Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“War is the father of all things.”

– Heraclitus

"Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate. "

– Friedrich Nietzsche

"When a man can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure."

– Vickor Frankl

1. SOF Renaissance: People Win Transform

2. U.S.’s Channels With China Have Gone Dark With Trump’s Return

3. What ‘Engagers’ Got Right About China

4. What Went Right in 2024? For One Thing, Free and Fair Elections

5. It Was a Bad Year for the World’s Autocrats

6. Kyiv Anxiously Awaits Confirmation of Next CIA Director

7. WATCH: HUR Posts Video of Train Sabotage Near Moscow

8. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 27, 2024

9. Iran Update, December 27, 2024

10. The U.S. Navy Has A History of Shooting Down the Wrong Planes

11. The Iranian Regime Is Crumbling – Time for Max Pressure

12. Trump rethinks firing Joint Chiefs chairman after one-on-one meeting, sources say

13. Putin apologises to Azerbaijan president over 'tragic' plane crash in Russian airspace

14. A global boom in cocaine trafficking defies decades of anti-drug efforts

15. Ukraine Uses Bird Nests to Nab Russian Saboteurs Planning Train Derailment

16. Has Russia’s Shadow Fleet, Built to Evade Sanctions, Added Sabotage to Its List?

17. Advanced US air-defence system used for first time in Israel

18. China is building new detention centers all over the country as Xi Jinping widens corruption purge

19. Time for a Pacific Charter

20. Government watchdog greenlights Army's new spy plane contract, denies L3Harris's protest

21. Wanna Become a U.S. Navy SEAL? Good Luck With That

22. How Do You Become A Green Beret?

1. SOF Renaissance: People Win Transform

Useful roll-up/summary of all the key USSOCOM initiatives.

https://www.socom.mil/Documents/SOCOM%20Strategic%20Intent%20–%20SOF%20Renaissance%20DEC%202024.pdf

The Discourse

SOF Renaissance: People Win Transform

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2024/12/27/sof-rennaissance-people-win-transform/

by SWJ Staff

12.27.2024 at 03:56pm

You can download the 13 page document HERE

SOF Renaissance: People Transform Win

If you’re reading this document, it’s because you understand the value of Special

Operations Forces (SOF) – from yesterday, to today, and into tomorrow. You

know our unconventional approach to global challenges applies today more than

ever and fuels renewed relevance of SOF.

A SOF Renaissance is now upon us! In an era where technological advancement

is rapidly changing the character of war and threats are converging globally, our

eight decades of experience has tailor-made SOF for Strategic Competition’s

return. It’s in our DNA – speed of innovation, power of adaptability, comfortable

in chaos – hallmarks of SOF since 1944. Combined with our decades of experience

in crisis response and counterterrorism, we are now better than ever.

This pinnacle document – SOF Renaissance: People Win Transform – codifies

our efforts to tackle the challenges of today and realize the opportunities that

lie ahead. We’ve reached an inflection point, necessitating this timely update to

our 2022 vision and strategy. Above all, we will continue to learn and transform,

with a flexible formation ready to address whatever threats face the nation – just

as we did for GWOT – while maintaining our global remit for rapid response to

crises in distinctively SOF ways.

As we look back on the deliberate journey over the last two years, it’s clear we

have evolved, in how we balance the duality of our Service-like responsibilities

with our role as a Global Combatant Command. This duality demands constant

assessment of our priorities within ongoing missions, capability modernization,

and force readiness. For this truly unique command, our vision encapsulates

the direction for global SOF to continually provide options across competition,

crisis, and conflict for the Joint Force and the nation. The future of modern

warfare is here, and SOF is ready.

SHANE W. SHORTER

Command Sergeant Major, U.S. Army

Command Senior Enlisted Leader

BRYAN P. FENTON

General, U.S. Army

Commander

2. U.S.’s Channels With China Have Gone Dark With Trump’s Return

China is trying to figure it out? Maybe China needs to figure out how Trump works. Why is it incumbent upon Trump to know how China works (which is of course the conventional wisdom - that we must know how China works). Trump's disruptive nature seems to be keeping China off balance. Maybe not being able to think outside the box is China's strategic weakness?

Excerpts:

Beijing has little experience with or appetite for thinking outside the box when it comes to interacting with Washington. Chinese officials like to stick to established protocol to minimize political risks for the leadership.

While Trump recently broke with precedent by inviting Xi to his inauguration next month, for instance, the Chinese leader isn’t planning to attend even though some observers say his acceptance of the invitation could help ease bilateral tensions.

One person familiar with the matter said people from the Trump team have indicated to the Chinese side that they would like to interact directly with Xi’s top aides—particularly Cai Qi, the leader’s chief of staff—as opposed to going through the formal diplomatic channels. Such a proposition is a sharp departure from established ways of interacting, and one Beijing isn’t ready to accept.

“Don’t they know how China works?” the person said.

U.S.’s Channels With China Have Gone Dark With Trump’s Return

During Trump’s first term, his team had little patience with formal communication frameworks preferred by Beijing

https://www.wsj.com/politics/biden-us-china-relationship-risk-under-trump-bccec522?mod=hp_lead_pos4

By Lingling Wei

Updated Dec. 28, 2024 12:32 am ET

The Biden administration has re-established dialogue with China’s government in recent years. Photo: Andy Wong/AP

For the past year and a half, senior Treasury officials have met with their Chinese counterparts almost once every other month. Whether an incoming Trump team will keep such channels of dialogue going is now up in the air.

President Biden and President-elect Donald Trump both advocate a tough stance on China, but have substantially different strategies on how to interact with Beijing.

Before Trump took office in early 2017, the two governments had over 90 official channels of communication. He and his team had little patience for such formalized communication, seeing them as a way for China’s leaders to suck the U.S. into endless discussions that yielded little meaningful change in policies seen as harmful to American workers and businesses. By the end of Trump’s first term, such channels had dwindled to virtually zero.

The Biden administration, in an effort to reset relations strained by the countries’ geopolitical rivalry and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, has re-established dialogue with Xi Jinping’s government in recent years, with some two dozen high-level channels covering topics from economic and financial matters to security and climate change.

Jay Shambaugh, Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs who has held seven rounds of economic talks with Beijing, said such dialogues have enabled Washington to press Beijing on issues of deep concern to the U.S., such as China’s industrial overcapacity, even as the administration this year has raised tariffs on Chinese steel, electric vehicles and other products that have flooded world markets.

“Just because we’re talking doesn’t mean we don’t continue to take defensive actions,” Shambaugh said in an interview.

Jay Shambaugh, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for international affairs Photo: Samuel Corum/Bloomberg News

A number of foreign-policy analysts in both the U.S. and China don’t expect the coming Trump administration to keep the meetings the Biden team established going. “It’s hard to imagine the continuation of the present near-strategic and economic dialogue,” Ian Bremmer, founder and president of political-risk consulting firm Eurasia, wrote in a recent note to clients.

In a statement, Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team, said China is “crippling our manufacturing industry” and listed a number of other Chinese actions seen as hurting U.S. interests. She said, “The American people elected President Trump to stand up to China, enforce tariffs on Chinese goods, and make America strong again. He will deliver.”

Beijing sees dialogue as always in its interest and prefers the predictability offered by a recurring mechanism.

Last year, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and her counterpart, China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng, who has a direct line to Xi, announced two channels for economic and financial dialogue, with topics including macroeconomic policies in both countries, China’s economic support of Russia, and joint anti-money-laundering efforts aimed at reducing human and drug trafficking.

In recent months, Treasury officials have used the dialogue to build on Yellen’s warnings during her April visit to China that output by China’s enormous manufacturing machine has gotten too large for the world to absorb.

China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at a meeting in April. Photo: Andy Wong/AP

Beijing has ramped up manufacturing capacity even as domestic demand plummets, sending its excess overseas and prompting many of China’s trading partners to raise tariffs and other trade barriers to fend off cheap Chinese goods.

Shambaugh said his team has used the talks to explain to senior Chinese officials the “large spillover as a result of your policies.” He said Treasury officials have argued that it is in China’s own interest to reduce excess capacity and to boost demand at home.

“We don’t think they’re moving far enough,” Shambaugh said, while noting that Beijing recently listed consumption as an economic priority.

Shambaugh said the Treasury team has also used dialogue to express significant concerns over Chinese firms’ support of Russia.

The U.S. this year has been drafting sanctions that threaten to cut some Chinese banks off from the global financial system—threats officials hope will stop Beijing’s commercial support of Russia’s military production.

A worker checking a production line of high-end threads in a Chinese factory. China has ramped up manufacturing capacity even as domestic demand plummets. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

“Our Chinese counterparts recognize that processing of financial transactions would be an area of very serious sanctions risks for their financial institutions,” Shambaugh said. “We still have lots of concerns and we’ve continued to use the channel for dialogue to push on that.”

He said he is hopeful the incoming administration will continue this form of contact “to make progress on defending U.S. firms and workers from Chinese policies that we think have spillover to the U.S.”

Brent Neiman, the senior Treasury official who leads the department’s financial dialogue with Beijing, said the channel has enabled experts from several agencies, including the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., to conduct “deep dives” on issues such as how to protect global financial stability if an important bank were to get into trouble in either country.

Ahead of Trump’s return to the White House, Chinese officials have repeatedly tried and failed to get access to Trump’s inner circle.

With virtually no backchanneling between Beijing and the Trump team, the Chinese leadership is trying to figure out whether Trump 2.0 intends to use tariffs as a way to negotiate a trade deal with Beijing, or to move the U.S. economy further away from China’s.

Beijing has little experience with or appetite for thinking outside the box when it comes to interacting with Washington. Chinese officials like to stick to established protocol to minimize political risks for the leadership.

While Trump recently broke with precedent by inviting Xi to his inauguration next month, for instance, the Chinese leader isn’t planning to attend even though some observers say his acceptance of the invitation could help ease bilateral tensions.

One person familiar with the matter said people from the Trump team have indicated to the Chinese side that they would like to interact directly with Xi’s top aides—particularly Cai Qi, the leader’s chief of staff—as opposed to going through the formal diplomatic channels. Such a proposition is a sharp departure from established ways of interacting, and one Beijing isn’t ready to accept.

“Don’t they know how China works?” the person said.

Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com

Appeared in the December 28, 2024, print edition as 'U.S. Talks With China at Risk in Trump’s Term'.

3. What ‘Engagers’ Got Right About China

Excerpts:

Xi Jinping already has sought to weaken China’s entrepreneurial class because he sees it as a threat to party rule. From a long view, we shouldn’t be helping him.

What most of us underestimated in the early ’90s was the pig-moving-through-the-python effect.

Though technology also played a role, 100 million Chinese shifting from peasant agriculture to factory work was a tsunami through the global division of labor, hurting many U.S. factory towns. A vast and overnight accretion of wealth in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party apparat was another unappreciated outcome. China scholar Perry Link corrected many a careless statement when he said the Communist Party didn’t make China rich, the Chinese people made the party rich. The result was resources out the wazoo for the party to invest in domestic surveillance and stirring up regional conflicts to justify continued CCP dominance of society.

The size and suddenness of China’s rise is a phenomenon all its own. No obvious parallel comes to mind. The Maoist catastrophes of the 1960s and ’70s start to appear in a new light. They look like China directing inward a propensity for chaos that it now directs outward.

...

Lesson: Lurching into actions harmful to ourselves turns out to be another unforeseen China-related risk. A trillion-dollar cleanup job now lies ahead to deal with the Biden administration’s attempt to force EVs on Detroit, thanks partly to rent-seekers masquerading as China hawks.

What ‘Engagers’ Got Right About China

Economic protectionism is no substitute for military protection, and economic ties have their benefits.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/what-engagers-got-right-about-china-protectionism-globalism-df917dec?mod=latest_headlines

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Dec. 27, 2024 4:14 pm ET

Chinese-made cars waiting for shipment in Yantai, China, Dec. 25. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press

Having been in the general vicinity of the creation, I don’t recognize today’s straw-man version of 1990s engagement with China. This newspaper in the ’90s favored trade but also emphasized military preparedness and deterrence in defense of Taiwan. An editorial demanded that Bill Clinton deploy the Seventh Fleet to ward off one of Beijing’s early missile intimidation exercises around the island.

Then as now, any thinking person also saw that Western hopes for China’s evolution were at odds with the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, promising only conflict in the future. A couple of decades later this column saw the cyber threat from China but also saw the Obama-prompted attack on Huawei as less a solution than a throwing away of leverage. Ditto TikTok today: The Chinese spying, propaganda and cyberwarfare threat will remain. The commercial success of TikTok in the U.S. gives Beijing something to lose.

Xi Jinping already has sought to weaken China’s entrepreneurial class because he sees it as a threat to party rule. From a long view, we shouldn’t be helping him.

What most of us underestimated in the early ’90s was the pig-moving-through-the-python effect.

Though technology also played a role, 100 million Chinese shifting from peasant agriculture to factory work was a tsunami through the global division of labor, hurting many U.S. factory towns. A vast and overnight accretion of wealth in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party apparat was another unappreciated outcome. China scholar Perry Link corrected many a careless statement when he said the Communist Party didn’t make China rich, the Chinese people made the party rich. The result was resources out the wazoo for the party to invest in domestic surveillance and stirring up regional conflicts to justify continued CCP dominance of society.

The size and suddenness of China’s rise is a phenomenon all its own. No obvious parallel comes to mind. The Maoist catastrophes of the 1960s and ’70s start to appear in a new light. They look like China directing inward a propensity for chaos that it now directs outward.

Only the most grievous example so far is Covid. With China’s rapid urbanization and enrichment on top of age-old cultural and culinary attachments, the world has never seen anything like China’s thousands of live-animal markets, and the extent and scale of the trade networks supporting them across of much of Asia.

China was already a source of much of the world’s flu. In the Covid explosion, the possible role of the Wuhan Institute of Virology only builds on the point. Next up, China has 150 nuclear power plants on the drawing board. The world assumes world-class engineering and oversight. It assumes reasonable control of corruption. Is it crazy to do so? If an AI Chernobyl lies in the world’s future, it also seems more likely to come from China than Silicon Valley.

This week the world is agog over a forced merger of Japan’s Honda and Nissan, once world-beating auto manufacturers. Don’t misinterpret explanations of a Chinese catalyst. Both companies invested in China’s domestic electric-vehicle market on the usual bait-and-switch terms. Now they are paying the usual price. But the U.S. has also sold itself a bill of goods on electric vehicles. EVs are not a “strategic” technology. They aren’t a fix for climate change. They are strategic only for China, to replace imported oil with domestic coal as security against a U.S. naval blockade.

Lesson: Lurching into actions harmful to ourselves turns out to be another unforeseen China-related risk. A trillion-dollar cleanup job now lies ahead to deal with the Biden administration’s attempt to force EVs on Detroit, thanks partly to rent-seekers masquerading as China hawks.

I hope Donald Trump, whose rhetoric can be disconcerting, is paying attention. U.S. global leadership in technology is built on openness to the world—at least openness to like-minded, Western-oriented economies. Even so, when the decouplers are done, our interdependence with China will still be orders of magnitude greater than any with the Soviet Union and usefully so. Not least it gives us a window on how Mr. Xi’s increasingly totalitarian and apocalyptic geopolitical fantasies are playing among Chinese elites, plus a chance to counter them.

U.S. technology controls were modestly successful in the ’70s and ’80s against a Soviet system that was little capable of internal, private innovation. The jury is out on China but one lesson shouldn’t be lost in the shuffle: Economic protectionism is no substitute for investing in sufficient military force and America’s alliances to raise the cost of Chinese aggression beyond what its leaders will think worth paying. In this one regard the coming year already is shaping up to be more dangerous than it needed to be.

Good news like bad is always provisional. Things can and likely will change on a dime. Our predilection for bad news is deeply rooted in the human psyche. Bad news and crises are drama, and we hunger for drama. Good news will always be like hope, lingering at the bottom of Pandora’s box—often overlooked but still essential. We can all recite a litany of what is wrong in the world. As we plunge ahead, we should also pay heed to what is right.What Went Right in 2024? For One Thing, Free and Fair Elections

In a fractious year, democracies operated smoothly and peacefully under pressure, while rising economies, falling crime and advances in medical care bode well for the future

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/what-went-right-in-2024-for-one-thing-free-and-fair-elections-4308bbab?mod=latest_headlines

By Zachary Karabell

Dec. 27, 2024 12:20 pm ET

Supporters of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi wear masks of his face as they attend an re-election rally in Meerut, March 31, 2024. Photo: Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters

For the first time in a while, polls show the public mood in the U.S. is ending the year on a relative upswing. While the election of Donald Trump to a second term as president remains hugely divisive, the overall effect of the November elections has been more energizing than any single event in many years. Most Americans remain sour on the state of the economy, but there is a widespread expectation, according to the polls, that on that front at least, things will get better, with just over half believing that we are headed for better times ahead.

The business community and investors are feeling especially jazzed, with the expectation that after years of regulatory pall, the Trump administration will take a more laissez-faire approach to, well, everything in business, which helps explain why stock, crypto and business sentiment are all ripping higher as the year ends.

