Quotes of the Day:

“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.”

― Eugene Victor Debs

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”

― Robert A. Heinlein

“When one with honeyed words but evil mind

Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.”

― Euripides, Orestes

1. The Hamas Leader Who Studied Israel’s Psyche—and Is Betting His Life on What He Learned

2. Opinion: While the West Dithers, the Future of the World is Being Decided in Ukraine

3. Opinion: Test of the West: Liberal Democracies Face a Perilous Crossroads

4. Special Operations News - December 11, 2023 | SOF News

5. Finding a New Big Picture: Reintroducing the American People to Their Armed Forces

6. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 10, 2023

7. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, December 10, 2023

8. New ICBM will take US nuclear missiles out of Cold War era

9. The Peril Of Ukrainian Attacks Against Nuclear Russia?

10. US forces have killed or captured dozens of ISIS fighters in Mideast in recent weeks, military says

11. DOD Officials Underscore 'Ironclad' Commitment to Philippines After China's Unsafe Maneuvers

12. Tradition at the end of Army-Navy game shows sportsmanship, unity

13. There Is No Such Thing as a ‘Humane’ War

14. Poland to spend $284 million on base improvements for US troops

15. Aerial Footage Shows Hamas Fighters Beating Gazans, Stealing Humanitarian Aid From Truck, IDF Says

16. Hamas’s Goal in Gaza

1 The Hamas Leader Who Studied Israel’s Psyche—and Is Betting His Life on What He Learned.

The best way to know your enemy is to live among them and learn from them.

A friend responded to my comment with this important view:

Yep      A very common strategy/technique that is as old as mankind. It is something AI will never be able to replicate. 

The Hamas Leader Who Studied Israel’s Psyche—and Is Betting His Life on What He Learned

Yahya Sinwar drove a strategy to exploit Israel’s willingness to trade Palestinian prisoners for hostages; Gaza leader spent two decades in prison in Israel

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-yahya-sinwar-israel-palestinian-hostages-6407dc41?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1

By Rory JonesFollow

, Summer SaidFollow

, Dov LieberFollow

 and Saleh Al-Batati

Dec. 10, 2023 12:01 am ET

When Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was imprisoned in Israel more than a decade ago, he explained to an Israeli official a theory now central to the war in Gaza. 

Sinwar said that what Israel considers its strength—that most Israelis serve in the army and soldiers hold a special status in society—is a weakness that can be exploited, said Yuval Bitton, who spent time with Sinwar as the former head of the Israel Prison Service’s intelligence division.

The idea proved accurate in 2011 when Sinwar was one of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners freed for a single Israeli soldier. 

Now, Sinwar is holding hostage 138 Israelis, including soldiers, and the Hamas leader is betting he can force the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners and establish a permanent cease-fire. He’s relying on his judgment of Israeli society after two decades studying it in jail, learning Hebrew, watching the local news and getting inside the Israeli psyche. 

But first, Hamas has to survive Israel’s powerful and deadly counterattack. If Hamas has miscalculated, Sinwar could be overseeing the destruction in Gaza of the U.S.-designated terrorist group—and lose his own life.

The gamble has already come with huge costs, including devastation across huge swaths of Gaza and the deaths of around 17,700 Palestinians.

Families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in Tel Aviv on Thursday. PHOTO: ABIR SULTAN/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

A Palestinian prisoner hugged his mother after being released in a hostage-prisoner trade between Hamas and Israel on Dec. 1. PHOTO: AMMAR AWAD/REUTERS

Israel says its plan is to destroy Hamas’s leadership in the strip, including Sinwar, and prevent the group from ever again threatening Israeli communities after the Oct. 7 attacks killed 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians. Still, after negotiating the release of women and children during a temporary cease-fire that collapsed this month, the Israeli government faces growing pressure to work with Sinwar for the freedom of the remaining hostages. 

“He understands that Israel will pay a heavy price,” said Bitton. “He understands this is our weak spot.”

Sinwar’s playbook since becoming leader of Hamas in Gaza in 2017 has been to constantly remind Israelis they are in conflict with Palestinians, one moment engaging constructively with Israel, and the next, pursuing violent means for political ends. He has a history of hunting down Palestinian collaborators with Israel, and his approach to the hostage negotiations was viewed by some Israelis as an attempt at psychological warfare. 

During the recent hostage negotiations, he cut off communications for days to put pressure on Israel to agree to a pause that would give Hamas time to regroup, according to Egyptian mediators. When the hostages were released, they were freed in batches each day, rather than in one go, creating a daily sense of anxiety in Israeli society. 

Sinwar, who is in his early 60s, has since told Egyptian negotiators that the war won’t be over quickly, the way other rounds of violence in Gaza were, and could last for weeks, indicating he wants to squeeze as much as he can from Israel for the remaining captives. 

At the moment, Sinwar is the main decision maker in Hamas as the most senior political leader in Gaza, who is working closely with Hamas’s military wing. The head of Hamas’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, is currently based in Doha, and his deputy, Saleh Arouri is in Beirut. While Hamas’s leadership in normal times makes decisions based on consensus, Israel believes Sinwar and Hamas militants around him in Gaza are more narrowly directing the war. 

Spokespeople for Hamas didn’t respond to requests for comment on Sinwar and the group’s strategy. 

Following the breakdown of the recent cease-fire, Hamas said that the militant group has only hostages who are soldiers and “civilians serving in the army,” and that it won’t release more of them until Israel ends its war. The group has said it is willing to free all the hostages in Gaza for all the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, estimated at more than 7,000 people. Israel says Hamas still holds both civilians and soldiers. 

Israel’s strategy for getting the remaining hostages out focuses on making battlefield gains to force Hamas to release the captives. Israeli officials’ theory is Hamas was more willing to negotiate on the release of women and children because Israel had invaded Gaza and began to pressure the group militarily.  

Israeli forces are currently fighting Hamas in Khan Younis, where Sinwar grew up, and this week surrounded his house, a largely symbolic move as he is believed to be hiding elsewhere underground

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, center, and deputy chief Saleh Arouri, left, met with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran in June. PHOTO: OFFICE OF THE IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER/REUTERS

Palestinians following Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza on Thursday. PHOTO: MOHAMMED DAHMAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Israel has vowed to kill Sinwar and all of Hamas’s top leadership, but senior officials have sent mixed messages over whether the government would be open to allowing lower-level Hamas fighters out of the strip. 

One of the reasons Hamas mounted the Oct. 7 attacks was to kidnap soldiers to trade for Palestinian prisoners, according to Palestinian political analysts.

When Sinwar was freed in the 2011 swap, he thought Hamas should have pushed harder for Israel to release Palestinians responsible for bombings that killed Israelis and who were serving multiple life sentences, said people involved.  

As he was freed, Sinwar told those who hadn’t made the cut he would work to get them free, these people said.

“It’s a personal thing,” said Mkhaimer Abusada, a Palestinian who before the war taught political science at Al Azhar University in Gaza. “He doesn’t feel comfortable leaving jail in 2011 and leaving some of his comrades inside.”

Should negotiations restart, Gershon Baskin, an Israeli peace activist who helped broker the 2011 agreement, said Israel would be unlikely to yield to Sinwar’s demand and give up Palestinians considered the most dangerous. Sinwar, waging war against Israel more than a decade after release, epitomizes why freeing prisoners who are serving life sentences is a risk for Israelis, he said. 

“He is the primary reason why they wouldn’t agree to it,” said Baskin. “They made that mistake once.”

Hunting informants

Sinwar has spent more years as a member of Hamas inside prison than outside of it. 

Before serving time, Sinwar was close to the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who himself had been released in 1985 in a swap involving more than 1,000 prisoners for three Israeli soldiers. 

Sinwar worked with his mentor to hunt Palestinian informants suspected of working with Israel, according to Israeli officials. The internal security police set up by Sinwar was a forerunner of Hamas’s military wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, these Israeli officials said. 

A mural of late Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza City in 2022. PHOTO: MOHAMMED SABER/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

In 1988, Israel detained him. During a series of interrogations, Sinwar explained how he rounded up a suspected Palestinian collaborator with Israel while the man was in bed with his wife, according to a transcript of his confession reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

He blindfolded the Palestinian, called Ramsi, and drove him to an area with a freshly dug grave where Sinwar strangled him with a scarf known as a keffiyeh, a symbol of the Palestinian cause. 

“After strangling him, I wrapped him in a white shroud and closed the grave,” Sinwar said in his confession. “I was sure that Ramsi knew he deserved to die for what he did.”

Sinwar described three similar killings of Palestinians he accused of collaboration, according to the transcript of the confession.

In another incident, Sinwar said he believed the brother of a Hamas operative was collaborating with Israelis, according to Michael Koubi, who was one of those who first interrogated Sinwar over more than 100 hours for Israel’s internal security service. Sinwar said he asked the Hamas operative to invite his brother to a meeting, and they put him in a grave and buried him alive, Koubi said. 

Koubi said that in a separate interrogation, the Hamas leader confessed to killing 12 Palestinians before being arrested. None of the men Sinwar killed were working with Israeli security authorities, Koubi said.

As early as 1989, Sinwar told his interrogator he was planning to establish units that would conduct raids into Israel to kill and capture people, Koubi said.

Sinwar was also involved in the abduction and murder of two Israeli soldiers, according to the Israeli military. He was given multiple life sentences and spent 22 years in jail. 

Hamas was in its infancy when Sinwar was jailed. It had evolved in Gaza from the Egyptian Islamist and social movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. In the year he was arrested, Hamas issued a charter of principles that included a goal of destroying Israel.

He was an influential member even inside prison. Prisoners are one of four power bases in Hamas, alongside members in the West Bank, in Gaza and in the diaspora outside the Palestinian territories, according to Israeli officials and independent researchers. Israel generally keeps Palestinians from the same factions housed in different areas of prisons, according to former Israeli prison officials. Hamas members establish hierarchies inside prisons similar to their outside structures, and choose a leader in each prison, and a top person across all Israeli prisons, the former Israeli prison officials said. 

People dressed as suicide bombers at a Hamas rally in Nablus in the West Bank in 2000. PHOTO: JAFAR ASHTIEH/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Members twice chose to make Sinwar their chief across the entire prison system, Bitton said. During the times he wasn’t chief, Sinwar held great sway over the people who were leaders, Bitton and Koubi said.

In 2000, Palestinians rose up against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza following collapsed peace talks over the creation of a Palestinian state. Hamas became involved in the uprising, known as the second intifada, waging attacks and some of the highest-profile suicide bombings. Sinwar’s role in the violence of the second intifada, if any, isn’t clear. 

In 2004, he appeared to develop neurological problems, speaking unclearly and struggling with walking, Bitton said. Doctors examined him, finding an abscess in the brain that threatened his life. They rushed him from a prison near Beer Sheva to the city’s hospital for surgery. 

After a successful operation, Sinwar returned to prison and thanked the doctors for saving his life, former prison officials said.

Sinwar gave Israeli officials the impression he wanted a halt to violence—at least in the short term. At the end of the Palestinian uprising in 2005, Sinwar was interviewed by an Israeli journalist inside prison. The leader told the journalist that Hamas would be open to a long-term cease-fire with Israelis that he said could stabilize the region, but would never accept Israel as a state. He said at that time that he understood Hamas could never defeat Israel militarily.  

Hamas, he said, is stubborn. “Just as we made the lives of the Jews bitter during the confrontation,” he said in Hebrew, referring to the intifada, during the interview. “We will make their lives difficult in dialogue about the cease-fire.”

Plan to kidnap soldiers

Hamas operatives in 2006 surprised Israeli soldiers at a command post on the border of the Gaza Strip, kidnapping 19-year-old Gilad Shalit. One of the people responsible for orchestrating the kidnapping, according to Israeli officials, was Sinwar’s younger brother, Mohammed.  

Talks about freeing Shalit dragged on for years. 

In prison, Sinwar and his fellow prisoners spent most of their lives in cells of three to eight people, getting out for two sessions a day in the yard to walk around for about an hour and half. They taught each other English and Hebrew and read history and the Quran, Bitton said. 

Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, after being freed in an exchange for Palestinian prisoners. PHOTO: ARIEL SCHALIT/ASSOCIATED PRESS

During negotiations between Israel and Hamas over the release of Shalit, Sinwar was influential in pushing for the freedom of Palestinians who were jailed for murdering Israelis.

He wanted to release those who were involved in bombings during the second intifada that had killed large numbers of Israelis, such as at a hotel on a Jewish holiday that initially killed 19 and became known as the “Passover Massacre,” according to Bitton, Baskin and an Egyptian official, who helped broker the deal.   

Sinwar was so maximalist in his demands, Israel put him in solitary confinement to curtail his influence within Hamas, Bitton and the Egyptian official said. 

Israel eventually released some Palestinians who had committed murders and were considered dangerous, including Sinwar himself, who only just made the cut to get out, because Israelis had reservations about releasing him, Baskin said.

“Releasing him was the worst mistake in Israel’s history,” said Koubi, his interrogator while in jail. 

A week after release in 2011, Sinwar told the Safa Press, a Palestinian news agency, that the best option for freeing prisoners left inside was to kidnap more Israeli soldiers.  

He arrived back in Gaza to a very different strip. Hamas now ruled it after wresting control from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. The enclave was fenced off from the rest of Israel. 

Sinwar again exerted influence within Hamas. During the war in 2014, he was involved in rounding up and killing suspected Palestinian informants for Israel, according to Israeli and Egyptian officials. Hamas called the killings “Operation Strangling Necks,” according to Amnesty International, which later documented the deaths. 

One of those found dead and bullet-ridden during the conflict was the former spokesman for Hamas, Ayman Taha, according to Amnesty International. Taha had been a liaison between Hamas and Egyptian intelligence, according to Egyptian officials, who believe Sinwar ordered his death over concerns he was leaking information about Hamas’s relationship with Iran. 

Hamas at the time said Taha appeared to have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Sinwar, center, after his release in the exchange in 2011. PHOTO: ADEL HANA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

In 2016, Sinwar was involved in a decision to execute a senior commander of the armed wing, Mahmoud Ishtaiwi, according to Israeli and Egyptian officials and a person close to the murdered commander. 

The exact reasons why aren’t clear. Egyptian officials say Sinwar arrested Ishtaiwi and convinced Hamas he was a spy for Israel. A Hamas official said the commander was an informant for Arab countries.

Before his death, Ishtaiwi told his family that Mohammed Deif, the head of the armed wing, had visited him and ordered other Hamas officials to release him, the person close to Ishtaiwi said. He was killed anyway. 

Hamas at the time in a statement said the commander was executed for “behavior and moral” crimes. 

A year later, Sinwar was voted as leader of Hamas in Gaza by its members. Other Hamas leaders assured members that his election as Gaza chief wouldn’t drag the group into new rounds of internal and external violence, according to Hamas officials. 

Sinwar again said publicly Hamas was committed to the release of every Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails. He soon sought to reconcile Hamas with the Palestinian faction that governs the West Bank, warning he would “break the neck” of anyone who stood in the way. Those talks failed to progress and Palestinian attempts to create their own state were complicated by internal divisions. 

In 2021, Sinwar won a second term as Hamas leader in Gaza, again vowing to liberate Palestinian prisoners. In May that year, Hamas fired rockets on Jerusalem helping spark an 11-day conflict. 

The death and destruction wrought in the conflict created a sense among the Israeli security establishment that Hamas was deterred and that Sinwar wouldn’t attempt to attack because he was more focused on building the strip economically.

Oct. 7 showed that was incorrect. While the initial lightning attack proved a success for Hamas, Sinwar made two mistakes, according to Amos Gilead, a former Israeli senior defense official. He thought that the attack would start a regional war involving Iran and Hezbollah, and that Israel wouldn’t invade Gaza to kill the Hamas leadership, Gilead said. 

“Now his strategy is to gain time,” Gilead added. “But we don’t have any choice other than to destroy him.”

Write to Rory Jones at Rory.Jones@wsj.com, Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com

Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the December 11, 2023, print edition as 'Hamas Leader Studied His Enemy'.

2. Opinion: While the West Dithers, the Future of the World is Being Decided in Ukraine

Opinion: While the West Dithers, the Future of the World is Being Decided in Ukraine

kyivpost.com · by Peter Dickinson

"Western unity is increasingly in question, with US support for Ukraine becoming hostage to political infighting and pro-Kremlin forces winning national elections in the EU," Dickinson writes.

December 11, 2023, 11:30 am |

This handout photograph taken and released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service on December 6, 2023, shows the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky looking on as he pays his respects in front of The Wall of Remembrance of the Fallen for Ukraine, in Kyiv on the Day of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

During the initial stages of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, there was something approaching an international consensus that Vladimir Putin had made a colossal blunder. Far from reversing the verdict of the Cold War, the Kremlin dictator appeared to have isolated his country and inadvertently unified the entire Western world against him.

As Russia’s invasion approaches the two-year mark, the picture is now far more complex and significantly darker. Western unity is increasingly in question, with US support for Ukraine becoming hostage to political infighting and pro-Kremlin forces winning national elections in the EU. Meanwhile, pledges of new aid from Ukraine’s partners have fallen to their lowest level since the start of the war. This is fueling a growing sense of jubilation in Moscow, where many believe recent developments vindicate earlier Russian predictions that any Western resolve to oppose the Kremlin would prove short-lived.

Unsurprisingly, Putin is now more confident than ever that he can outlast the West in Ukraine. Despite suffering catastrophic battlefield losses, he remains determined to press ahead with the invasion, and is actively preparing Russia for the rigors of a long war. Russia’s goal remains the “denazification” of Ukraine, meaning the eradication of Ukrainian national identity and the return of the country to Kremlin control, either via direct annexation or through the installation of a puppet regime in Kyiv.

Similar topics of Interest

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The election will be held over a three-day period from March 15 to 17, a move that Kremlin critics have argued makes guaranteeing transparency more difficult.

While the Ukrainian people are Russia’s immediate target, it would be a grave mistake to assume Putin’s revisionist ambitions are limited to the reconquest of Ukraine alone. On the contrary, if he succeeds in subjugating Ukraine, it is clear from Putin’s own words and actions that he will go further.

On the domestic front, Putin has succeeded in transforming Russia into a highly militarized dictatorship, while preaching an ideological crusade against the Western world that can only be sustained through perpetual conflict. On the international stage, he has burned his bridges with the West, reoriented the Russian economy away from Europe, and is busy building an international axis of anti-Western authoritarians together with China, Iran, and North Korea. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher’s famous assessment of Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Putin is most definitely not a man the West can do business with.

For Putin, the invasion of Ukraine has always been part of a far broader historic mission to end the era of Western dominance. This was already apparent in the very first days of the war, when the Russian state media prematurely published then quickly retracted a triumphant editorial proclaiming victory in Ukraine and declaring: “Western global domination can be considered completely and finally over.” These sweeping claims tally closely with Putin’s own frequent public statements. Since the start of the invasion, he has repeatedly trumpeted the dawning of a new “multipolar world order,” and has sought to position Russia as the leader of a global “anti-colonial movement.”

