Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

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1. "Oh So Social" Conversation: LTG Charles Cleveland + Dr. Michael Vickers

2. A Full Spectrum of Conflict Design: How Doctrine Should Embrace Irregular Warfare

3. The Tragic Paradox of Military Ethics

4. Jeff Bezos Gives $50M Each To Eva Longoria And Admiral Bill McRaven

5. Opinion | Why Biden’s appeals to democracy aren’t working

6. In this Ukrainian village, almost no men are left

7. US ally moves anti-ship missiles to first island chain choke point

8. Review | The CIA’s former master of disguise tells her story

9. ‘Jamming’: How Electronic Warfare Is Reshaping Ukraine’s Battlefields

10. Western special operations activity is on the rise around a new US partner in a strategic but unstable area of the Mediterranean

11. President Biden, You Have Leverage That Can Save Lives in Gaza. Please Use It.

12. Ukraine receives much-needed ammo boost

13. How to better study—and then improve—today’s corrupted information environment

14. Russians are filling America's news shortage

15. Opinion: The dangers in leaving TikTok at Beijing’s disposal

16. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, March 15, 2024

17. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 15, 2024

18. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, March 15, 2024

19. The War on Terror Is Back

20. SEALs break new ground while submarine breaks through ice at Arctic allied exercise

21. Pacific leaders say they need more funding to compete with China

22. Drone Swarms Are About to Change the Balance of Military Power

23. Ukraine’s Unconventional Military Options – Analysis

24. How Cuba Recruits Spies to Penetrate Inner Circles of the U.S. Government

25. Gospels of Foreign Policy Realism

26. 'SEAL Team' is surprisingly good TV

1. "Oh So Social" Conversation: LTG Charles Cleveland + Dr. Michael Vickers

Just Added!

Wednesday, April 3

"Oh So Social" Conversation: LTG Charles Cleveland + Dr. Michael Vickers

Dr. Michael Vickers talks with LTG Cleveland, USA (Ret.) about his RAND report, "The American Way of Irregular War: An Analytical Memoir."

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Wednesday, April 3 · 6 - 7:30pm EDT

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2. A Full Spectrum of Conflict Design: How Doctrine Should Embrace Irregular Warfare

Reprising this interesting and useful thought piece from last year. Graphics at the link below.

My caution applies to this as well as to current doctrine. We often spend too much time trying to fit conflict into various theoretical constructs rather than trying to deeply understand the actual conflict we are faced with. What is more important: Fitting the conflict into one of our conflict boxes or along a linear conflict spectrum or understanding the conflict (e.g., appreciate the context, understand the problem, and then develop an approach)?

Excerpts:

Today, both the State Department and the Department of Defense often identify belligerent aggression that does not fit neatly along a linear conflict continuum, resulting in a bewildered and delayed response. Hybrid warfare and gray zone aggression will likely continue to be the foremost methods for employing ways and means in twenty-first-century conflict. As such, a full spectrum of conflict design framework better allows for collaboration within the US government in matters of national security. As Philip Kapusta argued in 2015, understanding the gray zone can “enable early application of U.S. instruments of power . . . by shaping the arc of change closer to its origins.” Utilizing the full spectrum of conflict design better identifies origins in the gray zone.

Employing means in multiple ways creates the advantages of hybrid warfare and gray zone competition, but current joint doctrine and its linear approach to conflict limits the US military’s ability to detect or employ these methodologies. Joint doctrine can broaden conflict analysis by adopting a framework that integrates the distinct ways of (a) traditional warfare, (b) deterrence, (c) irregular warfare, and (d) competition. The full spectrum of conflict design allows for increased understanding of the linkages and relationships between direct and indirect means across the continuum of peace and war. This framework provides a fuller picture of multiple efforts oriented toward the same desired outcome. The Russia-Ukraine conflict is a prime example of how the use of the full spectrum of conflict design can be applied to better illustrate and articulate aspects of conflict in one graph.

Military planners can adopt the full spectrum of conflict design to synchronize activities throughout engagement and contingency plans, as well as major operations and campaigns. This simple framework allows practitioners to analyze and integrate multiple ways and means into one planning frame, as well as to synchronize resources and actions to achieve strategic ends. Finally, the full spectrum of conflict design can help scholars, planners, and theorists graphically appreciate, and potentially anticipate, the strategies of opponents.

A Full Spectrum of Conflict Design: How Doctrine Should Embrace Irregular Warfare

https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/a-full-spectrum-of-conflict-design-how-doctrine-should-embrace-irregular-warfare/?utm

March 14, 2023 by Robert S. Burrell Leave a Comment

China’s gray zone conflict. Russian hybrid warfare. These terms have emerged to describe belligerent activities that standard US military operations struggle to address. Although these adversarial approaches remain central to today’s security environment, they are absent from the current joint doctrinal framework. Even the new joint doctrine note on strategic competition (JDN 1-22) fails to address hybrid warfare at all and there is only one mention of the gray zone. In fact, these two methods of conflict should remain front and center. Since the inception of joint doctrine, the United States has generally envisioned conflict in a linear fashion where peace and full-scale war occupy opposite sides of a continuum, with varying degrees of each in between. Doctrine’s evolution has made little change in this concept of a conflict continuum over time.

The 2022 US National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy made progress in detailing a more comprehensive approach to conflict. But much more can be done to incorporate both deterrence and competition, as well as irregular warfare, into operational design. As Eric Robinson detailed in an Irregular Warfare Initiative essay in 2020, there are four foundational ways of responding to belligerents: traditional warfare, deterrence, irregular warfare, and competition. If planners adopted this framework, they would have a full spectrum of conflict design that would help them to integrate ends, ways, and means into a coherent campaign plan. And they would also be better able to understand the activities of the United States’ most important competitors.

Understanding Conflict—From One Dimension to Two

The US joint force has attempted to define different forms of conflict for decades, but it has failed to move beyond a linear understanding. A competition continuum was introduced in a 2019 joint doctrine note, with cooperation on one end, adversarial competition below armed conflict in the middle, and war on the other end. This one-dimensional concept has been adopted by other doctrinal publications, such as Joint Publication 1 (the joint force’s capstone doctrine) and Joint Publication 3-0, Joint Campaigns and Operations. While this is the most recent conceptualization, for the past two decades doctrine has only slightly redefined categories between war and peace through minor revisions to descriptions and these changes have added little significance.

Connecting ways and means to strategic ends remains the essential task of strategy. Thus, adding a second means-based dimension to the existing continuum creates a full spectrum of conflict design, which dramatically improves our understanding. This second dimension—which serves as the y-axis in Figure 1—is similar to Herman Kahn’s work on escalation. While escalation of means varies with circumstances, means can generally be employed directly (and overtly), indirectly (including covertly and clandestinely), or somewhere in between. The full spectrum of conflict design creates a holistic framework that clarifies the relationship between means (the resources used in conflict) and ways (how those means are employed). Figure 1 illustrates the two-dimensional framework where the x-axis delineates the continuum between war and peace while the y-axis delineates the military means utilized. Together, these axes produce four ways: (a) traditional warfare, (b) deterrence, (c) irregular warfare, and (d) competition.

Figure 1: Full Spectrum of Conflict Design

Traditional warfare. This quadrant is characterized by the authorized use of conventional military force to defeat an adversary’s army. Traditional warfare also includes the implementation of a diplomatic treaty for the purposes of combined warfare. Conventional forces primarily dominate in this quadrant.

Deterrence. In this quadrant, a government prevents adversaries’ aggressive actions by threatening the use of traditional means. In addition, a peacetime coalition of treaty allies or the buildup of weapons of mass destruction can also deter aggression. The deterrence quadrant is characterized by nonviolent and low-intensity conflict between competitors—reinforced and backstopped by hard power.

Irregular Warfare. This quadrant identifies violent activities waged against an opponent through nontraditional and indirect methods, such as foreign internal defense and unconventional warfare (either conducted to support resilience and resistance). Special operations typically dominate in irregular warfare, and the means utilized are typically more population-centric tools than those utilized in the direct approach.

Competition. This quadrant is characterized by rivalry between nation-states or nonstate actors where the means utilized fall short of violence. This includes nonproliferation activities to deny competitors arms or equipment and sanctions imposed on persons, groups, and nations. It also includes persistent engagement by special operations forces to prepare an environment for violent irregular warfare if required. Finally, humanitarian assistance and stability activities occur in this space as they alleviate human security demands in unstable regions where rivals operate (like al-Qaeda and ISIS).

The Relationship Among Quadrants

These four ways directly relate to one another; they are not independent, and a nation can employ all of them simultaneously. For instance, deterrence fundamentally connects to traditional warfare because they both use the same means, from nuclear arsenals to aircraft carriers. In other words, weapons of mass destruction or conventional arms can be used for war or deterrence equally. One could also use traditional warfare and deterrence simultaneously, such as employing military forces while threatening the use of a nuclear response.

Likewise, competition and irregular warfare are directly related. Each can take deliberate actions in opposition to a state (or nonstate) competitor with indirect application of military means. The main distinction between the two is that irregular warfare simply uses more violence than competition. For instance, foreign internal defense might assist a partner force to ensure fair elections in a fragile state. This nonviolent activity occurs in the space of competition. However, that same military force can be used in a different way—to counter irregular threats with violence.

The five recognized components of irregular warfare (foreign internal defense, unconventional warfare, stabilization activities, counterterrorism, and counterinsurgency) actually span the breadth of both competition and irregular warfare—a subject I published on in 2021. In fact, activities like stabilization primarily exist in nonviolent competition in most situations, rather than irregular warfare. The full spectrum of conflict design better allows the visualization of indirect use of military means in both competition and irregular warfare. Indirect uses of military power include (a) support to another regime’s resilience to protect its society from threats like subversion, lawlessness, and insurgency, and (b) supporting indigenous resistance against an adversary’s governance to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow the regime. Neither of these two methods (support to resilience or resistance) are constrained to violent means and concurrently exist in both the irregular warfare and competition quadrants. It is precisely for this reason that Joint Special Operations University has transitioned to the terms “support to resilience” and “support to resistance” as opposed to “irregular warfare.” These terms acknowledge the interdisciplinary nature of conflict in these quadrants, which serves to offer more comprehensive solutions that include diplomatic, informational, military, and economic aspects.

Military planners can more holistically address irregular threats by including both competition and irregular warfare as separate but related ways of dealing with violent and nonviolent threats. With this framework planners and operators will be prepared for nonviolent activities to evolve into irregular warfare, or for violent activities to revert to competition. Operation Restore Hope in Somalia is a good example of military force initially utilized for peaceful humanitarian assistance quickly evolving to employ violent means to establish rule of law. My 2021 article further illustrates such shifts.

In short, the full spectrum of conflict design framework should not be used to compartmentalize any nation’s activities into a single quadrant or type of military means as conflict rarely relies exclusively on one type of means. Figure 1 uses dotted lines to indicate that conflict might (and likely will) include activities in more than one space. As further explained below, activities that span multiple ways result in hybrid warfare or gray zone competition.

Clarifying Gray Zone and Hybrid Warfare

By employing multiple means illustrated in the full spectrum of conflict design framework, nations may specifically operate near the axes where activities are blurred to intentionally complicate an adversary’s response. Fortunately, the framework allows scholars and practitioners to visually identify gray zone conflict and hybrid warfare as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Identifying Gray Zone and Hybrid Warfare

In the figure, gray zone conflict occurs along the y-axis, because the gray zone blurs the line between war and peace. For example, the Chinese Communist Party tends to operate aggressively in the gray zone, as this gives it freedom of action without consequences. In the South China Sea, it often employs a maritime militia, instead of its navy, to enforce recognition of its territorial claims to disguise its intentions where actions are not clearly identified as warlike or peaceful.

Hybrid warfare occurs along the x-axis by purposefully implementing both direct and indirect means. In 2014, Russia invaded Crimea by sponsoring proxies and inserting Russian operatives without uniforms. At the same time Russia used its air force and navy to enforce air and maritime exclusion zones. Further, Russia used economic pressure and nuclear threats to ensure noninterference from NATO. Russia also established and maintained its narrative through propaganda with domestic and international audiences to justify its aggression.

Applying the Full Spectrum of Conflict Framework

One application for the full spectrum of conflict design is to map out major events in a struggle, to better appreciate the ways and means utilized and to identify the inherent nature of the conflict or the strategies of the participants. Applied to Ukraine, as an example, the product is a graph illustrating major Russian actions taken against Ukraine from 2003 through 2022.

Figure 3: Full Spectrum of Conflict Design, Russian Aggression, 2004-2022

In general, the graph demonstrates that Russian aggression has been escalatory in terms of military means over time. Russia began its campaign with influence, cyber, and economic coercion (2003–2013), subsequently transitioned to irregular warfare supported by traditional warfare (2013–2021), and finally transitioned to traditional warfare (2022) while simultaneously making threats of a nuclear response for the purposes of deterrence (2022). Russia’s activities occupy all four quadrants, generally employing a hybrid warfare approach (particularly in 2014) and leveraging multiple ways and means in achieving national objectives.

The Way Ahead

Today, both the State Department and the Department of Defense often identify belligerent aggression that does not fit neatly along a linear conflict continuum, resulting in a bewildered and delayed response. Hybrid warfare and gray zone aggression will likely continue to be the foremost methods for employing ways and means in twenty-first-century conflict. As such, a full spectrum of conflict design framework better allows for collaboration within the US government in matters of national security. As Philip Kapusta argued in 2015, understanding the gray zone can “enable early application of U.S. instruments of power . . . by shaping the arc of change closer to its origins.” Utilizing the full spectrum of conflict design better identifies origins in the gray zone.

Employing means in multiple ways creates the advantages of hybrid warfare and gray zone competition, but current joint doctrine and its linear approach to conflict limits the US military’s ability to detect or employ these methodologies. Joint doctrine can broaden conflict analysis by adopting a framework that integrates the distinct ways of (a) traditional warfare, (b) deterrence, (c) irregular warfare, and (d) competition. The full spectrum of conflict design allows for increased understanding of the linkages and relationships between direct and indirect means across the continuum of peace and war. This framework provides a fuller picture of multiple efforts oriented toward the same desired outcome. The Russia-Ukraine conflict is a prime example of how the use of the full spectrum of conflict design can be applied to better illustrate and articulate aspects of conflict in one graph.

Military planners can adopt the full spectrum of conflict design to synchronize activities throughout engagement and contingency plans, as well as major operations and campaigns. This simple framework allows practitioners to analyze and integrate multiple ways and means into one planning frame, as well as to synchronize resources and actions to achieve strategic ends. Finally, the full spectrum of conflict design can help scholars, planners, and theorists graphically appreciate, and potentially anticipate, the strategies of opponents.

Dr. Robert S. Burrell is an award-winning military historian and teaches interdisciplinary studies at Joint Special Operations University.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense, or that of any organization the author is affiliated with, including Joint Special Operations University and US Special Operations Command.

Image: Russian special operations forces, Russian Ministry of Defense.

3. The Tragic Paradox of Military Ethics

For weekend reflection.

Ethical considerations in war are tragically paradoxical: the more ethically constrained military campaigns and operations are, the longer evil reigns. The opposite is likely true as well: the more brutal war is, the longer peace can prevail. The decisive victory at Chaeronea and at Carthage, and the failure to maintain the peace after WWI serve as a small sampling of this paradox. The prolific British strategist Colin Gray noted that, “among history’s many ironies, it would seem indisputable that efforts to control and limited war, or armaments, both in theory and in practice have tended to have the reverse effect of that principally intended.” It is simply the case, Gray continued, that “awful means need to be threatened or employed for the purpose of advancing desirable end-state policy goals.”

...

But, if B.H. Liddel Hart was correct when he stated that “the object of war is a better state of peace,” we must recognize that peace follows governments and militaries acting with an eye towards winning a durable, total victory. The periods of greatest peace almost all followed fierce, brutal wars. Gray was fond of noting “history does not record major cases wherein a distinctively ethical, as contrasted with a bluntly prudential, reasoning shaped statecraft and strategy.” Commentators should keep in mind that, for all the wonders of the 21st century, we still live in a world defined primarily by power politics, a reality we must work through instead of denouncing.

The Tragic Paradox of Military Ethics

By Phillip Dolitsky on March 15, 2024

https://providencemag.com/2024/03/the-tragic-paradox-of-military-ethics/

In March 1946, the American philosopher and economist Henry Hazlitt published Economics in One Lesson. Expounding on what Frédéric Bastiat called the “seen vs unseen principle,” Hazlitt argued that the field of economics can be succinctly summarized as “looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act of policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.” An observation of lasting import in economics, Hazlitt’s ideas have also proven prescient toward military ethics. In such a context, decisions must be made considering not only the seen, immediately obvious consequences of an act, but also the less immediately evident yet still significant unseen consequences across all groups.

Military ethics has been the subject of much popular discussion of late with Israel’s just war against Hamas. One of the most common topics among media outlets is the need for Israel to protect innocents by adhering to the principle of “noncombatant immunity.” It is well known that Hamas hides its members and armaments amid civilian homes and buildings, utilizing women and children as human shields, thereby posing a serious moral conundrum. Some commentators, based on a strict and rigid understanding of noncombatant immunity, believe that Israel is obligated to refrain from any military action that would knowingly harm innocents, noting that it is always wrong to intentionally harm innocent civilians. In 2003, for example, Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet received intelligence that eight major Hamas leaders would soon convene in Gaza. Israeli leaders, worried that the size of ordinance necessary to ensure the elimination of all eight senior terrorists would also kill innocent bystanders, instead utilized a much smaller bomb. In the end, none of the senior Hamas figures were harmed.

Applying Hazlitt’s framework, what are the seen and unseen effects of this decision? What were the consequences of Israel’s policies to all groups? By deciding against using the necessary means to kill the intended targets in order to spare civilian lives, Israel could claim the moral high ground. In a world where barbaric actors like Hamas pay no attention to innocents, Israel can ask itself Churchill’s question of “are we beasts?” and answer with a definitive “no.” In a world where Israel is perpetually demonized as an oppressor, that is an important and noble seen consequence.

The unseen consequences, however, warrant consideration. By failing to employ the necessary means to kill those Hamas leaders in the name of the moral high ground, Israel allowed for the perpetuation of evil and bloodshed. By applying a moral standard in relation to its enemy, Israeli leaders subjected its own citizenry, to whom they are ultimately responsible, to the immoral, murderous actions of Hamas. Numerous Israeli lives have been lost because those eight men escaped in 2003, including Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, two of the masterminds behind the 10/7 attack.

It is important to recognize that this is a regular occurrence in Israel’s wars against terror: in the name of being seen as moral and ethical towards the enemy, Israel allows for evil to spread and metastasize against her own citizens. The Israeli terrorism scholar Boaz Ganor has shown that Israeli restraint in 2012 during Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza came at a significant price. According to Ganor,

“Israel’s desire to minimize harm in the Gaza Strip dictated large margins of security, which enabled the IDF to strike only those military compounds and rocket launching sites farthest from civilian centers and protected facilities. It spared those command centers, weapons caches, and launching sites located in densely populated civilian areas or near civilian structures, thereby preserving Hamas’s strategic capability.”

Israel realized just how intact Hamas’ capability was when another brutal war began just two years later in the summer of 2014.

It is a fundamental truth about the nature of war that the enemy always gets a say. That is just as true within military ethics as with military doctrine and planning. Historian David Lonsdale, commenting on the military strategy of Philip II and Alexander the Great, notes that “if one treats cultural and moral concerns as the prime consideration in war, then one may cede the advantage and initiative to an enemy who is in harmony with the true nature of war.” Similarly, Carl Von Clausewitz, the greatest military theorist of all time, recognized this truth that “if one side uses force without compunction, undeterred by the bloodshed it involves, while the other side refrains, the first will gain the upper hand.”

Hamas and other terrorist groups thrive off of the ethical concerns of liberal statesmen. While we laud the seen reality of adhering to such ethical standards, we should also be aware of the unseen effects, where opting against some violence today really amounts to choosing more violence tomorrow. Moral philosophers who insist that leaders adhere to “absolute” moral truths congratulate themselves for pressing for peace when they are merely kicking the can down the road for the next generation.

Ethical considerations in war are tragically paradoxical: the more ethically constrained military campaigns and operations are, the longer evil reigns. The opposite is likely true as well: the more brutal war is, the longer peace can prevail. The decisive victory at Chaeronea and at Carthage, and the failure to maintain the peace after WWI serve as a small sampling of this paradox. The prolific British strategist Colin Gray noted that, “among history’s many ironies, it would seem indisputable that efforts to control and limited war, or armaments, both in theory and in practice have tended to have the reverse effect of that principally intended.” It is simply the case, Gray continued, that “awful means need to be threatened or employed for the purpose of advancing desirable end-state policy goals.”

Of course, strategists, generals and presidents are human actors who, by nature, act with ethical values. But the tragic paradox of military ethics requires military leaders and government officials to adopt a more consequentialist ethic, one that recognizes the Machiavellian principle of virtu, where good men must, in order to protect their people, engage in violent acts. This aspect of political life is undoubtedly a tragedy, but it is a tragedy that all polities must grapple with.

Jewish sages teach that “he who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate.” And that is, undoubtedly, a tragedy. We want to do kindness and act ethically. But ethical decisions, especially in war, have far-reaching consequences that bear careful scrutiny. The tragic paradox of military ethics describes a state of affairs where military leaders and government officials are forced to make heartrending decisions on matters of life and death for many people; some their constituents, some not.

But, if B.H. Liddel Hart was correct when he stated that “the object of war is a better state of peace,” we must recognize that peace follows governments and militaries acting with an eye towards winning a durable, total victory. The periods of greatest peace almost all followed fierce, brutal wars. Gray was fond of noting “history does not record major cases wherein a distinctively ethical, as contrasted with a bluntly prudential, reasoning shaped statecraft and strategy.” Commentators should keep in mind that, for all the wonders of the 21st century, we still live in a world defined primarily by power politics, a reality we must work through instead of denouncing.

Phillip Dolitsky is an independent national security and foreign policy analyst. He is working towards becoming a strategic theorist, focusing on the intersection between strategy, military ethics, and classical realism. His writing has appeared in First Things, The Public Discourse, Military Strategy Magazine, and more. He can be found on X @phillyd97.

4. Jeff Bezos Gives $50M Each To Eva Longoria And Admiral Bill McRaven

Excerpt:

In a statement, McRaven said he wants to use the gift to focus on three areas: educating the children of deceased veterans, particularly in the special operations community; the mental health and brain performance of veterans; and helping to develop future military leaders through education.

Jeff Bezos Gives $50M Each To Eva Longoria And Admiral Bill McRaven

deadline.com · by Bruce Haring · March 15, 2024

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez are giving away $100 million as part of Bezos’ annual prize to individuals who make significant contributions to society.

This year’s recipients of $50 million each are actor and entrepreneur Eva Longoria, and Bill McRaven, a retired Navy admiral and former chancellor of the University of Texas System.

The Bezos Courage and Civility Award is given to people who try to find solutions to complicated problems, attempt to be uniters, and embrace civility.

The first recipients of the prize were Van Jones, a lawyer and CNN commentator, and chef José Andrés, who each received $100 million in 2021. Entertainer and philanthropist Dolly Parton was the 2022 recipient. There was no 2023 award.

In a statement, McRaven said he wants to use the gift to focus on three areas: educating the children of deceased veterans, particularly in the special operations community; the mental health and brain performance of veterans; and helping to develop future military leaders through education.

Longoria, who starred in ABC’s drama Desperate Housewives as trophy wife Gabrielle Solis, has focused on education and entrepreneurship in Latino communities. The Eva Longoria Foundation aims to connect Latinos and Latinas in lower-income areas with peer mentors, and Longoria has a start-up fund for Latino-owned small businesses.

“Of course, I am honored and thrilled personally, but I am even more excited about the impact I think we can have on this country through/by investing in the strength of the Latino community,” Longoria told CNN. “Latinos in the US are a rapidly growing group with extraordinary potential, but we disproportionately lack the infrastructure opportunity we need and I’m excited to invest in that opportunity.”

deadline.com · by Bruce Haring · March 15, 2024

5. Opinion | Why Biden’s appeals to democracy aren’t working

Rather than democracy how about championing self determination of government.?

Excerpt:

Democracy is an attractive theme with a long tradition in U.S. foreign policy. But appeals to democracy won’t arrest the GOP’s turn toward noninvolvement when it comes to Ukraine, and they offer no framework for mitigating Middle East violence. Hardheaded statecraft has to come first to protect the United States’ global interests.

Opinion | Why Biden’s appeals to democracy aren’t working

By Jason Willick

Columnist

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March 15, 2024 at 7:30 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Jason Willick · March 15, 2024

The Biden administration’s escalating spat with Israel over its war with Hamas in Gaza, now joined by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), has included media leaks, pointed intelligence assessments and diplomatic dressing-downs. But perhaps the most telling piece was Vice President Harris’s admonition last week not to “conflate the Israeli government with the Israeli people.”

As the Israeli journalist Amit Segal observes, “There is a significant disparity between Israel’s leadership and its citizens — but it’s the opposite of what people in Washington assume.” The policies of Israel’s war cabinet are restrained relative to public opinion. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign-policy instincts are moderate by Israeli standards. If “the Israeli people” somehow controlled the war in Gaza directly, it might be even more devastating.

So Harris’s remark reflects a misapprehension of Israeli democracy. But more than that, it highlights how promoting democracy is a weak foundation for U.S. foreign policy in the first place.

Biden has made a global contest between “democracy and autocracy” central to his presidency. That pitch has failed to keep Congress united in support of aiding Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. The main deficiency is obvious: Many Americans wonder what the form of government in a faraway country has to do with their own lives.

Republicans are responsible for holding up aid to Ukraine. But Biden has accelerated partisan polarization over the war by casting it as an extension of U.S. domestic politics, with Ukraine’s fight against Russia parallel to the Democrats’ fight against former president Donald Trump’s GOP. Portraying Republicans as part of the authoritarian menace you want to defeat abroad is obviously not a formula for winning their support on a foreign policy priority.

An overemphasis on democracy can be self-undermining, as the political philosopher Emily B. Finley argued in her 2022 book, “The Ideology of Democratism.” When democracy yields a controversial outcome, there can be a tendency to assume that democracy itself was corrupted — that the problem is not a difference of opinion among citizens, but that nefarious forces prevented the true will of the people from emerging. One classic example is the liberal attribution of Trump’s 2016 election victory to disinformation or foreign interference.

Harris’s Israel statement betrayed a similar tendency. The Biden administration is displeased with the behavior of Israel’s leadership, so it signaled that Israel’s elected leadership is not actually a democratic reflection of its people. But if Segal is right about Israel’s warlike public opinion, that’s misdirection. The Israeli conduct that angers the Biden administration is democratically representative.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to change a democratic country’s behavior. One benefit of American alliances is that they enable Washington to influence democratic allies to comport with U.S. interests. The Biden administration can lean on Israel as it wishes. But if it has to construct the fiction that it is leaning only on Israel’s leaders, not trying to overrule its people — because the latter would violate the sanctity of democracy — it is bound to miscalculate about what it can achieve.