Given that the past few years started with low expectations that were then surpassed, perhaps today’s better mood and churning animal spirits augur worse times ahead. But they also reflect a year that has seen much go right. You wouldn’t necessarily know that from the news. “Good news” is, if not an oxymoron, a rare creature. News is dominated by the dyspeptic, by heated emotions and crises. There may be lots of good news at any given point, but that isn’t news.

U.S. voters cast Election Day ballots at a polling location inside the Su Nueva Lavanderia in Chicago, Nov. 5. Photo: kamil krzaczynski/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

So what went right in 2024? The single most dramatically positive thing to happen globally in 2024 was a slew of elections. Voters in at least 60 countries went to the polls, including in the world’s largest democracy, India, and the world’s oldest continuous democracy, the U.S. The elections were conducted in an orderly fashion and unfolded peacefully, and the results were accepted by all parties without violence and civil division.

In almost all of the countries where elections were held, voters expressed economic discontent and frustration with the rising cost of living. In many of them, they voted out incumbents, whether those incumbents were populist, liberal or conservative, long-entrenched or recently elected. One notable exception was Mexico, where the ruling party changed leaders as it had to under the constitution but maintained control of the presidency and congress. On the flip side, in Japan, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost control of a government that it had dominated almost continuously since 1945.

Yet, despite voter anger most everywhere, that anger was expressed peacefully at the ballot box. That was certainly true in France and the U.K., which both saw rebukes of the ruling party. There was no violent or disruptive protest or civil-military unrest. In Indonesia, the fair election of the son-in-law of the last president to rule autocratically, Prabowo Subianto, was greeted with some alarm by international observers but with apparent equanimity by the 160 million people who voted.

India was perhaps the most extraordinary case and the most heartening. The ruling BJP party, headed by Narendra Modi, has been criticized from within and without for curbing freedom of the press and using majority Hindu nationalism as a cudgel to consolidate power at the expense of minority groups, especially the large Muslim population. And yet, with all of the advantages of incumbency, favorable polls and much greater funding, the BJP vastly underperformed expectations and denied Modi the supermajority he had promised and anticipated. The BJP may have autocratic leanings, but it clearly failed to bend the election its way, nor did Modi attempt to undermine the results.

Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, at a news conference where she called the re-election of Donald Trump as U.S. president ‘no cause for concern’ despite his threats of tariffs and mass migrant deportations, Nov. 6. Photo: alfredo estrella/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Indonesia’s new president and former top general Prabowo Subianto, left, and his presidential predecessor, Joko Widodo, sit together during Subianto’s inauguration ceremony, Oct. 20. Photo: bay ismoyo/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

And then there is the U.S., where the election was about as close as predicted, even if Donald Trump’s narrow win in the popular vote came as a surprise. Contrary to pre-election fears of widespread civil unrest and violence, the results were widely accepted, with little drama and fuss. Yes, if the outcome had been different, those fears might have come to pass. But we don’t live in hypothetical history. As it was, the election reaffirmed a functional democratic system.

It was, on the whole, a resoundingly successful year for democracy. This stands in stark contrast to the widespread belief that democracy is globally in retreat in the face of a new axis of autocracy, encompassing Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, Hungary, Venezuela and Turkey. Yet, compared with those 60 elections in 2024, autocracy is just a small and nasty club.

It was also a year that saw governments around the world beginning to grapple with the excesses of social media and its effects on teens and young children. Australia passed a groundbreaking law that made access to social media illegal for anyone under the age of 16 and placed the onus for that restriction on the companies, not the teens. Great Britain formalized rules making social-media companies more accountable for their content, though there are questions about whether those laws are too vague and possibly counterproductive. In the U.S., multiple states including Republican Texas and Democratic New York created new guidelines limiting the use of smartphones in schools and classrooms. These new guardrails acknowledge that the nearly complete free-for-all that has characterized social media over the past decade is not working.

Despite the evergreen appeal of lurid stories of violent crime, overall crime in the U.S. and indeed much of the world continued to decline from its 2021-2022 post-lockdown spike. Violent crime is down almost everywhere, as is incarceration. Most encouraging is the bipartisan work being done on crime policy. Democrats and Republicans across the country continue to find common ground on prison reform and different approaches to nonviolent crime, which runs counter to the message on the hustings that the two parties are starkly opposed on these issues.

A researcher works in a lab at the Moderna headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., on March 26, 2024; Moderna’s RSV vaccine continued the use of the mRNA technology applied to slow the spread of Covid. Photo: Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg News

A shopper carries bags in Walnut Creek, Calif., Dec. 16; by year’s end, GDP growth in the U.S. was healthy while inflation was well down from earlier highs and unemployment remained at a historic low, boding well for the economy. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News

And continuing a multiyear trend that was hypercharged by the rollout of the mRNA vaccines during Covid, medical breakthroughs are happening at an astonishing clip, with new drugs addressing basic allergies, HIV and various cancers.

The continued evolution of anti-obesity drugs is changing the way the medical establishment thinks of weight and inflammation, with many now believing that we are on the cusp of great progress against heart disease, diabetes and stroke. The next major step is the proposal by the Biden administration to add coverage of these drugs to Medicare and Medicaid, which will expand access significantly. Robert Kennedy Jr., who may become the next HHS secretary, had opposed these drugs but is already changing his stance and expressing qualified support.

Finally, the U.S. economy, statistically at least, remains the star of the global firmament. Yes, those numbers—GDP growth above 2.5%, inflation heading down to about the same, inflation-adjusted wages up about 1.5%, unemployment still at historic lows just over 4%—are not what many Americans feel. But that economic reality has sparked newly positive business attitudes and also new public and private spending, on everything from leisure to healthcare. It is why the next administration has such wide latitude in everything from tariffs to tax cuts.

Good news like bad is always provisional. Things can and likely will change on a dime. Our predilection for bad news is deeply rooted in the human psyche. Bad news and crises are drama, and we hunger for drama. Good news will always be like hope, lingering at the bottom of Pandora’s box—often overlooked but still essential. We can all recite a litany of what is wrong in the world. As we plunge ahead, we should also pay heed to what is right.

Zachary Karabell is the founder of The Progress Network, president of River Twice Capital and the author of 13 books.

Appeared in the December 28, 2024, print edition as 'What Went Right in 2024? For One Thing, Free and Fair Elections'.

5. It Was a Bad Year for the World’s Autocrats

It Was a Bad Year for the World’s Autocrats

Regimes in Syria and Bangladesh fell, marking unexpected defeats against a rising tide of authoritarianism in the world

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/it-was-a-bad-year-for-the-worlds-autocrats-8eee850b?mod=djemLifeStyle_h

For some, perhaps.

By Juan Forero

and Jon Emont

Updated Dec. 26, 2024 12:02 am ET

In Syria, rebels raced to Damascus, ending Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year-old dictatorship, which few in the outside world thought was in danger of collapse. In August, student protests sent Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year reign in Bangladesh crashing down.

Other authoritarian leaders and their governments came under new pressure in 2024, from Nicolás Maduro’s iron-fisted regime in Venezuela to the mullahs of Iran to the military junta of Myanmar.

In a world President Biden has cast as split between democracies aligned against a rising tide of autocracy, authoritarians suffered unexpected setbacks in 2024 that exposed their weaknesses, geopolitical analysts and historians said.

“Some positive things happened in terms of autocracies wobbling or, in a couple of places, falling,” said Larry Diamond, a Stanford University scholar who has written books on authoritarianism and the challenges facing democracies. “There are a lot of autocracies that are weak or kind of dazed.”

Regime change can be exciting on the ground, but it now presents a challenge to new leaders in Bangladesh and Syria to create lasting, inclusive governments, something that has proved difficult elsewhere following political upheavals.

Syrian rebels—whose roots go back to Islamic State and al Qaeda—pledge to respect minorities, but it is unclear whether they have truly shed their hard-line sympathies. Demonstrators fill the streets of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka. There are allegations of lynchings of people connected to Hasina’s political party. And Bangladesh’s powerful neighbor, India, is accusing the new government of failing to protect minority Hindus, a charge the Bangladeshi leadership rejects.

Top: Protesters celebrated at Parliament House in Dhaka, Bangladesh, after news of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's resignation in August. Bottom: Interim leader Muhammad Yunus in Dhaka last month.

Tuj Johora/AP ; Fabeha Monir for WSJ

“Expectation level is high,” said Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Prize-winning Bangladeshi economist who is now the country’s interim leader. “Matching this is very difficult.”

To be sure, most despotic governments are still firmly in place, from Miguel Díaz-Canel in Havana to Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Russia—with the help of Iranian arms, North Korean troops and oil sales to China—has made battlefield gains against Ukraine.

The alignment of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea—a group some analysts call “Crink”—has grown stronger. China is leapfrogging the West in some key technologies and has built strong ties with U.S. neighbors in Latin America.

President-elect Donald Trump’s approach toward autocrats will become clearer as he tries to halt the fighting between Russia and Ukraine, stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and manage the fallout from Venezuelan strongman Maduro’s disputed election win.

This year’s troubles for autocrats have lent momentum to opposition groups around the world. Venezuela’s opposition is arguing that Assad’s fall shows how dictatorial regimes that look invincible can collapse, if the right pressure is applied.

Political analysts who study democracies and autocracies warn that it is difficult to predict when authoritarian rule will crumble in a given country.

Top: A member of the Hezbollah band walks in front of a poster of Fuad Shukur, a former commander of the militant group who was killed by Israel. Middle: A child is embraced by several Hezbollah supporters during the funeral of three militants killed in Israeli airstrikes on Beirut's southern suburbs. Bottom: A demonstrator in Tehran holds a poster showing Iranian Revolutionary Guard Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killed by a 2020 U.S. airstrike in Iraq, kissing the forehead of late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, slain in an Israeli bombing in Beirut in September.

Manu Brabo for WSJ (2) ; Maryam Rahmanian for WSJ

Marcel Dirsus, a political scientist and author of “How Tyrants Fall,” a book about dictatorships published this year, said autocratic governments direct government resources to a narrow circle of supporters to remain in power. The practice rewards loyalty, but the broader population bristles at favoritism and corruption.

“In dictatorships there’s a very thin line between stability and chaos,” Dirsus said. “Staying in power in these regimes requires difficult decisions every day.”

Assad’s fall has resonated in part because it showed the frailty of its alliances with other authoritarian regimes.

For almost a decade, Assad benefited from an alignment with Russia, Iran and a group of militias antagonistic toward Israel, often called the “Axis of Resistance.”

The group presented a strategic counterweight to the U.S. and Israel in the Middle East and appeared to be growing stronger last year as the Arab world began recognizing Syria and Iran diplomatically after years of isolating them.

This alliance was tested after Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip, launched the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. And in just over a year, it crumbled. Russia and Iran didn’t have the strength to prevent Assad’s fall.

Among foreign powers, the biggest loser from Assad’s fall was Iran’s theocratic government. It had extended billions of dollars of oil sales to Syria on credit, had hopes of building a new business empire in the country and used it as a perch from which to threaten Israel.

A rebel fighter in Damascus posed with his assault rifle earlier this month. A torn picture of former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad lies on the red carpet of the Syrian presidential palace.

Gabriel Ferneini for WSJ (2)

This year, in addition to losing Assad, Iran’s proxies lost in Gaza and Lebanon. Israel also struck on Iranian soil for the first time—bombing the country’s antiaircraft systems and carrying out assassinations inside its borders. Meanwhile, Iran’s missile attacks on Israel caused little damage.

“Iran is the symbol of the failure of autocracies,” said Moises Naim, a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has written extensively on democratic backsliding.

Those who suffer the most when authoritarians fall on hard times are often ordinary people.

The Iranian currency has fallen hard, and discontent is widespread. The government also faces a dire energy shortage that has caused electricity outages, despite having some of the world’s biggest reserves of natural gas and crude oil. The problems could worsen as Trump has said he would resume what he calls maximum-pressure policies on Iran.

In Russia, the ruble is plunging and inflation is soaring. The Biden administration’s decision to ratchet up sanctions on Russia’s Gazprombank could gum up Moscow’s already constrained trade with commercial partners. The country has suffered 750,000 casualties in the war in Ukraine, the U.K. estimates.

“[Putin’s] hand is weaker now,” said Thomas A. Shannon Jr., who as the State Department’s undersecretary of state for political affairs negotiated with Russian diplomats from 2016 to 2018.

Top: A destroyed Russian tank seen in May in an industrial district of Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine. Bottom: A newly dug trench at the northern edge of Kharkiv.

Manu Brabo for WSJ (2)

The problems extend to Asia, where the Chinese Communist Party is struggling with slowing growth and a sinking property market. China’s leaders are preparing for tough tariffs from Trump, which could exacerbate the country’s economic slowdown and sow doubt about the party’s promise to deliver widespread prosperity.

Myanmar’s military junta, which heavily relies on trade and diplomatic support from Beijing, has lost bases and vast stretches of territory to various rebel groups. Some analysts now question whether the military, which has been a dominant force since the country’s 1948 independence and took power in a 2021 coup, is on its last legs.

“The overall trajectory is one of serious decline,” said Morgan Michaels, a Myanmar expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, though he noted that regime soldiers have shown fighting spirit at key junctures.

Stanford’s Diamond said a range of semi-authoritarian parties—some ensconced for many years—either lost power or suffered setbacks that curtailed their authority this year. In Botswana, the Democratic Party, in power since 1966, lost a presidential election. Turkey’s opposition won several major cities in local elections in March, dealing a blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party.

“In a lot of places,” Diamond said, “elections did what they’re supposed to do.”

A photo taken in November shows members of a major Myanmar ethnic rebel group receiving military equipment after special combat training in a secret jungle camp in northern Myanmar. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think 2025 holds for the world’s dictators? Join the conversation below.

Write to Juan Forero at juan.forero@wsj.com and Jon Emont at jonathan.emont@wsj.com

Appeared in the December 28, 2024, print edition as 'Autocrats Suffer Setbacks'.

6. Kyiv Anxiously Awaits Confirmation of Next CIA Director

Kyiv Anxiously Awaits Confirmation of Next CIA Director

Trump’s pick to lead the Central Intelligence Agency has been vocal in his support for Kyiv but has shown he is not above US politics when it comes to handling Russian and Ukrainian information.

by John Moretti | December 28, 2024, 12:46 pm

kyivpost.com · by John Moretti · December 28, 2024

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Kyiv Anxiously Awaits Confirmation of Next CIA Director

HUR Trump Ukraine

Trump’s pick to lead the Central Intelligence Agency has been vocal in his support for Kyiv but has shown he is not above US politics when it comes to handling Russian and Ukrainian information.

by John Moretti | December 28, 2024, 12:46 pm

Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, arrives to board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on December 12, 2020. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP)

CIA Director Bill Burns made his final secret visit to Ukraine as head of the US intelligence agency last weekend, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky and tying up the current administration’s loose ends with Kyiv before Donald Trump moves into the White House on Jan. 20.

It has left Ukraine’s leadership wondering what will come next for the two countries’ intelligence cooperation. While intel officials in Kyiv maintain that their allied counterparts are not made aware of covert operations, such as assassinations of Russian military officials, the overall collaboration between the CIA and its Ukrainian partners has been robust during the Russian invasion, officials say.

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Trump has nominated former Representative John Ratcliffe to take Burns’ place. The CIA director reports to the Director of National Intelligence, a position that Ratcliffe himself once held, and for which Trump now has nominated Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic US Representative and a veteran of the Army National Guard.

Neither of them has faced confirmation hearings in the Senate yet, which will be back in session Jan. 3, when the new Congress will be sworn in. According to Politico, more than 100 former officials, including a number of diplomats, have urged senators to hold Gabbard’s hearings behind closed doors, and noted that the congresswoman’s “past actions ‘call into question her ability to deliver unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and to the entire national security apparatus.’”

A New Sketchy History of Independent Ukraine

As an assessment of Ukraine’s history over the last 30 years since the country’s independence, Adrian Karatnycky’s “Battleground Ukraine” leaves much to be desired.

Those “past actions” include disseminating Kremlin talking points on the war in Ukraine. In general, her seeming affinity for Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin has raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill.

There are few concerns in that regard surrounding the president-elect’s hawkish pick to run the spy agency, but the staunch Trump ally has a history of playing domestic politics in his role of overseeing the advancement of American interests abroad.

Ratcliffe, 59, has been vocal about American support for Ukraine. Two months into the war, Ratcliffe went on Fox News to say that while Biden was helping Ukraine, he wasn’t “helping them to win.”

He was first elected to Texas’s 4th congressional district in 2015, representing the northeastern Dallas suburbs in the House of Representatives until 2020, when he stepped down to become Trump’s Director of National Intelligence.

He had initially been tapped by Trump in 2019 for that post, which oversees the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, but skeptical Republican lawmakers at the time thought he lacked the requisite experience.

“At a time when the Russians are interfering in our elections, we need a nonpartisan leader at the helm of the Intelligence Community who sees the world objectively and speaks truth to power, and unfortunately neither Acting Director Grenell nor Rep. Ratcliffe comes even close to that,” Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said after Ratcliffe’s DNI nomination.

On Trump’s second try in 2020, Ratcliffe managed to win over both the skeptical Democratic and Republican senators, by promising them he would not “politicize” the position.

