Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe."

– Anatole France

"Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential."

– Winston Churchill

“Do not look for luxury in watches or bracelets, do not look for luxury in forks or sails.

“Luxury is laughter and friends, luxury is rain on your face, luxury is hugs and kisses.

Don't look for luxury in shops, don't look for it in gifts, don't look for it at parties, don't look for it at events.

Luxury is being loved by people, luxury is being respected, luxury is having parents alive,

luxury is being able to play with your grandchildren, luxury is what money can't buy.

– Clint Eastwood

1. Putin vows deeper ties with Vietnam in visit criticised by US

2. Vietnam Welcomes Putin—and U.S. Criticism Over Doing So

3. Putin’s visit to Vietnam casts spotlight on Russia’s influence in Southeast Asia

4. Soaring U.S. Debt Is a Spending Problem

5. Russia and North Korea’s Defense Pact Is a Told-You-So Moment in Asia

6. When the Only Escape From War in Gaza Is to Buy a Way Out

7. Israeli Military Says Hamas Can’t Be Destroyed, Escalating Feud With Netanyahu

8. China-Philippines one step closer to armed conflict

9. ‘Only pirates do this’: Philippines accuses China of using bladed weapons in major South China Sea escalation

10. Philippines demands China return rifles and pay for boat damage after hostilities in disputed sea

11. Small drones will soon lose combat advantage, French Army chief says

12. US humanitarian pier reanchored to the coast of Gaza

13. Chinese military’s rifle-toting robot dogs raise concerns in Congress

14. Climate change is a threat, not a distraction, to the US military

15. How U.S. allies and partners see the November election

16. Batteries as a Military Enabler

17. Putin’s Hybrid War Opens a Second Front on NATO’s Eastern Border

18. The Credibility Trap: Is Reputation Worth Fighting For?

19. A New Era of Leadership: Special Operators in Government

20. The Original War Game

21. Niall Ferguson: We’re All Soviets Now

1. Putin vows deeper ties with Vietnam in visit criticised by US

Vietnam. Another proficient tightrope walker?

Excerpts:

The invasion of Ukraine presented Vietnam with a diplomatic challenge, but one it has so far managed to meet. It has chosen to abstain on the various resolutions at the United Nations condemning Russia’s actions, yet maintained good relations with Ukraine and even sent some aid to Kyiv. They also share a legacy from the Soviet era; thousands of Vietnamese have worked and studied in Ukraine.

This is all in keeping with Vietnam’s long-held foreign policy principles of being friends with everyone but avoiding all formal alliances - what the communist party leadership now calls ‘bamboo diplomacy’, bending with the buffeting winds of great power rivalry without being forced to take sides.

It is why Vietnam has so readily upgraded its relations with the US, a country against which its older leaders fought a long and destructive war, in the interests of seeking lucrative markets for Vietnamese exports and balancing its close ties with its giant neighbour China.

The US has objected to President Putin's official visit to Vietnam on the grounds that it undermines international efforts to isolate him, but it can hardly be surprised. Aside from the special historical links with Russia, public sentiment in Vietnam on the war in Ukraine is more ambivalent than in Europe.

Putin vows deeper ties with Vietnam in visit criticised by US

BBC · by Jonathan Head,

Putin in Vietnam: A friendship that refuses to die

24 minutes ago

BBC News, South East Asia correspondent

Getty Images

Vladimir Putin begins a state visit to Vietnam on Thursday

Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi on the second stop of an East Asian tour.

The trip, which comes on the heels of his lavish visit to North Korea, is being interpreted as a demonstration of the diplomatic support Russia still enjoys in this region.

The United States has criticised the visit for giving a platform for President Putin to promote his war of aggression in Ukraine.

Vietnam still values the historic ties it has with Russia even as it works to improve its relationship with Europe and the US.

Looming over a small park in Ba Dinh, Hanoi’s political quarter, a five-meter high statue of Lenin depicts the Russian revolutionary in heroic pose. On his birthday every year a delegation of senior Vietnamese officials solemnly lay flowers and bow their heads before the statue, a gift from Russia when it was still the Soviet Union.

Vietnam’s ties to Russia are close and go back many decades, to the vital military, economic and diplomatic support given by the Soviet Union to the new communist state in North Vietnam in the 1950s.

Vietnam has described their relationship as "filled with loyalty and gratitude". After Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 to throw out the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, it was isolated and sanctioned by China and the West, and depended heavily on Soviet assistance. Many older Vietnamese, including the powerful communist party secretary-general Nguyen Phu Trong, studied in Russia and learned the language.

Today Vietnam’s economy has been transformed by its integration into global markets. Russia has fallen far behind China, Asia, the US and Europe as a trading partner. But Vietnam still uses mainly Russian-made military equipment, and relies on partnerships with Russian oil companies for oil exploration in the South China Sea.

Getty Images

There is a statue of Lenin in central Hanoi

The invasion of Ukraine presented Vietnam with a diplomatic challenge, but one it has so far managed to meet. It has chosen to abstain on the various resolutions at the United Nations condemning Russia’s actions, yet maintained good relations with Ukraine and even sent some aid to Kyiv. They also share a legacy from the Soviet era; thousands of Vietnamese have worked and studied in Ukraine.

This is all in keeping with Vietnam’s long-held foreign policy principles of being friends with everyone but avoiding all formal alliances - what the communist party leadership now calls ‘bamboo diplomacy’, bending with the buffeting winds of great power rivalry without being forced to take sides.

It is why Vietnam has so readily upgraded its relations with the US, a country against which its older leaders fought a long and destructive war, in the interests of seeking lucrative markets for Vietnamese exports and balancing its close ties with its giant neighbour China.

The US has objected to President Putin's official visit to Vietnam on the grounds that it undermines international efforts to isolate him, but it can hardly be surprised. Aside from the special historical links with Russia, public sentiment in Vietnam on the war in Ukraine is more ambivalent than in Europe.

There is some admiration for Putin as a strongman who defies the West, and scepticism, fuelled partly by social media commentary, of the US and European claims to be upholding international law.

This is also true in other Asian countries, where the Ukraine war is seen as a faraway crisis. In Thailand, for example, a historic military ally of the US which was on the opposite side to Russia during the Cold War, public opinion is just as divided as in Vietnam. Thais too value the even older links between its monarchy and the pre-revolutionary Tsars of Russia, and the Thai government maintains close ties with Russia today, valuing the contribution millions of Russians make to its tourist industry.

How long Vietnam maintains its camaraderie with Vladimir Putin is less clear. It is already seeking alternative sources of military equipment, but ending its current dependence on Russia will take years.

A series of high-level resignations inside the communist party recently suggest intense internal rivalries over the next generation of leaders, and, potentially, over which direction the country will take. But there is no talk yet of abandoning the ambition of being friends to all, and enemies of none.

BBC · by Jonathan Head,

2. Vietnam Welcomes Putin—and U.S. Criticism Over Doing So

Vietnam Welcomes Putin—and U.S. Criticism Over Doing So

TIME · by Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen and John Boudreau / Bloomberg

Vietnam welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin, underlining its decades-old relationship with Moscow in the face of U.S. criticism over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Putin arrived in Hanoi on Thursday from North Korea, where he signed a comprehensive strategic partnership with Kim Jong Un who vowed to “unconditionally” support Russia in the war.

“The visit demonstrates that Vietnam actively implements its foreign policy with the spirit of independence, self-reliance, diversification, multilateralism,” according to a statement on Vietnam’s government website.

Vietnam and Russia have ties going back decades to the Soviet Union. Hanoi is brushing aside Western criticism of its invitation to Putin, who last visited Vietnam in 2017 when it hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.

The U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, in a statement Monday, said “no country should give Putin a platform to promote his war of aggression and otherwise allow him to normalize his atrocities.”

Russia’s Novatek PJSC plans liquefied natural gas projects in Vietnam, Putin wrote in the country’s Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan ahead of his visit, without providing details. He also mentioned an initiative to establish a center for nuclear energy and technologies with the support of Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom.

The company also wants to cooperate with Vietnam in wind power development, the Southeast Asian nation’s government reported on its website after a meeting between the firm’s CEO Alexey Likhachev and Vietnam Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

Putin said nearly 60% of trade transactions between the two countries were in rubles and Vietnamese dong. Russia relies on alternative payment settlement systems since its banks are cut off from the international payments system SWIFT.

The Russian president is expected to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and meet officials including Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong, Chinh and President To Lam, according to Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The nation has long relied on Russia for weapons, including aircraft and submarines. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, though, Vietnam has refrained from Russian arms procurements because of concerns over Western sanctions, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Hanoi will seek reassurances that Russia’s increasingly close ties with China are “not going to be at the expense of Vietnam,” Thayer said.

While not a major trading partner—Vietnamese exports to Russia last year amounted to less than $2 billion compared to $97 billion to the U.S.—Moscow is viewed as a counterbalance to both Beijing and Washington. The U.S. is seen as an ideological “opponent” by Hanoi, while China’s claims to waters off Vietnam’s coast threatens its sovereignty, said Alexander Vuving, an Asia expert at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii.

“Russia can alleviate pressure from both the US and China by giving Vietnam support,” Vuving said. “They can get arms from Russia. State-owned Russian companies for many years have been at the forefront of Vietnam’s efforts to protect its sovereignty in the South China Sea.”

Vietnam has used the backing of Russian firms to explore and drill for oil and gas in the South China Sea, often in the face of Chinese aggression.

In 2019, China repeatedly sent coast guard ships and a survey vessel to an energy block off Vietnam’s coast operated by Russia’s state-owned Rosneft PJSC. The previous year, PetroVietnam ordered Spain’s Repsol SA to halt work on a project off Vietnam’s southern coast, in what Bloomberg Intelligence called “an unexpected capitulation to geopolitical pressure applied by China.”

“The Russians have stood their ground” in the South China Sea, Vuving said.

State-owned Vietnam Oil and Gas Group, or PetroVietnam, has also signed a deal with Russia’s state energy giant Gazprom PJSC for oil drilling and exploration. Vietsovpetro, a joint venture between Vietnam and Russia, runs the Southeast Asian country’s largest oil field.

Vietnam, among nine Southeast Asian countries that abstained from condemning Russian violence in Ukraine last year, has taken a neutral stance on the war, calling for diplomacy to resolve the conflict.

Putin, in his article, thanked Vietnam for its “balanced position” toward Ukraine and for promoting “a pragmatic path to solve the crisis through peaceful means.”

Vietnamese Premier Chinh met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last year on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima. Many Vietnamese government officials and business executives have studied in Ukraine and Russia. Some 60,000 Vietnamese live in Russia, according to Vietnam’s government.

While hosting Putin is “risky” for Vietnamese officials, Vuving said, “they have to take the risk and stay loyal to Russia.”

TIME · by Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen and John Boudreau / Bloomberg

3. Putin’s visit to Vietnam casts spotlight on Russia’s influence in Southeast Asia

Putin’s visit to Vietnam casts spotlight on Russia’s influence in Southeast Asia

During his two-day state visit, Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to push for closer ties through cooperation in defence, energy, trade and bilateral payment.

Tung Ngo

@TungNgoCNA

Louisa Tang

19 Jun 2024 05:47PM

(Updated: 20 Jun 2024 09:25AM)

channelnewsasia.com

HANOI: Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to visit Vietnam on Wednesday (Jun 19) for the first time in more than a decade, where he is expected to seek support as Moscow faces international isolation over its invasion of Ukraine.

His two-day state visit will cast a spotlight on Russia’s influence in Southeast Asia, where Hanoi remains one of Moscow’s few friends.

Putin is expected to push for closer ties with Vietnam through cooperation in defence, energy, trade and currency transactions, building on longstanding bilateral relations.

“(Putin’s visit) comes shortly after the Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland, to which Russia was not invited,” said Ian Storey, senior fellow from the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.

“So Putin wants to demonstrate to the world that efforts by the West to isolate Russia have failed in his view, and that Russia still has friends around the world, including in Asia.”

The visit also comes straight after Putin landed in Pyongyang in the early hours of Wednesday for his first visit to North Korea in 24 years.

There, he vowed to deepen trade and security ties with the reclusive nuclear-armed state and to support it against the United States.

US ISSUES REBUKE

Vietnam is rolling out the red carpet for Putin amid rebuke from the US government, despite having just upgraded relations with Washington last year.

In a statement sent to CNA, a spokesperson for the US Embassy in Hanoi said that no country “should give Putin a platform to promote his war of aggression and otherwise allow him to normalise his atrocities”.

“If he is able to travel freely, it could normalise Russia’s blatant violations of international law and inadvertently send the message that atrocities can be committed in Ukraine and elsewhere with impunity, worsening human suffering, and prolonging the path to sustainable peace and justice,” the spokesperson added.

“We cannot return to business as usual or turn a blind eye to the clear violations of international law Russia has committed in Ukraine. There needs to be accountability for those responsible for war crimes.”

HISTORICALLY DEEP RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA

Vietnam has continued its historically deep relations with the former Soviet Union, even as it aligns itself with the US in opposition to China.

Assistance from Russia played a critical role in Vietnam’s history of war and nation-building when peace resumed.

The US had entered Vietnam in the late 1950s to prevent a communist takeover of the region. As Vietnamese civilians became increasingly caught in the crossfire and American tactics grew more brutal, the war became deeply unpopular in the US.

Exhibits at the Vietnam Military History Museum, located in the heart of Hanoi, make it apparent Vietnam sees Russia as an ally.

Wreckage of American airplanes from the Vietnam War is placed next to Soviet-made missile systems and aircraft that Vietnam used during the war.

Nguyen Dat Phat, vice-chairman of the Vietnam-Russia Friendship Association, told CNA: “The support from the Soviet Union was great and important because then, we wanted to liberate the South and unite the country by force, by resistance war.

“We needed weapons, ammunition, gas, and so on.”

Now, Vietnam wants to show its support for Russia as well.

It avoided the Ukraine peace summit last weekend and has abstained from voting on United Nations resolutions on the Russia-Ukraine war.

“The draft resolutions are sponsored by the West to condemn Russia. I think abstention means not joining efforts to oppose Russia. That's support for Russia,” said Nguyen.

POTENTIAL MAJOR DEFENCE AGREEMENTS

During Putin’s visit, talks are expected to focus on security and defence as well as boosting cooperation in energy and trade.

Leaders are also likely to discuss ways to get around international sanctions on Russia, including working out currency transactions in the banking system to enable payment for business.

Russia is the main provider of big-ticket defence equipment for Vietnam to protect its sovereignty in the South China Sea.

Russia was also the largest supplier of arms to Southeast Asia for two decades, before the value of Russian defence sales dropped due to greater competition from other countries and the threat of US sanctions, according to a 2021 analysis by Storey, the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute expert on defence and security issues in Southeast Asia.

During his visit, Putin is expected to ask for support from Hanoi as well.

“Russia has asked all the countries that it has provided arms to, to help it to transfer munitions – in particular, which the Russian Armed Forces are short of,” Storey noted.

“North Korea, as we know, has done so. They have sent millions of rounds of ammunition to Russia. Vietnam so far has not.

“I think the Vietnamese leadership will be very reluctant to do so because they don't want to take any steps that can be seen as prolonging the conflict,” he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Vietnam's President Vo Van Thuong on the sidelines of the Belt and Road Forum. (Photo: AFP)

Storey said that it is worth looking out for whether any major agreements will be signed on defence cooperation, especially on the sale of firearms.

While Vietnam has diversified its arms procurement since the mid-2010s, it still depends on Russia for supplies of spare parts, munitions and upgrades, he said.

Unprecedented waves of sanctions on Moscow imposed by the West over the war in Ukraine has greatly diminished Russia’s reliability as a defence supplier.

Despite this, Storey said Vietnam’s reliance on Russia looks set to “continue for many years to come”.

He added: “The question will be: If any new defence agreement is signed, will it just cover existing equipment? Or will Vietnam purchase new equipment from Russia?

“If it does, this will not go down too well in Washington because Washington has called on countries that buy arms from Russia to stop doing so, or possibly – if they do – face sanctions.”

Leaders from both sides are also expected to discuss Vietnam’s future membership in the BRICS group of major emerging economies, which was established in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

BRICS members want to build an alternative to the US dollar and give emerging economies more influence in international politics.

Earlier this year, the group added four members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

In Southeast Asia, Thailand and Malaysia are also working towards BRICS membership.

channelnewsasia.com

4. Soaring U.S. Debt Is a Spending Problem

Unfortunately I do not think either political party in the US has the will or the skill to deal with what could be the existential threat. There is no serious politician who is willing to make the hard cuts that need to be made.

Like the "solutions" to all current problems, we will just let the next generation inherit it.

Soaring U.S. Debt Is a Spending Problem

Revenue is stable, but outlays are reaching new heights as a share of GDP.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-debt-spending-congressional-budget-office-taxes-entitlements-biden-6b6f3ece?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

By The Editorial Board

June 19, 2024 5:53 pm ET

PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

You may have heard that the 2017 GOP tax cuts blew a giant hole in the federal budget—or so Democrats tell voters. The Congressional Budget Office’s revised 10-year budget forecast out Tuesday offers a reality check. Spending is the real problem, and it’s getting worse.

CBO projects that this year’s budget deficit will clock in at roughly $2 trillion, some $400 billion more than it forecast in February and $300 billion larger than last year’s deficit. This is unprecedented when the economy is growing and defense spending is nearly flat. The deficit this fiscal year will be 7% of GDP, which is more than during some recessions.

CBO says deficits will stay nearly this high for years, and the total over the next decade is now expected to total $21.9 trillion compared to $19.8 trillion in its February forecast. Debt held by the public will grow to 122.4% of GDP in 2034 from 97.3% last year.

