianjin, told state media in 2022.

In August, residents of the western city of Xi’an said they received an automated greeting from a government number during the Qixi Festival, the Chinese equivalent of Valentine’s Day: “Wishing you sweet love and marriage at an appropriate age. Let’s extend the Chinese bloodline.”

A maternity nurse tending to a newborn baby in Fuyang, China. PHOTO: SHELDON COOPER/SOPA IMAGES/ZUMA PRESS

The message drew a backlash on social media. “My mother-in-law doesn’t even push me to have a second child,” one person wrote. “I guess next, arranged marriages will come back,” another commented.

Beijing leans more to encouragement than the kind of coercion that marked the one-child policy. Local governments offer cash incentives for couples having a second or third child. A county in Zhejiang province gives a $137 cash bonus to every couple getting married before age 25.

In 2021, the city of Luanzhou asked unmarried people to sign up for a government-sponsored dating initiative that uses big data to find matches citywide. A district in the city of Handan provides a one-stop wedding-planning service.

Hide and seek

The shift means some women have gone from trying to dodge punishment for having too many children to being hounded to have more.

A decade ago, a woman surnamed Zhang was in a cat-and-mouse game with authorities after she decided to have a second child. She asked that her first name not be used.

While pregnant, she left her job to stay out of public view, fearful officials would pressure her to have an abortion, she said. After giving birth, in 2014, she stayed with relatives for a year. When she returned home, local family-planning officials fined her and her husband around $10,000. She said she was forced to have an intrauterine device implanted to prevent pregnancy. Authorities required her to have it checked every three months.

Months later, the Chinese government announced the one-child policy would be scrapped. For a while, authorities still demanded Zhang have her IUD checked.

She now gets text messages from officials encouraging her to have more children. She deletes them in anger. “I wish they would stop tossing us around,” she said, “and leave us ordinary people alone.”

There has been a tightening of licenses for clinics offering medical procedures to block pregnancies. In 1991, the height of the one-child policy, 6 million tubal ligations and 2 million vasectomies were performed. In 2020, there were 190,000 tubal ligations and 2,600 vasectomies.

On social media, people complain that getting a vasectomy appointment is as difficult as winning the lottery.

Officials have also tried to dial back abortions, a key tool for officials during the one-child policy. They have fallen by more than a third—from more than 14 million in 1991 to just under 9 million in 2020. China has since stopped releasing data on vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the 13th National Women’s Congress in Beijing on Oct. 23. PHOTO: XIE HUANCHI/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS

Pressurized populace

Wang Feng, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine, said there have been two conflicting shifts in Chinese society: a rising awareness of women’s rights and increasingly patriarchal policies.

For the first time in a quarter-century, no women are among the top two dozen officials on the Politburo. Since Xi took power in 2012, China has fallen 38 places in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report to No. 107 in the 2023 ranking of 146 nations.

In the Mao era, the party promised to end Confucian traditions that discriminated against women. Xi has instead stressed Confucian values, including the filial duty to have children. Families also pressure women into traditional roles.

Sophy Ouyang, 40, has known since middle school she didn’t want to marry and have children. Ouyang studied computer science, one of the few women in her village to pursue advanced schooling, and works as a software engineer in Canada.

Ouyang said that throughout her 20s, her family leaned on her to marry. Her mother said that if she had known Ouyang wouldn’t have children, she would have stopped her from getting a higher education.

Ouyang cut off contact with her family more than a decade ago. She has blocked her parents, aunts and uncles on social-media apps. “If I’m a bit more gentle with them,” she said, “they will take advantage.”

The Chinese government, which sees feminism as a nefarious ideology backed by foreign forces, has detained women’s-rights activists and erased their social-media accounts in a yearslong crackdown.

Even so, women have become more vocal online about their experiences relating to relationships, families and work. Their posts show a personal form of feminism that is harder for authorities to police.

Simona Dai, 31, started a podcast entitled “Oh! Mama” about birth and marriage after she learned that her mother had an abortion when she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with a girl in the early 1990s.

Dai got married when she was 26 and said she had to endure her husband’s chauvinistic views, especially during the pandemic, when they argued about household chores. She became adamant about not having children, despite pressure from the couple’s families.

She has since applied to end her marriage. “If I didn’t divorce, I might have to have a baby,” she said.

A child feeding gulls in December at a scenic spot in Qingdao, China: PHOTO: CFOTO/ZUMA PRESS

A national debate over the treatment of women erupted in early 2022, when the video of a woman—a mother of eight, kept in a shed with a chain around her neck—sparked a social-media storm. The woman’s plight resonated with Chinese women who saw a connection to their own roles.

In recent years, Beijing has raised its guard against similar instances of social-media outrage.

A woman who worked at a branch of the All-China Women’s Federation in Guangzhou from 2020 to 2021 said the branch focused on preventing gender-related topics from going viral. She said it paid more to a tech company to police social-media comments than its budget for women’s advocacy.

During training, she said, employees were warned of serious repercussions if women’s issues in Guangzhou drew unwanted social-media attention. The women’s federation didn’t respond to requests for comment.

China’s cyberspace watchdog, which polices material seen as harmful to Chinese internet users, said in December that it was targeting content “spreading wrong views on marriage.”

Some women who decided years ago against marriage and children consider themselves lucky.

Ouyang, the soft engineer in Canada, said, “I feel like I’ve completely dodged a bullet.”

Jonathan Cheng and Grace Zhu contributed to this article.

Write to Liyan Qi at Liyan.qi@wsj.com and Shen Lu at shen.lu@wsj.com

6. Israel is pulling thousands of troops from Gaza in a possible precursor to a scaled-back offensive

Again, I think this is Israel planning for long term, sustained military operations against the Hamas terrorists.

Israel is pulling thousands of troops from Gaza in a possible precursor to a scaled-back offensive

AP · January 1, 2024

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military confirmed Monday that it was pulling thousands of troops out of the Gaza Strip, a step that could clear the way for a new long-term phase of lower-intensity fighting against the Hamas militant group.

The confirmation of the planned troop drawdown came the same day that Israel’s Supreme Court struck down a key component of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious judicial overhaul plan. While the plan is not directly connected to the war effort, it was the source of deep divisions inside Israel and had threatened the military’s readiness before the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that triggered the ongoing war.

Politicians warned against reigniting those divisions and harming the national unity that has prevailed throughout the Israel-Hamas war.

Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with the military offensive until Hamas is crushed and the more than 100 hostages still held by the militant group in Gaza are freed.

But Israel has come under growing international pressure to scale back an offensive that has led to the deaths of nearly 22,000 Palestinians. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has repeatedly urged Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians, is expected in the region next week.

In its announcement, the army said that five brigades, or several thousand troops, would be taken out of Gaza in the coming weeks. Some will return to bases for further training or rest, while many older reservists will go home. The war has taken a toll on the economy by preventing reservists from going to their jobs, running their businesses or returning to university studies.

The army’s chief spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, did not say whether the withdrawal of some troops reflected a new phase of the war.

“The objectives of the war require prolonged fighting, and we are preparing accordingly,” he told reporters late Sunday.

But the move is in line with the plans that Israeli leaders have outlined for a low-intensity campaign, expected to last for much of the year, that focuses on remaining Hamas strongholds and “pockets of resistance.”

Israel has said it’s close to operational control over most of northern Gaza, reducing the need for forces there. Yet fierce fighting has continued in other areas of the Palestinian territory, especially the south, where many of Hamas’ forces remain intact and where most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled.

Israel has vowed to crush Hamas’ military and governing capabilities in the ongoing war, which was sparked by the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 others were taken hostage.

Israel responded with an air, ground and sea offensive that has killed more than 21,900 people in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count. The Israeli military says 173 soldiers have died since it launched its ground operation.

Israel also says, without providing evidence, that more than 8,000 militants have been killed. It blames Hamas for the high civilian death toll, saying the militants embed within residential areas, including schools and hospitals.

The war has displaced some 85% of Gaza’s population, forcing tens of thousands of people in overcrowded shelters or teeming tent camps in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless bombed. Palestinians are left with a sense that nowhere is safe.

With tensions high across the region, the United States announced Monday that it would send an aircraft carrier strike group home and replace it with an amphibious assault ship and accompanying warships.

BATTLES IN THE SOUTH

In Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza that Israel says is a key Hamas stronghold, residents reported airstrikes and shelling in the west and center of the city. Combat was also reported in urban refugee camps in central Gaza, where Israel expanded its offensive last week.

An Associated Press reporter saw at least 17 bodies, including those of four children, at a hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah after a missile struck a house.

“It’s our routine: bombings, massacres and martyrs,” said Saeed Moustafa, a Palestinian from the Nuseirat camp.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Monday that 156 people had been killed in the past day. The Israeli military said an airstrike killed Adel Mismah, a regional commander of Hamas’ elite Nukhba forces, in Deir al-Balah.

In Israel, Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the communities hit by Hamas on Oct. 7, announced Monday that Ilan Weiss, who was thought to have been kidnapped, is now believed to be dead. Weiss’ daughter, Noga Weiss, 18; and wife, Shiri Weiss, 53; were held in captivity in Gaza and released on Nov. 25 during a weeklong cease-fire.

A TEST FOR UNITY

The Israeli Supreme Court’s landmark decision to strike down part of Netanyahu’s planned judicial overhaul could reopen the fissures in Israeli society that preceded the war against Hamas.

The plan sparked months of mass protests and rattled the cohesion of Israel’s military. Those divisions were largely put aside after Oct. 7.

Benny Gantz, a rival of Netanyahu’s who joined the three-member War Cabinet, called on all sides to put aside their differences and focus on the war. “These are not days for political arguments. There are no winners and losers today,” he said.

In Monday’s decision, the court narrowly voted to overturn a law that prevents judges from striking down government decisions they deem “unreasonable.” The law passed in July was the first part of the government’s plan to curb the authority of unelected judges.

REGIONAL TENSIONS

The fighting in Gaza has threatened to spread across the region.

Israel has engaged in near-daily battles with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, to Israel’s north, and struck Iranian-linked targets in neighboring Syria as well.

Israel’s warplanes and drones struck several areas in southern Lebanon, including a strike on the village of Kfar Kila that killed three people, state media and security officials said. Hezbollah said the three were some of its fighters.

Since the latest exchange of fire began along the Lebanon-Israel border on Oct. 8, 133 Hezbollah fighters and around 20 civilians have been killed in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have fired long-range missiles at Israel and attacked civilian cargo ships in the Red Sea.

The United States has sent warships to the Mediterranean and Red Seas, providing protection for Israel and underscoring concerns that the fighting could widen.

On Monday, the U.S. Navy announced that after months of extra duty at sea, the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group would head home. The Ford will be replaced by the amphibious assault ship the USS Bataan and its accompanying warships.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo and Shurafa from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writers Melanie Lidman in Jerusalem and Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.

___

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

AP · January 1, 2024

7. India Is Chasing China’s Economy. But Something Is Holding It Back.

Excerpts:

The World Bank has applauded India’s commitment to infrastructure spending, which ramped up during the pandemic when the private sector needed rescuing. Since then, the government has doubled down, paying for bricks-and-mortar improvement to the rickety roads, ports and power supply that once discouraged business investment.

But the World Bank, whose mission is to nudge developing economies higher, says it is critical that those billions’ worth of government spending ignite a burst of corporate spending. Its economists speak of a “crowd-in effect,” which happens when, for instance, a new port next to a shiny new industrial park lures companies into building plants and hiring workers. Last year, the bank said it anticipated an imminent crowding-in, as it has forecast for almost three years running.

“To accelerate the growth of confidence, public investment is not enough,” Auguste Tano Kouamé, the World Bank’s country director for India, said at a news conference in April. “You need deeper reforms to make the private sector invest.”

A lack of confidence helps explain why the stock markets are setting records, even while foreign investors are backing away from buying into the Indian economy through start-ups and acquisitions.

The stock markets in Mumbai, India’s business capital, are worth nearly $4 trillion, up from $3 trillion a year ago, making them more valuable than Hong Kong’s. India’s small investors have been a big part of that, but trading stocks is quick and easy, compared with buying and selling companies. A recent annual average of $40 billion in foreign direct investment has shrunk to $13 billion in the past year.

One reason that businesses are watching and waiting to make investments is Mr. Modi’s powerful national government.

India Is Chasing China’s Economy. But Something Is Holding It Back.

By Alex Travelli

Reporting from New Delhi

Jan. 2, 2024

The New York Times · by Alex Travelli · January 2, 2024

Workers at a wholesale market in New Delhi.Credit...Rebecca Conway for The New York Times

Long-term investment in India by businesses is stagnant, and foreign money is falling, even as the government is driving growth with infrastructure spending.

Workers at a wholesale market in New Delhi.Credit...Rebecca Conway for The New York Times

Jan. 2, 2024

India’s economy is booming. Stock prices are through the roof, among the best performing in the world. The government’s investment in airports, bridges and roads, and clean-energy infrastructure is visible almost everywhere. India’s total output, or gross domestic product, is expected to increase 6 percent this year — faster than the United States or China.

But there’s a hitch: Investment by Indian companies is not keeping pace. The money that companies put into the future of their businesses, for things like new machines and factories, is stagnant. As a fraction of India’s economy, it is shrinking. And while money is flying into India’s stock markets, long-term investment from overseas has been declining.

Green and red lights are flashing at the same time. At some point soon, the government will need to reduce its extraordinary spending, which could weigh on the economy if private sector money doesn’t pick up.

No one expects India to stop growing, but a rise of 6 percent is not enough to meet India’s ambitions. Its population, now the world’s biggest, is growing. Its government has set a national goal of catching up to China and becoming a developed nation by 2047. That kind of leap will require sustained growth closer to 8 or 9 percent a year, most economists say.

Foreign direct investment in India

Note: Rolling 12-month total

Source: Reserve Bank of India

By The New York Times

The missing investment could also present a challenge for Narendra Modi, the prime minister since 2014, who has concentrated on making India an easier place for foreign and Indian companies to do business.

Mr. Modi is in campaign mode, facing elections in the spring and rallying the nation to cheer his successes. The sluggish investment is not something executives, bankers or foreign diplomats like to discuss, for fear of looking like naysayers. But investors are playing it safe while the economy is signaling both strengths and weaknesses.

One point of widespread agreement is that India should benefit from China’s slowdown, which has been fueled by an unfolding property crisis. China’s geopolitical tensions with the West present another opening for India, by motivating foreign companies to move production in China to other countries.

The site of a new metro station and flyover in the Indian capital, New Delhi. The government’s investment in airports, bridges and roads, and clean-energy infrastructure is visible almost everywhere.Credit...Rebecca Conway for The New York Times

But while money is flying into India’s stock markets, long-term investment from overseas has been declining.Credit...Rebecca Conway for The New York Times

Sriram Viswanathan, an Indian-born managing partner at Celesta, a Silicon Valley venture capital fund, describes investors “wanting to fill the vacuum that has been created in the supply chain.”

“That, I think, is the opportunity for India,” he said.

The World Bank has applauded India’s commitment to infrastructure spending, which ramped up during the pandemic when the private sector needed rescuing. Since then, the government has doubled down, paying for bricks-and-mortar improvement to the rickety roads, ports and power supply that once discouraged business investment.

But the World Bank, whose mission is to nudge developing economies higher, says it is critical that those billions’ worth of government spending ignite a burst of corporate spending. Its economists speak of a “crowd-in effect,” which happens when, for instance, a new port next to a shiny new industrial park lures companies into building plants and hiring workers. Last year, the bank said it anticipated an imminent crowding-in, as it has forecast for almost three years running.

“To accelerate the growth of confidence, public investment is not enough,” Auguste Tano Kouamé, the World Bank’s country director for India, said at a news conference in April. “You need deeper reforms to make the private sector invest.”

A lack of confidence helps explain why the stock markets are setting records, even while foreign investors are backing away from buying into the Indian economy through start-ups and acquisitions.

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, in Ahmedabad in November. One reason businesses are watching and waiting to make investments is Mr. Modi’s powerful national government.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

The stock markets in Mumbai, India’s business capital, are worth nearly $4 trillion, up from $3 trillion a year ago, making them more valuable than Hong Kong’s. India’s small investors have been a big part of that, but trading stocks is quick and easy, compared with buying and selling companies. A recent annual average of $40 billion in foreign direct investment has shrunk to $13 billion in the past year.

One reason that businesses are watching and waiting to make investments is Mr. Modi’s powerful national government.

On the one hand, business craves stability in political leadership, and India has rarely, if ever, had such a well-entrenched leader. He demolished the main opposition party in three big elections across the Hindi-speaking heartland in December and looks like a shoo-in for re-election this year. And Mr. Modi is vocally pro-business.

His government plays a markedly interventionist role in managing the economy, in a way that can make it dangerous for firms to place their stakes.

In August, the government announced sudden restrictions on the import of laptop computers, to spur production at home. That sent businesses that depend on them into a tailspin, and the measure was almost as suddenly withdrawn. Likewise in July, the government slapped online betting companies with a retroactive 28 percent tax, gutting a $1.5 billion industry overnight.

Workers in Dholera, an industrial park in the state of Gujarat, in August. The World Bank has applauded India’s commitment to infrastructure spending, which ramped up during the pandemic.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times

Businesses close to Mr. Modi and his political circle have done especially well. The most prominent examples are Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries and the Adani Group, conglomerates that reach into numerous areas of Indian life. Their combined market power has grown gigantic in recent years: The flagship stocks of each company are worth about six times more than they were when Mr. Modi became prime minister.

Some smaller companies have been the target of high-profile raids by tax-enforcement agencies.

“If you’re not the two A’s” — Adani or Ambani — it can be treacherous to navigate India’s regulatory byways, said Arvind Subramanian, an economist at Brown University who served under Mr. Modi’s government as chief economic adviser from 2014 to 2018. “Domestic investors feel a little bit vulnerable,” he added.

The past nine years of Modi government have improved many things in the business environment for all. Crucial systems work better, many types of corruption have been reined in and digitization of commerce has opened up new arenas for growth.

“What is really complex and interesting about this Modi phenomenon is that there’s a lot of hype and bluster and manipulation,” Mr. Subramanian said. “But it’s built on a core of achievement.”

Still, foreign officials charged with bringing billions of investment capital to India complain that much of the traditional pain of doing business in India lingers. The one most frequently cited is red tape. Too many officials get involved at every level of approval, and it remains painfully slow to obtain legal judgments, let alone to enforce them.

A consumer market in New Delhi. Foreign officials charged with bringing billions of investment capital to India complain that much of the traditional pain of doing business in India lingers.Credit...Rebecca Conway for The New York Times

The biggest wild card is whether India can grab a significant share of global business from China. Credit...Rebecca Conway for The New York Times

Another factor holding back longer-term investment is an underlying weakness in “the India growth story.” The most powerful source of demand, the kind that foreign investors and domestic businesses covet, is among the wealthiest consumers. In a population of 1.4 billion, about 20 million Indians are doing well enough to buy European consumer products, build luxury homes and beef up the top tier of the automotive sector.

Most of the rest of the population is struggling with inflation in food and fuel prices. Banks are extending credit to consumers of both kinds, but less so to businesses, which fear that the great majority of their customers will be tightening their belts for years to come.

“For the moment, there is no evidence that investors are feeling reassured about India,” Mr. Subramanian said.

But he remains hopeful. The annual growth, even if less than 6 percent, is nothing to sniff at. The new and improved infrastructure should attract more private investment eventually. And the benefits of consumer wealth, unevenly distributed as they are, could over time raise up more incomes.