It is tempting to scoff at the absurdity of Putin’s efforts to portray himself as an enemy of imperialism while waging one of the most openly imperialistic wars in modern history. Nevertheless, there is no denying that his anti-Western messaging resonates with many throughout the Global South. While China has been reluctant to defend the invasion of Ukraine, Beijing has enthusiastically echoed Putin’s calls for a fundamental reset in international relations. Other rising nations such as India, Brazil, and the Gulf states have expressed similar sentiments while refusing to condemn the Kremlin or join Western sanctions.

Anyone expecting Russia to establish a more equitable international environment is likely to be disappointed. Indeed, it does not take much imagination to envisage the kind of world Putin hopes to create. It is a world divided into spheres of influence where might is right and a handful of major powers are able to impose their will on weaker neighbors; it a world where today’s imperfect rules-based order is replaced by mounting insecurity.

If Putin is permitted to realize his dream of a turbulent new world order, the Russian invasion of Ukraine will provide inspiration for authoritarians around the globe and serve as a template for acts of aggression on every continent. This unraveling of the existing order is already evident everywhere from the Caucasus to South America. In recent months, it could be witnessed in Azerbaijan’s lightning seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh, the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel, and Venezuela’s saber-rattling against neighboring Guyana.

If the current geopolitical trajectory continues, it is only a matter of time before today’s escalating instability penetrates the borders of the European Union and the NATO Alliance. With Western leaders demoralized and discredited by the fall of Ukraine, it is far from certain that either institution would still have the requisite strength to survive.

Even if a major war between great powers could be avoided, Western governments would find themselves obliged to prioritize military spending and dramatically increase defense budgets. The days of squabbling over a few billion dollars to arm Ukraine would soon seem quaint in comparison. International trade would also suffer as the global peace dividend of the past three decades evaporated in a climate of mounting distrust and hybrid hostilities. It is entirely possible that the years from 1991 to 2024 will soon be viewed as a lost golden age of comparative tranquility.

None of this is inevitable. While the world is clearly changing with new centers of power emerging, the collective West still has more than enough economic, military, and diplomatic weight to shape the future for decades to come. The real question is whether the leaders of the democratic world are prepared to match the soft power they have long taken for granted with the kind of hard power necessary to thwart Russia’s destructive agenda.

For now, too many people in the West seem far more afraid of defeating Putin than of actually stopping him. They remain in denial over the scale of the civilizational challenge posed by Russia, and continue to labor under the comforting delusion that some kind of compromise can return the world to the prewar status quo. In reality, a confrontation with Putin’s Russia can no longer be avoided; it can only be won or lost. The Ukrainians are more than capable of delivering this victory, but they require the tools to do so. If Western leaders choose not to adequately arm Ukraine, future generations will view their decision as one of the great geopolitical turning points of the twenty-first century.

Peter Dickinson is the Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert.

This article is reprinted from Atlantic Council's UkraineAlert. See the original here.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.

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kyivpost.com · by Peter Dickinson

3. Opinion: Test of the West: Liberal Democracies Face a Perilous Crossroads

More than an inflection point. What is the future of the liberal democracy?

Opinion: Test of the West: Liberal Democracies Face a Perilous Crossroads

kyivpost.com · by Charles Cockell

Each moment of Western hesitancy in supporting Ukraine deals a chink in the armor of liberal democracies, in turn pushing the price we may all have to pay to defend our freedoms higher and higher.

December 11, 2023, 8:08 am |

The US Capitol building is seen ahead of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky?s address to a Joint Session of the US Congress in Washington, DC, on December 21, 2022. (Photo by SAMUEL CORUM / AFP)

There are times in history when those who enjoy the fruits of free societies are tested. Is that blissful anodyne existence of easy criticism, free discourse and relaxed harmony, something which they genuinely value, or are they willing to trade freedom for tyranny when times get tough?

Such time is now.

In February 2022, Ukraine made the decision to fight and sacrifice, at terrible and heart-wrenching cost, to defend its own version of liberty and the right to carve its own trajectory into the future.

The West – every single one of its component nations – also had a choice to make. That choice was not only about the values each nation was willing to defend at a single point in time, but has mutated into a test of resolve. And now, who has what it takes to see the task through?

At the risk of crowing, I’m glad to say that, largely, right across the political spectrum, the UK has stood firm. The fight for liberty has become embedded in British institutional memory and thus, in the upbringing of its people. I know that this rather grandiose claim will cause some eyebrow raising in (say) India or South Africa, and I’m sensitive to that justifiable historical skepticism, but I’m talking about the UK mainland.

From the air, we experienced the destruction of our cities less than 100 years ago, and at least prior to the decimation of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, the existential threat to Britain was real. For many of us, this history remains rooted in our sense of nation. There is a deep resonance with the Ukrainian situation on these matters. I think, I hope, that Britain will never be found wanting in its view of Ukraine.

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The election will be held over a three-day period from March 15 to 17, a move that Kremlin critics have argued makes guaranteeing transparency more difficult.

Across the pond, there seems to be some incertitude. Born from the furnace of its own revolutionary war, the US has been a staunch ally of liberty. But is that sense of individualism eroding back into isolationism, carried forward in a current of cynicism?

The US does not have some unspoken mandate or responsibility to use its vast military and financial capability to come to the aid of other nations. There is no presumption that the US is sitting there waiting for a phone call to sacrifice blood and treasure to bail out others. But in every stage of human development, there are always nations that command the moral, material, and manpower superiority to provide that role, and the question is whether they have the strength of character to recognize that unfortunate and, perhaps, unwanted position, and to heed the call.

Ancient Athens took on the role as the leader of the Delian League to hold off the acquisitive Persians. The extent to which they welcomed that and remained enthusiastic about it through that tenure is lost to history, but they accepted their role as the most influential liberty-seeking state on which such an alliance could coalesce.

Some might say that the Delian League is a poor example since it disintegrated into infighting, while Athens appropriated the funds for its own uses. However, one might equally point out that this loss of focus and an inward turn, although motivated by a very different political situation than the one we face today, is broadly a stark reminder of what happens when feuding on a small scale gets the better of bigger thinking.

Clouds on the horizon

Today, with trouble in Ukraine, the Middle East and Venezuela, clarity of moral conviction and a willingness to put aside domestic squabbles to show a resoluteness and steadfastness in leadership has become critical. Nations from Iran to North Korea are aligning with autocracies, not to offer some clear and compelling vision for the management of humanity, but simply to oppose the West.

The danger of an autocratic dark age engulfing large parts of the globe is a real and serious threat. The coordination of these axes opposed to the liberal and democratic vision of humankind gets stronger by the day. This, it should be said, is largely fueled by the western world’s weakness.

At every check point at which we fail to believe in ourselves, the lessons of brazen conquest become clearer. Push onwards and the West will buckle. Even if the US Congress was to approve aid tomorrow, a few weeks of dithering suggests that there are fractures within the US’s self-confidence or international conviction. Maybe another year of this will open those cracks wider? And so, the forces against freedom are emboldened.

Each moment of hesitancy delivers a stronger conviction that liberal democracies can be hounded into a corner. The price that we may ultimately have to pay to defend our freedoms rises higher and higher.

There seems to be a collection of politicians, commentators, and personalities in the US who are naively unaware of this, or, if they are sensible to it, they lack the clarity of mind to stand back from political point scoring and embrace the extraordinary peril and danger to our way of life that this rise in violence and tyranny may presage.

Needless to say, this clash of self-interest and higher purpose takes on a particularly obvious hue when there is a presidential election looming. But in a sense, one might also say that the appearance of this tussle on the horizon is more of a reason for the candidates in that race to demonstrate their capacity to rise above that fray and lead the US to the right decisions. This is an opportunity, not a challenge.

It would be wrong to chide the US alone. In Europe there has also been much failure, and the Netherlands may now have elected a government ready to turn its back on Ukraine. Europe’s history of standing up to tyranny in the last century hasn’t been a blazing example, let’s be blunt, but one might have thought that lessons would have been learned since 1945. Even Hungary’s government seems to have forgotten what all that noise and loss of life was about in 1956 (a clue – it wasn’t a cry for more autocracy).

There isn’t much leeway in all this. The decisions taken in the coming months could ramify across decades, potentially even centuries. Democracy, the liberal order, the freedoms of an open society – they are not a system of government that bubbles up from the wreckage automatically. They must constantly be clearly stated and defended. Anyone who holds these ideas to be valuable must do it, but the most powerful nation that can do it has a special responsibility.

Will the US stumble in the cause of freedom? At the eleventh hour, when the resolve, energy, and fortitude of all those who love liberty are tested to its limits, when easy excuses and slogans for election campaigns are cheap, will the US, at this moment, lose its focus and its nerve? We will find out. And upon that outcome, a great deal will rest.

Charles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh.

The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.

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Charles Cockell

Charles Cockell is Professor of Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

4. Special Operations News - December 11, 2023 | SOF News

Special Operations News - December 11, 2023 | SOF News

sof.news · by SOF News · December 11, 2023

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.

Photo / Image: A CV-22 Osprey assigned to the 21st Special Operations Squadron, sits on the flightline during a snow fall March 29, 2020, at Yokota Air Base, Japan. (U.S. Air Force photo by Yasuo Osakabe)

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SOF News

Recovery of CV-22B Crew. The U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command reports that six bodies have been located by divers from the eight-man crew of the Osprey that crashed into waters off Japan. As of Tuesday, the remains of three of the Airmen have been recovered. The status of all the Airmen has been changed from DUSTWUN to deceased and the names have been released to the public. “AFSOC Aircraft Mishap Releases”, AFSOC, December 10, 2023. The Department of Defense has grounded all CV-22 Osprey variants of the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps. (DoD, Dec 7, 2023) The Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) is leading the investigation into the Osprey mishap. The crash is likely due to a problem with the aircraft, not crew error.

Votel Joins AeroVironment. General Joseph L. Votel has joined the Board of Directors of AreoVironment. Votel is a former commander of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), and Central Command (CENTCOM). AreoVironment provides technology solutions at the intersection of robotics, sensors, software analytics and connectivity that deliver more actionable intelligence so you can proceed with certainty. Headquartered in Virginia, AeroVironment is a global leader in intelligent, multi-domain robotic systems and serves defense, government and commercial customers.

SEALs and India’s MARCOS Training. A U.S. Navy SEAL Team conducted a joint training exchange with the Indian Marine Commando Force (MARCOS) from Oct. 20 to Nov. 11, 2023. The combined tactical training, which built upon the partner nation’s collective maritime capabilities and long-standing partnership, included a focus on maritime interdiction operations, close quarters combat training, tactical combat casualty care and casualty evacuation procedures. “Indian MARCOS, U.S. Navy SEALs Conduct Joint Training Exchange”, DVIDS, December 5, 2023.

SEALs and Delta in South America. George Hand, a retired Green Beret writes about the time his team of Delta ‘lads’ joined some Navy SEALs to do some riverine training ‘in the jungles ‘down south’. “Navy SEALs and Delta Force Commandos Living Together in the Jungles of South America”, SANDBOXX, December 6, 2023.

26th MEU (SOC) in the Med. The Marines and Sailors with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), embarked on the USS Mesa Verde (LPD 19), participated in an integrated Greek Bi-Lateral Exercise with the 32nd Hellenic Marine Brigade, Mediterranean Sea, Dec. 1-3, 2023. (Navy, Dec 7, 2023)

SOCAFRICA’s Silent Warrior 23. Military and government leaders from the across the globe came together for Silent Warrior 23, Dec. 4 – 7, 2023 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. The multi-day conference, hosted by Special Operations Command Africa, aimed to facilitate forums for senior military leaders to discuss shared concerns and identify collaborative solutions to the strategic, operational, and tactical issues in Africa. “SOCAFRICA’s Silent Warrior 23”, SOF News, December 9, 2023.

SOF and Voice Analyzer. US Special Forces utilize many technologies to go after the enemies of this country. One such technology is the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (CVSA), a system that is manufactured by NITV Federal Services, located in West Palm Beach, Florida. Read a scenario where the CVSA is useful in spotting security violations by partner forces. “US Special Forces Use the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (CVSA) in Combat Zones”, PR Newswire, December 5, 2023.

International SOF

UK’s SF. Javier Sutil Toledano provides a detailed description of the UK’s special forces: history, purpose, organization, units, and notable operations. “UKSF: the United Kingdom Special Forces”, Grey Dynamics, December 8, 2023.

Omega PMC. Ukraine is the home of the Omega Consulting Group – a private military corporation that is playing a growing role within the privatized military sector. Since 2011, Omega has assisted companies, organizations, and governments by supporting and developing their projects in sensitive areas. Their operations throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Europe have benefitted clients in wide-ranging industries and foreign and Ukrainian governments. “Omega Consulting Group: Omega PMC”, by George Englehart, Grey Dynamics, December 9, 2023.

Elite Afghan Troops at Risk. About 200 members of Afghan special forces, trained and funded by the UK, face imminent deportation to their Taliban-controlled homeland. Some were members of Commando Force 333, set up by the UK to counter Afghanistan’s growing problems with opium production. “Elite Afghan troops face return to Taliban after UK ‘betrayal'”, BBC News, December 10, 2023.

Just Cause. On December 20, 1989, the entire 75th Ranger Regiment participated in Operation Just Cause (Panama). Parachute assaults were conducted onto Torrijos/Tocumen International Airport, Rio Hato Airfield and other locations to neutralize Panamanian Defense Forces.

The Coast Watchers. Unsung heroes of Australia’s intelligence network reported on naval activity in the Pacific Islands and along Australia’s coastline during the Imperial Japanese advance and occupations. Learn more in “Australia’s Secret Army”, Cove Talk, December 5, 2023.

Conflict in Israel and Gaza

Southern Gaza Now a Battleground. Israeli Defense Force (IDF) launched their attack on the main city in the southern Gaza Strip last week. It was the biggest assault since the collapse of the truce. The IDF advanced in a westerly direction and entered the city of Khan Younis. Many of the Hamas military and political leadership fled north Gaza for the city. This referred to as the second phase of the offensive. Since the truce collapsed, Israel has been posting an online map to tell Gazans which parts of the enclave to evacuate and has specified that the Salah ah Din Road that runs north-south is the designated humanitarian corridor. Hamas had constructed a massive system of underground tunnels in Gaza and the West Bank (FDD, Dec 6, 2023) that shield supplies, weapons, and fighters from Israeli attacks. The Israelis are responding by pumping seawater into the tunnels to render them unusable and to push fighters from underground refuge. Hamas continues to launch rockets into Israel and has stated that it has the intent of repeating October 7th again and again in the future.

Hostages. There are about 130 hostages held by the Hamas terrorists still in Gaza – negotiations for their release have stalled. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating (AP News, Dec 6, 2023) the deaths of 30 Americans and kidnappings of about 13 Americans in the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack.

Civilian Casualties. As with many conflicts . . . civilian casualties in Gaza are numerous. This is especially true due to the nature of urban combat and with limited safe places for civilians to evacuate to for safety. The October 7th Hamas terrorist attack killed over 1,200 people, most of them civilians. In addition, thousands of Palestinians have been killed – the majority of them civilians. This is compounded with the tactics used by Hamas – hiding amongst the civilian population and using them as shields. Lt. General Mark Schwartz (Ret.) is interviewed by CNN’s Jake Tapper on the topic. (CNN, Dec 6, 2023) Schwartz’s last assignment in the military was as the United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He led a multinational and interagency team responsible for U.S. security policy in developing the Palestinian Authority Security Forces. He served as the United States Executive Branch and Department of State, personal representative to the Palestinian Authority. Schwartz spent most of his career in Special Forces.

Humanitarian Crisis. Much of the population of north Gaza has fled to the south, about 1.7 million people have been displaced from their homes. Now they are in peril due to the current fighting between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces in southern Gaza. Living conditions for the internally displaced Palestinians is dire – communication outages, disease, shortages of food, water, fuel, and medical services are prevalent. Some aid is coming across the border from Egypt . . . but not enough. A recent article explores the options for the IDPs in Gaza – none of them good. “Displaced in Gaza: The Least-Bad Option”, The RAND Blog, December 4, 2023.

Refuge in Egypt – Foreign Nationals? Yes. Palestinians? No. Wounded civilians and foreign or dual nationals are permitted to cross the border crossing from Gaza to Egypt. The Egyptians are not allowing refugees to enter Egypt. Israel would love to see the 2 million plus Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, many now displaced, flow into refugee camps in Egypt supported by the international community. Egypt and other Arab nations? No so much.

Report – USAID and Gaza. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has published a brief on the over $7.6 billion in assistance to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since 1993. West Bank and Gaza Aid, GAO-24-106243, December 7, 2023, PDF, 49 pages. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106243

University Presidents Under Fire. The Presidents of Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Pennsylvania testified before Congress on Tuesday, December 6, 2023, where they provided ”inadequate responses” about whether calls for the genocide of Jewish people would violate university policies. The president of Harvard has issued an apology (The Harvard Crimson) and the president of one of the other universities has resigned in the aftermath of the testimony. (CNN)

And The Future? The Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Gaza campaign lacks a critical component, betraying a major strategic flaw: the absence of a plan to provide security, sufficient aid, and critical services to a largely displaced and vulnerable Palestinian population. Jonathan Lord of the Center for a New American Security argues that for both Israel’s security and the safety of the Palestinian people, the US needs to step up and organize a multi-national security force in Gaza. “The case for an immediate, US-led stabilization mission in Gaza”, Breaking Defense, December 4, 2023.

References: Map Gaza Strip (2005), and more maps of Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Israel.

Ukraine Conflict

U.S. Funding for Ukraine. The United States will soon run out of money and equipment to send to Ukraine by the end of the year if Congress does not approve additional aid. Many Republicans are against providing the money in a supplemental budget request – they don’t see the conflict as a fight we should be involved with. Some Republicans are tying financial support to Ukraine with fixing the serious security concerns associated with the U.S. southern border and meaningful immigration reform. Republicans argue that the laws need to be changed; saying that currently anyone who shows up in the United States legally or illegally to claim asylum are allowed to stay in the country while their cases are adjudicated by a system that is backlogged and overwhelmed. “Republican senators urge Biden to step in after Schumer vote fails over border dispute“, Washington Examiner, December 7, 2023. The latest security assistance package was provided to Ukraine on December 6, 2023. (DoD, Dec 6, 2023) The U.S. has provided more than $44.8 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022. (DoD Fact Sheet, Dec 6, 2023)

Russian Women Want Their Men Back. A growing movement of Russian women is demanding the return from the front of their husbands, sons and brothers who were mobilized after a decree by President Vladimir Putin in September last year. “In Russia, some women demand return of their men from Ukraine front”, Reuters, December 5, 2023.

Interactive Map. Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine by the Insitute for the Study of War and Critical Threats.