During his tenure at DNI, despite those pledges to Congress, Ratcliffe declassified select reports about Russian intelligence during the 2016 election between Trump and Hillary Clinton that were meant to damage the Democrats’ chances.

“HUR was our little baby. We gave them all new equipment and training… The SBU was too big to reform.”

former US intelligence official

While neither the DNI director nor the CIA director plays any official role in the crafting of foreign policy, the spy agency, especially, has a very active role to play in wartime Ukraine. An October 2023 Washington Post article shed some light on the nature of that cooperation with the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) and the military’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) ever since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

“The initial phases of cooperation were tentative, officials said, given concerns on both sides that Ukraine’s services were still heavily penetrated by the [Russian] FSB…” the Post authors wrote. “To manage that security risk, the CIA worked with the SBU to create an entirely new directorate, officials said, one that would focus on so-called ‘active measures’ operations against Russia and be insulated from other SBU departments. The new unit was prosaically dubbed the ‘Fifth Directorate’ to distinguish it from the four long-standing units of the SBU.”

Handpicked SBU recruits were trained by CIA personnel at centers just outside Kyiv.

Since then, the CIA has been working with the Ukrainian spies on the finer points of intelligence gathering rather than getting involved in specific operations, they said. A former US security official told the Washington Post that the focus was “more on secure communications and tradecraft… rather than ‘here’s how you blow up a mayor.’ I never got the sense that we were that involved in designing their ops.”

“We calculated that HUR was a smaller and more nimble organization where we could have more impact,” a former US intelligence official who worked in Ukraine told the Washington Post. “HUR was our little baby. We gave them all new equipment and training.” HUR officers “were young guys not Soviet-era KGB generals,” the official said, “while the SBU was too big to reform.”

Trump’s most recent comments about the nomination seem to indicate that his primary concern with the role of CIA director is that he will be a loyal servant of the man who picked him:

“From exposing fake Russian collusion to be a Clinton campaign operation, to catching the FBI’s abuse of Civil Liberties at the FISA Court, John Ratcliffe has always been a warrior for Truth and Honesty with the American Public,” Trump posted to his own social network after nominating Ratcliffe. “When 51 intelligence officials were lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop, there was one, John Ratcliffe, telling the truth to the American People.”

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John Moretti

John Moretti is a freelance journalist and author dividing his time between Europe and the United States. He has also spent more than a decade working with companies that protect travelers from health and security emergencies abroad. His academic background is in Eastern European Studies, international public policy and counterterrorism.

7. WATCH: HUR Posts Video of Train Sabotage Near Moscow

25 second video at the link: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/44603

Some people think that sabotaging trains is an anachronism and only the stuff of the OSS in WWII.

As a friend said in our exchange when he flagged this video:

So long as trains exist they will get blown. The folks that are conceptualizing this conflict are off. this is a mix of all TTPs

WATCH: HUR Posts Video of Train Sabotage Near Moscow

kyivpost.com · by Kyiv Post · December 28, 2024

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WATCH: HUR Posts Video of Train Sabotage Near Moscow

HUR Russia Top News

Ukraine’s military intelligence has been conducting an ongoing campaign of sabotage deep in Russian territory.

by Kyiv Post | December 28, 2024, 4:05 pm

A screenshot from the video.

A video of train cars exploding was published by the Ukrainian military’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) on its Facebook page.

“On Dec. 27, 2024, at one o’clock in the morning, an explosion took place at the railway station of the settlement of Voskresensk, Moscow region, which destroyed the wagons of a freight train – the aggressor state used them to provide logistics for the Russian occupation army,” the post said.

HUR added that the scale of damage has already been established.

With its now customary trolling tone, HUR wrote:

“Judging by the fervor of Russian propaganda – which, tries to hide the consequences of the boom, lies about the alleged absence of any fire on the territory of the Voskresensk railway depot – the Kremlin leaders’ fear of internal opposition to the Putin regime and the loss of control inside the country is seriously growing.”

Kyiv Post has not been able to independently verify the authenticity of the video.

On Dec. 12 Mikhail Shatsky, deputy chief designer and head of software for Russia’s Mars defense contractor, was shot dead in a Moscow park.

Shatsky was known for modernizing the Kh-59 cruise missiles to the Kh-69 level, introducing new UAVs, and is considered responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Ukrainians.

8. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 27, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 27, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-27-2024

Russia has continued to expand its domestic production capabilities of Iranian-designed Shahed drones ahead of its Winter 2024-2025 strike campaign against Ukraine. CNN, citing Ukrainian defense intelligence sources, estimated on December 27 that Russia's Shahed drone production facility in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the Republic of Tatarstan produced 5,760 drones between January and September 2024 — more than twice the number of drones that the facility produced in 2023. CNN reported that satellite imagery shows that Russian authorities have constructed two new buildings and appear to have installed anti-drone mesh cages over several buildings at the facility in the Alabuga SEZ. CNN, citing leaked documents from the facility, reported that the Alabuga facility is Russia's main Shahed production facility and has already fulfilled an agreement to produce 6,000 drones for the Russian military by September 2025. Sources in Ukraine's defense intelligence told CNN that the Alabuga facility began producing low-tech "decoy" drones that resemble Shahed drones and that Russian forces use these decoys to overwhelm Ukrainian air defense systems in Summer 2024. The sources told CNN that Russia intends to produce 10,000 decoy drones by the end of 2024 — almost double the number of Shahed strike drones that Russia produced in the first nine months of 2024 — since decoy drones are 10 times cheaper to produce than armed Shahed strike drones. CNN noted that Russia has also constructed a train station near the Alabuga SEZ with a direct rail connection between Russia and the People's Republic of China (PRC), which a Ukrainian intelligence officer stated could be used to transfer components required for drone production between the PRC and the Alabuga SEZ.

Russia has yet to address limitations in its ability to produce and field Shahed drones, however, and will likely continue to struggle with these limitations in 2025. ISW has previously observed indications that Western sanctions are complicating Russia's ability to source quality components for Shahed drones and that Russia is increasingly relying on low quality motors from the PRC to power Shahed drones. Ukrainian electronic warfare (EW) innovations also appear to be enabling Ukrainian forces to disrupt Shahed-heavy strikes more effectively. Russian forces will likely continue to adjust their strike packages during Winter 2024-2025 and beyond in order to inflict significant damage on Ukraine's energy grid and critical infrastructure, and Russia likely intends to further increase its production and use of Shahed drones following the anticipated signing of the Russian-Iranian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement in January 2025.

Key Takeaways:

Russia has continued to expand its domestic production capabilities of Iranian-designed Shahed drones ahead of its Winter 2024–2025 strike campaign against Ukraine.

Russia has yet to address limitations in its ability to produce and field Shahed drones, however, and will likely continue to struggle with these limitations in 2025.

North Korean forces are continuing to experience high casualty rates amid recent confirmation of the first captured North Korean soldier in Kursk Oblast.

Ukrainian forces recently conducted a HIMARS strike against a Russian staff meeting in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast, reportedly killing three Russian officers, following Ukrainian warnings about the possibility of renewed Russian offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast.

Russian Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) attempted to blame weather conditions and the pilot’s response to the Russian emergency airspace closure over the Republic of Chechnya for the Azerbaijan Airlines Embraer 190 passenger aircraft crash in Aktau, Kazakhstan on December 25.

A Russian insider source — who is reportedly affiliated with Russian law enforcement and released an alleged transcript of the communications between the crew and a Russian air traffic control in Grozny — accused Rosaviatsiya of attempting to conceal the misuse of Russian air defense systems.

Finnish authorities seized the Russian-owned Eagle S crude oil tanker on suspicion that the vessel was recently involved in damaging undersea electricity and telecommunication cables in the Baltic Sea but noted that it is too soon to conclude that Russia is behind the cable disruptions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu to head the newly established Scientific Expert Council of the Russian Security Council.

Ukrainian forces recently regained positions near Siversk and Russian forces recently advanced near Toretsk, Velyka Novosilka, and in the Pokrovsk and Kurakhove directions.

Russian federal subjects (regions) are continuing to increase the value of enlistment bonuses to incentivize military recruitment.

9. Iran Update, December 27, 2024

Iran Update, December 27, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-december-27-2024

An explosion from a former SAA position in Homs City suggests that HTS does not yet have full control on the ground and that local groups and individuals can access and repurpose unexploded ordinance. Syrian media reported a large explosion near a former SAA barracks in Homs City on December 27, injuring nine people. The Homs Police Commander Colonel Alaa Omran told state media that former regime elements rigged and detonated ordinance in a missile warehouse in the city to target a passing civilian. A Syrian source contradicted the police commander’s statement, however, and claimed that the explosion was the result of Syrians attempting to remove parts from old air defense missiles to sell them. Taking apart and repurposing explosives inside of munitions is one way military organizations can build rudimentary improvised explosive devices. The incident demonstrates that HTS does not control all former SAA weapons stockpiles and that locals can still access some of these stockpiles. This incident also suggests that the HTS-led security forces have not fully established total control over Homs City if these positions are easily accessible.

The HTS-led interim government has thus far failed to prevent individual opposition fighters from targeting members of the Alawite community. Unspecified opposition fighters have looted homes and stolen vehicles belonging to Alawites in Lattakia Province—a former regime stronghold—since the fall of the Assad regime. An Alawite sheikh in Damascus told Reuters on December 26 that there have been multiple instances of “[Alawites] being beaten at a checkpoint.” The HTS-led interim government has established several checkpoints across Syria since the fall of the Assad regime, but it is unclear who has attacked Alawite citizens at the checkpoint in Damascus. An HTS fighter in Damascus separately told Reuters that unspecified individuals offloaded a bus and beat Alawite passengers on December 26. These Alawite community members are framing these events as sectarian-motivated, underscoring the mistrust and fear that is permeating Alawite communities at this time. These instances of sectarian violence have caused some Alawites to refuse to hand in their weapons to the interim government, highlighting how the Alawite community currently distrusts the interim government to guarantee their security.

Key Takeaways:

Explosion in Homs: An explosion in Homs suggests that HTS does not yet have full control on the ground and that local groups and individuals can access and repurpose unexploded ordinance.

Sectarian Tension in Syria: The HTS-led interim government has thus far failed to prevent individual opposition fighters from targeting members of the Alawite community.

HTS and Christian Communities: The HTS-led interim government deployed forces to the Christian town of al Masmiyah in Daraa Province on December 27 to maintain security in the town during Christmas celebrations.

HTS Operations Against Former Regime Elements: HTS-led security forces engaged alleged former regime fighters in several villages west of Homs on December 26. HTS-led security forces entered Balqassa village, west of Homs City, on December 26, reportedly to pursue regime-affiliated official Shuja al Ali.

HTS-Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Negotiations: The HTS-led interim government is not publicly responding to SDF overtures to negotiate the SDF’s incorporation into the new Syrian army and incorporation into a Syrian state. It appears increasingly unlikelythat the HTS-led government’s leadership views negotiating with the SDF as a priority as it formalizes relations with Turkey.

SDF-Syrian National Army (SNA) Fighting: Local sources reported that the SDF continued to advance southwest of Lake Assad into SNA-controlled territory south of Tishreen Dam on December 27. The SNA also continued to engage the SDF west of Tishreen Dam in the Manbij countryside.

Iraq: Iranian-backed Badr Organization Secretary General Hadi al Ameri inspected combat units along the Iraq-Syria border on December 26 and 27. Ameri also reviewed security and intelligence plans and emphasized the need to conduct unspecified “preemptive operations.” Ameri’s inspections come as Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani implicitly threatened on December 27 to militarily intervene in Syria if the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) resurges and threatens Iraq.

West Bank: Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)'s Jenin Battalion said that it engaged with “occupation forces” in multiple areas of Jenin on December 26. Palestinian militias, including PIJ, historically used the term ”occupation forces” to refer to Israeli forces, but CTP-ISW has not observed IDF operations in Jenin in recent days. It would be a notable inflection if PIJ began referring to the PA as ”occupation forces.”

10. The U.S. Navy Has A History of Shooting Down the Wrong Planes

The U.S. Navy Has A History of Shooting Down the Wrong Planes

19fortyfive.com · by Michael Peck · December 27, 2024

Mystifying is the word that describes how a U.S. Navy cruiser managed to shoot down a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet over the Red Sea this week.

But it is no less mystifying than the U.S. Navy shooting down an Iranian airliner in 1988 – because it mistook an Airbus A300 for an Iranian F-14 Tomcat fighter.

While the U.S. Navy has yet to reveal specifics of the F-/A-18 shootdown, both incidents appear to have featured highly trained crews – equipped with some of most sophisticated air defense systems in the world – making the most negligent of mistakes.

A Familiar Set of Challenges for the U.S. Navy

On July 3, 1988, the Middle East was in turmoil much as it is today. Rather than Israel versus Iran and its proxies, the combatants were Iran and Iraq, which had invaded Iran in 1980. The Iran-Iraq War lasted for eight years and killed at least 500,000 soldiers and civilians.

In a conflict that often degenerated into the stalemate of trench warfare, both oil-exporting nations turned to economic warfare by attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. In response to the “Tanker War,” the U.S. Navy began escorting tankers in 1987. The war was dangerous for escorts as well as merchant ships: in May 1987, the American frigate USS Stark was nearly sunk – and 37 sailors died — after being hit by an air-launched Iraqi Exocet missile.

Already in a cold war with the hardline Islamic government in Iran, the U.S. sank Iranian ships that were laying mines or attacking maritime traffic. “For several months preceding the Airbus shootdown, the U.S. had received reports of Iranian efforts to improve their ability to attack U.S. men-of-war,” stated the Department of Defense’s report on the incident. “These have included attempts to outfit both aircraft and small boats…for suicide assaults, to reconfigure F-4s, F-l4s, and other types of aircraft to carry a variety of air-to-surface missiles, and to develop small boat “swarm” tactics which could break through a warship’s defensive gunfire.”

This is prologue to the events of July 3, 1988, when the cruiser USS Vincennes was on patrol in the Strait of Hormuz. A 10,000-ton Ticonderoga-class vessel equipped with the Aegis air defense system of radars and surface-to-air missiles, the Vincennes was one of the more capable anti-aircraft ships of the time.

But any warship would have been taxed that July morning. A swarm of Iranian speedboats had threatened – and fired on – merchant vessels and U.S. Navy helicopters. They were engaged by the Vincennes and other American warships.

Meanwhile, Iran Air 655 – with 290 passengers and crew – took off from Bandar Abbas Airport on its regularly scheduled flight from Iran to Dubai. It was supposed to be a 30-minute flight; the twin-engine Airbus 300 would only climb to 14,000 feet as it crossed the Persian Gulf to Dubai. And as is common with commercial flights, Iran Air 655 took off 27 minutes late and then entered its designated flight corridor.

Unfortunately, Bandar Abbas was a military as well as a civilian airport, where some of Iran’s American-made F14 fighters were based. “Although Flight 655 was detected by Vincennes’s radar shortly after takeoff, the cruiser also detected a Mode II (military) identification, friend or foe (IFF) reading, most likely from an F-14 on the ground at Bandar Abbas,” according to a U.S. Navy history. “The operator mistakenly correlated the Mode II signal with the aircraft taking off rather than with the plane on the ground.”

Though other American warships in the area had correctly identified the airliner, the Vincennes mistook it for an F-14 that was actually on the ground. Capt. William Rogers, commanding the Vincennes, was already busy dealing with the Iranian gunboats. Now he was told that an Iranian F-14 was descending toward the cruiser on what seemed to be an attack run.

Warnings to the airliner over military and civilian frequencies went unanswered (the Airbus wouldn’t have been equipped to receive military transmissions anyway). When the aircraft closed to within 10 miles of the Vincennes, the cruiser fired two SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles. There were no survivors.

The U.S. Navy investigation blamed multiple factors, including the short amount of time that the Vincennes had to react to an approaching aircraft. The U.S. government paid $61 million in compensation. The captain of the Vincennes received the Legion of Merit, though other Navy officers “were less charitable, believing that Rogers’s over-aggressive actions had gotten him into a jam of his own making,” the Navy history noted.

Learning from Past Mistakes?

In hindsight, accidents often seem preventable. Yet they do happen. Nonetheless, how one of the world’s most advanced warships at the time could have made such a mistake still seems incredible.

Block III Super Hornet. A U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet aircraft assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 102 flies past the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN 73) in the Philippine Sea Aug. 21, 2013. The George Washington was underway in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility supporting maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts.

While the investigation into the recent F/A-18 incident is still underway, it is likely to discover that a chain of mistakes led to the destruction of a $55 million aircraft. To be fair, navies arguably face a more dangerous environment today than in 1988. Back then, surface ships faced anti-ship missiles, torpedoes, bombs and mines.

Today, they must also contend with drones, hypersonic missiles and long-range ballistic missiles. U.S. warships in the Red Sea have been attacked multiple times by Houthi missiles and drones.

Nonetheless, then and now, there were major failures by well-trained crews equipped with advanced technology. The only certainty is that it is likely to happen again.

About the Author: Michael Peck

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Business Insider, Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

19fortyfive.com · by Michael Peck · December 27, 2024

11. The Iranian Regime Is Crumbling – Time for Max Pressure

Excerpts:

Iran’s house of cards is teetering, its strength revealed as illusory. Now is the time to undermine the Iranian regime, so that Iranians can finally free themselves of its yoke of repression and cleanse the Middle East of organizations posing as governments to export terror.