Notably, CBO’s revenue projections are little changed. Revenue is expected to total 17.2% of GDP this year—roughly the 50-year average before the pandemic, as the nearby chart shows. But CBO significantly revised up projections for federal spending. Outlays are now expected to hit 24.2% of GDP this year and average 24% over the next decade. Wow.

For perspective, consider that spending before the pandemic exceeded 24% only once since World War II—in 2009 amid the financial panic and the Obama-Pelosi “stimulus” binge. CBO notes that one culprit for the larger deficit this year is Congress’s recent military aid bill. But overall defense spending is still falling as a share of the economy and is expected to hit a postwar low of 2.8% of GDP in 2034.

Not so President Biden’s latest plans for student-loan debt transfer to taxpayers, which CBO estimates could cost $211 billion this year above what it estimated in February. This is on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt that Mr. Biden has already written down in part with his SAVE plan, which turns loans into de facto grants.

Spending on Affordable Care Act subsidies and Medicaid is also exceeding earlier projections owing to higher enrollment. CBO increased its ACA spending estimate by $22 billion for this year and $244 billion over the next decade. It also raised its ACA enrollment projection by four million for this year and an average of three million over the next 10 years.

That’s because the Inflation Reduction Act’s sweetened subsidies and a Biden Administration regulatory change increased eligibility for subsidies. CBO also notes that the recent surge in immigration—migrants qualify for premium tax credits—has boosted enrollment. The result: ACA subsidies this year will cost more than double pre-pandemic projections.

The end of the pandemic emergency was expected to cause Medicaid enrollment to plunge. That hasn’t happened, in part because Democratic-run states have been slow to remove able-bodied adults who are no longer eligible. CBO has thus increased its forecast for Medicaid spending by $50 billion in 2024 and $314 billion over the next decade.

Entitlement spending—which now includes student loans—is growing at a pace that is fiscally unsustainable. Financing these programs has also become more expensive owing to higher interest rates, which CBO also projects will need to stay higher for longer in order to subdue inflation. Spending on interest is now expected to be $1.02 trillion next year, exceeding $964 billion for defense.

CBO’s budget forecasts are getting progressively uglier, but it’s not because Americans aren’t paying their fair share in taxes. If spending as a share of GDP remained at the pre-pandemic average, the deficit would be roughly $890 billion this year and $13.4 trillion smaller than CBO’s 10-year projection. This would keep debt as a share of GDP at roughly 90%.

***

Neither Mr. Biden nor Donald Trump talks about the national debt, perhaps because they might then have to do something about it. But a moment of tax truth at least will arrive at the end of 2025 when most of the 2017 Trump individual tax cuts expire.

Mr. Biden’s plan is to raise taxes by $5 trillion or more, which would put the overall federal tax burden above 20% of GDP, which is close to the highest in peacetime. That still won’t finance Mr. Biden’s spending ambitions, which will continue to cost trillions in future years even if he loses the election.

Mr. Trump says he wants to renew and maybe expand the Trump tax cuts, and the best way to finance that is by repealing the Biden spending blowouts in the Inflation Reduction Act, student-loan write-offs and pandemic-era welfare expansions. Failing to take on that challenge means either a monumental tax increase or a debt panic down the road.

WSJ Opinion: Hollywood Joe Biden’s Celebrity Party

Play video: WSJ Opinion: Hollywood Joe Biden’s Celebrity Party

Wonder Land: The Democratic party’s celebrity dependency has been background noise for decades. Now Trump is taking advantage, peeling off layers of a coalition that has lost its common identity. Image: Michael Tran / AFP via Getty Images Photo: Image: Michael Tran / AFP via Getty Images

Appeared in the June 20, 2024, print edition as 'Soaring U.S. Debt Is a Spending Problem'.

5. Russia and North Korea’s Defense Pact Is a Told-You-So Moment in Asia

A visual depicting the "three powers" and the alignment of those who are opposed to the rules based international order.

Actually it is the authors of the 2017 NSS and 2018 NDS as well as the 2022 NSS and NDS that can say I told you so as they all identified the alignment of these major "powers" and the attacks that would take place on the rules based international order.

Russia and North Korea’s Defense Pact Is a Told-You-So Moment in Asia

By Motoko Rich and Choe Sang-Hun

Motoko Rich reported from Tokyo and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul

June 20, 2024, 5:59 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Choe Sang-Hun · June 20, 2024

While the agreement rattled officials in South Korea and Japan, the two U.S. allies in recent years have been expecting growing security challenges from North Korea.

Listen to this article · 7:54 min Learn more

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, played up their growing bond as they agreed to a mutual-defense pledge.

June 20, 2024, 5:59 a.m. ET

With ballistic missiles regularly flying nearby, Japan and South Korea need little reminder of the threat that North Korea and its nuclear arsenal poses to its neighbors. But the stunning revival of a Cold War-era mutual defense agreement during a visit this week by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to Pyongyang, the capital, amped up the pressure on some of the hermit kingdom’s closest neighbors.

Mr. Putin and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, agreed that if one country found itself in a state of war, then the other would provide “military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay,” according to the text of the agreement released Thursday by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

Analysts were still sorting through the text of the agreement to understand how far it would extend, either in terms of Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine or any future conflict on the Korean Peninsula. But the pledge, along with indications that Russia could help bolster North Korea’s continuing quest to build its nuclear capabilities, rattled officials in Tokyo and Seoul.

Mr. Kim has grown increasingly hostile toward South Korea and this year abandoned a longtime goal of reunifying with the South, however unlikely that might have been. Now he describes the South solely as an enemy that must be subjugated, if necessary, through a nuclear war. And he has often tested his ballistic missiles by flying them toward Japan, demonstrating North Korea’s provocative stance toward its former colonizer.

Mr. Kim’s alliance with Mr. Putin, analysts said, would escalate tensions in northeast Asia by sharpening a divide between the democratic partnership among the United States, South Korea and Japan on the one side, and the autocratic camp of Russia, North Korea and China on the other.

“It is bad news for international efforts to prevent North Korea from advancing its nuclear and missile technologies,” said Koh Yu-hwan, former head of the Seoul-based Korea Institute for Unification Studies.

A photograph released by North Korean state media showing what it says is a test fire of tactical ballistic missile at an undisclosed site in North Korea last month.Credit...The Korean Central News Agency, via Associated Press

Mr. Putin’s protracted war in Ukraine has led him to deepen relations with Mr. Kim. U.S. and South Korean officials say he has sought and received Soviet-grade ammunitions from Pyongyang — accusations that both Moscow and Pyongyang deny.

The war in Ukraine has loomed large in the region. “The Ukraine of today may be the East Asia of tomorrow,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan has often said.

Officials in Seoul and Tokyo were quick to point out that if Russia sends any military technology to North Korea, it would violate United Nations Security Council resolutions that it has previously signed.

“We are seriously concerned about the fact that President Putin did not rule out military-technical cooperation with North Korea,” Yoshimasa Hayashi, Mr. Kishida’s chief cabinet secretary, said at a press briefing in Tokyo.

In some respects, the meeting between the two authoritarian leaders, both desperate for outside support, provided a bit of an I-told-you-so moment for the United States and its Asian allies, who have been preparing in recent years for growing security challenges from North Korea as well as China, and sometimes have faced domestic political headwinds for doing so.

Japan has vowed to increase its defense budget and pushed limits on what it could do under its pacifist Constitution, including purchasing more fighter jets and tomahawk missiles. After years of frosty relations, Mr. Kishida and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea agreed to strengthen bilateral ties between their two countries and have drawn closer in a three-way partnership with the U.S. to forge mutual security arrangements. Over the last year, the three countries have participated in more than 60 trilateral diplomatic meetings, military exercises and intelligence sharing, according to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo.

A military exercise in Tokunoshima, Japan, last year. Japan has vowed to increase its defense budget, despite domestic pushback.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

“I think it shows how prescient President Biden, President Kishida and President Yoon were to spend political capital,” Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, said in an interview. “It was prescient not just from a political standpoint, but from a strategic standpoint because now Russia and North Korea” may be developing weapons together.

The revival of a Cold War-era mutual defense pledge between North Korea and Russia in this fraught global moment spooked other countries in the region.

“What I think is more dangerous is that it shows that the relationship will be more long term than perhaps we initially thought and that it may be more strategic than transactional,” said Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow in Asian studies at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “We don’t know the parameters of how far each country will go in support of each other.”

At the very least, it shows that Russia is willing to flagrantly dismiss U.N. sanctions.

“It was not that long ago that Russia was backing U.N. sanctions on North Korea,” said James D.J. Brown, a professor of political science at the Tokyo campus of Temple University who specializes in relations between Russia and East Asia. “So it confirms that Russia is not only not implementing sanctions themselves but actively undermining them and will help North Korea to evade sanctions.”

Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim shake hands in a television broadcast showing at a railway station in Seoul on Wednesday.

In Seoul, the meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim was likely to revive discussion of whether South Korea should consider arming itself with nuclear weapons as well as start anticipating what might happen if Donald Trump is re-elected president of the United States.

“It is time for South Korea to have a fundamental review of its current security policy, which depends almost totally on the U.S. nuclear umbrella to counter the North Korean nuclear threat,” said Cheong Seong-chang, the director of the Center for Korean Peninsula Strategy at the Sejong Institute.

In one respect, the growing bond between Russia and North Korea could help cement the recently revived ties between Tokyo and Seoul as well as their three-way cooperation with the United States. Many analysts have worried that a change of administration in either the United States or South Korea could endanger these relationships. (Japan is considered relatively stable.)

“In some ways it sets up the justification to continue trilateralism after potentially a Trump administration comes in or if progressives come in Korea,” said Jeffrey Hornung, a senior political analyst who specializes in Japan at the RAND Corporation in Washington. “Even though it doesn’t change what Seoul or Tokyo should be doing, it definitely adds a new factor of what they have to consider.”

But an editorial in Hankyoreh, a left-leaning daily newspaper in Seoul, questioned the wisdom of close cooperation among the United States, Japan and South Korea, saying it had put South Korea “consistently in conflict with China and Russia, two countries with a huge influence on the Korean Peninsula’s political situation. It’s time to reflect on whether this skewed approach to diplomacy hasn’t had the effect of contributing to the development of relations between North Korea and Russia.”

Despite the drama in Pyongyang this week, some analysts said that the biggest worry for the region remains the rising military ambitions of China.

“The maritime buildup in the East China Sea or South China Sea or in space and cyber and a multi-domain war capability — they all justify our new policy,” said Kunihiko Miyake, a former Japanese diplomat and a special adviser at the Canon Institute for Global Studies in Tokyo. Mr. Putin’s visit to North Korea, he said , “is just another example, and not the biggest example” of threats in Asia.

Kiuko Notoya contributed reporting from Tokyo.

Motoko Rich is a reporter in Tokyo, leading coverage of Japan for The Times. More about Motoko Rich

Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea. More about Choe Sang-Hun

See more on: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un

The New York Times · by Choe Sang-Hun · June 20, 2024

6. When the Only Escape From War in Gaza Is to Buy a Way Out

When the Only Escape From War in Gaza Is to Buy a Way Out

By Adam Rasgon

Reporting from Jerusalem

June 20, 2024, 5:38 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Adam Rasgon · June 20, 2024

For many Palestinians, securing approval to exit the territory is possible only after raising thousands of dollars to pay middlemen or an Egyptian company.

Palestinians with foreign passports at the Rafah border crossing in February. The Israeli military launched an offensive against Hamas in Rafah and took over the crossing there, leading to its closure in May. It has yet to reopen.

The only way for almost all people in Gaza to escape the horrors of the war between Israel and Hamas is by leaving through neighboring Egypt.

And that is usually a complicated and expensive ordeal, involving the payment of thousands of dollars to an Egyptian company that can get Palestinians on an approved travel list to cross the border.

Confronting the company’s stiff fees, as well as the widespread hunger in Gaza where there is no end in sight to Israel’s military campaign, many Palestinians have resorted to trying to raise money with desperate appeals on digital platforms like GoFundMe.

Dr. Salim Ghayyda, a pediatrician in northern Scotland, posted one such plea in January after his sister texted from Gaza to say that their father had suffered seizures.

Their father made it to a hospital and survived, but Dr. Ghayyda, 52, who left Gaza in 2003, said the episode convinced him he had to evacuate his family at any cost.

“I thought I’d go to sleep one night and wake up to the news that my family is gone,” he said. “I felt helpless and hopeless, but I knew I had to do something.”

A Complicated Process

Over the past eight months, an estimated 100,000 people have left Gaza, Diab al-Louh, the Palestinian ambassador to Egypt, said in an interview. Though some managed to get out through connections to foreign organizations or governments, for many Gazans, exiting the territory is possible only by way of Hala, a firm that appears to be closely connected to the Egyptian government.

Now the future of that avenue is uncertain, especially after the Israeli military launched an offensive against Hamas in Rafah and took over the crossing there, leading to its closure in May. No Gazans have been allowed to pass through it since, and it is unclear when it will reopen.

The New York Times spoke to a dozen people inside and outside Gaza who were either trying to leave the territory or help family members or friends to do so. All but one spoke on the condition of anonymity over fears of retaliation by the Egyptian authorities toward them or their relatives or friends.

Other pathways out of Gaza exist, but many of them require large payments, too. One route is to pay unofficial middlemen in the enclave or in Egypt, who demand $8,000 to $15,000 per person in exchange for arranging their departure within days, according to four Palestinians who either made the payments or tried to.

Palestinians connected to international organizations and governments, holders of foreign passports or visas, wounded people and some students enrolled in universities outside Gaza have been able to leave without paying large fees, but most of the more than two million people in the enclave do not fall into those categories.

Palestinians who fled Rafah arriving in Khan Younis last month.

Hala charges $5,000 to coordinate the exits of most people 16 and older and $2,500 for most who are below that age, according to seven people who have gone through this process or tried to do so.

Officials at Hala did not respond to questions sent by email. But Ibrahim al-Organi, whose firm, Organi Group, has listed Hala as one of its companies and who describes himself as a shareholder, disputed that the company charged those amounts, insisting that children traveled for free and that adults paid $2,500. He said that amount was necessary because the service Hala provides is a “V.I.P.” one and he argued that operating costs had skyrocketed during the war.

Mr. Organi, a tycoon with a history of helping the Egyptian government fight extremists in the Sinai Peninsula, maintains close connections to top Egyptian officials, according to three people who have tracked the relationship and spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their work in the region. He denied he was benefiting unfairly from his connections.

One man who lives in a tent on the beach in Deir al Balah, a city in central Gaza, said he felt as if he was dealing with war profiteers because he was being financially squeezed during the most vulnerable time of his life.

He felt he had no option but to register with Hala. The man, 48, has to raise money for his wife and seven children, some of whom have to pay the adult fare. That means he needs $37,500, he said, but he has managed to come up with only $7,330 on GoFundMe so far.

“What’s the alternative? There is none,” he said.

A camp for internally displaced Palestinians on the coast in Deir al Balah in the central Gaza Strip in April.Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

Offering a ‘V.I.P.’ Service?

Hala makes people go through a complicated bureaucratic process to register their loved ones. The company requires a family member to visit its offices in Cairo and pay for the service in $100 bills issued in or after 2013, according to Dr. Ghayyda and three other people with knowledge of Hala’s payment process. Mr. Organi denied knowledge of the practice and said those who paid in $100 bills had been scammed by illegal brokers.

In February, when Dr. Ghayyda traveled to the Egyptian capital to register his parents, sister and nephew, he brought his 23-year-old son with him to avoid carrying more than $10,000 by himself. By that time, he had raised around $25,000.

“The whole process was quite time-consuming, complex and uncertain,” he said.

In an interview at his office in Cairo, Mr. Organi spoke at length and in detail about Hala’s activities, though he said that his role in the company was limited and that he was just one of many shareholders. Hala has long been listed on Organi Group’s website as one of the conglomerate’s companies but the reference appeared to have been removed recently. Organi Group did not respond to a request for comment when asked why they had removed Hala from their website.

Mr. Organi described Hala as a tourism company, “just like any company that exists at an airport,” and said that it had been set up in 2017 to provide V.I.P. services to Palestinian travelers who wanted an upgraded experience crossing through Rafah.

“I help them only when they want to get into the V.I.P. hall, to have breakfast, to be driven to Cairo in a nice BMW, to have a rest stop, and then go on to their destination,” he said. “Our role is to provide the best service possible, that’s it.”

Israeli military vehicles near a border fence with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel last month. Since the Israeli military took over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, no Gazans have been allowed to pass through it.Credit...Abir Sultan/EPA, via Shutterstock

Multiple Palestinians who used Hala’s service during the war said they were not offered a V.I.P. service: They were driven to Cairo in a minibus and were given basic food.

Mr. Organi said increased wartime demand for services such as the drive from Rafah to Cairo had forced the company to raise its prices.

He spoke in an office where one wall displayed a large photo of him with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt. When asked about Hala’s ties to the Egyptian government and accusations that Hala profits from sweetheart contracts, he insisted that he was being slandered by news outlets linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, the political Islamist group that briefly held Egypt’s presidency more than a decade ago until the Egyptian military, led by Mr. el-Sisi, seized power.

On an April visit to a towering tinted glass building in central Cairo that houses Hala’s offices, 40 people were lined up outside with stacks of photocopied documents and bundles of cash in hand.

Those gathered were chatting loudly about exchange rates in Palestinian Arabic as they waited for two Egyptian Hala employees to allow them to enter the building and as cars and taxis dropped off more customers nearby.

When asked about the accusations against Egypt cited in this story, the Egyptian government referred The Times to previous comments made by Egyptian officials, including Sameh Shoukry, the foreign minister.

Mr. Shoukry told Sky News in February that he did not condone Hala’s collecting $5,000 in fees and said that Egypt would take measures to eliminate the fees. The Egyptian government did not respond to a request for comment on its relationship with Hala.