On storymaps.arcgis.com

National Security

NDAA. A final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (House version, congress.gov) has been agreed upon by House and Senate conferees. Both chambers of Congress will vote on the bill this week and send to the President for signing. Read more here in a statement by the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services (Dec 7, 2023).

WH War Powers Report. The White House has sent a letter to Congress with information about the deployments around the world of U.S. Armed Forces conducting counterterrorism missions.

Border Security. Arrivals of migrants in Mexico range from foreign born entrepreneurs to those who never intended to make Mexico their final destination – looking to move further north. “A New Wave of Migration is Changing Mexico”, America’s Quarterly, December 7, 2023.

Special Collection Service. The United States Special Collection Service (SCS), codenamed F6, is a joint NSA-CIA program that is referred to as the “mission impossible force.” The SCS’s existence is denied by the U.S. government, but its activities and capabilities have been revealed over the years. “Special Collection Service: America’s Mission Impossible Force”, by George Englehart, Grey Dynamics, December 10, 2023.

Space Force Now in Europe. U.S. European Command, U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Space Force officially activated the U.S. Space Forces Europe and Africa (SPACEFOREUR-AF) component command at a ceremony in Ramstein, Germany, on Dec. 8, 2023. SPACEFOREUR-AF is the newest service component under EUCOM and AFRICOM with their permanent headquarters at Ramstein Air Base. EUCOM and AFRICOM are the latest combatant commands to establish a space component, following in the footsteps of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. Central Command. (AFRICOM, Dec 10, 2023)

LRHW. The Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) (Figure 1), with a reported range of 1,725 miles, consists of a ground-launched missile equipped with a hypersonic glide body and associated transport, support, and fire control equipment. Read more about the LRHW in The U.S. Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), Congressional Research Service, CRS IF11991, updated December 8, 2023, PDF, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11991

Great Power Competition

Resisting China’s Gray Zone Activities Against Taiwan. China has sharply escalated its pressure campaign targeting Taiwan in recent years, particularly by leveraging military and security operations in the “gray zone” between peace and war. Policymakers in Washington and Taipei should respond to such gray zone pressure tactics by gauging their effectiveness, improving tracking and information-sharing, bolstering resilience, strengthening response capabilities, clarifying and consulting on response thresholds, and shaping the narrative. Jacob Stokes explains more in Resisting China’s Gray Zone Military Pressure on Taiwan, CNAS, November 2023, PDF, 14 pages.

https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/GreyZone_Final.pdf

PLA a Paper Tiger? Not Really. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is more capable than the United States cares to admit and only needs to be good enough at a certain time and place to send the US packing from the Indo-Pacific. “Think China’s PLA is a paper tiger? Think again, warns retired US Marine Officer”, Defense Connect, November 29, 2023.

Disrupting the PLA. RAND Corporation has published a new report on China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that explores the tasks the PLA will be expected to carry out in support of key missions in peacetime and in a low-intensity conflict. The report goes on to cite some vulnerabilities that could disrupt the PLA’s path towards carrying out the tasks and how the United States can leverage those vulnerabilities to disrupt the PLA’s tasks and Chinese strategic objectives. “Disrupting the Chinese Military in Competition and Low-Intensity Conflict”, RAND Corporation, November 2023, PDF, 116 pages. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1794-2.html

Chinese Overseas Ports. The Council of Foreign Relations has an interactive map that tracks China’s growing maritime influence through investments in strategic overseas ports. Users can plot the location of each port and view satellite images alongside detailed information. “Tracking China’s Control of Overseas Ports”, Council of Foreign Relations, November 6, 2023.

Paper – Russian Drones. Since 2009, Russia has invested significant effort into developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, for military purposes. They have used drones for reconnaissance, targeting, electronic warfare, and direct strikes. The Ukraine conflict has diminished the inventory of Russian drones, and the country is relying on Iranian drones. Russia is losing in the drone war with Ukraine. Read more in Russian Military Drones: Past, Present, and Future of the UAV Industry, by Pavel Luzin, Foreign Policy Research Institute, November 2023, PDF, 32 pages. https://www.fpri.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/russian-military-drones-.pdf

Russia and Finland Border Security. Since August 2023, around 900 asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa have been waved through by Russian border control to the Finnish border checkpoints without proper documentation. Finland accuses Russia of transporting the refugees to the border points where they then ask for asylum. The EU’s external border agency, Frontex, has dispatched staff to help Finnish colleagues stave off Russia’s weaponization of migrants on its border. Once across the border, the asylum seekers and refugees become a costly burden for the Finnish government and people. “Russian Border Bullying is Back – Finland This Time”, by Charlotta Collen, Center for European Policy Analysis, November 28, 2023. See also “Russia Taunts Finland with Migrant Maneuvers”, by Elisabeth Braw, CEPA, November 28, 2023. While the use of migrants as a weapon against Finland may be new, the tactic has been employed by Belarus against other European countries since 2021. See “A migrant crisis at the Latvia-Belarus border”, by Daniel Ofman, CEPA, November 22, 2023.

SOF News welcomes the submission of articles for publication. If it is related to special operations, current conflicts, national security, or defense then we are interested.

News From Around the World

Myanmar Conflict. The world’s longest running conflict is seeing the increasingly overstretched military junta losing ground in northern Myanmar in an area near the Chinese border. Lucas Myers, a senior associate for Southeast Asia at the Wilson Center’s Asia Program, provides a lengthy commentary on this topic. “The Myanmar Military is Facing Death by a Thousand Cuts”, War on the Rocks, November 17, 2023.

Report – Afghanistan: Background and U.S. Policy. The Congressional Research Service has updated a publication that covers the following topics: Taliban government, regional dynamics, counterterrorism, Afghan women and girls, relocations of Afghans to the U.S., and the humanitarian crisis. CRS R45122, updated December 4, 2023, PDF, 21 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45122

Afghanistan’s UN Seat. While the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) maintains that it deserves full-scale recognition, it has not been given the country’s seat at the United Nations. “Whose Seat Is It Anyway: The UN’s (non) decision on who represents Afghanistan”, Afghanistan Analysts Network, December 7, 2023.

Looking for a break from the snow and cold weather? Florida could be your next trip!

Attacks on U.S. Bases. The U.S. military in Iraq and Syria continue to receive rocket and drone attacks from various jihadist militia groups – many with an affiliation with Iran. The U.S. Embassy in Iraq has been subjected to attacks as well. In recent days, some servicemembers have received minor injuries. U.S. naval vessels in the waters in the Middle East region are intercepting drones and missiles fired by Houthis from Yemen. Some of these Houthi attacks are meant for Israel (Reuters, Dec 6, 2023) and others against military and commercial maritime traffic. (FDD, Dec 6, 2023) The Iranian-backed Houthis say they will prohibit the passage of any ships to Israel and consider them a target.

Venezuelan Referendum and Invading Guyana. Voters overwhelming cast their vote to establish a new Venezuelan state in a highly contested oil-rich territory of Guyana known as Essequibo. The region has been under dispute for years and Venezuela has been getting more active in its complaints and could consider taking military action to occupy the contested zone.

SOF News Book Shop

View our selection of books about special operations forces at the SOF News Book Shop.

Books, Podcasts, Videos, and Movies

Video – ThinkJSOU with Dr. Michael G. Vickers. Dr. Jeff Rogg interviews Dr. Michael G. Vickers, former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. Dr. Vickers had a storied career in Army Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency, partially captured in the popular book and film, Charlie Wilson’s War. In his new book, By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy, Dr. Vickers fills in the rest of the story and offers a deeper look into a life dedicated to public service. In this interview, Dr. Vickers discusses some of the key moments in his career, lessons learned along the way, and insights for U.S. national security today. Think JSOU, YouTube, December 6, 2023, 58 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8wglBG6YcM

Video – Mike Vickers on The Teamhouse. The former Assistant Secretary of Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict is interviewed by The Teamhouse. One topic covered is Vicker’s latest book. December 8, 2023, 1 hour 30 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRInktLnLXM

Podcast – Counter-Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy Priorities. War on the Rocks, December 8, 2023, 38 minutes. Christy Abizaid, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, spoke about the duties of the center, terrorist threats to the United States and the role of counter-terrorism during an era of strategic competition. https://warontherocks.com/2023/12/counter-terrorism-and-u-s-foreign-policy-priorities/

Armor. The mounted maneuver journal published by the U.S. Army Armor Branch has posted its Fall 2023 issue online. Ten different articles for tankers. DVIDS, PDF, 62 pages. https://www.dvidshub.net/publication/issues/68480

Strategika. The Hoover Institution has posted its latest issue of Strategika. Articles on the Ukraine conflict, Putin’s legitimacy, and prevailing in great power competition. December 7, 2023. https://www.hoover.org/publications/strategika/issue-88

Military Review. The November – December 2023 issue is now online. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/November-December-2023/

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sof.news · by SOF News · December 11, 2023

5. Finding a New Big Picture: Reintroducing the American People to Their Armed Forces

I love watching the old Big Picture films done by the US military. Can we really find a modern version that will have the desired effects? (perhaps it is of TikTok length).

Finding a New Big Picture: Reintroducing the American People to Their Armed Forces

thestrategybridge.org · December 11, 2023

Super Bowl XXV marked a high point in the relationship between the average citizen and the United States Armed Forces. The January 1991 game—best remembered for Scott Norwood’s field goal attempt missing wide right, leaving the Giants victorious, and starting an impressive streak of futility for the Bills—took place less than two weeks after the air campaign of Operation Desert Storm began. Throughout the night, the nascent war threatened to upstage the game itself. Whitney Houston delivered a classic performance of the national anthem in front of a sellout crowd in Tampa, each of whom waved a small American flag as aircraft from nearby MacDill Air Force Base screamed overhead. Rather than air the halftime show live, ABC opted to have Peter Jennings deliver an update on the war in Iraq. This was ironic, and merciful to the viewing audience, as the show itself was a celebration of Disney’s “It’s a Small World.” With frequent references to the war throughout, shots of servicemembers in the crowd, and a parade of children with deployed parents waving yellow ribbons, the broadcast created what historian Melani McAlister called a “multilayered patriotic display.”[1] Eighty million people watched it live on ABC.[2]

Whitney Houston singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl in 1991. (George Rose/Getty)

CNN’s coverage of the first night of bombings in Iraq drew an audience of similarly epic size, particularly impressive for a new network. Almost 60 million watched on the network itself and 225 independent affiliates simulcasting CNN’s coverage.[3] The network’s continuous coverage of the conflict established it as essential viewing and sped the decline of network news in favor of cable, sparking the creation of rivals Fox News and MSNBC by the late 1990s. As the U.S. military celebrated its victory in Operation Desert Storm, it numbered around two million uniformed service members, enjoyed a sprawling defense industrial base, and an adult population of whom 31% were veterans.[4] As the Cold War ended, military life was interwoven into that of the average American.

As the U.S. sought to move past the Cold War, its efforts to cash in the resulting peace dividend severed many of the most prominent links between the military and the broader population. Massive defense-related spending cuts led to fewer bases, servicemembers, and industry jobs, causing the military to vanish from many communities and leaving only ghost facilities to mark its past relationship. The reduced size of the force meant fewer having served, resulting in fewer veterans to share their experience and be part of local communities. Only one in eight men and one in 100 women today have experience serving in the military, a number the Census Bureau projects will fall to one in 14 men with women remaining at the same level.[5] The smaller military consolidated onto fewer bases over five rounds of Base Realignment and Closurec—ommonly known by its acronym, BRAC. Between 1988 and 2005, over 130 installations across 33 states and territories closed or saw drastically reduced usage.[6] These closures left both economic and environmental devastation in their wake, as clean-up costs potentially exceeded the savings from closing the installation.[7] Reduced military spending also roiled the defense industrial base, leading many contractors to either go out of business or merge. The number of aerospace and defense prime contractors went from 51 in 1990 to five today. Contractors for ground vehicles and tanks went from nine to three.[8] Communities reliant on the industrial base ended up suffering in many of the same ways as those that saw BRAC closures. The loss of jobs led to significant economic downturns and drastically altered the identity of many communities.

Despite this severing of the military from other parts of civil society, the public continued to support the military, placing more confidence in it than other public institutions. Today, even though the overall response is near an all-time low, 60 percent of those polled expressed a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military, placing it only behind small business in the Gallup poll.[9] A Reagan Foundation poll in 2022 painted a bleaker picture, with only a plurality of those surveyed expressing a great deal of confidence in the military and only 13 percent of 18-29 year old respondents were extremely or very willing to serve with 25 percent somewhat.[10] The disparity between support and interest in serving is a predictable outcome of a process started during the Reagan administration and carried through each administration since that equates to simply supporting the troops with the fulfillment of a patriotic duty.[11] Understanding or direct engagement was not a requirement, something that afforded political and military leaders broad latitude in using the military and avoiding serious inquiry on strategic missteps.

The recent decline in support paired with a crisis in recruiting reveals the fragility of the late Cold War civil-military dynamic and exposes how little the military has done to make itself relatable to society or understandable to most Americans. Similarly messaging does little to counter inaccurate depictions that take root in the popular imagination, such as that all veterans are simultaneously heroic but also nearly irreparably damaged. In a recent study looking at veterans in the workplace, Daniel Peat and Jaclyn Perrmann Graham found there was a “sense of stigmatization for nearly every veteran” they interviewed due to mental health perceptions.[12]

To combat this, a growing refrain to the force from military leadership is for individuals to be more active in telling their service stories. While this storytelling can be a good thing, it shifts much of the burden of communication from the institution to an already overtaxed force and presumes the message will be framed in a manner that reflects favorably on the service. It also overlooks that the reach of recent veterans and those currently serving is much smaller than it used to be. Finally, this communication has also already been occurring for years, which is why as of 2022 nearly 60 percent of recruits have a family member in the military, with 30 percent having a parent in the service.[13] A Wall Street Journal article this summer highlighted how this reliable “pipeline is now under threat” as well.[14] Given the size of the military is not likely to grow and old bases are not going to come back, the volume of storytellers and their reach will continue to diminish. To repair its relationship with the American public, the military needs to do more to leverage traditional and new media to amplify the stories of servicemembers and communicate better both what life in the military is like and what it does. This should not be a recruitment campaign, but rather a reintroduction. Recruitment campaigns contain a clear ask and rely on the assumption the audience has familiarity with the military. Given the separation between the military and the public this assumption is faulty. The military needs to reach out and show the American people what it actually does to support the nation and rebuild the foundation on which recruitment rests.

In the early years of the Cold War, the Army found itself in a similar position. It struggled to explain its utility on the assumed nuclear battlefields of the future to both policymakers and the American public. To bridge this perception gap, the Army turned to an innovative technology and growing communication medium: television. Beginning in 1951 and running for twenty years, the Army produced and distributed a show called The Big Picture. Initially debuting in primetime on ABC before moving to a syndication model, the half hour show highlighted a wide array of topics related to the Army. With over eight hundred episodes, the show is among the longest running in television history, won an Emmy, and was a launching pad for many who would find success in the broader television and movie industries. Historian John Lemza notes The Big Picture was a point of contact between the Army and the American people and “a mediating point between the Army’s internal image-makers and the wider world of public opinion.”[15]

Beginning as a showcase for the Army in the Korean War, the show expanded, covering the service’s history, special initiatives and technology, soldier experiences, and the roles of different branches and units. Ideas for episodes came from a variety of places and shifted frequently, allowing it to show “mud-level GI perspective, complementing it with a broader understanding of events.”[16] The show ended in 1971 amid rising concerns about its budget, around three-quarters of a million dollars annually, and accusations, most prominently from Senator Fulbright, that it attempted to influence foreign policy.[17] As it went off the air, it was still reliably carried by over 350 stations in the U.S. as well as 50 tied to the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.[18] In Lemza’s telling, the cancellation meant the U.S. Army “surrendered a key piece of media terrain that might have served it well into the future as it continued to defend its relevance with the American public.”[19]

Reacquiring this terrain should be a focus of the military as it seeks to close the civil-military gap. While the media environment is vastly different, today making a literal return of The Big Picture an unlikely solution, the content-hungry nature of contemporary mass media should create opportunities for partnership. As with The Big Picture, doing so would require an investment in both people and capital. Many in uniform are trying to take their stories to a broader audience via social media, publishing on sites like this one, and public speaking around military communities. However, these efforts tend to stay within the increasingly small military and military-adjacent audiences. The resources available to the Department of Defense could help push them onto a larger stage. The benefit of reintroducing the American people to what their military does for them makes it a worthy effort. Reversing the chasm between the public and their military is too important to wait for another unlikely convergence of a popular war, mega pop star and a Bills Super Bowl appearance.

Ben Griffin is an Army officer and the chief of the Military History Division in the History Department at the United States Military Academy. He is also the author of Reagan’s War Stories: A Cold War Presidency from the Naval Institute Press and is currently working on a follow up, Imagined World Orders: Tom Clancy and U.S. National Security. He can be found on Twitter/X at @BenGriffin06. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: U.S. Air Force Honor Guard Ceremonial Flight, Washington, DC, 2017 (Sgt. Kalie Frantz).

Notes:

[1] Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, & U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945, (Berkeley; University of California Press, 2005), 252.

[2] “Super Bowl Ratings History (1967-present)” Sports Media Watch, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/super-bowl-ratings-historical-viewership-chart-cbs-nbc-fox-abc/.

[3] Variety Staff, “CNN Reigns in Desert Storm,” Variety January 20, 1991, accessed December 3, 2023, https://variety.com/1991/more/news/cnn-reigns-in-desert-storm-99128411/.

[4] Jonathan Vespa, “Those Who Served: From World War II to the War on Terror”, Report ACS-43, US Census Bureau, June 2, 2020, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/acs-43.html.

[5] Vespa.

[6] “Base realignment and Closure (BRAC) Sites by State,” Environmental Protection Agency, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.epa.gov/fedfac/base-realignment-and-closure-brac-sites-state

[7] Ralph Vartabedian, “Decades Later, Closed Military Bases Remain a Toxic Menace,” New York Times October 2, 2023, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/us/military-base-closure-cleanup.html.

[8] “State of Competition with the Defense Industrial Base,” Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, February 2022, accessed December 3, 2023, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Feb/15/2002939087/-1/-1/1/STATE-OF-COMPETITION-WITHIN-THE-DEFENSE-INDUSTRIAL-BASE.PDF.

[9] “Confidence in Institutions,” Gallup, accessed December 3, 2023, https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx.

[10] “Reagan National Defense Survey” Ronald Reagan Institute, November 2022, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.reaganfoundation.org/media/359970/2022-survey-summary.pdf.

[11] Benjamin Griffin, Reagan’s War Stories: A Cold War Presidency, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2022), 172.

[12] Daniel M Peat and Jaclyn Perrmann-Graham, “Where Do I Belong? Conflicted Identities and the Paradox of Simultaneous Stigma and Social Aggrandizement of Military Veterans in Organizations” in The International Journal of Human Resource Management, VOL 34, NO 17, (September 2022): 3410.