Blocking a country’s collective democratic will takes more political muscle than persuading a single unrepresentative leader to change course. Biden’s remark that an Israeli invasion of Rafah “is a red line,” for example, will go unheeded if — as it appears — the Israeli public overwhelmingly wants its military to finish the job against Hamas. Biden could end up diminishing U.S. authority and his own political standing by appearing to resist an Israeli action that happens anyway.

Other than Israel, of course, America’s Mideast allies are autocracies. It might have been more accurate for Harris to warn against conflating the governments of countries such as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia with their people. Yet far from trying to open the gap between those governments and their populations, as Harris did with Israel, U.S. policy is to shore up moderate Arab regimes to check Iran and Islamist radicalism.

Indeed, a Saudi-Israel diplomatic agreement seems to be the linchpin of the Biden administration’s ideal Middle East settlement after the Israel-Gaza war. That rapprochement would be driven by the monarchy in Riyadh, not democratic forces in the Arab street.

It’s hardly a new discovery that popular opinion can, under certain circumstances, radicalize rather than moderate a state’s foreign policy. One politician in revolutionary France warned that democratizing foreign policy could lead France to “be at war with every nation that we consider unjust, or which will not accept our system.”

That brings us back to Hamas, the entity that started this war with its Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis. The Biden administration made headlines after Harris’s remarks by releasing an intelligence assessment saying that Netanyahu’s leadership “may be in jeopardy.” But the striking line in the assessment was not the assertion that Netanyahu’s popularity is eroding among Israelis but that Hamas enjoys “broad popular support” among Palestinians. Hamas won a Palestinian election in 2006 and, if the American spies are right, can still claim a kind of democratic legitimacy even after bringing ruin on its people.

Democracy is an attractive theme with a long tradition in U.S. foreign policy. But appeals to democracy won’t arrest the GOP’s turn toward noninvolvement when it comes to Ukraine, and they offer no framework for mitigating Middle East violence. Hardheaded statecraft has to come first to protect the United States’ global interests.

The Washington Post · by Jason Willick · March 15, 2024

6. In this Ukrainian village, almost no men are left

Extensive photos at the link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/15/ukraine-village-mobilized-men-war/

Excerpts:

Ukraine desperately needs more troops, with its forces depleted by deaths, injuries and exhaustion. Despite Russia’s own enormous casualties, the invaders still far outnumber Ukraine’s defenders, an advantage that is helping Moscow advance on the battlefield. Ukraine’s parliament is debating a bill to expand the draft pool, in part by lowering the eligibility age to 25 from 27, but few decisions are being made in Kyiv that will quickly answer the army’s urgent needs.

Civilians here say that means military recruiters are grabbing everyone they can. In the west, the mobilization drive has steadily sown panic and resentment in small agricultural towns and villages like Makiv, where residents said soldiers working for draft offices roam the near-empty streets searching for any remaining men. Such tactics have led some to believe that their men are being targeted disproportionately compared with other regions or bigger cities like Kyiv, where it is easier to hide.

Locals use Telegram channels to warn of soldier sightings and share videos of troops forcing men into their vehicles — stoking rumors of kidnappings. Some men are now serving time in jail for refusing to sign up.

In this Ukrainian village, almost no men are left

By Siobhán O'Grady, Anastacia Galouchka and Serhiy Morgunov

March 16, 2024 at 2:12 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Siobhán O'Grady · March 16, 2024

MAKIV, Ukraine — Few men of fighting age are left in this village in southwest Ukraine, and those who remain fear they will be drafted at any moment.

Their neighbors are already hundreds of miles east in trenches on the front lines. Some have been killed or wounded. Several are missing. Others from this rural area — about 45 miles from the borders of Romania and Moldova — have fled abroad or found ways to avoid the war, either with legitimate exemptions or by hiding.

“It’s just a fact,” said Larysa Bodna, deputy director of the local school, which keeps a database of students whose parents are deployed. “Most of them are gone.”

Ukraine desperately needs more troops, with its forces depleted by deaths, injuries and exhaustion. Despite Russia’s own enormous casualties, the invaders still far outnumber Ukraine’s defenders, an advantage that is helping Moscow advance on the battlefield. Ukraine’s parliament is debating a bill to expand the draft pool, in part by lowering the eligibility age to 25 from 27, but few decisions are being made in Kyiv that will quickly answer the army’s urgent needs.

Civilians here say that means military recruiters are grabbing everyone they can. In the west, the mobilization drive has steadily sown panic and resentment in small agricultural towns and villages like Makiv, where residents said soldiers working for draft offices roam the near-empty streets searching for any remaining men. Such tactics have led some to believe that their men are being targeted disproportionately compared with other regions or bigger cities like Kyiv, where it is easier to hide.

Locals use Telegram channels to warn of soldier sightings and share videos of troops forcing men into their vehicles — stoking rumors of kidnappings. Some men are now serving time in jail for refusing to sign up.

“People are being caught like dogs on the street,” said Olha Kametyuk, 35, whose husband, Valentin, 36, was drafted in June by soldiers who approached him and asked for his papers after he stopped for coffee on the main road outside Makiv. Despite a diagnosis of osteochondrosis, a joint disorder, he passed his medical exam in 10 minutes, she said, and deployed to the front, where he was wounded.

“The whole village was taken this way,” said Valentin’s mother, Natalya Koshparenko, 61.

“Almost all our men have been scraped out,” said Serhii, 47, an infantry soldier from Makiv who was drafted in March 2022 and serves in Ukraine’s 115th brigade.

Home for a short break this month for the first time in a year, Serhii said he had already been stopped and questioned. So had his son, who is only 22 and not yet eligible to be drafted. The Washington Post is identifying Serhii only by his first name because of the risk of repercussions.

When the soldiers realized he was already serving, he said, they asked how he felt about men “‘who haven’t seen a single day of war” — which he said he regarded as a forced, hollow show of camaraderie. Serhii said he replied by saying it was them, not his fellow villagers, he resented most.

“You’re military and I’m a civilian, but I’m fighting and you’re not,” he said. The conversation, he noted, “ended immediately.”

Oleksii, 30, was fixing his car last year when soldiers approached and handed him a draft order. It was Valentine’s Day and the news broke his girlfriend, Elvira, who works in a small shop in Makiv and barely ate for weeks afterward. Oleksii accepted his fate, but his experience has served as a warning to others about the realities on the front.

After three concussions and shrapnel wounds, Oleksii recently returned home. Scrolling through his phone, he showed a photo of him with more than a dozen fellow troops. Only two are still alive, he said.

This month, villagers in Makiv buried another of their own — Ihor Dozorets, a contract soldier who was wounded so badly that his son, also a soldier, identified him only by a scar on his hand. “He wanted to come home,” Ihor’s sister, Inna Melnyk, 43, said through tears. “He was tired of it all. But what can we do?”

Vasyl Hrebeniuk, 70, said that even at his age — 10 years over the draft limit — soldiers have regularly stopped and questioned him in Makiv.

Six weeks ago, he watched soldiers bang on a neighbor’s door, complaining that the man who lived there had asked to go say goodbye to his wife and mother, then disappeared. One soldier said they “should have taken him immediately, put him in the bus and driven away,” Hrebeniuk recalled.

Scenarios like these have left Polina, 16, anxious about how much longer she has with her father — one of the few draft-eligible men left in the village.

Last summer, Polina and her friend Olha were relaxing at a table outside the village store when Olha’s dad called and asked her to buy something for him there. She brushed off his request, saying she was busy with friends. He walked to the store himself instead, and the teens watched in horror as soldiers surrounded him and handed him a summons on the way in.

He has been serving ever since — and his daughter blames herself. “Olha thought it was her fault,” Polina said.

Tetiana Lychak, 32, a teacher at the local school, lost her husband on the front line in late 2022. Her son Max is only 5 but already speaks of joining the army, Lychak said, and she wonders if she, too, should take a turn. One of her colleagues, a teacher who used to instruct high school students in basic army drills as part of a course called “Protecting Ukraine,” is now deployed. Three students in his class have fathers serving in the military.

Maya Proskurivska, 63, is hiding the truth about her son-in-law, Oleksandr, 41, from his children, who are 8 and 14. Sent to fight in the Donetsk region, he has been missing since December, she said, but the children think he is confirmed as a prisoner of war. These days, she said, “on our street, it’s hard to find a young man.”

On a chilly afternoon this month, Eleanora Voropanova, 4, pedaled her tricycle up and down the quiet road outside her house. Asked if her parents were home, she paused. “Mom is home,” she replied. “Dad is at war.”

Her mother, Tanya, 42, opened the gate. Inside, her nephew, Bohdan, 25, and his friend Artem, also 25, trudged through the yard, chopping firewood.

It had been 16 months since Tanya last heard from her husband, Serhii, who joined the army in March 2022 and disappeared while fighting that November. A fellow soldier called at the time and told her he had two updates. “The first is he’s not among the dead,” she recalled him saying. “The second is he’s not among the living.”

She has lived in that limbo ever since — raising two daughters, now 4 and 8, alone. Her brother-in-law, Bohdan’s father, feared going to fight and fled abroad — a decision she scorns.

“There are people hiding, sitting at home, not even willing to go to the store,” she said. “I saw a car today where the woman was driving and the husband was hiding behind tinted windows in the back.”

The young men cleaning her yard acknowledged that they fear the draft. But Artem said he also resents men from eastern Ukraine who came west for refuge instead of staying to fight. “They came here to hide, and our guys have to die there,” he said. Artem’s father, who was drafted, is now fighting near the eastern city of Lyman.

Down the road from Makiv, in the small city of Kamyanets-Podilsky, a growing gallery honoring the dead fills a main square. Each photo shows the face of a local man or woman killed fighting for Ukraine.

On a recent morning, Lyuda Shydey stood weeping in front of the portrait of her younger brother, Serhiy Kozynyak, who was killed in 2022 in Avdiivka, a city that fell to Russian forces last month. Shydey has never been to eastern Ukraine but still dreams of one day walking barefoot through the place where he died.

“And dreams have to come true,” she said. “Otherwise, what is the point of dreaming?”

The Washington Post · by Siobhán O'Grady · March 16, 2024

7. US ally moves anti-ship missiles to first island chain choke point

Excerpts:

"This is the first time that a surface-to-ship missile unit has been established on the main island of Okinawa, and it is also the first time that Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles have been delivered to the main island," Ryukyu Shimpo reported.

This strategic move by Japan involves deploying missile systems in key locations across the first island chain to form a north-south blockade against China. The People's Liberation Army increasingly operates in contested areas like the Miyako Strait, including deploying its nuclear-capable bombers.

US ally moves anti-ship missiles to first island chain choke point

Newsweek · by Aadil Brar · March 14, 2024

U.S. ally Japan has deployed surface-to-ship missile launchers on Okinawa Island to counter China's aggressive moves along the first island chain, Japanese media said.

The Ministry of Defense and the Self-Defense Forces announced that a Type 12 surface-to-ship missile launcher, believed to be part of this new unit, was transported to the area in the early hours of Thursday, the Japanese newspaper Ryukyu Shimpo reported on Thursday.

"This is the first time that a surface-to-ship missile unit has been established on the main island of Okinawa, and it is also the first time that Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles have been delivered to the main island," Ryukyu Shimpo reported.

This strategic move by Japan involves deploying missile systems in key locations across the first island chain to form a north-south blockade against China. The People's Liberation Army increasingly operates in contested areas like the Miyako Strait, including deploying its nuclear-capable bombers.

The first island chain is a series of islands stretching north from the Japanese archipelago through Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo, and the Malay Peninsula.

The Miyako Strait is a 155-mile international passageway between Miyako and the Okinawa Islands.

Okinawa is strategically important in the U.S. defense posture in the region, as roughly 30,000 troops from all four branches are stationed in Japan on the crucial island base.

This marks the first-ever establishment of a surface-to-ship missile unit on the main island of Okinawa, also introducing the Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles to the island.

"Between 1:40 a.m. and 2:00 a.m., 12 Self-Defense Force vehicles quietly entered Katsuren Bunchi. Five of the vehicles were trailers, four had covered cargo beds, and one had what appeared to be a crane. It appears to have transported a launcher," Ryukyu Shimpo reported.

Earlier, Japanese media reported that Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force had moved up the schedule to deploy Type 12 missiles by 2025.

Newsweek contacted China's Embassy in Washington, D.C. for comment. Newsweek also contacted Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.

"The improved version of the Type 12 surface-to-ship guided missile is planned to extend its range from just over 100 kilometers to well over 1,000 kilometers. From its initial development, the plan was to deploy the ground-launched missile from fiscal 2026. However, Kihara instructed his ministry to consider moving up this schedule," Japanese newspaper The Japan News had reported on December 16, 2023.

These domestically produced long-range missiles are designed to enhance Japan's deterrence and response capabilities against potential threats from China and North Korea, according to The Japan News.

In April 2023, Japan's Ministry of Defense signed a contract with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for the development and mass production of the upgraded Type 12 Surface-to-Ship Missiles (SSMs), allocating JPY33.8 billion (approximately $235 million) in the 2023 budget for the development of a prototype, according to Janes Group, an open-source military affairs platform.

The total R&D cost is estimated at JPY150 billion, underscoring Japan's commitment to bolstering its defense posture.

A Type 12 surface-to-ship missile launcher unit is displayed for military service members from 18 countries on the sidelines of the Pacific Amphibious Leaders Symposium 2022 (PALS 22) at the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force's Camp... A Type 12 surface-to-ship missile launcher unit is displayed for military service members from 18 countries on the sidelines of the Pacific Amphibious Leaders Symposium 2022 (PALS 22) at the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force's Camp Kisarazu in Chiba prefecture on June 16, 2022. Japan has placed a surface-to-ship missile launcher on Okinawa Island for the first time as tensions with China prevail. PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty

The upgraded Type 12 SSM will feature enhanced range capabilities of 200–1,000 km, a larger missile length, a modified shape, an updated command link for in-flight target updates, and increased engine endurance for more extended operations, Janes Group said.

This enhancement comes as countries in the region, including Japan and the Philippines, are actively working to prevent China from crossing the so-called First Island Chain.

Meanwhile, the Philippines faces severe security challenges posed by China's gray-zone tactics in the South China Sea.

"The Philippines has also deployed BrahMos anti-ship missiles in Basco on Batan Island. This move, along with Japan deploying anti-ship missile systems in the Miyako Strait on Yonaguni and Miyako islands, and Taiwan's Hsiung Feng anti-ship missiles, forms a north-south blockade against China," Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at Taiwan's Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR), told Taiwan's official Central News Agency on Tuesday.

The Philippines hasn't yet confirmed the deployment of a joint India-Russia developed BrahMos anti-ship missiles system.

Newsweek contacted the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs for comment.

Newsweek · by Aadil Brar · March 14, 2024

8. Review | The CIA’s former master of disguise tells her story

Excerpts:

Six years later, she and Tony dropped their masks when a reporter from the New York Times came to interview him about his life and career. (Full disclosure: That was me. I am also very briefly quoted in the book on the subject of sexism at the CIA.) The newspaper story revealed that he had helped create a long-secret operation code-named ARGO — the elaborate escape plan, the false identities and the brilliant disguises that got six Americans out of revolutionary Tehran while others were held hostage in 1980. Jonna and Tony started writing their own story. George Clooney’s production company on line one, Brad Pitt’s on line two. Ben Affleck stepped in. He played Tony, Jonna and Tony went to the Oscars, “Argo” won best picture. Nowhere in fiction does a CIA story have a Hollywood ending like that.

When Jonna Mendez first joined the CIA six decades ago, and for years thereafter, “obfuscation and deception” ruled her life. “Even my best friends and family didn’t know what I did or who I worked for. … No one really knew who I was anymore.” One of the virtues of “In True Face” is that this no longer is true.

Review | The CIA’s former master of disguise tells her story

The Washington Post · by Tim Weiner · March 13, 2024

The CIA is the world’s most famous secret intelligence agency. Its directors, in retirement, write best-selling memoirs. Reporters detail its covert operations when they go wrong, and sometimes when they go right. Scribes like me write history books about the CIA, interviewing spies who have spent their lives undercover. And its veterans write autobiographies like Jonna Mendez’s engaging and enlightening “In True Face,” an important addition to the canon of nonfiction books about an institution encrusted in myths created by movies, television, novels, hostile intelligence services and, occasionally, the agency itself. This book, written with Wyndham Wood, is filled with adventures and operations whose details, somewhat to my astonishment, have escaped the gimlet eyes of the censors at the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board, remaining unobscured by their inexhaustible supply of black Magic Markers.

Mendez, born Jonna Hiestand, rose from the typing pool in the early 1960s, besting misogynistic bosses, sharpening her skills during many years working overseas, and becoming the CIA’s chief of disguise, master of the masks and other magic tricks that enable American spies abroad to evade detection by their enemies. She started out as a 21-year-old “contract wife” — her first husband, after he proposed, revealed he was a CIA officer. A contract wife was one step up from a chattel slave. As his spouse, she was hired as a secretary at the CIA logistics base in Frankfurt, Germany. The second step up was as staff secretary to the head of the CIA’s Office of Technical Service, the place where the officers of the clandestine service went for spy gear. (The office also ran the Cold War mind-control experiments known as MK-Ultra. Among other sins, its scientists drugged unsuspecting human subjects with LSD, in pursuit of a truth serum suitable for interrogations.) Mendez, bored senseless as a typist, prevailed upon her boss to let her learn the art of clandestine photography. She did so well that she was soon training a recruited foreign agent in that dark art.

She eventually secured a real job in the Clandestine Imaging Division, dealing with invisible ink and microdots. And then, having learned to flex instead of curtsy, she became the most talented aide to Tony Mendez, the master of disguise who ran the CIA’s Graphics and Identity Transformation Group in the 1970s. She became proficient in the use of sophisticated bugs, tiny cameras, covert communications systems, fake passports and undetectable disguises. She learned the mask-making techniques taught by a CIA contractor — the Hollywood makeup artist who had won an honorary Oscar for “Planet of the Apes.” She underwent training in enduring enemy detention, locked in a small cell, deprived of sleep and food — a template for the CIA’s interrogation of prisoners in black sites after 9/11.

She took assignments all over the world, especially the Indian subcontinent. Working in Pakistan, the hub of the CIA’s gunrunning mission sending hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons a year to the Afghan guerrillas fighting the Soviet army during the 1980s, she plotted to smuggle a Soviet defector into safe passage. In one scene, she recalls being crushed in a teeming security line at the Kolkata airport and yelling at a tiny woman in a white sari to quit shoving, only to realize she had accosted Mother Teresa. After describing a trip to Hong Kong to buy a suitcase’s worth of wigs and tinted eyeglasses, she depicts herself relaxing with an ice-cold martini and a Marlboro in the Intercontinental Hotel lobby bar, overlooking Victoria Harbor at sunset. For a moment, she is Bond — Jane Bond.

Things become really interesting for her, personally and professionally, after she becomes the Disguise Branch liaison to the spies trying to operate in Russia, China, East Germany and Cuba — “denied areas,” where CIA officers are under round-the-clock surveillance as they try to conduct espionage. Her work puts her on a fast track for promotion. Along with her, women at CIA headquarters were starting to rise up in rank, to rise in revolt against the men who had held them down. Three decades of subsequent lawsuits and public shaming have cracked the glass ceiling today, and controlled but not conquered a CIA culture once more sexist than the Marines.

In Tony Mendez, she had found a boss who treated her as an equal. After he retired, she became chief of disguise. She made masks that could change the wearer’s race and gender, a nice trick, and a necessity in a clandestine service made up almost exclusively of White men working abroad in lands where they were a minority. As a proof of concept, she went to the Oval Office with the CIA director, having disguised herself as a Black man. President George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director himself, was suitably impressed at the reveal. As her fame within the CIA increased, her marriage, gone stale years before, officially died. She and Tony, a widower, declared their love for each other. Kismet! Nineteen years to the day after they met at a CIA Christmas party somewhere in the Far East at the height of the Vietnam War, they spent Christmas Eve 1990 at the Brandenburg Gate, where the Berlin Wall had just fallen. They married at the close of the Cold War. Shortly thereafter, at 47, she was pregnant with her first child. A new life beckoned. She retired.

Six years later, she and Tony dropped their masks when a reporter from the New York Times came to interview him about his life and career. (Full disclosure: That was me. I am also very briefly quoted in the book on the subject of sexism at the CIA.) The newspaper story revealed that he had helped create a long-secret operation code-named ARGO — the elaborate escape plan, the false identities and the brilliant disguises that got six Americans out of revolutionary Tehran while others were held hostage in 1980. Jonna and Tony started writing their own story. George Clooney’s production company on line one, Brad Pitt’s on line two. Ben Affleck stepped in. He played Tony, Jonna and Tony went to the Oscars, “Argo” won best picture. Nowhere in fiction does a CIA story have a Hollywood ending like that.

When Jonna Mendez first joined the CIA six decades ago, and for years thereafter, “obfuscation and deception” ruled her life. “Even my best friends and family didn’t know what I did or who I worked for. … No one really knew who I was anymore.” One of the virtues of “In True Face” is that this no longer is true.

Tim Weiner has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for reporting and writing about intelligence. His new book, “The Mission: The CIA at War in the 21st Century,” will be published next year.

In True Face

A Woman’s Life in the CIA, Unmasked

By Jonna Mendez, with Wyndham Wood

PublicAffairs. 306 pp. $3

The Washington Post · by Tim Weiner · March 13, 2024

9. ‘Jamming’: How Electronic Warfare Is Reshaping Ukraine’s Battlefields

‘Jamming’: How Electronic Warfare Is Reshaping Ukraine’s Battlefields

Drones have become a critical weapon for both sides, but a lack of coordination among troops has put Ukraine at a disadvantage.

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Yurii Shyvala

Reporting from Ukraine’s eastern front

March 12, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/world/europe/ukraine-drone-russia-jamming.html?

Wearing immersive goggles, a soldier who goes by the call sign DJ, flew a First Person View drone from an underground bunker in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Yurii Shyvala

Reporting from Ukraine’s eastern front

March 12, 2024

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The Ukrainian soldier swore and tore off his headset. His video monitor had gone blurry at first, the landscape of shattered trees and shell craters barely visible, before blacking out completely. The Russians had jammed the signal of his drone as it was flying outside the town of Kreminna in eastern Ukraine.

“Some days everything goes smoothly, other days the equipment breaks, the drones are fragile and there is jamming,” said the soldier, who goes by the call sign DJ and was speaking from his underground outpost a few miles from the front line.

For a while, the Ukrainians enjoyed a honeymoon period with their self-detonating drones that were used like homemade missiles. The weapons seemed like an effective alternative to artillery shells for striking Russian forces.

Now, the bad days are starting to outweigh the good ones: electronic countermeasures have become one of the Russian military’s most formidable weapons after years of honing their capabilities.

Electronic warfare remains a hidden hand in much of the war, and like Ukraine’s disadvantage in troop numbers and ammunition supplies, Ukraine suffers in this area as well in comparison to Russia. Russia has more jamming equipment capable of overpowering Ukrainian signals by broadcasting on the same frequencies at higher power. It also exhibits better coordination among their units.

Image

Members of a drone unit assembled the aircraft and armed them with rockets inside a destroyed house on the frontline.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

With western military aid looking far from certain and artillery ammunition running low, the pressure on Ukraine’s unmanned air capacity has only grown, leaving Kyiv’s forces in an increasingly perilous position.

Interviews with Ukrainian soldiers, commanders and military analysts say that Russia’s jamming capabilities are straining Ukraine’s limited supplies of off-the-shelf drones and threatening to sideline a key component of Ukraine’s arsenal as the Kremlin mass produces its own fleet of drones.

Ukrainian troops describe a back and forth dance where one side makes technological changes — such as using different frequencies or jamming devices for drones — then the other side catches up in a matter of weeks or months, undercutting any short-lived advantage.

“There is a constant arms race,” said Babay, a sergeant in charge of a drone platoon on Ukraine’s eastern front, who, like DJ and others interviewed for this article, went by his call sign, as is military protocol. “We are improving our technology to counter these new realities on the battlefield, and in a while, the Russians will again have to invent something new to be able to defend themselves against our attacks.”

Small, cheap drones have been a staple of the conflict in Ukraine since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists attacked in the country’s east. But in 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the use of the unmanned vehicles over the battlefield ballooned.

In 2023, Ukraine gained the upper hand in the drone war by deploying the compact racing drones known as FPVs, for First Person Views, in large quantities.

Image

Ukrainian soldiers from the 21st Brigade building drones at a small kitchen workshop in Ukraine’s Kreminna region.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

“FPVs play a critical role for us, as these toys are essentially mobile artillery that compensate for the lack of artillery ammunition,” said Dyadya, a drone operator with the 63rd Mechanized Brigade. “We work at the same distance as a mortar, but our accuracy is much higher.”

Artillery’s strength often comes from its imprecision. By blanketing wide areas with high explosives and fragmentation, it can quickly disrupt battlefield operations by maiming troops and destroying vehicles. It’s a tactic that is near impossible to replicate with one or two drones.

As Ukraine’s artillery ammunition dwindled last fall and into the winter, the FPVs, used as guided projectiles, were effective in suppressing and harassing Russian trenches and vehicles. Precious artillery ammo was reserved to push back Russian ground attacks.

But the Russian military has since improved its jamming capabilities and also uses poor weather to its advantage, advancing in fog and rain when drones have difficulty flying.

“Both sides have quickly picked up on their adversary’s key FPV developments and tactics,” said Samuel Bendett, an expert on Russian military drones at the Center for Naval Analyses, a research organization based in Virginia. “And now these technologies are maturing very rapidly for both sides.”

Earlier this month, DJ’s small team, part of a national guard unit known as the Bureviy Brigade, set up their drone outpost among the ruins of a farmhouse near the frontline outside of Kreminna. They deployed the essentials needed to broadcast video and relay commands from the pilot to the cheap Chinese made FPV quadcopter: antennas, frequency relays, Starlink satellite internet and a laptop computer.

Image

DJ, left, and a soldier named Tomas set up their drone outpost among the ruins of a farmhouse outside of Kreminna.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

On the first two missions, DJ’s monitor showed the Ukrainian steppe below as his drone catapulted through the wilderness at upward of 60 miles per hour, strapped with roughly three pounds of high explosives and aimed at destroying Russian vehicles. But soon, the signal was lost, jammed by the Russians.

The third mission, targeting a grenade launcher in a Russian trench line, was partially successful: The $500 dollar drone detonated in a tree above the trench, but it had been jammed just a dozen or so yards away before it exploded.

Though potent, the Russian military’s jamming capabilities are deployed unevenly across the more than 600 miles of frontline, and their armored vehicles are often easy targets because they usually don’t have jamming systems installed, Ukrainian soldiers said.

Ukraine’s approach to drones and electronic warfare has been funded and supplied in part by disparate groups outside of the military, including the country’s well-known IT sector. Each drone unit on the battlefield serves as a sort of test lab for new technologies, procurement and combat missions.

Russia’s approach has been far more top down, with heavy military oversight. This has made the country’s drone fleet more predictable, with less variation in tactics and type. But it has also allowed the Russian military to jam Ukrainian drones on the battlefield without having to jam their own, by coordinating between flight paths and the jammers.

“There is nothing like that on the Ukrainian side,” said one drone operator flying for Ukraine.