Dr. Salim Ghayyda’s father, mother and sister at the Rafah crossing in March.Credit...Salim Ghayyda

COGAT, an Israeli Defense Ministry body that implements government policy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, declined to comment about what role Israel plays in the movement of Palestinians through the Rafah crossing. Israel has facilitated the exit of foreign and dual nationals from Gaza in coordination with Egypt and the United States, according to COGAT’s website.

Israel has allowed almost no Gazans to seek refuge in its territory or to travel through it to reach other places.

Bittersweet Reunions

In a statement in mid-May, GoFundMe said that more than $150 million had been contributed to fund-raisers related to the war in Gaza and that about 19,000 campaigns had been created on its platform, including for evacuations, medical care and food.

The contributors include friends, relatives and their social networks, but also strangers without direct connections to those promoting the fund-raisers.

A 30-year-old Palestinian man, who been living cramped into a small tent in Rafah, said he had made the decision in January to leave. He could no longer bear the unsanitary conditions. To bathe himself, he had to heat water on a makeshift wood stove and transfer it into a plastic bucket, which he lugged into a dirty room containing only a toilet. Using a bottle, he would pour water over his body, simulating a shower, a process he described as deeply inhumane.

He, too, resorted to a GoFundMe campaign. His family raised more than $55,000 to pay for 12 members to leave. A month ago, he and his family made it to Egypt.

Civilians leaving Gaza showed their documents in November at the Rafah crossing. Over the past seven months, an estimated 100,000 people have left Gaza.

In April, Dr. Ghayyda, the pediatrician, traveled to Egypt a second time, this time to reunite with his parents, sister and nephew, who had just made it out of Gaza in time for Eid al-Fitr.

He was overwhelmed with joy, but he still felt an enormous burden — 28 close relatives remained trapped in Rafah and Gaza City, and his parents would need to start a new life in Cairo, at least until the war ended. (In May, he secured the release of four more family members.)

“It’s bittersweet,” he said. “It meant the world to me to see my parents, sister and nephew. But I am still consumed by constant fears about my family that’s still in Gaza. I won’t be able to feel like I can breathe normally again until I know they’re safe.”

The fence between Egypt and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

Emad Mekay and Vivian Yee contributed reporting.

Adam Rasgon is a reporter for The Times in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs. More about Adam Rasgon

See more on: Israel-Hamas War News

The New York Times · by Adam Rasgon · June 20, 2024

7. Israeli Military Says Hamas Can’t Be Destroyed, Escalating Feud With Netanyahu

The military cannot always accomplish what the political leaders demand. But will the political leaders heed the best military advice?

Israeli Military Says Hamas Can’t Be Destroyed, Escalating Feud With Netanyahu

China-Philippines one step closer to armed conflict - Asia Times

Latest collision harms Philippine sailors and raises question of how much Chinese aggression it will take for the US to intervene

asiatimes.com · by Richard Javad Heydarian · June 18, 2024

MANILA – Barely one month since China imposed new maritime regulations for the South China Sea and yet another major incident involving Philippine and Chinese maritime forces has erupted in the disputed waters.

Manila and Beijing have traded accusations following a collision on Monday (June 17) between their vessels over the Second Thomas Shoal, a feature which hosts a de facto Philippine naval outpost aboard the grounded BRP Sierra Madre vessel.

The Philippines’ interagency task force overseeing the country’s waters in the South China Sea, known by Manila as the “West Philippine Sea”, accused Chinese maritime forces of ramming and towing a Philippine resupply vessel en route to the disputed land feature.

Manila has claimed Philippine servicemen suffered “bodily injury” while Philippine vessels sustained damage, raising the possibility of an armed confrontation between the two neighbors.

“China’s dangerous and reckless behavior in the West Philippine Sea shall be resisted by the Armed Forces of the Philippines,” Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said in a spirited statement following the latest incident. “China’s actions are the true obstacles to peace and stability in the South China Sea,” he added, underscoring a new nadir in bilateral relations.

For its part, China accused the Philippine resupply vessel of “deliberately and dangerously” approaching a Chinese ship, thus resulting in a moderate collision following the latter’s “illegally intru[sion]” into Chinese-claimed waters – a charge that Manila has rejected as “deceptive and misleading” following months of intimidation and aggressive actions by Chinse maritime forces in the area.

What makes the tussle between the Philippines and China particularly alarming is the potential involvement of the United States, which has a mutual defense treaty with Manila. Indeed, there are growing fears of multiple flashpoints across the disputed waters, which would only raise the prospect of armed confrontation and the potential for direct US military involvement.

In a public statement, the US State Department squarely blamed China for its latest “provocations” following half a dozen earlier collisions and incidents over the Second Thomas Shoal in the past year alone.

“[Chinese] vessels’ dangerous and deliberate use of water cannons, ramming, blocking maneuvers and towing damaged Philippine vessels, endangered the lives of Philippine service members, is reckless, and threatens regional peace and stability,” a US State Department statement said.

There is little reason to think that tensions will subside anytime soon. Under newly imposed maritime rules, the Chinese Coast Guard has been mandated by Beijing to detain suspected trespassers in the so-called nine-dash line for up to 60 days without trial.

In response, the Philippine Coast Guard deployed two vessels to patrol Philippine-claimed waters to ensure the safety and well-being of Philippine fishermen roaming the hotly-contested areas, particularly in the Scarborough Shoal, situated just over 100 nautical miles from Philippine shores and about 345 nautical miles from the Second Thomas Shoal.

By all indications, both sides are digging in. As a far weaker party militarily, the Philippines has doubled down on both its diplomatic rhetoric as well as military drills with Western allies.

Earlier this year, the Philippine defense chief accused China of trying to “bully” Manila “into submission” or “appeasement” through an increasingly muscular “gray zone” strategy in the South China Sea, which he said involved aggressive tactics that fall just short of armed confrontation.

He went so far as to describe the Asian superpower as an “existential issue” to the Philippines, underscoring the depth of angst in Manila.

To bolster its strategic position, the Philippines is enhancing its deterrence capabilities while regularizing high-stakes drills with allied nations. According to recent satellite imagery, the Philippines’ first BrahMos anti-ship missile base is beginning to take shape at a naval facility near the disputed waters.

The Philippine Navy’s US$375 million Shore-Based Anti-Ship Missile Acquisition Project kicked into action following India’s delivery of the much-vaunted supersonic missile defense system earlier this year.

This has coincided with America’s growing deployment of increasingly sophisticated weapons systems for major drills in the Philippines, including the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) as well as the US Army’s new MRC/Typhon system, which is capable of firing Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles.

The two sides are also preparing for a possible full invasion by an external power as well as a major contingency in Taiwan, with the US Army’s Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center introduced to the Philippines this year.

There is rising talk in the Philippines about the possibility of granting the Pentagon permission to deploy several sophisticated missile defense systems to designated Philippine bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), especially those facing both the western portions of the South China Sea and Taiwan’s southern shores.

Meanwhile, the Philippines has also stepped up its multilateral naval drills with like-minded powers. It was recently joined by the US, Japan and Canada for a two-day drill in the South China Sea in order to reaffirm “the four nations’ commitment to bolstering regional security and stability.”

The Philippines’ patrol ship BRP Andres Bonifacio joined Canadian frigate HMCS Montreal, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer JS Kirisame and the US guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson for a two-day drill within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea.

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“Cooperation like this represents the centerpiece of our approach to a secure and prosperous region where aircraft and ships of all nations may fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows,” the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement.

While these exercises enhance interoperability between the Philippines and its allies and accelerate military modernization, they do little when it comes to China’s “gray zone” actions in the short run.

If anything, China’s increasingly assertive approach to the Philippines is likely due to its concerns about Manila’s growing military cooperation with Western powers, which are seeking expanded access to military facilities across the Southeast Asian nation.

The Biden administration has repeatedly clarified that an “armed attack” on Philippine public vessels in the South China Sea would automatically activate bilateral mutual defense treaty obligations.

But there has been no effective response so far to China’s gray zone approach. During his Shangri-La Dialogue keynote speech earlier this month, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said that the death of any Philippine serviceman would be “very close to what we define as an act of war.”

However, he fell short of clarifying whether any casualties caused by China’s gray zone tactics would be met with an American military intervention.

Nor has the US clarified its position on how it would respond to any Chinese “gray zone” tactics that kill Philippine naval officers. As a result, both China and the Philippines are caught in a dangerous strategic conundrum, whereby each side is incentivized to push the envelope while hoping no actual war breaks out.

Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on X at @Richeydarian

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asiatimes.com · by Richard Javad Heydarian · June 18, 2024

9. ‘Only pirates do this’: Philippines accuses China of using bladed weapons in major South China Sea escalation

Maybe the Chinese thought it was the international talk like a pirate day yesterday. (But they would be wrong. it is September 19th not June 19th https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day)

Seriously go to the link to view the map and photos. https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/20/asia/philippines-footage-south-china-sea-clash-china-intl-hnk/index.html

‘Only pirates do this’: Philippines accuses China of using bladed weapons in major South China Sea escalation | CNN

CNN · by Nectar Gan, Kathleen Magramo · June 20, 2024

Video shows confrontation between Filipino forces and Chinese coast guard

01:27 - Source: CNN

Hong Kong CNN —

The Philippines has accused China’s Coast Guard of launching a “brutal assault” with bladed weapons during a South China Sea clash earlier this week, a major escalation in a festering dispute that threatens to drag the United States into another global conflict.

Footage released by the Philippine military on Thursday showed Chinese coast guard officers brandishing an axe and other bladed or pointed tools at the Filipino soldiers and slashing their rubber boat, in what Manila called “a brazen act of aggression.”

The Philippines and China have blamed each other for the confrontation near the Second Thomas Shoal in the contested Spratly Islands on Monday, which took place during a Philippine mission to resupply its soldiers stationed on a beached World War II-era warship that asserts Manila’s territorial claims over the atoll.

The incident is the latest in a series of increasingly fraught confrontations in the resource-rich and strategically important waterway.

But the scenes captured in the latest footage mark an inflection point in the long-simmering tensions, with China adopting new, far more openly aggressive tactics that, analysts say, appear calculated to test how the Philippines and its key defense ally – the United States – will respond.

China claims “indisputable sovereignty” over almost all of the South China Sea, and most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles from mainland China. Multiple governments, including Manila, hold competing claims.

Collin Koh, research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said it was unprecedented for China’s maritime law enforcement to board a Philippine naval vessel.

“They can be rubber boats, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are Philippine Navy vessels, and according to international law, they enjoy what we term as sovereign immunity,” Koh said. “That is very dangerous, because, if anything, that could even be construed as an act of war.”

This handout photograph released by the Philippine military shows destroyed communication and navigational equipments including a cellphone on a Philippine navy boat.

Armed Forces of the Philippines/AFP/Getty Images

Boats ‘looted’

At a news conference on Wednesday, senior Philippine military officials said China’s Coast Guard officers “illegally boarded” the Philippine rubber boats, “looted” seven disassembled rifles stored in gun cases, “destroyed” outboard motor, communication and navigation equipment and took the personal cellphones of Filipino personnel.

“They deliberately punctured our rubber boats using knives and other pointed tools,” said Alfonso Torres Jr., commander of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Western Command.

A Philippine Navy serviceman on the rubber boat lost his right thumb when the Chinese Coast Guard rammed it, Torres said.

China’s Coast Guard also deployed tear gas, “blinding” strobe lights and continuously blared sirens, the AFP said.

“Only pirates do this. Only pirates board, steal, and destroy ships, equipment, and belongings,” Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, said in a statement.

“The Chinese Coast Guard personnel had bladed weapons and our personnel fought with bare hands. That is what’s important. We were outnumbered and their weapons were unexpected but our personnel fought with everything that they had,” Brawner added.

At a regular briefing with reporters on Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry was asked to comment on the allegations from the Philippines that their vessels were damaged by Chinese coast guard personnel wielding blades and firing tear gas.

Spokesman Lin Jian did not address those allegations, and instead reasserted Beijing’s claims over the Second Thomas Shoal, known as Ren’ai Jiao in China.

“The Philippine operation was not for humanitarian supplies at all. The Philippine vessels carried not only construction materials but also smuggled weapons. They also intentionally rammed into Chinese vessels and splashed water and threw things on Chinese law-enforcement personnel,” Lin said. “These actions have obviously aggravated tensions at sea and seriously threatened the safety of Chinese personnel and ships.”

This handout photograph from the Philippine military shows destroyed windshields on a Philippine navy boat.

Armed Forces of the Philippines/AFP/Getty Images

Mutual defense treaty

What happens in the South China Sea has profound implications for the US, which has a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines that dates back decades.

The latest clash marks the first run-in between the two countries since a new law in China took effect Saturday to authorize its coast guard to seize foreign ships and detain crews suspected of trespassing for up to 60 days without trial.

It also comes just weeks after Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. warned that the death of any Filipino citizen at the hands of another country in the waterway would be “very close” to an act of war.

Marcos has sought closer ties with the US, which has repeatedly stressed Washington’s “ironclad commitment” to a 1951 mutual defense treaty between the US and the Philippines that stipulates both sides would help defend each other if either were attacked by a third party.

An aerial view taken on March 9, 2023 shows Philippine ship BRP Sierra Madre grounded on Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea. - As a Philippine Coast Guard plane carrying journalists flew over the Spratly Islands in the hotly disputed South China Sea, a Chinese voice issued a stern command over the radio: "Leave immediately." (Photo by JAM STA ROSA / AFP) (Photo by JAM STA ROSA/AFP via Getty Images)

Jam Sta Rosa/AFP/Getty Images/File

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday the “United States stands with its ally the Philippines and condemns the escalatory and irresponsible actions” by China.

In a phone call with his Philippine counterpart Enrique A. Manalo on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said China’s actions, “undermine regional peace and stability and underscored the United States’ ironclad commitments to the Philippines under our Mutual Defense Treaty.”

Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, a US-based think tank, said the footage released by the Philippines “clearly shows a Chinese attack on Philippine military assets,” which according to Washington and Manila’s defense pact would trigger mutual defense commitments.

“However, in practical terms, the Philippines itself would have to initiate a move to activate (it) before the US would intervene militarily,” he said.

In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines’ claims in a landmark maritime dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to assert historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.

But Beijing has ignored the ruling. Instead it has increasingly pushed its maritime territorial claims, with China Coast Guard ships – reinforced by militia boats – involved in multiple clashes over the past year that have damaged Philippine ships and seen Filipino sailors injured by water cannon.

Philippine ‘restraint’

The decision by China’s Coast Guard to use bladed weapons in the latest South China Sea clash has drawn comparisons with clashes between China and India on their disputed Himalayan border, where soldiers on both sides have fought fiercely with sticks, rocks and their hands.

The Philippine personnel on the rubber boats are elite forces hailing from the Navy Special Operations Group, Koh said.

“They are trained in combat. They did not retaliate against the Chinese because they’re just simply exercising restraint,” he said. “They probably have received instructions right from the top that under whatever circumstance they are not supposed to fight back against the Chinese and escalate the situation.”

The footage released by the Philippine military also showed another striking development – that the clash took place right next to the BRP Sierra Madre, a rusting US-built Philippine Navy landing craft that was run aground deliberately in 1999, with a national flag hoisted on board, to assert Manila’s territorial claims over Second Thomas Shoal.

This is the closest China’s Coast Guard has come to the BRP Sierra Madre, Koh noted.

“Under normal rules of engagement, the garrison would have fired warning shots,” he said. “The fact that this incident didn’t escalate further is because the Philippines exercised utmost restraint. That’s a simple fact.”

China, Koh said, was trying to test both Manila and Washington “to find out exactly where the red line is.”

“They wanted to see how far the US is willing to pledge its security commitment to the Filipinos. And of course, I don’t think Beijing is dumb enough not to have considered the possibility of having all these actions escalate the situation, but I believe that was a risk that they, in the end, decided to take.”

This story has been updated with additional developments. CNN’s Manveena Suri contributed reporting.

CNN · by Nectar Gan, Kathleen Magramo · June 20, 2024

10. Philippines demands China return rifles and pay for boat damage after hostilities in disputed sea

Philippines demands China return rifles and pay for boat damage after hostilities in disputed sea

AP · by JIM GOMEZ · June 19, 2024

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine military chief demanded Wednesday that China return several rifles and equipment seized by the Chinese coast guard in a disputed shoal and pay for damages in an assault he likened to an act of piracy in the South China Sea.

Chinese personnel on board more than eight motorboats repeatedly rammed then boarded the two Philippine navy inflatable boats Monday to prevent Filipino navy personnel from transferring food and other supplies including firearms to a Philippine territorial outpost in Second Thomas Shoal, which is also claimed by Beijing, according to Philippine officials.

After a scuffle and repeated collisions, the Chinese seized the boats and damaged them with machetes, knives and hammers. They also seized eight M4 rifles, which were packed in cases, navigation equipment and other supplies and wounded a number of Filipino navy personnel, including one who lost his right thumb, two Philippine security officials told The Associated on Tuesday.

The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to discuss the sensitive conflict publicly.

Video and photographs issued by the Philippine military Wednesday night show the chaotic faceoff at the shoal, with Chinese personnel onboard boats brandishing knives, axe and sticks while surrounding two Philippine navy supply boats beside Manila’s ship outpost. Sirens blare constantly as both sides yell at each other and the Chinese smash the Philippine navy boat with a pole and grab what appears to be a bag with a stick.

Pictures show a damaged Philippine navy boat with its side floaters slashed and deflated and another boat with its windshields and navigational screens shattered. A man displays a damaged cellphone.

“We are demanding that the Chinese return our rifles and our equipment and we’re also demanding that they pay for the damage they caused,” Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., head of the Philippine armed forces, said in a news conference in western Palawan province, where he pinned a medal on the wounded navy officer.

“They boarded our boats illegally and seized our equipment,” Brawner said. “They’re now like pirates with this kind of actions.”