[13] Jonathan Ahl, “Most Military recruits Come From Families of People Who Served. Experts Say That’s Not Sustainable,” The American Homefront Project, June 2, 2022, accessed December 3, 2023, https://americanhomefront.wunc.org/news/2022-06-02/most-military-recruits-have-family-members-who-served-experts-say-thats-not-sustainable.

[14] Ben Kesling, “The Military Recruiting Crisis: Even Veterans Don’t Want Their Families to Join,” The Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2023, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/military-recruiting-crisis-veterans-dont-want-their-children-to-join-510e1a25.

[15] John Lemza, The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen, (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2021), 36. Many of the episodes of The Big Picture are available online through the National Archives.

[16] Lemza, 31.

[17] Lemza, 137, 90.

[18] Lemza 137.

[19] Lemza, 263.

thestrategybridge.org · December 11, 2023

6. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 10, 2023

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-10-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova emphasized that Russia's maximalist objectives in Ukraine have not changed, repeating the Kremlin’s demand for full Ukrainian political capitulation and Kyiv’s acceptance of Russia’s military and territorial demands rather than suggesting any willingness to negotiate seriously.
• Zakharova's demand that Ukraine withdraw its troops from "Russian territory" as a necessary prerequisite for the resolution of the war suggests that Russia's maximalist objectives include controlling the entirety of the four oblasts it has illegally annexed parts of.
• The Kremlin continues to express an increasingly anti-Israel position in the Israel–Hamas war despite feigning interest in being a neutral arbitrator in the conflict.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Latin America on December 10 likely in order to secure Latin American support for Ukraine.
• Russian military authorities in Armenia are likely attempting to maintain military power over Armenia amidst the continued deterioration of Armenian-Russian relations.
• Russian forces conducted a small series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on December 9 and 10.
• Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas.
• Russian milbloggers continue to criticize the purported Russian military ban on the use of civilian vehicles for military purposes.
• Russian authorities continue long-term efforts to indoctrinate Ukrainian students in occupied Ukraine by directing funding to educational institutions in occupied Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 10, 2023

Dec 10, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 10, 2023

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

December 10, 2023, 6pm ET 

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

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 12:45 pm ET on December 10. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the December 11 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova emphasized that Russia's maximalist objectives in Ukraine have not changed, repeating the Kremlin’s demand for full Ukrainian political capitulation and Kyiv’s acceptance of Russia’s military and territorial demands rather than suggesting any willingness to negotiate seriously. In a written interview with AFP on December 9, Zakharova claimed that a "comprehensive, sustainable, and fair resolution" in Ukraine can only happen if the West stops "pumping up the Armed Forces of Ukraine with weapons" and that Ukraine surrenders Russia’s claimed Ukrainian territory and "withdraws its troops," presumably from Ukrainian territory Russia claims to have annexed.[1] Zakharova emphasized the Kremlin's longstanding claim that Russia invaded Ukraine for "de-militarization," "denazification," and to "ensure the rights of Russian-speaking citizens" in Ukraine.[2] The Kremlin has consistently used the term “denazification” as code for the removal of the elected government of Ukraine and its replacement by some government the Kremlin regards as acceptable—i.e., regime change.[3] “De-militarization” would obviously leave Ukraine permanently at Russia’s mercy. Zakharova's comments clearly highlight the fact that the initial goals of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as set out by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022, have not changed, and that Putin does not intend to end the war unless his maximalist objectives have been accomplished.[4] ISW continues to assess that Russia does not intend to engage in serious negotiations with Ukraine in good faith and that negotiations on Russia's terms are tantamount to full Ukrainian and Western surrender.[5]

Zakharova's demand that Ukraine withdraw its troops from "Russian territory" as a necessary prerequisite for the resolution of the war suggests that Russia's maximalist objectives include controlling the entirety of the four oblasts it has illegally annexed parts of. Russian forces currently militarily control portions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts, but Russia formally (and illegally) annexed the entirety of these oblasts in September of 2022.[6] Zakharova's suggestion that Ukrainian forces must entirely withdraw from territory that Russia has claimed through its sham annexation suggests that the Russian demands include the surrender of additional Ukrainian territory that Russian forces do not currently control up to the administrative borders of the four occupied oblasts. Calls for Ukraine's capitulation under the current circumstances of Russian control of Ukrainian territory up to the current frontline are already unacceptable from the standpoint of vital Ukrainian and Western national security interests, as ISW has previously assessed.[7] The Russian demand for an even more expansive surrender of Ukrainian-held territory that Russian forces could likely conquer only at the cost of tremendous additional blood, treasure, and time, if they can do it at all, indicates that Russia’s aims far transcend keeping the territory Russian forces have already seized. It is noteworthy, in this regard, that Russian forces continue to conduct offensive operations in eastern Kharkiv Oblast, which Russia has not claimed to have annexed, suggesting that Russia’s territorial aims may be even more expansive than those Zakharova laid out.

The Kremlin continues to express an increasingly anti-Israel position in the Israel–Hamas war despite feigning interest in being a neutral arbitrator in the conflict. NOTE: A version of this text appears in ISW-CTP's December 10 Iran Update. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a telephone conversation on December 10, which reportedly lasted for 50 minutes and heavily focused on the Israel–Hamas war.[8] Putin reportedly noted that there is a “disastrous humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip” and stressed that avoiding consequences for the civilian population while countering terrorist threats is just as important as rejecting and condemning terrorism.[9] Putin’s comments are noteworthy in light of the devastation the Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought to the civilian population there and Russia’s deliberate efforts to inflict suffering on Ukrainian civilians by attacking energy infrastructure going into winter. Putin reportedly reiterated the Kremlin’s initial rhetorical position on the Israel–Hamas war by claiming that Russia is ready to alleviate civilian suffering and de-escalate the conflict.[10] Putin has increasingly shifted away from this more neutral rhetoric to a much more anti-Israel position in recent weeks, notably claiming that the war is leading to the “extermination of the civilian population in Palestine.”[11] Netanyahu reportedly expressed dissatisfaction with Russian positions towards Israel that Russian officials have articulated at the United Nations (UN) and other multilateral organizations.[12] Netanyahu also reportedly criticized Russia for its “dangerous cooperation” with Iran, notably following Putin’s meeting with Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi in Moscow on December 7.[13] Putin likely aimed to assuage Israeli concerns about Russian support for Hamas and the deepening Russian–Iranian security partnership, but Israeli and Russian rhetoric surrounding the conversation suggests that Putin likely failed to do so.[14] The Kremlin’s increasingly non-neutral framing of the Israel–Hamas war signals potential increasing support for Iranian interests in the region and increased willingness to antagonize Israel.[15]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Latin America on December 10 likely in order to secure Latin American support for Ukraine. Zelensky met with Paraguayan President Santiago Peña Palacios, Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou, and Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa to discuss Latin America’s involvement in the Ukrainian Peace Formula and a future Ukraine–Latin America summit.[16] Zelensky thanked all the presidents for their vocal support for Ukraine and condemnation of Russia’s full-scale invasion.[17] Zelensky noted Uruguay’s prior participation in the Ukrainian Peace Formula and expressed hope that Uruguay and other Latin American countries will participate in the Peace Formula’s fourth meeting of national security and foreign policy advisors in January 2024.[18] Zelensky stated that it is important for Ukraine to have the support of Latin America during its fight for freedom and democracy.[19]

Russian military authorities in Armenia are likely attempting to maintain military power over Armenia amidst the continued deterioration of Armenian-Russian relations. The international human rights organization Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly’s Armenian branch in Vanadzor reported on December 8 that Russian military police at the 102nd Military Base in Gyumri, Armenia, detained Russian citizen Dmitri Setrakov on December 6 or 7 for desertion.[20] The Russian 519th Military Investigation Department, located in Armenia, subsequently opened a criminal case against Setrakov for unauthorized abandonment of his unit.[21] Setrakov reportedly served as a contract soldier in the Russian military before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine but refused to participate in Russian operations in Ukraine and moved to Armenia.[22] Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor Head Artur Sakunts told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Armenian Service Radio Azatuntyun that Armenian law enforcement was not involved in Setrakov’s arrest and stated Russian law enforcement does not have the right to arrest people, including Russian citizens, on Armenian territory.[23] Sakunts called the arrest an “attack on the Armenian legal system and against Armenia as a sovereign state.”[24] Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor called on the Armenian government, Prosecutor General’s Office, and other law enforcement agencies to protect Setrakov under Armenian law and initiate criminal proceedings against Russian military police in Armenia to prevent Setrakov's extradition.[25] Armenian government officials have not responded to Setrakov’s arrest or Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor’s statement at the time of this publication. Russian authorities’ arrest of Setrakov may generate criticism of Russia’s military presence in Armenia at the 102nd Military Base despite recent statements from Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safaryan that Armenia is not considering leaving the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) or discussing the withdrawal of Russia’s 102nd Military Base.[26] Armenia has effectively abstained from participation in the CSTO by not attending four recent high-level CSTO events and exercises.[27]

Russian forces conducted a small series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on December 9 and 10. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian air defenses downed a Kh-29 missile and Shahed-136 drone on December 9 and that Russian forces struck Velykyi Burluk, Kharkiv Oblast with two S-300 missiles on December 10.[28] The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense (UK MOD) assessed on December 10 that Russian forces likely conducted the first missile strike series of the anticipated winter strikes campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure on the night of December 7.[29] ISW has observed preparations for Russia’s anticipated winter strikes campaign since October 2023 and has also noted relatively larger drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure so far in December before the night of December 7.[30] ISW is not currently prepared to forecast a start date of the anticipated winter strike campaign.

Key Takeaways:

• Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova emphasized that Russia's maximalist objectives in Ukraine have not changed, repeating the Kremlin’s demand for full Ukrainian political capitulation and Kyiv’s acceptance of Russia’s military and territorial demands rather than suggesting any willingness to negotiate seriously.
• Zakharova's demand that Ukraine withdraw its troops from "Russian territory" as a necessary prerequisite for the resolution of the war suggests that Russia's maximalist objectives include controlling the entirety of the four oblasts it has illegally annexed parts of.
• The Kremlin continues to express an increasingly anti-Israel position in the Israel–Hamas war despite feigning interest in being a neutral arbitrator in the conflict.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Latin America on December 10 likely in order to secure Latin American support for Ukraine.
• Russian military authorities in Armenia are likely attempting to maintain military power over Armenia amidst the continued deterioration of Armenian-Russian relations.
• Russian forces conducted a small series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on December 9 and 10.
• Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas.
• Russian milbloggers continue to criticize the purported Russian military ban on the use of civilian vehicles for military purposes.
• Russian authorities continue long-term efforts to indoctrinate Ukrainian students in occupied Ukraine by directing funding to educational institutions in occupied Ukraine.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued localized offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on December 10 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled at least seven Russian assaults in the Kupyansk direction near Synkivka (9km northeast of Kupyansk), Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk) and Novoselivske (16km northwest of Svatove) and at least five Russian assaults in the Lyman direction near Makiivka (23km northwest of Kreminna), Terny (17km west of Kreminna), and the Serebryanske forest area (10km south of Kreminna).[31] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces recently advanced 1.5 kilometers near Kreminna, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[32] Ukrainian Ground Forces Command Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Volodymyr Fityo stated that poor weather, including freezing rain and sub-zero temperatures, led to a decrease in Russian assaults in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions on December 9.[33] Another Russian milblogger claimed that in the past week Ukrainian forces stabilized the front line near Ivanivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk) and that Russian forces failed to break through Ukrainian defenses near Synkivka due to dense Ukrainian minefields.[34]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on December 10 and recently made gains. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces were somewhat successful in the Serebryanske forest area in the past week.[35] Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian assaults near Synkivka, Torske (15km west of Kreminna), and the Serebryanske forest area on December 9 and 10.[36]

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

Russian forces conducted ground attacks northeast of Bakhmut on December 10 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Vesele (18km northeast of Bakhmut).[37] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 106th Guards Airborne (VDV) Division captured 10 unspecified positions and advanced up to 3.5 kilometers in depth near Vesele.[38] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed on December 9 that Russian forces advanced near Vesele and are attempting to encircle the settlement.[39]

Russian forces continued offensive actions west and south of Bakhmut on December 10 and recently made confirmed advances. Geolocated footage published on December 10 indicates that Russian forces advanced north of Khromove (immediately west of Bakhmut).[40] Additional geolocated footage published on December 9 indicates that Russian forces advanced north and southeast of Bohdanivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut).[41] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade (14th Army Corps, Northern Fleet) advanced near Bohdanivka and amplified alleged reports from unspecified Ukrainian military observers that Russian forces advanced up to 580 meters northeast of Bohdanivka.[42] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced in the direction of Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut).[43] Russian milbloggers claimed on December 10 that Russian forces advanced onto the dominant heights northwest of Klishchiivka (9km south of Klishchiivka) and are attacking in the direction of Chasiv Yar (12km west of Bakhmut), attempting to cut off Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) into Bakhmut.[44] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets claimed that Russian forces introduced additional manpower, including elements of the 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade and unspecified VDV units, into combat in the direction of Chasiv Yar.[45] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled at least 14 Russian attacks near Hryhorivka (9km northwest of Bakhmut), Bohdanivka, Ivanivske, Klishchiivka, and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[46] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Klishchiivka and Pivnichne (20km southwest of Bakhmut and just west of Horlivka).[47]

Russian forces continued offensive operations near Avdiivka on December 10 and recently made a confirmed advance. Geolocated footage published on December 9 indicates that Russian forces advanced east of Stepove (3km northwest of Avdiivka).[48] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced in Stepove, north of the Avdiivka Coke Plant (on the northwestern outskirts of Avdiivka), and in the Avdiivka industrial zone southeast of the settlement and attacked in the direction of Novokalynove (13km northeast of Avdiivka).[49] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled at least 39 Russian attacks east of Novobakhmutivka (9km northwest of Avdiivka); near Stepove, Avdiivka, and Pervomaiske (10km southwest of Avdiivka); and south of Tonenke (5km west of Avdiivka) and Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka).[50] Ukrainian Avdiivka City Military Administration Head Vitaliy Barabash stated that Russian forces are constantly attacking and striking Ukrainian positions near Avdiivka regardless of the weather conditions.[51] A Russian milblogger characterized the Avdiivka front as ”a lighter version of the Bakhmut meat grinder,” suggesting that Russian forces are conducting attritional infantry-led frontal assaults on Ukrainian fortifications in Avdiivka at high cost.[52] A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced in unspecified forest areas near Stepove.[53]

Russian forces continued assaults west and southwest of Donetsk City on December 10 and recently made a confirmed advance. Geolocated footage published on December 10 shows Russian forces planting a flag on the southwestern outskirts of Marinka (just west of Donetsk City), indicating that Russian forces marginally advanced further into Marinka.[54] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces control ”almost all” of Marinka and that Ukrainian forces have withdrawn to positions west of the settlement.[55] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled at least 14 Russian attacks near Marinka, Pobieda (5km southwest of Donetsk City), Novomykhailivka (10km southwest of Donetsk City), and southeast of Vuhledar (26km southwest of Donetsk City).[56] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Marinka and Pobieda.[57]

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

Russian forces continued ground attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on December 10 but did not make any confirmed advances. One Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces made marginal advances southwest of Staromayorske (10km south of Velyka Novosilka) in the past week, but another milblogger claimed that reports of Russian advances near Staromayorske are premature and that the frontline remains unchanged.[58] ISW has not observed any visual evidence of recent Russian advances in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on December 10 that Ukrainian forces repelled two Russian attacks near Staromayorske.[59] A Russian milblogger posted footage of the 218th Tank Regiment (127th Motorized Rifle Division, 5th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) operating north of Pryyutne (15km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[60] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack near Novodonetske (15km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[61]

Russian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on December 10 and reportedly made unconfirmed gains. Russian sources claimed on December 9 that Russian forces advanced one kilometer and pushed Ukrainian forces from positions between Robotyne and Novoprokopivka (just south of Robotyne).[62] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces are advancing from Verbove (9km east of Robotyne) and Novofedorivka (15km northeast of Robotyne).[63] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed on December 10 that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Verbove, however.[64] Russian milbloggers claimed that poor weather conditions and ice are impeding Russian and Ukrainian ground attacks and armored vehicle movement near Verbove.[65] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled three Russian attacks west of Robotyne and near Novopokrovka (12km northeast of Robotyne).[66]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on December 10. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack north of Novoprokopivka, and a prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Robotyne and Verbove .[67] Some Russian milbloggers claimed that the overall number of Ukrainian assaults in the area south of Orikhiv has recently decreased due to the recommitment of select Ukrainian troops to the Avdiivkadirection.[68] Russian sources additionally noted that the ground has mostly frozen around Verbove, and that fighting is ongoing in forest areas.[69] One milblogger stated that Ukrainian forces are still managing to operate combat helicopters along the Robotyne-Verbove line.[70]

Ukrainian forces continued ground operations on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast on December 10. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces maintain positions on the east bank of the Dnipro River and are striking Russian positions in the area.[71] Russian milbloggers claimed that fighting continues near Krynky (30km northeast of Kherson City) and noted a sustained high tempo of Ukrainian operations in the area.[72] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces captured new positions on Velykyi Potemkin island (southwest of Kherson City), although ISW assesses that Ukrainian forces already control all of the island.[73] A Russian milblogger amplified footage purporting to show elements of the Russian 28th Motorized Rifle Regiment (70th Motorized Rifle Division, 18th Combined Arms Army) striking Ukrainian positions on islands in the Dnipro River.[74] The Russian MoD posted footage purporting to show unspecified Russian Airborne (VDV) elements conducting aerial reconnaissance of Ukrainian positions on the west (right) bank of the Dnipro River.[75]

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

Russian milbloggers continue to criticize the purported Russian military ban on the use of civilian vehicles for military purposes. A Russian milblogger claimed on December 10 that Russian Directorate of Military Representations officials attempted to seize all Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant (UAZ) off-road vehicles from an unspecified Russian naval infantry unit, but that the unit’s officers convinced the officials to allow the unit to keep the vehicles.[76] The milblogger claimed that Russian volunteer efforts and soldiers purchase 99 percent of all SUVs and minibuses that Russian forces use in combat areas.[77] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian personnel personally fund their vehicle repairs and do not know how to obtain permission from the Russian military to continue to use personal vehicles.[78] Russian milbloggers previously noted that a Russian military ban on the use of civilian vehicles could impede Russian military movement, supplies and ammunition deliveries, and casualty evacuations, and therefore, ultimately demoralize military personnel.[79]

The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed on December 9 that the Iranian state aircraft manufacturer Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company produces Shahed-131/136 drones.[80] Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office stated that it has yet to conclude investigations into the production of Mohajer-6 and Italmas drones (also known as Izdeliye drones) and noted that it sent requests to nine unspecified countries for legal assistance in investigating the supply of dual-use drone components to Iran and Russia.[81]

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are using drones to remotely mine areas along the frontline.[82] The milblogger claimed that Russian drones can carry both OZM, PMN, and POM anti-personnel mines and PTM-3 and PTM-4 anti-tank mines.[83]

A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are upgrading their digital communications kits in T-72B3, T-80BVM, and T-90M tanks.[84] Russian news outlet Anna News reported that Sotniki-BL digital communications system first entered service with the 4th Motorized Rifle Battalion (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic Army Corps) in August 2023, replacing outdated R-173 and R-123 radio communication systems.[85]

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

Russian authorities continue long-term efforts to indoctrinate Ukrainian students in occupied Ukraine by directing funding to educational institutions in occupied Ukraine. The Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Militia announced on December 10 that Russian Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education Ayrat Gatiyatov announced that the Russian government plans to allocate at least five billion rubles (about $54.2 million) to repair infrastructure at institutes of higher education in occupied Luhansk Oblast from 2024 to 2027.[86] Gatiyatov also stated that the Russian government has allocated over 5.5 billion rubles (about $59.6 million) to universities in occupied Luhansk Oblast since the beginning of 2023.[87] Russian occupation authorities will likely use these renovations to increase enrollment into Russian-government controlled educational institutions.