Image

As Ukraine’s artillery ammunition dwindled, drones were effective in suppressing and harassing Russian trenches and vehicles.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

The lack of a broader command structure capable of coordinating drone units across the frontline often translates to confusion among Ukrainian troops. Drone operators can sometimes lose connection with their craft and end up looking through the camera of another drone.

FPV drones fly on an analog frequency, and since many are store bought, they come out of the box set to the same frequency. Ukrainian drone units often need soldiers who are skilled in coding to change the frequency on a drone’s software.

Dev, a Ukrainian drone technician, rated this issue second in significance to Russian jamming capabilities.

“There are many FPV groups operating at the front. The front is saturated with FPV groups, and there are no more frequency channels,” he said.

Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky established the Unmanned Systems Forces, a new part of the armed forces that, among other things, should improve the interaction of FPV units with one another.

Image

A Ukrainian soldier from the 63rd Brigade flies a drone with an attached blue battery pack and dummy bomb at a testing site.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

But Russia’s ability to mass produce its drones on an industrial scale is also a pressing problem. Ukrainian troops said they are often forced to scrounge for their drones, despite pledges from the government to produce thousands of them.

Chef, a drone company commander in Ukraine’s east, said his unit flies about 20-30 FPV missions a day, depending on their supply of the drones, which comes almost entirely from volunteer donations. The government has barely supplied his unit, he said. Last July, they received a handful of them, and then again in December.

“We launch as many as we produce,” he said. But “you can’t just use FPVs to win this war.”

Dzvinka Pinchuk contributed reporting.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Ukraine correspondent and a former Marine infantryman. More about Thomas Gibbons-Neff

A version of this article appears in print on March 13, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Russians Seize Advantage in Electronic Warfare. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

10. Western special operations activity is on the rise around a new US partner in a strategic but unstable area of the Mediterranean

Is Cyprus an important geostrategic location?

It is probably useful as an ISB (intermediate staging base).

Western special operations activity is on the rise around a new US partner in a strategic but unstable area of the Mediterranean

Business Insider · by Constantine Atlamazoglou

Military & Defense

Constantine Atlamazoglou

2024-03-15T10:45:01Z

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East Coast-based U.S. Naval Special Warfare Operators (SEALs) and Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen (SWCC) conduct maritime training with Cypriot Underwater Demolition Command (MYK) forces near Limassol, Cyprus on Jan. 25, 2024.US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Bill Carlisle

Cyprus lately has become something of a hub for Western special operations forces.
US Navy SEALs and Cypriot naval commandos recently completed a series of exercises off of Cyprus.
Other Western special ops units have deployed to the area in response to the Israel-Hamas war.

A former Russian partner who has drawn closer to the US in recent years has lately become something of a hub for Western special operations activity.

Earlier this year, US Navy SEALs and Special-Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen completed a three-week-long series of exercises with Cypriot naval commandos off of Cyprus.

The exercises between the US and its eastern Mediterranean partner come as the war in Gaza and Houthi attacks on shipping along the nearby Red Sea continue.

This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.

The exercises send a "clear message to our adversaries," Capt. Bill Gallagher, the SEAL commander on-site said. "Through joint endeavors, we fortify our capabilities and make clear that any aggression will be met with a swift, unyielding response."

The operators trained in Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure and other missions. VBSS training simulates boarding and searching a vessel for illegal cargo and potentially seizing it.

Americans aren't the only ones who have deployed to the island recently.

As a result of the war in Gaza, special operation units from Germany and the Netherlands also pre-deployed to Cyprus in case they needed to evacuate civilians or rescue hostages.

Furthermore, according to Israeli media, the US deployed 20 heavy cargo planes, carrying arms and troops, to the sovereign UK base of Akrotiri on Cyprus soon after the war started. The base was also used by the UK and the US to launch strikes against Houthi militias in Yemen.

East Coast-based U.S. Naval Special Warfare Operators (SEALs) and Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen (SWCC) conduct over the beach training with Cypriot Underwater Demolition Command (MYK) forces near Limassol, Cyprus on Feb. 1, 2024.US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Bill Carlisle

A strategic island

Often described as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier," Cyprus is strategically located in the eastern Mediterranean and provides access to the Levant, North Africa, and Asia Minor.

The country's proximity to Israel, Gaza, and the Red Sea is important for special operations training.

"There is no substitute for pre-deploying and training for potential operations within the theater in which they'll occur, or as close to it as possible," Jeff Butler, a former Navy SEAL officer told Business Insider.

A new US partner

Cyprus was formerly close to Russia. It has been a haven for illicit Russian funds, and Russian billionaires used financial institutions there to avoid Western sanctions. It has been estimated that the country was the recipient or intermediary of about 50% of Russian foreign investment in 2019.

In 2015, Nicosia signed a deal with Moscow allowing Russian warships to access its ports for replenishment. Additionally, the Cypriot National Guard uses several Russian arms.

However, the country has significantly strengthened its relations with the US recently and turned its back on Russia.

In 2019, Congress voted to increase energy cooperation with Cyprus, Israel, and Greece, and in 2020, the US partially lifted the arms embargo it had imposed on Cyprus since 1987 that had meant to limit the amount of arms on the de facto divided island.

Following Turkey's 1974 invasion, the island has been ethnically divided between its majority Greek-Cypriot and minority Turkish-Cypriot populations. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey, de facto controls the island's northern third, while the internationally recognized government in Nicosia controls about two-thirds of the island in the south.

Starting in recent years, US special operation units started training with their Cypriot counterparts, and US warships have started visiting the island.

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Cyprus barred Russian warships from its ports and scrapped the 2015 agreement, something the US had demanded.

In 2022, the US fully lifted its arms embargo, and the next year, the Cypriot National Guard partnered with the New Jersey National Guard to promote security ties.

Simultaneously, the amount of Russian capital on the island has been falling.

Although the lifting of the embargo is evaluated annually and is provisional on Cyprus continuing to deny access to Russian warships and tackling illicit finance, the military relationship between the US and Cyprus appears stronger than ever.

"The interoperability and camaraderie displayed here transcend conventional military cooperation. These face-to-face iterations of training not only bolster our combat capabilities but ensures the US and Cypriot relationship remains steadfast," Gallagher, the Navy SEAL captain, said.

Israel Gaza Russia

Business Insider · by Constantine Atlamazoglou

11. President Biden, You Have Leverage That Can Save Lives in Gaza. Please Use It.

Excerpts:

Because Biden couldn’t persuade Israel to ease up on this nonsense and allow in enough aid to avert starvation, he moved to airdrops and a sea corridor — better than nothing and also woefully inadequate. Cindy McCain, head of the United Nations World Food Program, warns that road access to Gaza is essential, and that “if we do not exponentially increase the size of aid going into the northern areas, famine is imminent.”

Diplomacy is about arm-twisting as much as persuasion, but Biden seems unwilling to act in ways that give force to his words. Simply put, Netanyahu ignores the White House because there is no cost to doing so.

That’s not entirely new. “Our American friends offer us money, arms and advice,” the Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan told a visiting American Zionist leader in 1967. “We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.”

....

The truth is that we don’t know how much leverage Biden has because he hasn’t truly tested his power. When Biden seemed to suggest this month that invading Rafah would cross a red line and might have repercussions, the White House immediately walked his statement back.

Perhaps Biden believes he is projecting friendship and loyalty to a beleaguered ally. To Netanyahu and most of the world, it looks like weakness.

Meanwhile, Gazans starve unnecessarily, and this may become part of Biden’s legacy.

OPINION

NICHOLAS KRISTOF

President Biden, You Have Leverage That Can Save Lives in Gaza. Please Use It.

March 16, 2024, 7:00 a.m. ET https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/16/opinion/biden-israel-gaza.html

Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times

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By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

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President Biden is sounding tougher toward Israel these days and showing more compassion for people starving in Gaza. “There are a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying,” Biden said. “And it’s got to stop.”

But it’s not going to stop on its own — indeed, it may get worse if Israel invades Rafah, or if hunger tips into famine. And Biden’s concern for Palestinians rings hollow to me because he has been unwilling to lean hard on Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make it stop.

So we’re now in a bizarre situation: American bombs and American aid are both falling from Gaza’s skies.

In 1948, the United States and its allies undertook the famous Berlin Airlift to rescue West Berlin from a Soviet blockade. Now we are engaged in another humanitarian airlift — this time because of the actions not of an enemy but of our partner. Israel is insisting on painstaking inspections of every aid truck going into Gaza. A senior administration official told me that Israel was turning back entire truckloads if they contained emergency birthing kits, apparently because these include a small scalpel for cutting umbilical cords. UNICEF tells me that Israel is refusing to allow it to bring in portable toilets. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley visited the Gaza border and found that Israel has blocked water purifiers. A British member of Parliament said that Israel had blocked 2,560 solar lights.

Because Biden couldn’t persuade Israel to ease up on this nonsense and allow in enough aid to avert starvation, he moved to airdrops and a sea corridor — better than nothing and also woefully inadequate. Cindy McCain, head of the United Nations World Food Program, warns that road access to Gaza is essential, and that “if we do not exponentially increase the size of aid going into the northern areas, famine is imminent.”

Diplomacy is about arm-twisting as much as persuasion, but Biden seems unwilling to act in ways that give force to his words. Simply put, Netanyahu ignores the White House because there is no cost to doing so.

That’s not entirely new. “Our American friends offer us money, arms and advice,” the Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan told a visiting American Zionist leader in 1967. “We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.”

Avi Shlaim, the historian, recounts that the visitor asked what would happen if America said that Israel would get aid only if it took the advice. Dayan replied: “Then we would have to take the advice, too.”

Under tough-minded presidents, that has occasionally happened. My first visit to the Middle East involved backpacking through a battered Lebanon after the 1982 Israeli invasion, which left many Palestinians dead but hasn’t improved Israel’s security. I didn’t know that behind the scenes President Ronald Reagan called up Prime Minister Menachem Begin after one particularly horrific artillery barrage and, instead of pleading for a halt, commanded it.

“I was angry,” Reagan wrote in his diary, as The New York Review of Books noted. “I told him it had to stop or our entire future relationship was endangered. I used the word holocaust deliberately and said the symbol of his war was becoming a picture of a 7-month-old baby with its arms blown off.”

“Twenty mins. later,” Reagan added, “he called to tell me he’d ordered an end to the barrage and pled for our continued friendship.”

I wish Biden would show similar mettle. He could attach end-use restrictions to shipments of offensive arms, limiting how they can be used (as he does with Ukraine). He could simply adhere, as eight senators have urged, to American law that ends military support to any country when the president finds that it “restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”

Under congressional pressure, Biden last month issued National Security Memorandum 20, which amplifies the law and will require Israel to confirm by late March that it is allowing humanitarian aid delivery; otherwise, it risks its supply of offensive weapons. That is leverage, but only if Biden is willing to use it.

The president can also publicly urge Egypt to let aid trucks now stalled at the border while awaiting Israeli inspections to pass into Gaza even without Israeli approval. (It could do its own inspections if necessary.) Egyptian-Israeli security cooperation is important, but not if it keeps food from Gaza.

The U.S. can also abstain on humanitarian resolutions at the U.N. instead of vetoing them. Biden can bypass Netanyahu and speak directly to Israelis — maybe at the Knesset — and make the case for humanitarian aid, a cease-fire and a path to a two-state solution.

Biden might deny that he actually has much leverage. It’s a fair point: Israelis were shattered by the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack and aren’t in the mood to hear outsiders who are sitting safely in distant lands call for restraint. One depressing poll last month found that 68 percent of Israeli Jews oppose allowing food and medicine into Gaza.

On the other hand, Israel has responded — albeit inadequately so far — to public pressure and criticism. Just in the last few days, officials have signaled that they want to see more humanitarian assistance, with a military spokesman saying it was trying to “flood” Gaza with aid. A convoy of six aid trucks was allowed to enter northern Gaza directly from Israel, which was encouraging.

The truth is that we don’t know how much leverage Biden has because he hasn’t truly tested his power. When Biden seemed to suggest this month that invading Rafah would cross a red line and might have repercussions, the White House immediately walked his statement back.

Perhaps Biden believes he is projecting friendship and loyalty to a beleaguered ally. To Netanyahu and most of the world, it looks like weakness.

Meanwhile, Gazans starve unnecessarily, and this may become part of Biden’s legacy.

To explain how the present policy is failing, I’ll give the last word to the Gaza linguistics scholar Mohammed Alshannat, whose texts I quoted in my column last week. In a new message, Alshannat told how he tried to collect food from an airdrop to avert starvation:

“Me and my wife decided to go to the beach hoping that we get something to feed our children. There were dozens of thousands of people waiting. Around 2:20 three planes started to drop their parachutes across the beach. People started chasing them. We chased one of these parachutes. However, when it was opened, we found water bottles and vinegar bottles. Two children died of stampede. Because we are so malnourished and have not eaten anything, it took us three hours to get back home, as we had to take a rest every 10 minutes. We wept all the way back.”

Ukraine receives much-needed ammo boost

Newsweek · by Aila Slisco · March 15, 2024

An effort to help solve Ukraine's ammunition shortage problem has received a much-needed boost from a European ally.

Portugal's Ministry of National Defense announced on Friday that Lisbon was joining a Czech-led effort to deliver over 800,000 artillery shells to Ukraine as the war-torn country continues its attempt to fend off Russian forces more than two years after being invaded.

Ukraine has suffered a series of recent setbacks on the battlefield due in part to a massive deficit in artillery ammunition when compared to Russia. A European diplomatic official told Newsweek earlier this month that the discrepancy was "the greatest acute danger" Ukraine is facing.

The Portuguese defense ministry said in a statement on Friday that it was "vital and urgent for Ukraine to obtain additional munitions to respond to Russia's continued and more intense attacks," stressing the need for additional 155mm artillery shells in particular.

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, left, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are pictured at a joint press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on August 24, 2023. Portugal announced on Friday that it was contributing about... Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, left, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are pictured at a joint press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on August 24, 2023. Portugal announced on Friday that it was contributing about $109 million to a Czech-led effort to supply Ukraine with over 800,000 much-needed artillery shells. Vitalii Nosach/Global Images Ukraine

Portugal is pledging €100 million, or about $109 million, to the Czech-led ammunition effort, which the ministry said would help defend "the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine."

Newsweek reached out for comment to the Ukrainian military via email on Friday.

The European Union (EU) and its constituent countries have recently been increasing aid to Ukraine while a $60 billion U.S. aid package requested by President Joe Biden remains held up in Congress amid partisan gridlock.

In addition to Portugal, European allies including Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden have contributed funds to the Czech ammunition program. Czech President Petr Pavel said last week that enough funding had been gathered to purchase 300,000 rounds so far.

Earlier this week, Czech national security adviser Tomáš Pojar said that the ammunition would be delivered to Ukraine from "June onwards," according to Euractiv. Deliveries are expected to last for approximately one year.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov recently lamented that half of the military aid promised by Kyiv's Western allies were "not delivered on time," further compounding the nation's battlefield woes.

While the Czech-led program is relying on the purchase of ammunition from outside Europe, EU officials announced an initiative on March 5 to increase the production of weapons in Europe and reduce the continent's reliance upon U.S.-made arms.

The Biden administration has been by far the largest contributor of weapons to Ukraine over the course of the war. Washington has provided more than 2 million rounds of 155 mm artillery shells to Kyiv since the war began on February 24, 2022.

The U.S. Army announced earlier this year that it plans to double monthly production of ammunition by the fall, with the goal of supplying both Ukraine and the American military. The Army hopes to achieve a production rate of 100,000 shells per month by October 2025.

On Tuesday, the Department of Defense announced that it was sending Ukraine a $300 million stop-gap military aid package without the need for congressional approval, using surplus funds taken from defense contracts that came in under budget.

Newsweek · by Aila Slisco · March 15, 2024

13. How to better study—and then improve—today’s corrupted information environment

Conclusion:

Beyond obvious tensions between safety and free speech, there are deep questions about how to construct commons that strike the right balance between allowing democracies to set standards without giving autocracies an excuse to suppress dissent, or that encourage creative activity without helping malign actors to profit from spreading clear misinformation. This is made much more complicated by the furious pace of AI-enabled content generation tools. Unless researchers fix how they study this environment, the scientific community will be increasingly left behind as civil society and governments struggle to realize the potential and minimize the perils from online spaces.

How to better study—and then improve—today’s corrupted information environment

By Sean Norton, Jacob N. Shapiro, March 1, 2024

https://thebulletin-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/thebulletin.org/2024/03/how-to-better-study-and-then-improve-todays-corrupted-information-environment/amp/

Social media has been a connector of people near and far, but it has also fueled political conflict, threatened democratic processes, contributed to the spread of public health misinformation, and likely damaged the mental health of some teenagers. Given what’s come to light about these platforms over the last several years, it is increasingly clear that current guardrails—both government regulations and the companies’ internal policies—aren’t sufficient to address the issues plaguing the information environment. But for democracies and their citizens to thrive, a healthy virtual ecosystem is necessary.

To get there, experts need an international effort to link policymakers to research by gathering, summarizing, and distilling relevant research streams. Two such initiatives, the International Panel on the Information Environment and the proposed International Observatory on Information and Democracy, have begun working towards that goal. Both are inspired by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a multinational organization that elects a scientific bureau to conduct evaluations of climate research and create policy recommendations. Since its founding in 1988, the IPCC has firmly established the anthropogenic origin of climate change and provided policy recommendations that formed the basis of two major international agreements, the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Agreement of 2015. Policymakers and researchers have called for similarly structured efforts to create research-informed, globally coordinated policies on the information environment.

For such efforts to work, though, they have to able to draw on a well-developed research base. The IPCC’s first report, written from 1988 to 1990, capitalized on decades of standardized measurements and research infrastructure, including atmospheric carbon dioxide monitoring, sophisticated measurements from weather balloons and meteorological satellites, and 16 years of satellite imagery of the Earth’s surface.

Experts simply don’t have that kind of depth of evidence on the information environment. There is little consilience in theoretical arguments about how this ecosystem works, and standardized measurements and research tooling are nearly non-existent. For an IPCC-style body on the information environment to reach its full potential, governments and other entities need to make substantial investments in data access, standardized measurements, and research tooling.

To examine what those investments should look like, it’s helpful to outline the current state of research on the information environment and the challenges of performing high-quality science under the current status quo.

The state of the information environment research. Our team conducted a survey of work published from 2017 until 2021 in 10 leading communications, economics, political science, computer science, and sociology journals, plus six major general-interest science research publications. We found that research is concentrated on two major social media platforms: Facebook and Twitter (now X).

Researchers could provide more reliable policy if they were able to characterize the entire information ecosystem. Our sample of relevant academic work, however, found that 49 percent of the papers used Twitter data exclusively, and 59 percent used it in some form, despite its relatively small base of 436 million monthly active users in 2021. Major platforms with large global user bases—including YouTube, WeChat, and Telegram—remain critically understudied. While there were approximately 22.4 and 1.4 published papers per 100 million active users for Twitter and Facebook respectively, YouTube, WeChat, and Telegram attracted far less research despite their substantial userbases. Some 2.3 billion people actively use YouTube each month. And WeChat and Telegram have 1.3 billion and 550 million active monthly users respectively.

Beyond limited platform coverage, existing research is also geographically and linguistically limited. Sixty-five percent of papers analyze only a Western democracy (the United States, EU countries, the United Kingdom, Australia, or New Zealand), more than half of which exclusively study the United States. Additionally, 60 percent of papers analyze only English-language data. This means the most populated regions of the world are the least-studied, indicating a severe need to enable research in and on Latin America, Asia, and Africa. In numerical terms, there were 27.22 papers per 100 million population in our sample focused exclusively on the United States, the European Union, and Oceania (mostly Australia and New Zealand), while the entire rest of the world is represented by only 1.39 papers per 100 million inhabitants.

Making global-scale policy recommendations requires some degree of normal science: settled, foundational results that can shape the focused inquiry and experiments necessary to develop prescriptive remedies to online harms. As an example, researchers have argued that ”pre-bunking” interventions—which range from warnings that a post or link may be misinforming to games designed to teach players how to detect misinformation in the wild—are effective at reducing belief in misinformation. More recent research argues that this effect is driven not by increased ability to identify misinformation, but rather by increased distrust of all information, including facts. In a paper published last year, the authors argue that such conflicting results reflect a larger issue in the information environment literature: a lack of scholarly consensus on how to design, test, and measure theimpact of interventions. This lack of consensus on research design and evaluation is pervasive throughout information environment scholarship, making it difficult to draw the sort of general conclusions from the literature necessary to create high-quality policy recommendations.

Combined, the lack of geographic coverage, limited research on most platforms, and absence of foundational results mean this field is far from being able to provide the kinds of highly reliable, global scale evidence the IPCC relied on for its firstassessment report.

Current research roadblocks. As part of a joint initiative between Princeton University and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, our team interviewed 48 academic and civil society researchers from more than 20 countries to determine what factors slow or reduce the scope of information environment research. (We have since engaged with almost 200 more researchers.) The researchers’ top complaint was a lack of sufficient data access. When they did have access to data, they reported that lack of technically skilled personnel or big-data-capable infrastructure—such as necessary data collection, secure storage, and especially analysis tools—made it difficult to use these data effectively. The conclusion is clear: To maximize the policy benefit of IPCC-like institutions, researchers need to go beyond enabling data access and make major investments into research tooling that helps scientists make use of data and advance the field.

Research runs on data, which has become less available as the information environment field has advanced. Last June, X (formerly Twitter) started charging researchers $42,000 per month for access to its data stream, despite providing less data than a previous free version of this interface. Meta made vast quantities of previously available public data unavailable after the Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 and said it would stop updating its CrowdTangle service, a Meta-provided data tool which provides researchers with access to most public activity on Facebook and a substantial share of Instagram.

Of course, data access is about more than just being able to download the information; it’s also about making it functionally accessible to a broader range of researchers. Right now, large quantities of data are useful to only a small group of well-funded, highly technically skilled researchers. Our interviews revealed that scholars faced a range of issues that limited their ability to actually analyze data, including inability to hire data scientists and engineers, the need to lean heavily on early-career students to solve technical problems (at detriment to those researcher’s own research agendas), and difficulty in implementing the video, image, and network analysis methods required to move beyond text to a fuller picture of social media data.

These barriers are reflected in the research base: Most papers in our sample are small-to-medium scale, text-only analyses that rarely utilize cutting-edge machine learning or statistical methods. And researchers reported that they frequently reduced the scope of, or entirely abandoned, projects due to lack of data access or the inability to create the needed research tools. Of 169 information environment papers from 2017 to 2021 that analyzed user-generated content, 71 percent utilized text data, 13 percent images, 8 percent video, and the remainder URLs or audio. Fifty three percent of all papers used straight forward regression analysis, and 42 percent used only basic descriptive statistics. Only 23 percent of all papers used machine learning methods, and more strikingly, only 19 percent of papers used network analysis, despite the key role networks play in behavior onsocial media.

These barriers also significantly influence who produces research on the information environment. Researchers Darren L. Linvill and Patrick L. Warren found that a handful of well-funded, large non-profit and academic research centers produced the overwhelming majority of public-facing reports on disinformation and influence campaigns through mid 2022. In the peer-reviewed research world, large and well-supported research centers such as NYU’s Center for the Study of Social Media and Politics (CSMaP) and Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe) pursue multiple projects simultaneously, many of which rely on common resources (such as Center for the Study of Social Media and Politics long-standing panel of thousands of American Twitter users). The outsized productivity of research groups that have achieved sufficient scale to hire technically skilled support staff demonstrates the value of investing in shared infrastructure and tooling. But such groups are still few, struggle to raise funds to provide broader public goods, and cannot alone produce research at the rapid pace needed to improve the information environment research base.

Recent developments in data access are promising, most notably the European Union’s Digital Service Act, which will require large social media companies to provide vetted researchers with access to data for studies of systemic risks to the European Union. Under the current status quo, however, data access alone is unlikely to advance research at the scale and speed necessary to maximize the potential of IPCC-like bodies. Most research groups are at capacity with the data they can already access. To accelerate the maturation of the information environment research base requires finding creative ways to help researchers more efficiently turn data into knowledge. Researchers should follow the example of climate science and create common scientific resources and processes, such as baseline datasets and measurements, access via peer review to high-powered data processing facilities (following the time-allocation model of large telescopes and particle accelerators), and infrastructure grants for the development and maintenance of critical computational tools.

Efforts such as the International Panel for the Information Environment and International Observatory on Information andDemocracy should be lauded for their forward-looking vision and goals of translating research to support policies that secure the global information environment. For them to reach their full potential, there’s a need to increase research capacity by building larger research institutions that realize economies of scale in studying the information environment. Managing the information commons is inherently difficult, because so many competing values are in play.

Beyond obvious tensions between safety and free speech, there are deep questions about how to construct commons that strike the right balance between allowing democracies to set standards without giving autocracies an excuse to suppress dissent, or that encourage creative activity without helping malign actors to profit from spreading clear misinformation. This is made much more complicated by the furious pace of AI-enabled content generation tools. Unless researchers fix how they study this environment, the scientific community will be increasingly left behind as civil society and governments struggle to realize the potential and minimize the perils from online spaces.Social media has been a connector of people near and far, but it has also fueled political conflict, threatened democratic processes, contributed to the spread of public health misinformation, and likely damaged the mental health of some teenagers. Given what’s come to light about these platforms over the last several years, it is increasingly clear that current guardrails—both government regulations and the companies’ internal policies—aren’t sufficient to address the issues plaguing the information environment. But for democracies and their citizens to thrive, a healthy virtual ecosystem is necessary.

Efforts such as the International Panel for the Information Environment and International Observatory on Information and Democracy should be lauded for their forward-looking vision and goals of translating research to support policies that secure the global information environment. For them to reach their full potential, there’s a need to increase research capacity by building larger research institutions that realize economies of scale in studying the information environment. Managing the information commons is inherently difficult, because so many competing values are in play.

14. Russians are filling America's news shortage

Excerpts:

"It's easy to create a website that looks legitimate," Poynter said. Stories from Russia's RT news service have been found at sites like Little Rock AR News and Albuquerque Breaking News, both parts of a network of "regional sites, national sites and faux local news sites targeting specific cities in the U.S." Sites like The Disinformation Laundromat can help news consumers distinguish between real information and propaganda. But the problem will probably get worse, said information manipulation expert Peter Benzoni. "I think you're gonna see a huge increase in the types of people using these dissemination networks."

The latest spate of Russia-sponsored local news sites give "the impression of topicality" with regular updates about national news, The New York Times said, but they aren't really trying to fool "discerning" readers. (One site's "about" page is filled with "Lorem ipsum" dummy text.) The idea is to "lend an aura of credibility" to the disinformation, said Darren Linvill of Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub, helping it spread more easily to thousands, "even millions" of readers. It's "cheap, highly targeted and obviously effective."

Russians are filling America's news shortage

The Week · by Joel Mathis, The Week US · March 11, 2024

The rise of Russian news sites runs headlong into the decline of local news sources

(Image credit: Tero Vesalainen / Getty Images)

published 11 March 2024

When is your local newspaper not your local newspaper? When it's actually a Russian disinformation operation. Many "local" sites have popped up in recent weeks — bearing names like the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and the Miami Chronicle — that are "meant to mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda," said The New York Times. The fake news sites are a "technological leap" in the ongoing campaign to "dupe unsuspecting American readers."