Armed with long knives and machetes, the Chinese coast guard personnel tried to beat the unarmed Filipinos, who resisted with their bare hands by parrying the blows and pushing back the Chinese, Brawner said. “Our objective is also to prevent war.”

Some of the Chinese pointed their knives at the Filipino navy personnel, he said.

China blamed the Philippines for the confrontation, saying the Filipino personnel “trespassed” into the shoal in defiance of its warnings.

“This is the direct cause of the incident,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said in Beijing. “The Chinese coast guard at the scene has taken professional law-enforcement measures with restraint aimed at stopping the illegal supply mission by the Philippine vessels and no direct measures were taken against the Philippine personnel.”

The United States renewed a warning Tuesday that it is obligated to defend the Philippines, a treaty ally.

Second Thomas Shoal, part of the disputed Spratly Islands, has been occupied by a small Philippine navy contingent aboard a grounded warship that has been closely monitored by China’s coast guard and navy in a yearslong territorial standoff. China claims the South China Sea virtually in its entirety.

There is fear that disputes in the South China Sea, long regarded as an Asian flashpoint, could escalate and pit the United States and China in a larger conflict. Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have conflicting territorial claims in the busy waterway.

Since last year, hostilities between China and the Philippines have escalated in the disputed waters, particularly in Second Thomas Shoal, which is less than 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from the Philippine coast and where the BRP Sierra Madre, now encrusted with rust, was deliberately grounded in 1999 to create a territorial outpost. The ship remains an actively commissioned military vessel, meaning an attack on it could be considered by the Philippines as an act of war.

AP · by JIM GOMEZ · June 19, 2024

11. Small drones will soon lose combat advantage, French Army chief says

Excerpts:

”The life of impunity of small, very simple drones over the battlefield is a snapshot in time,” Schill said. “Right now it’s being exploited, that’s clear, and we have to protect ourselves. Today, the sword, in the sense of the aerial drone, is powerful, more powerful than the shield. The shield is going to grow.”

This year’s edition of Eurosatory featured dozens of anti-drone systems, including shotguns, cannons and missiles, while companies including Safran, Thales and Hensoldt presented soft-kill solutions to eliminate drones by electronic means. Schill said vehicles in France’s Scorpion collaborative combat program will all be anti-drone systems in two years time, linking their detection capability with turrets that can fire a missile or a 40mm airburst grenade.

First-person view drones currently carry out about 80% of the destruction on the front line in Ukraine, when eight months ago those systems weren’t present, according to Schill. The general said that situation won’t exist 10 years from now, and the question could be asked whether that might already end in one or two years. Schill cited the example of the Bayraktar drone, “the king of the war” at the start of the conflict in Ukraine but no longer being used because it’s too easy to scramble.

The general said he doesn’t consider that the war in Ukraine calls into question the French choice of a maneuvering army built around medium armor, with a focus on speed and mobility. The vehicles that the Army is introducing as part of the Scorpion program -- the Griffon, Serval and Jaguar – can be equipped with either active or passive protection, even if a strong emphasis of mine protection means they’re “quite massive.”

Small drones will soon lose combat advantage, French Army chief says

Defense News · by Rudy Ruitenberg · June 19, 2024

PARIS — The advantage now enjoyed by small aerial drones on battlefields including in Ukraine is but “a moment in history,” French Army Chief of Staff Gen. Pierre Schill said at the Eurosatory defense show in Paris.

While anti-drone systems are lagging and “leave the sky open to things that are cobbled together but which are extremely fragile,” countermeasures are being developed, Schill told reporters during a tour of the French Army stand at the show June 19. Already today, 75% of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine are lost to electronic warfare, the general said.

”The life of impunity of small, very simple drones over the battlefield is a snapshot in time,” Schill said. “Right now it’s being exploited, that’s clear, and we have to protect ourselves. Today, the sword, in the sense of the aerial drone, is powerful, more powerful than the shield. The shield is going to grow.”

This year’s edition of Eurosatory featured dozens of anti-drone systems, including shotguns, cannons and missiles, while companies including Safran, Thales and Hensoldt presented soft-kill solutions to eliminate drones by electronic means. Schill said vehicles in France’s Scorpion collaborative combat program will all be anti-drone systems in two years time, linking their detection capability with turrets that can fire a missile or a 40mm airburst grenade.

First-person view drones currently carry out about 80% of the destruction on the front line in Ukraine, when eight months ago those systems weren’t present, according to Schill. The general said that situation won’t exist 10 years from now, and the question could be asked whether that might already end in one or two years. Schill cited the example of the Bayraktar drone, “the king of the war” at the start of the conflict in Ukraine but no longer being used because it’s too easy to scramble.

The general said he doesn’t consider that the war in Ukraine calls into question the French choice of a maneuvering army built around medium armor, with a focus on speed and mobility. The vehicles that the Army is introducing as part of the Scorpion program -- the Griffon, Serval and Jaguar – can be equipped with either active or passive protection, even if a strong emphasis of mine protection means they’re “quite massive.”

Griffons, Servals

The French Army is receiving around 120 Griffons and 120 Servals every year as part of Scorpion, as well as more than 20 Jaguars. The vehicles are equipped with “extremely powerful” information systems, and a vehicle such as the Griffon may contain more lines of code than a Rafale fighter jet, according to Schill.

Vehicles developed before the Scorpion program, such as the Leclerc main battle tank, are being reconfigured to become part of the collaborative combat system, which for example allows a target detected by one vehicle to be attacked by another. Scorpion was “extremely ambitious,” works, and has met expectations, according to Schill.

“Everything we had planned is perfectly in place, but it’s just a question of cost effectiveness on certain capabilities,” the general said.Something not considered five years ago is the rapid development of microprocessors, which means the gathered data can now be analyzed within the vehicle rather than externally. In combination with on-board artificial intelligence, that will allow for capabilities such as immediate threat detection, including of drones.

When looking to draw lessons from Ukraine, there needs to be a distinction between what is situational and related the type of terrain and battles being fought, and what is structural, the general said. The war in eastern Europe doesn’t mean the issues of the past 30 years around risk and crisis management will disappear. “We must remain a versatile army.”

The French choice has been to not separate the army into distinct parts suited for different theaters, for example an intervention army that is agile and mobile and a mechanized armor army prepared to fight a war like the one in Ukraine today, with “perhaps more rugged, lowered vehicles, but which, when they hit a mine will kill crews.”

Schill said he wants to preserve the “warrior aspect” of the French army, in which every soldier is aware they can be deployed in operation, rather than a soldier in a territorial defense army “who will never do anything.”

The pace of military drone development means that Army can’t commit to large buying programs, because an acquired capability can become obsolete in five months, according to the general. Schill said today’s drones fly better than those two or three years ago, with more computing power onboard that is capable of terrain-based navigation or switching frequencies to escape jamming.

Drones can’t be compared to 155mm shells, which can be stocked and will remain relevant in 10 years time, and the Army needs to find “the right system in this fast-moving world of new technology,” Schill said. The challenge is creating an industrial model that can produce in mass if necessary, and sufficiently standardized.

Future buying of electronic gear such as drones but also small radios and smart phones may be done in batches to allow for technology evolution, for example renewing equipment at the brigade level rather than multiple-year programs to equip the entire Army with a new piece of equipment, Schill said.

‘Just not possible’

The general also commented on the future French-German Main Ground Combat System, which will consist of several vehicles, some of them manned and others automated, combining anti-drone weapons, close-defense anti-aircraft capabilities, missiles and a canon. Putting all of that on a single tank would create a vehicle weighing 80 metric tons, which “is just not possible.”

Development of the system is going to 10 to 15 years because the land-based robotics are “not completely mature yet,” according to Schill.Schill said he doesn’t know whether the right main gun for the future tank system will be 120mm, 130mm or 140mm, saying that will depend on issues such as stealth and mobility requirements, as well as what the gun bore would add in terms of penetration. KNDS, which is involved in the MGCS program, presented a gun that can swap its barrel to fire either 120mm or 140mm shells.

The French Leclerc tank probably won’t get a second upgrade beyond the current XLR version being rolled out, according to the general. He said the French-German agreement is for the next-generation system in 2040, making the Leclerc question a secondary issue.

It’ll be in France’s interest to piggyback on any capability additions made by the United Arab Emirates, another Leclerc user, between now and 2040 as a way to finance intermediate innovations, Schill said. The introduction of the MGCS won’t immediately mean the end of the Leclerc, which the general expects to be in service in the French Army until 2045.

About Rudy Ruitenberg

Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.

12. US humanitarian pier reanchored to the coast of Gaza

US humanitarian pier reanchored to the coast of Gaza

militarytimes.com · by Cristina Stassis · June 20, 2024

The U.S. military reanchored its temporary humanitarian pier off the coast of Gaza, less than a week after detaching it ahead of high seas, a defense official said.

Despite again being attached to the coast, the pier isn’t yet shipping aid. The official didn’t offer a timeline for when those deliveries would restart. But they’re expected soon.

Even when they do, the aid rolling into Gaza won’t immediately reach the Palestinian people — more than 1 million of whom face “catastrophic levels of hunger,” according to the United Nations World Food Programme.

The WFP is responsible for distributing the humanitarian support but paused its deliveries June 9 due to concerns over worker safety. A day before, Executive Director Cindy McCain said, two warehouses had been hit by rockets, leaving one worker injured.

In the meantime, the crates moving from the pier into Gaza are only filling the nearby storage sites.

Following its completion in mid-May, the pier has been a debacle for the U.S. military. It was damaged by stormy weather little over a week later, leaving it out of commission until June 8. U.S. Central Command announced it would detach the pier last week, expecting rough seas that might again cause damage.

In addition, multiple U.S. service members have sustained noncombatant injuries while working on the humanitarian site.

Since its installation, the pier has only been operational for about 10 days and delivered 3,500 metric tons of aid for further transport the aid into Gaza, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh. The Pentagon insists that the pier is a “temporary measure” and that a sufficient amount of aid can only come through land routes into Gaza.

Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a briefing that he doesn’t have a date on when the pier will cease operations.

Aside from weather conditions, another concern is when the WFP will resume their distribution.

The same day WFP warehouses were rocketed, an Israeli-held raid rescued four hostages and killed at least 274 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is run by the terrorist group Hamas. The Israeli rescue unit used an area near the pier during its operation, leading WFP to conduct a security review on whether they can safely continue operations.

McCain said in a CBS “Face the Nation” interview that she is unsure how the warehouses got rocketed since they are “deconflicted” from the Israeli military.

In a briefing with reporters last week, Ryder affirmed multiple times that the Israeli Defense Forces used no part of the pier or humanitarian staging ground to launch its hostage-rescue operation.

About Cristina Stassis

Cristina Stassis is an editorial fellow for Defense News and Military Times, where she covers stories surrounding the defense industry, national security, military/veteran affairs and more. She is currently studying journalism and mass communication and international affairs at the George Washington University.

13. Chinese military’s rifle-toting robot dogs raise concerns in Congress

[Don't] let slip the ....

Let's study robot dogs.

Excerpt:

During last week’s debate over the annual defense authorization bill, House lawmakers inserted language in the massive military policy measure to require a new assessment from the Defense Department on “the threat of rifle-toting robot dogs used by China” in potential future conflicts.

Chinese military’s rifle-toting robot dogs raise concerns in Congress

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · June 19, 2024

Congress is worried that robot dogs with machine guns will be bounding onto the battlefield in the near future.

During last week’s debate over the annual defense authorization bill, House lawmakers inserted language in the massive military policy measure to require a new assessment from the Defense Department on “the threat of rifle-toting robot dogs used by China” in potential future conflicts.

The issue has gained public attention in recent weeks after Chinese military officials showed off armed robotic quadrupeds during recent military drills with Cambodia.

In a video released by state-run CCTV on May 25, a 110-pound dog-like robot is shown carrying and firing an automatic rifle. A spokesman for the Chinese military said the robot, which can perform many tasks autonomously, could “serve as a new member in our urban combat operations.”

Marines test robotic mule that could carry weapons, sensors

The program seeks to take the load off of dismounted troops.

Drone warfare is not new to the U.S. or foreign militaries, and the American military for years has experimented with robot dogs for use in reconnaissance and unit support roles.

But the idea of a robot version of man’s best friend shooting at American soldiers was enough to prompt House members to demand that the secretary of defense investigate “the threat such use poses to the national security of the United States.”

The amendment was adopted without objection from any members of the chamber. But it will have to survive negotiations with senators on the broader defense measure in coming months before it can become law.

The Senate is expected to hold floor debate and make possible amendments to its draft of the legislation in the next few weeks.

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

14. Climate change is a threat, not a distraction, to the US military

There is of course a lot of political disagreement with this.

Climate change is a threat, not a distraction, to the US military

BY ERIN SIKORSKY

DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR CLIMATE AND SECURITY

JUNE 18, 2024

defenseone.com · by Erin Sikorsky

A U.S. Army soldier cleares trees downed when Typhoon Mawar struck Guam in May 2023. Rachel Landers / Joint Region Marianas

We’ve got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Some members of Congress have recently tried to play the gotcha game, pressing witnesses to answer whether climate change is as serious a national security threat as other traditional issues. In one Armed Services Committee hearing, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro was asked whether climate change was more of a threat than “Communist China” or “nuclear annihilation.” Meanwhile, in a hearing before the Senate Budget Committee last month, I was pressed to pick either climate change or the national debt as the greater risk to the United States.

My answer? We’ve got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. An either/or mindset is the wrong way to think about climate change and national security. The security landscape of the 21st century requires us to understand how climate hazards exacerbate existing risks, and how they inhibit U.S. progress and military readiness.

Senators don’t have to take my word for it. In 2017, Jim Mattis—retired Marine general and President Trump’s first defense secretary—told Congress, “Climate change can be a driver of instability and the Department of Defense must pay attention to potential adverse impacts generated by this phenomenon.”

Many of those adverse impacts are increasing here at home, requiring greater attention from the military. In the past two years alone, U.S. troops have deployed domestically more than 70 times in response to climate-related hazards, fighting fires, rescuing citizens from floods, or delivering water. The U.S. National Guard’s time spent fighting wildfires increased from 14,000 personnel days in 2016 to 176,000 personnel days in 2021, and this demand is almost certain to grow as temperatures rise. Given the National Guard’s role in wartime, a military that does not plan for the impact of climate change on domestic demand for Guard services is one that is unprepared for combat abroad.

Of course, the security threat of climate change extends beyond U.S. borders. Take the Indo-Pacific. In criticizing Secretary Del Toro, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, claimed that climate change distracts from the real threat in the Indo-Pacific: China. He argues that matching China ship for ship should be the top priority for the Navy, full stop. Yet suppose the United States invests billions in new ships without accounting for extreme weather and climate resilience. The performance of such ships will suffer, and here’s why. Many Navy ships rely on cold seawater to cool their engines. Yet last year, ocean temperatures were the hottest on record, with temperatures in the northern Pacific well above normal. A retired UK general has warned that Royal Navy captains say their ship engines “have the potential to cut out with the surface sea temperature it is today, let alone at 38 to 40 degrees”—100 to 104° F.

At the same time, climate-driven extreme weather threatens U.S. military infrastructure and readiness in the Indo-Pacific. Last year, Guam was slammed by Typhoon Mawar, a category-four storm whose 150 mph winds interrupted operations at Anderson Air Force Base and caused billions of dollars of damage. This year, a massive rogue wave hit U.S. military facilities on Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands. Such waves are made worse by climate-driven sea level rise, and this one caused damage that the U.S. military estimated would take “months” to recover from. Both Guam and the Marshall Islands are key to maintaining U.S. power and influence in the Pacific.

Earlier this year, the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board released a report that described how climate change might affect the U.S. ability to defend Taiwan. The report’s description of how typhoons may interrupt communications capabilities or supply chain security underscores the fact that the country that plans for such disruptions based on the latest climate projections is the one that will have the upper hand. As U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told West Point cadets in 2023, “You can't train, for instance, for combined operations with allies and partners if the training facilities are flooded. You can't run an installation without water because you're in a drought. And you can't adequately prepare for the future threats if you're occupied with urgent crises.”

Historian John Ross writes that when President-elect John Kennedy asked outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower why D-Day had gone so well, Eisenhower replied, “Because we had better meteorologists than the Germans!" As the United States confronts more frequent and intense extreme weather events due to climate change, more ships and guns alone will not be enough to deter and defend against the threats we face. The U.S. military must ensure it has more thoroughly considered climate change than its adversaries to keep our country safe.

15. How U.S. allies and partners see the November election

How U.S. allies and partners see the November election

ctpublic.org · by Anthony Kuhn · June 19, 2024

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Polls and NPR's own reporting tell a story of many Americans fatigued by our upcoming presidential election, not satisfied with the choice between two men who have both already held the office of president. But American allies and partners are watching the race intently. Take South Korea, Japan, Ukraine, Israel - the fates of those countries are closely tied to whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden ends up sitting in the White House next year. So we have gathered the NPR correspondents who cover those countries to walk us through how they view the stakes of the U.S. election - Joanna Kakissis in Ukraine, Daniel Estrin in Israel and Anthony Kuhn, who covers both South Korea and Japan from his base in Seoul. Welcome to all three of you.

ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Thank you, Mary Louise.

JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: Thank you.

DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.

KELLY: All right. I'm going to start in Asia, since you're well ahead of us on the - in the time zone clock, Anthony. I want to talk through with all of you how a lot of anxiety centers on U.S. financial support and how that may come into play, depending on who wins this next presidential election. How does it look from where you sit?