The Iranian Regime Is Crumbling – Time for Max Pressure

By Robert Harward

December 28, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/12/28/the_iranian_regime_is_crumbling__time_for_max_pressure_1081275.html

The Iranian empire is crumbling. Just three months ago, Iran sat astride the Middle East, effectively controlling at least four Arab capitals and multiple well-armed proxy forces. Now, it has lost Syria and Lebanon while Hamas and Hezbollah have been decimated. This Israeli success presents the incoming Trump administration with a historic opportunity to dislodge other parts of the region from Iran’s rapacious grasp.

As impressive as Iran’s weakening has been, the United States cannot afford to declare mission accomplished and rest on Israel’s laurels. It needs a concerted and comprehensive strategy that synchronizes all elements of American power and marshals international support to finish the job that Israel began, ensuring the collapse of the Islamic Republic.

Diplomatically, Iran must be isolated and U.S. partners united. Europeans—having seen Tehran’s thugs beat up and kill women for daring to bare their hair, witnessed the evolution of drone warfare and watched Russia launch long range ballistic missiles into Ukrainian civilians—are finally willing to get tough on Iran. By convincing Berlin, Paris, and London to invoke “snapback,” the United States can get United Nations sanctions reimposed on Iran, without giving Russia and China a chance to veto them. But it will have to act quickly, this legal tool and the sanctions it can bring to bear, expire in October 2025.

In the Middle East, U.S. partners are united in their concern about Iran and the broader Islamic Revolution. A year ago, when Iranian power appeared at its zenith and U.S. regional involvement at its nadir, they were willing to consider hedging their bets and accommodating Tehran. But now, with Israel ascendant and U.S. assistance, an indispensable ingredient in its victory, Middle Eastern states, particularly in the Gulf, will be willing to side with and support a U.S. campaign to collapse the Iranian empire.

The Trump administration should also turn the legal tables on Iran. It has spread the legal fiction of Israel as a war criminal—with the International Criminal Court falling for its lies—while its own use of terror, human shields, and sexual violence goes unpunished. Assad’s fall, and the evidence that can now be recovered from his regime, makes it possible to bring Iranian crimes to light and its leaders to justice. The Trump administration should demand that international legal institutions devote as much energy to prosecuting these crimes as they have in their quest to delegitimize Israel.

But the United States must not just stand against Iran’s regime, it must also stand with the Iranian people. Having grown up in Tehran, I know Iranians to be a proud, educated, and pro-Western people, before the obscurantist yoke of the Islamic Republic was forced upon them 45 years ago. Repeatedly, Iranians have shown that they want to return to the freedom they once knew. In the same way that the United States successfully provided moral reassurance and political assistance to Eastern European resistance movements against communism, it can use similar, updated tactics to support and strengthen the Iranian opposition.

Such opposition can and will eventually overcome the corrupt and morally bankrupt Iranian regime. But the regime can still do a lot of damage before it collapses. Nothing is more dangerous, as Russia has proved in Ukraine, than a totalitarian regime raging against the dying of its darkness. That is why economic and military pressure to rollback Iranian power is critical in the near-term.

President Trump has proven that he already knows how to use economic tools to strangle the Iranian regime’s revenues. But he must also exert maximum military pressure.

First, to block Iran from insinuating itself back into the areas from which it has been pushed out. Strong enforcement of the ceasefire in Lebanon, to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding, will be critical. So, too, will holding the Syria-Iraq border, so that Iran cannot again flood weapons or fighters into Syria and Lebanon.

Second, the United States should work with its regional partners to dislodge Iran’s remaining proxies, particularly the Houthis. It is unthinkable that a terrorist group should be able to dictate the flow of global commercial shipping with a handful of cheap drones.

Most importantly, the United States must be ready to join Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. In preparation for this eventuality, the Trump administration should provide Israel with weapons it needs to strike inside Iran—such as KC-46 refueling tankers—and conduct joint training exercises for such a strike.

Finally, to both ensure that all these different elements of an Iran strategy are coordinated as well as to communicate the seriousness of U.S. resolve to collapse the Iranian empire, President Trump should immediately appoint a Cabinet-level Presidential Envoy, housed within the Executive Office of the President. This will give the Envoy the clout to marshal the interagency process and organize and implement a comprehensive Iran strategy.

Iran’s house of cards is teetering, its strength revealed as illusory. Now is the time to undermine the Iranian regime, so that Iranians can finally free themselves of its yoke of repression and cleanse the Middle East of organizations posing as governments to export terror.

Vice Admiral Robert Harward (USN, ret.) grew up in Iran from 1968 to 1979 and was in Tehran when it collapsed. As a senior Naval officer serving on the National Security Council during the Bush (43) administration, the deputy Commander of US Central Command, and repetitive tours in the region (leading the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq) he personally witnessed the counter-productive policies that facilitated the rise of Jihadist Islam. He participated in the Jewish Institute for National Security’s (JINSA) 2022 Generals and Admirals Program, and travels extensively in the region.

12. Trump rethinks firing Joint Chiefs chairman after one-on-one meeting, sources say

Of course all general/flag officers serve at the pleasure of the President but I do not fully grasp the grounds for firing the CJCS.

The best thing the Trump administration could do is to refrain from publically fighting the culture wars and just allow the military leadership to implement new policies in line with the President's intent. The current leadership will do that and the Trump administration should understand that they will support the President's policies. But such lack of understanding is indicative of those members of the Trump administration who have no real understanding of the military and desire to use their culture warriorship for political purposes. They are not serious about ensuring that the readiness and morale of the military is sustained if they put their culture warriorship first without allowing the current leadership to do their jobs.

Trump rethinks firing Joint Chiefs chairman after one-on-one meeting, sources say

President-elect Donald Trump and Joint Chiefs Chairman Charles Q. Brown Jr. spoke for about 20 minutes at the Army-Navy football game last weekend.

NBC News · by Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee · December 20, 2024

A meeting between President-elect Donald Trump and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., in a luxury box at the Army-Navy football game last weekend may have delayed Trump’s plans to fire Brown, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation.

For months, Trump and his close associates have vowed to immediately fire U.S. military leaders whom they deem too focused on diversity initiatives, often referring to Brown specifically. But the meeting went well, according to the two people with knowledge of the conversation.

Trump and Brown met during the second quarter of the annual military grudge match at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland, on Saturday, the two people said. Trump and Brown spoke one-on-one for about 20 minutes in the owner’s box.

They got along well, and Trump is “changing his tone” on Brown, the two people said, and it now appears Trump will not fire him right away.

Brown “congratulated Trump on his election and made it clear he was ready to work with the president,” one of the people familiar with the conversation said, adding that “[Trump] liked that.” Afterward, Trump told someone traveling with him that the conversation went well and that Brown was “doing a good job.”

Trump is now more likely to keep Brown in his job, the two people said. Brown, known as "C.Q.," assumed the chairman’s role on Oct. 1, 2023, and can serve in the position until his four-year term expires in 2027.

Brown seen as a source of stability

Several Republican lawmakers and retired generals have been urging Trump not to fire Brown because, they say, it could be destabilizing and send the wrong message to members of the military, particularly as Trump’s pick to head the Defense Department, former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, is fighting to be confirmed.

Brown would bring stability amid Hegseth’s controversial policies, lack of experience and concerns about his character, the two people said.

A Trump transition spokesperson declined to comment on the record.

A spokesperson for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs declined to comment.

Brown met with members of the Trump transition team's Pentagon landing team Wednesday, including Michael Duffey, a former Pentagon official who is leading the group, a defense official said.

“The chairman is actively supporting the transition team and the process,” the defense official said. “He is focused on ensuring that the president-elect and folks on his national security team are well-informed about both existing and potential threats.”

On a podcast last month, Hegseth said Brown needed to be fired.

“First of all, you got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s--- has got to go,” Hegseth said on the “Shawn Ryan Show,” a podcast whose host describes himself as a former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor.

Hegseth said people should be in the military for warfighting and “that’s the only litmus test we care about.”

One of the people who has been advocating for Trump not to fire Brown is retired Air Force Gen. Terrence “TJ” O’Shaughnessy, who works closely with Elon Musk at SpaceX.

Brown replaced O’Shaughnessy as commander of Pacific Air Forces, known as PACAF, in 2020, and the two men got to know each other on active duty. Trump then nominated Brown to be Air Force chief of staff in 2020, making him the first Black American service chief in the U.S. military.

When the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked protests across the U.S. in 2020, Brown released an emotional video about the challenges and biases he endured in his personal life and throughout his decades on active duty in the Air Force. He also described the advice he gives his sons about the dangers they face as young Black men in America.

“I’m thinking about how full I am with emotion, not just for George Floyd, but for the many African Americans that have suffered the same fate as George Floyd,” Brown said in the 2020 video. “I’m thinking about our two sons and how we had to prepare them to live in two worlds.”

The candid and raw video from Brown, who is known as an introvert with a quiet demeanor, surprised many officers who served alongside him. In it, a visibly emotional Brown said, “I’m thinking about my Air Force career where I was often the only African American in my squadron or, as a senior officer, the only African American in the room.”

He added, “I can’t fix centuries of racism in our country, nor can I fix decades of discrimination that may have impacted members of our Air Force.”

Just four days after Brown released the video, on June 9, Trump praised him in an online post, saying he is “excited to work even more closely with Gen. Brown, who is a Patriot and Great Leader!”

Tensions over recruiting memo

Two years later, on Aug. 9, 2022, Brown co-signed a memo that set goals for recruiting officers in the Air Force and the Space Force broken down by race, ethnicity and gender.

While it said the goals were not intended to undermine the merit-based process for recruiting or promotions, Republicans denounced the memo, arguing it imposed racial quotas on the military and called for reducing the number of white officers in the Air Force.

During Brown’s confirmation hearing to be chairman in 2023, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., pressed him about the memo, asking, “Do we have too many white officers in the Air Force?" Schmitt denounced what he called “race-based politics being injected into our military.”

“Somehow, some way, we ended up in a place where a general in the Air Force is advocating for racial quotas, whether it be by applicants or the number of officers or maybe the total unit, and I just think that’s wrong,” Schmitt said. “I just don’t know how we can continue to have leadership that advocates for this divisive policy.”

Brown countered that the memo only laid out goals for applications for officers in the Air Force and the Space Force.

Brown became Joint Chiefs chairman after having been Air Force chief of staff for just over three years. Throughout his 40 years in the Air Force, he was as a combat pilot flying primarily F-16s, and he commanded U.S. forces in the Middle East and the Pacific.

NBC News · by Courtney Kube and Carol E. Lee · December 20, 2024

13. Putin apologises to Azerbaijan president over 'tragic' plane crash in Russian airspace

Kind of a "celebrity apology:" along the lines of "I am sorry to those who might have been offended by something I said or did."

Putin apologises to Azerbaijan president over 'tragic' plane crash in Russian airspace

Putin says Russian air defence was working when the Azerbaijani Airlines plane tried to land in Grozny in Russia's southern Chechnya region.

28 Dec 2024 09:33PM

(Updated: 28 Dec 2024 11:10PM)

channelnewsasia.com

MOSCOW: Vladimir Putin on Saturday (Dec 28) apologised to Azerbaijan's president for the passenger plane crash this week, breaking the Kremlin's silence as speculation mounted that Russia may have accidentally shot the plane.

Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243, which was flying from Azerbaijan's capital Baku, crashed on Wednesday near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after diverting from southern Russia where Ukrainian drones were reported to be attacking several cities.

At least 38 people were killed while 29 survived.

Four sources with knowledge of the preliminary findings of Azerbaijan's investigation into the disaster told Reuters on Thursday that Russian air defences had mistakenly shot it down.

"(President) Vladimir Putin apologised for the tragic incident that occurred in Russian airspace and once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the injured," the Kremlin said in a statement after Putin called Azerbaijan's president Ilham Aliyev.

He admitted that Russian air defence was working when the Azerbaijani Airlines plane tried to land in Grozny in Russia's southern Chechnya region, but stopped short of saying Russian air defence shot the plane.

"At that time, Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were being attacked by Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, and Russian air defence systems repelled these attacks," the Kremlin said.

But Aliyev appeared in no doubt that the plane was shot at over Russia.

"President Ilham Aliyev emphasised that the Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane encountered external physical and technical interference while in Russian airspace, resulting in a complete loss of control," Baku's presidency said in a statement.

It added Aliyev "highlighted that the multiple holes in the aircraft's fuselage, injuries sustained by passengers and crew due to foreign particles penetrating the cabin mid-flight, and testimonies from surviving flight attendants and passengers confirm evidence of external physical and technical interference".

Survivors have told the media about hearing an "explosion" as the plane attempted to land.

Aliyev's office said Baku wanted an investigation "ensuring those responsible are held accountable".

"STARK REMINDER" OF MH17

Speculation has swirled for days, with the US weighing in on Friday.

White House spokesman John Kirby said Washington had "early indications that would certainly point to the possibility that this jet was brought down by Russian air defence systems".

Putin's phone call came after the Kremlin had earlier said it would be "inappropriate" to comment on the speculations.

Moscow also said it will work with an investigation by Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

While some in Azerbaijan - a Russian ally - have called for an apology from Moscow, Kazakhstan, one of Moscow's main allies, has not pointed the finger at Russia.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he also spoke to Aliyev on Saturday, saying the footage of the plane makes it look "very much like an air defence missile strike".

"The key priority now is a thorough investigation that will answer all questions about what really happened. Russia must provide clear explanations and stop spreading disinformation," Zelensky said on social media.

The EU, meanwhile, urged a "swift, independent international investigation".

Its top diplomat Kaja Kallas said the crash was a "stark reminder" of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which international investigations said was downed by a surface-to-air missile by Russian-backed rebels over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

AIRLINES CANCEL FLIGHTS

A series of airlines have this week begun cancelling flights to Russia after the incident, including national carriers of Moscow's allies.

The vast majority of Western airlines have stopped flights to Russia since Moscow launched its Ukraine offensive.

Turkmenistan Airlines - the national carrier of the reclusive Central Asian state - was the latest airline to announce cancellations on Saturday.

It said that "regular flights between Ashgabat-Moscow-Ashgabat were cancelled from 30/12/2024 to 31/01/2025", without giving an explanation.

The decision came after UAE airline flydubai suspended flights between Dubai and the southern Russian cities of Mineralnye Vody and Sochi that were scheduled between Dec 27 and Jan 3.

Kazakhstan's Qazaq Air has suspended its flights to Russia's Urals city of Yekaterinburg until the end of January.

Earlier this week, Israeli airline El Al said it was suspending its flights to Moscow for a week.

channelnewsasia.com

14. A global boom in cocaine trafficking defies decades of anti-drug efforts

Photos, graphic, and map at the link.

A global boom in cocaine trafficking defies decades of anti-drug efforts

The cocaine trade is far bigger and more geographically diverse than at any point in history as Albanian traffickers expand the market in Europe for the drug.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/28/cocaine-consumption-soars-europe-asia/

Today at 5:00 a.m. EST

By Samantha Schmidt, Arturo Torres and Anthony Faiola

Samantha Schmidt and Arturo Torres reported from cities in Ecuador and Colombia, and Anthony Faiola traveled to Albania, to document the rise of Alban...more

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador — The drug lord had already escaped the law in three countries, and he planned to do it again.

In less than a decade, Dritan Rexhepi had built a smuggling business that ran from the fields of Colombia to the ports of Ecuador and on to the streets of Europe, Italian and Latin American investigators said, rivaling the influence of Mexico’s powerful cartels. His brand, carved into cocaine packages, was “Bello” — beautiful.

The Albanian’s rise from gunman in his home country to transatlantic kingpin is part of a global explosion in the cocaine industry, a trade that is far bigger and more geographically diverse than at any point in history. South America now produces more than twice as much cocaine as it did a decade ago. Cultivation of coca crops in Colombia, the origin of most of the world’s cocaine, has tripled, according to U.S. figures, and the amount of land used to grow the drug’s base ingredient is more than five times what it was when the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993.

And production keeps soaring. A record 2,757 tons of cocaine was produced worldwide in 2022, a 20 percent increase over 2021, according to the most recent global drug report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

“It’s going up and up and up,” said Thomas Pietschmann, a research officer at the UNODC. “A few years ago, people were saying the future is synthetic drugs. … Right now, it’s still cocaine.”

For decades, cocaine consumers were primarily Americans, and interdiction was a U.S. government priority. But despite the tens of billions of dollars spent in the U.S. war on drugs in Latin America, the industry has not only grown, it has globalized, with new routes, new markets and new criminal enterprises.

A view of Micay Canyon in Cauca, Colombia. Coca production has exploded in recent years in the southern part of Cauca, where the mountains slope down to the Pacific Ocean. Here, the mountain is almost completely covered with coca, which can be recognized by the plants' light-green color. (Nadège Mazars)

Nearly every one of Latin America’s mainland nations has become a major producer or mover of the drug, with Ecuador now one of the most important cocaine transit points in the world. Demand is soaring in Europe, which rivals the United States as the world’s top cocaine destination. Cocaine seizures in E.U. countries grew fivefold between 2011 and 2021, and exceeded those in the United States in 2022. While the United States remains a huge market, cocaine use has declined by about 20 percent since 2006, according to UNODC.