The biggest wild card is whether India can grab a significant share of global business from China. The highest-profile example is Apple, the $3 trillion megacompany, which is slowly moving some of its supply chain away from China. Its pricey iPhone has barely 5 percent of the Indian market. But currently about 7 percent of the world’s iPhones are made in India — and JPMorgan Chase has estimated that Apple intends to get that to 25 percent by 2025. At that point, all kinds of things become possible for India.

“We should keep our minds open,” Mr. Subramanian said.

Businesses close to Mr. Modi and his political circle have done especially well. Some smaller companies have been the target of high-profile raids by tax-enforcement agencies.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Alex Travelli is a correspondent for The Times based in New Delhi, covering business and economic matters in India and the rest of South Asia. He previously worked as an editor and correspondent for The Economist. More about Alex Travelli

The New York Times · by Alex Travelli · January 2, 2024

8. The Problem With De-Risking

Excerpts:

The West faces a conundrum: it cannot decarbonize without China. To achieve its climate aims, the West needs to buy goods from a country that it views as a key strategic competitor. At the same time, if Western taxpayer money is spent with nothing to show for it, or if Western government money merely ends up in the coffers of Chinese companies, there will be a voter backlash. There are already ominous signs that Western consumers may be unwilling to bear the costs of incentivizing a shift toward clean energy: earlier this year, the United Kingdom watered down its climate targets to pander to voters uninterested in bearing the costs of the climate transition. In Germany, too, there is opposition and the right-wing party Alternative for Germany has criticized green government policies as “eco-dictatorship.”

To create hundreds of thousands of new green jobs, Western governments will need to make viable investments in clean energy manufacturing that are supported by the market and customers. That is the only way to really build up popular backing for climate action. Starting a clean energy trade war, which would likely provoke China into taking retaliatory action, or overpromising on industrial policies is not the solution. The West should keep in mind this tricky balancing act when designing a strategy for China.

The Problem With De-Risking

Transitioning to Clean Energy Requires Trade With China

By Henry Sanderson

January 2, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Henry Sanderson · January 2, 2024

During the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, former U.S. President Donald Trump called for a complete “decoupling” from China. Similar proposals came from Europe and Japan, where there was also a growing desire to re-shore supply chains, to end reliance on China for medical equipment such as masks and personal protective equipment. Western leaders no longer speak in these terms. Now they have agreed, instead, to “de-risk” global supply chains linked to China. This means maintaining trading ties and being open to cooperation with Beijing in multiple areas such as climate change while also giving government support and protection to essential homegrown industries. One of those critical industries, it has become clear, is clean energy technologies, an area that China dominates.

But when it comes to clean energy, the difficulty of successfully de-risking with respect to China has not been adequately understood by Western leaders or communicated to the public. Ever-larger subsidies and financial support has been offered to companies to stimulate domestic manufacturing. Although the aim of accelerating clean energy manufacturing is welcome, the strategy is not sustainable. The West needs a more refined approach, and the answer cannot be subsidies alone. If Western governments begin an all-out subsidy war against each other, that will only shift investment to the highest bidder. Nor would subsidies achieve their purpose. Attempting to compete with China on cost in every sector would likely waste taxpayer money, delay the energy transition, and lead to greater damage from climate change, with minimal geopolitical gain. Instead, Western governments should think carefully about how to compete with Beijing for the long haul.

To do so, the West should clarify which sectors it must absolutely support at a loss in order to reduce its reliance on China for national security reasons. These sectors include rare earths, for example, which have military uses. For other sectors, careful thought will be required to determine how to compete with China on costs. The answer cannot simply be subsidizing the cost difference with taxpayer money or banning Chinese imports; those actions will just increase the cost of clean energy. Tariffs on Chinese solar panel imports, for example, have helped support domestic suppliers, by restricting price competition, but have also increased the price of solar installations in the United States. To compete with China, low-cost, scalable, and sustainable innovations are required in mining, processing, and manufacturing, and these must be supported by customers rather than just subsidies.

When it comes to clean energy industries, the West lags far behind China. China is at the forefront not just in production and deployment of clean energy technologies but also now in innovation. If that situation continues, the world will be reliant on China for not only current technologies but future ones, too—and the West will lose out in one of this century’s largest economic opportunities. The West is right to focus on de-risking its supply chains with China. But a subsidy war between countries and direct competition with China, especially in terms of cost, in every area, are not contests that the West can win. It must, instead, focus on priority areas in which it relies excessively on China or sectors in which it can realistically compete. Finally, the West must push customers and the market to support Western supply chains rather than relying on government subsidies alone to support homegrown producers.

WHEN THE WEST LOST ITS CHANCE

It did not have to be this way. The West invented all the key clean energy technologies: the silicon solar cell was produced at Bell Labs in the United States in 1954; the lithium-ion battery was pioneered at ExxonMobil and the University of Oxford in the 1970s and 1980s; the wind turbine industry was developed in Denmark; and General Motors helped invent the rare-earth permanent magnet, which is used in electric motors, in the 1980s. But the West never truly capitalized on these inventions, squandering its early lead.

This was not because of a lack of popular interest in these technologies. In fact, as oil prices soared in the 1970s, there was strong support for clean energy among governments and the public. But that support dried up when oil prices fell in the 1980s. The oil companies, the major investors in solar power, exited the sector and began to spread disinformation about climate change. Exxon got rid of its battery efforts in the early 1980s, and GM’s rare-earth permanent magnet business was sold to China in 1995. Production of the magnets in the United States ended soon after.

Not only did the West squander its lead in clean energy technologies but it also helped China—then a poor developing country—get started in that sector. In the 1980s, a Danish government grant supported the building of wind turbines in Xinjiang. In the early 2000s, German companies went to Chinese solar plants to teach them how to produce solar cells and modules. China, having taken advantage of Western knowledge, then began to innovate just as the West began to lose enthusiasm for climate action. The Obama administration’s 2009 Recovery Act earmarked more than $90 billion for clean energy initiatives, out of a total of around $800 billion. But Congress frustrated the administration’s attempts to pass climate legislation, and many of the era’s startups went bankrupt and were bought by Chinese companies. The United States’ opportunity was lost.

De-risking with China is not adequately understood by Western leaders.

In contrast, Beijing proactively stimulated its domestic market. The government heavily subsidized electric vehicles and domestic solar installations. The result is China’s current position as a leader in the manufacture and deployment of both technologies. But that feat is not solely a result of subsidies. In many cases, the Chinese scaled up and manufactured better products than Western companies. Some Chinese firms have been pioneers: the manufacturing company BYD launched its first plug-in hybrid electric vehicle in 2008, at a time when most global automakers believed electric vehicles to be a costly fantasy.

Recent Western tariffs and import restrictions have done little to dent Beijing’s dominance in clean energy manufacturing. China is simply too far ahead now and its advantage in critical minerals and solar power is too great to make meaningful decoupling possible in this decade. China produces almost 70 percent of the world’s graphite for batteries, processes over 90 percent of the manganese for batteries, produces most of the world’s polysilicon for solar cells, and manufactures almost 90 percent of the world’s permanent rare-earth magnets. The main material used in an electric vehicle battery by volume is graphite—and over 90 percent of the type used in batteries is made in China.

China believes that its dominance enables it to overpower Western competition, and the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, has already acted to take advantage of this situation. This year, he announced tighter export restrictions on certain minerals needed for clean energy industries, including gallium, germanium, and graphite. Beijing has also increased rare-earth production quotas, despite declining prices. China has built up significant capacity and investment in clean energy supply chains—enough to provide the whole world with batteries and solar panels for a decade. That excess capacity will put further pressure on prices, making it even harder for Western companies to compete. It will also increase the pressure on Chinese companies to invest overseas and seek new markets, encouraging them to find loopholes in Western policies designed to keep them out.

LESS MONEY, MORE SUCCESS

There is a fundamental tension in the clean energy economy between what is good for the planet and what is good for business. Lower prices for batteries, solar module panels, and wind turbines help drive down the costs of clean energy. But they reduce margins for producers, making it impossible for many such companies in the West to succeed. Europe’s solar industry, in particular, is being overwhelmed by a flood of solar modules from China. The industry’s main lobbying group recently appealed to the European Commission for help, citing “a deeply precarious situation for European solar PV [photovoltaic] manufacturers.” The Obama administration faced a similar situation in the 2010s, when Chinese solar panels overwhelmed global markets. As former U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said, even a subsidized plant will not be profitable if the supply is not needed by the market. “A finished solar factory, due to overinvestment, it’s not going to be used,” he said in 2020.

Even with subsidies, a Western company will struggle to compete. For example, if China produces 90 percent of a processed mineral needed for electric vehicles and has a 10-to-15-year head start, then entering that market as a Western startup will be difficult. A Western company would need to raise funds for upfront costs at a time of higher interest rates. And in any case, it would likely take two to three years for a customer such as a major automaker to test and qualify any new material as safe and of sufficient quality to be used in mass production. Adding in the time necessary to get permits, it is unlikely that this company could meet U.S. and European demand until the latter half of the decade. By that time, Chinese production may have moved further down the cost curve.

Automakers, then, must choose whether to spend money buying cheaper materials from China to produce lower-cost electric vehicles now, helping the world reduce emissions, or bet on new Western plants with unproven results. At the moment, cost is winning out. As a result, companies are incentivized to hide their Chinese involvement so they can get the materials. Instead of greenwashing, the practice of marketing oneself as more green than one actually is, companies will engage in “China-washing.” They will carefully arrange their equity ownership shares or shift their investments to certain eligible countries to comply with U.S. and European subsidies, but without reducing their dependence on Chinese products.

MAKING UP FOR LOST TIME

In the battle over clean energy technologies, the West has a few advantages. Countries such as Canada, Norway and Sweden rely on electricity from hydropower that can lower the cost as well as the carbon footprint of producing clean energy technologies and processing critical minerals. Although Chinese companies are increasingly relocating to provinces with hydropower resources, it will take many years to change their large, incumbent industry. Western companies also have the advantage that, when planning a new plant, they do not need to copy the technology that China uses, which can be damaging to the environment. Battery production and processing of battery materials in China is often energy-intensive and in the case of critical minerals such as graphite, uses environmentally harmful chemicals including hydrofluoric acid. In the West, minerals can be processed without acids, and batteries produced without certain energy-intensive processes. This makes Western manufacturing more environmentally sustainable and, potentially, cost efficient. If the West can scale up technologies where innovation results in a reduction in the cost of producing an existing technology, then that would give its companies a strong competitive edge. It could also reduce the environmental cost of producing clean energy.

Still, innovations that are insufficiently cost competitive will not succeed. Consumers will not pay a high premium just to support a homegrown producer, and they should not be expected to. But Western governments can use industrial policy to enable their markets to pay slightly more for a more sustainable supply chain. This should also help lower the cost of capital for its clean energy companies. The European Union has adopted this approach by mandating sustainability and recycling criteria for batteries imported or produced in Europe. The market must then move toward introducing a green premium, whereby buyers pay slightly more for a greener product. Of course, China can do the same and also improve the sustainability of its supply chain, but this will take time, and many Chinese customers may be unwilling to pay a premium for a lower-carbon product. Western automotive companies, by contrast, are already starting to advertise the environmental footprint of their vehicles and their use of responsibly sourced minerals.

The West faces a conundrum: it cannot decarbonize without China. To achieve its climate aims, the West needs to buy goods from a country that it views as a key strategic competitor. At the same time, if Western taxpayer money is spent with nothing to show for it, or if Western government money merely ends up in the coffers of Chinese companies, there will be a voter backlash. There are already ominous signs that Western consumers may be unwilling to bear the costs of incentivizing a shift toward clean energy: earlier this year, the United Kingdom watered down its climate targets to pander to voters uninterested in bearing the costs of the climate transition. In Germany, too, there is opposition and the right-wing party Alternative for Germany has criticized green government policies as “eco-dictatorship.”

To create hundreds of thousands of new green jobs, Western governments will need to make viable investments in clean energy manufacturing that are supported by the market and customers. That is the only way to really build up popular backing for climate action. Starting a clean energy trade war, which would likely provoke China into taking retaliatory action, or overpromising on industrial policies is not the solution. The West should keep in mind this tricky balancing act when designing a strategy for China.

HENRY SANDERSON is Executive Editor at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and the author of Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green.

Foreign Affairs · by Henry Sanderson · January 2, 2024

9. Russia’s War on Woke

Putin's political warfare and subversion of the west.

Excerpts:

Le Pen is hardly the only conservative Western politician who developed a loose alliance with the Kremlin. The surging far-right party Alternative for Germany has also been warmly received by the Kremlin, and many of that party’s senior officials have spoken fondly of Moscow. One regional leader, for instance, described Putin as an “authentic guy, a real man with a healthy framework of values.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who likes to rail against “woke” policies and the LGBTQ community, has become a committed Putin partner. Orban even blocked European Union aid to Kyiv, aiding Moscow’s war efforts.

But none of these parties or politicians is as valuable to Putin as former U.S. President Donald Trump. As a candidate and as president, Trump repeatedly complemented Putin, and should Trump win power again in 2024, he has suggested he might stop aiding Ukraine. Trump himself has never cited Putin’s policies as the reason he likes Russia’s president—instead, he has pointed to Putin’s supposed strength—but Trump’s advisers have. Steve Bannon, Trump’s onetime chief strategist, praised Russia’s president for being “anti-woke.” Carlson, perhaps Trump’s foremost media booster, delivered a speech in Budapest in which he said that U.S. elites hate Russia “because it is a Christian country.”

For Putin, then, far-right policies and rhetoric are an effective means of building international support. He is, in essence, forming a kind of Far-Right International, similar to the Communist International, which promoted the Soviet revolution in the first half of the twentieth century. As with the Soviet Union, which never practiced communism’s philosophical tenets, it does not matter that Putin and his entourage violate their espoused principles. What matters is that those principles help him gain friends and undermine the liberal order.

Even if Putin’s vision does not come to full fruition, a “far-right international” would help strengthen his hand. He hopes that it might prompt Western states to weaken sanctions, for example, or to cut back on support for Kyiv. The result might be a more durable Kremlin regime. And for Putin, that in itself would be a win.

Remember this excerpt from the 2017 National Security Strategy. signed by former President Trump:

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

Access NSS HERE

Russia’s War on Woke

Putin Is Trying to Unite the Far Right and Undermine the West

By Mikhail Zygar

January 2, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Mikhail Zygar · January 2, 2024

In March of this year, Russia will hold presidential elections. The contest, like ones past, will be highly choreographed, and its outcome is preordained. President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia for more than 23 years, will dominate the race from the beginning. Every media outlet in Russia will promote his candidacy and praise his performance. His nominal opponents will, in fact, be government loyalists lined up to make the contest appear competitive. When all the ballots are counted, he will easily win.

Yet even though the election will be a farce, it is worth watching. That is because it is an opportunity for Putin to signal his plans for the next six years and, relatedly, to test different messaging strategies. Analysts can therefore expect him to do two main things. One is to play up Russia’s struggle against the West. But the other is something that Westerners will find familiar from domestic politics: decrying socially liberal, or “woke,” policies. Putin will, for example, talk a lot about family values, arguing that Russians should have traditional two-parent households with lots of children. He will denounce the so-called “LGBT movement” as a foreign campaign to undermine Russian life. And he will rail against abortions, even though most Russians support the right to have them.

The parallels with the American right are not coincidental. Putin and his advisers have adopted the views and rhetoric of conservative American firebrands, such as anchors on the Fox News channel. The Kremlin has done so because, by embracing the culture wars, it believes it can win over support from populist politicians in Washington and elsewhere. In fact, Russia has already won international right-wing fans. Conservative leaders across the United States and Europe, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, have praised Putin. Some of them have suggested they are happy to compromise over Ukraine’s future.

Putin’s far-right rhetoric and policies are thus a form of statecraft. By championing such causes, the president appears to believe he can undermine Western societies from within. He likely thinks he can thereby tear down the rules-based international order. And he probably hopes he can replace it with a new, conservative global system with the Kremlin at its center.

THE POWER OF HATE

When Putin first came to power, he was not a culture warrior. In fact, until 2012, the Kremlin was driven by a moderate agenda. Under his first deputy chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov, Putin focused on economic development. Although Surkov was an apologist for Putin’s authoritarian system, he did not despise queer people, immigrants, or women. Instead, he believed that the best base of support for Putin would be cosmopolitan middle-class voters, who tend to be relatively socially liberal.

But Surkov’s theory was incorrect. Russia’s middle class may have supported Putin at first, but as his rule dragged on and became increasingly autocratic, this demographic became critical of the president. During his run for a third presidential term in 2012, hundreds of thousands of middle-class Russians even took to the streets in protest.

Putin won nonetheless. But the demonstrations were a turning point in how he thought about power. He felt betrayed, so he sidelined Surkov. His new chief political strategist, Vyacheslav Volodin, was a conservative ideologue who prompted Putin to focus on enlisting the support of Russia’s poor and its working class, who were considered more religious and conservative. As a result, Putin’s rhetoric and policies began to shift away from the economy and the middle class and toward cultural issues, playing up so-called traditional values and skewering a supposedly decadent West.

One of the first symbols of this reversal was a 2013 law, passed and signed at Volodin’s suggestion, that banned LGBTQ “propaganda." In effect, the bill made it illegal for the media to describe non-traditional relationships in a positive fashion, and it banned gay characters from appearing in movies or television shows that might be viewed by anyone under 18. The law was not the only way Putin’s new regime worked to stigmatize the queer community. Kremlin-controlled media outlets also began branding LGBTQ people as both dangerous to society and inherently sinful. In August 2013, for example, Dmitry Kiselyov, the host of Russian state television’s evening news show, demanded that the government ban heart transplants from gay men killed in accidents. Instead, he said, their hearts should be burned.

Putin and his advisers have adopted the views and rhetoric of conservative American firebrands.

At the time, such vitriol was still unusual in Russia, so Kiselyov’s statements created a scandal. But Putin seemed happy. In December 2013, he created a new state-owned news agency and named Kiselyov its head. Kiselyov’s promotion helped symbolize the changing nature of Russia’s media outlets. Before Putin’s third term, state television was dull and sedate. In 2012, however, state broadcasters began behaving as if they were on Fox News, the right-wing U.S. television channel known for drumming up outrage. According to a senior former official in Russian state television, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern about his safety, journalists were told to watch and mimic what they saw on the channel. Kiselyov, for his part, started acting like the Fox News star Bill O’Reilly, who was famous for his angry diatribes. That O’Reilly was no fan of Putin—he once called Russia’s president "the devil"—was of no concern to Russian anchors. What mattered, as the former official told me, was that O’Reilly had "the flames of hatred bursting from his eyes": his news programs were exciting, with fury, fights and shouting. Now, so were Kiselyov’s.

The state broadcaster wasn’t the only Russian outlet to borrow from Fox News. At the end of 2013, Jack Hanick, a long-time Fox News producer, came to Russia to help the businessman Konstantin Malofeev launch Tsargrad TV, a private far-right channel with ties to the Russian Orthodox Church. In the spring of 2014, Malofeev funded Igor Girkin, then a Russian military commander, as Girkin helped lead Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine.

Ironically, and much like many conservative politicians in the United States, Russia’s leaders are hardly paragons of right-wing principles. Putin, for instance, divorced his wife in 2014. Putin has not remarried, but he appears to have been involved with Alina Kabaeva, the former Olympic rhythmic gymnastics champion, since at least 2008. They are widely thought to have children together.