KUHN: Well, Donald Trump has described the U.S.'s top allies in Asia, Japan and South Korea, basically as wealthy freeloaders. And he said that if they don't pay more for the U.S. to defend them, the U.S. could bring home some of the roughly 78,000 troops based in those two countries. Now, critics point out that U.S. troops are not there just to defend allies. They're also there to defend U.S. interests and maintain U.S. primacy in Asia. But critics say that Trump is more interested in the balance of payments than the balance of power in Asia. For example, in 2019, Trump demanded a 500% increase in South Korea's contribution.

KELLY: Five hundred percent?

KUHN: Yes.

KELLY: OK.

KUHN: And that made some South Koreans feel like he was shaking them down for protection money.

KELLY: Joanna, hop in here. When you hear Anthony talking about Trump throwing around the term wealthy freeloaders, how does that resonate for you sitting in Kyiv, which, of course, is very dependent on the U.S. and its NATO allies for support right now, both military and financial, and where Trump has also threatened NATO allies saying, you need to pay more; you need to up your contributions?

KAKISSIS: Yeah, that's right. I mean, for Ukraine, this election is actually existential. Everyone asks us what's going to happen, and this sort of lack of clarity on Trump's position to some extent and, like, the future is making everybody really nervous. At least with Biden's team, they say, well, this is an administration that's been with us through the worst of it. And Donald Trump has made some pretty strong statements. He has threatened to cut off future support for Ukraine. And he called President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine's president, the greatest salesman, and he didn't mean...

KELLY: The greatest salesman.

KAKISSIS: He did not mean it as a compliment.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DONALD TRUMP: Zelenskyy is maybe the greatest salesman of any politician that's ever lived. Every time he comes to our country, he walks away with $60 billion.

KELLY: I think President Zelenskyy would love if that were true - if every time he visited the U.S., he walked away with $60 billion. Daniel Estrin, jump in here from Israel, also, of course, grappling with its own war and trying to figure out what a Trump or a second Biden presidency would look like.

ESTRIN: That's right. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also grappling with the very question of U.S. defense support, just like we heard in Asia and in Ukraine. I mean, just this week, Netanyahu infuriated the White House. He put out this video accusing the U.S. of holding up weapons and ammunition to Israel, just really making it clear that Netanyahu is publicly standing up to Biden.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: I said it's inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions, too, as well.

ESTRIN: I think it is clear in the background, Mary Louise, that Netanyahu and his circle of advisers much prefer Trump in the White House to Biden. Netanyahu's advisers will walk in the hallways and say things to each other like, well, it's just half a year to go, and then the Biden administration's pressure on Israel will go away. And that pressure is very much on Israel's conduct in the Gaza war. So analysts see here that Netanyahu is perhaps trying to buy time with the war, hoping that Trump wins the election and hoping that eventually that means that Israel will get this pressure from the Biden administration off its back.

KELLY: Anthony Kuhn, what about in South Korea? What about in Japan? Do you hear political leaders there either publicly or kind of under their breath expressing support for one candidate or the other in the American elections?

KUHN: They put a very diplomatic public face on it, saying that no matter who's in the White House, alliances with Washington will remain ironclad. But if you talk to people here, you know that they have serious concerns about abandonment. And this goes not just for South Korea and Japan, but also allies such as the Philippines and partners such as Taiwan. And they fear they could be abandoned for several reasons.

KELLY: Joanna, speak to speak to that in Ukraine. What kind of comments are you hearing from Zelenskyy, from his team in terms of either saying out loud or saying under their breaths the - what they may be doing to prepare for a possible change of administration?

KAKISSIS: He's - Zelenskyy is very much a person who says, come, see what we're experiencing here, and I believe that you will change your mind if you have any reservations. And there are teams. President Zelenskyy's government is reaching out privately to Trump's team. So these efforts at diplomacy are being sped up as the election gets closer and closer.

KELLY: And then - this is a jump-ball question for any of the three of you. We've obviously been focusing these last several minutes on how elected leaders in your patch of the world view the American elections. What about just ordinary people? How closely are they tracking this given everything else going on actually in their daily lives and plenty of politics at home to watch?

ESTRIN: It's not on the front pages of the newspaper here. That's for sure. I mean, the Israelis are preoccupied with so much right now, the Gaza war, a potential Lebanon war. Polls do show that more Israelis would want to see Trump in the White House than Biden. I think there is one thing though that Israelis fear, and it's that the U.S. won't give its full backing at this very precarious time for Israel's security. And really whoever is in the White House, there's a hope that they can help Israel reach a resolution to this mess.

KUHN: Yeah, I was just going to add that a lot of people here in South Korea, I think, think back to the Trump administration as a time of very high tension. People called it the days of fire and fury when there was a sort of nuclear brinksmanship between then-President Trump and Kim Jong Un, and people really felt insecure. And I think in people's memories, that was a very tense time.

KELLY: And Joanna, last word.

KAKISSIS: Well, Mary Louise, it's really amazing how closely people are following this. People all know who Mike Johnson is. They all know who the key players in Congress are. We were just in Western Ukraine on the border with Romania, you know, very - kind of an impoverished part of the country, and everyone there was asking me about it as well. Well, who do you think Trump would select as a Secretary of State? And I was like, wow. You all are really interested in this. So - but it's understandable considering how much of a role the U.S. plays in Ukraine's fate.

KELLY: That is NPR's Joanna Kakissis in Kyiv, Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv and Anthony Kuhn in Seoul. Thanks to all three of you.

KUHN: Thank you, Mary Louise.

KAKISSIS: You're welcome.

ESTRIN: You're welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

ctpublic.org · by Anthony Kuhn · June 19, 2024

16. Batteries as a Military Enabler

Just issue everyone a G-76 hand cranked generator and a rechargeable battery and you are good to go (note sarcasm - for anyone who has had to jump and hump a G-76 generator in the field to keep the radio operational for long periods of time.)

More serious excerpts:

Finally, given batteries’ potential military applications, the West should closely examine its sectoral technology transfer policies. China’s battery complex frankly enjoys a technological edge in many respects. Still, the West’s leading battery powers should ensure that they are able to prevent tech leakage to China of cutting-edge technologies — especially solid-state batteries — that have substantial military applications, transformational commercial potential, or both.

At the same time, it’s important to stress that competition with Beijing should be managed responsibly. The West should continue to de-risk supply chains, especially for technologies with potential dual-use applications such as shipbuilding, dronemaking, and batteries. Yet it should also underscore that it does not seek to decouple from China entirely, nor does it seek unnecessary confrontation or conflict. There are hard limits to Western-Chinese ties; trade will not deliver a fundamental breakthrough in relations with Beijing. Still, commercial ties in non-sensitive areas mitigate security dilemmas, provide economic benefits, and, most importantly, limit the probability and consequences of an unnecessary and potentially catastrophic war between great powers.

Balancing deterrence and reassurance vis-à-vis Beijing is no easy task. That is especially true regarding trade in technologies, such as batteries, that deliver clear economic and environmental benefits, yet also have latent or actual military potential. While Washington and Brussels should carefully manage competition with Beijing, they must also constrain China’s technological and industrial capacities, especially for critical products such as batteries, while ensuring that the coalition develops its own robust capabilities.

Batteries as a Military Enabler - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Joseph Webster · June 20, 2024

Batteries, often overlooked, could quietly tilt the balance of military power. Yes, it’s true. Batteries have military implications, creating difficult tradeoffs for policymakers balancing strategic, economic, and decarbonization priorities. While mainland China’s lithium-ion storage batteries are useful for meeting economic and decarbonization goals across the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, its battery complex poses potential security risks, especially in the event of a contingency over Taiwan.

Batteries are an increasingly important feature in military affairs, with use cases ranging from diesel-electric submarines to unmanned platforms and more. Moreover, synergies between China’s battery, drone, and shipbuilding complexes are alarming. There is, however, only limited recognition of batteries’ growing importance in military affairs, especially in a contingency over Taiwan. While positive steps are being taken to limit Beijing’s industrial and technological capacity in batteries, the Washington- and Brussels-led alliance system must act more vigorously.

To constrain China’s battery complex, the United States and its allies should continue to phase in tariffs on Chinese exports of lithium-ion batteries for grid storage and electric vehicles. Given the importance of reducing sole-supplier dependency risks, Washington and Brussels should work together to de-risk supply chains, especially in upstream mining and refining for raw materials like graphite, nickel, and lithium. Furthermore, the West should ensure that any battery technology transfers do not aid the Chinese defense industrial base — although, bluntly, Chinese batteries are often at the technological frontier.

In addition to limiting China’s battery complex, the free world, especially the United States, must strengthen itself by expanding its own battery capacity and capabilities. This will entail undertaking fiscal investments, reforming onerous permitting requirements, adopting new policy mechanisms, and incentivizing research and development.

These steps, taken in tandem, will reduce the probability that Beijing is the first to achieve technological breakthroughs for even more advanced batteries, such as solid-state batteries, that could deliver game-changing commercial applications and potential military uses.

To accelerate the development of the U.S. battery industry and its attendant strategic, economic, and environmental benefits, policymakers should reach a bipartisan agreement that streamlines reviews for all energy projects — including renewables, nuclear energy, mining for critical materials, and, yes, oil and gas development. Ensuring that the United States can build infrastructure quickly will strengthen the arsenal of democracy’s manufacturing capacity, deterring potential adversaries.

The disturbances from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prove that energy security is national security. The Washington- and Brussels-led alliance system should strengthen internal manufacturing capacity, especially for critical dual-use technologies like batteries, while taking steps to constrain the technological and industrial capacity of the Chinese battery complex.

The Military Implications of China’s Battery Complex

China’s battery complex complements its military capabilities.

Consider aerial drones, especially one-way attack assets. These weapons already figure prominently in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Samuel Bendett estimating that both combatants field at least 50,000 first-person-view suicide drones per month. Crucially, these one-way attack drones often use lithium-ion batteries for propulsion.

While lithium-ion–powered one-way attack drones are already revolutionizing warfare in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, constraining daytime maneuver, unmanned aerial drones could play an even larger role in any confrontation over Taiwan. China’s output of potential dual-use drones dwarfs production seen in both Ukraine and Russia. A single Chinese dronemaker, DJI, holds a 90 percent share of the global consumer drone market. While military and civilian drones have different roles and capabilities, China could repurpose civilian drone production lines for the needs of its armed forces, just as it would use its civilian shipbuilding yards to repair its naval fleet during wartime. Mainland China’s industrial capacity in aerial drones and batteries, along with its proximity to Taiwan, could prove significant in a confrontation.

Still, there will be limitations to the role batteries can play in the aerial domain. Owing to its greater energy density, gasoline stores vastly more power than batteries for the same weight. As Justin Bronk and Jack Watling write for the think tank RUSI, “For applications requiring light payloads over short ranges for limited periods, electrical power is generally the preferred solution, while the longer the required range and the heavier the payload, the more compelling combustion engines powered by fuels become.”

Additionally, the Taiwan Strait has high wind speeds most of the year (summer is an important exception) that would buffet smaller platforms and likely make them inoperable. Finally, and significantly, most first-person-view drones have a limited range of about five to 20 kilometers, not nearly enough to range Taiwan from mainland China without adjustments that add technical complexity and cost.

Batteries will therefore play an important — but probably constrained — role in China’s aerial drone fleet. Still, battery technology breakthroughs, especially improvements in energy density, could increase the saliency of aerial drones in the event of a contingency over Taiwan.

Worryingly, there are indications that the Chinese navy is expanding aerial drone use in operations. China recently launched the world’s first dedicated drone carrier and has constructed at least two drone motherships. Analysts believe these platforms are being used for training purposes, especially to simulate hostile drone swarms. Accordingly, the Chinese navy appears to be in the early days of employing drone swarm capabilities. Many, probably most, of these drones will be fueled by gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel, but expendable lithium-ion battery–powered drones could also play a role. Synergies between China’s aerial dronemaking capabilities, shipbuilding prowess, and its battery complex should be a focus of coalition military planners.

Batteries are likely to prove even more significant for the maritime domain, which will be a critical feature in any confrontation over Taiwan.

Batteries are employed in unmanned underwater vessels, unmanned surface vessels and, non-nuclear-powered submarines. Most navies, especially those without access to nuclear-powered vessels, operate diesel-electric submarines with propulsion batteries charged via diesel generation. With existing lead-acid batteries, diesel-electric subs must frequently rise near the surface to intake air, or snorkel, which allows them to clear diesel exhaust and recharge batteries for operation but raises the risk of detection.

Lithium-ion battery–powered submarines offer performance improvements over existing lead-acid batteries. Some benefits of lithium-ion batteries include lower risk of detection (due to less need for snorkeling, as well as quieter operations), longer underwater endurance, and higher speeds for sprinting and cruising. Japan’s is the only navy confirmed to operate diesel-electric submarines with lithium-ion batteries.

Other navies could soon employ submarines with lithium-ion batteries. Although the United States does not currently operate diesel-electric submarines itself, there may be synergies with not only Japanese but also South Korean shipyards. But the People’s Republic of China looms large. Although the Chinese system is generally better at implementation than innovation, its battery complex has made undeniable advances in recent years and is in many ways more technologically advanced than the global West’s. China’s navy could field advanced lithium-ion diesel-electric submarines over the medium term and may already have plans to do so.

Solid-state batteries offer even greater capabilities than lithium-ion batteries, including greater energy density, capacity, and range. Crucially, solid-state batteries are advantaged over lithium-ion batteries at preventing fires, which are a major risk aboard submarines. While solid-state batteries have yet to be commercialized due to cost and technical challenges, military customers — including in China — are not as price-sensitive. The development of solid-state batteries could therefore offer substantial performance improvements for both diesel-electric submarines and unmanned systems below, on, and above the surface.

Washington’s Battery Balancing Act: Recommendations

The larger and more sophisticated the Chinese battery complex becomes, the more likely it is to secure technological advances in next-generation solid-state batteries that could revolutionize energy or transform military affairs. It could also leverage its existing industrial capabilities in lithium-ion batteries to scale deployments of unmanned and manned aerial and maritime systems. Accordingly, the Washington- and Brussels-led democracies should work jointly to limit the Chinese battery complex by phasing in tariffs. At the same time, they must also develop their own industrial base and technological capacity.

Critics of tariffs on Chinese products claim that these measures would raise battery costs and slow decarbonization efforts without alleviating dependency on Chinese-made batteries. Yet this criticism overlooks the fact that substantial progress has already been made in building out the Western battery industrial base.

U.S. investment in batteries has surged since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022. Cumulative investments from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of 2024 totaled $42.2 billion. According to the Clean Investment Montor, batteries investment in the first quarter of this year stood at $11.4 billion, an all-time high and 486 percent higher than the same period in 2022. Nor are commercial battery advances limited to the United States, as Japanese company TDK recently announced a breakthrough that will allow it to expand energy density at 100 times that of current levels. Applying tariffs to Chinese-made batteries creates a void that Western manufacturers can fill.

Developing a Western “battery industrial base” will require a reliable supply chain. The United States and critical coalitional partners — especially South Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada, and Taiwan — should aim to rapidly de-risk potential supply chain chokepoints, as Beijing’s October 2023 graphite restrictions demonstrate it will continue to try to exploit any vulnerabilities. Otherwise, shortfalls in extracting and refining battery metals could strangle the coalition’s battery supply chain, as a recent Foreign Affairs article shows. To address supply chain risks, policymakers should adopt creative mechanisms, such as creating new benchmarks, financing hedging instruments, establishing price insurance, and maintaining strategic reserves.

Forging a reliable batteries supply chain will necessitate working with allies and partners across a variety of different commodities in the mining sector. For instance, graphite reserves are concentrated in Turkey and Brazil; Indonesia and Australia hold the world’s largest reserves of nickel.

Additionally, China is increasingly outpacing the United States and others in research and development in the applied physical sciences — including in materials science, chemistry, and engineering. Accordingly, the United States and others should respond by expanding investments in these sectors, which will likely deliver a positive return on investment. Importantly, these efforts could garner bipartisan support, as the potentially transformational Endless Frontiers Act enjoyed the support of Republican and Democratic senators.

In addition to de-risking supply chains and supporting research and development, Washington and Brussels should accelerate indigenous energy deployment. Streamlining procedures for the permitting of electricity generation assets, transmission lines, mining and refining, and electric vehicle charging infrastructure would remove barriers holding back the West’s battery complex and its energy security. Given the stakes of the competition with Beijing, policymakers should be able to reach a bipartisan agreement that streamlines reviews for all energy projects, whether they are clean energy projects or conventional hydrocarbons. Expanding Western energy production is critical not only for energy security, but also for winning other energy-related competitions with Beijing, including in AI.

Finally, given batteries’ potential military applications, the West should closely examine its sectoral technology transfer policies. China’s battery complex frankly enjoys a technological edge in many respects. Still, the West’s leading battery powers should ensure that they are able to prevent tech leakage to China of cutting-edge technologies — especially solid-state batteries — that have substantial military applications, transformational commercial potential, or both.

At the same time, it’s important to stress that competition with Beijing should be managed responsibly. The West should continue to de-risk supply chains, especially for technologies with potential dual-use applications such as shipbuilding, dronemaking, and batteries. Yet it should also underscore that it does not seek to decouple from China entirely, nor does it seek unnecessary confrontation or conflict. There are hard limits to Western-Chinese ties; trade will not deliver a fundamental breakthrough in relations with Beijing. Still, commercial ties in non-sensitive areas mitigate security dilemmas, provide economic benefits, and, most importantly, limit the probability and consequences of an unnecessary and potentially catastrophic war between great powers.

Balancing deterrence and reassurance vis-à-vis Beijing is no easy task. That is especially true regarding trade in technologies, such as batteries, that deliver clear economic and environmental benefits, yet also have latent or actual military potential. While Washington and Brussels should carefully manage competition with Beijing, they must also constrain China’s technological and industrial capacities, especially for critical products such as batteries, while ensuring that the coalition develops its own robust capabilities.