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made a historical appeal to past Russian and Soviet military victories during a speech to the Doha Forum on December 10 in an effort to downplay Russian losses in Ukraine and Russia’s degraded military capabilities.[88] Lavrov claimed that the military action “unleashed by the US at the hands of Ukraine” has only made Russia stronger and claimed that this phenomenon is similar to alleged increased Russian strength following military victories over Napoleon in the 19th century and Hitler during the Second World War.[89] Lavrov likely invoked these false historical analogies to minimize Russia’s losses in Ukraine and to assert that Russia would still be able to defeat the West in a hypothetical confrontation as the Russian empire and the Soviet Union did fighting European powers in past costly wars. Lavrov likely also referenced these false historical analogies, which were followed by periods of increased Russian and Soviet geopolitical power, to claim that the war in Ukraine will conclude with a geopolitically empowered Russia that can more widely challenge the West. The analogies are farcical because the current war began with an unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine, whereas Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 and Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.

The Ukrainian Center for Combating Disinformation reported on December 10 that Russian actors sent false SMS messages to Ukrainian residents in Zaporizhzhia City alleging a planned mass evacuation from the city in December 2023.[90] Russian sources are increasingly promoting information operations aimed at generating Ukrainian social discontent, and Russian actors may want to promote alleged military threats to near rear population centers, even those far outside the realistic potential for Russian advance, in an effort to promote discontent towards Ukrainian leadership.[91]

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

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met with Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo on December 9 and 10 and stated that Belarus will open an embassy in Malabo in the near future and that Equatorial Guinea will open an embassy in Minsk by the end of 2024.[92]

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

7. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, December 10, 2023

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-december-10-2023

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, December 10, 2023

Key Takeaways:

1. Palestinian militias continued to attack Israeli forces on the Israeli forward line of advance in Khan Younis.
2. Palestinian militias attacked Israeli military vehicles in Jabalia city as Israeli forces advanced east of the city.
3. Israeli forces killed the Hamas Shujaiya Battalion commander during clearing operations in the neighborhood.
4. Israel moved elements of its Artillery Corps into the Gaza Strip for the first time since the war began.
5. The Israeli Army Radio reported that the IDF has killed between 6,000 and 7,000 Palestinian militia fighters since the war began.
6. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called for greater coordination among Palestinian militias against Israel.
7. Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip conducted two indirect fire attacks into Israel.
8. Al Qassem Brigades spokesperson Abu Obeida threatened that Hamas would conduct additional terror attacks against Israeli civilians.
9. Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in five towns across West Bank.
10. Lebanese Hezbollah conducted a one-way drone attack that injured Israeli soldiers in northern Israel. LH claimed seven other attacks on Israeli military positions in northern Israel.
11. Asaib Ahl al Haq Secretary General Qais al Khazali reiterated his commitment to expelling US forces from Iraq in a social media statement.
12. Unspecified militants conducted two one-way drone attacks on US forces in eastern Syria, according to a US journalist.
13. The French FREMM Multi-Mission Frigate Languedoc intercepted two incoming Houthi drones off the Yemeni coast while patrolling the Red Sea.
14. Senior Iranian officials discussed the Israel-Hamas war with Syrian Prime Minister Hussein Arnous in Tehran.

IRAN UPDATE, DECEMBER 10, 2023

Dec 10, 2023 - ISW Press

Iran Update, December 10, 2023

Ashka Jhaveri, Amin Soltani, Andie Parry, Riley Bailey, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00pm EST

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

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

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Key Takeaways:

1. Palestinian militias continued to attack Israeli forces on the Israeli forward line of advance in Khan Younis.
2. Palestinian militias attacked Israeli military vehicles in Jabalia city as Israeli forces advanced east of the city.
3. Israeli forces killed the Hamas Shujaiya Battalion commander during clearing operations in the neighborhood.
4. Israel moved elements of its Artillery Corps into the Gaza Strip for the first time since the war began.
5. The Israeli Army Radio reported that the IDF has killed between 6,000 and 7,000 Palestinian militia fighters since the war began.
6. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine called for greater coordination among Palestinian militias against Israel.
7. Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip conducted two indirect fire attacks into Israel.
8. Al Qassem Brigades spokesperson Abu Obeida threatened that Hamas would conduct additional terror attacks against Israeli civilians.
9. Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in five towns across West Bank.
10. Lebanese Hezbollah conducted a one-way drone attack that injured Israeli soldiers in northern Israel. LH claimed seven other attacks on Israeli military positions in northern Israel.
11. Asaib Ahl al Haq Secretary General Qais al Khazali reiterated his commitment to expelling US forces from Iraq in a social media statement.
12. Unspecified militants conducted two one-way drone attacks on US forces in eastern Syria, according to a US journalist.
13. The French FREMM Multi-Mission Frigate Languedoc intercepted two incoming Houthi drones off the Yemeni coast while patrolling the Red Sea.
14. Senior Iranian officials discussed the Israel-Hamas war with Syrian Prime Minister Hussein Arnous in Tehran.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
• Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian militias continued to attack Israeli forces on the Israeli forward line of advance in Khan Younis on December 10. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continued targeting Palestinian militia sites in Khan Younis, Jabalia, Shujaiya, and Beit Hanoun. Israeli forces attacked underground tunnels in Khan Younis and conducted airstrikes to support ground maneuvers.[1] The al Qassem Brigades—the militant wing of Hamas—claimed that its fighters detonated an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) targeting Israeli forces northeast of Khan Younis.[2] The militia claimed to kill 13 Israeli soldiers in the EFP attack and two more soldiers with small arms afterward the initial explosion. EFPs are particularly lethal improvised explosive devices designed to penetrate armored vehicles, such as main battle tanks.[3] This attack is consistent with the shift of Hamas and other Palestinian militias using increasingly sophisticated tactics since the humanitarian pause expired on December 1.

The al Qassem Brigades claimed several other attacks on Israeli soldiers and armored vehicles using anti-personnel munitions, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), anti-tank rockets, and mortars. The militia claimed that it targeted an Israeli field command post with anti-personnel shells in one of the attacks.[4] The al Quds Brigades—the militant wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—conducted a complex attack on Israeli forces in a building northeast of Khan Younis using anti-personnel munitions and small arms. The militia also claimed three mortar attacks on Israeli soldiers advancing on east of Khan Younis.[5] The National Resistance Brigades—the militant wing of Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP—claimed that its fighters clashed with Israeli soldiers and vehicles east of al Bureij in the central Gaza Strip and Khan Younis.[6] A local resident captured footage of Israeli tanks operating on the Osama Elnajjar Road in Khan Younis on December 10.[7]

Palestinian militias attacked Israeli military vehicles in Jabalia city as Israeli forces advanced east of the city on December 10. Most of the attacks claimed by Palestinian militias across the Gaza Strip occurred around Jabalia. Fighting between Israeli forces and militia fighters concentrated in eastern Jabalia city near Jabalia refugee camp and in western Jabalia city adjacent to the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood. The al Qassem Brigades claimed several attacks on Israeli Merkava tanks and armored bulldozers using the al Yassin anti-tank munition west of Jabalia refugee camp.[8] The militia claimed attacks using anti-personnel munitions, grenades, and small arms against Israeli forces in the same area.[9] The militia also claimed that its fighters conducted two house-borne improvised explosive device (HBIED) attacks on Israeli forces west of Jabalia.[10] The al Quds Brigades and al Qassem Brigades claimed to fire RPGs, including tandem-charged RPGs, at Israeli military vehicles and soldiers as they advanced on al Fallujah Road.[11] A Palestinian journalist in Jabalia refugee camp reported that Israeli tanks advanced toward a UN Relief and Works Agency clinic.[12] Several other local journalists commented on Israeli forces operating around the camp.[13]

Israeli forces killed the Hamas Shujaiya Battalion commander during clearing operations in the neighborhood. The Shujaiya Battalion is a combat effective battalion under active and intense IDF pressure as Israeli forces advance into Shujaiya neighborhood.[14] Israeli forces killed the former commander of the battalion on December 2.[15] The IDF announced on December 10 that it killed the new battalion commander, Amad Abdullah Ali Qariqa.[16] Qariqa had served as the deputy commander of the battalion since 2019 and trained anti-tank operatives in Hamas’ Gaza City Brigade.[17] The IDF said on December 2 that it has “significantly damaged” the battalion’s capabilities.[18]

The IDF provided details on three units’ operations in Shujaiya neighborhood on December 10. The 282nd Fire Brigade attacked over 20 targets, including weapons storage facilities, booby-trapped houses, and other Hamas-affiliated military infrastructure.[19] The Golani Brigade has uncovered 15 tunnel shafts, located ammunition, and killed Palestinian fighters since the start of fighting in the neighborhood.[20] The 188th Brigade Combat Team raided a Hamas military headquarters and found various weapons.[21]

The al Quds Brigades claimed on December 10 that one it its "martyrdom” fighters blew up a house of 13 Israeli soldiers, who were searching for a tunnel entrance in Shujaiya.[22] The attack is one of few Palestinian militia claims of ”martyrdom” operations since the Israel-Hamas war began.[23] An Israeli Army Radio journalist on the ground noted that Israeli forces had encountered a compound of booby-trapped houses while clearing Shujaiya and after Palestinian militia fighters attempted to lure the forces into a trap.[24] The al Quds Brigades separately claimed to destroy an Israeli tank using an EFP in Shujaiya.[25] The National Resistance Brigades claimed on December 10 that two of its fighters, including a commander, died during clashes in Shujaiya.[26]

Israel moved elements of its Artillery Corps into the Gaza Strip for the first time since the war began. The Artillery Corps has been using fire to support ground maneuver and for shaping operations in the Gaza Strip since the war began.[27]

The al Qassem Brigades military spokesperson, Abu Obeida, boasted about Hamas’ alleged battlefield success in the Gaza Strip in a speech on December 10. Abu Obeida claimed that the al Qassem Brigades have destroyed Israeli vehicles in several neighborhoods around the northern Gaza Strip and Khan Younis.[28] Obeida referenced a failed Israeli operation to rescue a hostage on December 8 to say that neither Israel nor the United States is capable of freeing Hamas-held Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip.[29]

The Israeli Army Radio reported that the IDF has killed between 6,000 and 7,000 Palestinian militia fighters since the war began.[30] The outlet stated that the IDF has killed 800 militia fighters since the resumption of fighting after the humanitarian pause expired on December 1.[31] The number of wounded of Hamas fighters is twice as high as the number of fatalities, between 12,000 to 14,000, since the beginning of the war began, according to the outlet.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) called for greater coordination among Palestinian militias against Israel. The PFLP called for the formation of a unified Palestinian emergency command to confront Israeli military operations.[32] Some Palestinian militias have claimed combined operations since the war began, although such claims are infrequent.[33] CTP-ISW previously reported that the IDF faces a loose coalition of Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip—not just Hamas.[34]

Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip conducted two indirect fire attacks into Israel on December 10. The al Qassem Brigades and al Quds Brigades separately fired rockets at an Israeli military site adjacent to the Gaza Strip.[35] An unspecified senior military source told Israeli Army Radio that Hamas has hundreds of medium- and long-range rockets left in its arsenal and noted that 2024 will be a continuous year of fighting.[36]

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

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

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Al Qassem Brigades spokesperson Abu Obeida threatened on December 10 that Hamas would conduct additional terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Obeida referenced a shooting attack conducted by two Hamas gunmen on a bus stop in Jerusalem on November 30, saying “what is coming is worse and greater.”[37] That shooting attack killed three Israeli civilians hours before the humanitarian pause in the Gaza Strip expired.[38] The spokesperson also acknowledged that Hamas has a military presence in the West Bank and mockingly asked if Israel is “able to eliminate [Hamas] in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.”[39]

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in five towns across West Bank on December 10. Palestinian fighters used small arms against Israeli forces in three towns around Nablus.[40] The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed that it shot at an Israeli military checkpoint in one of the Nablus clashes.[41] Palestinian fighters also engaged Israeli forces in Tubas and Hebron.[42] CTP-ISW did not record any IED attacks on Israeli forces in the West Bank on December 10. Israeli forces arrested 21 Palestinians and confiscated small arms, weapons components, and explosives in West Bank raids on December 10.[43]

Hamas and several other Palestinian groups called for a global strike, especially in the West Bank, on December 11. Hamas’ West Bank Telegram channel distributed flyers for the strike.[44] Hamas called on West Bank residents to fight Israeli forces and demonstrate against Israel on December 11.[45] The National and Islamic Forces—a coalition the major Palestinian political factions— announced that its parties would participate in the global strike as a show of unity.[46]

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

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
• Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) conducted a one-way drone attack that injured Israeli soldiers in northern Israel on December 10. LH claimed that it launched several one-way attack drones at an Israeli command headquarters at the Yara barracks in northern Israel.[47] The IDF said that the attack moderately injured two soldiers and lightly injured others.[48] Israeli air defenses intercepted two of the several drones that entered Israel from Lebanon.[49] LH has only claimed seven drone attacks on Israeli positions along the Lebanese border since the Israel-Hamas war began, although the IDF frequently intercepts ”suspicious” aerial targets originating from Lebanon.[50] LH last claimed a drone attack on Israeli forces on November 20.[51]

LH claimed seven other attacks on Israeli military positions in northern Israel on December 10.[52] LH fired Burkan rockets at three Israeli military sites.[53] The al Qassem Brigades' Lebanon branch separately launched rockets at northwestern Israeli towns on December 10.[54] The al Qassem Brigades last claimed an attack from Lebanon on November 12.[55]

Top Israeli security and military officials discussed publicly on December 10 the threat that LH poses to Israel. Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hangebi told Israeli media that Israel can no longer accept the presence of LH’s elite Radwan forces along its northern border and that the situation in the north must change.[56] Hangebi added that Israel will pursue a diplomatic solution but otherwise would “have to act.” IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said that Israel emphasized similar sentiments about the need to address the LH threat, while visiting Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.[57] Halevi said that Israel can deter LH but can also achieve security through war. Halevi specified that war is not the preferred option. These statements follow Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning on December 7 that “if Hezbollah makes a mistake, the IDF will turn Beirut and South Lebanon into Gaza and Khan Younis.”[58]

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
• Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

Asaib Ahl al Haq (AAH) Secretary General Qais al Khazali reiterated his commitment to expelling US forces from Iraq in a social media statement on December 10.[59] Khazali’s statement follows recent indications of a division between AAH and other Iranian-backed Iraqi militant groups over attacks on US forces. Kataib Hezbollah (KH) has implicitly criticized the lack of AAH attacks on US positions since the Israel-Hamas war began.[60] AAH members also notably did not attend the December 5 funeral ceremony for five Iraqi militants killed during recent US self-defense strikes, though many other Iranian-backed Iraqi groups were present.[61] Iranian-backed Iraqi actors are exploiting the Israel-Hamas war to try to expel US forces from Iraq, as CTP-ISW previously reported.[62]

Unspecified militants conducted two one-way drone attacks on US forces in eastern Syria on December 10, according to a US journalist.[63] The militants targeted the US positions at Conoco Mission Support Site and al Omar oil field. US forces intercepted three drones used in the attacks. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—has not claimed responsibility nor has any other actor for the attacks at the time of writing. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq previously claimed attacks on US positions at al Omar oil field on December 4 and Conoco Mission Support Site on December 8.[64]

The French FREMM Multi-Mission Frigate Languedoc intercepted two incoming Houthi drones off the Yemeni coast while patrolling the Red Sea on December 9.[65] The Houthi drone attack comes after the Houthi military spokesperson announced on December 9 that the Houthis will expand their attacks on maritime traffic around the Red Sea.[66] The New York Times also reported on December 8 that Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance” plans to increase attacks on US and allied assets in the Middle East, including Houthi attacks on American-owned vessels operating in the Red Sea.[67] The Houthis have unsuccessfully targeted US naval vessels in the Red Sea with drones on multiple occasions, as CTP-ISW previously reported.[68] US Deputy National Security Adviser John Finer stated on December 7 that the IRGC is involved in planning and executing the Houthis’ drone and missile attacks on ships in the Red Sea.[69]

Senior Iranian officials discussed the Israel-Hamas war with Syrian Prime Minister Hussein Arnous in Tehran on December 10. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi boasted that the war has increased the global influence of Iran’s so-called “Axis of Resistance.”[70] Supreme National Security Council Secretary Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian praised the unity of the Axis of Resistance against Israel.[71] Arnous met with Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on December 9.[72]

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian called on Europe to take “effective action” to facilitate a permanent ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in a letter to EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell on December 10.[73] Abdollahian also called for the observance of international law and the provision of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Abdollahian warned of the possibility of the “deep” expansion of the conflict if Israel continues its military operations in the Gaza Strip during a phone call with Borrell on December 3.[74] Iranian officials have tried to pressure international actors to pursue a ceasefire by repeatedly suggested that the war could evolve into a regional conflict, as CTP-ISW previously reported.[75]

Cypriot security forces arrested two Iranians on December 10 for allegedly plotting to assassinate prominent Israelis inside Cyprus.[76] Israel stated that it aided the operation to identify and arrest these individuals.[77] Cypriot and Greek authorities have previously arrested Iranian-backed individuals plotting to conduct similar attacks against Israelis in Cyprus and Greece.[78]

The PFLP said that attacks on US bases and interests in addition to removing US and Israeli forces from the region must remain a goal of the Palestinian resistance.[79] The PFLP criticized the United States for vetoing a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war at the UN Security Council on December 8.[80] Iranian-backed militias in the regional have attacked dozens of US positions in Iraq and Syria since the war began.[81]

The Kremlin continues to express an increasing anti-Israel position in the Israel-Hamas war despite feigning interest in being a neutral arbitrator in the conflict. NOTE: A version of this text appears in ISW December 10 Russia Offensive Campaign Assessment. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a telephone conversation on December 10, which reportedly lasted for 50 minutes and heavily focused on the Israel-Hamas war.[82] Putin reportedly noted that there is a “disastrous humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip” and stressed that avoiding consequences for the civilian population while countering terrorist threats is just as important as rejecting and condemning terrorism.[83] Putin’s comments are noteworthy in light of the devastation the Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought to the civilian population there and Russia’s deliberate efforts to inflict suffering on Ukrainian civilians by attacking energy infrastructure going into winter. Putin reportedly reiterated the Kremlin’s initial rhetorical position on the Israel-Hamas war by claiming that Russia is ready to alleviate civilian suffering and deescalate the conflict.[84] Putin has increasingly shifted away from this more neutral rhetoric to a much more anti-Israel position in recent weeks, notably claiming that the war is leading to the ”extermination of the civilian population in Palestine.”[85] Netanyahu reportedly expressed dissatisfaction with Russian positions towards Israel that Russian officials have articulated at the United Nations (UN) and other multilateral organizations.[86] Netanyahu also reportedly criticized Russia for its ”dangerous cooperation” with Iran, notably following Putin’s meeting with Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi in Moscow on December 7.[87] Putin likely aimed to assuage Israeli concerns about Russian support for Hamas and the deepening Russian-Iranian security partnership, but Israeli and Russian rhetoric surrounding the conversation suggests that Putin likely failed to do so.[88] The Kremlin’s increasingly non-neutral framing of the Isarel-Hamas war signals potential increasing support for Iranian interests in the region and increased willingness to antagonize Israel.[89]

8.  New ICBM will take US nuclear missiles out of Cold War era

New ICBM will take US nuclear missiles out of Cold War era

airforcetimes.com · by Tara Copp · December 10, 2023

F.E. WARREN AIR FORCE BASE, Wyo. — The control stations for America’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles have a sort of 1980s retro look, with computing panels in sea foam green, bad lighting and chunky control switches, including a critical one that says “launch.”