Many of Putin's cronies are also divorced. Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin divorced his first wife in 2011 and his second in 2017. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin divorced in 2014. Arkady Rotenberg, Putin's close friend and a major Russian businessman, divorced in 2013. If these were Soviet times, the separations would have damaged these men’s careers; the Soviet Communist Party was ardently against divorce. But today, separations do not matter at all. Russia has, for many years, been among the world champions in divorce. Its current rate—3.9 divorces per 1,000 inhabitants—is one of the highest in the world, well above the global average of 1.8. (The rate in the United States is 2.5.)

FEAR AND LOATHING

Putin’s culture war has not stopped at Russia’s borders. Beginning in the 2010s, for example, Russian politicians and propagandists began to bemoan the influx of migrants and refugees into Europe, declaring that the continent had lost its identity, culture, and spirituality to people from Africa and the Middle East. “Many Euro-Atlantic countries have actually gone down the path of abandoning their roots, including Christian values that form the basis of Western civilization,” Putin declared in a 2013 speech. Europeans, he said, have been “unable to ensure the integration of foreign languages and foreign cultural elements into their societies.”

Moscow has also waded into U.S. politics. When the Black Lives Matter movement took off in 2020, the Kremlin said the cause was a catastrophe for the United States. "American elites themselves undermine the statehood of their country,” Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s security council, said in an article. "They use street movements in their own interests. They flirt with marginalized people who rob stores under noble slogans." Patrushev even suggested that there were places in the United States "where whites are forbidden to enter, and local gangs will take over the police functions.” Such remarks could easily have been written by the right-wing media personality and former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson.

Moscow’s anti-woke diatribes have, of course, come to feature Ukraine. In a 2022 speech celebrating Russia’s illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions, Putin avowed that his country was fighting to protect “our children and our grandchildren” from “sexual deviation” and “satanism.” In this view, Kyiv is now a vehicle for the West, spreading its corrupt liberal values into Russia’s rightful sphere of influence, and Moscow’s aggression is actually a defense of tradition. It is a way to make sure that every Russian child would have a “mom and dad,” not "parent number one, parent number two, and parent number three,” as Putin put it in September 2022.

In the Kremlin’s view, trans people—the supposed “parent number one, parent number two, and parent number three”—are especially threatening. As a result, they are now the target of extremely repressive legislation. In July, Russia passed a hastily drafted bill that banned hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery. It also prohibited people from changing their gender identification on passports, annulled any marriage in which one person has changed gender, and deprived transgender adults of the right to adopt children.

At a Russian Supreme Court hearing on whether to designate the “LGBT movement” as extremist, Moscow, November 2023

Maxim Shemetov / Reuters

Gay cisgender Russians have not been quite so marginalized. But they have faced heavy repression, as well. In November, the Russian Ministry of Justice pronounced the "international LGBT social movement" to be an "extremist organization" and banned it. This law might seem to be of little consequence, given that there is no such formal movement. But in practice, the move has criminalized any show of support for gay rights and the very act of being gay in public. Today, any outward display of queer behavior in Russia can lead to a prison sentence of at least five years.

Moscow’s new right-wing measures are not just targeted at LGBTQ Russians. The Kremlin has also launched attacks on women, in part by promoting restrictions on abortion. At a recent public event, both Putin and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, criticized abortion, arguing that the country needed more native-born Russians to prevent the country from being overrun by migrants. At the end of the event, both leaders listened as a mother of ten made an orchestrated call to ban the procedure.

So far, no one has drafted a bill outlawing abortion, and the speaker of the Russian Senate, Valentina Matvienko, has promised that the country will not totally ban the right to choose. But regional governments have started prohibiting private clinics from offering abortions. Such restrictions on private clinics might expand in the years ahead.

FAR-RIGHT INTERNATIONAL

Putin’s right-wing policies may play well at home, helping to justify his continued rule and the invasion of Ukraine. But domestic politics alone cannot explain his war on woke—and not just because it includes attacks on European immigration and the racial justice movement in the United States. Contrary to what Putin suggests, Russia is not a fundamentally conservative society. According to surveys by the Levada Center, for example, only one percent of Russians attend church weekly, and more than 65 percent of Russians say that religion does not play a significant role in their lives. According to other Levada surveys, roughly 65 percent of Russians support the right to abortion. Transgender people, meanwhile, make up only a tiny fraction of the country’s populace. Before Putin launched his attacks, they attracted almost no public attention.

Instead, Putin’s rants appear to be aimed less at a domestic audience and more at right-wingers abroad. They seem to be targeted at Europe and North America in particular, the two places where Moscow has lost the most support over Putin’s last decade in power. In both regions, mainstream leaders who have isolated Moscow are struggling to fight off insurgent right-wing politicians who support ostensibly Christian values. Increasingly, these populist conservatives are winning. And by embracing their rhetoric, Putin believes he can gain their support and, with it, find a way to improve Russia’s international position.

It is easy to see why the Kremlin believes such an approach is necessary—and why it will succeed. After Russia occupied Crimea in 2014, the West slapped sanctions on the country, and Putin found it harder (although not impossible) to do business with his usual partners in Europe. But the continent’s far right remained receptive. The French right-wing leader Marine le Pen, for example, praised the annexation. She has also asserted that Putin is “looking after the interests of his own country and defending its identity.” Russian banks, perhaps not coincidentally, have provided loans to her party. It has proved to be a smart investment: In 2017 and 2022, Le Pen was the runner-up in France’s presidential elections.

Putin’s rants appear to be aimed less at a domestic audience and more at right-wingers abroad.

Le Pen is hardly the only conservative Western politician who developed a loose alliance with the Kremlin. The surging far-right party Alternative for Germany has also been warmly received by the Kremlin, and many of that party’s senior officials have spoken fondly of Moscow. One regional leader, for instance, described Putin as an “authentic guy, a real man with a healthy framework of values.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who likes to rail against “woke” policies and the LGBTQ community, has become a committed Putin partner. Orban even blocked European Union aid to Kyiv, aiding Moscow’s war efforts.

But none of these parties or politicians is as valuable to Putin as former U.S. President Donald Trump. As a candidate and as president, Trump repeatedly complemented Putin, and should Trump win power again in 2024, he has suggested he might stop aiding Ukraine. Trump himself has never cited Putin’s policies as the reason he likes Russia’s president—instead, he has pointed to Putin’s supposed strength—but Trump’s advisers have. Steve Bannon, Trump’s onetime chief strategist, praised Russia’s president for being “anti-woke.” Carlson, perhaps Trump’s foremost media booster, delivered a speech in Budapest in which he said that U.S. elites hate Russia “because it is a Christian country.”

For Putin, then, far-right policies and rhetoric are an effective means of building international support. He is, in essence, forming a kind of Far-Right International, similar to the Communist International, which promoted the Soviet revolution in the first half of the twentieth century. As with the Soviet Union, which never practiced communism’s philosophical tenets, it does not matter that Putin and his entourage violate their espoused principles. What matters is that those principles help him gain friends and undermine the liberal order.

Even if Putin’s vision does not come to full fruition, a “far-right international” would help strengthen his hand. He hopes that it might prompt Western states to weaken sanctions, for example, or to cut back on support for Kyiv. The result might be a more durable Kremlin regime. And for Putin, that in itself would be a win.

MIKHAIL ZYGAR is a columnist at Der Spiegel, founding Editor in Chief of the independent Russian television channel TV Rain, and the author of War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine.

Foreign Affairs · by Mikhail Zygar · January 2, 2024

10. The West must abandon weakness and commit to Ukraine’s victory

This always seems to be the case: you can pay me now or pay me later and the cost is usually much higher later.

Excerpts;

At the Munich Security Conference in 2007, then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin committed to withdrawing Russian peacekeepers from Georgia, deployed since the Georgian Civil War in the 1990s, on “an accelerated schedule.”

Instead of following through with that commitment, the Russian army invaded Georgia the following year. The West could’ve imposed devastating consequences on Moscow for its aggression. Rather than punishing the Kremlin, however, Russia was appeased.

To be clear: The costs of stopping Russian aggression at this moment in time would’ve been marginal compared to the bill that countries like Ukraine and the West have paid ever since.

The West must abandon weakness and commit to Ukraine’s victory

BY GEORGE MONASTIRIAKOS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 01/01/24 10:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4380519-the-west-must-abandon-weakness-and-commit-to-ukraines-victory/

The West is strong, not weak. It has disguised its strength behind acts of weakness and portrayed its prosperity as poverty. These lies have only ever served as excuses to abandon the West’s values, interests and partners.

It’s time to reverse course, abandon weakness and commit to Ukraine’s victory.

Warmongering dictators are among the most dangerous leaders on Earth. Both for the citizens they govern and the people residing in neighboring states. Not far behind them are the weak leaders who appease them.

Compromise is interpreted by warmongering dictators not as restraint, but as weakness. To them, every transaction is a zero-sum game. They are emboldened not despite the concessions we make to them, but because of those concessions.

Bad behavior must be punished, not rewarded. Even a child knows that rewarding someone who engages in wrongdoing only reinforces the misconduct. The same applies to bad faith actors in international politics.

At the Munich Security Conference in 2007, then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin committed to withdrawing Russian peacekeepers from Georgia, deployed since the Georgian Civil War in the 1990s, on “an accelerated schedule.”

Instead of following through with that commitment, the Russian army invaded Georgia the following year. The West could’ve imposed devastating consequences on Moscow for its aggression. Rather than punishing the Kremlin, however, Russia was appeased.

To be clear: The costs of stopping Russian aggression at this moment in time would’ve been marginal compared to the bill that countries like Ukraine and the West have paid ever since.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy brokered a ceasefire that Moscow never respected instead. Soon after, Obama called for a “reset” in relations with Russia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel rewarded Putin with Nord Stream 1. Russia hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics. The list goes on and on.

Emboldened by the West’s feebleness, Putin doubled down on his aggressive foreign policy. To kill Ukraine’s dream of a free and prosperous Euro-Atlantic future, Russia invaded Donbas and annexed Ukrainian Crimea in 2014 — immediately after hosting the Olympics in Sochi.

Putin gambled. U.S. President Barack Obama slapped Russia on the wrist. Western sanctions imposed on Moscow were limited in scope and scale. The Europeans rewarded Putin with Nord Stream 2. Russia hosted the World Cup in 2018. Business continued as usual, like Putin predicted.

The West’s weakness wasn’t only exploited in the European theatre, but also in the Middle East. In 2012, Obama warned that America would intervene militarily if Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons in the Syrian Civil War.

When the dictator of Damascus crossed Obama’s infamous “red line,” the U.S. didn’t follow through on its warning. Instead, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron convinced French President Francois Hollande that the correct approach was to make a deal with Assad.

Russia brokered the agreement. Syria pledged to destroy “all” of its chemical weapons. That didn’t happen. Assad’s chemical weapons attacks continued, at least until 2018. After all, to Putin and his community of like-minded dictators, “deals” are just words scribbled on a piece of paper.

Emboldened by the West’s inaction after the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Russia intervened in Syria the following year. Putin helped the Assad regime and Iranian terror proxies like Hezbollah kill up to half a million people, survive the Syrian Civil War and turn Syria into a narco-state.

Years later, Western fragility was on display once again in Afghanistan. The U.S. withdrew from Kabul despite sacrificing 2,352 soldiers, investing more than $2 trillion in the war effort and spending two decades building a state that collapsed against the Taliban in 10 days.

Perceiving the West as weak once more, Putin launched his second invasion of Ukraine less than six months later. Russia intended to capture Kyiv within a few weeks. To say that the war isn’t going well for Moscow is an understatement.

Ukraine has since destroyed roughly 2,200 Russian tanks. U.S. intelligence estimates the Russian Army has sustained at least 350,000 casualties. Russia has lost more than 220 vehicles and nearly 13,000 soldiers at the Battle of Avdiivka since October alone.

Putin’s gamble failed. He overestimated what the Russian Army was capable of accomplishing. He underestimated Ukrainian bravery. Putin also misread President Joe Biden who, despite his faults, is not Bush or Obama.

A conflict of great power magnitude has returned to the European continent for the first time since World War II. Yet what happens in Europe doesn’t stay in Europe. By failing to extinguish the fire, what began as an ember has since turned into a firestorm that risks setting the rest of the world ablaze.

The parallels between the prelude to World War II and today’s international security environment are alarming. The West could nonetheless reduce the likelihood of a world war without sacrificing a single soldier. It all starts by abandoning weakness and committing to Ukraine’s victory instead of just ensuring its survival.

George Monastiriakos is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Ottawa. Read his work at monastiriakos.com. Follow him on Twitter @monastiriakos.

11. More Americans Think Foreign Policy Should Be a Top U.S. Priority for 2024

But foreign policy is rarely a significant election issue.

More Americans Think Foreign Policy Should Be a Top U.S. Priority for 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/01/02/more_americans_think_foreign_policy_should_be_a_top_us_priority_for_2024_1002180.html?mc_cid=4966f54328&mc_eid=70bf478f36

By Will Weissert & Linley Sanders

WASHINGTON (AP) — In this time of war overseas, more Americans think foreign policy should be a top focus for the U.S. government in 2024, with a new poll showing international concerns and immigration rising in importance with the public.

About 4 in 10 U.S. adults named foreign policy topics in an open-ended question that asked people to share up to five issues for the government to work on in the next year, according to a December poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

That’s about twice as many who mentioned the topic in the AP-NORC poll conducted last year.

Long-standing economic worries still overshadow other issues. But the new poll’s findings point to increased concern about U.S. involvement overseas — 20% voiced that sentiment in the poll, versus 5% a year ago.

It also shows that the Israeli-Hamas war is feeding public anxiety. The conflict was mentioned by 5%, while almost no one cited it a year ago. The issue has dominated geopolitics since Israel declared war on Hamas in Gaza after that group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israeli soil.

Four percent of U.S. adults mentioned the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as something for their government to focus on this year. That’s similar to the 6% who mentioned it at the end of 2022.

Foreign policy has gained importance among respondents from both parties. Some 46% of Republicans named it, up from 23% last year. And 34% of Democrats list foreign policy as a focal point, compared with 16% a year ago.

Warren E. Capito, a Republican from Gordonsville, Virginia, worries China could soon invade Taiwan, creating a third major potential source of global conflict for the U.S. “They would love to have us split three ways,” he said of China, and “we’re already spread so thin.”

Immigration is also a rising bipartisan concern.

Overall, the poll found that concerns about immigration climbed to 35% from 27% last year. Most Republicans, 55%, say the government needs to focus on immigration in 2024, while 22% of Democrats listed immigration as a priority. That’s up from 45% and 14%, respectively, compared with December 2022.

Janet Brewer has lived all her life in San Diego, across from Tijuana, Mexico, and said the situation on the border has deteriorated in recent years.

“It’s a disaster,” said Brewer, 69, who works part time after running a secretarial and legal and medical transcription small business. “It’s crazy.”

The politics of foreign military aid and immigration policy are entangled, with President Joe Biden ‘s administration promoting a $110 billion package that includes aid for Ukraine and Israel that remains stalled in Congress while Republicans push for a deal allowing major changes in immigration policy and stricter enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Brewer said she wouldn’t vote for Biden or a Republican for president in 2024, and may opt for independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But she also questions whether a change in the White House would necessarily improve immigration policy.

As for foreign aid, she said: “I know that we need to help. But come on. We’ve done enough.”

Even as immigration and foreign policy rose as concerns, those issues were no match for worries about the economy. Inflation has fallen, unemployment is low and the U.S. has repeatedly defied predictions of a recession — yet this poll adds to a string of them showing a gloomy outlook on the economy.

Some 76% of U.S. adults said this time that they want the government to work on issues related to the economy in 2024, nearly the same as the 75% who said so at this point in 2022.

About 85% of Republicans and 65% of Democrats name the economy as a top issue. But Republicans are more likely than Democrats to want the government to address some specific economic issues: on inflation 41% vs. 22% and on government spending or debt, 22% vs. 7%.

Meanwhile, 3 in 10 U.S. adults listed inflation as an issue that the government should focus on, unchanged from 2022.

The economy is a top issue mentioned by 18- to 29-year-olds (84%), followed by inflation specifically (39%), personal finances issues (38%) and foreign policy (34%). In the same age bracket, 32% mentioned education or school loans as something for the government to address in 2024. That’s despite the Biden administration trying new, more modest efforts to cancel debts after the Supreme Court struck down its larger original push.

Among those 30 and older, only 19% mention student loans. But Travis Brown, a 32-year-old forklift operator in Las Vegas, noted that he’s back to getting calls seeking payment of his student loans.

“Right now, with the economy, wages are not matching,” Brown said. “Blue collar’s going away and I don’t see how that’s going to boost an economy. An economy thrives off the working class. Not off the rich.”

Brown also suggested that the U.S. is too focused on shipping aid to its overseas allies.

“I care about others, I do,” he said. “But when you sit here and say, ‘I just sent $50 million over to Israel’ and then I go outside and I see half a neighborhood rundown … you’ve got to take care of home.”

One possible sign that larger sentiments on the economy could be improving slightly is that overall mentions of personal financial issues declined some, with 30% mentioning them now compared with 37% last year. Drops occurred for Democrats, 27% vs. 33%, and among Republicans, falling to 30% compared with 37% in 2022.

One-quarter of U.S. adults say 2024 will be a better year than 2023 for them personally, and 24% expect it will be a worse year. Some 37% of Republicans expect it’ll be a worse year for them, compared with 20% of independents and 13% of Democrats.

Just 5% of U.S. adults are “extremely” or “very” confident that the federal government can make progress on the important problems and issues facing the country in 2024, with 7% of Democrats and 11% of independents being optimistic, compared with 1% of Republicans.

Brown is a Democrat but said he was disillusioned enough to perhaps sit out the presidential election — especially if it proves to be a 2020 rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump, who has built a commanding early lead in the 2024 Republican primary.

“I don’t think I will participate and maybe that’s bad,” Brown said. “But, it’s like, you’re losing faith.”

The poll of 1,074 adults was conducted Nov. 30–Dec. 4, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, designed to represent the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.

12. Suspicious of China, Philippines Expands US Military Presence

Suspicious of China, Philippines Expands US Military Presence

December 29, 2023 5:13 PM

voanews.com · December 29, 2023

SANTA ANA, PHILIPPINES —

Naval Base Camilo Osias, a small military facility on the northern tip of the Philippines’ largest island, does not look important.

On a quiet afternoon in mid-December, just a handful of Philippine navy personnel mingle at its tiny barracks and mostly empty airplane hangar.

Nearby, a rusted anti-aircraft gun, lying partially assembled on a concrete pedestal near a basketball court, is the only visible weapon.

Despite appearances, this site is evidence of an evolving U.S.-Philippine relationship expected to have substantial impact on Asian security.

With U.S. funding, Naval Base Camilo Osias is expected to soon get a rehabilitated airstrip, a new pier and more facilities to accommodate soldiers.

Philippines and the South China Sea

The U.S. military can also rotate troops and place weapons at this strategic location, just 400 kilometers from Taiwan.

It isn't the only site where this is happening.

The U.S. military recently gained access to two other locations near Taiwan, and one facing the disputed South China Sea, under an expansion of a bilateral deal known as the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, or EDCA.

Nine sites across the Philippines are now covered under the defense pact, originally signed in 2014.

The agreement does not establish permanent U.S. bases, but it does give the U.S. military a bigger presence that could be important if a conflict were to break out in nearby Taiwan or the South China Sea.

Complicated history

EDCA is the latest development in a long and complicated relationship between the United States and the Philippines.

The Philippines was ruled as a U.S. territory from 1898 to 1946, before gaining independence. In 1951, the two countries agreed to a mutual defense treaty, establishing the oldest U.S. defense treaty alliance in Asia.