It's not just happening in the United States. The Times report came a few weeks after France discovered a "vast network of Russian disinformation sites" operating in Europe, Le Monde said. The network of nearly 200 sites — called "Portal Kombat" by investigators — is "entirely dedicated to republishing and amplifying pro-Russian propaganda." The good news: "The audience for these sites seems very limited."

Back in America, though, the rise of Russian news sites runs headlong into the decline of local news sources. The country lost more than 130 print newspapers in 2023, The Conversation said, and nearly 2,900 newspapers have closed since 2005. That leaves "thousands of communities that simply do not have access to local news." Propaganda sites might be helping fill the vacuum.

'Divide and conquer'

"Chaos and disorder is the goal," Stew Magnuson said at National Defense. Russia appears to be "actively looking for communities where newspapers have disappeared" to fill the void with propaganda campaigns meant to "erode our confidence in democratic institutions." If so, the Russians have picked an easy target. "Newsrooms are being gutted" even in communities where local news organizations continue to operate. That leaves those communities relatively defenseless. "Divide and conquer is the strategy."

Research shows that the "decline of local journalism is associated with the drivers of disinformation," Jon Bateman and Dean Jackson said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. That decline "contributes to civic ignorance and apathy" among voters, while "lower-quality information sources can fill the gap" for people looking for news. That breeds a "susceptibility to disinformation." And that will be a big challenge to change. "Reversing the decline of local journalism is an extremely costly proposition."

Bad actors are taking advantage. "Russia's 2024 election interference has already begun," NBC News said. While there are concerns about "deep fake" videos and audio entering the information ecosystem, the truth is that most of what Russia is doing is amplifying existing divisions — highlighting disagreements about immigration, for example. "They see whatever narrative is rising to the top," said Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, and "they try to push it."

'Faux local news'

"It's easy to create a website that looks legitimate," Poynter said. Stories from Russia's RT news service have been found at sites like Little Rock AR News and Albuquerque Breaking News, both parts of a network of "regional sites, national sites and faux local news sites targeting specific cities in the U.S." Sites like The Disinformation Laundromat can help news consumers distinguish between real information and propaganda. But the problem will probably get worse, said information manipulation expert Peter Benzoni. "I think you're gonna see a huge increase in the types of people using these dissemination networks."

The latest spate of Russia-sponsored local news sites give "the impression of topicality" with regular updates about national news, The New York Times said, but they aren't really trying to fool "discerning" readers. (One site's "about" page is filled with "Lorem ipsum" dummy text.) The idea is to "lend an aura of credibility" to the disinformation, said Darren Linvill of Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub, helping it spread more easily to thousands, "even millions" of readers. It's "cheap, highly targeted and obviously effective."

Joel Mathis, The Week US

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Joel Mathis is a freelance writer who has spent nine years as a syndicated columnist, co-writing the RedBlueAmerica column as the liberal half of a point-counterpoint duo. His work also regularly appears in National Geographic, The Kansas City Star and Heatmap News. His awards include best online commentary at the Online News Association and (twice) at the City and Regional Magazine Association.

15. Opinion: The dangers in leaving TikTok at Beijing’s disposal

Excerpts:

Some headlines claim Congress wants to ban the app, and that’s what TikTok is telling users, mobilizing them to call Washington and pressure their representatives to reject the bill. But the flood of calls only added to the image of TikTok as an entity that can be used to manipulate Americans.

The number of Americans who get their news from TikTok is skyrocketing, according to the Pew Research Center. From 2020 to 2023, it quadrupled to 14%. And almost a third of adults under 30 say they regularly get their news from the app.

At a time like this, with Americans more deeply divided than ever, tensions running high with a pivotal election approaching and after the experience of 2020 and especially 2016, when Russia used social media to turn Americans against each other, leaving TikTok at Beijing’s disposal would amount to governmental dereliction of duty.

Under a 2017 Chinese intelligence law, Chinese authorities have full power to seize any information from Chinese companies and use those firms for their own purposes. TikTok CEO Shou Chew insists the company is independent of the government, claiming Beijing has never asked for US user data and maintaining that it wouldn’t comply if asked. Real life suggests otherwise.

The repressive Chinese government has made it almost routine to make powerful business leaders “disappear” if they offer even mild complaints about government policy. Some of them reappear after long periods, chastened and determined to toe the line. The cases of Chinese tycoons Jack Ma — who disappeared for months — and Xiao Jianhua, who was sent to prison following his reappearance after vanishing, shocked the global business community.

That’s just one reason why it’s laughable to hear China’s foreign ministry claim that the TikTok bill would disrupt market operations and undermine investor confidence.

Opinion: The dangers in leaving TikTok at Beijing’s disposal | CNN

CNN · March 14, 2024

What would be the impact of a TikTok ban?

02:48 - Source: CNN

Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN —

For many of the 170 million TikTok users in the United States, Wednesday’s vote in the House of Representatives to effectively ban the social media platform is worrisome. But the overwhelming — bipartisan even — decision to push forward a bill aimed at forcing ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to sell the social media app, shows how deep concerns run. The fact that it happened despite opposition from former President Donald Trump makes the moment even more remarkable.

Frida Ghitis

CNN

The House bill would give ByteDance five months to divest, or it would ban app stores from offering it in the country. It’s unclear if the Senate will take up the bill, but it already tried a similar one last year, and Senators from both parties were impressed with the extent of bipartisanship in the House vote.

National security officials say TikTok could become a threat. But a look at TikTok’s feeds strongly suggests it already is far from a neutral player, aggravating divisions in the US and apparently trying to conceal posts on topics about which the Chinese government prefers silence. (A practice TikTok has denied).

Congress is right in wanting to curtail China’s ability to use TikTok to scoop up Americans’ private information and, more importantly, to influence views and opinions in a country that it views as its primary geopolitical rival.

Some headlines claim Congress wants to ban the app, and that’s what TikTok is telling users, mobilizing them to call Washington and pressure their representatives to reject the bill. But the flood of calls only added to the image of TikTok as an entity that can be used to manipulate Americans.

The number of Americans who get their news from TikTok is skyrocketing, according to the Pew Research Center. From 2020 to 2023, it quadrupled to 14%. And almost a third of adults under 30 say they regularly get their news from the app.

At a time like this, with Americans more deeply divided than ever, tensions running high with a pivotal election approaching and after the experience of 2020 and especially 2016, when Russia used social media to turn Americans against each other, leaving TikTok at Beijing’s disposal would amount to governmental dereliction of duty.

Under a 2017 Chinese intelligence law, Chinese authorities have full power to seize any information from Chinese companies and use those firms for their own purposes. TikTok CEO Shou Chew insists the company is independent of the government, claiming Beijing has never asked for US user data and maintaining that it wouldn’t comply if asked. Real life suggests otherwise.

Steven Mnuchin, former Treasury secretary, during a session at the Qatar Economic Forum in May 2023.

Christopher Pike/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The repressive Chinese government has made it almost routine to make powerful business leaders “disappear” if they offer even mild complaints about government policy. Some of them reappear after long periods, chastened and determined to toe the line. The cases of Chinese tycoons Jack Ma — who disappeared for months — and Xiao Jianhua, who was sent to prison following his reappearance after vanishing, shocked the global business community.

That’s just one reason why it’s laughable to hear China’s foreign ministry claim that the TikTok bill would disrupt market operations and undermine investor confidence.

Most of the world’s most popular social media apps, incidentally, are banned in China unless they — or their user data — are locally based and thus easily overseen by the government. There’s no Facebook in China, no Instagram, WhatsApp or X.

Trying to save itself, TikTok has moved American users’ data to Oracle-controlled servers. But the all-powerful algorithm remains out of reach.

On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said before Congress that the US “cannot rule out” the possibility that Beijing will use TikTok to influence the 2024 election. The US Annual Threat Assessment warned that in 2022 the Chinese government used TikTok accounts to target candidates of both parties. China denies it all and a US intelligence official told CNN there’s no evidence they’re doing it now, but it’s naive to think the manipulation is not already underway.

In recent months, TikTok has already added to political tensions in the US. A Wall Street Journal analysis found TikTok served a steady diet of the most extreme views on both sides of the Israel-Hamas war, stoking fear and anger, with posts such as one claiming that the US “has decided to exterminate all Arab countries.”

On the US economy, videos falsely claiming that the US — which is enjoying historical low unemployment — is experiencing a “Silent Depression” gained traction on TikTok. Analysts at Rutgers University found that TikTok appears to thwart videos about Tibet, the Uyghurs, the Hong Kong protests and the Tiananmen Square massacre, all topics that reveal the intensity of China’s repression.

In response to the analyses, TikTok quietly disabled the tool used to measure trends on the app.

Wednesday’s vote was a rare show of unity in a divided Washington. The bill passed by a wide margin – 352 to 65.

Frida Ghitis

Wednesday’s vote was a rare show of unity in a divided Washington. The bill passed by a wide margin — 352 to 65.

But perhaps more remarkable was the rebuke of former President Trump by his own party. Only 15 of 219 Republicansin Congress rejected the bill, which Trump opposed.

Trump’s position now is a neck-wrenching reversal. “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States!” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One in July 2020. At the time, he was battling China not only on trade issues but on Covid, seeking to put the spotlight on the country in connection with the pandemic.

Concerns about TikTok’s ability to sweep up data from millions of Americans were already high on the national security agenda. Trump was so adamant against the app that he even opposed a potential deal for Microsoft to buy TikTok.

But now, Trump has reversed course and he opposes the bill. He claims it would only help Facebook, which he has labeled an “enemy of the people,” a favorite phrase he’s borrowed from the Stalinist purges in the USSR.

It’s impossible to know with full certainty what motivates Trump’s shift. But it’s worth asking if it has something to do with Republican billionaire Jeff Yass, a mega-donor who owns a slice of ByteDance and has hired former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway to lobby against the bill. She has had multiple meetings with legislators and has spoken with Trump about protecting TikTok, according to the Washington Post.

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Could Trump also be influenced by a propaganda film produced by the far-right group Citizens United, which blamed Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg for his election loss in 2020?

Defying Trump is a notable move for today’s congressional Republicans. It shows that concerns about TikTok have reached a critical mass. It’s unclear how far this legislation will go and at what speed.

What is beyond doubt is that social media has become such a powerful force that curtailing TikTok’s ability to harm the country should be only the first step, even if it makes users uneasy.

The government needs to develop oversight rules for all social media. Leaving the companies to police themselves is only worsening the country’s ills.

CNN · March 14, 2024

16. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, March 15, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/china-taiwan-weekly-update-march-15-2024

Key Takeaways

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense announced that it redefined its criteria for a “first strike” against PRC military assets, which now include a “first move” by PLA aircraft and vessels across Taiwan’s territorial boundaries.
A PRC Taiwan Affairs official participated in the negotiations on Kinmen, which is inconsistent with the CCP policy of not holding official exchanges with Taiwan’s DPP government.
Taiwan’s Kuomintang is implementing party reforms to restrain the influence of a hardline faction and better appeal to young voters in future elections.
The PRC’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesperson Chen Binhua stated that “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan remains the PRC’s policy despite the omission of the term “peaceful” from the Two Sessions government work report.
The PRC, Russia, and Iran held the joint Maritime Security Belt – 2024 naval exercise in the Gulf of Oman from March 11 to 15.
The People’s Liberation Army increased the number of military aircraft flights through the Miyako Strait in March, likely as part of an effort to normalize flights outside of the first island chain.
The PRC portrayed the Philippines as a provocateur rather than a partner for managing disputes in the South China Sea while the Chinese Coast Guard drives heightened tensions in the South China Sea.
The PRC defined its coastal baseline that extends its territorial waters and claims of sovereignty in the Gulf of Tonkin. The baseline is not in line with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas, to which the PRC is a signatory.

CHINA-TAIWAN WEEKLY UPDATE, MARCH 15, 2024

Mar 15, 2024 - ISW Press

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, March 15, 2024

Authors: Nils Peterson, Matthew Sperzel, and Daniel Shats of the Institute for the Study of War

Editors: Dan Blumenthal and Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute

Data Cutoff: March 14 at 5 pm ET

The China–Taiwan Weekly Update focuses on the Chinese Communist Party’s paths to controlling Taiwan and cross–Taiwan Strait developments.

Key Takeaways

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense announced that it redefined its criteria for a “first strike” against PRC military assets, which now include a “first move” by PLA aircraft and vessels across Taiwan’s territorial boundaries.
A PRC Taiwan Affairs official participated in the negotiations on Kinmen, which is inconsistent with the CCP policy of not holding official exchanges with Taiwan’s DPP government.
Taiwan’s Kuomintang is implementing party reforms to restrain the influence of a hardline faction and better appeal to young voters in future elections.
The PRC’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesperson Chen Binhua stated that “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan remains the PRC’s policy despite the omission of the term “peaceful” from the Two Sessions government work report.
The PRC, Russia, and Iran held the joint Maritime Security Belt – 2024 naval exercise in the Gulf of Oman from March 11 to 15.
The People’s Liberation Army increased the number of military aircraft flights through the Miyako Strait in March, likely as part of an effort to normalize flights outside of the first island chain.
The PRC portrayed the Philippines as a provocateur rather than a partner for managing disputes in the South China Sea while the Chinese Coast Guard drives heightened tensions in the South China Sea.
The PRC defined its coastal baseline that extends its territorial waters and claims of sovereignty in the Gulf of Tonkin. The baseline is not in line with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas, to which the PRC is a signatory.

Cross-Strait Relations

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) announced that it redefined its criteria for a “first strike” against PRC military assets, which now include a “first move” by PLA aircraft and vessels across Taiwan’s territorial boundaries. ROC Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng told Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan that Taiwan reserves the right to take military countermeasures if enemy military planes or ships enter Taiwan’s territorial waters or airspace and Taiwan fails to expel them by interception, identification, and warning. He did not clarify if the “first strike” concept applies to Taiwan’s outlying islands. Chiu said that the MND adopted the concept of a “first move” in February 2021. It further developed the concept after the large-scale PLA air and naval exercises around Taiwan in August 2022, which the PRC launched in response to then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Chiu said the MND’s definition of an enemy “first strike” before the policy change specifically referred to enemy artillery or missile fire at Taiwan. The reason for changing the definition was to counter the PRC’s “gray zone” operations around Taiwan.[1] The CCP has not publicly commented on the policy change as of March 13.

Chiu also described the security situation in the Taiwan Strait to legislators and explained that it is “on the brink” of escalating to a heightened threat alert level. He referenced recent events that have contributed to escalating tensions, including the PRC’s explicit denial of the median line in the Taiwan Strait and the death of two PRC fishermen near Kinmen, whose boat capsized while they fled from Taiwan’s Coast Guard. Chiu also said that the PRC has increased the frequency of its air and naval missions near Taiwan and that these missions take place closer to Taiwan than before. He said he did not expect war to break out, however.[2]

The PRC is conducting dredging operations in the Liuwudian Channel near Taiwan’s Kinmen island group, possibly to facilitate the passage of PRC vessels. The Liuwudian Channel is located between Lieyu Island (known as Little Kinmen) and the islands of Dadan and Erdan, which are part of Taiwan’s Kinmen Island group. The ROC agreed in 2015 to let PRC ships pass through the Liuwudian Channel between Xiamen port on the PRC mainland and the sea even though the channel passes through Kinmen’s restricted and prohibited waters. The PRC did not make use of the channel after Tsai Ing-wen was elected president of Taiwan in 2016, however. Deputy Minister of Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council Chou Mei-wu said that the dredging activities were routine operations on the PRC side of the Liuwudian channel, but that the dredgers sailed through restricted and prohibited waters around Kinmen.[3]

Retired ROC General Lee Cheng-chieh said the dredging of the channel means the PRC plans to use the waterway in the future. He said the PRC could use ships in the Liuwudian channel in the future to block military supply shipments to Taiwanese garrisons on Dadan and Erdan.[4] Lee is a frequent commentator on foreign and military affairs whose opinions are often covered by KMT-aligned media and PRC media.[5] ROC Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said dredging vessels operating in Kinmen’s restricted waters do not constitute a “first strike” under the MND policy which authorizes Taiwan to respond with military force to enemy military incursions into its territory.[6]

Dredging sand in Taiwan-controlled waters is one of a growing range of “gray zone” tactics the PRC uses to harass Taiwan, assert its territorial claims, and strain Taiwan’s resources and response capability.[7]

Thousands of PRC dredgers have illegally operated in and around Taiwan’s restricted waters, including around the Kinmen and Matsu islands, for at least a decade. The dredgers usually extract sand and gravel from the seabed for use in construction projects.[8] Taiwan’s CGA interpreted illegal dredging to be non-political profit-seeking behavior in 2020 and agreed to cooperate with the PRC to crack down on the activity.[9] Taiwanese media and scholars were openly describing dredging activities near Taiwanese territory as “gray zone warfare tactics,” as of late 2023, however. Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passed a law to allow Taiwan to confiscate any vessels caught illegally dredging sand in its waters.[10]

ROC National Security Bureau Director Tsai Ming-yen said the PRC’s "joint combat readiness patrols" around Taiwan are related to Taiwan’s exchanges with foreign countries. Tsai said the PRC patrols occur every 7–10 days on average and involve around 10 military aircraft and 3 to 4 naval ships. Tsai said that whenever other countries pass resolutions friendly to Taiwan, foreign vessels pass through the Taiwan Strait, or foreign dignitaries visit Taiwan, the PRC coordinates its existing regular patrols to coincide with these diplomatic events.

Tsai further said the PRC is likely to intensify its “push and pull” tactics against Taiwan before and after President-elect Lai Ching-te’s May 20 inauguration, including military and political intimidation combined with economic incentives for Taiwanese people to further the cause of “reunification.”[11] Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said in a report to the Legislative Yuan that the PRC has stepped up “multi-front saturated gray-zone tactics” around Taiwan, including balloons, drones, and civilian vessels, along with increased patrols of military ships and planes. The MND report said the PRC aimed to "increase burdens of [Taiwan’s] naval and air forces and to obscure the existence of the median line in the strait.[12] ISW has reported that some of “gray zone” tactics increased during Taiwan’s 2023-2024 election season in tandem with influence operations over local Taiwanese officials and businesspeople, as well as the PRC’s ongoing push for economic “cross-strait integration.”

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) denied media reports that ROC-PRC negotiations on the “Kinmen incident” broke down and said they would resume after Kinmen prosecutors finish investigating the incident. The Kinmen incident refers to the February 14 event in which a PRC fishing boat in Taiwan’s prohibited waters near Taiwan’s Kinmen Island, which is roughly 10 kilometers from the PRC city of Xiamen, capsized while fleeing from a legal Taiwanese Coast Guard pursuit. The capsizing resulted in the deaths of two of the four fishermen onboard. PRC and ROC representatives have held 15 rounds of negotiations on Kinmen to resolve disputes around the incident, including PRC demands that Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration (CGA) apologize, reveal the truth of what happened, and return the capsized boat. Taiwanese media reported that the negotiations collapsed on March 6 because the two sides failed to reach a consensus and went home. The CGA claimed the negotiations broke down because the PRC demanded to interrogate CGA personnel and did not recognize Taiwan’s maritime boundaries or law enforcement rights.[13] The MAC denied that negotiations had “broken down,” however, and merely said the first phase of negotiations had ended. MAC officials said negotiations would resume after Taiwan’s judicial investigation into the incident concludes.[14] [15]

A PRC Taiwan Affairs official participated in the negotiations on Kinmen, which is inconsistent with the CCP policy of not holding official exchanges with Taiwan’s DPP government. Quanzhou Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) deputy director Li Zhaohui was one of three leaders of a PRC delegation to negotiate with Taiwanese authorities about the February 14 capsizing incident.[16] The other two were Jinjiang Red Cross chairman Cao Rongshan and Director of the Coordination Department of the China Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) Xu Weiwei.[17] Quanzhou and Jinjiang are PRC cities near the Kinmen islands. Although Li is a TAO official, PRC state media CGTN, Enlightenment Daily, and other PRC media described him as an associate or advisor to the Red Cross in articles about the negotiations.[18] The ROC side of the negotiations was led by CGA officials including Deputy Director-General Hsu Ching-chih and Fleet Branch Director Liao Te-cheng.[19]

The presence of a PRC government official at the negotiations is inconsistent with the CCP policy of not directly interacting with the Taiwanese government. This has been the CCP’s policy since Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party became president of Taiwan in 2016. The CCP insists that all cross-strait negotiations must be held on the mutual basis of the “1992 consensus,” which Tsai and the DPP do not recognize. The 1992 Consensus is an alleged verbal agreement between semi-official representatives of the PRC and the then KMT-ruled ROC following negotiations in 1992. It states that both sides agree there is only one China and that Taiwan is part of China. The CCP interprets this “one China” to be the People’s Republic of China, however, while the KMT interprets it to be the Republic of China.

Li’s involvement in the negotiations also undermines the CCP's effort to legitimize the KMT as a negotiating partner on behalf of Taiwan in contrast with the DPP. KMT vice chairman Andrew Hsia traveled to the PRC and met with TAO director Song Tao on February 29 to discuss the Kinmen capsizing incident concurrently with the DPP government-led negotiations on Kinmen.

Taiwan

Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and DPP-led government raised concerns that a KMT push to legalize absentee voting for overseas Taiwanese could enable CCP interference in Taiwan’s elections. Taiwanese voters are required to return to the city or county of their household registration to vote in elections.[20] Taiwan’s cabinet approved a bill in February 2024 that allows absentee voting for national referenda for Taiwanese nationals living in Taiwan. This means that voters can vote in person in the area where they live instead of having to return to their hometown. Premier Chen Chien-jen and Interior Minister Lin Yu-chang said the government has no plans to permit absentee voting for national elections, however.[21] The KMT has been pushing for legislation to legalize absentee voting in elections, including permitting mail-in ballots for Taiwanese people living overseas. DPP politicians including National Bureau Director Tsai Ming-yen raised concerns that permitting overseas absentee voting, especially for Taiwanese people living in the PRC, could create a security risk of PRC interference in Taiwan’s elections.[22] KMT politicians, including party chairman Eric Chu, pointed out that many countries, including the United States, have implemented absentee voting and accused the DPP of disenfranchising Taiwanese citizens under the pretense of national security.[23]

Taiwan’s Overseas Community Affairs Council estimates that around 2 million Taiwanese citizens live overseas, excluding the PRC.[24] Estimates of Taiwanese who live or work in the PRC range from around 160,000 according to the PRC’s 2021 census to over 1 million by other estimates.[25] The CCP frequently conducts outreach to Taiwanese businesspeople and other ROC nationals living in the PRC to influence them to vote for more PRC-friendly candidates.

Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) is implementing party reforms to restrain the influence of a hardline faction and better appeal to young voters in future elections. KMT Chairman Eric Chu announced on March 6 that the party would disband its historic Huang Fuxing branch and reorganize it into a “veterans service working committee.” Huang Fuxing is a powerful conservative branch of the party that older military veterans and their dependents dominate. It supports Taiwan’s eventual reunification with China. It is organized separately from local party branches and has around 80,000 members. Chu said the reform was part of an effort to improve the efficiency of party affairs, integrate with local governments to expand services to party members, and appeal to younger generations.[26] KMT vice chairman Sean Lien said the reorganization aims to better allocate party resources. He said that Huang Fuxing’s NT$60 million of annual expenditures amounted to the KMT’s largest expense and dwarfed spending on other departments including publicity, youth, and women’s party organizations.[27] Various Huang Fuxing members and other KMT politicians strongly objected to the reform, however, and said it could cost the KMT a crucial base of support in elections. Some hardliners called on Eric Chu to resign and threatened to leave the KMT or join third parties like the Taiwan People’s Party or the New Party to show their displeasure.[28]

The KMT’s dissolution of the Huang Fuxing branch shows an effort by the party's central leadership to constrain the influence of the older and more conservative deep-Blue faction in favor of appealing to younger voters. The reform was triggered by the KMT’s loss in the 2024 presidential election and the increasing unpopularity of PRC-friendly policies promoted by the deep-Blue wing of the party.

The reforms may lead the KMT to moderate its stance on cross-strait relations to be more in line with the Taiwanese public, which overwhelmingly embraces a Taiwanese (and not Chinese) identity and opposes unification with China. The reforms risk former members of Huang Fuxing leaving the KMT or defecting to other parties, however, which would split the pan-Blue vote in future elections and decrease the KMT’s chances of victory.

China

The PRC’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesperson Chen Binhua stated that “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan remains the PRC’s policy despite the omission of the term “peaceful” from the Two Sessions government work report.[29] Premier Li Qiang’s work report to the National People’s Congress on March 5 omitted the word “peaceful” in the continuation of a trend of CCP officials using less restrained language about unification with Taiwan. Chen said the PRC is willing to “create a broad space for peaceful reunification” but will never renounce the right to use force or “all necessary measures” to achieve reunification. This language is consistent with the PRC’s standard messaging regarding Taiwan. The TAO is the primary agency responsible for cross-strait relations and conducting the PRC’s Taiwan policy.

The PRC’s recent measures to exert pressure on the ROC illustrate its adoption of a more aggressive approach to realizing unification, however. These measures include influence operations and the use of law enforcement to erode Taiwan’s territorial control. The PRC recently expanded its efforts to conceal its pressure campaigns. Deputy leader of the Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs Wang Huning led an interagency meeting in December to coordinate and camouflage the CCP’s efforts to influence Taiwan’s elections, according to a Taiwanese intelligence leak of the top-secret meeting. Wang allegedly urged officials at the meeting to step up effectiveness to influence Taiwan’s public opinion and reduce the detectability of its tactics by “external parties.”[30] The PRC’s opportunistic exploitation of the Kinmen capsizing incident to increase pressure on Taiwan further illustrates its growing pressure on Taiwan. The Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) pledged in February to strengthen law enforcement and conduct regular inspections in the waters around Kinmen, resulting in an unprecedented boarding of a Taiwanese civilian vessel in Kinmen’s waters.[31]

CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s address during the Twentieth Party Congress in 2022 also signals the impetus for more intense efforts to pressure Taiwan. Xi called for cracking down on Taiwanese separatism and foreign interference in Taiwan and urged stronger efforts to realize unification.[32] Xi’s call to action serves to galvanize a more aggressive attitude in CCP policymakers, indicating the trend of escalation against Taiwan will continue.

Russia and Iran

The PRC, Russia, and Iran held the joint Maritime Security Belt – 2024 naval exercise in the Gulf of Oman from March 11 to 15.[33] Kremlin-affiliated outlet Izvestia reported on March 11 that a detachment of ships of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, including the Varyag Slava-class cruiser, arrived at Iran’s Chabahar Port to participate in Maritime Security Belt-2024 alongside Iranian and Chinese naval detachments.[34] The annual exercise began in 2019.[35] The Russian Marshal Shaposhnikov Udaloy-class destroyer; the Chinese Ürümqi destroyer, Linyi frigate, Dongpinghu replenishment ship; and 10 unnamed Iranian ships, boats, and supply vessels and three naval helicopters are taking part in the exercise.[36] Representatives of Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Oman, India, and South Africa will observe the exercise.[37]

Northeast Asia

Japan

The People’s Liberation Army increased the number of military aircraft flights through the Miyako Strait in March, likely as part of an effort to normalize flights outside of the first island chain. The PLA flew a Y-9 medium transport aircraft in the Miyako Strait on March 9 and 10.[38] It then flew a Y-9 and two H-6 bombers through the Miyako Strait on March 12.[39] Japan’s Joint Staff noted in January 2024 that it scrambled fighters 555 times in the last nine months of 2023.[40] 98 percent of the scrambles responded to Chinese and Russian aircraft and more than 50 percent occurred near Japan’s southwest airspace, which encompasses the Miyako Strait. [41] The concentration of the PLA component of these intrusions in the southwest indicates the PLA’s intent to operate outside the first island chain.