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Balkan, Italian, Turkish and Russian criminal groups have all swept into Latin America for a piece of the action. Few have managed to muscle their way into cocaine trafficking quite like Albanian criminal networks, investigators and analysts say.

“We know there’s not only one channel for cocaine,” said Marco Martino, a senior Italian police official in charge of coordinating counternarcotics operations. But “the Albanians,” he said, “are the best and the biggest.”

As cocaine production was exploding, investigators said, Albanian criminal networks rode the opportunity it presented. They were critical to getting the drug to Europe and fueling consumption across the continent.

The prison where Dritan Rexhepi was held in Latacunga in Ecuador's Cotopaxi province. (Rodrigo Buendia/AFP/Getty Images)

Rexhepi, 44, built much of his empire from an Ecuadorian prison cell, fostering connections with Latin American gangs and turning his cellblock into an executive suite. A lawyer representing him in Albania declined to comment. Rexhepi, in a 2015 appeal, denied any involvement in drug trafficking, “either as a perpetrator, accomplice or accessory.” But in 2021, Italy sought his extradition, warning the authorities in Ecuador in a letter from its embassy in Quito that Rexhepi was the “undisputed leader” of an Albanian drug trafficking network with global reach and access to “infinite quantities of cocaine.”

Rexhepi’s emergence as a feared power broker within a federal prison in Cotopaxi province was symptomatic of the collapse of government control in Ecuador. But with the authorities in Rome seeking to imprison him for drug trafficking, he decided it was time to move again.

A local judge, citing a medical need, ordered him into home detention in an upscale neighborhood here in the port city of Guayaquil in August 2021, according to Ecuadorian officials.

Then, predictably, Rexhepi vanished.

A photo of drug kingpin Dritan Rexhepi taken Nov. 10, 2023, the day he was arrested in Istanbul by Turkish authorities in response to extradition requests from Italy and Albania. (Turkish General Directorate of Security//Anadolu/Getty Images)

This investigation into the global expansion of the cocaine business and the rise of Albanian drug traffickers is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials in Ecuador, Colombia, Europe and the United States, gang members in Ecuador, and thousands of pages of court documents from Ecuador, Albania and Italy. It reveals how criminal networks led by Albanians infiltrated Ecuador’s ports, judiciary, prison system and security forces to gain control of key parts of the cocaine supply chain and trigger a deluge of the drug in Europe — a more than $12 billion annual cocaine market, according to the E.U. Drugs Agency.

“With these profits, these organizations manage to permeate all public and private institutions, corrupting any structure,” said Ecuador’s former anti-narcotics director, Gen. Willian Villarroel, in an interview.

Drug trafficking entrepreneurs from Albania, a country of only about 2.8 million people, have begun to rival the world’s most powerful cartels by working with them, not against them, transforming how the trade is run. The new networks, investigators say, are often criminal coalitions of disparate and independent groups, rather than hierarchical, violently competitive cartels.

Skip to end of carouselBehind the growing power of the cartels

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A boom in cocaine production and the expanding power of criminal organizations pose a growing threat in Latin America, the United States’ biggest trading partner. In a multipart series, The Washington Post is examining how organized crime groups have vastly expanded their influence, corroding the region’s democracies, strangling commerce and propelling thousands of people to the U.S. southern border.

Latin America is producing more than twice as much cocaine as it did a decade ago. Nearly every one of its mainland nations has become a major producer or mover of the drug, feeding booming markets in the United States, Europe and South America.

Organized crime groups have moved well beyond narcotics. They’ve created sprawling illicit industries in extortion, migrant smuggling and gold mining. Their power has become so great that they form a new kind of insurgency, infiltrating government operations.

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Europol is aware of dozens of “Albanian-speaking” clans or organized criminal networks currently operating in Europe, Robert Fay, the head of Europol’s drug unit, said in an interview.

“It’s not about how many people you have,” said Fatjona Mejdini, an Albanian analyst with the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. “It’s about the right alliances you can form.”

From his prison cell in Ecuador, Rexhepi paved the way. He befriended leaders of Ecuador’s most powerful gang, Los Choneros, who were already working for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, according to one of the gang’s founding members, who, like some others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of security concerns.

That led to strategic partnerships with both South American traffickers and gang leaders across Europe. His goal was simple, investigators and analysts said: sell as much cocaine as possible with abundant profit for all parties to the deals.

“Rexhepi is the pioneer,” Mejdini said.

A close-up of coca plants in Guaviare, Colombia. (Nadège Mazars)

Soaring cocaine production

The explosion in cocaine production can be traced back to the demobilization of Colombia’s largest leftist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). A historic peace deal with the country’s government in 2016 ended the longest-running civil conflict in the hemisphere, a conflict in which the United States played a critical role.

Since the start of the counternarcotics and security package known as Plan Colombia in 2000, the United States has sent about $14 billion in funding to Colombia, at least 60 percent of it for the military and police. The plan focused in large part on combating the country’s cocaine production and export, which the FARC controlled, using the proceeds to fund its insurgency and secure territory.

When the guerrillas laid down their weapons, a proliferation of smaller armed groups, driven by profit rather than ideology, swept into coca-producing areas.

These drug traffickers “no longer have political interests,” said Leonardo Correa, the head of the UNODC mission in Colombia. “What they want is to get the drug out as fast as possible, to make the most money possible.”

Detail

Caribbean Sea

VENEZUELA

ANTIOQUIA

Coca plantations

Cocaine enclaves

COLOMBIA

Pacific

Ocean

GUAVIARE

NARIÑO

CAQUETA

PUTUMAYO

ECUADOR

BRAZIL

PERU

Source: UNODC

Deforestation related to coca plantations in Colombia

Nariño Department

2017

2024

COLOMBIA

Detail

Putumayo Department

2018

2024

COLOMBIA

Detail

Source: Maxar Technologies

Instead of sourcing coca leaves from fields in the center of the country, Colombia’s cocaine producers have created “enclaves” near the country’s borders and coasts, to more easily export the drug. These enclaves became a one-stop shop for a process that was previously dispersed — now, the cultivation, extraction and refining of the drug all happen in the same area before it is moved across nearby borders. Three of the four most productive enclaves border Ecuador.

Producers have even improved the plant itself, creating remarkably productive hybrid crops that extract more alkaloid from the same quantity of leaves. The government of Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president and a fierce opponent of the U.S.-led “war on drugs,” has vowed to dismantle drug trafficking networks, but it shifted its focus away from the eradication of coca crops. Analysts say this has only further fueled cultivation, and could draw harsh criticism from the incoming Trump administration.

The amount of land used to plant coca in Colombia grew by 10 percent in 2023, but the productivity of that land exploded: Cocaine production grew by 53 percent, according to the UNODC. As a result, these enclaves — making up 14 percent of Colombian territory that has coca crops — produce about 40 percent of the country’s coca, according to the UNODC. This has left other areas of the country struggling to sell their coca crops.

Colombian police Lt. Jonnathan Gil examines two types of coca: in his right hand, a branch of the Erythroxylum novogranatense type, and in his left hand, a branch of the Erythroxylum coca type. The coca at Colombia's National Police Training School (CENOP) is grown for scientific and educational purposes. (Nadège Mazars for The Washington Post)

Samples of cocaine batches seized by the anti-narcotics police are laid out on a table in a laboratory at the International Center for Strategic Anti-Narcotics Studies (CIENA) in Bogotá, Colombia. The samples show the variety of disguises used to hide cocaine in products such as coffee, tea and plastic objects. (Nadège Mazars for The Washington Post)

As Colombian criminal groups industrialized their systems, European mafias offered the prospect of new routes to avoid intensified U.S. patrols along Colombia’s coast. Cocaine started to move in ever bigger quantities through countries including Ecuador, Costa Rica and Paraguay and onto ships bound for Europe.

In Ecuador, a country that does not produce cocaine, authorities seized more of the drug in 2023 than the combined total seizures of Peru and Bolivia, the second- and third-largest production countries. This year, through mid-December, Ecuador seized 251 tons of cocaine, up from 197 last year. More than 81 tons were destined for Europe, compared with only about 18 that were intended for the United States and Mexico.

For just one kilogram of cocaine, worth $2,000 or so in Colombia, drug traffickers could earn $25,000 by smuggling it to the United States but at least $31,500 if it reached Europe, according to U.N. and E.U. officials.

In 2022, for the sixth year in a row, E.U. states reported a record number of cocaine seizures, with Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands registering the most. Almost 70 percent of those drug seizures were from container ships that arrived from Latin America.

Forces in the Ecuadorian coast guard sail along tributary channels of the Guayas River next to port terminals during an anti-drug patrol in Guayaquil, Ecuador. (Yuri Cortez/AFP/Getty Images)

A crucial transit point

It was one of the world’s largest single cocaine seizures on record — and authorities stumbled on it by accident.

In late January, Ecuadorian military officers followed a lead about a cache of weapons and explosives hidden at a pig farm in Los Ríos province. Instead, in an underground cellar, they found 22,000 bricks of cocaine — 22 tons in total, a haul valued at more than $660 million on the European market. The packages were labeled with airline logos: Iberia, KLM, Qatar, Jet2.

The cache belonged to an Albanian criminal group, according to intelligence officials and Ecuadorian court records.

For an Ecuadorian government that had nearly collapsed due to drug violence, it was hailed as a major blow to the country’s cocaine trade. It also confirmed Ecuador’s global role as a crucial transit point and logistical hub for the world’s most powerful drug traffickers.

Wedged between the cocaine-producing countries of Colombia and Peru, Ecuador became an ideal location for traffickers, investigators said. It had limited coastal surveillance, fragile institutions that were corruptible, lenient visa policies allowing long-term residence for foreigners, and a robust pool of local gangs eager to team up with European groups to transport drugs.

In January 2024, Ecuadorian military officers showed off what amounted to one of the largest global cocaine seizures on record. (Video: Ecuador Army)

Packages of cocaine totaling a then-record-breaking 9.4 tons, found hidden among banana crates in a container coming from Ecuador, are seen during a police news conference at the port of Algeciras in Spain on Aug. 25, 2023. (Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images)

The country also boasted a thriving shipping industry. Ecuador is the principal exporter of bananas to Europe, and a free-trade agreement with the E.U. led banana exports to grow by 40 percent since 2017, according to E.U. figures. The banana shipping business, making up more than two-thirds of exports leaving Ecuador, provided an ideal form of transit, investigators said.

In 2023, about half of the cocaine seized in containers in Ecuador before departure to Europe was hidden in banana shipments, according to Ecuadorian authorities.

The January seizure at the pig farm also illustrated the Albanian trafficking model, intelligence officials said, with third-party associates contracted for each link in the cocaine supply chain.

Colombian armed groups handle the production and transport across the border, and Ecuadorian gangs take it from there. To move the 22 tons of cocaine, for instance, one gang, Los Lobos, transported the drugs to the underground cellar, according to an intelligence official with knowledge of the case. Another, Los Choneros, was tasked with guarding the drugs, while a third, Los Lagartos, was supposed to smuggle the drugs into the port. Finally, Los Chone Killers were to ensure that it left hidden on a designated container ship.

Dritan Rexhepi's uncle, Arben Jaupaj, and a young man sit outside his cafe in Velce, an Albanian mountain village. Residents here still speak of the local boy who “made it” as a patron who covered surgeries for the poor and provided unspecified “jobs” to local men. (Ilir Tsouko for The Washington Post)

The escape artist

Rexhepi arrived in Ecuador around 2011, part of a wave of Albanians, many of whom had deep ties to criminal groups in Europe, investigators said. Ecuador was beginning to emerge as a transit hub in the cocaine trade, residency was relatively easy to acquire, and there was little difficulty for foreigners in acquiring property and setting up companies, Ecuadorian officials said.

Rexhepi, who had multiple false identities, landed as a Greek businessman, investigators said.

The son of grape farmers in Velce, an Albanian mountain village, Rexhepi came of age as Ponzi schemes in the late 1990s sparked a devastating economic collapse in Albania. Military armories were pillaged, leading to the rise of criminal gangs that made parts of the country lawless.

“Everyone had guns in the village,” said Rexhepi’s uncle, Arben Jaupaj, 64, who runs a bar in Velce. “The adults and the kids.”

Rexhepi quickly rose within the ranks of one network with continent-wide ambitions, Albanian officials said. He was arrested in 2006 in the late 1990s slayings of a police officers and a bystander. In an act that turned Rexhepi into a household name in Albania, he escaped on the day of his arrest from a police station in the seaside city of Durres by simply opening a door with a faulty lock in a basement interrogation room. He waltzed out, telling police officers he encountered that his interview was finished.

Fields and mountains stretch across the landscape near Velce. The village is dotted with incongruent signs of wealth, including a few large homes behind elaborate wrought-iron gates. (Ilir Tsouko for The Washington Post)

Arben Jaupaj recalls his nephew Dritan as a precocious, curly-haired boy who excelled at school. Jaupaj said Rexhepi claims he was falsely accused of drug trafficking. (Ilir Tsouko for The Washington Post)

“He’s seen as smart, brave and willing to take risks,” said an Albanian law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

In the years that followed, Rexhepi became one of Europe’s most-wanted criminals, pursued from one country to another. He was arrested on drug trafficking charges in the Netherlands and extradited to Italy, where he was sentenced to 13 years in prison. In 2011, he and two other Albanians broke out of a jail near Milan after using contraband saws to file down bars and repelling out of a window on an impromptu rope made from tied bedsheets. Months later, he was arrested in Spain but extradited to Belgium, where he was wanted for his role in a violent robbery years earlier. But the low-security Belgian prison was no match for Rexhepi. Once again, he escaped, this time by scaling a prison wall.

But staying in Europe was becoming increasingly untenable because of the risk of another arrest, and Rexhepi fled to Ecuador.

Rexhepi built his network by making use of legitimate front companies, according to Italian prosecutors. He started establishing ties to Ecuadorian businesses that would help him build up his smuggling operations and launder money. One of his associates, an Albanian diplomatic vice consul in Ecuador, held large shares in food and cannabis companies, according to public records and an Ecuadorian intelligence analyst who has studied the network.

In just a few years in the city of Guayaquil, Rexhepi and his cohorts built a sophisticated drug logistics system, buying off port staff and shipping companies that allowed them almost free access to containers heading to Europe, investigators said. He formed alliances across the spectrum of criminal groups in the country, they said, by selling Europe as a new, open market where everyone could profit.

The law, however, caught up with Rexhepi again, and in 2014, he was arrested in Guayaquil, charged with drug trafficking and eventually sentenced to 13 years in prison. The prison system in Ecuador was largely run by the gangs, and Rexhepi continued to build his business, investigators said.

His uncle, Jaupaj, said his nephew claims he was falsely accused, and that he was simply running a seafood business in Ecuador.

In a 2015 appeal, Rexhepi — using the fake name Murataj Lulezim — accused Ecuadorian authorities of confusing him with another man and depriving him of his freedom “in an unjust way, without a single piece of evidence against me or a single photo that proves any trace of participation.”

“My only sin, so to speak, is that I am an Albanian citizen, and I came to this country because of the publicity abroad, promoting investment.”

Security forces display the 22 tons of cocaine seized in an operation at a pig farm in Quevedo in Ecuador's Los Ríos province on Jan. 22. (Daniel Vite/AFP/Getty Images)

An armored vehicle is seen during a police and military operation in Guayaquil in March. (Gerardo Menoscal/AFP/Getty Images)

Descent into lawlessness

In September 2020, following a five-year investigation, hundreds of officers across Europe conducted a large sting against Rexhepi’s operations — arresting 20 individuals in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Spain, Albania and Dubai.

Italian authorities sent a series of letters to Ecuadorian officials, urging them to begin extradition proceedings against Rexhepi. In one 2021 letter from the Italian Embassy, which was reviewed by The Washington Post, diplomats warned that Rexhepi organized transatlantic drug shipments and ordered the murder of rivals “thanks to a dense network of complicity and corruption, from prison, using all types of communication systems.”

But Rexhepi had his own plans. In August 2021, a Guayaquil judge, Diego Poma, granted Rexhepi house arrest for “medical reasons” with an ankle monitor, according to the court order. Days later, the judge ordered the removal of the ankle monitor and instructed Rexhepi to report to the authorities every 15 days. The judge was later dismissed by the country’s judiciary council, which found that he had violated the independence of judicial servants in several decisions benefiting powerful drug lords. Poma, in his disciplinary process, denied wrongdoing and said he followed all legal protocols in making his decisions.

In 2023, Rexhepi’s release was denounced publicly by presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio as another example of Ecuador’s descent into lawlessness; several months later, Villavicencio, who promised to take on the country’s narco gangs, was assassinated.

The city of Guayaquil as seen from Cerro Santa Ana. (Johanna Alarcón for The Washington Post)

By then, it had become clear just how much power Albanian drug traffickers wielded in Ecuador. Another prominent Albanian drug trafficker, Dritan Gjika, had established a sprawling web of business and political connections, investigators found, allegedly under the protection of Ecuador’s head of police. Some European intelligence officials said they suspect Gjika may be part of Rexhepi’s network.