The United States retained a permanent military presence until the early 1990s, when the last U.S. base was removed amid domestic opposition and concerns about Philippine sovereignty.

Since then, the Philippines has gradually welcomed back visiting U.S. forces under a pair of bilateral agreements, including EDCA.

This trend intensified under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who has aligned his country more closely with the United States since taking office in 2022.

Closer ties with the US

This year, U.S. and Philippine forces held their biggest combined military exercise ever and resumed joint patrols in the South China Sea after a long hiatus. The two sides also convened a series of high-level diplomatic and security meetings.

FILE - U.S. Marines and Philippine troops work together during a joint military exercise called "Balikatan," Tagalog for shoulder-to-shoulder, at Capas, Tarlac province, northern Philippines, April 14, 2023.

“We’ve seen a dramatic improvement in U.S.-Philippine relations over the course of the last year and a half,” a U.S. diplomat in Manila told VOA. However, the diplomat added, “even if we hadn’t redoubled our efforts and gone all out on the U.S. part, we’d probably still be doing pretty well, because the Chinese have done almost everything wrong.”

In recent months, China has escalated its harassment of Philippine vessels, using water cannons and military-grade lasers, in disputed areas of the South China Sea.

Philippine officials are also worried about the danger of conflict in Taiwan, especially as China ramps up its threats against the self-ruled island.

Earlier this year, China’s ambassador to the Philippines, Huang Xilian, drew condemnation when he appeared to issue a veiled threat against the tens of thousands of overseas Philippine workers in Taiwan.

While criticizing the EDCA agreement, Huang said Manila should “unequivocally oppose” Taiwanese independence if it genuinely cared about the fate of the 150,000 Filipinos working there.

Philippine priorities

Philippine officials have said the revamped EDCA sites, especially those in the north, could be useful for evacuating Filipinos from Taiwan in the event of a war.

The bases could also help facilitate U.S. humanitarian responses to strong typhoons, which often pummel the northern Philippines.

The main priority, though, is military modernization, Jonathan Malaya, assistant director general of the Philippines National Security Council, told VOA in an interview in his office in mid-December.

“We have improved our military ... but it’s never enough. It’s never enough because of the territorial issues we have with China,” Malaya said.

Malaya said the presence of U.S. troops could serve as a deterrent against China’s expansionist goals, especially as Beijing seeks to extend its influence past the so-called first island chain of Pacific archipelagos.

“And that first island chain [includes] both Taiwan and the Philippines, no? So with American troops rotating in the Philippines, it becomes a problem for them,” he said.

FILE - In this handout photo provided by the Philippine Coast Guard, a Chinese coast guard ship uses water cannons on Philippine navy-operated supply boat M/L Kalayaan as it approaches Second Thomas Shoal in the disputed South China Sea on Dec. 10, 2023.

As evidence, Malaya cited China’s 1995 seizure of the contested Mischief Reef, which occurred shortly after the U.S. military removed its last permanent base from the Philippines.

“When that happened, the Chinese saw an opportunity and took over,” later turning the tiny ring-shaped island into a “heavily militarized forward operating base,” he said.

Local worries

China has responded angrily to the U.S.-Philippines basing agreement, saying the move jeopardizes regional peace and stability.

That worries Manuel Mamba, the governor of Cagayan Province, where two EDCA sites are located.

“Ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan attacked us, basically because U.S. forces were here. And I think that will happen again if we have foreign forces within our midst,” Mamba told VOA.

Marcos has insisted the EDCA sites will not be used to target any other country and Philippine officials have repeatedly stressed that the agreement allows Manila to veto any use of EDCA that is not in the country’s national interest.

Those assurances are worth little to Mamba, though, who said Marcos or any other future Philippine president may not be able to resist pressure from a much more powerful United States, especially during a crisis.

“It may not be his call when the time comes,” Mamba said. “Sometimes you cannot say no.”

Asked about such concerns, MaryKay Carlson, the U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines, told VOA that the United States respects the Philippines' territorial integrity.

She noted Marcos’ public vow that the Philippines will not “abandon even one square inch of territory” to a foreign power.

“We have heard President Marcos loud and clear,” Carlson said. “It’s actually the People’s Republic of China that has established militarized bases within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines.”

voanews.com · December 29, 2023

13. Inside the tunnels of Gaza

Please go to the link to view the photos and comprehensive diagrams. https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS/GAZA-TUNNELS/gkvldmzorvb/?utm

Inside the tunnels of Gaza

Reuters · by Adolfo Arranz

The scale, and the sophistication, of Hamasâ tunnel network

Published Dec. 31, 2023Â Â 11:00 AM EST

Beneath the warscape of Gaza City lies a vast network of tunnels built by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Some entrance shafts are hidden among what remains of the cityâs multi-storey buildings, ravaged by Israeli air strikes. Others are concealed in sandy dunes outside the city. Or tucked away in private homes. They lead to a warren of interconnecting passages that stretches below Gazaâs streets, extending for hundreds of miles into almost every area of the enclave.

Reuters spoke to seven military experts and officials, and drew on its own reporting on the ground in Gaza, as well as descriptions and images from Hamas and the Israeli military, to piece together a picture of the scale and sophistication of the tunnel network.

An illustration of a person climbing vertically down a 1 meter wide shaft using climbing bars. At the bottom of the shaft is an illustration of a tunnel that runs horizontally.

The Gaza metro

Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, said two years before the current conflict erupted that it had installed a network of more than 500 kilometers (310 miles) of tunnels - roughly equivalent to half the length of the New York subway system.

The Israeli military has nicknamed it the Gaza metro.

Israel says the tunnels have been a primary target of its air strikes, artillery bombardment and ground forces since the war began. Images shared by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), as well as Reuters reporting on the ground, show the tunnels have specialized sections for launching military attacks, as well as logistics areas, storage facilities and transportation routes.

Hamas has said it is using the tunnels, and other safe places, to hide hostages seized in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Hamas gunmen killed some 1,200 people and took 240 captives in the raid, which sparked the war. Around 110 of those hostages have been released, most of them during a week-long ceasefire that ended in late November, while Israel says 129 remain in Gaza, though it says 22 of those are believed to be dead.

Israel's air and artillery bombardment has killed more than 21,800 people, according to health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza.

Israeli soldiers walk through what Israel's military says is an iron-girded tunnel designed by Hamas to disgorge carloads of Palestinian fighters for a surprise storming of the border, amid the Israeli army's ongoing ground operation against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, close to Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip, December 15, 2023. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

The scale of some of the tunnels demonstrate significant planning and resources. In mid-December, the Israeli military uncovered what it called the biggest tunnel to date. The passageway, wide enough to drive a car through, emerged in a sand dune at the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, just 100 meters south of Israelâs Erez military checkpoint, which controls all pedestrian access from Israel into Gaza.

Reinforced with concrete and iron, the tunnel was 3 meters (10 feet) in diameter, and 4 km (2.5 miles) long - enough to reach into northern Gaza City. With cables and piping to provide power and ventilation, the tunnel descended down a ramp to a depth of 50 meters below ground, the Israeli military said.

Erez was one of the places attacked by Hamas gunmen on Oct. 7. The Israeli military said the tunnel was designed to transport Hamas fighters to the border area, but didnât confirm it was used in the attack.

Hamas responded to Israel's discovery by releasing a video of what appeared to be bodycam footage of Oct. 7, showing fighters emerging from a tunnel in the dunes and attacking an Israeli military position. Reuters was able to confirm the location as the Erez crossing, using visible landmarks. âYou arrived too late â¦ Mission had already been completed,â read an on-screen message at the end of the video.

Hamas didnât immediately respond to Reutersâ request for comment on its tunnel building activities.

The IDF said in a statement it has a variety of methods and successful experience in dealing with tunnels of all types. It did not provide further details.

An illustration of a Hamas tunnel discovered in December near the Erez checkpoint. The illustration shows the entrance section, which is composed of metal cylinders about 3 meters in diameter, and a cross-section of the inner tunnel, which enables the transportation of troops, including vehicles, in large numbers.

Israeli army operates in northern Gaza amid the ongoing ground operation against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

REUTERS/Amir Cohen

On softer ground

The types of sandy or loamy soils common in Gaza made it both easier for Hamas to excavate the tunnels and harder for Israel to destroy them, two experts said.

The three main types of soil in the 365 sq. km. enclave are:

An illustration of the three types of soil in the Gaza Strip: Dune sand, loess, fluvial and eolian, and calcareous sandstone.

Even in the trickier areas - such as the dunes near the Mediterranean coast that are prone to water infiltration - Hamas had enough building materials and resources to adjust to the type of soil they were dealing with, said Professor Joel Roskin, a geomorphologist and geologist with Israel's Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, who has studied the tunnel network.

âWhat we've seen is that there are so many tunnels that have been reinforced with concrete,â Roskin said, adding that Hamas had invested considerable money and manpower in construction.

âTo dig deeper demands more resources, more energy. The deeper tunnels are of course more difficult to detect.â

A map of the major exposed rock types across Israel and Gaza. Alluvium (gravel, sand, silt, clay, and rock), sand, and calcareous sandstone, red sandstone, and loam are the types found in the Gaza Strip. In the east, towards Jerusalem, the area is predominantly covered by chalk, limestone, dolostone, and chert. Next to the map sits two charts visualizing a cross section of the rock layers below the surface. One for the Nirim area in the Gaza Strip and another for the area surrounding Jerusalem.

John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute and a founding member of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare, said the sandy nature of the soil had certainly made it easier for Hamas.

âI have seen many videos of them digging by hand or using simple power tools,â he told Reuters. âThe soil is conducive to rapid and unskilled digging.â By contrast, he said, the Lebanese Shiâite group Hezbollah had to dig through solid rock in south Lebanon to build cross border tunnels into northern Israel.

Hezbollah has not confirmed the existence of the tunnel network but, in 2019, the Israeli military put on display one tunnel that, it said, reached depths of 80 meters (265 feet) as it ran from a kilometer inside Lebanon into Israel near Zarâit in the Upper Galilee.

The relative softness of the soil in Gaza is also a disadvantage to the IDF teams seeking to clear and destroy the network, Spencer said.

âThe loose soil actually reduces the IDF use of explosives to destroy tunnels as the soft soil absorbs explosive force. Add the blast doors in the tunnels weâve seen, and that further reduces the effects of explosive force traveling through the tunnel.â

An illustration showing the steps for building a tunnel. Initial excavation is usually done manually, with the help of shovels and other tools. In areas where the terrain is tougher, pneumatic hammers are utilized. Lastly, the illustration shows that as progress is made, the walls are reinforced with prefabricated cement or wood slabs.

On Nov. 22, the Israeli army showed some news organizations a concrete-lined tunnel near Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City that, it said, was a command post for Hamas fighters. The tunnel complex, which the IDF said was at a depth of around 10 meters below ground, featured a bedroom, a tiled bathroom, kitchen and meeting room.

Reuters photographer Ronen Zvulun went inside the tunnels. âThe tunnel floor is sand but the walls and roof are lined with concrete, like a tiny road or train tunnel. And just about high enough for someone to stand upright.â

An Israeli soldier stands in a room inside a tunnel underneath Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, November 22, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

âInside, you hear nothing. If an air strike hit directly above or nearby, it would no doubt register, but anything a few blocks away, you would probably hear nothing that far underground,â Zvulun said.

Israel accuses Hamas of deliberately locating its tunnels, rocket-firing sites and other military infrastructure near schools and hospitals, and in densely populated areas, using civilians as human shields. Hamas rejects the accusation. Meanwhile, Palestinian human rights groups say they have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israel on war crimes charges for carrying out air strikes on civilian areas.

The IDF says it has taken steps to minimize casualties and abides by the rules of war. It has pledged to continue its military operation until Hamas is destroyed, the hostages released and any threat to Israel from Gaza is removed.

The ICC said in a statement to Reuters that it had extensive contacts with Palestinian civil society groups as part of an investigation of possible war crimes in Palestinian territories that it opened two years ago, covering the period back to 2014. âThis cooperation, combined with other investigative actions, has allowed the Office to collect considerable information with respect to alleged crimes committed in Gaza,â it told Reuters.

An illustration of a soldier walking through a tunnel that is .8 meters wide, reinforced with steel rebars and concrete panel walls. Most tunnels are narrow enough for single-file movement and their height varies.

Tunnel warfare

Israelâs military said its ground forces had uncovered around 1,500 Hamas tunnels and shafts throughout the Gaza Strip, as of Dec. 19.

âDismantling Hamas's underground strongholds in the north, center, and south is a significant step in dismantling Hamas, and it takes time,â military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a press briefing.

The network has been in construction for years. In the early 1990s, Egyptian and Israeli forces reported finding cross-border tunnels used to smuggle weapons, supplies and militants from Egypt into Gaza. Tunnel-building became easier after Israel pulled its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005. Two years later, Hamas seized full control of the Gaza Strip from President Mahmoud Abbasâs Palestinian Authority.

The tunnel-makers are thought to have dumped much of the excavated soil into the sea, making it difficult to detect the scale of their activities, according to Israeli security sources. The rest is used for construction.

In previous conflicts, the IDF failed to decommission the tunnel network. After a brief 2014 conflict, in which the Israeli military said it neutralized 32 Hamas tunnels, the militant group showed Reuters that parts of its network were untouched. And following the last round of hostilities in 2021, Hamas' leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, said the group had more than 500 km of tunnels, of which the Israelis destroyed only a fraction.

The IDF has not publicly estimated how large the tunnel network may be.

An Israeli soldier secures a tunnel underneath Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, November 22, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Tackling the tunnels

During the current conflict, the Israeli air force has typically first bombed the area above suspected tunnels to flatten any structures. Then bulldozers are used to uncover the tunnel shafts and locate any booby traps or improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Finally, ground troops go in to destroy, or to seal off, the tunnels and shafts, according to two security sources and IDF footage reviewed by Reuters.

Israel says it is doing what it can to spare civilians. Israel's Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi said on Dec. 26 the military was being "focused and precise in its actions". However, some of Israelâs staunchest allies - including the United States, Britain and Canada - have urged it to do more to reduce civilian deaths from what President Joe Biden has called "indiscriminate bombing".

Eyal Pinko, a former senior official with Israelâs intelligence services until 2017, said part of the challenge was that it was hard to precisely locate the whereabouts of tunnels: even Israelâs Ground Penetration Radar (GPR) was only effective to 15 or 20 meters below ground for major tunnels. Below that depth, it would struggle to detect anything at all, he said. âThey are digging very, very low and this is very problematic,â Pinko said, adding that some tunnels could be 70 or 80 meters deep. âThere is a huge intelligence gap about those tunnels.â

âThey (Hamas) are popping up from tunnels and you don't know that there is a tunnel over there.â

The IDF declined to provide specific details on its tactics in locating and destroying the tunnels.

Once inside the tunnels, specialists including the Combat Engineering Corpsâ elite Yahalom unit use a wide variety of methods to search, record and destroy the tunnels, including K-9 dog units fitted with cameras, and explosive gel charges.

Four military experts say that clearing the tunnels manually would be a lengthy process and expose soldiers to the risk of booby traps or ambush by concealed Hamas fighters. The Israeli military said it had lost 167 personnel during the Gaza operation, as of Dec. 28, many of them killed by attacks launched from the tunnel network.

The military is experimenting with drones to search the tunnels without risking the lives of soldiers.

âThe biggest problem in deploying drones underground right now is they get maybe a hundred feet into a tunnel network, then the tunnel makes a right or left turn and they completely lose signal,â said Blake Resnick, CEO of U.S. based drone maker BRINC, who said it is testing drones with the Israeli military.

The latest drones being tested have a networking facility that allows its operators to fly one a few hundred feet into a tunnel, until the structure changes direction. âThey can land that drone, use it as a repeater, and then send in another drone deeper into the network,â he said. âAnd they can do that, practically as many times as they want.â

He said a new generation of drones they were testing has thermal imaging, night vision illuminators, and front-facing lidar sensors that create a 3D map of their environment as they fly.

After President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in Egypt in 2014 and decided to shut down the cross-border tunnel network in southern Gaza, he ordered it flooded with sea water.

However, the risk of killing Israeli hostages may make that an unlikely option for Israel. There was outcry in Israel in mid-December after three hostages were accidentally shot dead by Israeli forces, when they were waving a white flag.

Sources:

Israel Defense Forces; "A Case Study of Thin Concrete Wall Elements Subjected to Ground Loads, by Davide Elmo and Amichai Mitelman, MDPI; Haaretz; Bar-Ilan University - Prof. Joel Roskin; Britannica; Geological Survey of Israel; Natural Earth; SRTM

Development by

Sudev Kiyada, Han Huang and Jitesh Chowdhury

Additional reporting by

Ronen Zvulun and Jiawei Wang

Edited by

Daniel Flynn

Reuters · by Adolfo Arranz

14. The Wages of Neglect in Syria

Excerpts:

The appalling move of some Arab and Western countries toward normalizing relations with Assad reveals the ongoing deficit of U.S. leadership and the continuing absence of “international community” advocacy of human rights. Assad has been welcomed back to the Arab League, from which he’d been shunned due to his atrocities. China is in on the action, assiduously cultivating relations with Arab states and, in September, announcing a “strategic partnership” with the Syrian regime. Members of the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees from both parties have argued against President Biden’s acceptance of these normalization efforts and his weak enforcement of Syria sanctions.

China claims to have a “peace plan” for Israel and Gaza. One need only look at the Russia-sponsored “peace process” for Syria to see where this would go. China, Iran, and Russia see the Israel-Hamas war as an opportunity to gain yet more geopolitical and informational ground against the United States and have all increased their antisemitic propaganda.

The U.S., UN, European, and Arab world abandonment of Syria was a significant blow to international norms and democratic principles. Pivots from one region to another that forgot the worldwide interconnectedness of modern threats and simplistic equations of hard power gave enemies of freedom vacuums to fill. In the Middle East and around the world, we see that the West’s languid deterrence, flimsy penalties on aggressors, and willingness to overlook human rights did not buy the longed-for post-Cold War repose. A new Syria policy, with moral and strategic clarity and backbone, would reverberate positively in the region and improve America’s ability to deter its adversaries.

The Wages of Neglect in Syria

The U.S. abandonment of Syria sent disastrous repercussions across the Middle East and beyond.

The National Interest · by Anne Pierce · January 1, 2024

If we remain on the current course, future historians are likely to record the slaughter of innocent Syrians, and the resulting harm done to America’s national interests and moral standing, as a shameful failure of U.S. leadership and one of the darker chapters in our history.

—Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham “Syria’s Descent into Hell,” Washington Post, December 30, 2012

The story of the Syrian revolt against tyranny is as inspiring as it is tragic, and U.S. and international responses to Bashar al-Assad’s atrocities and Syria’s cataclysmic war have been as misguided as they have been consequential. Looking at how the last decade went so terribly wrong for the Syrian people, with suffering after suffering still unfolding, and at the current explosiveness of the Middle East, with U.S. and democratic influence in precipitous decline, we see the urgent need for more principled and wise American foreign policy. We see that, as Brookings Senior Fellow Suzanne Maloney warned in 2018, “what happens in Syria doesn’t stay in Syria” and that, even at this late date, a new approach to Syria and the region is in order.

The fact that Assad and allies Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah succeeded in keeping the detested Syrian regime in power through merciless war and crimes against humanity and that the world did little to stop them set a precedent that reverberates today. In the genocidal horrors of Russia’s war on Ukraine and of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, there are echoes of the atrocities Assadists inflicted on Syrians. The free world supposedly resoundingly “won” the Cold War. However, Putin’s Russia is reaping devastation in Syria as well as Europe, and anti-democratic countries and Islamist militias still exploit Syria’s chaos and despair.