Joseph Webster is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and Indo-Pacific Security Initiative and editor of the independent China-Russia Report. This article represents his own personal opinions.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Joseph Webster · June 20, 2024

17. Putin’s Hybrid War Opens a Second Front on NATO’s Eastern Border

Excerpts:

“We are doing the work for everyone else,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said June 13. “This needs to be a European Union issue.”

Seeking to weaken Europe and destabilize it from within, Russia is dipping into its hybrid operations toolbox more actively than ever, according to a May 30 report by the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki. While large-scale expulsions of Russian intelligence operatives across the region have hampered its ability to carry out such attacks, officials concede they tend to be one step behind whatever Moscow comes up with.

That makes the hybrid threat from Russia ubiquitous, according to Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen.

“There is no front line in this,” she said. “All of Europe is at war now.”

Putin’s Hybrid War Opens a Second Front on NATO’s Eastern Border

Destabilizing operations have intensified across the Baltic Sea region. However much they prepare, governments concede they remain one step behind.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-20/putin-s-hybrid-war-opens-second-front-on-russia-s-border-with-nato?sref=hhjZtX76

By Kati Pohjanpalo, Aaron Eglitis, Milda Seputyte, and Ott Tammik

June 20, 2024 at 12:00 AM EDT

Shortly after midnight, several masked men in boats began removing orange navigational aids on the Narva River that separates Estonia from Russia — a watercourse which demarcates the extent of NATO’s reach.

Even that late in the day it’s twilight in northern Europe at the end of May, leaving the Russian border guards who were working to lift the markers clearly visible to the watching Estonian authorities.

Then again, Russia’s actions in the early hours of May 23 weren’t necessarily meant to be conducted under cover of darkness; Estonia took it as an explicit signal of intent to the Baltic states and the West more broadly.

Border patrol removing navigational aids on the Narva River that separates Estonia from RussiaSource: Estonian Border Guard

The incident was catalogued as one in a series of acts intended to provoke and destabilize the nations that share a 3,550-kilometer (2,210-mile) frontier with Russia and its ally Belarus. Generally falling short of conventional attacks that could trigger NATO’s collective response, these episodes have grown in frequency since Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine in early 2022.

That reality is increasingly turning the Baltic region into a second front in the West’s conflict with Moscow.

“Russia is currently waging two wars,” Finland’s President Alexander Stubb said at a foreign policy forum in Helsinki on June 14. “One is a kinetic, conventional war in Ukraine. The other is a hybrid war in Europe and the West with the aim of influencing the tone of public discourse or in some way shake our sense of security.”

Second Front

NATO’s Eastern flank doubled after northern enlargement

Source: Bloomberg

Sending groups of migrants to storm borders; jamming GPS signals; recruiting criminals for petty acts of sabotage: they are part of an expanding repertoire of acts cited by countries from Finland through the Baltic states to Poland and beyond as calibrated to unsettle their citizens.

Each nation shares a troubled history of dealings with Moscow, and all are now members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. They’ve responded with plans to reinforce and upgrade the eastern border through a combined $3.5 billion, and have asked for hybrid attacks to be on the agenda at next month’s NATO summit in Washington.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment on its activities on Wednesday.

In the past few months alone, Finland and Sweden have suffered airspace violations, multiple commercial aircraft have been prevented from landing at small airports due to interference with the global positioning system, and Poland has detained people for alleged Russia-backed acts of sabotage inside the European Union.

Black smoke above a burning shopping center in Warsaw on May 15. Poland is investigating acts of sabotage.Photographer: Attila Husejnow/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Questioning established borders is another well-worn tactic given a modern twist.

The Russian frontier at Narva has long been a flashpoint for tensions with Estonia, strains that have ratcheted up since President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. This year, Moscow restricted traffic crossing the border bridge to pedestrians only. Estonia is surveilling the area for drone activity and has put up signs warning travelers of Russian intelligence recruitment efforts.

According to the government in Tallinn, it’s traditionally agreed with Moscow on the location of navigational markers on the river to ensure fishing and leisure boats don’t veer into Russian territory by accident, but that since 2023 Russia has not given its assent and disagreed with the location of about half the 250 buoys planned this year. Estonia demanded the markers that were removed be returned, and said it would continue installing more unless Russia provided evidence that the location of the shipping lane had changed. It’s still awaiting a response.

Read how Russian threats put security at the heart of the EU elections

Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have a combined frontier with Russia that extends over more than 2,300 kilometers; add the 1,250 kilometers shared with Belarus, and that’s longer than the US-Mexico border.

Since the Cold War, a 100 kilometer corridor separating Poland and Lithuania known as the Suwalki Gap has been considered a strategic choke point in any conflict scenario. Sandwiched between Belarus and the heavily armed Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, it’s a territory that, if severed, would cut off the Baltic states’ land access to the rest of Europe.

It’s a vulnerability that’s been used to rattle nerves in Lithuania. In March, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko revealed a blueprint to grab the Suwalki Gap and close it to Kaliningrad on the Baltic. Posing in military uniform with a fluffy white dog on his lap, Lukashenko was shown on social media conversing with his army commanders about plans for a land grab of Lithuania and part of northern Poland.

Putin and Lukashenko at the Independence Palace in Minsk on May 24.Photographer: Mikhail Metzel/AFP/Getty Images

For Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, rather than evidence of imminent military activity, it shows that Russia is “attempting to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about their intentions in the Baltic Sea.”

The states in Russia’s immediate western neighborhood — formerly unwilling Soviet republics, members of the Soviet bloc, or wary observers — have long been among the most hawkish when assessing Moscow’s intentions. Feeling vindicated, they have responded to the war in Ukraine by raising defense budgets well above NATO’s 2% of economic output goal and taking steps toward conscription.

Russia has denounced as provocations the decisions of Sweden, with which it shares a maritime border, and of Finland to break with decades of non-alignment and become NATO members. The Baltic states are each hosting advanced NATO battle groups in a significant increase in the military alliance’s forward presence next to Russia’s border.

“There will be no war today.”

All concerned are having to grapple with disinformation and influence operations at record levels.

Moscow routinely portrays the Baltic states as warmongers and Russophobes, and has enlisted trolls and bot armies to spam social media with malicious content, according to their intelligence services. Where language mistakes in disinformation texts used to make them relatively easy to spot, the widespread advent of artificial intelligence makes the challenge more difficult, Lithuania’s top cyber security agency has warned.

The Kremlin has sought to mobilize Russian-speaking minorities in Estonia and Latvia to sow internal divisions, mostly without success, while in Poland the focus has been on stoking tensions between locals and the large numbers of Ukrainians who sought refuge from the war.

Lithuania’s armed forces stepped in with a message on social media to calm the population in March — “there will be no war today” — after soldiers were approached in public and asked when the conflict was going to start and how to prepare for it.

It’s part of a broader pattern of actions meant to sow fear and anxiety, said Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who was placed on a wanted list by the Kremlin this year. “Let’s not fall into the trap of Russian intimidation,” she told reporters on May 23.

Russia has gone low tech, too, sending migrants to frontier zones to put pressure on border control and potentially stir public dissent. It’s a strategy that began in 2015, when scores of people suddenly appeared at remote Lapland border stations in Finland and Norway in what Finnish authorities later determined was a test to gauge preparedness.

Migrants at the Finnish-Russian frontier last year, some with children’s bikes.Photographer: Jussi Nukari/AFP/Getty Images

A migration crisis erupted in 2021 on a larger scale in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, with Syrians and other nationalities flown in from the Middle East to Belarus. Forced back by border guards, some froze to death in the forests. In the fall of last year, migrants reappeared at the Finnish-Russian frontier — groups of men on rickety bicycles, some even riding children’s bikes — prompting Helsinki to close all road crossings. The border remains shut.

Barriers to halt migrant flows are being erected in Finland, Latvia and Poland, while Lithuania has finished a 500-plus-kilometer fence on its border with Belarus. Warsaw alone plans to invest about $2.5 billion in fortifying the border, which would protect the country both against conventional invasion with tanks and cyber warfare.

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Russia’s European neighbors from Norway to Poland are considering establishing a “drone wall” to combat Russian surveillance drones, track migration and disrupt smuggling. Latvia and Lithuania are planning investing in “drone armies” this year as part of efforts to boost production of the local defense industry, with the latter now offering courses to the public in operating drones just like learning to drive.

With so much investment, front-line countries complain they shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden alone.

A fence topped with razor wire running along the Polish border with Belarus.Photographer: Damian Lemanski/Bloomberg

“We are doing the work for everyone else,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said June 13. “This needs to be a European Union issue.”

Seeking to weaken Europe and destabilize it from within, Russia is dipping into its hybrid operations toolbox more actively than ever, according to a May 30 report by the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats in Helsinki. While large-scale expulsions of Russian intelligence operatives across the region have hampered its ability to carry out such attacks, officials concede they tend to be one step behind whatever Moscow comes up with.

That makes the hybrid threat from Russia ubiquitous, according to Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen.

“There is no front line in this,” she said. “All of Europe is at war now.”

— With assistance from Piotr Skolimowski and Leo Laikola

18. The Credibility Trap: Is Reputation Worth Fighting For?

Do we worry too much about our credibility?

Or do we have a "say-do gap"

Do our adversaries take our credibility seriously?

How many times have we lamented that we have lost credibility ? What has been the result?

Excerpts:

Adversaries may not even pay the most attention to what the United States does overseas. They may more closely follow its domestic politics. More than any action the United States did or did not undertake abroad, it may well have been American political polarization that most encouraged Putin to test Washington’s resolve to defend Kyiv. Recent research suggests that when presidents show resolve in domestic crises, they can build their reputations internationally. Soviet leaders’ opinion of President Ronald Reagan’s resolve was bolstered by a domestic act—his firing of air traffic controllers for going on strike in 1981. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that he was impressed by Kennedy’s resolve to seek a negotiated settlement to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. But what impressed him was not how the president behaved toward Moscow but his willingness to overrule the advice of his own military leaders to avert a catastrophe.

A reputation for resolve is one of the hardest things for leaders or states to control. Any assessment of U.S. adversaries that does not carefully examine their psychology—the different ways they come to conclusions about the United States—is doomed to be inadequate. And ultimately, to regain credibility abroad, the United States may first need to tackle an even more complicated task: restoring unity at home.

The Credibility Trap

Is Reputation Worth Fighting For?

By Keren Yarhi-Milo

July/August 2024

Published on June 18, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Who Fights for Reputation · June 18, 2024

Does a reputation for weakness invite aggression? Many analysts have suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine in 2022 after inferring that the United States and the rest of NATO lacked resolve. The West had imposed only weak sanctions on the Kremlin in response to its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2018 poisoning of a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom. Then came the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, a chaotic evacuation that seemed to demonstrate Washington’s lack of commitment.

On the day Russia invaded, U.S. President Joe Biden declared that Putin launched his attack to “test the resolve of the West.” Now, many believe that the United States must incur significant costs—sending billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine and risking nuclear escalation—in part to prove to Putin that it is resolute. But the audience Washington is performing for goes well beyond Putin. Across the world, it can seem as if American credibility is constantly being questioned, with the United States’ adversaries challenging U.S. hegemony, and its allies worrying whether Washington will come to their aid. The potential for another Trump presidency and a more isolationist approach to foreign policy only adds to these allies’ concerns. In the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly scorned Washington’s requests for restraint in his assault on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after its terror attack on his country last year, while Iran’s proxies are brazenly attacking U.S. targets. In the global South, the United States is struggling to convince countries to take its side in the emerging struggle between democracies and autocracies. “Nobody seems to be afraid of us,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates lamented in a February interview with Foreign Affairs.

Many analysts suggest that these developments are the United States’ fault—that it has lost its once unquestioned reputation for strength and resolve. Regaining that reputation depends on the extent to which the United States is willing to support friends such as Israel and Ukraine. The rest of the world is watching closely, and if Washington goes soft, the argument runs, adversaries will feel emboldened and allies abandoned. China, for instance, might infer that it can invade Taiwan without serious consequences.

Leaders have long obsessed over credibility, the perceived likelihood that a nation will follow through on its word, especially a threat to use military force. Washington has even gone to war—in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq—to protect its credibility. Behind this consensus that credibility is important, however, lies a great deal of uncertainty about how it is established, how much it drives relations between states, and how it can be maintained or regained without instigating escalation or unwanted wars.

Over the past decade, a new wave of research has produced fresh insights into credibility, particularly about what creates a reputation for resolve. The latest thinking shows that all else being equal, maintaining a reputation for resolve is important to deter adversaries and reassure allies. But it also suggests that leaders have far less influence over their country’s credibility than they might wish. Credibility is in the eye of the beholder, after all. It depends on the complex psychological calculations of one’s adversaries. Reputations are beliefs about beliefs, which makes them almost impossible to control. The implication for the United States should give policymakers pause: its efforts to rebuild credibility are costly, easily misread, and can even backfire.

FACE OFF

The word “credibility” entered the international relations lexicon after the 1938 Munich agreement between fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, referring to what the leaders who appeased Hitler lacked. Resolve—a state’s willingness to stand firm in a crisis—is only one component of credibility; material capabilities and perceived interests are also essential. But maintaining a reputation for resolve became much more central to American statecraft with the advent of the Cold War. Considering the United States’ new commitments at that time to defend distant allies, the global struggle between competing power blocs, and the existential risk of nuclear conflict, theorists such as Thomas Schelling contended that credibility was one of the key factors in deterring and prevailing against the Soviet Union. “Face is one of the few things worth fighting over,” he wrote in 1966.

Schelling, whose pioneering work shaped the rationalist thinking of many Cold War–era U.S. presidents, emphasized that a state’s response to any given crisis would prove relevant in future crises, even very different kinds of crises, because adversaries would presume that the state would behave similarly. This hypothesis suggested that deterrence depended on sending clear messages to adversaries and sticking to prior commitments. And it helped motivate the United States’ containment policies during the Cold War, leading to a focus on peripheral regions such as Indochina. Although the United States had few direct interests in Vietnam, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson felt that the United States’ reputation for resolve was being tested, and so they were steadily drawn into a war to defend South Vietnam from the communist north.

After the Cold War, a second wave of scholars questioned whether a state’s reputation for resolve mattered at all. Because most international relations dilemmas incorporate new considerations and unique sets of stakes, Daryl Press has argued that, when predicting a state’s future actions, analyzing its “current calculus” of interests and capabilities is far more useful than scrutinizing its past behavior. Jonathan Mercer has argued that reputations for resolve are hard to build. Moreover, they are subjective: leaders are more likely to believe their adversaries are resolute and their allies are weak-willed.

This post–Cold War school of thought contended that because states judge other states’ reputations subjectively and reputation does not appear to predict current behavior, reputation may not be worth fighting for. This view became more influential among U.S. policymakers over the course of the United States’ long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as some began to question whether Washington was mainly staying the course for reputation’s sake—and if it was really gaining anything by the effort to sustain its reputation for resolve. President Barack Obama defended his decision not to attack Syria after Bashar al-Assad’s regime used chemical weapons in 2013, crossing a redline he himself had set, by saying in 2016, “Dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.”

THE SCIENCE OF RESOLVE

Over the last decade, a new generation of scholars has employed fresh statistical methods, textual analyses of newly declassified government records, and survey-based experiments to bring an even more nuanced examination to how reputation shapes international relations, charting a middle path between those who think credibility is the be-all and end-all in foreign affairs and those who think it does not matter. All else being equal, it is becoming clearer that if a state has a reputation for resolve, that does change its adversaries’ behavior. For example, Alex Weisiger and I found in a 2015 study that countries that had backed down in a crisis were more than twice as likely to face challenges the following year than countries that had stood firm.

Yet signaling resolve can be harder than it seems. Repeated demonstrations of resolve can become rote over time and lose their force—or even be counterproductive. The United States prosecuted the Vietnam War in part to show its resolve to contain communism. But by making subsequent presidents wary of entangling Washington in far-flung conflicts, the war may have dampened that resolve and made future interventions much less likely—an aversion that came to be known as “Vietnam syndrome.”

Van Jackson’s research has also demonstrated that because a state’s commitments are multifaceted, an effort to prove one form of determination may weaken a reputation for other kinds. For instance, North Korea’s frequent threats over the course of its crises with the United States helped it establish a reputation for resolve. But when it failed to follow through, the same threats gave it a reputation for inconsistency and dishonesty. In seeking to show toughness, North Korea proved its fickleness.

Assessments of an adversary's resolve are profoundly shaped by irrational biases.

The greatest paradox the new wave of research identified, however, is that a state’s reputation is not in its own hands. Reputations depend on who is assessing them. My own research has found that leaders display selective attention, giving information that stands out to them—such as their personal impressions of their counterparts—greater weight than other indicators that may be equally or more relevant. In a similar 2022 study, Don Casler also found that policymakers adjudicate credibility differently depending on their experiences and roles. Intelligence and military officials, for instance, tend to focus on a state’s current capabilities, whereas diplomats focus more on the consistency (or lack thereof) of its leaders’ behavior.

Beliefs matter, too. The recent scholarship on credibility suggests that one actor’s assessment of another is profoundly shaped by irrational forces such as confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and ideological predisposition. For instance, a 2018 study by Joshua Kertzer, Jonathan Renshon, and I found that hawkish policymakers perceive public threats as less credible than their dovish counterparts do and are more inclined to view actions such as military mobilizations as credible signals of resolve. A similar study by Kertzer, Brian Rathbun, and Nina Srinivasan Rathbun found that hawks are more likely than doves to view their adversaries’ promises to comply with agreements as lacking credibility, suggesting that existing beliefs color assessments. As former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said of the Iranians as Trump prepared to withdraw from Obama’s nuclear deal, “We know they’re cheating. . . . We’re just not seeing it.”