Those underground capsules are about to be demolished and the missile silos they control will be completely overhauled. A new nuclear missile is coming, a gigantic ICBM called the Sentinel. It’s the largest cultural shift in the land leg of the Air Force’s nuclear missile mission in 60 years.

But there are questions as to whether some of the Cold War-era aspects of the Minuteman missiles that the Sentinel will replace should be changed.

In this undated image provided by the Department of Defense, crews construct missile site connections in the 12th Missile Squadron flight area north of Great Falls, Mont. The 12th MS is one of four missile squadrons in the 341st Operations Group of the 341st Space Wing. (Department of Defense via AP)

Making the silo-launched missile more modern, with complex software and 21st-century connectivity across a vast network, may also mean it’s more vulnerable. The Sentinel will need to be well protected from cyberattacks, while its technology will have to cope with frigid winter temperatures in the Western states where the silos are located.

The $96 billion Sentinel overhaul involves 450 silos across five states, their control centers, three nuclear missile bases and several other testing facilities. The project is so ambitious it has raised questions as to whether the Air Force can get it all done at once.

An overhaul is needed.

The silos lose power. Their 60-year old massive mechanical parts break down often. Air Force crews guard them using helicopters that can be traced back to the Vietnam War. Commanders hope the modernization of the Sentinel, and of the trucks, gear and living quarters, will help attract and retain young technology-minded service members who are now asked each day to find ways to keep a very old system running.

RELATED

Inside the delicate art of maintaining America’s aging nuclear weapons

The AP was granted access inside military nuclear missile bases and other facilities to report on how they are adjusting to meet the increasing workload.

By Tara Copp, AP

Nuclear modernization was delayed for years because the United States deferred spending on new missiles, bombers and submarines in order to support the post 9/11 wars overseas. Now everything is getting modernized at once. The Sentinel work is one leg of a larger, nuclear weapons enterprise-wide $750 billion overhaul that is replacing almost every component of U.S. nuclear defenses, including new stealth bombers, submarines and ICBMs in the country’s largest nuclear weapons program since the Manhattan Project.

For the Sentinel, silo work could be underway by lead contractor Northrop Grumman as soon as 2025. That is 80 years after the U.S. last used nuclear weapons in war, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, which killed an estimated 100,000 in an instant and likely tens of thousands more over time.

For the Pentagon, there are expectations the modern Sentinel will meet threats from rapidly evolving Chinese and Russian missile systems. The Sentinel is expected to stay in service through 2075, so designers are taking an approach that will make it easier to upgrade with new technologies in the coming years. But that’s not without risk.

“Sentinel is a software-intensive program with a compressed schedule,” the Government Accountability Office reported this summer. “Software development is a high risk due to its scale and complexity and unique requirements of the nuclear deterrence mission.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has acknowledged the challenges the program is facing.

“It’s been a long time since we did an ICBM,” Kendall said in November at a Center for New American Security event in Washington. It’s “the biggest thing, in some ways, that the Air Force has ever taken on.”

“Sentinel, I think quite honestly, is struggling a little bit,” he said.

New connections

By far, the biggest cultural shift the Sentinel will bring is the connectivity for all those who secure, maintain, operate and support the system. The overhaul touches almost everything, even including new equipment for military chefs who cook for the missile teams. The changes could improve efficiency and quality of life on the bases but may also create vulnerabilities that the analog Minuteman missiles have never faced.

Since the first silo-based Minuteman went on alert at Montana’s Malmstrom Air Force Base on Oct. 27, 1962 — the day Cuba shot down a U-2 spy plane at the height of the Cuban missile crisis — the missile has “talked” to its operators through thousands of miles of hard-wiring in cables buried underground.

Those Hardened Intersite Cable Systems, or HICS, cables carry messages back and forth from the missile to the missileer, who receives those messages through a relatively new part of the capsule — a firing control console called REACT, for Rapid Execution and Combat Targeting, that was installed in the mid-1990s.

In this Oct. 19, 2018, photo provided by the U.S. Air Force, one of the multiple launch switches sits in the upper-left portion of a panel at a missile alert facility launch control center operated by the 320th Missile Squadron at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo. The control panel that would be used in case of a silo-based nuclear missile launch is still very much reflective of the 1960s and 1980s technology it still relies on. It will all be overhauled with the arrival of the new Sentinel system, but some caution that it’s dependence on old technology is what keeps it protected from cyber warfare. (Staff Sgt. Neal Uranga/U.S. Air Force via AP)

It’s a closed communication loop, and a very secure one that brings its own headaches. Any time the Air Force wants to test one of the missiles, it literally has to dig up the cables and splice them, to isolate that test missile’s wiring from the rest. Over decades of testing, there are now hundreds of splices in those critical loops.

But it’s also one of the Minuteman’s best features. You would need a shovel — and a lot more — to try to hack the system. Even when missile crews update targeting codes, it is a mechanical, manual process.

Minuteman is “a very cyber-resilient platform,” said Col. Charles Clegg, the Sentinel system program manager.

Clegg said cybersecurity for the software-driven Sentinel has been a top focus of the program, one that has all of their attention.

“Like Minuteman, Sentinel will still operate within a closed network. However, to provide defense in depth, we will have additional security measures at the boundary and inside the network, enabling our weapon system to operate effectively in a cyber-contested environment,” Clegg said.

Frigid fields

Those who maintain the Minuteman III have tried over the years to bring in new technology to make maintenance more efficient, but they have found that sometimes the old manual way of tracking things — sometimes literally with a binder and pen — is better, especially in frigid temperatures.

Nuclear missile fields are located in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming. Those missiles need maintenance even in the winter, and crews spend hours outside in sub-zero field conditions,

“An iPad won’t survive a Montana winter” at the launch sites, where maintenance crews have worked outdoors in temperatures of minus 20 degrees or even minus 40 degrees, said Chief Master Sgt. Virgil Castro, the 741st missile maintenance squadron’s senior enlisted leader.

Also, when maintenance crews at Malmstrom tested some radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology — think of how seaports track items inside cargo containers — it created security vulnerabilities.

“Today, everything is connected to the internet of things. And you might have a back door in there you don’t even know” said Lt. Col. Todd Yehle, the 741st maintenance squadron commander. “With the old analog systems, you’re not hacking those systems.”

What it means is that even though technology could automate the whole operations process, one critical aspect of missile launch will remain the same. If the day comes that another nuclear weapon must be fired, it will still be teams of missileers validating the orders and activating a launch.

“It’s the human in the loop,” said Col. Johnny Galbert, commander of the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren. “I think what it comes down to is we want to rely on our airmen, our young officers out there, to make that decision, to be able to interpret what higher headquarters is telling them or directing them to do.”

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

About Tara Copp, AP

Tara Copp is a Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press. She was previously Pentagon bureau chief for Sightline Media Group.

9. The Peril Of Ukrainian Attacks Against Nuclear Russia?

HOOVER INSTITUTION / STANFORD UNIVERSITY

The Peril Of Ukrainian Attacks Against Nuclear Russia?

https://www.hoover.org/research/peril-ukrainian-attacks-against-nuclear-russia

     By: Bing West                                      December 7, 2023

“Here’s my strategy on the Cold War,” President Ronald Reagan said in 1988, “we win, they lose.” Shortly thereafter, the Soviet Union disintegrated. It is reasonable to conclude that the United States and the West won the Cold War.

However, a revanchist Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and unleashed a hot war against the rest of Ukraine in February of 2022. “There is no possibility of him [Putin] winning the war in Ukraine.” President Biden declared five months ago. “He has already lost the war.”

Mr. Biden has raised the fundamental question of how winning versus losing a war is defined. Any definition depends upon a description of what the desired end state should look like when the shooting stops. For President Zelensky, that means all Russian troops have been driven out of all Ukrainian territory, including the 10,425 square miles of the Crimean Peninsula. For Putin, the end state is the collapse of the Ukrainian government and its forces, to be replaced by a puppet regime. It is conceivable that he might settle for the Russian military occupation of a sizeable portion of Ukraine, with ceasefire conditions conducive to a continuous effort to subvert the democratic government of Ukraine. President Biden has expressed no vision of an end state. His silence is deliberate. He does not want Ukraine to lose, nor does he want Putin, with nuclear weapons, to lose. He abides in an intellectually liminal state that is imaginary; wars do not end in ties.

The conflict is nearing the two-year mark, with no signs of abating. Fifty billion dollars in military aid has been allocated by Congress, a sizeable but not staggering sum. By comparison, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act contains $500 billion in new spending. Our military aid will continue, with a majority of the public in favor.

But wars don’t end in ties and Putin is not under severe strain. President Biden promised devastating sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine. Those sanctions have not worked. The Russian economy shrank by just two percent last year, and the International Monetary Fund forecasts growth of a positive one percent in 2023.

The Ukrainian offensive toward Crimea has bogged down. The front resembles World War I, with bloody, seesaw battles along hundreds of miles of trench lines. From Putin’s perspective, his advantage is enormous manpower, continuously replacing staggering losses while grinding down the much smaller and exhausted Ukrainian forces. Whether a pivot point is reached and the Russian soldiers mutiny or simply walk off the battlefield is difficult to predict. But there are no overt signs of that happening. Rather, Russia is turning into a soulless military machine.

The fight is one-sided. Russia is mauling Ukraine, but Ukraine cannot seriously strike back at Russia. In the first year of the war, Russia launched more than a thousand drones and 5,000 cruise missiles, fired in waves against the energy grid and apartment complexes. Given a steady supply of drones provided by Iran as well as its own factories, it is unrealistic to expect Russia to ever “run out” of these long-range weapons.

From the start of the war, the administration restricted military aid to short-range weapons because President Biden feared Russia’s nuclear arsenal of 5889 warheads. He treated the territory of Russia as a sanctuary, not to be violated. There was trepidation that providing long-range weapons would dramatically escalate U.S. involvement in the war, with Putin employing a nuclear bomb, either over the Black Sea or inside Ukraine.

To gain leverage or simply as a dramatic gesture, the nuclear saber has been rattled many times. In January 1953, President Truman left office deeply unpopular due to the ongoing Korean War that had taken more than 30,000 American lives. In his farewell address, he pointedly warned that “starting an atomic war is totally unthinkable for rational men.” Yet a month later, his successor, President Eisenhower, conveyed to China that if the war did not end soon, he might employ “the ultimate weapon.” Shortly later, for multiple reasons China agreed to a ceasefire and embarked upon acquiring its own nuclear arsenal. To cite a few other examples of employing the nuclear threat: In 1961, the UK threatened China; in 1991, Israel threatened Iraq; India and Pakistan have threatened each other numerous times, most recently in 2019. After invading Ukraine 18 months ago, Putin has threatened numerous times that his nuclear weapons were at the ready. Each time, Biden recursively responds, “I worry about Putin using tactical nuclear weapons.”

During the Vietnam War, the United States possessed an overwhelming nuclear advantage over the Soviet Union. Yet the Soviet Union still supplied the North Vietnamese with thousands of long-range artillery tubes to kill American soldiers. The Soviets didn’t worry. Between 2004 and 2007, Iran designed and provided to the terrorists in Iraq thousands of highly sophisticated Improvised Explosive Devices that killed more than 400 of our soldiers. Iran didn’t worry about retaliation of any sort from the nuclear-armed United States. And indeed, no retaliation ever occurred, let alone the use of a nuclear weapon.

For 18 months, Zelensky persisted in asking for long-range missiles, especially the surface-to-surface missiles called ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) that could strike logistics and munitions depots. Biden persistently said “No,” both privately and publicly. Until recently, Ukraine’s maximum range on U.S.-provided weapons was fifty miles. Restricting Ukraine to the close-in battle made no military sense. Yet General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs until a few months ago, agreed that a key tenet for fighting the war was to “Contain war inside the geographical boundaries of Ukraine.” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin agreed. The Ukrainians are able, he said, “to service the targets that they need to service inside of Ukraine.” Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl told reporters in 2022 that “they don’t currently require ATACMS to service targets that are directly relevant to the current fight.” Russia is shooting with a rifle and the Pentagon wants Ukraine to shoot back with a pistol.

Exasperated with Washington, five months ago Britain supplied several of its Storm Shadow missiles with a range of 150 miles. Ukraine employed them to strike Russian warships. In August, using its own drones, Ukraine struck deep into Russia and even harassed Moscow. Putin did not escalate to nuclear war.

To employ a nuclear weapon requires him to consult with a staff to select the target, communicate with the delivery crew, and evacuate his own forces from the blast and wind-driven contamination path. Several hundred are involved, not just one man. And for what purpose and at what cost? A nuclear blast would not cause Ukraine to surrender. It would result in the total isolation of Russia, harsh, not fake, sanctions, and a large increase in the defense budgets of NATO.

In October, Biden relented and delivered twenty ATACMS with 100-mile range. Twenty missiles comprise a trivial gesture. By comparison, Iran is delivering to Russia 1,700 long-range drones. Russia holds an advantage over Ukraine of one hundred to one in terms of long-range drones and missiles.

Biden also insisted that Ukraine pledge not to strike Russian territory with the missiles. But Putin feeds vast manpower into the fight via rail lines, depots, and bridges inside Russia. Long-range systems are not a silver bullet, but they do decidedly impose a heavy material cost. The twelve- mile long Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to Russia is the most obvious target. Its destruction would symbolize the determination of the Ukrainians to regain their territory and flummox Putin, who cites it as the symbol linking Ukraine to its master, Russia.

Dribbling in only a few long-range missiles and treating Russia as a sanctuary both weakens Ukraine and encourages nuclear proliferation. It clearly signals that an aggressor nation can assault a neighbor without fearing retaliatory attacks upon its own soil. China lurks, biding the moment when, while threatening nuclear escalation to deter America, it assaults Taiwan. Iran lurks, biding the moment when it announces its possession of nuclear weapons in order to prevent any action against its territory.

Two decades after the Civil War, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared: “To fight out a war you must believe something and want something with all your might….All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can.…One may fall—but in no other way can he reach the rewards of victory.”

Ukraine is fighting with all its might against a hulking brute openly challenging the resolve of the United States and its NATO European partners. Ukraine deserves the victory of driving Russia from its territory. For its bravery and sacrifice, Ukraine merits fulsome aid, including tens of thousands of inexpensive long-range drones and missiles to strike targets inside Russia. It is perilous not to provide Ukraine with the weapons to fight as hard as it can. First target: Putin’s dacha.

A former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine in Vietnam, military historian Bing West has written a dozen books about our wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. His most recent is The Last Platoon.

Strategika

Strategika

Strategika is an online journal that analyzes ongoing issues of national security in light of conflicts of the p...

10. US forces have killed or captured dozens of ISIS fighters in Mideast in recent weeks, military says

Off many of our radar screens.

US forces have killed or captured dozens of ISIS fighters in Mideast in recent weeks, military says

Stars and Stripes · by Doug G. Ware · December 8, 2023

Coalition service members pose after conducting a close quarters live-fire exercise at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on Oct. 30, 2023. (Damion Clark/U.S. Army)

WASHINGTON — American forces have killed or captured dozens of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria in the past month, amid an uptick in attacks against U.S. bases in those countries, military officials said Thursday.

During November, U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Syria killed at least four ISIS militants and detained 33 others, according to U.S. Central Command, the Defense Department’s operational command for the Middle East.

“Even in the midst of complex challenges within the region, CENTCOM remains steadfast to the region and the enduring defeat of ISIS,” said Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, CENTCOM commander.

Those challenges include the conflict between Israel and Hamas following the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack, and the ongoing attacks against various U.S. bases in Syria and Iraq. Since mid-October, there have been at least 78 attacks on American installations in those countries that have caused more than 60 minor injuries to U.S. personnel, the Pentagon has said.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the United States has moved military assets into the region to protect U.S. service members there and deter other groups or countries from escalating the fighting. Those assets include aircraft carrier strike groups and squadrons of fighter jets.

CENTCOM said it carried out 40 operations against ISIS during November — 24 in Iraq and 16 in Syria. Three of the militants were killed in Iraq and the other died in Syria, officials said.

“These operations highlight [our] enduring commitment to the lasting defeat of ISIS and the continued need for targeted military efforts to prevent ISIS members from conducting further attacks,” CENTCOM said.

Officials said U.S. and coalition forces disrupted several militant cells in the country during the month, including one that planned attacks on prisons in Syria to free ISIS captives and another that produced explosive belts for suicide attackers.

“We have a very important mission there, focused on the defeat ISIS mission. It’s the only reason our forces are there,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, told reporters this week. “They will stay focused on that and we’re going to stay focused on protecting them.”

The Pentagon has not indicated which militant groups are attacking the U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria, but defense officials said they’re all acting with support from Iran and are “proxy groups.” For decades, Iran and aligned militant groups have said one of their top goals is to eradicate Israel and force U.S. troops out of the region. The attacks have all involved rockets and one-way drones, but the Pentagon said none have caused serious injuries or major structural or property damage.