In the history of Syria, since peaceful protestors first took to the streets to demand basic rights, only to be met with the violence and brutality of the oppressor regime, we see the longing and passion for freedom; the folly and shortsightedness of appeasement; the sadism and cruelty of civil war; and the insidious collusion of the Syrian, Iranian and Russian regimes, and their backing of extremist forces. Syria exposes a Western world degraded and depleted by moral relativism and military-strategic complacency and a “United Nations” that forgot the post-World War II principles on which it was established.

When peaceful pro-democracy protests erupted in early 2011, the Assad regime arrested and even tortured adolescents, and when protests only grew, the regime gunned protestors down. As state brutality fanned the rebellion and rebels took up arms, Assad deployed tanks, attack helicopters, fighter jets, and, eventually, “barrel bombs” and “starvation sieges” against rebels and civilians alike. By early 2012, Syria was in a “civil war.” The Obama administration’s response to Assad’s escalating hostilities and atrocities was deeply flawed. In response to the slaughter, disappearances, and systematized torture, the administration deferred to the U.N. Security Council, which it knew would veto any meaningful action; Obstructed or diluted substantive congressional proposals, including for strong sanctions; Rejected France’s call for a humanitarian corridor and Turkey’s plea for a “no-fly safe-zone”; Accepted a Russian-backed U.N. plan which did not call for Assad to step down; Failed to make a moral case for the Syrian people.

As the United States and the United Nations issued morally neutral calls for an end to the “violence,” life became more hellish for Syrians. U.S. and UN debility opened the door to extremist groups eager to hijack the Syrian revolt or defend the Syrian regime. Among them: Syria and Iran surrogate Hezbollah, Iranian Quds forces, and Iran-backed militias. As it still does today, Iran protected Assad and exploited the regional chaos. By 2014, ISIS had entered the fray.

The radicalization of the conflict suited Assad well. Invigorated by setbacks to moderate rebels and by the Free Syria Army’s failure to procure outside aid, Assad amplified his reign of terror. Even though Assad had released much of the ISIS leadership from prison, he shrewdly positioned himself as a bulwark against Islamist extremism. Insofar as ISIS was deemed part of the “opposition,” it lent credence to Assad’s contention that those fighting the regime were terrorists. Insofar as ISIS fought against the Free Syria army, it hastened the demise of moderate rebels. Tellingly, regime forces and Islamic State militants usually spared each other while targeting others.

While post-Iraq War aversion to “boots on the ground” contributed to American passivity, the inaction of the United States and others allowed ISIS to build a stronghold in Syria and Iraq, a development so serious that it would require a military response. While the Obama administration hoped Iran’s cooperation on nuclear and regional issues could be gained by taking a minimalist approach to Syria, Iran saw weakness and acted accordingly. Making matters worse, the United States went along with Russia’s purported “peace plans” for Syria via “Geneva conferences,” which only bought Assad time and cover for more aggression. In the absence of major military setbacks, Assad had no reason to compromise. Moreover, rebels knew that if they laid down arms, Assad would crush them.

In April 2013, Israel, France, Britain, and Turkey all provided evidence that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons. Yet in May, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov announced plans for a conference based upon the Geneva Communique, which, while calling for a transitional government, did not specifically call for Assad’s departure. In August 2013, Assad unleashed chemical weapons on thousands of civilians in Damascus, a development which, according to President Obama’s previously declared “red line,” should have prompted U.S. airstrikes. However, Russia engineered another plan for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons by 2014 on the condition that the United States refrain from striking Syria. UN action based on the agreement effectively re-legitimized Assad’s regime by calling on both sides to compromise and confirm Assad’s role in continued negotiations.

With opportunities accruing in 2015, Russia entered the war on Assad’s side, launching air strikes on moderate rebels. Aided by Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, Assad retook much of the territory that by then had been captured by the Free Syria Army. Making matters even worse were ensuing U.S. decisions. In a move as unprincipled as it was unwise, the Obama administration called for a cessation of hostilities, after which it agreed to fly sorties in “cooperation” with Russia against ISIS. Rebels were warned they too would be targeted if they did not sever relations with al Nusra extremists, with whom some had by then reluctantly sided. Notably, there were no requirements that Assad’s own bombardments, massacres, and atrocities stop. The fatally flawed ceasefire quickly collapsed. In the meantime, ruinous violence and extreme atrocities resulted in millions fleeing their homes, constituting one of the worst humanitarian disasters the world has seen.

Obama administration notions—that Russia could be a “partner” in fighting ISIS, that Iran could play a “constructive role” in Syria and Iraq, and that the Syrian people could “coexist” with a regime that caused them such horror and pain—were delusions. Iran and Russia were working against American interests and in support of Assad at every turn.

President Donald Trump’s foreign policy team charted a better course at first. The administration imposed significant new human rights sanctions and responded with limited military actions when pro-Assad forces again used chemical weapons and militarily threatened the U.S.-led coalition. Trump officials even stated that “there can be no peace, stability or justice as long as Assad remains in power” and “Russia and Iran support his killing his own people.” But, increasingly, Trump focused narrowly on the threat from ISIS and the battle, along with Syrian Kurds, to drive ISIS out of Syria and Iraq.

Russia again seized the day when, in January 2017, it orchestrated the first Astana Conference, where it pushed a proposal for “deconfliction zones” to be enforced by Russia, Iran, and Turkey. Trump officials expressed skepticism but went along despite the warning signs: Failed deconfliction zones had helped Assad lock down victories in the western portion of Syria. Civilian casualties had soared as pro-government forces bombed areas designated for protection. Populations fleeing ISIS, regime forces, and Iranian militias faced abuses from those forces even upon trying to return to their homes.

Although President Trump was improving relations with Sunni states that could counter Iran and announced penalties on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), he failed to form a strategy to deal with the collusion of Assad, Russia, and Iran and their brutal assault on the Syrian people. In fact, upon suddenly announcing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria in December 2018, he tweeted, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there...” This course benefited Russia and Iran and opened the door for Turkey to launch a devastating assault on Kurdish forces that had partnered with the U.S. to defeat ISIS. Kurds would increasingly turn toward Russia and Assad for protection.

With pushback from Trump’s own foreign policy team and Congress, about half of the 2000 U.S. troops were back in Syria within a year. But, Trump, like Obama, rarely referenced the suffering of those in the grips of atrocity-committing regimes, and sometimes, as Obama sometimes did, went so far as to flatter odious dictators. Simplistic mantras like “ending endless war” and “America first” neglect Syrians and other severely oppressed peoples. Moreover, doing and saying little in response to escalating hostilities and atrocities to avoid war makes it more likely that the United States will eventually be forced into war by events spiraling out of control.

Thus, Russia achieved power-broker status and bases and tested countless weapons in Syria, which it would then use in Ukraine. Iranian militias gained a foothold in addition to Iraq, from which they’ve targeted U.S. troops with rockets and drones and wreaked endless havoc and heartbreak across the Middle East. Terrorists and drug traffickers have gained new ground. Assad and Russia still bomb rebels and civilians in the remaining rebel stronghold, Idlib, in the countryside, and even in refugee camps. The “disappeared” still languish in prisons. Syrians still endure a reign of terror. Yet Syrians still come out en masse to protest for democracy and the end of the Assad regime, as they have in recent months in the province of Sweida.

Assad and Russia’s remorseless military offensive against Syrians has notably intensified since Hamas attacked Israel. And Iranian proxies have since then launched nearly 100 attacks on U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq. Yet the Biden administration, understandably trying to avoid escalation but unacceptably showcasing moral and strategic inertia, has responded with too little, too late.

The appalling move of some Arab and Western countries toward normalizing relations with Assad reveals the ongoing deficit of U.S. leadership and the continuing absence of “international community” advocacy of human rights. Assad has been welcomed back to the Arab League, from which he’d been shunned due to his atrocities. China is in on the action, assiduously cultivating relations with Arab states and, in September, announcing a “strategic partnership” with the Syrian regime. Members of the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees from both parties have argued against President Biden’s acceptance of these normalization efforts and his weak enforcement of Syria sanctions.

China claims to have a “peace plan” for Israel and Gaza. One need only look at the Russia-sponsored “peace process” for Syria to see where this would go. China, Iran, and Russia see the Israel-Hamas war as an opportunity to gain yet more geopolitical and informational ground against the United States and have all increased their antisemitic propaganda.

The U.S., UN, European, and Arab world abandonment of Syria was a significant blow to international norms and democratic principles. Pivots from one region to another that forgot the worldwide interconnectedness of modern threats and simplistic equations of hard power gave enemies of freedom vacuums to fill. In the Middle East and around the world, we see that the West’s languid deterrence, flimsy penalties on aggressors, and willingness to overlook human rights did not buy the longed-for post-Cold War repose. A new Syria policy, with moral and strategic clarity and backbone, would reverberate positively in the region and improve America’s ability to deter its adversaries.

Anne R. Pierce is an author of books and articles on American presidents, American foreign policy, and American society. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, is an appointed member of Princeton University’s James Madison Society, and was a Political Science Series Editor for Transaction Publishers. Follow her @AnneRPierce.

Image: Mohammed Bash / Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest · by Anne Pierce · January 1, 2024

15. China’s Taiwan Nightmare Has Come True

Excerpts:

So much for China’s claim to be an innately self-denying, innately trustworthy seafaring power. Bullying is now a daily routine for China’s navy, coast guard, and maritime militia. And Chinese soft power lies in the wreckage.

Not that Xi Jinping & Co. seem to care. They jettisoned a mode of diplomacy that offered promising results and directed Chinese representatives to comport themselves like jackasses toward foreign interlocutors. Jackass diplomacy is diametrically opposed to Zheng He diplomacy, which aimed at conciliating others. Nor has Beijing’s turnabout escaped notice in Asian and Western capitals. Its swerve to heavy-handed means alienates potential sources of support for Taiwan, fuels arms buildups in countries fearful of Chinese predations, and herds rival powers into hostile alliances, coalitions, and partnerships.

Why engage in behavior that seems consciously calculated to guarantee that China wins no friends? You have to think domineering conduct is engraved on Chinese habits of mind and deed and thus on Chinese political and strategic culture. If so, officialdom is acting on ingrained ways of thinking, feeling, and doing. Beijing is captive to longstanding and highhanded traditions. Party chieftains can’t help themselves.

Now, there’s a narrative that explains much about China’s past, present, and potentially future actions. Prepare accordingly.

China’s Taiwan Nightmare Has Come True

Taiwan has undergone a seismic demographic and political transformation in recent decades—a transformation that virtually precludes pacific unification between Taiwan and China.

The National Interest · by James Holmes · January 1, 2024

Imagine that. Constant bombast coupled with daily armed provocations is no way to endear yourself to audiences overseas. Or, as the Wall Street Journal put it recently, “China confronts a new political reality in Taiwan: no friends.” The Journal’s brief is compelling. Taiwan has undergone a seismic demographic and political transformation in recent decades—a transformation that virtually precludes pacific unification between Taiwan and China.

China’s Taiwan Challenge

If China enjoys no support among Taiwan’s political parties, there’s little prospect a China-friendly president will take up residence in the Presidential Office in Taipei following this month’s elections. Without a China-friendly president and legislature, China stands vanishingly little chance of achieving its paramount goal of gaining control of the island without fighting. It will have to deploy armed force, with all the hazards and costs warfare entails.

And Chinese Communist Party officialdom has no one to blame but itself for this sad state of affairs. Its diplomacy seems almost deliberately designed to drive away prospective friends and unite alliances and coalitions to defeat the party’s aims.

Admittedly, demographics is not China’s friend in the Taiwan Strait. As recently as twenty years ago, sentiment among islanders was roughly evenly divided between advocates of unification with the mainland and advocates of independence. At the extremes, around ten percent favored immediate unification, and another ten percent favored immediate independence. The middle eighty percent seemed more or less content with the cross-strait status quo, voicing support for unification or independence but on no particular timetable. Moderates were happy to kick the can down the road indefinitely rather than undergo the upheaval from drastic political change.

Since then, things have deteriorated from Beijing’s standpoint. It’s an iron law that generational change happens as older generations pass from this earth and that a society’s attitudes may change as youthful generations molded by different formative experiences take charge.

Since the turn of the century, the proportion of “mainlanders” who fled to Taiwan in the wake of defeat in the Chinese Civil War and who define themselves primarily as Chinese has shriveled to under three percent of the populace, according to the Journal. That’s not a meaningful constituency in favor of a cross-strait union. No one caters to three percent of the electorate.

Youthful islanders define themselves chiefly as Taiwanese, not Chinese. They display little affinity—let alone allegiance—to China. Unsurprisingly, then, none of the three parties vying for the island’s presidency has made unification a major theme while barnstorming for votes. Just the opposite, in fact. Even the Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT, which has cozied up to Beijing in the past, has muffled any advocacy of closer cross-strait ties into near-silence. That’s how electoral politicking works.

You would think even communists would grasp the basic vagaries of democratic politics. You would be wrong. Indeed, China’s conduct vis-à-vis Taiwan amounts to diplomatic malpractice. It’s a self-defeating policy, and foreseeably so. Beijing’s failure to woo the islanders is part of its larger turn away from “soft power” toward raw coercion and intimidation. It wants to overawe rather than allure.

For Joseph Nye, who coined the phrase, soft power is a power of civilizational attraction. It helps the leaders of a society that’s attractive to others get their way when negotiating with foreign leaders. Soft power encourages others to want what you want.

For America, talismans of soft power include the United States’ relative openness to outsiders, founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and pop-culture products such as movies and music. China can appeal to its long history, impressive art and architecture, and venerated historical figures like the philosopher Confucius or the Ming Dynasty diplomat-admiral Zheng He. Beijing used to understand all of this. Not so long ago, Chinese emissaries pursued a soft-power offensive, a.k.a. “charm offensive,” toward China’s Asian neighbors. And they premised their outreach on Zheng He’s exploits while voyaging in maritime Asia during the fifteenth century.

Zheng He commanded the Ming “treasure fleet,” then the world’s largest, most technologically advanced navy, during a series of expeditions to Southeast and South Asia. The voyages weren’t entirely nonviolent in nature—the fleet battled piracy near Malacca, for example—but they were not voyages of territorial conquest. That Zheng He abstained from conquest cast the keystone for Communist China’s charm offensive six centuries later.

Beijing invoked Zheng He’s journeys to portray China in a positive light compared to predatory Western empires that trampled Asian sovereignty for half a millennium. Spokesmen contended that China’s true, ineluctable, anti-imperial nature had manifested itself through the treasure voyages. The narrative reassured Asians that they could trust a strong maritime China not to wrest territory from them. Here’s the thing, though: when you sketch a narrative that supposedly depicts your society’s intrinsic culture, you set a standard for your future conduct. Foreign audiences will hold you to that standard. They will notice if you deviate from it. Future soft-power appeals will fall flat if you do.

False storylines will do that.

There were worrisome signs even during the heyday of China’s charm offensive. Beijing enacted an “Anti-Secession Law” in 2005, vowing to use force against Taiwan should the island’s leadership move toward formal independence from the mainland. In 2009, the party leadership submitted a map to the United Nations claiming “indisputable sovereignty” over waters and landmasses within a “nine-dashed line” enclosing the vast majority of the South China Sea, including swathes of exclusive economic zones belonging to China’s neighbors. In 2012, it seized Scarborough Shoal, a feature deep within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. In 2013, it took to manufacturing artificial islands in the South China Sea. Etc.

So much for China’s claim to be an innately self-denying, innately trustworthy seafaring power. Bullying is now a daily routine for China’s navy, coast guard, and maritime militia. And Chinese soft power lies in the wreckage.

Not that Xi Jinping & Co. seem to care. They jettisoned a mode of diplomacy that offered promising results and directed Chinese representatives to comport themselves like jackasses toward foreign interlocutors. Jackass diplomacy is diametrically opposed to Zheng He diplomacy, which aimed at conciliating others. Nor has Beijing’s turnabout escaped notice in Asian and Western capitals. Its swerve to heavy-handed means alienates potential sources of support for Taiwan, fuels arms buildups in countries fearful of Chinese predations, and herds rival powers into hostile alliances, coalitions, and partnerships.

Why engage in behavior that seems consciously calculated to guarantee that China wins no friends? You have to think domineering conduct is engraved on Chinese habits of mind and deed and thus on Chinese political and strategic culture. If so, officialdom is acting on ingrained ways of thinking, feeling, and doing. Beijing is captive to longstanding and highhanded traditions. Party chieftains can’t help themselves.

Now, there’s a narrative that explains much about China’s past, present, and potentially future actions. Prepare accordingly.

About the Author

Dr. James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College and a Nonresident Fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. The views voiced here are his alone.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.

The National Interest · by James Holmes · January 1, 2024

16. Unmasking Digital Deception – OpEd

Excerpts:

The effective use of media has been playing a substantial role in the pursuance of national interests of the nation states. It becomes empirically evident that all fronts of media play critical role in influencing the minds of people and shutting down the dissent. The intensified scrutiny and suppression of journalists inevitably exacerbate the constriction of avenues through which information can be disseminated to the global community.

In an interview with a US-based YouTube channel, Jack Dorsey the former CEO of Twitter highlighted the threats that the platform received from India during the Farmers’ Protests. The government asked Twitter to remove over 1000 accounts critical of the government’s actions. To compel Twitter to remove the account, members of the BJP threatened to ‘shut Twitter down in India.’

Under the pressure of Authoritarian regimes, social media giants unable to comply with its policies while contributing towards shutting down the dissent. Consequently lose its credibility as a reliable source of information. The pursuit of economic interests in India by social media apps over its own crafted values will benefit these apps for short term. However, in long run, these apps will not be enjoying the same social media followers. This episode highlights the imperative for information dissemination channels to uphold their principles steadfastly in the fight against disinformation, preventing the exploitation of these channels for nefarious state-centric agendas. Only then, the social media will be able to maintain its status as a reliable communication source.

Unmasking Digital Deception – OpEd

January 1, 2024 0 Comments

By Syeda Tahreem Bukhari and Abdul Basit Noor

https://www.eurasiareview.com/01012024-unmasking-digital-deception-oped/?utm_source=pocket_saves

eurasiareview.com · January 1, 2024

Information technologies are emerging as powerful instruments in unconventional warfare. Social media platforms are often weaponized by states to project themselves as responsible, while discrediting their opponents as belligerent via disinformation and propaganda to mold public opinion in their interest.

The Indian government, for instance, offers social media platforms a large market which it has used as leverage to regulate the content on these platforms as a form of censorship. Not only that but branches of the Indian military have also been involved in propagating disinformation campaigns that are dangerous for Kashmiri journalists. Silencing journalists through social media platforms is just one of many strategies that the Indian government and military have adopted alongside blocking news channels, charging reporters with terrorism, and raiding their homes and offices. All of these activities create an atmosphere of fear for those engaging in nonpartisan reporting

On September 26, 2023, the Washington Post published an investigative report titled, ‘Under India’s pressure, Facebook let propaganda and hate speech thrive.’ The report exposed fake social media accounts run by the Indian Army’s Chinar Corps, stationed in Jammu and Kashmir. These accounts were used by the Indian military to praise its own activities in Indian held Kashmir while accusing Kashmiri journalists of promoting dissent and separatism. The activities of the army including the dissemination of disinformation, posed a significant threat to journalists working in the Kashmir region.