Or consider the United States’ pullout from Afghanistan in 2021. Those who cared about the overall reputation of the United States might have concluded that the withdrawal and its chaotic execution showed adversaries that the country lacks resolve. But those more concerned about the consistency of its promises and its actions—maintaining what is known as a strong “signaling reputation”—would say the withdrawal revealed high credibility. Biden, after all, followed through on a campaign promise to pull U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, signaling that he keeps his word.

Adding to the complexity, observers do not judge resolve based only on what a leader does; they also judge it based on what they think the leader thinks about what he does. In 1969, after North Korea shot down a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft, killing 31 Americans, the United States chose not to retaliate. U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers attempted to frame this nonresponse as a sign of American strength: “The weak can be rash. The powerful must be more restrained.” If observers thought Rogers truly meant what he said, then the decision not to retaliate could have bolstered the United States’ reputation for resolve. But if observers believed Rogers was trying to dress up weakness with powerful rhetoric, or that the United States had chosen not to retaliate purely to send a signal about its reputation, they may have discounted the statement entirely. This is what the scholar Robert Jervis called “the reputation paradox.” Ultimately, how people calculate someone’s intentions reflects their own biases.

SIGNAL OR NOISE?

Debates about credibility, or more specifically reputations for resolve, are now playing a major role in the latest outbreak of violence in the Middle East. One reading of that conflict suggests that the decline of American credibility in the region—thanks to the bungled Iraq war, the failure to follow through on the redline with Syria, and the rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan—directly contributed to a credibility deficit that may have emboldened Iran and its proxies, including Hamas. A converse theory suggests that Iran and its proxies rated U.S. credibility highly and hoped that if they attacked a U.S. ally, Washington would be forced to respond and get dragged into a costly war.

These narratives may have elements of truth. But they assume qualities about the United States’ adversaries that are almost impossible to know, such as which dots Iranian or Hamas leaders connected to form their assessments of U.S. resolve. After Israel scored a decisive win in its 2006 war with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, acknowledged that had he known Israel would respond with so much force, he would never have kidnapped the two Israeli soldiers whose capture triggered the war. It is unlikely the leaders of Hamas or Iran will make a similar declaration—and if they did, it might not accurately reflect whether the United States’ credibility deficit factored into their calculus. Even if these leaders plainly and publicly declared how their perception of U.S. resolve influenced their decision-making, such statements may be merely performative. Policymakers must apply great caution when concluding, first, that they understand how adversaries perceive their country and, second, that this perception clearly motivated a certain action.

In fact, Hamas’s October 7 attack may have had nothing to do with Washington’s reputation. It could simply be explained by the failure of Israeli deterrence attributable to local factors such as the prospect of an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal and turmoil in Israel’s domestic politics. Likewise, Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine may have had everything to do with his psychology—his megalomania, his aspiration to restore Russia’s lost grandeur. By blaming so much global disorder on a U.S. credibility gap, analysts can easily overstate Washington’s ability to shape world events.

The American credibility deficit is also frequently invoked to account for China’s growing belligerence. A common argument is that a U.S. failure to support Ukraine will signal to Chinese leader Xi Jinping that the United States’ commitment to supporting smaller allies is fundamentally softening, thus making China’s invasion of Taiwan more likely. But only Xi fully knows how much the war in Ukraine factors into his calculations. Actions don’t always speak for themselves, as Jervis has noted.

REPUTATIONAL RISKS

It is essential for U.S. leaders to avoid being trapped by their anxieties about credibility. In the end, it matters little how the United States assesses its own reputation for resolve. What matters far more is how observers—its adversaries and allies—judge it, which is hard for the United States to control. The current obsession with fixing the United States’ credibility deficit may not only be fruitless; it also carries substantial risk. If Americans come to the consensus that a credibility crisis is to blame for the world’s disorder, they are likely to conclude that their opponents will be more willing to challenge U.S. interests, which invites more hawkish U.S. policy and costlier signaling. This signaling, in turn, could provoke unnecessary crises, arms races, and even wars.

Of course, Washington must make its threats as credible as possible, reassure its allies, and demonstrate that contested areas—such as Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine—are of vital concern. But states and leaders have a wider menu of options to build credibility than some policymakers recognize: public methods, private methods, and a combination of the two. Sending military aid or moving aircraft carriers can signal resolve. So can taking steps to avoid undermining American credibility, such as not publicly broadcasting the United States’ intent to “pivot” away from a region or publicly delineating redlines it will be unwilling to enforce. In general, those who suggest the United States faces a credibility deficit tend to put far too much emphasis on the country’s past actions. The past matters, but what matters more is the credibility of the signals Washington is sending right now.

The current obsession with fixing the U.S. credibility deficit gap carries substantial risk.

U.S. policymakers also sometimes excessively globalize credibility by presuming that every country around the world perceives the United States’ actions in the same way and takes a single message from U.S. foreign policy, even policies the United States has applied in a completely different region. In truth, the vantage points from which other countries form their perceptions of the United States vary widely, depending on those countries’ local situations and their leaders’ psychologies. Policymakers must carefully analyze the psychologies of the United States’ diverse adversaries—otherwise, even costly signaling may not have the desired effect. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to signaling resolve or maintaining deterrence.

Adversaries may not even pay the most attention to what the United States does overseas. They may more closely follow its domestic politics. More than any action the United States did or did not undertake abroad, it may well have been American political polarization that most encouraged Putin to test Washington’s resolve to defend Kyiv. Recent research suggests that when presidents show resolve in domestic crises, they can build their reputations internationally. Soviet leaders’ opinion of President Ronald Reagan’s resolve was bolstered by a domestic act—his firing of air traffic controllers for going on strike in 1981. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that he was impressed by Kennedy’s resolve to seek a negotiated settlement to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. But what impressed him was not how the president behaved toward Moscow but his willingness to overrule the advice of his own military leaders to avert a catastrophe.

A reputation for resolve is one of the hardest things for leaders or states to control. Any assessment of U.S. adversaries that does not carefully examine their psychology—the different ways they come to conclusions about the United States—is doomed to be inadequate. And ultimately, to regain credibility abroad, the United States may first need to tackle an even more complicated task: restoring unity at home.

KEREN YARHI-MILO is Dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Relations. She is the author of Who Fights for Reputation.

Foreign Affairs · by Who Fights for Reputation · June 18, 2024

19. A New Era of Leadership: Special Operators in Government

A New Era of Leadership: Special Operators in Government

By Daniel Elkins

June 20, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/06/20/a_new_era_of_leadership_special_operators_in_government_1039223.html?mc_cid=2c1a406c5a&mc_eid=70bf478f36

A New Era of Leadership: Special Operators Can Bring Needed Experience to our Government

In the dust of warfare, an elite breed of American has repeatedly proven their mettle. Hailing from all walks of life, members of the U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) have answered the highest call to service, defending our nation with unwavering courage, blood, and a commitment to something greater than themselves. As politics becomes increasingly pervasive in our everyday lives and politicians become less representative of the people, we need better candidates. SOF values and the desire to serve don’t end when the uniform comes off. Now, more than ever, our nation is calling on the SOF community to serve yet again.

Our nation’s leadership is dominated by career politicians whose understanding of the challenges we face is often theoretical—detached from the harsh realities our men and women in uniform confront daily. In contrast, members of the SOF community navigate the most complex, high-stakes environments imaginable every day, making difficult decisions with limited resources and against overwhelming odds. The amazing men and women of this community are adept at leading diverse teams, collaborating with allies worldwide, and tackling intricate problems with innovative solutions.

Members of the SOF community are assessed and selected to be America ‘s elite, undergoing rigorous training pipelines with high attrition. Their ability to adapt, innovate, and lead under pressure is unparalleled – these are skill sets our nation desperately needs in its elected officials.

These men and women are not merely Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, or Marines; they are strategic thinkers, problem-solvers, and decision-makers who possess the highest ethical standards. They have witnessed firsthand the consequences of policy decisions, bearing the scars and sacrifices that come with defending our way of life. Who better to shape the policies that will guide our nation’s future than those who have fought valiantly to protect and defend our freedom?

Critics might argue that military service is not a defining qualification for serving in Congress. Simply put, these critics are protectors of special interests and the status quo. Their interests lie in preserving the current order for political and personal gain. They do not want problem solvers in office because they thrive off collective fixation on problems, rather than fixing them.

We’re championing those who have undergone the most rigorous training in the world — who have proven their aptitude in the world’s most demanding environments. They are leaders whose perspectives have been forged in the fires of real-world adversity and tempered by a deep understanding of the human cost of conflict.

Our decision to support members of the SOF community who choose to run for office transcends partisan politics. We will amplify their voices, endorsing SOF Veteran Candidates regardless of party affiliation, because their experiences and insights are invaluable assets to our democracy. We will organize our network to help get voters out to support and elect these candidates. Special Operations Forces draw their ranks from all walks of life, race, and creed, representing a diverse cross-section of America. By highlighting our community, we are not just diversifying our political leadership; we are enriching it with a wealth of experience, expertise, and unparalleled insight.

So, to the members of the SOF community who feel called to public service, we say, “Your nation needs you once more. Bring your experiences, your leadership, and your unwavering commitment to the halls of power. Help us forge a brighter, more inclusive future for all Americans.”

For those who have stared danger in the face and prevailed, the challenges of political life will hold no fear. It is time for a new era of leadership, one defined by the values that have made our nation’s elite forces the envy of the world.

We are the Special Operations Association of America, and we are proud to stand with you.

Daniel Elkins is the Founder and President of the Special Operations Association of America, a former Green Beret and Special Operations Combat Veteran, an Atlantic Council Counter-Terrorism Project member.

20. The Original War Game

I missed this last week.

The Original War Game

The invention of Kriegsspiel, a detailed tabletop simulation of battle, revolutionized 19th-century warfare and laid the groundwork for today’s role playing games.

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/the-original-war-game-69829ec6?mc_cid=2c1a406c5a&mc_eid=70bf478f36

By Kelly Clancy

June 14, 2024 9:00 pm ET

A game of Kriegsspiel, with pieces representing military units on a terrain map. PHOTO: MARSHALL NEAL/INTERNATIONAL KRIEGSSPIEL SOCIETY

Chess originated in ancient India as an explicit abstraction of war. Its Sanskrit name, chaturanga, means “four-limbed,” referring to the military divisions of infantry, cavalry, elephantry and chariotry. In the Arabic world, the pieces evolved from lifelike sculptures of men, horses and elephants to the more abstract forms we know today.

In the late 18th century, the German mathematician Johann Hellwig determined to put military realism back into the game by inventing a new variant, which he called Kriegsspiel. As the first modern “war game,” Kriegsspiel helped military theorists make explicit the conditions of battle and gain new perspectives on war. To this day, all major militaries still use some form of Kriegsspiel-style simulation to inform their decisions. U.S. federal agencies run game simulations on scenarios ranging from disaster relief to nuclear war.

While hobby groups play a simplified version of Kriegsspiel in person and online, the game also evolved into more familiar forms. It inspired tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer, and its mechanics were adopted as the bedrock for role-playing and combat-based videogames.

Hellwig’s game replaced the traditional chess pieces, representing outmoded military units like knights, with modern pieces such as artillery. Instead of the king, players aimed to capture a fixed fortification. To mimic a real battlefield, Hellwig expanded the board to 1,617 squares, each color-coded to indicate different terrains. Over time, new variations added features that would become standard in war simulations, such as using dice to determine an attack’s damage, reintroducing the noisiness of reality into chess’s composed strategy.

A 19th-century illustration shows German officers playing Kriegsspiel. PHOTO: ALAMY

In the early 19th century, Georg Leopold von Reisswitz, a Prussian nobleman, realized the game’s potential for military training and began to create increasingly elaborate versions. He replaced the chessboard with wet sand molded into imaginary landscapes and designed porcelain tiles with bas-relief terrain features, allowing players to experience the difficulties of different terrains. Wooden blocks were used to represent troop formations. Reisswitz’s son Georg Heinrich, an army officer, continued to refine Kriegsspiel, introducing a data-driven scoring system based on historical battle losses. The two sides in a game were designated by red and blue, a convention that persists to the present day: Security professionals use “red teaming” to simulate attacks on their systems.

Kriegsspiel systematized contingencies of terrain, weather and enemy power. Each turn simulated two minutes of warfare. The wooden-block troops, which took up map space corresponding to the actual footprint of regimental units, were constrained to move a reasonable distance. Communication between forces was subject to the fog of war, and opposing players used separate boards so that they couldn’t see one another’s pieces, just as real intelligence is limited by troops’ relative positions and sight lines.

Early versions of the game had been tedious to play, each turn burdened with complicated formulas for tallying the exact numbers of casualties. In time, the designers replaced the onerous rulebook with knowledgeable umpires who could quickly estimate and assign damage or assess victory after each move. Kriegsspiel became significantly faster paced and even—for some—enjoyable. The game made it possible for military officers to improve their skills even in times of peace. It combined the pure strategy of chess with the chance element of dice, so players had to be both future-oriented and quick to adapt.

In 1824, Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, who had loved the game as a child, learned of the improved version through his military tutor. He invited the younger Reisswitz to umpire a demonstration of Kriegsspiel at his home, witnessed by dignitaries and the king. The scenario involved a campaign fought between the Oder and Elbe Rivers, including territory in what is now Poland—a region of great strategic interest at the time. The game took weeks to play; during that time, all cats had to be banished from the house to prevent them from disrupting the game pieces. General Karl Freiherr von Müffling, who attended the demonstration, quickly realized the potential of Kriegsspiel and exclaimed: “It’s not a game at all! It’s training for war. I shall recommend it enthusiastically to the whole army.” The king was likewise impressed and demanded, by royal decree, that every military regiment learn to play.

General Helmuth von Moltke, the chief of staff of the Prussian army from the 1850s to the 1880s, was a devoted fan of Kriegsspiel. He saw it as an ideal training tool for officers. Anyone, he argued, “can take part immediately in the game as a commander, even if he has no previous knowledge of the game or has never even seen it before.” He credited the game’s bird’s‑eye view of the battlefield for offering a novel perspective on outdated tactics. For instance, von Moltke abandoned column and line troop formations, which he realized made for easy targets, in favor of loose formations. The lower density of soldiers translated to fewer casualties in artillery attacks.

Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke had his staff officers play Kriegsspiel to keep sharp. PHOTO: ULLSTEIN BILD/GETTY IMAGES

Moltke organized the first permanent peacetime general staff and had them play Kriegsspiel to keep sharp. It allowed officers to assess their reports’ intelligence and strategic savvy, and generally disrupted the military’s hierarchy. Previously, appointments had been nepotistic, but Kriegsspiel made it easier for officers to ascend through the ranks on the merit of their ideas. Trainees could reason through scenarios with their superiors, coordinating on high-level strategy and working out counterfactual outcomes. Officers were afforded more accountability, and game simulations gave them a deeper understanding of the tactics they should carry out.

Prussian general Kraft Karl August zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, whose military strategy won him high honors in the Franco-Prussian War, credited his success to Kriegsspiel: “The ability to quickly arrive at decisions and the cheerful assumption of responsibility which characterized our officers in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 was in no small measure due to the war games.”

Through the lens of a game, war became a science: testable, rigorous, algorithmic. Before its revival under Kaiser Wilhelm I, Kriegsspiel had been largely forgotten in the long peace that characterized the reign of his elder brother. Scholars had dropped the Reisswitz name from any mention in military histories and Kriegsspiel manuals. In fact, the Reisswitzes had been so effectively scrubbed from history that an 1873 magazine article celebrating Kriegsspiel’s role in Prussia’s recent military victories failed to mention the family whatsoever. The author instead claimed that the game had no inventor and had been passed down as folk knowledge until the first guide was published in 1846.

A few weeks later, an anonymous letter to the magazine corrected the record, describing how the game had been painstakingly perfected over decades of experimentation by the Reisswitzes and how it had come to the attention of the royal household. Though the letter was unsigned, most historians believe that it could only have been written by the Kaiser himself, given that it contained details known solely to him. It was an act of patient tribute to the father and son whose technology had forged a national identity for Germany and changed the face of Europe—and, soon, the world.

Kelly Clancy is a neuroscientist and physicist. This essay is adapted from her new book, “Playing With Reality: How Games Have Shaped Our World,” which will be published on June 18 by Riverhead Books.

21. Niall Ferguson: We’re All Soviets Now

Smolensky Street shoppers, including two Soviet Army soldiers lining up at a liquor store counter waiting to buy vodka, on November 16, 1991. (Sergei Guneyev via Getty Images)

Niall Ferguson: We’re All Soviets Now

https://www.thefp.com/p/were-all-soviets-now?mc_cid=2c1a406c5a&mc_eid=70bf478f36

A government with a permanent deficit and a bloated military. A bogus ideology pushed by elites. Poor health among ordinary people. Senescent leaders. Sound familiar?

By Niall Ferguson

June 18, 2024

Bari here.

In the early days of The Free Press, I put together a fantasy roster. Niall Ferguson was at the top of it. Today, I am thrilled to announce that Niall is joining The Free Press as a biweekly columnist.

Niall’s résumé is a little much. He has two degrees from Oxford and has taught there as well as at Cambridge, NYU, the London School of Economics, and Harvard. He’s now a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Given the present state of many of those institutions, you might dismiss Niall as an establishment hack who shapes history to serve the acceptable narrative.

That isn’t Niall. Unlike so many of the excellent sheep that enjoy tenure in academe, Niall thinks for himself, a quality you can see on display in any one of his 16 books (and counting), including The Pity of War: Explaining World War I; Kissinger: 1923–1968: The Idealist (part one of a two-part biography); The Square and the Tower; and, most recently, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.

For this incredible body of work, King Charles just knighted Niall a few days ago.