“The United States, along with many countries in the region, have provided a presence there to ensure international security and stability. We will continue to play an important role in that effort,” Ryder said.

On Thursday, the Senate defeated a resolution that would have forced President Joe Biden to remove all 900 U.S. troops from Syria. It was sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and 13 senators voted for the measure — five Republicans, seven Democrats and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Eighty-three senators voted against the resolution and three didn’t vote.

Doug G. Ware

Doug G. Ware

Doug G. Ware covers the Department of Defense at the Pentagon. He has many years of experience in journalism, digital media and broadcasting and holds a degree from the University of Utah. He is based in Washington, D.C.

Stars and Stripes · by Doug G. Ware · December 8, 2023

11. DOD Officials Underscore 'Ironclad' Commitment to Philippines After China's Unsafe Maneuvers

Greetings from Manila though I am not here for this issue (though China does loom large in the issues I am working on).

DOD Officials Underscore 'Ironclad' Commitment to Philippines After China's Unsafe Maneuvers

defense.gov · by Joseph Clark

Defense officials remain in close consultation with counterparts from the Philippines following the latest unsafe operational behavior by Chinese military vessels against Philippine vessels operating lawfully in the South China Sea over the weekend, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said today.

Ryder underscored the United States' "ironclad" commitment to upholding its obligations under its mutual defense treaty with the Philippines and urged "all nations to work together in the region to ensure that ships and aircraft can sail wherever international law allows."

Austin and Subianto

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto arrive at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministers’ Meeting-Plus in Jakarta, Indonesia, Nov. 15, 2023.

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VIRIN: 231115-D-TT977-1028C

"We're going to continue to consult very closely with our Philippine allies and our partners in the region," he told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon.

Chinese vessels carried out unsafe maneuvers against Philippine vessels operating outside the Scarborough Reef on Saturday and again near the Second Thomas Shoal on Sunday.

During the encounters, the Chinese vessels employed water cannons and forced a collision which caused damage to Philippine vessels undertaking official supply missions.

Chinese military ships operating near the Scarborough Reef also used acoustic devices to incapacitate Filipino crew members.

"By impeding the safe operations of Philippine vessels carrying provisions to Filipino service members stationed at Second Thomas Shoal, the PRC interfered in lawful Philippine maritime operations and in Philippine vessels' exercise of high seas freedom of navigation," State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement on Sunday. "Obstructing supply lines to this longstanding outpost and interfering with lawful Philippines maritime operations undermines regional stability."

USS Dewey

The USS Dewey steams alongside the Philippine Navy offshore patrol vessel BRP Gregorio del Pilar in the South China Sea, Oct. 21, 2023.

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The latest maneuvers are a continuation of the Chinese military's increasingly provocative and risky behavior in the region.

Defense officials have also noted a steep rise in risky and aggressive intercepts by China's military of U.S. aircraft operating in international airspace in accordance with international law.

According to the most recent China Military Power Report, the U.S. has documented more than 180 coercive and risky air intercepts against U.S. aircraft in the region between 2021 and 2023.

That is more risky intercepts in the past two years than in the past decade, according to the report.

"It's just hugely irresponsible and unsafe when you're putting seamen at risk at sea, operating in international waters and completely within their rights," Ryder said of China's behavior over the weekend.

Austin and Teodoro Jr.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III greets Philippine Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr. at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministers’ Meeting-Plus in Jakarta, Indonesia, Nov. 15, 2023.

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Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met last month with Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. as part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministers' Meeting-Plus in Jakarta, Indonesia.

During their discussion, the secretaries applauded the "historic momentum" in the alliance, "which has upheld peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region for over seventy years," according to a joint summary of the meeting.

The secretaries also discussed recent provocations by China during the meeting.

"Secretary Austin reiterated President Biden's message that the U.S. defense commitment to the Philippines is ironclad and emphasized that the United States stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the Philippines in defending its sovereign rights and jurisdiction in its exclusive economic zone," according to the meeting summary.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., spoke with Philippines Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Gen. Romeo Brawner, Jr., by phone today following China's latest provocations against the Philippine vessels.

During the discussion, the two leaders discussed the regional security environment as well as the two countries' mutual strategic security interests and opportunities for increased military cooperation, according to a summary of the phone call.

The two leaders also agreed to remain in close consultation, according to the summary.

Spotlight: Focus on Indo-Pacific Spotlight: Focus on Indo-Pacific: https://www.defense.gov/Spotlights/Focus-on-Indo-Pacific/

defense.gov · by Joseph Clark

12. Tradition at the end of Army-Navy game shows sportsmanship, unity

Such honorable men and women. We should all take a lesson. I was not able to see the game as I was on a plane but the descriptions and highlights are excellent. It was quite a game. As a former defensive end it was great to hear about that goal line stand.

Tradition at the end of Army-Navy game shows sportsmanship, unity

militarytimes.com · by Britt Slabinksi and Thomas Mundell · December 9, 2023

It’s one of the most iconic moments in American sports.

Saturday evening on the field at Gillette Stadium, in Foxborough, Massachusetts, the players and cheerleaders participating in the annual Army-Navy football game will walk to the side of the losing team and together sing that academy’s alma mater. Next, they will trudge across the field to the victor’s side to do the same thing.

Then, and only then, will one side celebrate and the other go off to seek solace in their defeat.

The moment, repeated year after year, says so much in such a short amount of time. It speaks to honor, tradition, compassion, civility, and unity – values that bind together those who play and those who support them.

It also represents an ideal that we once recognized was essential to our American experience --the rough and tumble reality of a democracy in action -- tackling, fighting and scoring points against the opposition, but ultimately being united in our shared vision of what really matters.

The moment is even more poignant, of course, because these young men and women will soon be commissioned as officers in the U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Some will perform great acts of heroism. Some may make the ultimate sacrifice with their lives. All will serve.

In performing their duty, they will be supported by the values that were sharpened – just as steel sharpens steel -- in the halls, classrooms, parade grounds and playing fields of West Point and Annapolis.

But what about the rest of us who don’t wear the uniform but seek to be good citizens in a turbulent world. Are values such as courage, integrity, commitment, sacrifice, citizenship, and patriotism relevant to the rest of us?

At times it feels as if these traditional civic values have been replaced by one long argument that shows no sign of ending. It’s as if we’ve lost the ability to converse and engage each other in a respectful and civil manner.

Thankfully, many Americans seem to recognize that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. Earlier this year, a survey conducted by Ipsos for the Medal of Honor Foundation found that 71% of respondents believe society is not emphasizing values enough. Similarly, 79% believe strong values and character are important to all Americans and a whopping 87% agreed society would be a better place if we possessed stronger values.

The survey was released around the time that we were reminded of a real-life example of what happens when these values are put into action. Paris Davis was an Army Captain and Green Beret near Bong Son, Republic of Vietnam on June 17-18, 1965, when his unit was ambushed. He was severely wounded but time and time again, he returned to the battlefield to evacuate other wounded men under direct artillery fire and push back the enemy.

Davis was nominated twice for the Medal of Honor, and twice the paperwork went missing – “lost” his supporters were told. But they refused to give up until the President pinned the Medal of Honor around his neck in March. His bravery in 1965 and his subsequent civility reminded us that America can and must remember its heroes.

Most of people will never be faced with life-and-death moments like Paris Davis. But every day we each deal with situations when we have choices to make; choices big and small that define who we are.

By teaching the importance and meaning of these core values and providing real life examples of how they can be lived, we can make a positive difference in the lives of our families, our communities and our nation. Values can be taught. This takes commitment and a sense of boldness – the same qualities that those young men from the service academies will show on Saturday and beyond.

The stakes are high – nothing less than the future of the country – and the timing could not be more critical. Let’s get to work.

Britt Slabinski received the Medal of Honor for his actions in the War on Terrorism in Afghanistan and is the president of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, which operates a Character Development Program. Thomas Mundell is the president and chief executive officer of The National Medal of Honor Leadership and Education Center, which offers leadership training centered on the values of the Medal of Honor.

13. There Is No Such Thing as a ‘Humane’ War

Yes, but...

Of course there is no humane war, but that does not mean we do not try to uphold the laws of war both for the enemy and the innocents, and to minimize the moral injury to our fighting men and women.

We should never hesitate to apply all necessary military power but we must also do so in a way that lives up to the standards and values we have set for ourselves. And in doing so there will always be the tragedy of civilian casualties that will always have to live with.

Conclusion:

The notion of a clean, humane war is a fairy tale conjured up by liberal sensibilities that has no relation to reality. The only other option, according to Hendrickson, is for Israel to limit its war aims so that it can achieve the more limited aims by less cruel means. “The truth is,” Hendrickson writes, “that there is no way to destroy Hamas without destroying Gaza.” It is just this sort of moralism that is used to pressure Israel to accept something less than total victory in Gaza, just as it has been used in the past to persuade America’s leaders to accept something less than total victory in virtually every war since World War II.

There Is No Such Thing as a ‘Humane’ War

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/12/11/there_is_no_such_thing_as_a_humane_war_998005.html

By Francis P. Sempa

December 11, 2023

Friends and relatives of the Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group attend a rally calling for their release, Saturday, Dec. 9, 2023, in Tel Aviv, Israel. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Writing in Responsible Statecraft, the online journal of the Quincy Institute, David C. Hendrickson argues that Israel’s proclaimed war aim of destroying Hamas should be reconsidered because there is no way to “humanely” destroy Hamas. Hendrickson, from his comfortable perch at Colorado College, lectures Israel on the “just war” theory and condemns Israel for not fighting with “restraint,” not rejecting “indiscriminate bombing and shelling,” and not respecting “enemy civilians.” Israel, he writes, is “pursuing . . . a moral enormity” and risks committing “wickedness on a titanic scale in order to achieve total victory.” His recommendation to Israeli leaders is to “accept limited war and seek the containment of the enemy, not his obliteration.” In other words, Israel should conduct the war in a way that entails the greatest risk to the lives of its warriors and that will leave Hamas’ forces in position to terrorize, rape, and massacre Israeli citizens another day. That is somehow “just.”  

Hendrickson’s position is consistent with the Biden administration’s approach to America’s longtime ally in the Middle East. Hendrickson quotes Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who stated on November 30^th: “Israel has one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world. It is capable of neutralizing the threat posed by Hamas while minimizing harm to innocent civilians. And it has an obligation to do so.” This is also the position of Jo-Ann Mort and Michael Walzer in a piece in the New Republic that Hendrickson discusses. Walzer, a longtime critic of “unjust wars” (in 1977, in the wake of our defeat in Vietnam, Walzer, who condemned America’s involvement in that war, wrote Just and Unjust Wars), argues in the New Republic piece that Israel can achieve its war aim--the destruction of Hamas--in a humane war. Hendrickson doesn’t buy it. And he’s right because there is no such thing as a “humane” war.

For Hendrickson this means that Israel must reconsider its war aim. Israel should settle for containing Hamas. That, apparently, would be a proportionate response to the wanton terrorizing and killing of more than 1200 Israelis on October 7^th--a number that would equal per capita the killing of more than 40,000 Americans. He calls Israel’s conduct in the Gaza War a “wildly disproportionate retribution[],” and “the most elaborate and twisted application yet of the Dahiya Doctrine” that includes bombing of non-military targets and a “radical” blockade “on all things requisite to life” (electricity, water, food). Hendrickson no doubt would have condemned Ulysses S. Grant for doing what was necessary to defeat the slave masters of the Confederacy. There were many leaders in the South who would have made peace with the Union earlier if President Lincoln would have allowed them to keep their “peculiar institution.” And Hendrickson would surely disagree with Grant’s favorite general William T. Sherman who once remarked that “War is cruelty; you cannot refine it.”

But Sherman was right. So was Gen. Curtis LeMay when he said that war was simple: “You’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.” LeMay and his airmen were instrumental in the firebombing and atomic bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities which ultimately brought Japan to its knees in World War II. Walzer, as Hendrickson notes, thought that we should have stopped short of total victory over Japan in order to avoid the killing of so many Japanese civilians.

The notion of a clean, humane war is a fairy tale conjured up by liberal sensibilities that has no relation to reality. The only other option, according to Hendrickson, is for Israel to limit its war aims so that it can achieve the more limited aims by less cruel means. “The truth is,” Hendrickson writes, “that there is no way to destroy Hamas without destroying Gaza.” It is just this sort of moralism that is used to pressure Israel to accept something less than total victory in Gaza, just as it has been used in the past to persuade America’s leaders to accept something less than total victory in virtually every war since World War II.

Francis P. Sempa writes on foreign policy and geopolitics. His Best Defense columns appear at the beginning of each month.

14. Poland to spend $284 million on base improvements for US troops

Poland to spend $284 million on base improvements for US troops

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · December 8, 2023

The U.S. military operates at multiple sites across Poland, including the Army installations shown here. An agreement between Washington and Warsaw calls for Poland to spend on facilities required by U.S. forces in the country. A finalized version of the 2024 defense authorization bill shows Warsaw spending nearly $300 million on base upgrades. (U.S. Army)

Poland plans to spend nearly $300 million to upgrade several military sites used by U.S. forces in the country, a move expected to eventually improve the quality of life for soldiers deployed there.

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday released a finalized version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which is expected to be voted on as early as next week.

The $866 billion defense bill detailed upgrades in store for the U.S. military operating in Poland that are to be paid for by Warsaw, rather than U.S. taxpayers.

The NDAA authorizes the Pentagon to accept seven construction projects with in-kind contributions totaling $284.5 million from Poland.

The projects are part of a bilateral defense security cooperation agreement that requires Poland to pick up a large amount of the infrastructure costs needed to support U.S. troops in the country.

The largest initiative calls for $93 million to be spent on a new Army barracks and a dining facility in Powidz, which has emerged as a major aviation and logistical hub for the U.S. military in Poland.

U.S. Army soldiers practice hooking up a sling load to a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, at Powidz, Poland, on Nov. 30, 2023. A recent agreement between Washington and Warsaw calls for Poland to upgrade facilities used by U.S. forces in the country, including a $35 million rotary wing apron at Powidz. (Elsi Delgado/U.S. Army)

The living conditions at the base are among the most austere for troops carrying out missions in the central European country.

Other projects include a $35 million rotary wing apron in Powidz, fuel storage and rail improvements in Swietoszow, and aerial port and taxiway upgrades in Wroclaw.

The Poles also will spend $16.2 million to establish a “company operations facility” for U.S. special operations troops doing missions in Lubliniec, a town in the south-central part of the country.

The U.S. in recent years has been steadily building up its force in Poland, which has become the centerpiece of the military’s push to counter Russia and fortify NATO’s eastern flank.

In March, the Pentagon established its first permanent garrison in the Polish city of Poznan, where an Army headquarters manages operations stretching from the Baltics to Bulgaria.

The garrison alone oversees about a dozen different sites, which feature a mix of units rotating in and out of Poland.

Poland also has been increasing its own defense spending, with major investments in weapons systems, including U.S. Abrams tanks.

The 2024 NDAA seeks to reward countries like Poland that meet NATO defense spending benchmarks calling for at least 2% of gross domestic product to be dedicated to military matters. Currently, only seven of NATO’s 31 members hit the mark.

The failure of many allies in Europe to sufficiently increase defense spending has been a major point of contention over the years, with several U.S. administrations calling for allies to shoulder a larger share of the security burden.

When it comes to basing, training and exercises, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin should prioritize allies that have reached the 2% GDP benchmark, the NDAA states.

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · December 8, 2023

15.  Aerial Footage Shows Hamas Fighters Beating Gazans, Stealing Humanitarian Aid From Truck, IDF Says

Of course this will be discounted unless there is independent reprotring and even then everyone will be skeptical and suspicious even though these actions are in keeping with all the evidence of Hamas actions we have been seeing.

Aerial Footage Shows Hamas Fighters Beating Gazans, Stealing Humanitarian Aid From Truck, IDF Says

themessenger.com · December 10, 2023

Members of Hamas reportedly beat Gazan civilians and stole from humanitarian aid trucks, according to a statement from the Israeli Defense Forces’ Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adraee.

Video footage, released by the IDF, “proves the gap between Hamas men and the residents of the Gaza Strip, as Hamas members beat Gazan citizens in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood and looted bags of humanitarian supplies that were brought into the Gaza Strip,” Adraee shared on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

View post on Twitter

In the aerial video footage, a group of men appear to be hitting a man dressed in civilian clothes, next to a pickup truck. The footage then cuts to men driving the same truck away.

Shuja'iyya is a neighborhood located within the center of Gaza City. Much of the residential area was destroyed during Israeli bombardment, earlier this month. Gaza’s Civil Defense estimated that as many as 300 people were killed when Israel bombed apartment buildings in an effort to eliminate a Hamas commander, the French newspaper Le Monde reported.

This is not the first time that there have been reports of Hamas stealing direly needed humanitarian aid from Palestinian civilians. In October, the UNRWA deleted a tweet which alleged that fuel and medical equipment were stolen from their Gaza City compound.

The UN agency, which oversees aid to Palestinians, later released a statement explaining that they had not been looted and that “images circulating on social media were of a movement of basic medical supplies from the UNRWA warehouse to health partners,” according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Israeli government social media accounts then contradicted the UNRWA – with the foreign ministry accusing the humanitarian aid workers of being scared of “disappointing” their “terrorist friends.”

As the war enters its third month, nine out of 10 people in Gaza are unable to eat every day, according to Carl Skau, deputy director of the UN World Food Program.

"I have a daughter, three years old, always she ask me [for] some sweets, some apple, some fruits. I can't provide. I feel helpless," Gaza Doctor Ahmed Moghrabi told the BBC.

"There is not enough food, there is not enough food, only rice, only rice can you believe? We eat once, once a day, only."

themessenger.com · December 10, 2023

16.Hamas’s Goal in Gaza

Excerpts:

In the weeks since Hamas launched its attack, much international attention has focused on the unprecedented massacre of Israeli civilians. Far less noted has been what the assault revealed about strategic shifts within Hamas itself. By forcing Israel to launch a huge war in Gaza, the October 7 operation has overturned the prevailing understanding of Gaza as a territory that had been liberated from Israeli occupation and whose status quo as an isolated enclave could be sustained indefinitely. However great the cost to the Gazans themselves, for Hamas, the war has already achieved the goals of positioning Gaza as a key piece of the Palestinian liberation struggle and of bringing that struggle to the center of international attention.

In turn, for the Palestinians, the war has reconnected Gaza to some of the central traumas of their historical experience. Presented by Israel as an emergency humanitarian measure, the forced displacement of Gaza’s populations to the southern end of the coastal strip—as well as plans mooted within the Netanyahu administration to relocate Gazans to the Sinai Desert—has reframed the situation in Gaza within the much longer history of Palestinian expulsion that has unfolded since 1948. These current efforts to displace or remove the Gazans are all the more significant since most of those being forced to move come from families who were already refugees from the 1948 crisis. For many of them—including hundreds of thousands who have refused to leave the northern part of the strip—the situation is repeating these earlier upheavals. As they see it, the only way to avoid the risk of a second nakba (or “catastrophe”) is to remain in Gaza, no matter how great the destruction.