The unveiling of Chinar Corp’s controversy substantiates the EU Disinfo Lab report, “Indian Chronicles”. A result of 15 years of work, this report revealed India’s involvement in over 750 counterfeit media outlets spanning 119 countries, cases of identity theft, the manipulation of more than 10 UN Human Rights Council accredited Non-Governmental Organizations, and the registration of more than 550 fraudulent websites. The primary objective of these efforts was to bolster India’s global influence and reputation while simultaneously creating feelings of animosity against China and Pakistan.

The Chinar Corps controversy highlights India’s attempts to construct a facade of normalcy in Kashmir through fake social media accounts and crack down on freedom of expression. This repression specifically targets Kashmiri journalists, deploying smear campaigns and framing critical reporting as an act of treason. Furthermore, the personal information of independent journalists was disseminated via anonymous Twitter accounts, such as “Traitors of Kashmir” and “Kashmir Traitors.” Instead to cast positive image of the Indian administration of Jammu and Kashmir, after the revocation of article 370, for international audiences, fake accounts of journalists surfaced on social media outlets hailing development in Kashmir. Among these journalists, was Jibran Nazir whose fake account appraises the Indian government’s abrogation of Article 370 linking it to the development in Kashmir with hashtags such as New Kashmir or Naya Kashmir.

Facebook’s Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB) unit was responsible for exposing networks using fake and duplicate accounts. The CIB unit in India failed to address the issue as the ruling BJP seeks to maintain a presence of like-minded individuals within tech companies that wield considerable influence over public opinion. When the U.S.-based supervisor of the CIB unit of Facebook expressed its intent to delete these network accounts, executives in the New Delhi office resisted while citing concerns about antagonizing the Indian government. Their apprehensions were about the possibility to be imprisoned for treason. This prolonged delay spanned over three years, endangering the safety of Kashmiri journalists. The propaganda by ruling government in India via disinformation campaign worked effectively until the removal of fake Facebook accounts urged by the company’s CIB team in the United States.

Due to declining democratic values, India is characterized as “one of the worst autocratizers in last 10 years” by the V-Dem report 2023. Press freedom is among the basic pillars of democracy and the crackdown on journalists in India has resulted in the country falling from 150 to 161 out of 180 countries in this year’s Press Freedom Index. Reporters Without Borders has also expressed concerns about the systematic use of fake content by political actors for extensive propaganda and disinformation campaigns.

The ruling government in India is exploiting social media platforms to achieve its nefarious political objectives, specifically the propagation of hate against minorities. The Wall Street Journal report published on August 14, 2020, confirms that Facebook was hosting content by members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) aimed at promoting hate speech against Muslims.

The Indian government is also taking the personal data of the users from social media platforms to shut down dissent. In this regard, the Jammu and Kashmir Police reportedly collaborates with major social media platforms, including WhatsApp, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Snapchat, Telegram, and TikTok, to track individuals whose content appears to be critical of India on these respective platforms. In the first half of 2022, the government of India requested user data 55,497 times and 66.59 percent of these requests were pursued by Meta. Data sharing in this manner not only infringes on freedom of expression but also egregiously violates the security policies of social media platforms, which ensure that data is secure and will not be shared with any third party.

The Washington Post’s report also highlights the controversy surrounding the ‘Human Rights Impact Assessment’ (HRIA) report on addressing hate content in India. While Meta published HRIA reports for Myanmar and other Asian countries, it was compelled not to share the full findings and analysis of the report for India. Instead, only a four-page summary was provided, apparently intended to obscure concerns raised by the Foley Hoag law firm.

The effective use of media has been playing a substantial role in the pursuance of national interests of the nation states. It becomes empirically evident that all fronts of media play critical role in influencing the minds of people and shutting down the dissent. The intensified scrutiny and suppression of journalists inevitably exacerbate the constriction of avenues through which information can be disseminated to the global community.

In an interview with a US-based YouTube channel, Jack Dorsey the former CEO of Twitter highlighted the threats that the platform received from India during the Farmers’ Protests. The government asked Twitter to remove over 1000 accounts critical of the government’s actions. To compel Twitter to remove the account, members of the BJP threatened to ‘shut Twitter down in India.’

Under the pressure of Authoritarian regimes, social media giants unable to comply with its policies while contributing towards shutting down the dissent. Consequently lose its credibility as a reliable source of information. The pursuit of economic interests in India by social media apps over its own crafted values will benefit these apps for short term. However, in long run, these apps will not be enjoying the same social media followers. This episode highlights the imperative for information dissemination channels to uphold their principles steadfastly in the fight against disinformation, preventing the exploitation of these channels for nefarious state-centric agendas. Only then, the social media will be able to maintain its status as a reliable communication source.

About the authors:

Syeda Tahreem Bukhari is a Research Officer at the Centre for International Strategic Studies-AJK. A NESA Alumni and an MPhil Scholar in Peace and Conflict Studies from National Defence University, Islamabad.
Abdul Basit is an Associate Research Officer at Strategic Stability Desk, Center for International Strategic Studies, AJK. A NESA Alumnus and a graduate student of International Relations from National Defence University, Islamabad.

eurasiareview.com · January 1, 2024

17. Wartime Command & Control

Obviously an important issue. One of the things I think we overlook is ensuring that decision making authority is at the correct lowest level. We seem to always default to raising the level of decision authority to higher levels especially for complex and/or sensitive operations when in fact better decisions might be made at the "correct lowest level."

I think paragraph 5 of the OpOrder/Oplan should include a key decision making analysis to determine the key decisions that need to be made at various levels with the goal to push decisions to the correct lowest level.

Excerpts:

The acquisition of and training on command and control (C2) tools—computers, radios, and software—became confused with the requirement for continuous training in the operational art of and methods for effective control of forces. [Emphasis added.]1

For both command and control, leader/manager authorities should be delegated to the maximum extent possible. Decision advantage is often thought of as something technology can deliver; this is a core tenet of Project Overmatch, but technological solutions will have little effect if authorities remain centralized with high-level commanders or inside individual staffs.2

Delegating authorities to lower levels increases the velocity of effects in the operational plan. It reduces the adversary’s opportunity to degrade control of forces by interdicting communications.

Reasons not to delegate authority can include subordinate commanders or commands not being trained appropriately, limited or nonexistent ability to communicate action and intent, and a lack of resources to act on delegated authorities. Solutions to these challenges exist, but they are more easily adopted before a fight. Waiting until a conflict has begun will increase the fog and uncertainty. But sometimes, plans must be improvised after the shooting starts.

...

Summary

Joint power, capacity, and capabilities must be centralized under joint command authorities. Mission, function, and task authorities must be assigned with the clarity and certainty provided by operational and tactical control constructs. Devolving to supported/supporting constructs is a leading indicator of insufficient resources for the missions assigned. Mission command, with its supporting commander’s intent, ensures unity of command and effort when control mechanisms are interdicted or overwhelmed. Control is separate and distinct but related to command. And judicious delegation of authority helps sustain the velocity of action, protecting decision superiority.

A war such as the one in this scenario would be demanding, lethal, and risk-filled. To prevail, commanders must remember these historical tenets of command and control, applying them with the knowledge that war complicates everything. As Albert Einstein might have advised, C2 must be as simple as possible, and no simpler.

The War of 2026 scenario demands rethinking both command and control with mission command a central tenet.

By Admiral Scott Swift, U.S. Navy (Retired)

January 2024 Proceedings Vol. 150/1/1,451

usni.org · January 1, 2024

Analyzing command and control (C2)—whether in an academic environment, a wargame or exercise debrief, or through a historical lens—can be an interesting but often sterile endeavor. Which senior leader made what decision based on what information available at which time? Which side put the right leaders in command with the proper control mechanisms and the authorities to act to gain decision advantage over the adversary? These are weighty but often lofty discussions.

There is nothing lofty and everything weighty about command and control in the 2026 scenario. It will be visceral and pressurized, with constant life-and-death decisions. As the scenario states, the stakes “are enormous—much greater than at any time since the Cold War or even World War II—and carry extraordinary implications. . . . ‘Business as usual’ is not viable.” Commanders at all levels will have to make the hardest decisions of their lives, often with limited time to think and with thousands of lives on the line.

What follows is a discussion of C2 based on years of study and experience in exercises and wargames focused on the western Pacific. I cannot pretend to have lived through—never mind led through—a war of this intensity. But U.S. and allied commanders must stretch their imaginations now to inform C2 relationships before such a scenario ever becomes a reality.

Initial Thoughts

It is important to explain command and control and its application, structure, execution, and management. The military mind tends to align things in vertical priorities, authorities, and responsibilities, so breaking C2 into a vertical, hierarchical context is the norm. That structuring takes the form of echelons of commands and formations and phases of competition and war.

The military does not do well with horizontal constraints and variables other than, perhaps, time. Even regarding time, services and commands focus on the near term—what needs to be done today, inclined toward crisis planning and crisis response rehearsals. When a longer view is taken, too often it does not inform near-term planning and actions. It expresses a desired end-state rather than a horizon for a long-term sequence of events; it remains, in other words, a variable that affects operational and tactical concerns, not strategic ones. Or, at the very least, it does not connect the operational and tactical considerations closely and sequentially with the strategic ones.

During World War II, Admiral Chester Nimitz delegated authority to subordinate commanders to the maximum extent possible. He also updated his commander’s intent often so that they understood the “why” and the risk/reward calculus. U.S. Naval Institute Archives

Increasing a commander’s planning and action horizon is critical to moving beyond reactive actions derived from direct, objective observations of enemy activity. For a commander and his or her assigned forces to succeed, they must anticipate enemy actions, maneuvering their forces to positions of advantage in space, time, and configuration. There are tools to achieve this ideal. Cycles of planning, assessments, and action are intended to drive the velocity of war to one’s advantage. They are designed to meld the science of objective planning with the art of subjective alternatives in a structured, repeatable process. Commanders and staffs train to use these tools but often fail to apply them in execution. Enemy actions and own-force friction cause timelines for action to collapse; planning timelines follow; and decision timelines become product-based rather than process-based. Enemy effects take root in U.S. commanders’ processes.

Leadership is a critical element of command and control, but talking about leadership is insufficient without discussing its relationship to management. When an operation is going smoothly and according to plan, C2 activities are best described as “managing the plan.” When an operation does not go smoothly, however, or when the plan is flawed or planning assumptions are proven to be false, those who would have managed the plan’s execution must now lead to adjust it—changing or even abandoning the plan based on emergent realities. The overall mission may remain unchanged and its functions consistent, but time constraints will force changes, which are driven by the leaders’ experience and subjective analysis.

Command and control is not a unified concept. Command is related to, but distinctly different from, control. They are characterized as a single construct—C2—but this can cause confusion, even more so when they are combined with “communications” and “computers” in the “C4” construct. In 2002, then Seventh Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Robert Willard defined the terms this way: “Command is the doctrinal assignment of authority. Possessing a measure of command is a prerequisite to exerting control. Control is defined as guiding the operation.” He noted:

The acquisition of and training on command and control (C2) tools—computers, radios, and software—became confused with the requirement for continuous training in the operational art of and methods for effective control of forces. [Emphasis added.]1

For both command and control, leader/manager authorities should be delegated to the maximum extent possible. Decision advantage is often thought of as something technology can deliver; this is a core tenet of Project Overmatch, but technological solutions will have little effect if authorities remain centralized with high-level commanders or inside individual staffs.2

Delegating authorities to lower levels increases the velocity of effects in the operational plan. It reduces the adversary’s opportunity to degrade control of forces by interdicting communications.

Reasons not to delegate authority can include subordinate commanders or commands not being trained appropriately, limited or nonexistent ability to communicate action and intent, and a lack of resources to act on delegated authorities. Solutions to these challenges exist, but they are more easily adopted before a fight. Waiting until a conflict has begun will increase the fog and uncertainty. But sometimes, plans must be improvised after the shooting starts.

A War for More Than Regional Hegemony

The War of 2026 scenario describes a struggle for regional hegemony and Taiwan, with implications for leadership of the world order. The “why,” therefore, is to defeat China’s ability to replace or displace the current international rules-based order through force and coercion. As the fighting begins, the lead national security functions must shift from the State Department to the Department of Defense. The application of military planning and effects that would have been ongoing will take priority, but they will not replace discourse, dialogue, and diplomacy.

Centers of gravity assessment and determination are critical to formulating relevant command, control, and rules of engagement. An ongoing risk-to-mission assessment must determine when there are more impediments to success than enablers. This assessment guides policy and rules of engagement (ROE) decisions that, when timely and informed, can empower friendly objectives.

A context for determining the scenario centers of gravity is found in the following statements. The U.S. and allied strategic goals are to (1) defend Taiwan by ensuring; (2) Taiwan remains autonomous; (3) China is defeated militarily; and (4) China is isolated politically and economically.

The first objective (defending Taiwan) is an outcome of achieving the second and third objectives (Taiwan remains autonomous and China is militarily defeated). The second and third objectives should be assigned to DoD as the supported authority. The fourth should be retained by the State Department as the supported authority.

Objective two should be clarified in the context of China’s stated military operation “to restore the integrity of Greater China.” This People’s Liberation Army (PLA) operation to reunify Taiwan with China is broadly referred to as the Joint Island Landing Campaign (JILC).3 Defeating this campaign is a more appropriate military mission than defeating the PLA. DoD would assign this clarified objective (mission) to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (Indo-PaCom).

Command is the structure operational commanders use to exercise their authorities to pursue assigned missions. Higher authority assigns and delegates missions to subordinates. The functions that enable mission success include: movement, maneuver, intelligence, fires, sustainment, and protection. Tasks within the functions are actions that create the necessary effects to achieve the assigned mission.

Command is executed through control mechanisms. Broadly those mechanisms are provided by the man, train, and equip functions of the service chiefs and endorsed by the Secretary of Defense through the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process. They are codified in law through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Scenario Command Considerations

In a war with China, U.S. commanders’ ability to communicate up, down, and across echelons would be hampered significantly. Planning for and exercising graceful degradation before the conflict will be a key to success. U.S. Navy (Ryre Aciaga)

Command structures, authorities, and protocols should be built for the worst-case environment for exercising command over fielded forces. The command environment in this scenario will be the most contested since World War II. Each side takes an opposing philosophical approach to command, one embracing decentralization as a core strength, the other treating it as a core weakness. It is incumbent that U.S. command structures are built on a decentralized foundation of mission command.

Mission Command / Commander’s Intent

According to the 2020 Joint Staff paper “Mission Command,” the subject is philosophically focused on the art of war and is defined as “the conduct of military operations through decentralized execution based on mission-type orders.” The paper goes on to say mission command “exploits the human elements of trust, force of will, intuition, judgement, and creativity, exercised through disciplined initiative.”4 This is why delegating authority must be a commander’s routine practice. If not practiced in times of stability and clarity, it will not happen in the chaos and fog of war.

The underpinning document that provides order and clarity to mission command is commander’s intent. Mission command is a concept, and commander’s intent provides its structure. Often described as what constitutes success for the operation, commander’s intent highlights the purpose, key tasks, and conditions that define the end-state. This view, however, lacks an essential understanding of the different time horizons required to deal with peer competition, crisis, and conflict. Commander’s intent should be conditions-based on a horizon of interest relevant to the engaged forces. These changing conditions extend from the strategic to tactical levels, include risk/advantage to force and mission, and cross all functions of warfare, including movement, maneuver, intelligence, fires, sustainment, and protection. For the past 30 years, U.S. commanders have had the luxury of time continuums that are too long for this scenario at the tactical level.

Success requires breaking down tactical operations into shorter time frames, aligning the focus of engaged forces to the battle conditions they will experience. At the operational and strategic levels, where the echelon I and II commanders and staffs function, longer time horizons will be the norm. The days of Operations Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Enduring Freedom (OEF), where all echelons often functioned at the tactical edge, are informative but not instructive. Those who do not command at the echelon they are assigned will not succeed.

Mission is an end-state—in this case defeating the Chinese JILC. Commander’s intent, however, is conditions-based. Initially, it might be “Create the conditions to deter the PLA’s campaign to take Taiwan.” If the PLA is not deterred, commander’s intent must change. When to transmit the updated intent depends on available communications.

For these reasons, commander’s intent should be part of a running assessment. It should be a living document, changed and updated as battle conditions change and reissued as the communications allow. It should be concise for ease of transmission, and unambiguous to subordinate commands that may not have the benefit of knowing the conditions that drove the changes.

Command Relationships

Unique and shared command responsibilities will have to be negotiated with the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs across combatant and functional commanders. With global authorities and responsibilities, U.S. Strategic Command, Space Command, Special Operations Command, Transportation Command, and Cyber Command all will be operating in the theater. Adjacent combatant commands—Central Command, Africa Command, European Command, Southern Command, and Northern Command—all have coordinating equities. With every combatant and functional command engaged, command authorities must be as simple as possible.

Because the outcomes of this conflict are critical, combatant, operational, and tactical control of forces must be the rule. Joint Publication 1 notes that all three have unique attributes, but all have a common critical element—assigned authority to organize and employ commands and forces as the commander considers necessary to accomplish assigned missions.5 These authorities, centralized in theater commanders, are critical to sustaining the clarity, accountability, and responsibility for success of the missions assigned to counter the PLA. Specifically, authorities include those to “plan for, deploy, direct, control, and coordinate the actions of subordinate forces.”6 Power delegated is power applied.

Supported/Supporting

The supported/supporting command relationship should be avoided. It is applied when there are more missions than forces assigned can support and more tasks than resources available. If this was not the case, then operational or tactical control authorities would be applied. These authorities are “by design, a somewhat vague but very flexible arrangement.”7 Joint Publication-1 further states: “When a supporting commander cannot fulfill the needs of the supported commander, the establishing authority will be notified by either the supported or a supporting commander. The establishing authority is responsible for determining a solution.”8 In this scenario, this “vague but very flexible arrangement” will increase the workload of overtasked senior commanders.

If operational tempo is low to moderate, supporting/supported command authorities work well to allow a supporting commander to serve under resourced commanders. As operational tempo increases, however, the available bandwidth of senior commanders and their staffs decreases, reducing their ability to adjudicate supporting or supported commanders’ conflicting support. As a result, these adjudication priorities are determined by default rather than design, with subordinate commanders making decisions without necessary experience, intelligence, operational insight, or authority. Without the preponderance of force and internal logistics lines, supported/supporting command relationships are high risk.

Joint Command Structure

Commander, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, should be authorized as the joint force commander (JFC), responsible for mission achievement, but no single service can win this fight. Missions must be centralized through multiservice joint command structures. Functions must be joint, drawing on capability distributed across all services. Tasks must be assigned to joint formations based on the highest probability of success with the least risk to force/mission and lowest cost in resources required.

The JFC would establish subordinate command elements with assigned subordinate missions in specific areas of operations. Those missions would inform the establishment of joint operations areas providing geographic boundaries of assigned missions, authorities, responsibilities, functions, tasks, and risks. One of these command elements would be the commander, joint task force (CJTF), subordinate to the JFC.

CJTFs have the authority to establish and assign missions and authorities to subordinate task force (TF) commanders. These can be domain-based, such as joint force maritime component commander, joint force land component commander, etc. In this scenario, the CJTF should establish them based on mission or function. An example of a mission-based TF would be to establish freedom of maneuver to conduct fires in support of CJTF mission objectives. A function-based TF would be ordered to provide logistical support to other TFs.