In recent years, Niall has been one of the most thoughtful and intellectually honest voices in the cultural battle that has engulfed America’s most storied institutions—including academia. In an epochal essay he published this past December in The Free Press, “The Treason of the Intellectuals,” he argued that “American academia has gone in the opposite political direction—leftward instead of rightward—but has ended up in much the same place” as German academia pre–World War II. “The question is whether we—unlike the Germans—can do something about it.”

Niall is doing something. He is one of the founders of the new University of Austin, where I sit on the board alongside him and where, this fall, we will welcome the university’s first class.

Oh, and did I mention that he’s married to Ayaan Hirsi Ali? In journalism we call that burying the lede.

Sir Niall’s first column is just below. —BW

The witty phrase “late Soviet America” was coined by the Princeton historian Harold James back in 2020. It has only become more apposite since then as the cold war we’re in—the second one—heats up.

I first pointed out that we’re in Cold War II back in 2018. In articles for The New York Times and National Review, I tried to show how the People’s Republic of China now occupies the space vacated by the Soviet Union when it collapsed in 1991.

This view is less controversial now than it was then. China is clearly not only an ideological rival, firmly committed to Marxism-Leninism and one-party rule. It’s also a technological competitor—the only one the U.S. confronts in fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. It’s a military rival, with a navy that is already larger than ours and a nuclear arsenal that is catching up fast. And it’s a geopolitical rival, asserting itself not only in the Indo-Pacific but also through proxies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

But it only recently struck me that in this new Cold War, we—and not the Chinese—might be the Soviets. It’s a bit like that moment when the British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, playing Waffen-SS officers toward the end of World War II, ask the immortal question: “Are we the baddies?”

I imagine two American sailors asking themselves one day—perhaps as their aircraft carrier is sinking beneath their feet somewhere near the Taiwan Strait: Are we the Soviets?

Yes, I know what you are going to say.

There is a world of difference between the dysfunctional planned economy that Stalin built and bequeathed his heirs, which collapsed as soon as Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform it, and the dynamic market economy that we Americans take pride in.

The Soviet system squandered resources and all but guaranteed shortages of consumer goods. The Soviet healthcare system was crippled by dilapidated hospitals and chronic shortages of equipment. There was grinding poverty, hunger, and child labor.

A drunken man lies down at the Kazansky train station buffet in Moscow on January 6, 1992. (Vitaly Armand via Getty Images)

In America today, such conditions exist only in the bottom quintile of the economic distribution—though the extent to which they do exist is truly appalling. Infant mortality in the late Soviet Union was around 25 per 1,000. The figure for the U.S. in 2021 was 5.4, but for single mothers in the Mississippi Delta or Appalachia it is 13 per 1,000.

The comparison to the Soviet Union, you might argue, is nevertheless risible.

Take a closer look.

A chronic “soft budget constraint” in the public sector, which was a key weakness of the Soviet system? I see a version of that in the U.S. deficits forecast by the Congressional Budget Office to exceed 5 percent of GDP for the foreseeable future, and to rise inexorably to 8.5 percent by 2054. The insertion of the central government into the investment decision-making process? I see that too, despite the hype around the Biden administration’s “industrial policy.”

Economists keep promising us a productivity miracle from information technology, most recently AI. But the annual average growth rate of productivity in the U.S. nonfarm business sector has been stuck at just 1.5 percent since 2007, only marginally better than the dismal years 1973–1980.

The U.S. economy might be the envy of the rest of the world today, but recall how American experts overrated the Soviet economy in the 1970s and 1980s.

And yet, you insist, the Soviet Union was a sick man more than it was a superpower, whereas the United States has no equal in the realm of military technology and firepower.

Actually, no.

We have a military that is simultaneously expensive and unequal to the tasks it confronts, as Senator Roger Wicker’s newly published report makes clear. As I read Wicker’s report—and I recommend you do the same—I kept thinking of what successive Soviet leaders said until the bitter end: that the Red Army was the biggest and therefore most lethal military in the world.

On paper, it was. But paper was what the Soviet bear turned out to be made of. It could not even win a war in Afghanistan, despite ten years of death and destruction. (Now, why does that sound familiar?)

On paper, the U.S. defense budget does indeed exceed those of all the other members of NATO put together. But what does that defense budget actually buy us? As Wicker argues, not nearly enough to contend with the “Coalition Against Democracy” that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have been aggressively building.

In Wicker’s words, “America’s military has a lack of modern equipment, a paucity of training and maintenance funding, and a massive infrastructure backlog. . . . it is stretched too thin and outfitted too poorly to meet all the missions assigned to it at a reasonable level of risk. Our adversaries recognize this, and it makes them more adventurous and aggressive.”

And, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the federal government will almost certainly spend more on debt service than on defense this year.

It gets worse.

According to the CBO, the share of gross domestic product going on interest payments on the federal debt will be double what we spend on national security by 2041, thanks partly to the fact that the rising cost of the debt will squeeze defense spending down from 3 percent of GDP this year to a projected 2.3 percent in 30 years’ time. This decline makes no sense at a time when the threats posed by the new Chinese-led Axis are manifestly growing.

Even more striking to me are the political, social, and cultural resemblances I detect between the U.S. and the USSR. Gerontocratic leadership was one of the hallmarks of late Soviet leadership, personified by the senility of Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko.

Visitors walk through the courtyard to visit the Winter Palace courtyard in Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in November 1983. (Mikki Ansin via Getty Images)

But by current American standards, the later Soviet leaders were not old men. Brezhnev was 75 when he died in 1982, but he had suffered his first major stroke seven years before. Andropov was only 68 when he succeeded Brezhnev, but he suffered total kidney failure just a few months after taking over. Chernenko was 72 when he came to power. He was already a hopeless invalid, suffering from emphysema, heart failure, bronchitis, pleurisy, and pneumonia.

It is a reflection of the quality of healthcare enjoyed by their American counterparts today that they are both older and healthier. Nevertheless, Joe Biden (81) and Donald Trump (78) are hardly men in the first flush of youth and vitality, as The Wall Street Journal recently made cringe-inducingly clear. The former cannot distinguish between his two Hispanic cabinet secretaries, Alejandro Mayorkas and Xavier Becerra. The latter muddles up Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. If Kamala Harris has never watched The Death of Stalin, it’s not too late.

Another notable feature of late Soviet life was total public cynicism about nearly all institutions. Leon Aron’s brilliant book Roads to the Temple shows just how wretched life in the 1980s had become.

In the great “return to truth” unleashed by Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, Soviet citizens were able to pour forth their discontents in letters to a suddenly free press. Some of what they wrote about was specific to the Soviet context—in particular, the revelations about the realities of Soviet history, especially the crimes of the Stalin era. But to reread Russians’ complaints about their lives in the 1980s is to come across more than a few eerie foreshadowings of the American present.

In a letter to Komsomolskaya Pravda from 1990, for example, a reader decried the “ghastly and tragic. . . loss of morality by a huge number of people living within the borders of the USSR.” Symptoms of moral debility included apathy and hypocrisy, cynicism, servility, and snitching. The entire country, he wrote, was suffocating in a “miasma of bare-faced and ceaseless public lies and demagoguery.” By July 1988, 44 percent of people polled by Moskovskie novosti felt that theirs was an “unjust society.”

Look at the most recent Gallup surveys of American opinion and one finds a similar disillusionment. The share of the public that has confidence in the Supreme Court, the banks, public schools, the presidency, large technology companies, and organized labor is somewhere between 25 percent and 27 percent. For newspapers, the criminal justice system, television news, big business, and Congress, it’s below 20 percent. For Congress, it’s 8 percent. Average confidence in major institutions is roughly half what it was in 1979.

A man reads the Russian newspaper Pravda, publicly displayed on the walls of a Moscow building during the Gorbachev era. (Bernard Bisson via Getty Images)

It is now well known that younger Americans are suffering an epidemic of mental ill health—blamed by Jon Haidt and others on smartphones and social media—while older Americans are succumbing to “deaths of despair,” a phrase made famous by Anne Case and Angus Deaton. And while Case and Deaton focused on the surge in deaths of despair among white, middle-aged Americans—their work became the social-science complement to J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy—more recent research shows that African Americans have caught up with their white contemporaries when it comes to overdose deaths. In 2022 alone, more Americans died of fentanyl overdoses than were killed in three major wars: Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The recent data on American mortality are shocking. Life expectancy has declined in the past decade in a way we do not see in comparable developed countries. The main explanations, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, are a striking increase in deaths due to drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, and suicide, and a rise in various diseases associated with obesity. To be precise, between 1990 and 2017 drugs and alcohol were responsible for more than 1.3 million deaths among the working-age population (aged 25 to 64). Suicide accounted for 569,099 deaths—again of working-age Americans—over the same period. Metabolic and cardiac causes of death such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease also surged in tandem with obesity.

This reversal of life expectancy simply isn’t happening in other developed countries.

Peter Sterling and Michael L. Platt argue in a recent paper that this is because West European countries, along with the United Kingdom and Australia, do more to “provide communal assistance at every stage [of life], thus facilitating diverse paths forward and protecting individuals and families from despair.” In the United States, by contrast, “Every symptom of despair has been defined as a disorder or dysregulation within the individual. This incorrectly frames the problem, forcing individuals to grapple on their own,” they write. “It also emphasizes treatment by pharmacology, providing innumerable drugs for anxiety, depression, anger, psychosis, and obesity, plus new drugs to treat addictions to the old drugs.”

Obese? Try Ozempic.

The mass self-destruction of Americans captured in the phrase deaths of despair for years has been ringing a faint bell in my head. This week I remembered where I had seen it before: in late Soviet and post–Soviet Russia. While male life expectancy improved in all Western countries in the late twentieth century, in the Soviet Union it began to decline after 1965, rallied briefly in the mid-1980s, and then fell off a cliff in the early 1990s, slumping again after the 1998 financial crisis. The death rate among Russian men aged 35 to 44, for example, more than doubled between 1989 and 1994.

The explanation is as clear as Stolichnaya. In July 1994, two Russian scholars, Alexander Nemtsov and Vladimir Shkolnikov, published an article in the national daily newspaper Izvestia with the memorable title “To Live or to Drink?” Nemtsov and Shkolnikov demonstrated (in the words of a recent review article) “an almost perfect negative linear relationship between these two indicators.” All they were missing was a sequel—“To Live or to Smoke?”—as lung cancer was the other big reason Soviet men died young. A culture of binge drinking and chain-smoking was facilitated by the dirt-cheap prices of cigarettes under the Soviet regime and the dirt-cheap prices of alcohol after the collapse of communism.

The statistics are as shocking as the scenes I remember witnessing in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which made even my native Glasgow seem abstemious. An analysis of 25,000 autopsies conducted in Siberia in 1990–2004 showed that 21 percent of adult male deaths due to cardiovascular disease involved lethal or near-lethal levels of ethanol in the blood. Smoking accounted for a staggering 26 percent of all male deaths in Russia in 2001. Suicides among men aged 50 to 54 reached 140 per 100,000 population in 1994—compared with 39.2 per 100,000 for non-Hispanic American men aged 45 to 54 in 2015. In other words, Case and Deaton’s deaths of despair are a kind of pale imitation of the Russian version 20 to 40 years ago.

The self-destruction of homo sovieticus was worse. And yet is not the resemblance to the self-destruction of homo americanus the really striking thing?

Of course, the two healthcare systems look superficially quite different. The Soviet system was just under-resourced. At the heart of the American healthcare disaster, by contrast, is a huge mismatch between expenditure—which is internationally unrivaled relative to GDP—and outcomes, which are terrible. But, like the Soviet system as a whole, the U.S. healthcare system has evolved so that a whole bunch of vested interests can extract rents. The bloated, dysfunctional bureaucracy, brilliantly parodied by South Park in a recent episode—is great for the nomenklatura, lousy for the proles.

Meanwhile, as in the late Soviet Union, the hillbillies—actually the working class and a goodly slice of the middle class, too—drink and drug themselves to death even as the political and cultural elite double down on a bizarre ideology that no one really believes in.

Muscovites queue at a liquor store to buy wine, limited to two bottles per person, on May 29, 1990. (Janek Skarzynski via Getty Images)

In the Soviet Union, the great lies were that the Party and the state existed to serve the interests of the workers and peasants, and that the United States and its allies were imperialists little better than the Nazis had been in “the great Patriotic War.” The truth was that the nomenklatura (i.e., the elite members) of the Party had rapidly formed a new class with its own often hereditary privileges, consigning the workers and peasants to poverty and servitude, while Stalin, who had started World War II on the same side as Hitler, utterly failed to foresee the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and then became the most brutal imperialist in his own right.

The equivalent falsehoods in late Soviet America are that the institutions controlled by the (Democratic) Party—the federal bureaucracy, the universities, the major foundations, and most of the big corporations—are devoted to advancing hitherto marginalized racial and sexual minorities, and that the principal goals of U.S. foreign policy are to combat climate change and (as Jake Sullivan puts it) to help other countries defend themselves “without sending U.S. troops to war.”

In reality, policies to promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion” do nothing to help poor minorities. Instead, the sole beneficiaries appear to be a horde of apparatchik DEI “officers.” In the meantime, these initiatives are clearly undermining educational standards, even at elite medical schools, and encouraging the mutilation of thousands of teenagers in the name of “gender-affirming surgery.”

As for the current direction of U.S. foreign policy, it is not so much to help other countries defend themselves as to egg on others to fight our adversaries as proxies without supplying them with sufficient weaponry to stand much chance of winning. This strategy—most visible in Ukraine—makes some sense for the United States, which discovered in the “global war on terror” that its much-vaunted military could not defeat even the ragtag Taliban after twenty years of effort. But believing American blandishments may ultimately doom Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to follow South Vietnam and Afghanistan into oblivion.

As for climate change, the world is now awash in Chinese electric vehicles, batteries, and solar cells, all mass-produced with the help of state subsidies and coal-burning power stations. At least we tried to resist the Soviet strategy of unleashing Marxism-Leninism on the Third World, the human cost of which was almost incalculable. Our policy elite’s preoccupation with climate change has resulted in utter strategic incoherence by comparison. The fact is that China has been responsible for three-quarters of the 34% increase in carbon dioxide emissions since Greta Thunberg’s birth (2003), and two-thirds of the 48% increase in coal consumption.

To see the extent of the gulf that now separates the American nomenklatura from the workers and peasants, consider the findings of a Rasmussen poll from last September, which sought to distinguish the attitudes of the Ivy Leaguers from ordinary Americans. The poll defined the former as “those having a postgraduate degree, a household income of more than $150,000 annually, living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile,” and having attended “Ivy League schools or other elite private schools, including Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.”

Asked if they would favor “rationing of gas, meat, and electricity” to fight climate change, 89 percent of Ivy Leaguers said yes, as against 28 percent of regular people. Asked if they would personally pay $500 more in taxes and higher costs to fight climate change, 75 percent of the Ivy Leaguers said yes, versus 25 percent of everyone else. “Teachers should decide what students are taught, as opposed to parents” was a statement with which 71 percent of the Ivy Leaguers agreed, nearly double the share of average citizens. “Does the U.S. provide too much individual freedom?” More than half of Ivy Leaguers said yes; just 15 percent of ordinary mortals did. The elite were roughly twice as fond as everyone else of members of Congress, journalists, union leaders, and lawyers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 88 percent of the Ivy Leaguers said their personal finances were improving, as opposed to one in five of the general population.

A food shop clerk standing by empty display counters amid shortages and economic reform price hikes in political turmoil–beset Moscow, USSR. (Sergei Guneyev via Getty Images)

A bogus ideology that hardly anyone really believes in, but everyone has to parrot unless they want to be labeled dissidents—sorry, I mean deplorables? Check. A population that no longer regards patriotism, religion, having children, or community involvement as important? Check. How about a massive disaster that lays bare the utter incompetence and mendacity that pervades every level of government? For Chernobyl, read Covid. And, while I make no claims to legal expertise, I think I recognize Soviet justice when I see—in a New York courtroom—the legal system being abused in the hope not just of imprisoning but also of discrediting the leader of the political opposition.

The question that haunts me is: What if China has learned the lessons of Cold War I better than we have? I fear that Xi Jinping has not only understood that, at all costs, he must avoid the fate of his Soviet counterparts. He has also, more profoundly, understood that we can be maneuvered into being the Soviets ourselves. And what better way to achieve that than to “quarantine” an island not too far from his coastline and then defy us to send a naval expedition to run the blockade, with the obvious risk of starting World War III? The worst thing about the approaching Taiwan Semiconductor Crisis is that, compared with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the roles will be reversed. Biden or Trump gets to be Khrushchev; XJP gets to be JFK. (Just watch him prepping the narrative, telling European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that Washington is trying to goad Beijing into attacking Taiwan.)

We can tell ourselves that our many contemporary pathologies are the results of outside forces waging a multi-decade campaign of subversion. They have undoubtedly tried, just as the CIA tried its best to subvert Soviet rule in the Cold War.

Yet we also need to contemplate the possibility that we have done this to ourselves—just as the Soviets did many of the same things to themselves. It was a common liberal worry during the Cold War that we might end up becoming as ruthless, secretive, and unaccountable as the Soviets because of the exigencies of the nuclear arms race. Little did anyone suspect that we would end up becoming as degenerate as the Soviets, and tacitly give up on winning the cold war now underway.

I still cling to the hope that we can avoid losing Cold War II—that the economic, demographic, and social pathologies that afflict all one-party communist regimes will ultimately doom Xi’s “China Dream.” But the higher the toll rises of deaths of despair—and the wider the gap grows between America’s nomenklatura and everyone else—the less confident I feel that our own homegrown pathologies will be slower-acting.

Are we the Soviets? Look around you.

Niall Ferguson’s latest book is Doom. Follow him on X @nfergus.

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De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

V/R

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Phone: 202-573-8647

Personal Email: d avid.maxwell161@gmail.com

Web Site: www.fdd.org

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Subscribe to FDD’s new podcast, Foreign Podicy

FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

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

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

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