In January, Ecuadorian gangs unleashed a wave of violence that targeted the country’s institutions and media. The country’s new president, Daniel Noboa, responded by declaring a state of internal armed conflict against the gangs, mobilizing the military to bring control to the country’s cities and prisons. The government has since touted an 18 percent drop in the murder rate, but kidnapping and extortion have continued to rise, and human rights organizations have accused the government of arresting thousands with little evidence of due process.

The drop in killings, said Renato Rivera, coordinator of Ecuador’s Organized Crime Observatory, “is not a response to the militarization, but rather to the peace processes and criminal alliances” between gangs. Despite the president’s declaration of internal armed conflict, the country’s most powerful criminal structures — such as the Albanians — remain “exactly the same,” he added.

“These transnational groups have not really been affected,” Rivera said.

Spanish police stand next to packages of cocaine in Algeciras on Nov. 6, part of a record-breaking bust of 13 tons of cocaine that were found in a container coming from Ecuador. (Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images)

New markets in Africa and Asia

The cocaine lords continue to adapt, diversify and flourish.

As law enforcement authorities in Europe have intensified interdiction operations, particularly at major ports in Northern Europe, drug traffickers appear to be shifting to other points of entry. The Netherlands and Belgium, home to the largest ports in Europe, seized about half as much cocaine in the first half of 2024 as they did in the same period last year.

Spain, which has continued to seize record amounts of cocaine, appears to be surpassing Belgium and the Netherlands as Europe’s most important gateway for cocaine. Sweden and Norway also reported record cocaine seizures at ports in 2023, according to the E.U. Drugs Agency. Germany saw its cocaine seizures more than double between 2022 and 2023, according to the UNODC.

Traffickers are increasingly using labs in Europe to process cocaine or to separate it from other materials used to conceal it. The E.U. reported dismantling 39 cocaine laboratories across member states in 2022, up from at least 16 in 2019; one lab, discovered by authorities in Spain in 2023, was turning out 200 kilograms (almost 450 pounds) of cocaine every day.

New markets beyond Europe continue to open up in response to the surfeit of cocaine. Australia reported the highest annual prevalence of cocaine use in the world, according to the UNODC, though wastewater data suggests most cocaine consumers only use the drug occasionally. In early December, Australian authorities seized over two tons of cocaine, the country’s largest-ever seizure of the drug. Just days earlier, the Colombian navy announced the capture of six “narco-subs” carrying more than 225 tons of cocaine, including one carrying five tons of cocaine to Australia.

In July 2023, authorities in Hamburg discovered a shipment of 12 tons of cocaine hidden in a container of black sesame seeds that left from Paraguay. (Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor's Office)

While data for Asia is limited, cocaine consumption and seizures are rising in China and Japan, the UNODC reports. It has also noted increases in seizures in India, Malaysia and the Philippines, suggesting they could emerge as growth centers for traffickers. If Asia’s rates of consumption were to someday align with Europe’s, the number of regular cocaine users there could shoot up from 2 million to over 40 million, according to the UNODC.

“It’s the kids of the upper classes who take it,” Pietschmann, the UNODC research officer, said. “The potential is there. … There is a young generation there, the young generation has money, and the young generation goes to parties.”

Cocaine seizures have also reached record levels in Africa, where the Brazilian criminal group Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) has expanded its presence and used several countries, including Mozambique, Angola and Cape Verde, as stopovers for shipping cocaine to Europe, according to the UNODC.

Albanian criminal groups have reportedly begun establishing networks in Australia, exploiting weaknesses in the country’s immigration system and capitalizing on a burgeoning market with high cocaine prices, according to Australian officials.

The Albanians have been able to perfect their operation just about anywhere, Mejdini said.

“There’s no limit for them anymore,” Mejdini said. “The model they have created, to forge alliances, to cooperate with other foreigners, it helps them go everywhere. Wherever there is demand, they are going to be the delivery guys.”

Some analysts speculate that Turkey, where officials reported a 45 percent increase in cocaine seizures between 2020 and 2021, could become a crucial corridor for moving the drug east.

That’s where authorities found Rexhepi in November 2023, two years after he was released from prison in Ecuador. He was arrested in response to extradition requests from Italy and Albania.

The kingpin had traded one life of luxury for another, after arriving in Turkey on a Colombian passport under the alias Benjamin Omar Perez Garcia and settling into a white villa in a seaside suburb of Istanbul, authorities said.

He remains behind bars in Turkey — for now.

Faiola reported from Tirana, Albania, and Rome. Fjori Sinoruka in Tirana and Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report. Graphics by Júlia Ledur.

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By Samantha Schmidt

Samantha Schmidt is The Washington Post's Bogotá bureau chief, covering all of Spanish-speaking South America. follow on X@schmidtsam7

By Anthony Faiola

Anthony Faiola is Rome Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. Since joining the paper in 1994, he has served as bureau chief in Miami, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and New York and additionally worked as roving correspondent at large. follow on X@Anthony_Faiola

15. Ukraine Uses Bird Nests to Nab Russian Saboteurs Planning Train Derailment

Ukraine Uses Bird Nests to Nab Russian Saboteurs Planning Train Derailment

Russian operatives recruited agents to derail ammo trains. But Ukrainian security service were a step ahead, watching with cameras planted in bird nests.

by Kyiv Post | December 28, 2024, 2:32 pm

kyivpost.com · by Kyiv Post · December 28, 2024

Russian operatives recruited agents to derail ammo trains. But Ukrainian security service were a step ahead, watching with cameras planted in bird nests.

by Kyiv Post | December 28, 2024, 2:32 pm

Photo: SBU.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has uncovered a network of three Russian intelligence agents plotting to sabotage Ukraine’s railways, according to the SBU.

The SBU’s counterintelligence unit apprehended one of the agents before he could derail a train loaded with ammunition, weapons and equipment to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The suspect had been preparing a makeshift brake shoe designed to cause trains to derail.

To document the sabotage, the SBU installed several cameras around the railroad track, which were disguised as bird nests, enabling real-time recording of the planned attack.

The recruited Russian agent is a resident of Rivne, the SBU said. He worked for the 316th intelligence center of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, located in occupied Crimea.

The agent acted as part of a network that included two others currently hiding in Crimea.

The organizer of the network was 43-year-old Roman Yakymchuk, the SBU said, and the “liaison” operative who sought out and assigned tasks to the agent was Oleksandr Ignatiev, a former employee of the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine, who was fired in 2014 for corruption and drunkenness.

To work with an agent in Kyiv, Yakymchuk and Ignatiev made a request to the Russian Federation for $100,000. At the same time, they promised only 40% of this amount directly to the agent.

ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December, 27, 2024

Latest from the Institute for the Study of War.

Yakymchuk and Ignatiev planned to divide the remaining funds among themselves, hiding this fact from the leadership of the Russian military intelligence, according to the SBU.

The SBU says that they have detained the suspected agent and documented his handlers.

Investigators notified all three persons involved of suspicion in accordance with the committed crimes under several articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

16. Has Russia’s Shadow Fleet, Built to Evade Sanctions, Added Sabotage to Its List?

Excerpts:

If confirmed, it would be the first known instance of a shadow fleet vessel being used to intentionally sabotage critical infrastructure in Europe — and, officials and experts said, a clear escalation by Russia in its conflict with the West.

“We know about Russia’s shadow fleet operating in our area, and we know Russia is systematically conducting hybrid warfare against its neighboring NATO/EU countries,” Lauri Läänemets, Estonia’s interior minister, said in an email to The New York Times. “It’s time to drop the illusions and face it.”

...

On Friday, a number of countries in the region announced the deployment of additional naval and coast guard resources to bolster security. NATO’s general secretary, Mark Rutte, responding to requests from the leaders of Finland and Estonia, both member nations, said the Atlantic alliance would “enhance” its military presence in the Baltic Sea.

“NATO stands in solidarity with Allies and condemns any attacks on critical infrastructure,” Mr. Rutte said in an earlier post on X, the social media platform.

For the Kremlin, the creation of a shadow fleet offered a solution to the problem of financing its war in Ukraine. After President Vladimir V. Putin ordered Russian troops to invade in February 2022, Western countries began to impose sanctions meant to strangle the Russian economy and cut off its access to the funds needed to keep the country’s army on the move.

Oil is a cornerstone of Russia’s economy, and a key target of the sanctions was Russia’s energy sector. But instead of a full embargo, which officials feared would cause a global spike in prices, the United States and its Western allies imposed price caps of $60 a barrel on all oil and oil products originating in Russia and transported by sea, a significant discount on the market price.

Has Russia’s Shadow Fleet, Built to Evade Sanctions, Added Sabotage to Its List?

Russia has assembled a fleet of hundreds of vessels to covertly ship its oil. With so many ships at sea, the idea of using some to cause havoc may be proving irresistible to the Kremlin.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/28/world/europe/russia-ship-shadow-fleet-finland.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

A Finnish Coast Guard vessel watching over the oil tanker Eagle S on Friday, in an image provided by the Finnish Border Guard.Credit...EPA, via Shutterstock

By Michael Schwirtz

Dec. 28, 2024

Updated 3:08 a.m. ET

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Eastern Europe, Northern Europe and Western Europe? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Western officials have long been concerned about Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet, an assemblage of aged tankers created to covertly carry Russian crude oil around the world. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the worry primarily concerned the use of such off-the-books ships to circumvent Western sanctions and generate revenue to fuel the Kremlin’s war machine.

But Russia’s shadow fleet may now present a more pressing danger to the West.

This week, Finnish commandos boarded an oil tanker that officials suspect had cut through vital underwater cables in the Baltic Sea, including one that carries electricity between Finland and Estonia. The ship, the Eagle S, bears all the hallmarks of vessels belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet, officials said, and had embarked from a Russian port shortly before the cables were cut.

If confirmed, it would be the first known instance of a shadow fleet vessel being used to intentionally sabotage critical infrastructure in Europe — and, officials and experts said, a clear escalation by Russia in its conflict with the West.

“We know about Russia’s shadow fleet operating in our area, and we know Russia is systematically conducting hybrid warfare against its neighboring NATO/EU countries,” Lauri Läänemets, Estonia’s interior minister, said in an email to The New York Times. “It’s time to drop the illusions and face it.”

Image

Ilkka Koskimäki, right, Finland’s national police commissioner, and other Finnish officials discussed the cutting of undersea cables on Thursday at a news conference in Helsinki.Credit...Jussi Nukari/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

On Friday, a number of countries in the region announced the deployment of additional naval and coast guard resources to bolster security. NATO’s general secretary, Mark Rutte, responding to requests from the leaders of Finland and Estonia, both member nations, said the Atlantic alliance would “enhance” its military presence in the Baltic Sea.

“NATO stands in solidarity with Allies and condemns any attacks on critical infrastructure,” Mr. Rutte said in an earlier post on X, the social media platform.

For the Kremlin, the creation of a shadow fleet offered a solution to the problem of financing its war in Ukraine. After President Vladimir V. Putin ordered Russian troops to invade in February 2022, Western countries began to impose sanctions meant to strangle the Russian economy and cut off its access to the funds needed to keep the country’s army on the move.

Oil is a cornerstone of Russia’s economy, and a key target of the sanctions was Russia’s energy sector. But instead of a full embargo, which officials feared would cause a global spike in prices, the United States and its Western allies imposed price caps of $60 a barrel on all oil and oil products originating in Russia and transported by sea, a significant discount on the market price.

Image

A gas tanker being filled up from a liquefied natural gas plant on Sakhalin Island, Russia.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

The idea to create a shadow fleet to circumvent sanctions is not new. The scheme has long been used by global pariahs like Iran and North Korea, as well as drug cartels, said Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has researched and written about shadow fleets.

Russia’s innovation, Ms. Braw said in an interview, was one of scale. Since Russia began assembling its fleet, the number of shadow vessels traversing the oceans has grown by hundreds and now makes up 17 percent of the total global oil tanker fleet.

“That makes it like a tumor,” she said. “When it was a small share, it could be managed, but now that it’s approaching 20 percent, it’s much less manageable, and obviously it’s growing.”

Nearly 70 percent of Russia’s oil is being transported by shadow tankers, according to an analysis published in October by the Kyiv School of Economics Institute, a research organization based in Ukraine. Some experts put the total number of Russia’s shadow vessels at more than 1,000, though significantly fewer are used by Russia to regularly circumvent sanctions, the institute’s analysis found.

The authorities in Finland are still investigating whether the Eagle S engaged in a criminal act. But the sheer size of the shadow fleet might have made using some of these vessels for sabotage irresistible to Russia, Ms. Braw said.

“I think at some point that Russia realized, ‘Oh, we have all these vessels that we’re using; we might as well use a few of them to cause a little extra harm.’”

While it’s still not certain that this week’s cable cutting was done intentionally, the Baltic Sea, for a number of reasons, is an ideal arena to carry out sabotage operations. It is relatively shallow and is crisscrossed with essential undersea cables and pipelines that provide energy, as well as internet and phone services, to a number of European countries that are NATO members. Russia has relatively unfettered access to the sea from several ports, and its commercial vessels, protected by international maritime law, can move around international waters largely unmolested.

Even before the cables were cut, it was clear that the Baltic Sea was becoming a key arena in an intensifying competition between the West and Russia.

Since the Ukraine war began, NATO, which the Kremlin considers its primary enemy, has grown by two members, Sweden and Finland, both significant Baltic powers. NATO jets in the region are often scrambled to respond to Russian military aircraft, and each fall, countries in the Western alliance hold major naval exercises there called Freezing Winds, directed mainly against the Russian threat.

Image

Members of the German Navy with a submarine drone onboard a ship during a NATO exercise known as Freezing Winds in the Baltic Sea in November.Credit...Anne Kauranen/Reuters

Months after the war in Ukraine began, explosions blew apart several sections of the Nord Stream pipeline beneath the Baltic, cutting off Western Europe from Russian natural gas deliveries. U.S. intelligence services have assessed that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack, but public details remain sparse.

The suspicions that Russia was using shadow vessels for more than just escaping sanctions existed before this week’s cable cutting. Last April, the head of Sweden’s Navy told a local news outlet that there was evidence such ships were being used to conduct signals intelligence on behalf of Russia and that some fishing vessels had been spotted with antennas and masts not normally seen on commercial vessels.

Since the war began, there has also been an uptick in suspicious episodes resulting in damage to critical undersea infrastructure.

Last year, a Hong Kong-registered ship, the Newnew Polar Bear, dropped its anchor and cut through a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia. That ship was allowed to sail into international waters before the authorities could investigate. Officials responded more aggressively last month, halting a Chinese-flagged ship called the Yi Peng 3, holding it at anchor for nearly a month and eventually boarding it after two fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea were cut.

Image

A Chinese-flagged ship, the Yi Peng 3, was anchored and being monitored by a Danish naval patrol vessel near Jutland, Denmark, in November.Credit...Mikkel Berg Pedersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

With the Eagle S, the response has been even more aggressive. Hours after Finland’s energy grid operator alerted the police that an undersea power cable was damaged on Wednesday, Finnish officers descended by helicopter to the ship’s deck and took over the bridge, preventing the vessel from sailing farther. By Friday, it remained at anchor in the Gulf of Finland, guarded by a Finnish Defense Forces missile boat and a Border Guard patrol vessel.

One reason for the intensity of the response might be that the ship so closely fits the characteristics of a Russian shadow vessel. The 70,000-ton crude oil tanker has changed ownership and managers within the past two years and lacks the types of insurance oil tankers usually have, all major indicators of a shadow vessel, said Yuliia Pavytska, manager of the sanctions program at the Kyiv School of Economics Institute, who works with Western officials to identify and impose sanctions on Russian shadow vessels.

The ship is also flagged to the Cook Islands, which is well known for its lax oversight. An inspection of the Eagle S in Ghana in September 2023 discovered 24 defects, including problems with fire safety and navigation systems, an astounding number, Ms. Pavytska said.

“This is like a record,” she said. “I can’t recollect whether we’ve seen so many deficiencies identified.”

Michael Schwirtz is an investigative reporter with the International desk. With The Times since 2006, he previously covered the countries of the former Soviet Union from Moscow and was a lead reporter on a team that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for articles about Russian intelligence operations. More about Michael Schwirtz

17. Advanced US air-defence system used for first time in Israel

Advanced US air-defence system used for first time in Israel

THAAD deployed to intercept Houthi missile after Israel struck multiple targets in Yemen on Thursday

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/28/advanced-us-air-defence-system-used-first-time-israel/?WT.mc_id=e_DM482960&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_USD_New&utmsource=email

Tony Diver

US Editor

China is building new detention centers all over the country as Xi Jinping widens corruption purge | CNN

CNN · by Yong Xiong · December 28, 2024

CNN —

China has built or expanded more than 200 specialized detention facilities nationwide to interrogate suspects ensnared in Xi Jinping’s widening anti-corruption drive, a CNN investigation has found, as the Chinese leader extends his crackdown beyond the ruling Communist Party to a vast swath of public sectors.

Since taking power in 2012, Xi has launched a sweeping campaign against graft and disloyalty, taking down corrupt officials as well as political rivals at an unprecedented speed and scale as he consolidated control over the party and the military.

Now well into his third term, the supreme leader has turned his relentless campaign into a permanent and institutionalized feature of his open-ended rule.