Southeast Asia

Philippines

The PRC portrayed the Philippines as a provocateur rather than a partner for managing disputes in the South China Sea while the Chinese Coast Guard drives heightened tensions in the South China Sea. The PRC sent 11 proposals for “managing the situation at sea and carrying our maritime cooperation” to the Philippines in April 2023.[42] PRC MFA Spokesman Wang Wenbing claimed on March 12, 2024, that “the Philippines has not yet responded to most of the proposals and made frequent infringements and provocations at sea.” [43] Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr stated on March 11, 2024 that “we have not rejected any proposals that China has made to us but the premise is something that we questioned…that premise that China has made is that their territory follows what is now described as a 10 dash line.”[44] The 10 dash line is the expansive PRC territorial claim over the South China Sea and Taiwan. The PRC’s nine-dash line precursor claimed the same territory but with one less dash around Taiwan.

Wang’s comments aim to deflect blame from the PRC to the Philippines for heightened tensions over the Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal. Scarborough Shoal is a contested atoll that the PRC and the Philippines claim and that has been under de facto PRC control since 2012. The Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) erected a floating barrier and intercepted Philippine Coast Guard vessels in February to deny the Philippines access to the shoal. The CCG has also disrupted Philippine Coast Guard missions near the shoal to ensure the security of Filipino fishermen in the area. The Second Thomas Shoal is a submerged reef in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea which the Philippines and the PRC both claim. The Philippines controls the shoal with troops based on the grounded warship BRP Sierra Madre. A CCG vessel attempted to block and collided with a Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) vessel escorting a supply mission to Second Thomas Shoal on March 5, causing minor damage to the Philippine ship. Two CCG ships also fired water cannons at a separate Philippine supply ship, injuring four Philippine personnel, and later collided with it.

The CCG actions in the South China Sea support PRC claims of sovereignty over nearly the entirety of the South China Sea, including the Spratly Islands, through the “nine dash line” maritime boundary. The PRC rejects a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that found the nine dash line claims are unlawful. The PRC has constructed, seized, and attempted to seize many islands in the South China Sea so it can build a military presence throughout the critical waterway. The PRC has built military infrastructure on islands that it has seized control of or artificially constructed to expand its power projection capability, strengthen domain awareness, and increase its ability to block critical Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) through the South China Sea. Developing the capability to monitor or restrict ships through the South China Sea would support a future PRC effort to implement a blockade of Taiwan or block US and allied reinforcements from reaching the Taiwan Strait in wartime.

The PRC and Philippines' bilateral diplomatic forums for managing tensions in the South China Sea are unlikely to change PRC behavior in the region. The CCP has a track record of engaging in dialogue while driving crises to achieve its political objective. In 2012 the party engaged in negotiations with the Philippines to end a standoff at the Scarborough Shoal, which Manilla administered at the time, while steadily increasing the number of Chinese Coast Guard ships near the shoal.[45] This resulted in the Philippines withdrawing its ships from the shoal in mid-June 2012 under a now-disputed agreement that the PRC would do the same.[46] The CCP subsequently kept its ships near the shoal and achieved its political objective of gaining de facto control of the Scarborough Shoal by July 2012.[47] In 2016 the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Arbitration Tribunal unanimously ruled in favor of the Philippines by rejecting the legitimacy of PRC claims to territory inside of the nine dash line and land reclamation activities.[48] The CCP has ignored the ruling by continuing land reclamation efforts and maritime coercion in the South China Sea over the last eight years.

These PRC efforts continue despite PRC Assistant Foreign Minister Nong Rong and Philippine Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Theresa Lazaro co-chairing the eighth meeting of the China-Philippines Bilateral Consultation Mechanism (BCM) on the South China Sea in January 2024.[49] The PRC has continued its coercive behavior over the past decade in the South China Sea while not honoring prior diplomatic or international legal agreements.

Vietnam

The PRC defined its coastal baseline that extends its territorial waters and claims of sovereignty in the Gulf of Tonkin. The baseline is not in line with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas, to which the PRC is a signatory. [50]A baseline is a conceptual line that a state uses to define its territorial waters, contiguous zone, exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and continental shelf. The PRC last issued a baseline in 1996 with the announcement of 49 points that stretch eastward from the island of Hainan to the Shandong peninsula on its eastern seaboard.[51] The 1996 baseline excluded the Gulf of Tonkin. The PRC and Vietnam signed the landmark Maritime Boundary Delimitation Agreement in 2000 that defined each country’s territorial waters and EEZs in the Gulf of Tonkin.[52] The new PRC baseline in the Gulf of Tonkin extends 24 nautical miles beyond where normal basepoints would be under the framework of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.[53]

Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Pham Thu Hang urged that the PRC adhere to the UNCLOS when determining the baseline to measure territorial waters and “respect and comply with” the 2000 delimitation agreement. [54] The PRC claimed that the baseline is in accordance with its domestic laws, however.[55] The PRC’s Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs posted on WeChat that the new baseline in the Gulf of Tonkin “fills the gap of the westernmost part of the Chinese mainland’s territorial sea.”[56] The WeChat announcement framed the baseline necessary to exercise national sovereignty and jurisdiction in the territorial sea.

The PRC’s rationale for the new baseline is unclear. The baseline is consistent with PRC efforts to solidify its legal claims over maritime areas and features, however. The PRC has taken incremental steps over decades to consolidate control over its ambitious maritime territorial claims, which encompass the entirety of the South China Sea. This is evident in the PRC’s seizure of the Paracel Islands from Vietnam in 1974, its excessive baseline assertions around them in 1996, and subsequent militarization across the Paracels. The PRC’s gradual assertion of sovereignty over the Paracel Islands highlights a gradational strategy to increase control and legitimacy in the disputed territory over long periods. The PRC’s gradual delimitation of regional bodies of water serves to establish a basis for its territorial claims and ultimately advance its control over sensitive maritime areas.

Maritime territorial conflicts between the PRC and Vietnam stretch back decades, with each country claiming to have held sovereignty over contested areas for centuries. Past disputes include the Gulf of Tonkin, while unresolved claims over the resource-rich and strategically important areas encompassing the Paracel and Spratly Islands make for ongoing conflict.

The PRC conducts regular maritime patrols around Vietnam’s oil and gas fields, which receive less public attention than PRC engagements with other rival claimants such as the Philippines.[57]

The PRC and Vietnam have a long-standing record of maritime disputes in the South China Sea and engage in occasional high-profile confrontations over South China Sea territorial claims. The PRC instigated a tense standoff in 2014 by deploying an oil rig in disputed waters south of the Paracel Islands, which Vietnam saw as a direct territorial provocation. The PRC sent approximately 40 Coast Guard vessels, 6 warships, a military aircraft, and dozens of logistical and fishing vessels to support the rig, prompting reciprocal military deployment from Vietnam.[58] The standoff ended when the PRC withdrew the oil rig after two months, claiming early completion of its work and denying any relevance to “external factors.”[59]

Oceania

The United States approved $7.1 billion in funding for the Compacts of Free Association, which are the financial assistance commitments that govern the US relationship with Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands and grant US military access throughout their territories. Congress previously funded the COFAs for a 20-year period in 2003.[60] The United States renewed COFAs with Palau and Micronesia in May and the Marshall Islands in October and the US Congress approved them in March 2024.[61] [62] The $7.1 billion will cover the new 20-year COFAs that cover the period 2024 to 2043.[63]

17. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 15, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-15-2024

Key Takeaways:

Russian forces will likely continue ongoing offensive efforts to destabilize Ukrainian defensive lines in Spring 2024 while also preparing for a forecasted new offensive effort in Summer 2024. The provision of Western security assistance will likely play a critical role in Ukraine’s ability to hold territory now and to repel a new Russian offensive effort in the coming months.
Well-provisioned Ukrainian forces have shown that they can prevent Russian forces from making even marginal gains during large-scale Russian offensive efforts, and there is no reason to doubt that Ukraine could further stabilize the frontline and prepare for repelling the reported Russian offensive effort this summer if materiel shortages abated.
The threat of significant Russian gains in the coming months does not mean that there is no threat of Russian forces making such gains through offensive operations this spring.
Pressing shortages in air defense systems and missiles will likely dramatically reduce Ukraine’s ability to defend against Russian strikes both in rear and frontline areas in the coming weeks if not addressed rapidly.
Russian forces have shown the capacity to adapt to fighting in Ukraine and will likely aim to scale lessons learned from the war in Ukraine to ongoing efforts to prepare the Russian military for a potential long-term confrontation with NATO.
Senior European officials stressed that a Russian victory in Ukraine would result in Russia posing a strategic threat to NATO security.
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev questioned the sovereignty of Latvia, a NATO member state, and threatened Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs following Medvedev’s March 14 call for the total elimination of Ukraine and Ukraine's absorption into Russia under Medvedev's “peace formula.”
French President Emmanuel Macron stated on March 15 that he is not ruling out sending Western troops to Ukraine but that the current situation does not require it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed continued limited raids from Ukrainian territory into Russia’s border region on March 15.
Ukrainian forces conducted a drone strike against a Russian oil refinery in Kaluga Oblast, and recent Ukrainian strikes against oil refineries reportedly caused a spike in Russian domestic oil prices.
Several Russians made limited attempts to disrupt the first day of voting in the Russian presidential election on March 15.
Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Kupyansk and Avdiivka and in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Ukrainian Treatment of Prisoners of War Coordinating Headquarters Representative Petro Yatsenko stated that Russia has intensified its efforts to recruit military personnel from abroad.
Ukrainian sources and Russian opposition media reported that occupation officials continue coercive efforts to artificially inflate voter turnout and perceptions of support for Russian President Vladimir Putin in occupied Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 15, 2024

Mar 15, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 15, 2024

Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Christina Harward, Angelica Evans, and Frederick W. Kagan

March 15, 2024, 8:50pm ET

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

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 2:00pm ET on March 15. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the March 16 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian forces will likely continue ongoing offensive efforts to destabilize Ukrainian defensive lines in Spring 2024 while also preparing for a forecasted new offensive effort in Summer 2024. The provision of Western security assistance will likely play a critical role in Ukraine’s ability to hold territory now and to repel a new Russian offensive effort in the coming months. Russian forces are attempting to maintain the tempo of their offensive operations throughout eastern Ukraine in an effort to prevent Ukrainian forces from stabilizing their defensive lines.[1] Russian forces are particularly concentrating on pushing as far west of Avdiivka as possible before Ukrainian forces can establish a harder-to-penetrate line in the area.[2] Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated on March 15 that Russian forces have concentrated their efforts on the Avdiivka direction and have been conducting daily mechanized and infantry assaults in an attempt to break through Ukrainian defenses.[3] Although Ukrainian forces have recently been able to slow Russian advances west of Avdiivka, pervasive materiel shortages caused by delays in Western security assistance appear to be forcing Ukraine to prioritize limited resources to critical sectors of the front, increasing the risk of a Russian breakthrough in other less-well-provisioned sectors and making the frontline overall more fragile than it appears despite the current relatively slow rate of Russian advances.[4] Russian forces will continue to use the advantages provided by possessing the theater-wide initiative to dynamically reweight their offensive efforts this spring and into the summer, likely in hopes of exploiting possible Ukrainian vulnerabilities.[5] Russian forces may be pressing their attempts at a breakthrough before difficult weather and terrain conditions in spring will likely constrain effective mechanized maneuver on both sides of the line and further limit Russian capabilities to make significant tactical advances while the ground is still muddy.[6] Russian forces have intensified offensive operations during similar conditions before, however, and Russian forces may seek to maintain the tempo of their offensive operations through spring regardless of difficult weather and terrain conditions in an effort to exploit Ukrainian materiel shortages before promised Western security assistance arrives in Ukraine.[7]

Ukrainian and Western officials are increasingly warning about both significant Ukrainian materiel shortages and a new large-scale Russian offensive this summer.[8] The intent and design of the Russian Summer 2024 offensive effort is not immediately clear and likely will not be until Russian forces launch it, but the Russian military command likely intends to capitalize on any gains it makes in the coming weeks as well as on forecasts that the Ukrainian military may be even less-well-provisioned this summer than it is now. Well-provisioned Ukrainian forces have shown that they can prevent Russian forces from making even marginal gains during large-scale Russian offensive efforts, and there is no reason to doubt that Ukraine could further stabilize the frontline and prepare for repelling the reported Russian offensive effort this summer if materiel shortages abated.[9]

Western and Ukrainian officials are expressing concerns about delays in Western security assistance to Ukraine ahead of this expected Russian offensive effort. EU High Commissioner Josep Borrell stated on March 14 that the West must increase and speed up its support for Ukraine as the next months will be “decisive” ahead of the expected major Russian offensive in the summer of 2024.[10] Borrell stated in an interview with PBS published on March 14 that Europe alone cannot, however, make up for the lack of US aid as the US has a much stronger and larger military capacity, as ISW has previously assessed.[11] The Washington Post reported on March 15 that a senior US official stated that there is no “bright” future for Ukraine if the US does not pass the supplemental aid package for Ukraine.[12] A senior advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly told the Washington Post that Russian forces are highly likely to make significant territorial gains in Summer 2024 if the US does not provide aid to Ukraine. The Washington Post reported that Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Michael Kofman assessed that the US supplemental aid package would allow Ukrainian forces to “buy time” but that Ukraine must also fix the ”structural problem” related to its limited manpower resources.

The threat of significant Russian gains in the coming months does not mean that there is no threat of Russian forces making such gains through offensive operations this spring. Relative Russian successes this spring, even tactical, may set conditions for Russian forces to pursue operationally significant gains in the summer. Neither would a Ukrainian ability to further stabilize the current frontlines this spring preclude Russia from pursuing a breakthrough this summer. Well-provisioned Ukrainian forces will likely be able to prevent any significant Russian advances both in Spring and Summer 2024 as long as sufficient Western security assistance arrives in the next months in a manner that allows Ukrainian forces to address current materiel shortages and prepare for and sustain future defensive operations.

Pressing shortages in air defense systems and missiles will likely dramatically reduce Ukraine’s ability to defend against Russian strikes both in rear and frontline areas in the coming weeks if not addressed rapidly. The Washington Post reported on March 15 that Ukrainian policymakers conveyed to Western official sources that Ukraine may use up some of its air defense systems by the end of March.[13] The Ukrainian officials reportedly stated that Ukraine has previously aimed to shoot down four out of every five missiles that Russian forces launch at Ukrainian rear cities but that Ukrainian air defense shortages may force Ukraine to only target one out of every five Russian missiles. Ukraine has already had to make difficult decisions regarding the placement of its limited air defense systems in rear and frontline areas, and Russian forces have recently taken efforts to strain Ukrainian air defenses both in rear population areas and along the frontline.[14] Russian forces have recently experimented with strike packages with different means of penetrating and further pressuring the Ukrainian air defense umbrella.[15] Russian forces also utilized air strikes to tactical effect in the seizure of Avdiivka in mid-February and have intensified and improved their use of glide bombs along various sectors of the front.[16] A 60 percent reduction in Ukraine’s ability to target - let alone shoot down - Russian missiles will further exacerbate these allocation issues. ISW continues to assess that the US remains the only immediate source of necessary air defense systems like Patriots.[17]

Russian forces have shown the capacity to adapt to fighting in Ukraine and will likely aim to scale lessons learned from the war in Ukraine to ongoing efforts to prepare the Russian military for a potential long-term confrontation with NATO. Foreign Policy reported on March 14 that Director-General of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service (EFIS) Kaupo Rosin told journalists that the Russian military is “turning into a learning organization” after the past two years of war in Ukraine and is currently resolving its battlefield problems within months.[18] Rosin stated that Estonian intelligence assesses that Russian forces have largely addressed battlefield issues with large amounts of manpower and materiel and that reforms relying on mass will likely result in a low-tech, Soviet-style Russian military with significant firepower and artillery.[19] Russian forces have addressed many tactical and operational challenges in Ukraine through their ability to field a greater amount of materiel and manpower than Ukrainian forces, notably seen with a reliance on manpower-intensive ”meat assaults” to maintain a relatively high tempo of offensive operations.[20]

Notable Russian adaptations through mass are not the only adaptations that Russian forces have made in Ukraine, however, as the Russian military has demonstrated an uneven propensity for operational, tactical, and technological innovation and learning. The Russian defensive effort against the Ukrainian summer 2023 counteroffensive in western Zaporizhia Oblast was relatively successful largely due to the 58th Combined Arms Army’s (Southern Military District [SMD]) ability to prepare for and conduct a doctrinally sound ”elastic defense” that Russian forces had previously struggled to conduct in Ukraine.[21] That Russian defensive effort also successfully employed technological adaptations with electronic warfare (EW) systems and drones, and the 58th Combined Arms Army (CAA) appears to have established some degree of effective reconnaissance-fire complex (RFC) to repel Ukrainian mechanized assaults.[22] It remains unclear to what degree the Russian military has internalized and disseminated these adaptations among different Russian force groupings in Ukraine, but the Russian military is attempting to adapt to the tactical and operational challenges of fighting in Ukraine at scale.[23] Ongoing Russian offensive operations suggest that the Russian command may have learned from previous operational campaign design mistakes, and the Russian military is employing select tactical-level adaptations on certain sectors of the front.[24] Continued widespread Russian tactical failures throughout Ukraine suggest that the Russian military command has struggled the most to internalize and disseminate adaptations at the tactical level, however.[25]

Rosin stated that Russia is currently attempting to restructure and expand in anticipation of a possible war with NATO in the next 10 years, and other Western intelligence agencies have previously made similar assessments.[26] ISW assesses that the ongoing recreation of the Leningrad and Moscow military districts (LMD and MMD) and efforts to create at least a dozen new formations are likely preparations for a potential future large-scale conventional war against NATO.[27] Russian forces will also likely attempt to ensure that the Russian military has widely scaled adaptions from its current conventional war in Ukraine to forces that it envisions potentially fighting a conventional war against NATO countries that do not have similar recent experiences to draw from.

Senior European officials stressed that a Russian victory in Ukraine would result in Russia posing a strategic threat to NATO security. European Union (EU) High Commissioner Josep Borrell stated on March 14 that a Russian victory in Ukraine that places Russian troops on the borders of Poland, Moldova, and the Baltic states would be an “unbearable” security cost to Europe and the United States.[28] Borrell noted that there is no alternative to NATO to ensure European security against a Russian threat and stated that Russia’s invasion acted as a ”strategic wake-up call” for Europe to take more responsibility for its own defense capacities in the future.[29] French President Emmanuel Macron agreed with Borrell, stating that Russia’s war in Ukraine is ”existential for our Europe and for France.”[30] Macron emphasized that a Russian victory in Ukraine would diminish European security and that if the situation in Ukraine deteriorates, Europe should ”be ready to make sure that Russia never wins that war [in Ukraine].”[31] Director-General of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service (EFIS) Kaupo Rosin stated that a war between Russia and NATO is not inevitable but that the future of Europe heavily depends on the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine.[32]

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev questioned the sovereignty of Latvia, a NATO member state, and threatened Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs following Medvedev’s March 14 call for the total elimination of Ukraine and Ukraine's absorption into Russia under Medvedev's “peace formula.” Medvedev threatened Rinkēvičs’ life in a post on March 15 and claimed that Russia will hang Rinkēvičs alongside the current “Nazi” Ukrainian government for “wish[ing] for the death of Russia.”[33] Medvedev also claimed that Latvia is a ”non-existent country.” ISW previously noted that Medvedev’s sardonic and extreme March 14 ”peace formula” more explicitly outlines real and central elements of the Kremlin’s ideology and stated war aims and justifications.[34] Medvedev’s March 15 post is a similarly explicit presentation of the Kremlin’s ideological framing of the war in Ukraine as part of Russia’s longer-term conflict with the West and NATO that Putin has previously alluded to by claiming that Russia is fighting a geopolitical “Nazi” force gaining power in the West.[35] Medvedev’s threats against Rinkēvičs and the current Ukrainian government follow previous Kremlin efforts to assert its right, contrary to international law, to enforce Russian federal law on officials of NATO member and former Soviet states for actions taken within the territory of their own countries where Russian courts have no jurisdiction, effectively denying the sovereignty of those states.[36]

French President Emmanuel Macron stated on March 15 that he is not ruling out sending Western troops to Ukraine but that the current situation does not require it.[37] Macron stated that anyone advocating for ”limits” on aid to Ukraine is choosing defeat and that ”to have peace in Ukraine, [Europe] must not be weak.” Macron noted that if France decides to send French troops to Ukraine in the future, the responsibility for the decision will lie solely with Russia. Macron stated that the West is doing everything possible to help Ukraine and that there can be no lasting peace in Ukraine without recognition of Ukraine’s sovereignty and internationally recognized borders, including Crimea. Politico previously reported that France is building an alliance of countries open to potentially sending Western troops to Ukraine.[38]

Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed continued limited raids from Ukrainian territory into Russia’s border region on March 15. Putin accused “Ukrainian forces” - referring to likely elements of the all-Russian pro-Ukrainian Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), Freedom of Russia Legion (LSR), and Siberian Battalion - of conducting the cross-border raids into Belgorod and Kursk oblasts on March 12 to 15 in order to disrupt Russia’s ongoing presidential election and turn international attention to Ukraine.[39] Putin claimed that the Russian people will respond to these raids with ”even greater unity” and that pro-Ukrainian forces will not intimidate Russia. Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), claimed that Russian border units and the Russian military continued to repel assaults by pro-Ukrainian forces near Spodaryushino and Kozinka, Belgorod Oblast and Tetkino, Kursk Oblast on March 14 and 15.[40] Russian milbloggers claimed that elements of Russia’s 2nd Spetsnaz Brigade (Russian Main Military Intelligence Directorate’s [GRU]) are also defending against the attacks on the borders of Belgorod and Kursk oblasts.[41]

Ukrainian forces conducted a drone strike against a Russian oil refinery in Kaluga Oblast, and recent Ukrainian strikes against oil refineries reportedly caused a spike in Russian domestic oil prices. Ukrainian outlet Suspilne reported that the Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) conducted a drone strike against the Perviy Zavod oil refinery near Kaluga City overnight on March 14 to 15 and that Russia uses this refinery for military purposes.[42] Geolocated footage published on March 15 shows a drone impact and a large explosion at the Perviy Zavod refinery, which is reportedly the largest petrochemical complex in Kaluga Oblast.[43] Russian news outlet RBK reported on March 13 that the price of Russian AI-95 grade oil exceeded 60,000 rubles (about $648) per ton for the first time since September 2023 due to Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries and that the price of other grades of Russian oil similarly increased on March 13.[44] RBK also reported that the shutdown of the two main oil processing units at the Ryazan oil refinery and another main oil processing unit at the Nizhny Novgorod refinery due to Ukrainian strikes on March 13 may reduce Russian gas production by eight to nine percent and significantly impact the Russian oil market.[45]

Several Russians made limited attempts to disrupt the first day of voting in the Russian presidential election on March 15. Russian opposition outlet Sever Realii reported on March 15 that the Russian Investigative Committee opened eight criminal cases against Russians who committed arson and damaged ballot boxes at polling stations throughout Russia and in occupied Ukraine.[46] Russian sources amplified footage of several Russians pouring dye, ink, or paint into ballot boxes, and Russian officials reported that some Russians also poured paint on ballot counting devices and set polling stations on fire.[47] The Moscow Prosecutor’s Office warned that residents should not attend ”Noon Against Putin” protests outside polling stations at noon on March 17.[48] Isolated public protests against the Russian presidential election and Russian President Vladimir Putin are highly unlikely to impact the course or outcome of the Russian presidential election unless there is widespread public participation, which is also unlikely.