Multinational Operations and Interagency Coordination

Command and control is often thought of as a unified concept. But the tools of control, including computers and datalinks, are enablers of command—not command itself. Shutterstock

Another advantage of joint command concepts is that their design accommodates multinational operations and interagency coordination.9 Applied command concepts are most likely to succeed if practiced, exercised, and tested on a regular basis. There is deterrent value in these actions as well, demonstrating will, commitment, capability, and capacity. This is true with respect to operating with key allies as well, but too often allies are not assumed to be part of the command structure. Decisions about command constructs are often deferred—to be determined as the conflict develops. This is dangerous. U.S. and allied forces in the Indo-Pacific should commit to a structure now. Test and exercise it with an eye to increasing confidence in it. Apply an ongoing combined assessment of the structure with recommended changes and improvements based on a rigorous assessment of what works and what does not.

Success in this scenario requires exploring options before such a war breaks out to develop the highest level of integration possible between the United States and Taiwan. Cooperation with Taiwan may be the best that can be achieved, but this is just the first for four critical levels of integration. Cooperative organizations remain separate, conducting independent operations but cooperating to be aware of the timing, tempo, and intention of each other’s independent operations.

Coordination is the next level of integration. Coordinated organizations may share staff. Even liaison staff are of great value. The goal is to adjust the timing, tempo, and intention of operations to ensure conflicts are minimized and to optimize independent operations when possible.

The next higher level is collaboration. While command functions are not integrated in the U.S. joint context, U.S. and allied command staffs could be collocated to collaborate during operational planning and execution.

The ideal state is combined operations with full staff integration. On a multinational level, NATO is a good example, while Combined Forces Command Korea demonstrates bilateral integration.

Decentralized Control and Execution

These command structures—formed according to the tenets of mission, function, and task—avoid the temptation of senior commanders to place priority or preeminence on specific capabilities to be used by subordinate commanders. It requires seniors to give subordinates the mission, commander’s intent, and broad mission orders, reinforced with clear operational control and tactical control authorities over forces assigned.

Delegating the latitude to plan how to accomplish missions with the resources assigned will ensure unity of command and effort and optimize resources. No one warfare area or capability should be the primary focus of any commander.

Rules of Engagement

Rules of engagement are defined as “directives issued by competent military authority that delineate the circumstances and limitations under which United States forces will initiate and/or continue combat engagement with other forces encountered.”10 The key words are circumstances and limitations. ROE can diminish the efficiency and effectiveness of military operations. When this occurs, it is incumbent on military commanders to inform civilian leaders of the effects on risk to mission and force. Discussions of ROE ensure all the implications—both intended and otherwise—are fully understood. This requirement underscores the importance of ROE so that law-of-war (justice in war) principles such as military necessity, discrimination, and proportionality are fully adhered to.11 When a commander assesses that the ROE provides insufficient latitude for success, he or she must inform civilian leaders—who determine the rules—of the risk.

Complying with ROE also emphasizes the centrality of civil authority over military operations. Core to ROE is ensuring all military operations are fully compliant with international law; and guided by restraints (must not do) and constraints (must do) of U.S. civil government authorities. Multinational operations require a clear understanding of the application and implications of every participating nation’s ROE caveats.

Control Considerations

With a clear delineation between command and control, control considerations become more distinct—as Admiral Willard put it, the ability to guide combat operations and forces. This is the amalgamation of software, hardware, and people to deploy, employ, and optimize C5ISR. These are the enabling capabilities and tools of command.

In OEF and OIF, the control environment was much less contested than the one envisioned in this scenario. The implications of control mechanisms in this scenario are just as critical as the command structures. Control capabilities and tools should be built to support the worst-case environment for exercising command over fielded forces in denied areas. Project Overmatch is an example of an effort designed to provide hardened battle networks to operate in contested environments.

Understanding PLA capabilities to interdict U.S. and allied control mechanisms allows hardware, software, and training to support best-case practices as well as worst-case fallback protocols. Systems, plans, and training must account for the graceful degradation of control, with the attendant implications to command.

To best hedge against the enemy’s capability to interdict control mechanisms, commanders must habitually delegate authority, practice mission command, and frequently update commander’s intent. Cross- or in-echelon command structures and practices must be ready to take over when down- or up-echelon command structures are no longer available.

Summary

Joint power, capacity, and capabilities must be centralized under joint command authorities. Mission, function, and task authorities must be assigned with the clarity and certainty provided by operational and tactical control constructs. Devolving to supported/supporting constructs is a leading indicator of insufficient resources for the missions assigned. Mission command, with its supporting commander’s intent, ensures unity of command and effort when control mechanisms are interdicted or overwhelmed. Control is separate and distinct but related to command. And judicious delegation of authority helps sustain the velocity of action, protecting decision superiority.

A war such as the one in this scenario would be demanding, lethal, and risk-filled. To prevail, commanders must remember these historical tenets of command and control, applying them with the knowledge that war complicates everything. As Albert Einstein might have advised, C2 must be as simple as possible, and no simpler.

usni.org · January 1, 2024

18. Asian American Officials Cite Unfair Scrutiny and Lost Jobs in China Spy Tensions

We have to get this right. We will lose too much talent and undermine our values if we get this wrong.

Asian American Officials Cite Unfair Scrutiny and Lost Jobs in China Spy Tensions

By Edward Wong and Amy Qin

Edward Wong reports on diplomacy and national security from Washington. Amy Qin covers Asian American issues from Washington. They previously reported from China for about two decades in total.

The New York Times · by Amy Qin · December 31, 2023

National security employees with ties to Asia say U.S. counterintelligence officers wrongly regard them as potential spies and ban them from jobs.

“I know dozens of diplomats who have lost out on getting assignments to China, Hong Kong and Vietnam,” said Yuki Kondo-Shah, a diplomat in London who successfully fought an assignment restriction placed on her for Japan.Credit...Mary Turner for The New York Times

By Edward Wong and

Edward Wong reports on diplomacy and national security from Washington. Amy Qin covers Asian American issues from Washington. They previously reported from China for about two decades in total.

Dec. 31, 2023, 5:02 p.m. ET

When Thomas Wong set foot in the United States Embassy in Beijing this summer for a new diplomatic posting, it was vindication after years of battling the State Department over a perceived intelligence threat — himself.

Diplomatic Security officers had informed him when he joined the foreign service more than a decade ago that they were banning him from working in China. In a letter, he said, they wrongly cited the vague potential for undue “foreign preference” and suggested he could be vulnerable to “foreign influence.”

Mr. Wong had become a U.S. diplomat thinking that China was where he could have the greatest impact. He had grown up in a Chinese-speaking household and studied in the country. And as a graduate of West Point who had done an Army tour in the Balkans, he thought he had experience that could prove valuable in navigating relations with the United States’ greatest military and economic rival.

As he looked into the ban, he discovered that other diplomats — including many Asian American ones — faced similar restrictions. Security officers never gave the exact reasons, and they made the decisions in secret based on information gathered during the initial security clearance process. Thousands of diplomats have been affected by restrictions over the years.

Similar issues range across U.S. government agencies involved in foreign policy and national security. In the growing espionage shadow war between the United States and China, some American federal employees with ties to Asia, even distant ones, say they are being unfairly scrutinized by U.S. counterintelligence and security officers and blocked from jobs in which they could help bolster American interests.

The paranoia weakens the United States, they say, by preventing qualified employees from serving in diplomatic missions, intelligence units and other critical posts where their fluent language skills or cultural background would be useful.

This story is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials from multiple national security agencies and a review of dozens of Defense Department documents on security clearance cases.

The concerns, most loudly voiced by Asian American diplomats, are urgent enough that U.S. lawmakers passed bipartisan legislation in December to try constraining some practices at the State Department. The military spending bill of Dec. 14 includes language pushed by Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, intended to make the department more transparent in its assignment restriction and review processes.

“We should be asking ourselves how to deal with the risk, not cutting off the people who have the best skills from serving altogether,” Mr. Wong said. “That’s a self-inflicted wound.”

The State Department eventually reversed the ban on Mr. Wong after he and others raised the issue internally. Similarly, the State Department has lifted 1,400 assignment restrictions during the Biden administration, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken this year announced an end to the practice.

But there are still bars for officials to clear. Today, some 625 State Department employees remain under the ban, according to department data released to The New York Times. The agency did not explain why. In addition, counterintelligence officers can recommend bans after investigating employees with job offers to countries, most prominently China, judged to pose special intelligence threats.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announced this year an end to the practice of assignment restrictions, but hurdles remain.

At the F.B.I., two counterintelligence officers said separately that they were persecuted by colleagues because of their China background, according to interviews and documents examined by The Times and reported here for the first time.

Similar fears of Chinese espionage in American institutions led to the creation of the Justice Department’s China Initiative during the Trump administration, when the F.B.I. investigated many ethnic Chinese scientists inside and outside the U.S. government whom federal agents suspected of illegally aiding China. In some cases where the Justice Department was unable to find evidence of espionage, officials brought lesser charges, only to drop them — but not before damage was done to the scientists’ reputations and careers. The department shut down the China Initiative in 2022.

The processes inside the national security agencies have existed since before the China Initiative and occur in the secretive world of vetting for security clearances and assignments. Because these inquiries are not public criminal investigations, they have gotten less public attention.

Critics of the bans say an American with family members in China is no more susceptible to becoming a Chinese intelligence asset than anyone else. And they say the U.S. government has failed to catch up to a population that has undergone vast demographic shifts in recent decades. One in four children in America has at least one immigrant parent, compared with 13 percent about 20 years ago. China remains a top country of origin for newly naturalized American citizens.

Government employees have little control over those family circumstances. Some U.S. officials argue, however, that security clearance denials or job restrictions are still justified because of the Chinese government’s record of putting pressure on some foreign citizens by detaining or harassing family members in China.

Legislation in 2021 cited State Department data showing the agency had placed the most restrictions for posts in China, followed by Russia, Taiwan and Israel. Some Russian American diplomats also have been affected.

The State Department said in a statement that it does not practice discrimination based on race, ethnicity or national origin, and that Mr. Blinken is determined to build a diverse workforce. It also said its counterintelligence processes are based on guidelines from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and 13 criteria outlined in the Foreign Affairs Manual.

Senior Asian American officials do work throughout U.S. agencies, including on Asia policy. Vice President Kamala Harris’s mother is from India, and Katherine Tai, whose parents are from Taiwan, is the U.S. trade representative, a cabinet post.

But Representative Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey and a former State Department diplomat, said Asian American employees from across the government have approached him with concerns about the “constant specter hanging over them.”

As a State Department employee, Representative Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, was barred from working on issues involving the Korean Peninsula.Credit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

Mr. Kim, who is Korean American, got a State Department letter a dozen years ago saying he was barred from working on issues involving the Korean Peninsula.

“It was one of the most disrespectful, humiliating experiences of my career,” he said.

Counterintelligence Hunt

Many federal government agencies have their own internal security unit that conducts investigations into employees, often without notifying the employee or giving any insight into their process. In the F.B.I., the unit conducts polygraph tests and can recommend that the department withhold or revoke an employee’s security clearance.

At the State Department, security officers would use information gleaned during regular background checks for security clearance to determine whether or not to take the extraordinary step of putting an assignment restriction into the file of a diplomat.

For many U.S. officials, obtaining the initial top-secret security clearance is an intrusive process, but is needed for their jobs. Applicants list their ties in foreign countries and subject themselves to a microscopic review of their personal relationships, former employers, financial history and lifestyle. Security officers can deny or revoke a clearance for reasons like holding large debt or recent illegal drug use.

The bar that certain federal employees and contractors have to clear appears to have risen as concerns have grown about China’s espionage capabilities. Public documents posted online by the Defense Department show how in the vetting of security clearances for individual federal contractors, the assessments of China’s spying efforts over the past two decades have grown longer and more detailed, according to a review by The Times of more than three dozen of the documents.

The State Department said in a statement that it does not practice discrimination based on race, ethnicity or national origin.Credit...Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Applicants with ties to China face a “very heavy burden” of persuasion that they are not potential intelligence threats, the decisions often say.

In one 2020 decision, a 24-year-old engineer for a defense contractor who immigrated to the United States from China in middle school was described by an administrative judge as a “loyal American citizen” who lived a “typically American lifestyle.” But his ties to family members in China, while “perfectly normal,” also posed a “heightened risk of manipulation or inducement,” the judge wrote. His appeal for clearance was denied.

In another case from 2022, a man who was born in the United States and worked for a defense contractor was denied a clearance because of his wife’s Chinese relatives. The judge acknowledged that “coercion is rare,” but added that “it does occur, and there is little that China would not do to further its goals.”

Mark Zaid, a lawyer who has represented hundreds of government employees fighting agencies on security clearance decisions, said “there’s no doubt that Asians bear the brunt of that scrutiny more so than many others.”

Susan Gough, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said that security clearance determination is a “risk-based decision,” and that the department aims to verify each employee “is worthy of the special trust granted to them on behalf of our nation.”

Several public cases have revealed counterintelligence overreach within federal departments. In November 2022, Sherry Chen, a China-born American hydrologist who worked on flood forecasting, won a $1.8 million settlement from the Commerce Department after officials there accused her of unlawfully downloading sensitive government data and falsely portrayed her as a spy for China. They based their suspicions on a brief exchange she had with a former classmate who was also a local Chinese official. The F.B.I. arrested her, but prosecutors eventually dropped charges.

“They have a mindset that you are a spy, and all they want to do is prove their theory,” Ms. Chen said in an interview.

Sherry Chen, a China-born American hydrologist, won a $1.8 million settlement from the Commerce Department after officials there falsely portrayed her as a spy for China.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

In 2021, a Senate committee released a report about the Commerce Department’s security unit that revealed Ms. Chen was one of many Chinese American employees who had been unlawfully investigated.

The report concluded that the unit had functioned as a “rogue, unaccountable police force,” and that it had broadly targeted offices with “comparably high proportions of Asian American employees.”

‘The Stigma Around China’

Even government officers who work on China counterintelligence are sometimes perceived as potential threats by security officials. They say those parts of their background that give them a familiarity with China unfairly mark them in the eyes of officials as possible spies.

Chris Wang became a counterintelligence analyst in the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles field office after graduating from the University of California at Davis. Although he got a top-secret security clearance, he was handed a letter on his first day in 2011 stating he was being placed in a special internal surveillance program known as PARM, in which his contacts, travels and computer use would be scrutinized by security officials. He would also be subject to frequent polygraph tests and interviews, according to a copy of the letter Mr. Wang shared with The Times.

“Your foreign contacts and foreign travel create a heightened risk of foreign exploitation,” it said.

Mr. Wang had trained under Chinese martial arts teachers in California and had done a half-year of undergraduate study in Shanghai.

A newly hired counterintelligence analyst in the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles field office in 2011 was told he was being placed in a special internal surveillance program because of his “foreign contacts and foreign travel.” He had trained under Chinese martial arts teachers in California and studied for half a year in Shanghai.Credit...Jake Michaels for The New York Times

His supervisors assigned him to counterintelligence on China. Then he lost access to the most sensitive information after failing a polygraph test; he said he was nervous because he feared being wrongly accused of having nefarious China ties.

While he passed a subsequent polygraph test and security interview to become an agent, Mr. Wang quit in 2020, after officials told him they would do an administrative inquiry into him, he said.

“Because of the stigma around China, Chinese Americans are more likely to be put in a box even if their associations are innocent in nature,” Mr. Wang said.

Another former F.B.I. officer who worked in counterintelligence, Jason Lee, said he was suing the agency for discrimination and for using national security as a cover for abusive behavior. At one point, he said, a polygraph test interrogator noted that Mr. Lee’s father also worked in a sensitive government job and wrongly accused him of being part of a “father-son Chinese spy ring.” Mr. Lee said that infuriated him and caused him to fail the test.

The F.B.I. declined to comment on specific cases but said it conducts polygraph tests fairly. It also said that “diversity is a core value” and that it fosters an environment where employees “are respected, are encouraged to be who they are, and are afforded every opportunity to thrive.”

Diplomacy Denied

At the State Department, a group representing Asian American employees has worked to push the agency to overhaul assignment restrictions. That has led to laws since 2016 aimed at forcing changes.

Although the employees praise Mr. Blinken’s statement in March announcing a softening of restrictions, they worry about another limit still in place: the provision called assignment review, in which counterintelligence officers can recommend bans after a routine investigation of employees with offers for posts that department officials assert have special intelligence threats.

“It’s really problematic,” said Tina Wong, a vice president of the U.S. Foreign Service union.

The list of posts is classified, but The Times learned that in addition to China, it includes Russia, Vietnam and Israel, which is a U.S. partner.

Tina Wong, a vice president of the union for Foreign Service employees, described the process in which counterintelligence officers can recommend bans as “really problematic.” Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times

Stallion Yang, a diplomat whom the State Department once banned from working in Taiwan, has gathered data for the Asian American Foreign Affairs Association, an employee group, about officials up for postings to one of the special intelligence-threat countries. Since 2021, he said, he has tracked 22 cases of employees with ties to Asia who were under investigation for longer than the standard period of one month.

The association sent a letter to Mr. Blinken raising concerns. Last month, John Bass, the under secretary of state for management, replied in a letter obtained by The Times that of 391 assignment-review investigations in the last year, only nine had resulted in a recommendation of rejection.

But diplomats say the number does not take into account employees who moved on to other jobs after the investigations dragged on.

And beyond those concerns, there are aspiring diplomats who were cut out of jobs much earlier, even failing to get security clearance approval.

One China-born American, Ruiqi Zheng, 25, said the State Department told her she would be denied a security clearance even though she had begun a selective fellowship there. After a clearance process lasting almost two years, she was rejected in 2021 because of ties to family members and others abroad, she said.

“Everyone I knew told me that it was too good to be true, that America would never accept foreign-born Chinese Americans like me,” she said. “But I chose to trust the process.”

Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent who has reported for The Times for more than 24 years from New York, Baghdad, Beijing and Washington. He was on a team of Pulitzer Prize finalists for Iraq War coverage. More about Edward Wong

Amy Qin writes about Asian American communities for The Times. More about Amy Qin

The New York Times · by Amy Qin · December 31, 2023

19. Taiwan president says ties with China must be decided by will of the people

Asia Pacific

Taiwan president says ties with China must be decided by will of the people

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-president-says-ties-with-china-must-be-decided-by-will-people-2024-01-01/

Reuters

January 1, 202412:26 AM ESTUpdated a day ago

Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen attends the National Day celebration ceremony in Taipei, Taiwan October 10, 2023. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins Acquire Licensing Rights

TAIPEI, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Taiwan's relations with China must be decided by the will of the people and peace must be based on "dignity", President Tsai Ing-wen said on Monday after China's leader, Xi Jinping, said "reunification" with the island is inevitable.

China has been ramping up military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims over democratically governed Taiwan, which on Jan. 13 holds presidential and parliamentary elections.

Xi's comments, in a New Year's Eve address, struck a stronger tone than the previous year where he said only that people on either side of the Taiwan Strait are "members of one and the same family".

Asked about Xi's speech at a New Year's press conference at the presidential office in Taipei, Tsai said the most important principle on what course to follow on relations with China was democracy.

"This is taking the joint will of Taiwan's people to make a decision. After all, we are a democratic country," she said.

China should respect the outcome of Taiwan's election and it is the responsibility of both sides to maintain peace and stability in the strait, Tsai added.

China has cast the election as a choice between war and peace and has refused multiple offers of talks by Tsai, believing she is a separatist.

Tsai has made bolstering and modernising Taiwan's defences a priority, including pushing an indigenous submarine programme.

"Everyone's home has locks on them, which is not to provoke the neighbours next door but to make yourself safer. This is the same for the doors to the country. Taiwan's people want peace, but we want peace with dignity," she said.

Taiwan's government has repeatedly warned China is trying to interfere in the election, whether by using fake news or military or trade pressure, and Tsai said she hoped people could be on alert for this.