And increasingly, some of the most fearsome tools he has wielded to keep officials in line are being used against a much broader section of society, from private entrepreneurs to school and hospital administrators – regardless of whether they are members of the 99-million-strong party.

The expanded detention regime, named “liuzhi,” or “retention in custody,” comes with facilities with padded surfaces and round-the-clock guards in every cell, where detainees can be held for up to six months without ever seeing a lawyer or family members.

It’s an extension of a system long used by the party to exert control and instill fear among its members.

New detention regime

For decades, the party’s disciplinary arm, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), had run a secretive, extralegal detention system to interrogate Communist Party cadres suspected of corruption and other misdeeds. Officials under investigation were disappeared into party compounds, hotels or other covert locations for months at a time, with no access to legal counsel or family visits.

In 2018, amid growing criticism over widespread abuse, torture and forced confession, Xi scrapped the controversial practice known as “shuanggui,” or “double designation” – a nod to the party’s power to summon members for investigation at a designated time and place.

But the Chinese leader did not abolish secret detention, which had been a potent weapon in his war on corruption and dissent. Instead, it was codified by law, given a new name and placed under the purview of a powerful new state agency, the National Supervisory Commission (NSC).

Founded in 2018 as part of the constitutional revision that cleared the way for Xi to rule for life, the new agency consolidated the government’s anti-graft forces and merged them with the CCDI. The two agencies work hand in glove and share the same offices, same personnel and even the same website – an arrangement that expands the remit of the party’s internal graft watchdog to the entire public sector.

The new liuzhi detention regime has kept many features of its predecessor, including the power to hold suspects incommunicado in custody and a lack of independent oversight.

A criminal defense lawyer, who has represented Chinese officials in corruption cases, told CNN they had seen little improvement in the protection of detainees’ rights under liuzhi.

The lawyer, who requested anonymity due to fears of retribution from the government, said many of their clients had detailed abuse, threats and forced confessions while in liuzhi custody.

“Most of them would succumb to the pressure and agony. Those who resisted until the end were a tiny minority,” the lawyer said.

Liuzhi casts a much wider dragnet than shuanggui, targeting not only party members, but anyone who exercises “public power” – from officials and civil servants to managers of public schools, hospitals, sports organizations, cultural institutions and state-owned companies. It can also detain individuals deemed to be implicated in a graft case, such as businessmen suspected of paying bribes to an official under investigation.

High-profile liuzhi detainees include Bao Fan, a billionaire investment banker, and Li Tie, a former English Premier League soccer star and coach of China’s national men’s team. (Li was sentenced to 20 years in prison for corruption this month.) At least 127 senior executives of publicly listed firms – many of them private businesses – have been taken into liuzhi custody, with three quarters of detentions taking place in the past two years alone, according to company announcements.

State media says the expanded jurisdiction fills longstanding loopholes in the party’s anti-corruption fight and enables graft busters to go after everyday abuse of power endemic in the country’s behemoth public sector, from bribes and kickbacks in hospitals to misappropriation of school funds.

Critics say it is another example of the party’s ever-tightening grip over the state and all aspects of society under Xi, China’s most powerful and authoritarian leader in decades.

Bayannur, Inner Mongolia built its liuzhi detention center with a helipad in 2018 on the site of a special education school on the far outskirts of the city. An expansion project in 2021 doubled the facility in size and built a five-story office building for the local supervisory commission.

Maxar Technologies/CNN

Tacheng, a city in the Xinjiang region near the Kazakhstan border, built a four-story liuzhi facility with 10 detention cells in 2023. The center is also constructing an additional detention building to add 16 cells, which is expected to be completed in 2025.

Maxar Technologies/CNN

The liuzhi detention center in Qingyang, Gansu province features a two-story detention building, two four-story dormitory buildings, and two office buildings.

Maxar Technologies/CNN

Dandong, in the northeastern province of Liaoning, built its liuzhi facility in 2023 with a budget of 280 million yuan ($38 million). The complex includes detention, office, and duty room buildings and a gym.

Maxar Technologies/CNN

In Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, the liuzhi facility is officially named the Clean Governance Education Base. Built between 2020 and 2022, it costs 638 million yuan ($ 87 million) and features two detention buildings, two office buildings, and two buildings for “major cases.”

Maxar Technologies/CNN

The liuzhi detention center in Xianyang, Shaanxi province, where Chen Jianjun was held for six months, was built in 2018.

Google Earth/CNN

In Golog prefecture, Qinghai province, the liuzhi detention center was built between 2019 and 2021 next to a county prison.

Maxar Technologies/CNN

Some of the detention centers built or expanded in China since 2018

Between 2017, the year China set up local supervisory commissions as pilot programs before establishing the NSC, and November 2024, at least 218 liuzhi centers have been built, renovated or expanded across China to accommodate the new detention system, according to CNN’s review of tender notices and other government documents for these facilities listed publicly online.

The real number is likely much higher, as many local governments don’t publish tender notices online, or delete them after the bidding is finished.

The spate of construction appears to be largely driven by a surge in demand for detention cells due to the NSC’s new broad remit, as well as efforts to make liuzhi facilities more standardized and regulated than the hotels and villas often used for shuanggui, the documents revealed.

CNN has reached out to the National Supervisory Commission and the State Council Information Office, which handles press inquiries for the Chinese government, for comments.

Soft padded rooms

An analysis of the tender notices shows a lull in construction during the pandemic, but the number of projects picked up again in 2023 and 2024. More detention centers have been built, and more funds have been allocated, in provinces and regions with a higher percentage of ethnic minorities.

Shizuishan, a city in the northwestern region of Ningxia – the official heartland of the Hui Muslim minority – was approved to build a 77,000 square feet liuzhi site with a budget of 20 million yuan ($2.8 million) in 2018, according to a government notice.

The document provides a rare glimpse into what the interior looks like. All detention cells, interrogation rooms, and the infirmary must have fully padded walls, cabinets, tables, chairs and beds, with all edges rounded for safety.

No exposed electrical wiring or power sockets are allowed, and floors must be treated with anti-slip surfaces. All ceiling-mounted installations, including surveillance cameras, lights, fans and loudspeakers, must incorporate “anti-hanging designs.” In the bathrooms, washbasins and stainless-steel toilets must be fully padded too, while showerheads and surveillance cameras must be mounted on the ceiling, according to the notice.

These maximized safety features are designed to prevent detainees from taking their own lives – an issue that had long dogged shuanggui detentions.

But Shizuishan’s liuzhi center turned out to be too small for the influx of detainees. In June, the city published another notice seeking to expand the facility to address the problem of “insufficient facilities and equipment.” The project includes a new building for interrogation, a new staff canteen and reconfiguration of existing buildings to create more detention cells.

The party never published official figures on shuanggui detention, and the numbers on liuzhi are nearly as elusive. In 2023, the only year national data was available, 26,000 people were detained by the NSC and its local branches across the country.

Provincial data, although patchy, has pointed to a sharp increase in the number of detentions. In the northern region of Inner Mongolia, 17 times more people were placed under liuzhi custody in 2018 than those subject to shuanggui in 2017, according to the region’s supervisory commission.

Authorities appear to have laid down standard construction rules for liuzhi centers – including a national plan for building these facilities between 2023 and 2027 – which were cited repeatedly in government documents and tender notices viewed by CNN.

Dingxi, one of the poorest cities in the northwestern province of Gansu, said its 305-million-yuan ($42 million) detention center would be built following requirements specified by the CCDI and NSC to achieve the “standardized, law-based, and professional operations” of the liuzhi facility.

The massive complex, featuring 542 rooms, will include 32 detention cells, accommodation for investigators and guards to live on site, as well as other facilities to meet their daily needs, according to a 2024 budget document of the city’s anti-graft agency.

Life under liuzhi

Chinese officials and state media have hailed the transition from shuanggui to liuzhi as a crucial step toward what they describe as “the rule of law in anti-corruption work.”

The shuanggui system had long been criticized for using threats, intense pressure or even torture to secure confessions. A 2016 report by Human Rights Watch documented 11 deaths in shuanggui custody from 2010 to 2015, and numerous instances of abuse and torture.

Unlike shuanggui, which had no legal basis, liuzhi is inscribed in the national supervision law – introduced in 2018 to regulate the NSC.

The law bans investigators from collecting evidence through illegal means such as threats and deception; it prohibits insulting, scolding, beating, abusing and any form of corporal punishment of those under investigation. The law also requires interrogations to be recorded on video.

Sketches drawn by Chen Jianjun describing his experience in Xianyang Supervisory Commission detention center for six months in 2022.

Obtained by CNN

But legal experts say the legislation only wraps a thin veil of legality around a detention regime that operates outside the judicial system, lacks external oversight and remains inherently prone to abuse.

“In the past, it was extra-legal. Now, some critics call it ‘legally illegal,’” said a Chinese legal scholar who has studied the NSC. They spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fears of government retribution.

China’s opaque court system, which answers to the Communist Party, already boasts a conviction rate above 99%.

But unlike criminal arrests, liuzhi takes place outside the judicial process and does not allow access to legal representation, raising concerns for potential abuse of power, said a second Chinese scholar who also requested anonymity.

In September, Zhou Tianyong, a top economist and former professor at the elite Central Party School, where the Communist Party trains its senior officials, warned that local authorities had been using corruption probes to extort money from private entrepreneurs to fill their strained coffers.

In a viral article that was later censored, Zhou called for an end to the practice by local anti-graft agencies of detaining businessmen on suspected or trumped-up bribery charges and forcing them to pay for their release. “If (this trend) spreads, it will undoubtedly lead to another disaster for the national economy,” Zhou wrote.

In recent years, allegations of abuse and forced confessions have emerged in multiple liuzhi cases publicized online.

Among them is Chen Jianjun, an architect-turned-local official who claimed he was deceived and forced into making false confessions of bribe-taking while detained under liuzhi in 2022 in the northwestern city of Xianyang.

During his six months of detention, the 57-year-old was watched by rotating pairs of guards around the clock and forced to sit upright for 18 hours a day without moving or speaking, with any slightest bending of his back immediately met with reprimands from the guards, according to a written account of his experience posted on social platform WeChat.

Two people familiar with the case confirmed to CNN that the account was written by Chen and published by his daughter, Chen Lu. The post also includes photos of three sketches drawn by Chen Jianjun on toilet paper, describing his life under liuzhi.

Chen was only allowed to sleep for less than six hours a day under bright lights that were never switched off; in bed, he must lie on his back and keep his hands above the blanket in sight of the guards, he wrote.

“The prolonged torment left me physically and mentally exhausted, with blurred consciousness, a mental breakdown, chaotic thoughts and hallucinations,” Chen wrote, adding that by the time he emerged from liuzhi, he had lost 15 kilograms.

Chen’s daughter did not respond to CNN’s requests for interview. His lawyer declined to comment.

In 2023, Chen was sentenced to six years in prison for accepting bribes of 2.5 million yuan ($340,000). He appealed and is waiting for a ruling, according to Caixin, a business magazine known for its investigative reporting.

CNN has reached out to the Xianyang government and the Xianyang municipal supervisory commission for comment.

The Chinese lawyer who represented officials in court after they were released from liuzhi custody said it was common for detainees to be forced to sit in one position for up to 18 hours a day.

“They had to sit continuously without moving, causing severe pressure ulcers on their buttocks. Some medicine would be applied, but they were made to continue sitting, leading to further deterioration. It was extremely torturous,” they said.

Some clients were also given very little food until they confessed, causing malnutrition and a host of other health problems, the lawyer said. “Many people eventually developed auditory hallucinations and felt like they were losing their minds,” they said.

According to the lawyer, another tactic commonly used by investigators was to detain an official and their spouse simultaneously, even if the spouse did not hold public office.

It’s a two-pronged approach: investigators can try to gather clues about the official’s alleged transgression from the spouse; while the spouse can be held hostage to pressure the official to confess, the lawyer explained.

In some cases, investigators had also threatened to detain officials’ children for interrogation, the lawyer added.

A draft amendment to the national supervision law, which is under review by China’s top legislature, appears to nod to concerns of potential abuse. It added a clause that requires investigators to carry out investigations in a “lawful, civilized and standardized manner.”

But the draft proposal has ignored calls to allow access to legal counsel during liuzhi detention. Instead, it has suggested extending the maximum detention period from six months to eight months, if the suspect is likely to be sentenced to a prison term of 10 years or longer; the entire liuzhi period can be reset and restarted if new offenses are discovered, meaning a maximum of 16 months of custody, according to the proposal.

The draft amendment has sparked heated debate and criticism from Chinese lawyers and legal scholars, who say the powers granted to investigators during liuzhi have far outweighed the protection of detainees’ rights.

“Prolonged detention and interrogation present an extreme test that surpasses the physical and mental limits of the detainee,” Dacheng, a Beijing-based law firm, said in an article on its social media account.

“Under such extreme conditions, where both the body and the mind are pushed to their limits, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell whether the detainee is giving an ‘honest confession’ based on facts or opting for ‘full cooperation’ by compromising the truth under unbearable pressure.”

How CNN reported this story:

CNN obtained tender notices containing the keyword “liuzhi” published online between 2017 and November 30, 2024. These were manually reviewed and classified as new detention center construction projects, expansions and transformations of existing detention facilities, and other projects.

CNN identified more than 200 projects involving construction or expansion of liuzhi facilities, and compiled corresponding land area, building area, budget, bidding document dates, and construction periods for each project where data was available. CNN cross-checked these projects with government procurement notices provided by ChinaFile, an online magazine published by the nonprofit Asia Society.

CNN used China’s 2020 census data to determine each province’s total population and ethnic minority population, as well as the national data. We categorized provinces where the proportion of ethnic minority population was higher than the national average as “provinces and regions with a higher percentage of ethnic minorities.”

Reporting: Yong Xiong and CNN staff

Graphics: Soph Warnes, Lou Robinson and Rosa de Acosta

Illustration and animations: Duncan Senkumba

CNN · by Yong Xiong · December 28, 2024

19. Time for a Pacific Charter

The Heritage Foundation's Pacific Pivot?

Excerpts:

My proposal for a Pacific Charter would give concrete meaning to the Heritage Foundation’s Pacific Pivot. It envisions America and its allies on the Rim and beyond adopting commitments to keep our Blue Continent safe, peaceful, united and free of great power rivalries and incursions into the region.

Just as President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill aboard the U.S.S. Augusta in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, in August 1941, signed that historic document, which devised a plan to end World War II, I call on policymakers in the incoming Trump administration and Congress in a bipartisan way to work together with our allies and Pacific nations to develop a Pacific Charter as a declaration of peace, not war, to be signed by President Trump and the other leaders aboard a U.S. vessel in Pago Pago Harbor no later than the fall of 2028, if not before.

That is my challenge to all.

Time for a Pacific Charter

washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

By Amata Coleman Radewagen - Thursday, December 26, 2024

A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.

OPINION:

The Heritage Foundation asked me to keynote a recent roundtable on its “Pacific Pivot” paper on Pacific Island strategic challenges. I had planned to critique the paper, but coincidentally, the APEC summit in Peru, in which President Biden’s performance was derided by the media. At the same time, China’s President Xi Jinping was lauded, prompting me instead to refocus my remarks on what the U.S. might do to regain the mantle of leadership relinquished at the end of World War II.

Xi’s Lima APEC appearance was tied neatly to his ribbon cutting at the new CCP-financed, $3.5 billion mega-port at Chancay, just 45 miles away. While great for China’s trade in South America, it also gives the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) a firm foothold for naval and military forward positioning in the Western Hemisphere, a troubling development. Xi does not like us being in Guam, we did not like the Soviets being in Cuba, and I sure do not like the CCP being in Peru.

So, it seems to me it is time to develop Heritage’s “Pacific Pivot” into a Pacific Charter, like the Atlantic Charter concluded before America entered World War II. However, while that document was meant to guide our actions in a war underway, a Pacific Charter should be designed to prevent the start of worldwide conflict in this century.

In the 80 years since WWII, our Pacific multilateral priorities have focused on Micronesian countries and territories to the west of Hawaii north of the equator. South of the equator, Australia concentrated on Melanesia, and New Zealand and France looked after much of Polynesia.

Xi’s Peruvian ribbon-cutting opened a new bridge across Pacific islands, waters, and airspace to facilitate trade and strategic competition to all of South America. That includes a straight line from China to major markets and strategic locations in Latin America running straight through the Samoan Island chain that includes American Samoa, the home of the American people I represent in Congress.

My islands may seem remote to those traveling from the U.S. Mainland to and through Hawaii and west to Asia, but in the context of the new geopolitical realities forced upon us by CCP, American Samoa, the only U.S. soil anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere, is in the huge Polynesian Triangle that lies to the east and south of the Melanesian and Micronesian Pacific sub-regions. The smaller triangle at its heart, linking the Samoan and Tongan islands to eastern Fiji’s Lau group, is in the center of the direct path from Shanghai to the new CCP-built port in Peru.

While regional counter-positioning by the U.S. and its allies in two groupings has concentrated on the traditional first and second island chains around China, and we have secured our position through strategic alliances in Micronesia, China’s interests in South America have largely gone unchallenged.