Key Takeaways:

Russian forces will likely continue ongoing offensive efforts to destabilize Ukrainian defensive lines in Spring 2024 while also preparing for a forecasted new offensive effort in Summer 2024. The provision of Western security assistance will likely play a critical role in Ukraine’s ability to hold territory now and to repel a new Russian offensive effort in the coming months.
Well-provisioned Ukrainian forces have shown that they can prevent Russian forces from making even marginal gains during large-scale Russian offensive efforts, and there is no reason to doubt that Ukraine could further stabilize the frontline and prepare for repelling the reported Russian offensive effort this summer if materiel shortages abated.
The threat of significant Russian gains in the coming months does not mean that there is no threat of Russian forces making such gains through offensive operations this spring.
Pressing shortages in air defense systems and missiles will likely dramatically reduce Ukraine’s ability to defend against Russian strikes both in rear and frontline areas in the coming weeks if not addressed rapidly.
Russian forces have shown the capacity to adapt to fighting in Ukraine and will likely aim to scale lessons learned from the war in Ukraine to ongoing efforts to prepare the Russian military for a potential long-term confrontation with NATO.
Senior European officials stressed that a Russian victory in Ukraine would result in Russia posing a strategic threat to NATO security.
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev questioned the sovereignty of Latvia, a NATO member state, and threatened Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs following Medvedev’s March 14 call for the total elimination of Ukraine and Ukraine's absorption into Russia under Medvedev's “peace formula.”
French President Emmanuel Macron stated on March 15 that he is not ruling out sending Western troops to Ukraine but that the current situation does not require it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed continued limited raids from Ukrainian territory into Russia’s border region on March 15.
Ukrainian forces conducted a drone strike against a Russian oil refinery in Kaluga Oblast, and recent Ukrainian strikes against oil refineries reportedly caused a spike in Russian domestic oil prices.
Several Russians made limited attempts to disrupt the first day of voting in the Russian presidential election on March 15.
Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Kupyansk and Avdiivka and in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
Ukrainian Treatment of Prisoners of War Coordinating Headquarters Representative Petro Yatsenko stated that Russia has intensified its efforts to recruit military personnel from abroad.
Ukrainian sources and Russian opposition media reported that occupation officials continue coercive efforts to artificially inflate voter turnout and perceptions of support for Russian President Vladimir Putin 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 Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Russian Technological Adaptations
Activities in Russian-occupied areas
Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
Russian Information Operations and Narratives
Significant Activity in Belarus

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 recently marginally advanced northeast of Kupyansk amid continued positional fighting along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on March 15. Geolocated footage published on March 14 indicates that Russian forces recently marginally advanced east of Synkivka (northeast of Kupyansk).[49] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced 300 meters in an area east of Terny and Yampolivka (west of Kreminna) and that Russian forces also advanced in an unspecified area near Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna), although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of Russian advances near Bilohorivka.[50] Positional engagements continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka and Pershotravneve; southeast of Kupyansk near Tabaivka; west of Kreminna near Terny and Yampolivka; southwest of Kreminna in the Serebryanske forest area; and near Bilohorivka.[51] Elements of the Russian 6th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic [LNR] Army Corps [AC]) are reportedly operating near Spirne (south of Kreminna).[52]

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

Positional fighting continued near Bakhmut on March 15, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline. The commander of a Ukrainian battalion operating in the Bakhmut area stated that Ukrainian forces pushed Russian forces from unspecified positions in the Bakhmut direction and that Russian forces have not advanced on the outskirts of Ivanivske (west of Bakhmut) in the past week and a half.[53] Positional fighting continued northeast of Bakhmut near Bilohorivka (21km northeast of Bakhmut) and Rozdolivka; northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka; west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske; southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Andriivka; and south of Bakhmut near Niu York.[54] Elements of the Russian 106th Airborne (VDV) Division are operating north of Soledar (northeast of Bakhmut), and elements of the 238th Artillery Brigade (8th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) are operating near Horlivka (south of Bakhmut).[55]

Russian forces recently advanced northwest of Avdiivka amid continued positional fighting in the area on March 15. Geolocated footage published on March 13 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced westward within Berdychi (northwest of Avdiivka).[56] Russian milbloggers claimed on March 14 and 15 that Russian forces also recently advanced up to 400 meters in depth between Orlivka and Tonenke (both west of Avdiivka) and within Pervomaiske (southwest of Avdiivka), although ISW has not observed confirmation of these claims.[57] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces control heights northwest of Avdiivka near Novobakhmutivka and Ocheretyne that complicate Russian advances in the area and that Ukrainian mechanized operations near Berdychi also pose challenges to attacking Russian forces.[58] Positional fighting continued northwest of Avdiivka near Novobakhmutivka, Berdychi, and Semenivka; west of Avdiivka near Orlivka and Tonenke; and southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske and Nevelske.[59] Ukrainian military officials reported that Russian forces are conducting assaults with small infantry groups in the Avdiivka direction.[60] Elements of the Russian 1st Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] Army Corps [AC]) are operating in the Avdiivka area.[61]

Positional fighting continued west and southwest of Donetsk City on March 15, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 1.5 kilometers in depth north of Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City), although ISW has not observed confirmation of this claim.[62] Positional fighting continued west of Donetsk City near Krasnohorivka and Heorhiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Novomykhailivka, Pobieda, and Vodyane.[63] Elements of the Russian 255th Motorized Rifle Regiment (20th Motorized Rifle Division, 8th CAA, SMD) are reportedly attacking near Pobieda, and elements of the 2nd Motorized Rifle Battalion of the 39th Motorized Rifle Brigade (68th AC, Eastern Military District [EMD]) are reportedly operating near Novomykhailivka.[64]

Positional fighting continued in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on March 15. Positional fighting occurred southeast of Velyka Novosilka near Novodonetske, Shevchenko, and Volodymyrivka and south of Velyka Novosilka near Staromayorske and Urozhaine.[65] Elements of the Russian 3rd Motorized Rifle Battalion of the 60th Motorized Rifle Brigade (5th CAA, EMD) are reportedly operating near Staromayorske and elements of the 26th Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Protection Regiment (36th CAA, EMD) are reportedly operating near Volodymyrivka.[66] Aviation elements of the Russian 11th Air Force and Air Defense Army (Russian Aerospace Forces [VKS] and EMD) reportedly conducted glide bomb strikes near Vuhledar.[67]

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

Russian forces recently made confirmed advances in western Zaporizhia Oblast. Geolocated footage published on March 14 indicates that elements of the Russian 247th Airborne (VDV) Regiment (7th VDV Division) recently advanced north and northwest of Verbove (east of Robotyne).[68] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that positional engagements continued near Robotyne and Verbove.[69] Elements of the Russian 38th Motorized Rifle Brigade (35th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Eastern Military District [EMD]) and elements of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division (58th CAA, Southern Military District [SMD]) are reportedly operating in the Zaporizhia direction.[70]

Ukrainian forces maintain positions in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast near Krynky as of March 15 amid continued positional engagements in the area.[71]

Ukrainian outlet Defense News reported on March 14 that the Kakhovka Reservoir is refilling with water again, which will weaken the soil and prevent military equipment, including amphibious vehicles, from traversing it.[72] Defense News stated that satellite imagery between October 2023 and March 2024 shows that the Kakhovka Reservoir is filling with water from melted snow and that the biggest water accumulations are east of Enerhodar, Zaporizhia Oblast. The Kakhovka Reservoir significantly dried up after Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant (KHPP) dam in June 2023.[73]

Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign (Russian Objective: Target Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure in the rear and on the frontline)

Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of March 14-15 and during the day on March 15. The Ukrainian Air Force stated that Russian forces launched 27 Shahed-136/131 drones overnight from occupied Crimea and Kursk Oblast and that Ukrainian forces shot down all 27 drones over Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia, and Kyiv oblasts.[74] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces struck Kharkiv and Donetsk oblasts with seven S-300/400 missiles, Poltava Oblast with a Kh-59 missile, and residential buildings in Vinnytsia Oblast with Shahed drones on the night of March 14-15.[75] Ukrainian officials stated that Russian Iskander-M ballistic missiles struck civil infrastructure in Odesa City, killing at least 19 Ukrainian civilians and wounding at least 70.[76]

Ukrainian Kharkiv Oblast Prosecutor’s Office Head Oleksandr Filchakov stated on March 14 that Russian forces have struck six Ukrainian oblasts with 50 North Korean missiles since December 2023.[77] Filchakov reported that North Korean missiles are of low quality with an imperfect control system and a flight range of about 700 kilometers. Filchakov stated that Ukrainian forces have observed many of the North Korean missiles exploding in the air before striking their intended targets.

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

Ukrainian Treatment of Prisoners of War Coordinating Headquarters Representative Petro Yatsenko stated that Russia has intensified its effort to recruit military personnel from abroad.[78] Yatsenko stated that Russia’s coercive force generation campaign targeting Russian prisoners and former Wagner Group personnel has run out of force generation capacity, so Russia has intensified recruiting in states with “difficult economic situation[s].” Yatsenko stated that the number of Cuban citizens fighting for Russia in Ukraine is increasing because Russia feels confident in its relations with Cuba and that many foreigners from India, Africa, Nepal, Serbia, Latin America, Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq are serving in the Russian military.

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

Russian forces continue efforts to develop their drone operation capabilities. Russian Center for Integrated Unmanned Solutions General Director Dmitry Kuzyakin stated that Russian forces are developing a new military specialty for first-person view (FPV) drone operators and that the development of new drone technology can lead to the emergence of many military specialties.[79] The Russian State Commission on Radio Frequencies told Russian state-affiliated news outlet Izvestia that it has proposed changes that would allow Russian drone operators to use special radio frequencies to communicate with aircraft crews as drone operators currently use standard frequencies that are often overloaded, causing issues.[80] Izvestia reported that these new frequencies will allow Russia to increase its usage of drones for civilian transportation, and this change may also benefit Russian forces as they attempt to strengthen their drone operations.[81]

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

Note: ISW will be publishing its coverage of Ukrainian defense industrial efforts on a weekly basis in the Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. ISW will continue to track developments in Ukrainian defense industrial efforts daily and will refer to these efforts in assessments within the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment and other ISW products when necessary.

ISW is not publishing coverage of Ukrainian defense industrial efforts today.

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)

Note: ISW will be publishing coverage of activities in Russian-occupied areas twice a week in the Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. ISW will continue to track activities in Russian-occupied areas daily and will refer to these activities in assessments within the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment and other ISW products when necessary.

Ukrainian sources and Russian opposition media reported that occupation officials continue coercive efforts to artificially inflate voter turnout and perceptions of support for Russian President Vladimir Putin in occupied Ukraine. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Deputy Chief Major General Vadym Skibitskyi stated on March 14 that Putin tasked Russian and occupation officials with falsifying a 75 percent voter turnout and 75 percent level of support for Putin in occupied Ukraine but noted that occupation officials will likely claim that a higher percentage of residents (85 percent) voted and supported Putin in order to please Putin.[82] Skibitsky stated that the Kremlin will use these numbers to falsely demonstrate support for Putin in occupied Ukraine.[83] Russian opposition outlet Vazhnye Istorii (IStories) reported on March 13 that Russian authorities have registered 4.5 million voters in occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts despite estimates that only 2.5 million adults currently live in occupied Ukraine.[84] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on March 13 and 14 that occupation authorities are forcing an estimated 100,000 Russian workers and Central Asia migrants living in occupied Ukraine to vote there in order to artificially inflate voter turnout numbers.[85] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that occupation authorities are also conducting door-to-door visits and listing residents who refuse to vote as ”disloyal.”[86] Occupation authorities are holding propaganda events in support of Putin’s election campaign and promising pensioners and university-age students, including those in Russia, monetary benefits if they vote in occupied Ukraine.[87] Ukrainian partisan organization Yellow Ribbon stated on March 15 that occupation authorities are forcefully transporting people to polling stations in occupied Henichesk, Kherson Oblast.[88]

Ukrainian partisans reportedly detonated an improved explosive device (IED) in occupied Kherson Oblast during voting for the Russian presidential election on March 15. Kherson Oblast occupation election commission and occupation administration head Vladimir Saldo claimed that Ukrainian “provocateurs” detonated an IED near a polling station in occupied Skadovsk, Kherson Oblast but that the explosion did not cause any casualties.[89] Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko also reported explosions in Skadovsk on March 15.[90]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian authorities attempted to portray the first official day of voting in the Russian presidential election as having a significant turnout in order to create a veneer of legitimate and meaningful elections. The Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) claimed that just under 29 percent of all eligible voters had cast their ballots by 2000 Moscow time on March 15.[91] Russian state news outlet RIA Novosti cited an interlocutor as reporting that the voter turnout in Belgorod Oblast exceeded 50 percent despite the ongoing cross-border raids in the oblast.[92] Russian opposition outlet SOTA reported that a local branch of Russian state television channel Rossiya-1 in Belgorod Oblast reported a 3.92 percent turnout by 1345 Moscow time on March 15 and an implausible increase to 52 percent by 1500.[93] CEC Chairperson Ella Pamfilova claimed that more than 333,600 international observers observed the first day of the election but that various actors attempted to interfere in the elections, including an alleged 10,000 cyberattacks against the virtual voting portal.[94] Russian opposition outlet Vazhnye Istorii reported that there were almost no independent observers at polling stations throughout Russia and that most of the observers are affiliated with the Kremlin and Russian Public Chambers.[95]

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)

Nothing significant to report.

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.

18. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, March 15, 2024

https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-march-15-2024

Key Takeaways:

Lebanon: Unspecified Iranian officials said that Iran could “intensify its proxy war” against Israel if Israel attacks Lebanese Hezbollah, which is consistent with Iran's decades-old use of its proxies.
Iran has long used its regional proxies to pursue Iranian strategic objectives throughout the region. This strategy decreases the risk that Iran will face direct retaliation from its adversaries by obfuscating Iran’s role in escalation.
Iranian media reported in October 2023 that Iran formed a “joint operations room” to coordinate operations and attacks against Israel and the United States with its proxies in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
Iranian media claimed that Hezbollah would use Syrian ground forces—as part of the joint operations room—to invade Israel in the event of an Israeli attack on Hezbollah. Hezbollah is closely affiliated with the Syrian Arab Army’s 1st Corps.
The Telegraph reported that five Iranian-controlled, US-sanctioned container ships are using European ports to disguise weapons shipments to Lebanese Hezbollah.
Northern Gaza Strip: Palestinian fighters clashed with Israeli forces in Zahra, south of Gaza City.
Negotiations: Hamas submitted a ceasefire proposal and a hostage-for-prisoner exchange to international mediators.
Yemen: Houthi fighters conducted at least three attacks targeting civilian and military vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Syria: Israel likely conducted a drone strike targeting a truck transporting weapons for Iranian-backed militias near Albu Kamal, Syria.
Iran: The G7 countries warned Iran that it should not transfer missiles to Russia.
West Bank: Tens of thousands of Palestinian worshippers gathered peacefully at the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem for Ramadan prayers, despite repeated Hamas calls to “defend” the mosque.

IRAN UPDATE, MARCH 15, 2024

Mar 15, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, March 15, 2024

Ashka Jhaveri, Annika Ganzeveld, Johanna Moore, Amin Soltani, Kathryn Tyson, Anne McGill, and Brian Carter

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm ET

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.

CORRECTION: The March 14, 2024, edition of the Gaza Strip maps described the jetty that is under construction along the Gazan coast to facilitate the delivery of aid as “Israeli-built.” NGO World Central Kitchen is building this jetty, not Israel.[1] We apologize for the error.

Unspecified Iranian officials said that Iran could “intensify its proxy war” against Israel if Israel attacks Lebanese Hezbollah, which is consistent with Iran's decades-old use of its proxies.[2] Seven Iranian, Lebanese, and regional sources told Reuters on March 14 that IRGC Quds Force Commander Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani met with Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut in February 2024 to discuss the possibility of an Israeli offensive against Hezbollah.[3] Three of the sources told Reuters that an Israeli offensive against Hezbollah “could pressure Iran to react more forcefully" by intensifying “its proxy war” against Israel.[4] Iran has avoided directly fighting Israel and the United States in the current war, instead using its proxies across the region to fight on Iran’s behalf. Iran has long used its regional proxies to pursue Iranian strategic objectives throughout the region. This strategy decreases the risk that Iran will face direct retaliation from its adversaries by obfuscating Iran’s role in escalation. Iranian media reported in October 2023 that Iran formed a “joint operations room” to coordinate operations and attacks against Israel and the United States with its proxies in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.[5] Iranian media claimed that Hezbollah would use Syrian ground forces--as part of the joint operations room--to invade Israel in the event of an Israeli attack on Hezbollah. Hezbollah is closely affiliated with the Syrian Arab Army’s 1st Corps.[6]

The Iranian officials may also have been messaging Iran’s opposition to a direct confrontation with Israel to try to appease the Iranian public. An Iranian source told Reuters that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei seeks to avoid a direct war with Israel.[7] Some Iranians criticize the regime for funding Iran’s proxies and focusing on external affairs while failing to improve citizens’ lives and the economy.[8] Many of the sociocultural, economic, and political frustrations that ignited the Mahsa Amini movement that began in September 2022 remain prevalent among the Iranian population, moreover.[9]

Key Takeaways:

Lebanon: Unspecified Iranian officials said that Iran could “intensify its proxy war” against Israel if Israel attacks Lebanese Hezbollah, which is consistent with Iran's decades-old use of its proxies.
Iran has long used its regional proxies to pursue Iranian strategic objectives throughout the region. This strategy decreases the risk that Iran will face direct retaliation from its adversaries by obfuscating Iran’s role in escalation.
Iranian media reported in October 2023 that Iran formed a “joint operations room” to coordinate operations and attacks against Israel and the United States with its proxies in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
Iranian media claimed that Hezbollah would use Syrian ground forces—as part of the joint operations room—to invade Israel in the event of an Israeli attack on Hezbollah. Hezbollah is closely affiliated with the Syrian Arab Army’s 1st Corps.
The Telegraph reported that five Iranian-controlled, US-sanctioned container ships are using European ports to disguise weapons shipments to Lebanese Hezbollah.
Northern Gaza Strip: Palestinian fighters clashed with Israeli forces in Zahra, south of Gaza City.
Negotiations: Hamas submitted a ceasefire proposal and a hostage-for-prisoner exchange to international mediators.
Yemen: Houthi fighters conducted at least three attacks targeting civilian and military vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Syria: Israel likely conducted a drone strike targeting a truck transporting weapons for Iranian-backed militias near Albu Kamal, Syria.
Iran: The G7 countries warned Iran that it should not transfer missiles to Russia.
West Bank: Tens of thousands of Palestinian worshippers gathered peacefully at the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem for Ramadan prayers, despite repeated Hamas calls to “defend” the mosque.

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 fighters clashed with Israeli forces in Zahra, south of Gaza City, on March 15. Three Palestinian militias, including Hamas, targeted Israeli forces in Zahra using rocket-propelled grenades (RPG), thermobaric rockets, and indirect rocket fire.[10] The militias may have infiltrated into Zahra and other areas of southern Gaza City from areas of the central Gaza Strip that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) has not yet cleared. The militias also likely reactivated dormant cells after the Israelis decreased the number of IDF troops in the northern Strip.

The IDF Nahal Brigade (162 Division) killed ten Palestinian fighters in an unspecified area in the central Gaza Strip on March 15.[11] Israeli forces are currently operating at the intersection of the northern and central Strip near Wadi Gaza.[12]

Israeli forces continued to conduct clearing operations in Khan Younis on March 15. Israeli forces directed an airstrike targeting a Palestinian militia squad that was loading explosives into a vehicle in Khan Younis.[13] Hamas fighters fired RPGs targeting Israeli forces in Hamad neighborhood.[14] Hamas fighters returned from the frontlines in Hamad and said that they had conducted a complex attack by detonating an explosively formed penetrator (EFP) and firing a thermobaric rocket targeting an Israeli armored vehicle.[15]

Hamas submitted a ceasefire proposal and a hostage-for-prisoner exchange to international mediators on March 14.[17] The proposal is Hamas’ response to the US, Qatari, and Egyptian proposal that Hamas has been deliberating over for weeks.[18] Hamas’ statement said that the proposal includes a ceasefire, calls for Israel to release Palestinian prisoners, an increase in the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, a return of displaced Palestinians, and a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Strip.[19] The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said that Hamas continues to make “unrealistic demands.”[20] A senior Israeli official noted that Hamas’ proposal included the number of Palestinian prisoners that Hamas demands Israel release as part of the deal.[21] The number of Palestinian prisoners Hamas is demanding has been a point of contention during ceasefire negotiations. Hamas reportedly expressed readiness to reduce the number of Palestinian prisoners whom Israel would release.[22] CNN reported that Israel is sending a delegation to Doha for further talks.[23]

The first delivery of humanitarian aid via the maritime corridor arrived in the northern Gaza Strip on March 15.[24] The first humanitarian aid ship left Cyprus on March 12. The UAE and Cyprus funded the project, and World Central Kitchen (WCK) organized the delivery.[25] The IDF confirmed on March 15 that its forces are on land and at sea to secure the delivery area.[26] The ship contained 115 tons of food and water. WCK transferred the food and water into 12 trucks that then distributed the aid in the northern Gaza Strip.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the best option Israel has for the future leader in the Gaza Strip will be local Palestinians who are affiliated with the Palestinian Authority (PA).[27] Israeli media reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to allow local clans unaffiliated with Hamas or the PA to rule the Gaza Strip after the war ends.[28] Hamas reportedly killed the head of a local clan in Gaza City on March 13. Palestinian civilians accused the clan of cooperating with Israel.[29] The attack demonstrates that Hamas intends to reassert its authority in the Gaza Strip and suppress political opposition.

Hamas criticized PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ appointment of a new prime minister.[30] Abbas appointed current Palestinian Investment Fund Chairman Mohammad Mustafa as the new PA prime minister on March 14.[31] Abbas tasked him with forming a new government that will seek to rebuild the Gaza Strip after the war. Hamas stated on March 15 that Abbas’ decision is an “individual decision” that is “devoid of substance,” noting that Palestinians have lost confidence in the PA’s policies.[32]

Hamas announced on March 15 that it established a “government” with Palestinian armed groups, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), in response to Mustafa’s appointment.[33] Hamas warned that ”political exclusivity will grow,” and that ”division will deepen” without a national consensus on a government.

PIJ fighters fired rockets targeting unspecified Israeli towns surrounding the Gaza Strip on March 14.[34] The IDF Air Force and artillery forces targeted Palestinian military infrastructure in the northern Gaza Strip on March 15 in response to rocket launches into southern Israel on March 14.[35]

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Israeli forces have clashed with Palestinian fighters at least three times in the West Bank since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on March 14.[36] The IDF said on March 15 that it has conducted over 60 ”brigade operations” in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began.[37] The IDF also said that more than half of Palestinians that Israel has detained in the West Bank are associated with Hamas.[38]

Tens of thousands of Palestinian worshippers gathered peacefully at the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem for Ramadan prayers on March 15, despite repeated Hamas calls to “defend” the mosque.[39] Israeli police reported that there were no confrontations during the prayers.[40] Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh called in February for marches on al Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan.[41] Ramadan began on March 10. Hamas released several statements in March that called for Palestinians to escalate attacks against Israeli forces in the West Bank.[42]

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

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah, have conducted at least 13 attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on March 14.[43]

The Telegraph reported on March 14 that five Iranian-controlled, US-sanctioned container ships are using European ports to disguise weapons shipments to Lebanese Hezbollah.[44] The Telegraph reported that the Iranian ships transport weapons from Bandar Abbas, Iran, to Latakia, Syria. Unspecified sources told The Telegraph that some of these ships continue to Belgium, Italy, and Spain to obfuscate the nature of the shipments. One of the sources said that Iran has relied on shipping weapons to Hezbollah by sea following Israeli attacks on Iranian land shipments from Iraq to Syria.[45] Israel has conducted an air campaign in Syria in recent months meant to disrupt Iran’s efforts to transfer weapons and military systems to Hezbollah and other Iranian partners in the Levant.[46] Hezbollah members have claimed previously that the group controls surveillance at the port and that the port is ”ours, [Hezbollah’s].”[47]

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

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

Israel likely conducted a drone strike on March 15 targeting a truck transporting weapons for Iranian-backed militias near Albu Kamal, Syria.[48] A local Syrian outlet reported that the militia fighters were transporting Iranian missile parts to Lebanese Hezbollah.[49] The IDF previously said in February 2024 that it had conducted a series of airstrikes targeting more than 50 Hezbollah and Hezbollah-affiliated targets in Syria since the start of the Israel-Hamas war to interdict Iranian weapons shipments to Hezbollah through Syria.[50]

Iranian state media said on March 14 that Iran and the United States conducted secret indirect nuclear negotiations in Oman in January 2024, thus confirming earlier Western reports.[51] The Financial Times reported that the talks were primarily focused on convincing Tehran to pressure the Houthis to halt attacks on maritime traffic in the Red Sea but included discussions over Iran’s nuclear program.[52] Iranian state media denied that the negotiations addressed the Houthi attacks but confirmed that the two sides held nuclear negotiations, citing an unspecified “informed” Iranian source.[53]

The G7 countries warned Iran on March 15 that it should not transfer missiles to Russia.[54] The G7 countries threatened “new and significant measures against Iran,” including new sanctions, if Iran transfers missiles to Russia. Western media reported that the G7 is considering banning Iran’s national air carrier, Iran Air, from conducting flights to Europe.[55] American and European officials told Western media on March 15 that they have no evidence confirming that Iran has supplied missiles to Russia.[56] Iranian sources told Reuters on February 21 that Iran provided hundreds of short-range ballistic missiles to Russia in early January.[57]

Iranian Ambassador to Qatar Ali Saleh Abadi discussed security cooperation with Qatari Interior Minister and Internal Security Force (Lekhwiya) Commander Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad al Thani in Doha on March 14.[58] Abadi previously served as the governor of Iran’s Central Bank between October 2021 and December 2022 and has served as Iran’s ambassador to Qatar since August 2023.[59] Abadi’s appointment coincided with the transfer of $6 billion worth of frozen Iranian assets to Qatari banks as part of a prisoner swap agreement with the United States.[60] The Lekhwiya is a Qatari security service responsible for counterterrorism, riot control, the maintenance of security and public order, and the protection of Qatar’s borders and coasts.[61] Thani previously took military training courses on combating terrorism and riot control between 2015 and 2018.[62]

Houthi fighters have conducted at least three attacks targeting civilian and military vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since CTP-ISW's last data cut off on March 14.[63] US CENTCOM reported that the Houthis conducted two anti-ship ballistic missile attacks from Houthi-controlled Yemen, targeting unspecified targets in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.[64] Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree claimed on March 15 that Houthi fighters had targeted the Panama-flagged, Vietnamese-owned Pacific 01 merchant vessel in the Red Sea.[65] The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations separately reported an explosion occurred alongside a vessel on March 15 approximately 65 nautical miles west of Hudaydah in the Red Sea.[66] The vessel did not suffer any damage.[67] Saree also claimed that the Houthis launched one-way attack drones targeting a US warship in the Red Sea.[68]

US CENTCOM reported on March 14 that it conducted preemptive strikes targeting nine anti-ship missiles and two drones in Houthi-controlled Yemen.[69] CENTCOM determined that the munitions presented an “imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region.”

The United States and the United Kingdom expressed their support to boost the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism’s (UNVIM) capacity to inspect shipments to Houthi-controlled ports during a UNSC meeting on March 14.[70] US Alternative Representative for Special Political Affairs, Ambassador Robert Wood, stated that UNVIM is critical to identifying violations of the Houthi arms embargo and preventing weapon shipments to the Houthis.[71] UNVIM operates under the auspices of UN Security Council Resolution 2216 to monitor commercial and bilateral aid shipments bound for Yemeni ports in the Red Sea and inspect the cargo for banned items, including weapons.[72] UNSC Resolution 2216 demanded an immediate ceasefire in Yemen in 2015 and imposed sanctions, a travel ban, and an arms embargo on Houthi supreme leader Abdulmalik al Houthi.[73] Iran continues to supply advanced conventional weapons and ”other lethal aid” to the Houthis in support of the group’s attack campaign in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, according to US officials.[74]

19. The War on Terror Is Back

Excerpts:

Just as profoundly, counterterrorism has ceased to be a significant organizing principle in U.S. policy planning. Indeed, the Biden administration's October 2022 National Security Strategy barely makes any mention of the urgency of fighting against militant Islam and contesting extremist actors.

Yet, as strategic planners know all too well regarding the battlefield, the adversary also gets a vote. So, it is with the threat posed by radical Islam. As America increasingly focuses on the dangers of Russian imperialism and Chinese expansionism, extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, as well as malign actors such as Iran, are exploiting the consequent opening. The result is a spreading global disorder that threatens both American interests and U.S. allies.

All of this demands that Washington refocus in earnest on the counterterrorism fight and do so without delay.

The War on Terror Is Back

Within the Beltway, February and March tend to be busy months, when high-ranking military commanders and senior intelligence officials descend on Capitol Hill to update lawmakers on the assorted threats facing the United States. This year, however, interspersed with the usual briefings about Russia (reenergized by what it sees as flagging Western support for Ukraine) and China—with its persistent desire to dominate Taiwan—Members of Congress also heard a different and deeply unwelcome message. The conflict once called the “War on Terror” has well and truly returned.

The National Interest · by Ilan Berman · March 15, 2024

Most immediately, the cause is the savage campaign of terror carried out by the Palestinian terror group Hamas on October 7, 2023. Much like the Biden administration’s hasty retreat from Afghanistan three years ago inspired a fresh generation of jihadists, the grisly success of Hamas’ offensive against Israel (which resulted in the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust) has breathed new life and vitality into an array of extremist Islamic factions.

“Both al-Qa‘ida and ISIS, inspired by the HAMAS attack against Israel, have directed their supporters to conduct attacks against Israeli and U.S. interests,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines informed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Furthermore, Hamas’ actions are now “galvanizing individuals to leverage the Palestinian plight for recruitment and inspiration to conduct attacks.”

But other factors are also at play. In Africa, for instance, massive disparities in resources, widespread economic privation, and chronically weak regimes have generated enormous volatility and given Islamists a much-needed foothold. “In East Africa, al-Shabaab and ISIS bring violence to peoples already struggling with inter-ethnic clashes and climate-related food and water shortages,” Gen. Michael Langley, who leads the United States Africa Command, told the Senate on March 7. “Conflict and climate challenges also loom over the vast populations and natural resources of Central Africa, while Southern Africa faces economic and energy shortfalls, combined with an ISIS insurgency in Mozambique.”