With Gaza once more under intense shelling after the collapse of the seven-day cease-fire, Israel and the United States have been discussing various scenarios for the “day after.” Although the two countries disagree on many issues, including the possibility of government by the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, which Israel rejects, both countries are adamant about the total eradication of Hamas. But this goal itself may be based on an understanding of the organization that does not take account of its current reality. So far, despite a five-week onslaught by one of the most powerful armies in the world—one in which an overwhelming majority of Gazans have been forced to leave their homes and more than 17,000 have been killed—Hamas shows few signs of having been eradicated. Not only has it managed to maintain itself; it has also asserted its autonomy from the organization’s outside leadership as well as its Arab allies and Iran, which was not warned of the attack. The Gazan organization’s ability to remain a force even now, with a highly structured leadership, a media presence, and a network of support, calls into serious question all the current debates around the future governance of the Gaza Strip.

For the time being, as its forces have failed to fulfill its objectives in Gaza, Israel has stepped up military operations in the West Bank through daily raids, mass arrests, and sweeping crackdowns. Not only does this raise the prospect of a two-front war after years of Israeli efforts to separate the occupied Palestinian territories from the Gaza Strip. It also suggests that the Israeli military itself may help further Hamas’s own goal of reconnecting Gaza with the broader struggle for Palestinian liberation.

Hamas’s Goal in Gaza

The Strategy That Led to the War—and What It Means for the Future

By Leila Seurat

December 11, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Leila Seurat · December 11, 2023

Among the many striking aspects of Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel, one that has received relatively little scrutiny is the location. For much of the past decade, the Gaza Strip no longer appeared to be a major battleground for the Palestinian resistance. Recurring incursions by the Israeli army into Gaza, including the nearly two-month Operation “Protective Edge” in 2014—still the longest Israeli offensive to date, had locked Hamas into a defensive posture. Meanwhile, Israel’s increasingly sophisticated missile defenses had rendered Hamas’s rocket attacks from the strip largely ineffective, and the blockade of Gaza had cut off the territory from the rest of the world.

By contrast, the West Bank was a far more obvious arena of conflict. With its expanding Israeli settlements and frequent incursions by Israeli soldiers and settlers into Palestinian villages, the West Bank—along with the holy sites in Jerusalem—attracted continual international media attention. For Hamas and other militant groups, here was the more appropriate staging ground for nationalist Palestinian armed resistance. Indeed, Israel seemed to recognize this: on the eve of October 7, the Israeli forces were busy monitoring Palestinians in the West Bank, on the assumption that Gaza posed little threat other than occasional rocket fire.

But the October 7 operation radically contradicted that view. To launch its deadly dawn raid, Hamas’s Gaza-based military wing blew up the Erez border crossing with Israel and breached Gaza’s security barrier at numerous points. In killing more than 1,200 Israelis and taking more than 240 hostages, the attackers clearly anticipated a large-scale military response against Gaza, an expectation that has been confirmed in the Israeli army’s unprecedentedly violent air and ground offensive. In turn, the Israeli campaign, which has killed more than 17,000 Palestinians and caused enormous devastation across the territory, has dominated the attention of world leaders and the international media for weeks. In essence, after years of being consigned to the background, Gaza has become the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.

The renewed centrality of Gaza raises important questions about Hamas’s senior leadership. Previously, it had been assumed that Hamas was largely run from outside the territory by its leaders located in Amman, Damascus, and Doha. But that understanding is long out of date. At least since 2017, when Yahya Sinwar took over Hamas’s Gazan leadership, Hamas has undergone an organizational shift toward Gaza itself. Along with making the territory more autonomous from Hamas’s external leaders, Sinwar has presided over a strategic renewal of Hamas as a fighting force in Gaza. In particular, he has aimed at taking offensive action against Israel and connecting Gaza to the larger Palestinian struggle. At the same time, he has adjusted the movement’s strategies to account for evolving developments in the West Bank and Jerusalem, including the growing tensions around the al Aqsa mosque. Paradoxically, instead of isolating Gaza, the Israeli blockade has actually helped put the territory back at the center of world attention.

The Road from Damascus

As a political and military organization, Hamas has four centers of power: Gaza; the West Bank; Israeli prisons, where many senior Hamas figures have languished; and the “outside”—its external leadership. Of these four, the external leadership, which runs Hamas’s political bureau, has generally held sway over policy. In 1989, during the first intifada, Israel cracked down on Hamas, forcing the movement’s leaders to flee to Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Around 2000, Damascus became Hamas’s main headquarters.

From their perches abroad, these leaders maintained control over the movement’s military wing in Gaza, known as the Qassam Brigades. They also conducted diplomacy with foreign leaders and drew support from a range of foreign donors, including charitable associations, private donors, and, after the Madrid and Oslo peace process began, Iran. During these years, the outside leaders were dominant; some of them, like Khaled Meshal, the chair of the Hamas political bureau, had grown up in exile. From Amman and, later, Damascus, Meshal and the other leaders decided on war and peace, and the Qassam Brigades in the Palestinian territories had to act accordingly, even when they disagreed with these orders from afar.

But the primacy of Hamas’s external leaders was gradually called into question after Israel assassinated Sheikh Yassin, the movement’s spiritual head, in Gaza in 2004. Several factors enabled the Gazan organization to gain greater clout. One was Hamas’s victory in the 2006 elections and its formation of a government, both before and after it seized control of the strip in June 2007. Once Israel reinforced its blockade, the leaders of Gaza managed to generate revenue through trade via their clandestine network of tunnels, thus making the Gazan organization less dependent on the economic support of the diaspora.

The Arab spring in general and the Syrian uprising in particular accelerated the shift toward Gaza. At the start of the Syrian civil war, Hamas’s Damascus-based leaders tried to mediate between the Syrian regime and Sunni insurgents. But they refused Iranian injunctions to show unconditional support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and in February 2012 finally decided to leave the country. Deputy chair Moussa Abu Marzouk settled in Cairo; Meshal went to Doha, where he strongly criticized Iran and Hezbollah, which was now assisting the Assad regime. In response, Iran suspended financial support for Hamas in two stages: in the summer of 2012 and in May 2013, when the Qassam Brigades fought Syrian regime forces and Hezbollah in the Battle of Qusayr. Iran reduced its economic aid to Hamas by half, from $150 million to less than $75 million per year.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (left) with Sinwar, at a funeral for a Hamas fighter, Gaza City, March 2017

Mohammed Salem / Reuters

These tensions, combined with the dispersal of the leaders, weakened Hamas’s external organization. “The departure from Syria helped the Gaza leadership a lot,” Ghazi Hamad, a senior member of Hamas, acknowledged when I interviewed him in Gaza in May 2013. “I'm not saying that Gaza has overtaken the leaders based outside Gaza, but there is now a greater balance between the two.” Notably, despite the rupture in Syria, the Gazan leadership was able to maintain strong links with Iran. This was particularly true of senior members of the Qassam Brigades such as Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, who traveled to Tehran whenever possible.

The growing autonomy of Hamas’s military organization was also clear in the case of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was abducted and taken to Gaza in 2006. It was Ahmed al-Jabari, the leader of the Qassam Brigades, who ordered Shalit’s capture and who, along with Hamad, negotiated the much-discussed 2011 agreement for Shalit’s release. According to the deal, the Israeli soldier was released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, and many Palestinians saw it as a major victory for Hamas in Gaza. Israel assassinated Jabari a year later, opening a new military offensive against the Gaza strip known as Operation “Pillar of Defense.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s recurring military operations in Gaza played their own role in strengthening the influence of the Qassam Brigades. On the frontlines in Gaza, these fighters could claim a central part in the struggle against Israel in contrast to the external leadership, which was increasingly marginalized. In recognition of the brigades’ growing importance, in 2013 three of its members joined the Hamas political bureau, giving the armed wing a new and direct role in political decision-making.

As the blockade continued, Gaza also gained importance as a symbolic territory and place of sacrifice, which Hamas’s political leaders needed to acknowledge to reinforce their legitimacy. For example, in 2012, to commemorate Hamas’s 25th anniversary, Meshal, who was then a candidate for reelection as chair of the political bureau, entered Gaza for the first time, giving a speech in which he evoked the blood of the martyrs and the sacrifice of the mothers of “eternal” Gaza. “I say I'm coming back here to Gaza,” he said, “even if it’s actually the first time I’ve been here, because Gaza has always been in my heart.”

But it was in the years after 2017 that Gaza increasingly became central to Hamas’s senior leadership. That year, Meshal was succeeded as chair of the political bureau by Ismail Haniyeh, who had previously been the head of Hamas in Gaza. This move opened the way for enhanced relations between Hamas and the Iranians, who now dealt directly with Gazan interlocutors. For a number of reasons, including the difficulties of traveling in and out of Gaza, which depended on Egyptian goodwill, Haniyeh eventually relocated to Doha in December 2019. But Haniyeh’s departure also signaled the coming to power in Gaza of Sinwar, a former Hamas military commander who had begun to rival Haniyeh in influence.

Rearming the Resistance

Sinwar had been a crucial figure in the establishment of Hamas’s military wing in the 1980s. He then spent 22 years in Israeli prisons, where he helped build Hamas’s leadership; he was released in October 2011 as part of the Shalit deal. Sinwar had a proactive vision of the Palestinian armed struggle: for him, only offensive force and the assertion of power could pave the way to fairer negotiations with Israel. After becoming Hamas’s strongman in Gaza, he began to put this vision into practice. Thus, he sought to use Hamas’s control of the strip to extract further concessions from Israel, and he continued to expand the Qassam Brigades, which analysts estimate grew from fewer than 10,000 fighters in the first decade of this century to some 30,000 or more.

Within Hamas’s political ranks, only Ahmed Yousef, a former adviser to Haniyeh, officially expressed reservations about Sinwar's appointment. Yousef worried that too much decision-making power was being shifted to the Palestinian territories and felt that the external leadership should continue to have precedence. He also worried that Sinwar’s close ties with the movement’s armed wing could work against Hamas. According to Yousef, it could give the Israelis yet another pretext for treating Gaza as simply a breeding ground for Islamist terrorism.

Hamas’s outreach to Palestinians coincided with Arab leaders’ normalization with Israel.

But Sinwar soon proved he could get results. In 2018 and 2019, he was able to obtain a relative easing of the Israeli blockade by orchestrating the March of Return protests on Gaza’s barriers with Israel. Hamas quickly took advantage of these weekly protests, which drew tens of thousands of Gazans to the border to protest the blockade, to fire rockets and incendiary balloons toward Israel. In response to this pressure strategy, Israel ultimately entered into a series of agreements to allow the limited opening of several border crossings as well as increased Qatari funds to be delivered into Gaza to pay civil servants. Still, many Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank remained skeptical of Hamas, accusing it of using the marches to distract from growing criticism of its rule and wielding force only to defend its own interests in Gaza.

In 2021, Sinwar seized an opportunity to address Hamas’s credibility problem. At the time, Israel had launched a violent crackdown on Palestinians who were protesting Israeli evictions of Palestinian residents from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. On May 20, after issuing an ultimatum, the Qassam Brigades fired thousands of rockets at Ashdod, Ashkelon, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Spontaneously, Arab Israelis in many Israeli cities rose up in solidarity with the Palestinians in Jerusalem, enabling Hamas to reconnect with Palestinians outside Gaza and present itself as the protector of the holy city. Since then, the name of Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, has been chanted whenever Palestinians protest in Jerusalem or the West Bank.

Significantly, the Gazan leadership’s growing outreach to Palestinians outside of Gaza came shortly after Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates normalized relations with Israel. By entering these U.S.-brokered agreements—known as the Abraham Accords—these Arab countries made clear they were prepared to take such a historic step despite the looming prospect of an outright Israeli annexation of the West Bank. For the Palestinians, this was overwhelmingly regarded as a betrayal. Thus, at a moment when Arab countries were signaling that they would no longer defend the Palestinians, Hamas in Gaza was standing up for the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Since 2021, Hamas has also made a point of acting in solidarity with the Palestinians against the growing Israeli threats to the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the Palestinians’ national symbol. Seen in this context, Hamas’s October 7 operation—which it calls the al Aqsa Flood—is part of the same logic of using offensive force to defend the Palestinian territories as a whole. Notably, the decision to attack appears to have come from within Hamas’s Gazan organization and did not involve the movement’s external leadership.

Telling a Different Story

Since Israel’s war began, Hamas has also deployed a concerted media strategy to emphasize the centrality of Gaza in the Palestinian struggle. Foremost has been the group’s ability to communicate with the outside world during the fighting. Despite the Internet blackout of Gaza, intense Israeli bombing, and the destruction of telecommunications infrastructure across the territory, Hamas has continued to broadcast information from the battlefield, providing a continual counternarrative to official Israeli accounts of the war. By publishing almost daily videos of the destruction of Israeli tanks and challenging claims about hospitals used as human shields, the Qassam Brigades and Hamas’s Gazan organization overall have contradicted Israeli claims and maintained some influence over the coverage of the war by the international media.

Hamas’s external leaders in Doha do not appear to be involved in this information campaign, which is dictated and directed from Gaza. In contrast to Hamas’s communications during Operation “Cast Lead”, Israel’s offensive against Gaza in 2008 and 2009, it is no longer the president of the Hamas political bureau who comments on unfolding events from an external location but a military leader—Abu Ubaida—who is on the ground in Gaza itself. Indeed, it has become increasingly clear that Sinwar and the rest of the Hamas leadership in Gaza disdain the members of the movement in Doha, who live at a comfortable and luxurious remove from the conflict.

A protest against the Israeli war, Hebron, West Bank, December 2023

Mussa Qawasma / Reuters

Hamas representatives in Lebanon, on the other hand, have had a significant part in the current information war. Osama Hamdan, the former head of Hamas’s department of foreign relations and one of the most prominent figures in the political bureau, has held regular press conferences in Beirut challenging Israeli narratives of the war. Unlike other Hamas figures, who have feared that Sinwar was too close to the Qassam Brigades, Hamdan considers the convergence of Hamas’s civilian and military wings perfectly natural. he also shares Sinwar’s view that only the use of force can help the Palestinian cause. (In an interview I conducted with Hamdan in 2017 in Beirut, he drew an analogy with Israel’s own leadership, noting that, “Israel's political leaders, whether Netanyahu, Rabin, Barak, or Peres, were all warlords before they took on political responsibilities.”)

In his statements, Hamdan has sought to portray the war not as a Hamas battle but as a general struggle for Palestinian liberation, and he calls on the rest of the world to support the Palestinians against what he refers to as the “American-Zionist imperialist project.” According to him, the October 7 attack has resulted in several gains for Palestinians: freeing Palestinians jailed in Israel, drawing the Israeli army into a difficult situation on the ground, and forcing the evacuation of Israeli populations from northern towns bordering Lebanon and, in the areas surrounding Gaza. Hamdan claims that it was the Israeli army’s growing difficulties in its ground campaign in Gaza that made Israel willing to pause the fighting and release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for some of the Israeli hostages. Hamdan also maintains that Israel decided to resume its military operation on November 24 because it had failed to accomplish its goals during the first phase of the fighting.

The Hamas narrative has not gone unchallenged in official Arab media, particularly in Saudi Arabia, which has traditionally been hostile to the movement. But Abu Ubaida and Hamdan’s statements have had a significant impact both in the greater Palestinian world and among the Arab populations in neighboring countries, some of whom may be more sympathetic to Hamas than they were before the war. In launching its operation, Hamas had shown that Israel was not invincible, in contrast to PLO, which many Palestinians feel has done little to further their cause. However great the costs to Gaza, Hamas’s attack has made the liberation project concrete for Palestinians; and by provoking Israel to unleash its devastating invasion and massive killing of civilians, it has also brought extraordinary worldwide attention on the brutality of Israeli occupation and Israeli control of the Palestinian territories. These outcomes will probably have deep consequences for the future of the conflict.

What Day After?

In the weeks since Hamas launched its attack, much international attention has focused on the unprecedented massacre of Israeli civilians. Far less noted has been what the assault revealed about strategic shifts within Hamas itself. By forcing Israel to launch a huge war in Gaza, the October 7 operation has overturned the prevailing understanding of Gaza as a territory that had been liberated from Israeli occupation and whose status quo as an isolated enclave could be sustained indefinitely. However great the cost to the Gazans themselves, for Hamas, the war has already achieved the goals of positioning Gaza as a key piece of the Palestinian liberation struggle and of bringing that struggle to the center of international attention.

In turn, for the Palestinians, the war has reconnected Gaza to some of the central traumas of their historical experience. Presented by Israel as an emergency humanitarian measure, the forced displacement of Gaza’s populations to the southern end of the coastal strip—as well as plans mooted within the Netanyahu administration to relocate Gazans to the Sinai Desert—has reframed the situation in Gaza within the much longer history of Palestinian expulsion that has unfolded since 1948. These current efforts to displace or remove the Gazans are all the more significant since most of those being forced to move come from families who were already refugees from the 1948 crisis. For many of them—including hundreds of thousands who have refused to leave the northern part of the strip—the situation is repeating these earlier upheavals. As they see it, the only way to avoid the risk of a second nakba (or “catastrophe”) is to remain in Gaza, no matter how great the destruction.

With Gaza once more under intense shelling after the collapse of the seven-day cease-fire, Israel and the United States have been discussing various scenarios for the “day after.” Although the two countries disagree on many issues, including the possibility of government by the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, which Israel rejects, both countries are adamant about the total eradication of Hamas. But this goal itself may be based on an understanding of the organization that does not take account of its current reality. So far, despite a five-week onslaught by one of the most powerful armies in the world—one in which an overwhelming majority of Gazans have been forced to leave their homes and more than 17,000 have been killed—Hamas shows few signs of having been eradicated. Not only has it managed to maintain itself; it has also asserted its autonomy from the organization’s outside leadership as well as its Arab allies and Iran, which was not warned of the attack. The Gazan organization’s ability to remain a force even now, with a highly structured leadership, a media presence, and a network of support, calls into serious question all the current debates around the future governance of the Gaza Strip.

For the time being, as its forces have failed to fulfill its objectives in Gaza, Israel has stepped up military operations in the West Bank through daily raids, mass arrests, and sweeping crackdowns. Not only does this raise the prospect of a two-front war after years of Israeli efforts to separate the occupied Palestinian territories from the Gaza Strip. It also suggests that the Israeli military itself may help further Hamas’s own goal of reconnecting Gaza with the broader struggle for Palestinian liberation.

LEILA SEURAT is a researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (CAREP-Paris) and the author of The Foreign Policy of Hamas: Ideology, Decision Making, and Political Supremacy.

MORE BY LEILA SEURATForeign Affairs · by Leila Seurat · December 11, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com