Throughout this region, CCP state enterprises exploit subversive, comparative advantage in competition with democracies through unlawful political and economic warfare. The threat that competition could lead to confrontation, aggression and warfare grows yearly. Since APEC in Lima, current international dynamics make it seem the world is becoming even more dangerous, a global phenomenon perhaps comparable to the rise of Hitler in the 1930’s. Hence, Churchill and FDR responded with the Atlantic Charter. The success of that “Atlantic pivot” as a declaration of democratic rights for all peoples depended on victory in what became a global war.

In 2024, we are well into the Pacific Century. The lessons of our own history demand a solemn commitment to freedom under the rule of law for the nations of the world. That noble past now beckons us to a different, hopefully peaceful, but equally determined endeavor to resist the forces of tyranny.

Can a united Pacific community composed of freedom-loving peoples in free enterprise nations from the Pacific Rim to its center, with democratic models of self-government, now summon resolve equal to the competitive challenge we face from CCP and prevail against weaponized political warfare waged by CCP? Despite our best efforts, going back to President Nixon’s “opening to China,” CCP-ruled China has resisted joining the ranks of mainstream nations seeking comity and reciprocity in international commerce.

My proposal for a Pacific Charter would give concrete meaning to the Heritage Foundation’s Pacific Pivot. It envisions America and its allies on the Rim and beyond adopting commitments to keep our Blue Continent safe, peaceful, united and free of great power rivalries and incursions into the region.

Just as President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill aboard the U.S.S. Augusta in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, in August 1941, signed that historic document, which devised a plan to end World War II, I call on policymakers in the incoming Trump administration and Congress in a bipartisan way to work together with our allies and Pacific nations to develop a Pacific Charter as a declaration of peace, not war, to be signed by President Trump and the other leaders aboard a U.S. vessel in Pago Pago Harbor no later than the fall of 2028, if not before.

That is my challenge to all.

Congresswoman Radewagen is the vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs IndoPacific Subcommittee for the 118th Congress and served as chairman of the IndoPacific Task Force for the Natural Resources Committee

washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

20. Government watchdog greenlights Army's new spy plane contract, denies L3Harris's protest

Government watchdog greenlights Army's new spy plane contract, denies L3Harris's protest - Breaking Defense

The Government Accountability Office issued its decision on December 23, noting that the protest is covered by a "protective order," and a report on the rationale behind the denial will be publicly released once it's redacted.

breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · December 26, 2024

A Bombardier Global 6500 aircraft. (Bombardier via US Army)

WASHINGTON — The Army is cleared to proceed building out its new spy plane with the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), after the government watchdog agency denied L3Harris’s contract protest.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its decision on December 23, noting that the protest is covered by a “protective order,” and a report on the rationale behind the denial will be publicly released once it’s redacted. The forthcoming report should shed additional light on the company’s complaint into how the service awarded the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) deal, but for now L3Harris said it is weighing its options.

“We will review the GAO’s decision and determine our next steps,” a company spokeswoman wrote in a short statement. “We remain confident L3Harris offers the lowest risk and most capable solution as demonstrated through more than 600 sorties and 6,000 flight hours on the US Army’s ARES and ATHENA programs.”

The Army did not immediately respond to questions from Breaking Defense about the program and if the stop work order has now been lifted. Following initial publication, an SNC spokesperson said the company is pleased with the GAO’s decision and is looking forward to resuming work.

“Throughout this process, we remained committed and fully confident in the superiority of our solution and the Army’s selection of SNC for the HADES contract,” said Tim Owings, the executive vice president for SNC’s Mission Solutions and Technologies business. “We are honored to continue our partnership with the Army to develop and deliver the best solution to the warfighter at the speed demanded for operational excellence.”

In August, the service selected SNC to convert Bombardier’s Global 6500 business jets into an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platform under its HADES program. An industry team up featuring L3Harris, Leidos and MAG Aerospace had also bid on the program to replace the legacy fleet of RC-12 Guardrail turboprop aircraft. By October, L3Harris filed a protest with the GAO.

“We carefully reviewed the information during the Army’s debrief process, which led us to challenge the HADES decision and request further analysis to ensure the proposal received an equitable evaluation,” an L3Harris spokesperson said in a statement at the time. “Our goal remains to ensure that mission operators receive the lowest risk and most capable solution available for an increasingly complex security environment.”

The Army halted HADES integration work while GAO sorted through the protest, but in November it officially accepted the first business jet slated for integration during a ceremony in Wichita, Kansas.

“Once we’re in a position to begin integrating the aircraft, that will be the next step … the integration of the equipment in the back,” Andrew Evans, the director of the Army’s ISR Task Force, told reporters at the time.

“The airplane itself is what we describe as the workhorse to HADES, it’s what enables HADES to get in position, to collect … to have the endurance necessary to provide meaningful station time,” he added. “But the magic of a HADES is what will happen in the back of that aircraft.”

That magic includes moving target indication, high-end signals intelligence and other capabilities, possibly including launched effects. The service is also gleaning feedback from “bridging” aerial ISR assets designed, in part, to inform HADES requirements. Those efforts included:

An ISR-as-a-service contract to SNC for the High Altitude Expeditionary Next ISR-Sensor (Athena-S) centered on two converted Global 6500s;
Another pair of converted Global 6500s by MAG Air and L3Harris under the Athena-Radar initiative;
A Leidos-owned Bombardier Challenger 650 dubbed the Airborne Reconnaissance and Targeting Exploitation Multi-Mission Intelligence System (ARTEMIS); and
The L3Harris Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System (ARES) that uses a Bombardier Global 6000.

Evans and Lt. Gen. Anthony Hale, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, said the goal is to create commonality across those aircraft and port back lessons into the HADES design.

“Every day the enemy is working in the electromagnetic spectrum, they’re utilizing EW [electronic warfare] capabilities, they’re utilizing unmanned aerial system capabilities that we haven’t seen before, and then they’re increasing the use of new weapon systems,” the three-star general said.

“Whether it’s [in] Ukraine or whether it’s somewhere in Africa, our adversary is using these places as battlefields and testing areas to develop and continue to emerge technology and so … getting after what we see in one theater is going to come to another theater,” Hale later added.

If all goes as planned, the service plans to have that initial HADES ready for the force by the end of 2026 or early 2027, and is possibly eyeing more than a dozen aircraft under a one-per-year buy depending on budgets and the threat analysis.

This article was last updated on 12/26/2024 at 1:51 pm EST with statements from both L3Harris and SNC.

21. Wanna Become a U.S. Navy SEAL? Good Luck With That

Wanna Become a U.S. Navy SEAL? Good Luck With That

19fortyfive.com · by Steve Balestrieri · December 28, 2024

Key Points and Summary: Navy SEALs are the U.S. Navy’s premier special operations force, specializing in small-unit missions across land, sea, and air environments.

-Their roots trace to World War II Frogmen and the OSS Maritime Branch. Training is extremely rigorous, with an attrition rate often exceeding 65%. Candidates must endure BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL), including the notorious “Hell Week,” followed by advanced SEAL Qualification Training.

-Graduates then receive the SEAL Trident and join an operational team. The SEALs have a distinguished record, from Vietnam to Afghanistan, including the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Their deployments frequently involve high-stakes missions worldwide.

Inside Navy SEAL Training: What It Takes to Earn the Trident

Many young men today wish to challenge themselves beyond the typical bonds of jobs and careers. They’re looking for something that the civilian job market doesn’t offer. They’re looking to join and belong to something bigger. They want to dedicate themselves to protecting our country in ways the ordinary person is incapable or unwilling to do.

They choose to enter the world of the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which has units from every service. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines all have dedicated elite units that stand out as outstanding at their craft. Among these special forces are the Navy’s Special Operations units and the Navy SEAL teams.

Who Are the SEAL Teams, and What Do They Do

The SEALs sprang from the World War II UDTs (Frogman) and the OSS Maritime Branch. The Navy SEALs are the Navy’s primary special operations force and a United States Naval Special Warfare Command component.

The main missions of the SEALs (Sea, Air, and Land) are conducting small-unit special operations missions in maritime, jungle, urban, arctic, mountainous, and desert environments. SEAL Team missions center around Direct Action, Special Reconnaissance, foreign internal defense, and Unconventional Warfare.

The first SEAL Teams were created in 1962, with one on each coast. All came from the UDT Teams. With the Vietnam War about to get the United States heavily involved, President Kennedy was a huge proponent of Special Operations.

SEALs would fight with distinction during the war in Vietnam and were part of the Studies and Observation Group (MACV SOG) with Army Green Berets, Air Force personnel, and the CIA.

SEALs have fought in every conflict since Vietnam. During the war in Afghanistan, Navy SEALs were tasked with the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The team members of DEVGRU (aka SEAL Team 6) were able to infiltrate Pakistan undetected via helicopter. They landed outside the Bin Laden compound, infiltrated the compound, and killed all al-Queda terrorists inside, including Bin Laden.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan came to a close, the Navy wanted the SEAL Teams to get back to their maritime roots.

Training Pipeline To Become a Navy SEAL

The Navy states that all Navy SEAL candidates are between the ages of 18 and 28, though candidates who are 17 can attend the training with signed parental permission. Navy SEAL candidates are also required to be United States citizens. This includes natural citizens and those who earned citizenship after immigrating to the US.

(June 5, 2007) – U.S. Navy SEALs (Sea, Air, Land) perform a live fire exercise for the Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) The Honorable Dr. Donald C. Winter at the Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek’s shooting facility. U.S. Navy photo by LCDR Keith Williams.

All SEALs must undergo a rigorous training program before wearing the Trident pin that denotes SEALs. The washout rate is exceptionally high, running between 65 to 80 percent, depending on the classes. The training could take up to two years to become a Navy SEAL. It consists of several phases:

Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School (NSW Prep): This 8-week course prepares candidates physically and mentally for the challenges ahead.

It starts with the initial Physical Screening Test and ends with a more demanding Modified Physical Screening Test, including a minimum of 70 push-ups in 2 minutes, a timed four-mile run in 31 minutes, and a timed 1,000-meter swim with fins in 20 minutes. The goal is to prepare the candidates for BUD/S training.

Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) Training: This 24-week course is divided into three phases: physical conditioning, combat diving, and land warfare. The first phase is where most SEAL candidates fail or quit, and at the end of the first phase is the famous “Hell Week,” a five-and-a-half-day smoker where the candidates are physically taxed to their limit with only a few hours of sleep.

SEAL Qualification Training (SQT): This is a 26-week course that provides SEAL candidates with advanced training in weapons, navigation, small-unit tactics (SUT), parachuting, cold-weather warfare, and combat diving.

Airborne Training: SEAL candidates attend the US Army Airborne School in Fort Benning, Georgia, for three weeks of basic parachute training.

US Navy SEALs. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

SEAL Team Assignment: After SQT and Airborne School, the new graduates are awarded their SEAL trident and assigned to a SEAL Team.

SEAL Tactical Training (STT): Once assigned to a SEAL Team, members undergo additional training specific to the team’s specializations and operational requirements. This training is conducted at the Platoon level.

Once a graduate is assigned to a SEAL Team/Platoon, the training really starts. The Trident gets you in the door, but the training never stops. Depending on the team and area orientation, deployments to far-flung areas of the globe will be many and challenging. SEALs, Green Berets, and other members of the SOCOM community mainly work far away from the normal chain of command, so operators must be self-reliant, self-disciplined, exceptionally physically fit, think outside the box, and work within a small team.

Many operators may join one of the Special Mission Units under the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

About the Author:

Steve Balestrieri is a 19FortyFive National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer. In addition to writing for 19FortyFive, he covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). His work was regularly featured in other military publications.

19fortyfive.com · by Steve Balestrieri · December 28, 2024

22. How Do You Become A Green Beret?

How Do You Become A Green Beret?

19fortyfive.com · by Steve Balestrieri · December 28, 2024

Key Points and Summary: The U.S. Army’s Green Berets, or Special Forces, are elite soldiers specializing in unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, counterterrorism, and more.

-Their rigorous training pipeline, spanning up to two years, begins with Special Forces Assessment and Selection (SFAS), testing physical endurance, leadership, and mental toughness.

-Following selection, candidates undergo the Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC), covering unconventional warfare, survival tactics, specialized MOS training, and language skills.

-Culminating in the challenging Robin Sage exercise, candidates must train and lead a simulated guerrilla force in denied areas. Upon graduation, they join Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) teams, deploying worldwide for extended missions.

How to Join the Elite Green Berets: The Path to Becoming Special Forces

To become part of the Special Operations Command, you must be on top of your game. All of the units have strict criteria for becoming a part of it, and there is no easy course. All of the Selection and Training courses are difficult and have high failure/dropout rates.

In this piece, we’ll discuss the Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets due to their distinctive headgear. To separate fact from fiction, there is only one Special Forces: the Army’s. The SEALs, Raiders, Rangers, and Air Force Combat Controllers are Special Operations Forces.

Who Are the Green Berets And What Do They Do?

The core mission set of Special Forces contains five missions: unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, direct action, counterterrorism, and special reconnaissance.

The Army Special Forces Groups are separated by area orientation and languages. Depending on which group a Green Beret is assigned to, the languages spoken in that area will be ones trained on by members of the particular group.

The 1st SFG (A), the First Special Forces Group Airborne, is area-oriented toward the Pacific, and the Green Berets will speak many languages found in the Pacific region.

The 3rd SFG (A) is area-oriented toward all of Sub-Saharan Africa except for the Eastern Horn of Africa.

The 5th SFG (A) is oriented towards the Middle East, Persian Gulf, Central Asia, and the Horn of Africa (HOA).

The 7th SFG (A) is area-oriented toward the western hemisphere, including the land mass of Latin America south of Mexico, the 13 island nations of the Caribbean, and European and U.S. territories.

A U.S. Army Special Forces Soldier, assigned to 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), qualifies at a stress shoot range at Ft. Carson, Colorado, Mar. 3, 2016. The stress shoot was designed to test these soldiers for actions seen in combat operations. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Connor Mendez)

The 10th SFG (A) is area-oriented towards Europe, mainly Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, and Northern Africa.

The 19th SFG (A) (Army National Guard) is area-oriented toward Southwest Asia (shared with the 5th SFG(A)), Europe (shared with the 10th SFG(A)), and Southeast Asia (shared with the 1st SFG(A)).

The 20th SFG (A) (Army National Guard) is oriented towards the same area as the 7th SFG in Latin America.

The Green Berets came from the WWII civilian agency, the OSS. OSS was the pre-CIA during the war years. Although a civilian intelligence agency, many Army, Navy, and Marines served there with distinction. And Special Forces learned their UW (unconventional warfare) lessons as members of OSS Operational Groups or the Jedburg Teams.

Since their establishment in 1952, Special Forces soldiers have operated in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, 1st Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, Syria, Yemen, Niger and, in an FID role, East Africa. But there have been countless other countries who have asked for US military assistance. SF units constantly deploy to hot spots globally to protect our allies and US interests.

Green Berets. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Training Pipeline To Become a Green Beret

Like the Navy SEAL Program, the Special Forces training to become a Green Beret is long and takes one to two years, depending on the MOS a candidate is assigned to.

Candidates must be US citizens between 20 and 36 years old and eligible for a Secret clearance, which is Top Secret for officers. Eventually, everyone will get a TS clearance. All candidates must already be Airborne qualified.

The training then begins at Camp Mackall, NC, just outside of Ft. Liberty (nee Bragg).

Special Forces Assessment and Selection SFAS (3 Weeks) is a gut check. The candidates will operate with little sleep or food. They must also think clearly and plan when physically broken down. It tests physical endurance, leadership attributes, and mental fortitude. Rucking and cognitive ability are factors that are looked for by the cadre.

Just because a candidate makes it to the end is then selected, peer evaluations, character, and physical performance are all factored in. I worked at Selection as a cadre member when the course was first incorporated. And it is a bear. Attrition rates vary widely depending on where the majority of the candidates came from. Airborne, Light Infantry, and Ranger Regiment troops do the best.

Special Forces Qualification Course (56 Weeks): This is also known as the SFQC. Here’s where the crux of the training takes place.

-Intro to Unconventional Warfare (6 weeks)

-Small Unit Tactics and Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (13 weeks)

-MOS Training (16 weeks – 1 Year Plus) SF medics course (18Ds) is longest.

-Robin Sage (4 weeks)

-Language and Culture (25 weeks)

-Graduation and Military Free Fall (5 weeks)

UW is SF’s bread and butter, and it takes a lot to travel to a different culture with another language and teach the host nation fighters to trust you and learn from you. All of that is put to the test during Robin Sage, where candidate teams are inserted into a denied area with enemy troops (82nd Airborne) and must train a guerrilla force. The “G-Force” is comprised of non-combat arms personnel.

After graduation and the award of the Green Beret and Special Forces Tab, newly minted Green Berets are sent to one of the groups, and to one of the Operational Detachment Alpha (ODAs)

That’s where the real training begins. Special Forces missions frequently have much longer durations than the SEALs or Rangers. Green Berets are deployed constantly all over the globe. And as their saying goes, “You are always being assessed.”

About the Author:

Steve Balestrieri is a 19FortyFive National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer. In addition to writing for 1945, he covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). His work was regularly featured in other military publications.

19fortyfive.com · by Steve Balestrieri · December 28, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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