Simultaneously, massive strategic gains are being made by another actor, Iran, which is fast emerging as the principal beneficiary of the spreading regional disorder in the Middle East. In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, illustrated that regional threats like attacks on maritime commerce by Yemen's Houthi rebels and the targeting of U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria by Shia militias are part of a larger pattern, with the Islamic Republic at its center. The events of October 7 “created the conditions for malign actors to sow instability throughout the region and beyond,” Kurilla said, and Iran leaders have “exploited what they saw as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the Middle East to their advantage.”

At the moment, America is woefully unprepared for such a resurgence. In recent years, countering Islamic extremism has taken a back seat to “great power competition” with a rising and increasingly belligerent China (as well as an aggressive, militaristic Russia), with profound effects. Relevant defense budgets have dwindled as policymakers in Washington have increasingly prioritized conventional warfighting over special operations and low-intensity conflict.

Just as profoundly, counterterrorism has ceased to be a significant organizing principle in U.S. policy planning. Indeed, the Biden administration's October 2022 National Security Strategy barely makes any mention of the urgency of fighting against militant Islam and contesting extremist actors.

Yet, as strategic planners know all too well regarding the battlefield, the adversary also gets a vote. So, it is with the threat posed by radical Islam. As America increasingly focuses on the dangers of Russian imperialism and Chinese expansionism, extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, as well as malign actors such as Iran, are exploiting the consequent opening. The result is a spreading global disorder that threatens both American interests and U.S. allies.

All of this demands that Washington refocus in earnest on the counterterrorism fight and do so without delay.

About the Author

Ilan Berman is Senior Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.

The National Interest · by Ilan Berman · March 15, 2024

20. SEALs break new ground while submarine breaks through ice at Arctic allied exercise

Photos at the link: https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2024-03-13/seals-green-berets-arctic-13304192.html?utm

SEALs break new ground while submarine breaks through ice at Arctic allied exercise

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · March 13, 2024

A C-130 Hercules assigned to the 109th Airlift Wing, part of the New York Air National Guard, flies over Navy SEALs, Norwegian naval special operations commandos and the attack submarine USS Hampton during an integration exercise in the Arctic Ocean, Saturday, March 9, 2024. (Jeff Atherton/U.S. Navy)

STUTTGART, Germany — U.S. special operators and allied commandos moved across frozen tundra in snowmobiles and linked up with a fast-attack submarine after it cracked through a thick sheet of ice, marking a first in the Arctic Circle, military officials said this week.

Some 400 Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets and elite troops from several NATO countries were fanned out in the upper Arctic for weeks to hone their cold-weather fighting skills during Arctic Edge 24.

The exercise was part of a flurry of ongoing military maneuvers stretching from the northernmost points of the United States to Finland, Sweden and Norway.

Special operators broke new ground when MH-47G Chinook helicopters landed in a secure zone past Utqiagvik, Alaska, having received ice depth information from a U.S. submarine in the area, Naval Special Warfare Group Two said in a statement Tuesday.

U.S. Navy SEALs and Norwegian naval special operations commandos test ice thickness to establish a landing zone for an MH-47G Chinook helicopter during an integration exercise in the Arctic Ocean on Saturday, March 9, 2024. (Jeff Atherton/U.S. Navy)

From there, the commandos took off in snowmobiles to set up a command-and-control tent, coordinated an airdrop “of a critical package” from a C-130 Hercules and carried on across the tundra to deliver the package to the submarine USS Hampton, which moments beforehand surfaced through the sea ice, military officials said.

“This marked the first-ever integration of SOF personnel, SOF aircraft and snowmobiles coming together to conduct an operation with a submarine that surfaced that deep in the Arctic Circle,” Naval Special Warfare Group Two said in a statement Tuesday.

Military officials did not detail the contents of the “critical package” or the nature of the training scenario, which brought together special operators and an attack submarine designed to seek and destroy enemy submarines and surface ships.

The strategic value of the High North has increased over the years, as melting sea ice opens the possibility of new shipping lanes and greater access to undersea natural resources that the Kremlin has its eye on. Russia has sought to fortify its position in the region with numerous military bases now in operation.

A Navy special warfare operator hands off a package from an airdrop to a sailor assigned to the attack submarine USS Hampton on Saturday, March 9, 2024, during an integration exercise that was part of Arctic Edge 24. (Jeff Atherton/U.S. Navy)

Capt. Bill Gallagher, commander of Naval Special Warfare Group Two, said in a statement Tuesday that the drills were intended to discourage aggression from potential adversaries.

“Given the frequency with which we are training alongside our allied partners and demonstrating our combined expertise in some of the most severe environments on the planet, we are sending a clear message about our warfighting ability and our preparedness to defend the homeland across the Arctic region,” Gallagher said in the statement.

Arctic Edge 24, which ended Tuesday, included special operators fast-roping from helicopters, multiple diving operations and pier-side vessel attacks by combat swimmer infiltration.

A Navy SEAL uses a radio on the ice next to the attack submarine USS Hampton during an integration exercise with Norwegian naval special operations commandos Saturday, March 9, 2024, as part of Arctic Edge. (Jeff Atherton/U.S. Navy)

Other exercises in the Arctic are ongoing. The two-week Nordic Response, which involves 20,000 U.S. and allied troops, will conclude Thursday.

Meanwhile, soldiers from the Alaska-based 11th Airborne Division will fly over the North Pole next week for Arctic Shock, which will see them dropping down in northern Norway.

“The Arctic is a critical region for power projection and homeland defense,” Maj. Gen. Brian Eifler, 11th Airborne Division commanding general, said in a statement Monday.

Navy SEALs and Norwegian naval special operations commandos retrieve an airdropped package from a C-130 Hercules assigned to the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing during exercise Arctic Edge on Saturday, March 9, 2024. The training was designed to bolster troops’ skills in an arctic environment. (Jeff Atherton/U.S. Navy)

Naval special warfare operators and Norwegian naval commandos exit an MH-47G Chinook helicopter Saturday, March 9, 2024, during an integration exercise designed to bolster skills in Arctic environments. (Jeff Atherton/U.S. Navy)

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · March 13, 2024

21. Pacific leaders say they need more funding to compete with China

Excerpts:

By far the largest section in the new request is for “posture and presence” in the region, with a price tag of almost $19 billion. Many items in that group have appeared in past reports, but now include a higher dollar figure. For example, the document asks for just over $2 billion in funding to defend Guam and $125 million to defend Hawaii — the latter nearly three times more than last year’s request as the combatant command seeks a new radar installation.

The trove of weapons included — from long-range missiles to mines to torpedoes — is listed at just under $8 billion, near triple that of last year.

It also includes a new $1.7 billion request for “all domain attritable autonomous capabilities,” or drones, for the Navy. Those programs are listed as classified, but closely resemble the goal of Replicator — an effort by the Pentagon to buy thousands of drones that could be useful against China before next August.

The other major increase in this year’s report is for military construction: $4.8 billion, which is more than double the amount requested last year. Those funds would largely go to military sites spread across different Pacific Islands.

Pacific leaders say they need more funding to compete with China

Defense News · by Noah Robertson · March 14, 2024

America’s military leaders in the Pacific are asking Congress for a surge in funding to keep their edge against China.

The request comes in the form of an annual review Indo-Pacific Command sends lawmakers, listing what it thinks is necessary to stay the region’s top military power.

Defense News obtained an unclassified copy of this year’s report, which requests around $26.5 billion. That’s more than $11 billion above what INDOPACOM asked for in 2023 and more than four times the figure from two years ago. Much of the money would go toward precision weapons, infrastructure on Islands where American forces could operate and the missile defense of Guam — a longtime focus of the combatant command.

The 2024 defense policy bill allotted $14.7 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative — a select list of what the Defense Department spends in the region. Congress, though, hasn’t yet passed a full defense budget for this fiscal year, so the Pentagon doesn’t know how much it will actually get to use. Meanwhile, the Defense Department’s newly requested budget for FY25 includes about $9.9 billion for the initiative, around $800 million more than requested for FY24.

Speaking with Defense News on the condition of anonymity, a senior defense official said about $15 billion of the $26.5 billion listed in this year’s report is also included in the FY25 budget request. That leaves $11 billion in “unfunded priorities,” which the combatant command details in another review it sends each year to Congress. Munitions, infrastructure projects and the defense of Guam make up most of that $11 billion disparity, the official said.

More broadly, the gap between what INDOPACOM says it needs and what the Pentagon requests in the Pacific Deterrence Initiative is an enduring point of tension among lawmakers, the combatant command and the Defense Department. Congress created the program in part to give military leaders in the Pacific a chance to pitch what they need directly to lawmakers, rather than risk it getting lost in the Pentagon’s budgeting process.

Motivating that change has been China’s recent military buildup. The People’s Liberation Army is the world’s largest active-duty force — some 4 million strong — and has spent the last 20 years improving its weapons and working toward its goal of building a “world class” military.

The Pentagon’s annual assessment of China’s military says the PLA’s goal is to be able to win in a fight against a “strong enemy,” a likely reference to the U.S. A secondary goal is to keep another country from intervening in a conflict over Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its rightful territory and has threatened to invade.

“The security environment in the Indo-Pacific is becoming more dangerous and defined by an increasing risk of confrontation and crisis,” reads INDOPACOM’s new report.

By far the largest section in the new request is for “posture and presence” in the region, with a price tag of almost $19 billion. Many items in that group have appeared in past reports, but now include a higher dollar figure. For example, the document asks for just over $2 billion in funding to defend Guam and $125 million to defend Hawaii — the latter nearly three times more than last year’s request as the combatant command seeks a new radar installation.

The trove of weapons included — from long-range missiles to mines to torpedoes — is listed at just under $8 billion, near triple that of last year.

It also includes a new $1.7 billion request for “all domain attritable autonomous capabilities,” or drones, for the Navy. Those programs are listed as classified, but closely resemble the goal of Replicator — an effort by the Pentagon to buy thousands of drones that could be useful against China before next August.

The other major increase in this year’s report is for military construction: $4.8 billion, which is more than double the amount requested last year. Those funds would largely go to military sites spread across different Pacific Islands.

About Noah Robertson

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

22. Drone Swarms Are About to Change the Balance of Military Power

Excerpts:

The Department of Defense is already researching a “brain-computer interface,” which is a direct communications pathway between the brain and an AI. A recent study by the RAND Corporation examining how such an interface could “support human-machine decision-making” raised the myriad ethical concerns that exist when humans become the weakest link in the wartime decision-making chain. To avoid a nightmare future with battlefields populated by fully autonomous killer robots, the U.S. has insisted that a human decision maker must always remain in the loop before any AI-based system might conduct a lethal strike.

But will our adversaries show similar restraint? Or would they be willing to remove the human to gain an edge on the battlefield? The first battles in this new age of warfare are only now being fought. It’s easy to imagine a future, however, where navies will cease to operate as fleets and will become schools of unmanned surface and submersible vessels, where air forces will stand down their squadrons and stand up their swarms, and where a conquering army will appear less like Alexander’s soldiers and more like a robotic infestation.

Much like the nuclear arms race of the last century, the AI arms race will define this current one. Whoever wins will possess a profound military advantage. Make no mistake, if placed in authoritarian hands, AI dominance will become a tool of conquest, just as Alexander expanded his empire with the new weapons and tactics of his age. The ancient historian Plutarch reminds us how that campaign ended: “When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.”

Drone Swarms Are About to Change the Balance of Military Power

On today’s battlefields, drones are a manageable threat. When hundreds of them can be harnessed to AI technology, they will become a tool of conquest.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/drone-swarms-are-about-to-change-the-balance-of-military-power-e091aa6f?utm_medium=social

By Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis

March 14, 2024 10:00 am ET

The Shahed-model drone that killed three U.S. service members at a remote base in Jordan on Jan. 28 cost around $20,000. It was part of a family of drones built by Shahed Aviation Industries Research Center, an Iranian company run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. A thousand miles away and three days later, on the night of Jan. 31 into the morning of Feb. 1, unmanned maritime drones deployed by Ukraine’s secretive Unit 13 sunk the $70 million Russian warship Ivanovets in the Black Sea. And for the past several months, Houthi proxies have shut down billions of dollars of trade through the Gulf of Aden through similarly inexpensive drone attacks on maritime shipping. Drones have become suddenly ubiquitous on the battlefield—but we are only at the dawn of this new age in warfare.

This would not be the first time that a low-cost technology and a new conception of warfare combined to supplant high-cost technologies based on old ways. History is littered with similar stories. A favorite comes from the time of Alexander the Great. His conquests are as much a technological story as a political one. When Alexander’s army stepped onto the battlefield it was not only with a new technology—the sarissa, a 16-foot spear—but also with a new conception of how to use that weapon in tight, impregnable phalanxes. These heavily armed formations allowed Alexander to repel Persian armored chariots and Indian war elephants and to march deep into the subcontinent.

The phalanx armed with long spears was a military innovation that transformed ancient warfare, enabling the conquests of Alexander the Great. PHOTO: DORLING KINDERSLEY RF/GETTY IMAGES

The most formidable element of American power-projection has long been the warship. After the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel, the Biden administration sent two carrier battle groups to the region to deter Iranian aggression. One of those carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford, was on its maiden voyage, having recently been completed at a price tag of $13 billion. This makes it the most expensive warship in history.

For that same sum, a nation could purchase 650,000 Shahed drones. It would only take a few of those drones finding their target to cripple and perhaps sink the Ford. Fortunately, the Ford and other U.S. warships possess ample missile defense systems that make it highly improbable that a few, or even a few dozen, Shahed drones could land direct hits. But rapid developments in AI are changing that.

Drones are simple, cheap and available to militaries the world over—they’re the sarissas of today. But what those militaries have yet to achieve is the conception of war that will fulfill the potential of these unmanned systems. Much as the sarissa changed the face of warfare 2,000 years ago when employed in a phalanx of well-trained soldiers, the drone will change the face of warfare when employed in swarms directed by AI. This moment hasn’t yet arrived, but it is rushing to meet us. If we’re not prepared, these new technologies deployed at scale could shift the global balance of military power.

The future of warfare won’t be decided by weapons systems but by systems of weapons, and those systems will cost less. Many of them already exist, whether they’re the Shahed drones attacking shipping in the Gulf of Aden or the Switchblade drones destroying Russian tanks in the Donbas or smart seaborne mines around Taiwan. What doesn’t yet exist are the AI-directed systems that will allow a nation to take unmanned warfare to scale. But they’re coming.

A few Shahed drones are mostly a hassle, easily swatted from the sky except in the rare case when they score a lucky hit. They are best at blinding radars, disrupting communications and attacking small numbers of troops, as they did tragically in Jordan. But dozens or hundreds of drones in AI-directed swarms will have the capacity to overwhelm defenses and destroy even advanced platforms. Nations that depend on large, expensive systems like aircraft carriers, stealth aircraft or even battle tanks could find themselves vulnerable against an adversary who deploys a variety of low-cost, easily dispersed and long-range unmanned weapons.

Ukraine’s Unconventional Military Options – Analysis

eurasiareview.com · March 16, 2024

By Can Kasapoğlu

The Military Necessity of Exploring Ukraine’s Unconventional Options

A week on the ground in Ukraine made one aspect of the current war abundantly clear: the incumbent situation is not a stalemate. Assessing it as one could lead to catastrophic consequences for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and for Europe’s defense architecture.

There is no doubt that Russia holds many advantages and that the situation on the ground remains dangerous for Ukraine. Indeed, the battlefield geometry is largely static, while Russia holds the upper hand in force generation and artillery. Moreover, while the Russian military’s engineering units have prepared a deep and multi-layered defensive complex, Ukraine lacks similar structures that can stabilize the front when the situation worsens.

Furthermore, the Kremlin can continue to conscript and further mobilize from a large manpower pool of millions of personnel, while Ukraine could not even finalize its recent mobilization draft. Worse, Russia’s partners in crime, North Korea and Iran, have boosted the Russian military’s warfighting prowess with systematic arms transfers. Cumulatively, these factors have led to sharp differences in the force-on-force and force-to-terrain capabilities of the belligerents, favoring Moscow in the long run.

But this war is not the sprint that the Kremlin envisioned it would be—it is a marathon. While Russia may possess the stamina for a long-running conflict, Ukraine has demonstrated increasing skill in employing unconventional military options to combat Russia’s many advantages.

This special edition, while neither an intelligence forecast nor a set of specific defense policy recommendations, examines three such options. Each of them holds the potential to help Kyiv gain ground in this marathon conflict.

Option 1: Targeting the Joint Russia-Iran Drone Plant and Other Military-Industrial Facilities inside Russia

Targeting the joint Russia-Iran drone plant deep inside Russian territory would carry both military and political weight for Ukraine. Such an attack would also resonate with Tehran, sending a strong message to the Islamic Republic and its formidable Revolutionary Guard Corps to reduce their roles in the conflict.

The threat posed by Iran-originated Shahed loitering munitions, now produced in Russia under the Geran family, is growing. Recently, Russia has increased its use of these drone warfare assets, and Russian combat formations are now able to unleash scores of the weapons each week.

Moreover, new variants of the Shahed line have become increasingly effective. As a recent edition of this Hudson newsletter detailed, a large number of new Shaheds, including the jet-powered Shahed-238 variant, have become operational. Other platforms of the baseline feature warheads equipped with tungsten balls, shrapnel, or thermobaric warheads. A new class of the family possesses special coatings that decrease the drones’ radar signatures. Drone wreckage has even shown that some Shaheds carry Kyivstar SIM cards and modems that allow them to map out Ukrainian air defenses in advance of follow-on attacks.

There is no underestimating the magnitude of the threat that Shahed munitions pose for Kyiv. The drones are causing three specific problems for Ukraine.

First, they are depleting the nation’s already scarce air defense resources. By triggering sirens in an area of attack, even a fully intercepted wave can paralyze operations in critical facilities like the Port of Odesa. Second, Shahed salvos divert Ukraine’s maneuver short-range air defense (M-SHORAD) assets, such as its 35mm-class Flakpanzer Gepard anti-aircraft guns, to protect population centers. These assets are better utilized fulfilling their designed function, which is accompanying heavy armor and mechanized formations to protect them from air threats. Third, Shahed drones are being employed in mixed strike packages alongside missiles, further complicating the picture for Ukraine’s air defenses.

Recent media posts indicate that the new drone plant in Tatarstan, operated jointly by Russia and Iran, is the likely source of many of the Russian military’s Shahed loitering munitions. As such, the factory offers a legitimate target for Ukrainian strikes. Unchecked, the plant will continue to produce thousands of Shahed variants, further plaguing the skies. To ensure its national security, Kyiv needs to put constant pressure on the facility, if not eliminate it altogether.

Open-source intelligence suggests that the plant is located in Yelabuga, Tatarstan, in Russia’s special economic zone. To strike it, Ukraine would have to hit a facility some 900 miles from its border, while Ukraine’s longest-range drone, the UJ-26 Beaver, only has an approximate range of 620 miles. Open-source data suggests that the UJ-26 carries a relatively small, 44-pound warhead, so reducing its combat payload is not a viable option.

Instead, Ukraine will have to boost the range of the kamikaze drone without making the warhead smaller, should it opt for launching the UJ-26 into Tatarstan. Since a small number of drones would likely fail to seriously damage the Yelabuga factory, which is almost certainly protected by dense air defenses, a large salvo would also be necessary

Another option for Ukraine would be to launch a Shahed drone strike of its own against the plant. Interestingly, in late 2023, the chief executive officer of the Ukrainian defense industry company Ukroboronprom, Herman Smetanin, stated that Kyiv has been pursuing a Shahed drone of its own. A typical Shahed-136 has a range of roughly 1,600 miles and delivers a warhead weighing between 80 and 100 pounds. While Ukraine has not yet produced a drone with a range exceeding 620 miles, its defense technological and industrial base (DTIB) is likely capable of successfully copying and producing long-range Shahed loitering munitions to target the drone plant in Tatarstan.

While striking that factory would carry significant symbolic value, conducting a systematic long-range campaign against other Russian defense industrial facilities would also hurt the Kremlin. Ukraine’s recent strike against Russia’s Taganrog Aviation Plant, which hosted A-50 Beriev airborne early warning and control (EW&C) aircraft, is a telling example of this type of campaign, as is Ukraine’s January 2024 attack on the Shcheglovsky Val defense enterprise in Tula, a facility that manufactures the Pantsir short-to-medium range air defense system.

Ukraine could also use its growing arsenal of Neptune anti-ship missiles, which recently gained a land-attack capability and extended range, in a mixed strike package alongside loitering munitions. Moreover, a large transfer of Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), ideally including the unitary warhead variant, could help the Ukrainians get the job done. Neptune missiles and the ATACMS could easily reach many defense industrial plants located near Ukraine.

Option 2: Temporarily Seizing Russian Territory

While the Russian military is formidable, the Soviet-remnant siloviki elite’s adventurist military dreams have made it vulnerable to internal threats. During the June 2023 armed mutiny by the Wagner Private Military Company, for example, the shadow army seized control of Rostov-on-Don, and the Southern Military District headquarters within the city, in a matter of hours. The group then moved north, stopping just short of Moscow.

In 2023, anti-Kremlin Russian paramilitary groups, dubbed the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, raided the Russian city of Belgorod, sparking clashes there. Evidence suggests that these paramilitary raids were coordinated with Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR). The GUR’s widely known chief, General Kyrylo Budanov, has already expressed his interest in striking deep inside Russia.

This week, another raiding party composed of Ukraine-supported, anti-Kremlin Russian groups hit Belgorod and Kursk, making incursions along the Russian border. The attackers hit the state administration building in Belgorod with drones, while Russian mediaand Telegram channels claimed that Tochka-U tactical ballistic missiles and Vampire heavy rockets were also used in the operation. Reportedly, the attack involved the Siberian Battalion, a pro-Ukraine paramilitary group manned by Turkic Buryat and Yakut fighters. According to news outlets, the raid employed artillery and armor, showcasing sophisticated planning.

The March 2024 Kursk and Belgorod attacks, following in the footsteps of the 2023 armed incursions into Russia, were at best probing efforts. Nonetheless, they provided Ukraine with a template for dispatching surprise forays at larger scale, potentially using additional fire-support elements to temporarily seize and control terrain.

Such a military strategy would heighten the domestic threats to the Kremlin, worsening the security perceptions sparked by Wagner’s thwarted uprising. In addition to the armed Russian and Belarusian opposition, Ukraine can employ other battle-hardened groups more effectively, such as the Georgian Legion, which excels at fire-support operations in mobile detachments, as well as several Chechen battalions that would gladly take part in the raids.

Option 3: A Ukrainian Military Campaign in Transnistria

The Russian military has a 1,500-strong forward presence in the breakaway Transnistria region of Moldova. While Russia’s Ministry of Defense claims that the Kremlin has fielded only one battalion there, available writings suggest a larger deployment has occurred. Moreover, the area hosts a large military storage facility for the Kremlin, the Cobasna ammunition depot.

From a geostrategic standpoint, the Ukrainian military enjoys the upper hand in any offensive initiative against the Russian contingent in Transnistria. Since the region is surrounded by Moldova and Ukraine, the Kremlin cannot reinforce its forward-deployed troops there. Moreover, the bulk of the military personnel in the area are conscripted from the local pro-Russian population.

Targeting and expelling the Russian presence in Transnistria would score important political and military points for Kyiv. Above all, Russia’s expansionist presence in the area poses a threat to the Ukrainian city of Odesa. Before the current war, the Kremlin had assembled a large amphibious force of assets from Kaliningrad, the Black Sea Fleet, and the Eastern Military District, possibly aiming at a landing to seize Odesa. Had the Russian military managed to conduct such an ambitious operation—which was stymied by the Ukrainian coastal defenses’ sinking of the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship Moskva in April 2022 and the deterrence signal it sent—Russia could have attempted to link Odesa to its forces in Transnistria.

Seizing Russian-held territory would equip Ukraine, which has long been on the defensive, with leverage in escalation dominance against the Kremlin. Of course, such a bold move would come with risks. A large-scale strike could trigger a humanitarian situation in Moldova and neighboring Romania. Shelling near the Cobasna military depot could prove very dangerous. But none of these risks are inevitable. Ukrainian troops conducting systemic incursions into Transnistria augmented by targeted drone strikes could force the Russian contingent in the breakaway province to abandon its positions. Since Ukraine, a victim of the unfolding invasion, would not run a war of conquest in sovereign Moldovan territory, such a military operation should be married to fast diplomatic talks with Chisinau, as well as a border security deal between the two nations.

With elections set for later this year in Moldova and European Union accession on the table, the nation’s intelligence services expect that the country is likely to be exposed to intense Russian hybrid warfare efforts in 2024. Proactively depriving Moscow of its leverage in Transnistria could help the country’s pro-Western president, Maia Sandu, set a geopolitical course forward.

Battlefield Update

Last week, the balance of power on the battlefield remained relatively unchanged. Russia remained on the offensive, expanding territorial control in the eastern and southern sectors. Ukraine remained largely on the defensive and continued its efforts to push back advancing Russian combat formations. The Ukrainian military’s localized counterattacks slowed down the Russian advance, though Kyiv’s recent choice to preserve its manpower and withdraw from Avdiivka illustrates that Ukraine’s political-military leadership is well aware of its recent setbacks.

According to recent reports, Russia currently controls approximately 18.5 percent of Ukrainian territory. While this is down from 26.4 percent in the spring of 2022, the Russian push remains strong and menacing on multiple axes.

In the east, one of Russia’s main strategic priorities continued to be increasing its hold on Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts while Moscow maintained its positions in the south. Along the eastern front line, hotspots such as Kupiansk, Svatove, Bakhmut, Stepove, Avdiivka, and Mariinka witnessed heavy positional fighting over the last week. In the south, Russia pushed Ukrainian defenses, with a particular focus on Robotyne and Verbove. In Robotyne, numerous reports suggest that trenches, ongoing Ukrainian strikes, and electronic warfare (EW) efforts are slowing down Russian advances.

According to the United Kingdom’s Defense Intelligence, in an attempt to slow down Russia’s progress and perhaps a large-scale offensive in the future, Ukraine recently accelerated the fortification of defensive positions. In addition, despite mounting pressure, Ukrainian combat formations continued to hold their positions along the bridgehead across the Dnipro River near Krynky. But holding the tactically important position is getting harder and costlier for Ukraine every day.

While the character of Russia’s aerial assaults did not change significantly this week, their intensity and frequency saw a substantial uptrend. As in past strikes, the recent attacks targeted civilian centers. In Odesa, where Russia intensified its efforts, five people were killed in a strike less than one-third of a mile from a high-level meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. On March 10, Ukrainian forces neutralized 35 out of the 39 Shahed drones that Russia launched from occupied Crimea and Krasnodar. These strikes also included several S-300 missiles modified for attack roles.

According to Russian sources, on March 9, Russia struck a Ukrainian Patriot air defense system in Donetsk. While the destruction of the targeted launcher vehicles was confirmed by visual evidence from the battlefield, attempts to identify the specific destroyed Ukrainian assets are pending further investigation.