After China accused Taiwan of erecting trade barriers and ended some tariff cuts for the island, China last week threatened further economic measures.

Tsai said Taiwan's companies must look globally and diversify.

"This is the correct path, rather than going back to the path of relying on China, especially as in China's unstable market there is unpredictable risk," she said.

"We have always welcomed healthy, orderly interactions across the strait, but trade and economic exchanges cannot become a political tool."

China has taken particular exception to current Vice President Lai Ching-te, the presidential candidate for Taiwan's ruling Democratic Party (DPP) and who is leading in opinion polls by varying margins, saying he is also a dangerous separatist.

Both the DPP and Taiwan's largest opposition party the Kuomintang say only the island's people can decide their future.

Tsai cannot stand again after two terms in office. She will step down in May when the next president is sworn in.

Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Kim Coghill and Neil Fullick

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

20. The world should fear 2024

A sobering conclusion:

The world is living through its most dangerous moment in many decades, and the logic of events, in every theatre, leads towards further escalation over the year to come. In 2024, America’s fraught domestic interregnum will create a feedback loop with the already bloody global interregnum for the spoils of its empire. Last year was a hard year, drenched in blood and human misery through global conflict: but in retrospect, we may view it as the last golden summer of our world order, with the troubling storms still distant on the horizon. The coming year will be a historic one: we are right to dread its approach.

The world should fear 2024

Escalation lurks on every battlefield

BY ARIS ROUSSINOS

Aris Roussinos is an UnHerd columnist and a former war reporter.

arisroussinos

unherd.com · by Aris Roussinos · January 2, 2024

When asked in 2020 to envisage the world after Covid, Michel Houellebecq proclaimed, accurately enough, that “it will be the same, just a bit worse”. It does not take a soothsayer to foresee that the same will hold true for this coming year. The year 2023 saw the greatest global resurgence of armed conflict since 1945: 2024 will be worse. We are living, if not through a World War, then a world at war, the great post-globalisation jostling to divide up the spoils of what was once America’s unipolar imperium. This will be as epoch-defining a period as the late Forties were for Britain, or 1991 for Russia.

Unlike the two World Wars, the rival great powers are not challenging the superpower directly — at least, not yet. Instead, American hegemony is being challenged obliquely, as its rivals nibble at the edges of empire, targeting weaker client states in the confidence that the United States now possesses neither the logistical capacity nor the domestic political stability necessary to impose its order on the world. In the Nineties and 2000s, at the height of its unipolar moment, the United States made almost all the world its client state, writing cheques for their security it now struggles to cash: like bankruptcy, decline comes slowly at first, then all at once. The overriding theme of 2024 then, like 2023, will be that of imperial overstretch precipitating retreat from global dominance. From the Red Sea to the Donbas, the jungles of South America to the Far East, America’s security establishment finds itself struggling to contain local blazes that threaten to become a great conflagration.

Yet bad as things are, they could always be worse. We perhaps too easily forget that only six months ago, in the immediate wake of Prigozhin’s dramatic and unexpected rebellion, Russia’s security establishment was engaged in vigorous and public discussion over whether it was necessary to conduct a nuclear strike either in Ukraine, as a warning against the West, or against the West itself. So endemic has the sense of crisis, both globally and domestically, become that the most dangerous nuclear escalation since the Cold War went largely unremarked. We should be grateful that this moment passed, yet the fact it did pass is itself evidence of America’s weakening global position. The brief episode of nuclear anxiety came at a time when Putin’s Kremlin faced both an unprecedented internal threat and the risk of battlefield defeat, on the brink of Ukraine’s much-anticipated summer offensive. But the offensive, as we now know, faltered into a costly defeat for Ukraine, upturning the expected outcome of the war. For our now-lowered risk of nuclear war, Kyiv will pay a heavy price.

Like an inscrutable game of chess, the battle lines in Ukraine have barely moved this year, but expectations for the war’s outcome have been totally reversed. This time a year ago, the consensus was that the invasion was already a strategic defeat for Putin: his armies had proved unexpectedly ineffective on the battlefield, and had crumbled before Ukraine’s rapid autumn 2022 northeastern counteroffensive. Rather than breaking apart through its internal divisions, the Nato alliance had found a new sense of purpose, consolidating itself against the Russian threat and devoting vast quantities of already-existing and soon-to-be-produced materiel towards military victory. That mood of triumphalism has already passed. The promised war-winning Western increase in munitions production simply has not materialised, while Russia’s transition to a war economy, and its seizing of Western companies in response to a sanctions regime whose effects have proved the opposite to those intended, have granted Russia both renewed offensive potential and an economic boom to pay for it. The West imposed on Russia a war stimulus it should have embraced itself. It did not, and as a result this winter is a bleak one for Ukraine; but the year to come looks to be far worse.

Through 2023, Kyiv and its Western backers gambled a successful conclusion to the war on a single armoured thrust in the country’s southeast, punching through Russia’s defensive lines and threatening its hold on the Crimea and Black Sea coast, forcing a humbled Putin into peace negotiations. That gamble failed, and there is now no viable path towards the expansive definition of victory adopted by Zelenskyy at a more buoyant phase of the war. Along the northern border and behind the current lines in the East, Ukrainian forces are hurriedly digging defensive lines, hoping to blunt Russia’s resurgent offensive power in the same way Russia’s fortifications chewed up its own newly-formed and Nato-trained armoured brigades. The “mountain of steel” donated for the offensive by the West will not be repeated; the wave of enthusiastic volunteers who initially manned the lines has been replaced by increasingly unwilling conscripts, with Kyiv planning a further mobilisation of half a million men just to hold the line.

When Zelenskyy’s over-optimistic prognoses of the war’s conclusion were punctured by his military chief General Valerii Zaluzhny characterising the current state of play as a “stalemate”, it revealed growing internal political strife within the Kyiv leadership. But the hard reality is that now offensive momentum has passed to Russia, Ukraine forcing the war into a stalemate that will lead to peace negotiations looks as close to victory as will realistically be achieved. But as things stand, an increasingly confident Moscow shows no inclination towards peace talks without Ukraine making territorial and political concessions indistinguishable from surrender. That Zelenskyy’s senior advisors are floating the possibility of Putin’s sudden overthrow in Moscow as a possible path to victory shows the scale of the threat facing Kyiv. Short of a revolutionary deus ex machina in the Kremlin, the challenge for Ukraine in 2024 will be to hold its defensive lines, degrade Russia’s offensive power faster than its recruitment and industrial production can replace, and maintain the necessary political unity in Kyiv to steer the war towards the least painful conclusion possible. Of all these, perhaps the last will be the greatest challenge.

But as Kyiv struggles, the hegemon is already losing interest in Ukraine, distracted again by its decades-long enfeebling entanglement in the Middle East. Israel is both diplomatically and militarily dependent on the United States, but that relationship is not reflected in Netanyahu’s prosecution of his punitive war on Gaza. When US envoys beg Israel to scale down its war, Netanyahu immediately promises to intensify it. Even as American planners fret over the erosion of their precious munitions stockpiles by the Ukraine war, Israel is burning through US-donated supplies at an alarming rate. Until the US can increase its munitions production and replenish its arsenal, which may take years, every shell fired on Gaza or in eastern Ukraine weakens America’s deterrent power. The result will be the arms equivalent of the “hungry gap”, as its available military resources become increasingly unequal to its global commitments. This shortfall presents America’s rivals with a rare and unexpected window to challenge the superpower directly, in the knowledge that it will struggle to fight a high-intensity war of any great duration.

But if the logic of armaments production, as well as the diplomatic isolation and domestic outrage fuelled by the Gaza war, drives the United States to seek a swift resolution to the conflict, the logic of events leads towards escalation. The risk of the conflict widening to Lebanon has not abated — if anything, Israel appears to be straining at the leash to extend its full-scale war across its northern frontier, as thousands of Israeli civilians have fled their homes as a result of the tit-for-tat exchange of artillery fire with Hezbollah. Yet the blockade of Red Sea shipping by Yemen’s Houthi movement has shown that Western countries face direct costs for their increasingly qualified support of Israel, and that regional powers are increasingly confident in challenging the United States directly.

Having triumphantly survived a years-long war against Saudi Arabia, devastating to Yemen’s civilian population, in which Saudi forces deployed US jets, bombs and intelligence support to little battlefield effect, the risk of a short-lived American punitive bombing campaign must seem a manageable one to the Houthis. Knowing that America has no appetite for a wider conflict that will be seen both internationally and domestically as having been dragged into a war on Israel’s behalf, the Houthis now feel emboldened to attack US naval escorts directly. So politically toxic is Israel’s Gaza campaign that even America’s closest Nato allies prefer to keep their distance from American security efforts in the Red Sea, while as a result of poor procurement decisions, the US Navy is struggling to marshal the resources necessary to keep trade routes open, the basic function of a global empire. Balking at fighting Hezbollah or the Houthis directly, the prospect of a US attack on Iran, deemed an over-ambitious goal even at the height of US power, is unlikely in the extreme, which in turn feeds Tehran’s appetite for risk. Overstretched, wearing down its ships through over-deployment, and suddenly showing itself dependent on weaker, unenthused European allies to make up the numbers, in the Red Sea we are shown a glimpse of America’s naval performance in a future Pacific conflict: the results will be heartening to China.

Like an ailing mammoth, weakened by a succession of individual spear thrusts, the hegemon staggers bleeding across the global scene. Though stronger than any individual competitor, America is not capable of sustaining three simultaneous major conflicts against powerful regional rivals, without mobilising for a war effort unfeasible within its current political dynamics. At the height of its power, when America’s rivals were cowed and isolated, the United States assumed global security burdens that looked easily achievable at the time, while running down the industrial base necessary to sustain them. Bad choices were made, which are now difficult to undo. As a result, the United States has already shifted into a defensive mode, attempting to preserve its gains of better times against resurgent challengers, and delaying the grand-political reordering of global affairs for as long as possible. Yet unlike Russia, Iran or China, America’s democratic system incentivises short-term planning, and offers its leaders the escape route of shifting responsibility for failure to the next, rival administration. Heading towards what looks like an inevitable political defeat in 2024, the Biden administration is already drained of political authority, as tired and absent-minded as the gerontocrat at its helm.

In an earlier phase of America’s history, the looming handover of power would be expected to happen smoothly, and continuity achieved in maintaining the empire’s strategic goals. No such continuity can be expected in 2024. America’s previous two elections were marked by the most serious waves of civil disorder and political instability in decades as each party and their factions within the state bureaucracy contested each others’ legitimacy, each deploying excitable civilians radicalised by their respective court press as proxy weapons. Over the course of the coming year, America will likely be roiled by its internal political dysfunction in a way we have never yet seen, and the rest of the world will live in the shadow cast by the contested imperial throne.

Not just the fate of Ukraine but also of the Nato alliance will be determined by the battle for power in Washington. For Netanyahu, the incentive of America’s election year will be to drag the war out for another year, or widen it into a regional conflict, gambling Israel’s future security on the presumed greater indulgence of the incoming Republican administration. Similarly, for Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis, the waning days of a cautious Biden administration desirous to avoid a Middle Eastern conflagration presents the greatest opportunity for escalation. For China, waiting in the wings to deliver the final blow, the optimum time to act will be at the moment of Washington’s greatest distraction by internal disorder: perhaps this election season will present an opportunity too rare to pass up, accelerating the timetable to seize Taiwan.

The world is living through its most dangerous moment in many decades, and the logic of events, in every theatre, leads towards further escalation over the year to come. In 2024, America’s fraught domestic interregnum will create a feedback loop with the already bloody global interregnum for the spoils of its empire. Last year was a hard year, drenched in blood and human misery through global conflict: but in retrospect, we may view it as the last golden summer of our world order, with the troubling storms still distant on the horizon. The coming year will be a historic one: we are right to dread its approach.

unherd.com · by Aris Roussinos · January 2, 2024

21. Analysis | Two Gaza Wars: Why the Gulf Between Israelis and Outsiders Is So Vast, and Jarring

Analysis | Two Gaza Wars: Why the Gulf Between Israelis and Outsiders Is So Vast, and Jarring

Notions like 'we tried peace' and 'this isn't the time,' along with a compressed range of history that begins on October 7, are pushing Israelis – and Palestinians – away from a political solution to the Gaza war

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-27/ty-article/.premium/two-gaza-wars-why-the-gulf-between-israelis-and-outsiders-is-so-vast-and-jarring/0000018c-aade-d885-abdf-fede81470000

Dahlia Scheindlin

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Dec 27, 2023

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Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest against U.S. aid to Israel in New York City, December 23, 2023.Credit: CHARLY TRIBALLEAU - AFP

Dahlia Scheindlin

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Dec 27, 2023

Buying something at a kiosk in Tel Aviv this week, I caught strains of Phil Collins' pop song "In the Air Tonight." In an inane pleasantry – nothing feels pleasant these days – I said to the kiosk owner: "I just heard that song on the radio yesterday," and I did not mean it in a good way. But he responded with a wan smile: "I could hear this song every single day." Collins' hit was released in January 1981, 43 years ago.

Apparently, even when it's bad, what's familiar is comforting. Since October 7, certain perspectives have become axiomatic in Israeli life – including enormous blind spots that we nevertheless play on repeat. These are important to understand – not in order to ogle at Israel's failings at a time of anguish, but to explain a gulf between international and Israeli perspectives. In my decades of straddling both worlds, the chasm has never been wider.

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One of the biggest blind spots I've named before, but it bears reiterating: The notion that "Israel tried peace," and its corollaries such as "Israel gave them [Palestinians] control over their lives/self-determination/a state," and October 7 proved they preferred the option of murdering Jews over that of Palestinian freedom. Many Israelis can't shake this notion, although it's dead wrong.

At best, both Israel and the Palestinians made efforts to reach a final status resolution of the conflict, which failed – mostly in the year 2000, and also 2008. Each side can blame the other, but what we can't do is blame "peace" for October 7. If anything, ongoing conflict and occupation led inevitably to violence, as they do everywhere when conflicts are unresolved. This was compounded by a failed policy of isolating Gaza under a crushing blockade that harmed civilians rather than helping security, while boosting Hamas all the while. Nothing excuses what Hamas did – nothing – but extreme violent escalation of some sort was inevitable.

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Yet top leaders regularly make the point that Oslo, the great attempt at peace, led directly to October 7. A few weeks ago it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who compared them, causing a mini-scandal. Right-wing commentators have neatly blamed the Oslo concept of giving Palestinians "self-governance," and blamed the 2005 disengagement from Gaza for the concept that "withdrawing" would lead to peace – instead, both led to terror. These statements shape public thinking powerfully; not a day goes by without someone saying to me in private or offhanded conversations "but we tried Oslo and then…" Or "We tried peace and they proved it doesn't work."

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting the northern Gaza Strip on MondayCredit: Avi Ohayon/GPO/Handout via AP

Thus, when allies such as the United States and European countries excavated their rhetoric about reviving the two-state solution following the attack and the war, Israelis were baffled: "Haven't we tried that?" goes the collective response. This is no less a blind spot of the international community itself. Imagining that Israelis will become newly receptive to the idea that "a two-state solution will bring peace and security through separation that will allow Israel to remain a Jewish and democratic state" ignores that neither Israelis nor Palestinians bought into the two-state division idea enough to begin with, or we'd have done it already.

Outsiders think separation is so clearly the only way: for Israel to be Jewish and democratic. But Israelis (at least Jews) think separation means concessions to terror and prefer permanent control over Palestinians. In our December 2022 joint Israeli-Palestinian survey, 37 percent of Israeli Jews already preferred Israeli annexation without equal rights, over 34 percent who chose a two-state solution. Not surprisingly, the November Peace Index survey found that more Jews support unequal annexation to two states after October 7 as well. New ideas and new arguments are needed.

A hell of a blind spot

A second key Israeli blind spot involves the logical conundrum that "this isn't the time." This notion now has two meanings: Since October 7, it's a talking point Netanyahu and Likud members use to defer blame for the worst failure in the history of Israel. Within the first two weeks, Likud figures Miki Zohar, Yuli Edelstein and other party members said it dutifully, from the Knesset podium and television studios.

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A bloody handprint inside a house at Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the Gaza border communities attacked by Hamas on October 7.Credit: Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP

In a briefing for foreign journalists in Sderot on October 17, Likud lawmaker Boaz Bismuth, formerly the chief editor of Israel Hayom during its heyday as a Netanyahu mouthpiece, was asked directly about the responsibility of his party. He assured the audience that "five, no, four minutes, one minute after the war, the most difficult questions will be asked" – some may even lose their jobs, he said – "but not right now. All those people – the generals, the army, the government – who are in charge right now are the best ones, and they will bring us to victory." The best ones? Those who failed to detect or prevent October 7?

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Bismuth added that Israelis will have to ask questions about normalizing Hamas' rocket fire on Israeli civilians for too long. That's a hell of a blind spot. Just who tolerated this for most of the last 14 years? His master, Netanyahu.

Going that far back raises the real question about "it's not the time." In Israel, it's never the time to think about how to end its control over Palestinians through a political mechanism to reduce and contain – and maybe one day transform – a hostile political conflict.

During the 2014 war in Gaza known as Operation Protective Edge, I dared to use the C-word ("context"): "Zooming out, the long-term context of the conflict is increasingly indefensible. Yet Israel's argument for the war depends on immediate justifications and ignores the context." Saying this today risks derision or worse, but in 2014 no one listened or cared. On Israel's Channel 13 this weekend, I mentioned the need for a future political resolution and several other guests looked at me quizzically, as if they'd seen an alien. One of them responded – what else? – that war isn't the right time to talk about these big general themes.

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Instead, the bulk of public discussion, media coverage or public statements by Israel's political leadership focuses on the last or the next 24 hours. The range of history has been compressed: It starts with October 7 itself – a bottomless source of horrors taking up much media airtime – through to a few weeks into the future, if the Biden administration is sending signals on that day that it might press Israel to wind down the "intense" phase of the war soon.

By contrast, the columnists, investigative journalists and policymakers who shape global understanding of Israel are talking big picture: Going back years to explain how this happened, discussing who will govern Gaza in the future and how to jump-start a political solution. The gulf between the sides is enormous; Israelis hear these items like soft rumblings filtered through a seashell. International audiences are baffled as to why Israelis are not heeding New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

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Take that gulf and multiply it a thousandfold for both Israelis and Palestinians alike living in the region, versus the often self-indulgent, self-referential activist conversations on U.S. college campuses. And I'm not saying which side I mean.

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Palestinians inspecting the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday.Credit: Arafat Barbakh/Reuters

These gaps aren't easily bridged – they emerge from differences of language, but much more: different cultural and political worldviews held in regular liberal democratic countries, and vastly different personal experiences of life in what is, ultimately, an active zone of conflict (for Israelis) and occupation (for Palestinians). Within this generalization, there are plenty of interlocutors who try to span the divide, but the most effective first step is simply to acknowledge it.

Israelis should work harder to close their blind spots. International audiences need to understand just how jarring and out of place their own axiomatic perspectives are, especially when the language or ideas are obsolete. Palestinians are not passive actors either; being human beings, they too have blind spots. The most independent-minded, and courageous among them, are trying to find and close those gaps as well – for example, by naming and deploring what Hamas did on October 7, or developing hard policy analysis of their vision of a better political future. Sometimes Israelis and Palestinians share the very same blind spot, like failing to see or care about civilian death and suffering on the other side.

The situation today is so terrible that people run from reality as they run from rockets, and hide in the shelter of their blind spots. It's pointless to wag fingers. The only thing left to do is try and change that reality.

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De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

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

Access NSS HERE

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