Ukrainian forces persisted in their strikes against critical Russian platforms and facilities. They conducted an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) attack in Rostov Oblast featuring dozens of drones, allegedly engaging an A-50 Beriev aircraft parked at the Taganrog plant. Russia uses this facility for the maintenance and repair of its rare aerial assets, including the A-50, making it a critical hub for the sustainability of Russian air power.

Ukrainian strikes also caused economic damage in Russia. According to British intelligence, Russia’s oil refining capacity might have temporarily plunged due to the Ukrainian UAV strikes, leading to higher gasoline prices as Russia’s elections near.

About the author: Can Kasapoğlu is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute
Source: This article was published by the Hudson Institute

eurasiareview.com · March 16, 2024

24. How Cuba Recruits Spies to Penetrate Inner Circles of the U.S. Government

How Cuba Recruits Spies to Penetrate Inner Circles of the U.S. Government

Washington has long underestimated Havana, which often shares intelligence with Moscow and Beijing

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/how-cuba-recruits-spies-to-penetrate-inner-circles-of-the-u-s-government-d277b931?mod=hp_lead_pos6

By Brett ForrestFollow

and Warren P. StrobelFollow

March 16, 2024 7:00 am ET

MIAMI—Manuel Rocha was on alert, zigzagging through Miami’s Brickell district, en route to a clandestine meeting—at a church.

The retired U.S. ambassador was fearful of being tailed. But “a message for you from your friends in Havana” was waiting, promised a text from the man who had requested the covert encounter, according to a federal criminal complaint.

The urbane and self-assured Rocha failed to detect counterintelligence agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation who were watching and following.

The FBI arrested Rocha in December, and U.S. prosecutors allege he secretly pushed Cuba’s agenda for more than 40 years as he advanced through top posts at the State Department, National Security Council and the U.S. military’s Southern Command. Rocha told a federal judge last month that he intends to plead guilty to being an agent of Cuba.

Attorney General Merrick Garland called the Rocha case one of the “highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent” of any country.

Attorney General Merrick Garland called the Rocha case one of the ‘highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent’ of any country. PHOTO: DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

The Rocha affair, just one in a string of cases in which Americans accused of spying for Havana have penetrated virtually every segment of the U.S. national security structure, points to a larger problem, former U.S. and Cuban intelligence officers say. Cuba and its intelligence service, the Dirección de Inteligencia, are in the world’s top ranks when it comes to recruiting spies, while the American teams responsible for stopping them are understaffed and outmatched, according to former U.S. counterintelligence officials.

Cuba has “the best damn intelligence service in the world” for cultivating agents, said Brian Latell, a former CIA analyst who led the agency’s Latin America division.

And the implications of that espionage extend beyond Cuba. Former U.S. officials say Washington has repeatedly underestimated the danger from Havana, which often distributes the fruits of its spying to more potent adversaries such as Russia and China.

The Justice Department said that Cuba “has long posed a significant counterintelligence threat to the United States,” citing its relationship with U.S. rivals.

The Cuban Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘Sinister genius’

Modeled on the Soviet KGB and its Eastern bloc cousins, Cuba’s spy service still relies on time-tested Cold War spy tradecraft, such as high-frequency shortwave radio transmissions to communicate with agents, and one-time cipher pads to encode and decode messages. What it lacked in high tech it made up for in human capital.

“One of the reasons they were so good is they had a sinister genius running their service, the president of Cuba,” Latell said, referring to Fidel Castro.

The office of Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother and Cuba’s former longtime military chief, would receive stacks of original U.S. government documents from moles at the State Department, Pentagon and elsewhere, Alcibíades Hidalgo, Raúl Castro’s chief of staff for 12 years, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We didn’t have the capacity to go through them all.”

Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl, pictured in 1977, took special interest in U.S. officials of Hispanic background who might be sympathetic to Havana. PHOTO: FRED WARD/DISNEY GENERAL ENTERTAINMENT CONTENT/GETTY IMAGES

The haul was sometimes momentous, and included stolen American high tech and intended targets of U.S. military plans. Other times it was mundane, such as one CIA report detailing how a Brazilian president had died after doctors misdiagnosed his ailment, diverticulitis. Hidalgo said Raúl told him to flag anything else about the disease: “Fidel suffers from this.”

Cuba recruited Americans, in part, by looking for potential sympathizers. Cuban intelligence officers routinely target young people, often in academia, with an ideological pitch about Cuba suffering under the U.S. economic embargo and other policies, current and former officials say.

“The Cubans didn’t pay big and didn’t need to pay big,” said Stuart Hoyt Jr., a former FBI agent who worked Cuban counterintelligence cases. “Because they could find people that sympathize.”

Ana Belén Montes, a senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst considered Havana’s most damaging spy in the U.S. government, was recruited by Cuban intelligence while a student. She rose through the ranks to become one of U.S. intelligence’s top Cuba specialists. She pleaded guilty in 2002 to spying and served two decades in prison.

Montes, who spied undetected for Cuba for 17 years, told Havana about a stealth spy satellite program code-named Misty, information of more utility to Russia and China than Cuba, according to Jim Popkin, author of a book on the Montes case.

José Cohen Valdés, a former Cuban cryptography officer who defected on a raft in 1994, said that when intelligence would come in, Havana would categorize it to determine what was useful for its own purposes, and what might help other countries.

“All agents who work for Cuba indirectly work for governments that are hostile to the U.S.,” he said in an interview with the Journal.

Ana Belén Montes, who was considered Havana’s most damaging spy in the U.S. government, was awarded a certificate of distinction from CIA Director George Tenet. PHOTO: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE/REUTERS

65-Junk

When it came to recruiting agents, Cuba’s spies always had one major advantage over their American counterparts. Havana’s spy priority has always been the U.S., while Cuba is often an afterthought for Washington.

The FBI’s New York field office recently had 12 counterintelligence squads dedicated to Russia, but just one for Cuba, said Chris Simmons, who worked Cuban counterintelligence cases at the DIA.

“There was a revolving door at Cuban counterintelligence; everybody wanted to get out,” said Peter Lapp, a former FBI agent who investigated Montes and wrote a book about the case.

The FBI’s label for Cuban spy cases was 65J, but agents called it “65-Junk,” Lapp said.

If the FBI failed to identify agents spying on the U.S., the CIA had its own problems penetrating Cuba. In 1987, a Cuban military officer—code-named “Touchdown” by the CIA—defected while serving in Eastern Europe. Cuban Maj. Florentino Aspillaga Lombard told his stunned American handlers that all but one of the four dozen agents the CIA was running in Cuba was a “double,” secretly under the Castro regime’s control. The revelation chilled CIA recruiting efforts in Cuba for years, officials said.

Cuban media reported that one of the doubles had received a CIA award, according to Latell. “The CIA didn’t suspect a thing,” he said.

Cuba, meanwhile, was busy running agents who secured jobs at U.S. military bases with false identities under a program code-named “Operation Texaco,” according to a former federal prosecutor and judge. Havana also penetrated exile groups in South Florida and participated in the downing of a private flight operated by an anti-Castro group, killing four people.

In the early 2000s, U.S. counterintelligence services knew of more than 100 actual or potential Cuban agents in the U.S., according to Lapp, yet failed to allocate requisite manpower to investigate them.

Former U.S. and Cuban officials suspect that Havana still runs agents within the U.S. government and society, based on defector accounts, intercepted communications and Cuban tradecraft.

Grand slam

The government believes that Cuba recruited Rocha, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Colombia, during his stay as a student in Chile in 1973. He fit a mold familiar to Fidel Castro, who took special interest in U.S. officials of Hispanic background who might be sympathetic to Havana, said a former Cuban intelligence officer who defected to the U.S.

Manuel Rocha, at front right, with Bolivian leaders in 2001 in La Paz when he was the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia. PHOTO: GONZALO ESPINOZA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Rocha, who became a “great friend” of Cuban intelligence, according to the criminal complaint, joined the State Department in 1981 and worked at U.S. embassies in Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Mexico. “You just cringe when you think of the amount of high-level information that he had,” said Evan Ellis, a Latin America expert at the U.S. Army War College.

After retiring from the State Department in 2002, Rocha joined several boards and businesses. He advised the U.S. military’s Southern Command, which oversees U.S. operations and security in Latin America, where he continued to access sensitive information and maintain contact with Cuban intelligence, the Justice Department alleges.

Publicly, it is unknown if the U.S. suspected Rocha of Cuban ties while he served in government. He was almost certainly identified by either a Cuban defector or in coded communications the U.S. intercepted, according to former American officials.

In late 2022, an undercover FBI counterintelligence agent posing as a Cuban intelligence official contacted him by text message. In three Miami-area meetings in a year-plus, Rocha boasted of his success in penetrating the State Department, according to the criminal complaint.

U.S. officials “underestimated what we could do to them,” Rocha said in one of the meetings, according to a government affidavit. His collaboration with Cuban intelligence, he said, was “more than a grand slam.”

Write to Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@wsj.com and Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com

25. Gospels of Foreign Policy Realism

Father, son, and holy ghost.

Kennan, Kissinger, and Kaplan.

Excerpts:

As wars rage in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and as tensions rise in the western Pacific, America’s leaders and policymakers should tone down their rhetoric, prioritize vital as opposed to peripheral interests, and consult with the “gospels” of U.S. foreign policy realism--George F. Kennan, Henry Kissinger, and Robert D. Kaplan.

...

Let’s begin with Kennan. He served as a foreign service officer and diplomat in Eastern European nations, Russia, and Germany before, during, and after the Second World War. He authored the Long Telegram in 1946 and “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in 1947, which explained the need for a policy of containment of Soviet Russia. He served as the director of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff in the early years of the Cold War, writing and overseeing the drafting of numerous policy papers on Europe and Asia. He briefly served as our Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and later as Ambassador to Yugoslavia.

...

Henry Kissinger’s undergraduate honors thesis was a lengthy reflection on the ideas of Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, and Immanuel Kant. His doctoral dissertation, later transformed into a book titled A World Restored, was on the diplomacy of Metternich, Castlereagh, and other European statesmen in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. In the mid-1950s, he authored Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, which discussed the option of fighting a limited nuclear war. Kissinger became a foreign policy adviser to Nelson Rockefeller, who had aspirations for the presidency. Kissinger acted as a consultant to the Eisenhower and Kennedy national security teams before assuming active government service as National Security Adviser to President Nixon and later Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Kissinger played a key role in Nixon’s opening to China and Nixon’s triangular diplomacy with China and the Soviet Union, negotiated a fragile but important peace in the Middle East that lessened Soviet influence in the region, and negotiated an end to America’s divisive war in Southeast Asia.

...

Robert Kaplan perhaps understands Kissinger and foreign policy realism better than any contemporary writer on foreign affairs. Kaplan has been a foreign correspondent, government consultant, and writer on international affairs for four decades. His work combines on-the-scene reporting with geopolitical depth. In an essay in The Atlantic in 2013, republished in The Return of Marco Polo’s World, Kaplan compared Kissinger to Britain’s great 19^th century Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister Henry Temple, better known as Lord Palmerston.

...

In an essay in The National Interest in 2014, Kaplan noted that foreign policy realism is “not the evil invention of Henry Kissinger, but an American tradition going back to George Washington, John Quincy Adams, and wise men like George F. Kennan and Dean Acheson,” and he lamented that “Wilsonianism lives on . . . no matter how often it is shown to be flawed.” Realists understand that there are very real dangers of escalation in the Ukraine War, and that those American political leaders and commentators calling for direct attacks against Iran in the Middle East risk igniting a regional conflict with dangerous unintended consequences, even as tensions continue to rise in the western Pacific. World War III is on a lot of minds. Before things get out of hand, our leaders should consult the realist gospels of Kennan, Kissinger, and Kaplan.

Gospels of Foreign Policy Realism

By Francis P. Sempa

March 16, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/03/16/gospels_of_foreign_policy_realism_1018803.html

SPECIAL SERIES:

Best Defense

As wars rage in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and as tensions rise in the western Pacific, America’s leaders and policymakers should tone down their rhetoric, prioritize vital as opposed to peripheral interests, and consult with the “gospels” of U.S. foreign policy realism--George F. Kennan, Henry Kissinger, and Robert D. Kaplan.

Realism, unfortunately, is in short supply in Washington, D.C., where legislators’ comments on foreign policy appear designed to make the evening news programs or tomorrow’s headlines in Beltway media, and where the Biden national security team seems fixated on leading an ideological crusade against “autocracy.” And while Kennan and Kissinger cannot personally be consulted, their writings (and their actions while in government) can and should be studied. Robert Kaplan is their philosophical successor--he is American foreign policy realism’s most profound voice in the early 21^st century. A careful reading of the gospels of Kennan, Kissinger, and Kaplan may help to ground American foreign policy in prudential geopolitics.

Let’s begin with Kennan. He served as a foreign service officer and diplomat in Eastern European nations, Russia, and Germany before, during, and after the Second World War. He authored the Long Telegram in 1946 and “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in 1947, which explained the need for a policy of containment of Soviet Russia. He served as the director of the State Department’s Policy Planning staff in the early years of the Cold War, writing and overseeing the drafting of numerous policy papers on Europe and Asia. He briefly served as our Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and later as Ambassador to Yugoslavia.

Kennan’s books American Diplomacy, The Decline of Bismarck’s European Order, The Fateful Alliance, Russia Leaves the War, The Decision to Intervene, and Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin are insightful and carefully written diplomatic histories. His books Russia, the Atom and the West, Realities of American Foreign Policy, and On Dealing With the Communist World are short, trenchant analyses of U.S. foreign policy in the 1950s and early 1960s. And to top it off, Kennan wrote three volumes of memoirs (including From Prague After Munich), introspective philosophical books Around the Cragged Hill and Sketches from a Life, collections of his essays in The Nuclear Delusion and At A Century’s Ending, and finally The Kennan Diaries (edited by Frank Costigliola). This is a veritable treasure trove of realist thinking grounded in empiricism and a keen understanding of human nature and the behavior of nation-states and empires throughout history.

In American Diplomacy, Kennan explained the geopolitical factors upon which American security rested:

[I]t [is] essential to us . . . that no single Continental land power

should come to dominate the entire Eurasian land mass. Our

interest has lain rather in the maintenance of some sort of stable

balance among the powers of the interior, in order that none of

them should effect the subjugation of the others, conquer the

seafaring fringes of the land mass, become a great sea power as

well as land power, shatter the position of England, and enter . . .

on an overseas expansion hostile to ourselves and supported by

the immense resources of the interior of Europe and Asia.

This statement, which Kennan wrote in 1951, still applies to America’s fundamental security interests in the early 21^st century. The Eurasian land mass is the great continent from where challenges to U.S. security have arisen since the First World War--Wilhelmine and Hitler’s Germany, the Soviet Union, and today, China.

Kennan believed that the tragedies of the 20^th century had their roots in the First World War, which he called the “seminal catastrophe” of that century. More specifically, the “peace” imposed at the end of that war, Kennan wrote, “had the tragedies of the future written into it as by the devil’s own hand.” He blamed the Wilsonian notion, which he termed a “colossal conceit,” that “you could suddenly make international life over into what you believed to be your own image; when you dismissed the past with contempt, rejected the relevance of the past to the future, and refused to occupy yourself with the real problems that a study of the past would suggest.”

This Wilsonian notion led, Kennan wrote in Realities of American Foreign Policy, to “Utopian” enthusiasms and schemes to remake the world in America’s image and, thereby, the loss of the “feeling for reality . . . about foreign policy.” We sought to universalize our values and habits. We assumed, Kennan wrote, that “our moral values, based as they are on the specifics of our national tradition and the various religious outlooks represented in our country, necessarily have validity for people everywhere.” And we assumed, he continued, that “the purposes of states . . . are fit subjects for measurement in moral terms.” “Moral principles,” Kennan explained, “have their place in the heart of the individual, . . . [b]ut when the individual’s behavior passes through the machinery of political organization and merges with that of millions of other individuals to find its expression in the actions of government, then it undergoes a general transmutation, and the same moral concepts are no longer relevant to it.”

In At A Century’s Ending, Kennan reprinted an essay he wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1985 on “Morality and Foreign Policy.” Here, he expanded on what he saw as America’s abandonment of realism in favor of the “histrionics of moralism,” which he defined as “the projection of attitudes, poses, and rhetoric that cause us to appear noble and altruistic in the mirror of our own vanity but lack substance when related to the realities of international life” and the “feeling that we must have the solution to everyone’s problems and a finger in every pie.” American foreign policy should instead seek global “stability” and bring our “commitments and undertakings into a reasonable relationship with [our] real possibilities for acting upon the international environment.” He recommended a foreign policy “founded on recognition of the national interest, reasonably conceived, as the legitimate motivation for a large portion of the nation’s behavior,” and noted that we should “pursue that interest without either moral pretension or apology.” Often, Kennan wrote, this meant “minding our own business whenever there is not some overwhelming reason for minding the business of others.”

Henry Kissinger’s undergraduate honors thesis was a lengthy reflection on the ideas of Oswald Spengler, Arnold Toynbee, and Immanuel Kant. His doctoral dissertation, later transformed into a book titled A World Restored, was on the diplomacy of Metternich, Castlereagh, and other European statesmen in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars. In the mid-1950s, he authored Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, which discussed the option of fighting a limited nuclear war. Kissinger became a foreign policy adviser to Nelson Rockefeller, who had aspirations for the presidency. Kissinger acted as a consultant to the Eisenhower and Kennedy national security teams before assuming active government service as National Security Adviser to President Nixon and later Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Kissinger played a key role in Nixon’s opening to China and Nixon’s triangular diplomacy with China and the Soviet Union, negotiated a fragile but important peace in the Middle East that lessened Soviet influence in the region, and negotiated an end to America’s divisive war in Southeast Asia.

Kissinger’s realism can be found on page after page of his magnificent memoirs: White House Years, Years of Upheaval, and Years of Renewal. In his 1994 book Diplomacy, Kissinger recognized that American foreign policy in the 20^th century was torn between the realism of Theodore Roosevelt and the idealism of Woodrow Wilson. Kissinger sided with Roosevelt, but understood the attraction of Wilson. He described Roosevelt as the “warrior-statesman” and Wilson as the “prophet-priest.” “Statesmen,” Kissinger explained, “focus on the world in which they live; to prophets, the ‘real’ world is the one they want to bring into being.” With echoes of Kennan, Kissinger described America’s fundamental geopolitical security interest as resisting “the domination of Europe or Asia by any one power and, even more, the control of both continents by the same power.” Like Kennan, he traced the tragic 20^th century wars and revolutions to the Wilsonian “peace” of the First World War. Franklin Roosevelt was a Wilsonian in foreign policy who hoped that what Robert Nisbet characterized as his “courtship” of Stalin would strengthen the postwar peace. Instead, we had 45 years of Cold War. Kissinger noted that it was Nixon’s realism--especially the opening to China and triangular diplomacy--that set the stage for President Reagan to end the Cold War in the 1980s. Reagan, for all of his idealistic rhetoric, was a foreign policy realist who used ideology as a weapon to help defeat the Soviet Union.

Kissinger continued to preach foreign policy realism in his later post-Cold War books, especially Does America Need a Foreign Policy, World Order and Leadership. He once wrote in a 1956 essay in Foreign Affairs that “[f]oreign policy is the art of weighing probabilities; mastery of it lies in grasping the nuances of possibilities.” Kennan would have agreed. Indeed, Kennan once remarked that Kissinger “understands my views better than anyone at State ever has.”

Robert Kaplan perhaps understands Kissinger and foreign policy realism better than any contemporary writer on foreign affairs. Kaplan has been a foreign correspondent, government consultant, and writer on international affairs for four decades. His work combines on-the-scene reporting with geopolitical depth. In an essay in The Atlantic in 2013, republished in The Return of Marco Polo’s World, Kaplan compared Kissinger to Britain’s great 19^th century Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister Henry Temple, better known as Lord Palmerston. In describing Kissinger’s realism, Kaplan wrote:

Ensuring a nation’s survival sometimes leaves tragically little

room for private morality. Discovering the inapplicability of

Judeo-Christian morality in certain circumstances involving

affairs of state can be searing. The rare individuals who have

recognized the necessity of violating such morality, acted

accordingly, and taken responsibility for their actions are among

the most necessary leaders for their countries, even as they

have caused great unease among generations of well-meaning

intellectuals who, free of the burden of real-world bureaucratic

responsibility, makes choices in the abstract and treat morality

as an inflexible absolute.

Kaplan in the essay defended Kissinger from the slings and arrows of his many critics who accused him of immorality and war crimes. Kissinger, he wrote, performed the work of a statesman, “aware of his own tragic circumstances and able to connect them to a larger pattern of events.” Kissinger’s realism was about “the ultimate moral ambition in foreign policy: the avoidance of war through a favorable balance of power.” Kaplan characterized Kissinger’s statecraft and writings as “emotionally unsatisfying but analytically timeless.” Which is a good description of Kaplan’s own writings.

Like Kissinger and Kennan, Kaplan understands, as he wrote in his book Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, that “[i]t takes a shallow grasp of history to believe that solutions exist to most international problems.” “Often,” Kaplan noted, “there are no solutions, only confusion and unsatisfactory choices.” The world, he explains, “is not ‘modern’ or ‘post-modern,’ but only a continuation of the ‘ancient.’” Human nature hasn’t changed very much.

Kaplan also shares the broad geopolitical worldview of Kennan and Kissinger, and has updated it to assess the 21^st century challenge of China to the U.S.-led world order. In a series of books--Monsoon, The Revenge of Geography, Asia’s Cauldron, and The Loom of Time, and in an essay written for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment titled “The Return of Marco Polo’s World,” Kaplan, like Kennan and Kissinger, ties U.S. national security to the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia.

Kaplan’s most vivid gospel of realism is set forth in The Tragic Mind, where he uses the ancient Greeks, Shakespeare, Conrad, Dostoevsky and other literary tragedians to highlight the dangers of foreign policy hubris and pride, the persistence of human ambition, and the impossibility of human perfectibility. The greatest statesmen, Kaplan writes, are those with a “tragic sensibility” and who understand the fragility of civilization.

In an essay in The National Interest in 2014, Kaplan noted that foreign policy realism is “not the evil invention of Henry Kissinger, but an American tradition going back to George Washington, John Quincy Adams, and wise men like George F. Kennan and Dean Acheson,” and he lamented that “Wilsonianism lives on . . . no matter how often it is shown to be flawed.” Realists understand that there are very real dangers of escalation in the Ukraine War, and that those American political leaders and commentators calling for direct attacks against Iran in the Middle East risk igniting a regional conflict with dangerous unintended consequences, even as tensions continue to rise in the western Pacific. World War III is on a lot of minds. Before things get out of hand, our leaders should consult the realist gospels of Kennan, Kissinger, and Kaplan.

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

26. 'SEAL Team' is surprisingly good TV

Hmmm... maybe we should take a look. :-)

'SEAL Team' is surprisingly good TV

sandboxx.us · March 15, 2024

Military dramas on TV tend to be… well… not very good and sometimes, just eye-rollingly bad – HBO being the exception. So, I tend to avoid military drama shows. However, due to the VA, I watched this one.

I was sitting in the VA waiting room, and they had SEAL Team playing. I watched about 20 minutes of an episode, and I was rather impressed. Although I mostly watched through an action sequence, it was enough to convince me to later watch through the first season – and I was pleasantly surprised by SEAL Team.

Lights, camera, action

SEAL Team follows Bravo Team, which falls under DEVGRU, also known as SEAL Team Six, the most elite of SEAL teams.

Bravo Team is led by Master Chief Special Warfare Operator Jason Hayes and is involved in a diverse range of missions around the world. The show also depicts at-home drama, as well as SEALs training for various missions and deployments.

Season 1 follows a young SEAL named Clay Spenser who is going through Green Team, a DEVGRU training and selection pipeline, but, spoiler alert, he makes Bravo Team.

With Jason we get the experienced SEAL team operator and leader, whereas Spenser acts a bit like the audience surrogate. He allows us to see things through new eyes and acts as a way for exposition to be realistically dumped without feeling heavy-handed.

(Paramount Plus)

The show’s team does have an actual elite special operations veteran in the form of Tyler Grey who plays Trent Sawyer, the team’s corpsman. In real life, Tyler Grey was a sergeant first class, a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment, and eventually, a member of Delta Force. He retired due to a severe army injury that we can see throughout the series. He was also a military advisor for the series.

The show does a good job of balancing real-life drama with the action and demands of being an elite operator.

What I like is that the creators incorporate different story themes, at least in Season 1, to add to the excitement and drama: One episode might have your traditional terrorist bad guy, whereas in another the antagonist might be another SEAL Team leader our heroes are butting heads with. This prevents the show from having just one more cookie-cutter bad guy every episode.

SEAL Team also seems to understand that the interpersonal drama of the operators’ lives back home isn’t the focal point of the show. Yet, the creators dial in just enough drama to show that these guys are real people – husbands, dads, and more. However, they take that external drama and use it to reinforce the stress these guys are facing. This humanizes their decisions, and when they are in danger, the stakes feel higher as you know the character has a newborn or a waiting wife at home.

SEAL Team and authenticity

(Paramount Plus)

Obviously, it’s still is, “lights, camera, action,” not” lights, camera, realism.” I can’t speak for sure, but I doubt DEVGRU teams are infiltrating China every week like the TV show portrays.

Also, the series omits the mundane parts of being part of an elite outfit – but who wants to watch SEALs sit on a C17 aircraft for 12 hours to fly to who-knows-where only for their mission to get scrubbed? (Although, that’s not to say that missions don’t get scrubbed. It happens in the show. Even after the team trains and trains and trains, someone higher up pulls the plug.)

I was never a SEAL, so I can’t speak for the tactics or culture portrayed in the show. When you get that high up in the special operations world, I’m sure the culture is extremely different than what I encountered as a Marine grunt. I bet most of the training, weapons, and tactics of DEVGRU won’t be leaked or shown on TV either, thus making the show authentic might be impossible.

I can speak on what I know regarding a thing or two. For one, the firearms seem accurate. The SEALs are using RMR-equipped Glocks, HK 416 rifles, HK MP7s, and MK 48 machine guns. The guns are even equipped with some common aftermarket swaps, like a Super Duty rail system replacing the 416’s stock standard option.

(Paramount Plus)

In terms of gear, the guys are using real gear you’d see high-end operators use, for example, we see stuff from companies like Crye. One of the most interesting pieces of gear included in the show is the Eagle Industries’ NSW plate carrier which isn’t available to the general public. Another is the lightweight Spritius chest rigs used in one episode for a low-vis mission. It’s very clear that someone behind the scenes is making sure these guys aren’t in airsoft chest rigs. They SEALs in the show even do rehearsals for missions, which is something actual operators do.

It also bears mentioning that the SEALs are all very handsome. That’s important because of all the Special Ops guys I’ve met and worked with, the SEALs are always the most handsome.

SEAL Team is a fun show, and while it has an overarching narrative, each episode mostly focuses on a specific mission. The show presents some heavy topics, including an accidental shooting of a nonhostile, issues with race, and operators hiding injuries to keep deploying. At the same time, it remains entertaining and tends to end on a high note. It’s not going to sweep the awards season, but it’s a well-made show that’s quite entertaining.

If you have duty this weekend, give it a watch!

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