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Quotes of the Day:
"The future promise of any nation can be directly measured by the present prospects of its youth."
- John F. Kennedy
"What can be more soothing, at once to a man's Pride, and to his Conscience, than the conviction that, in taking vengeance on his enemies for injustice done him, he has simply to do them justice in return?" -
Edgar Allan Poe
"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself."
- Joseph Campbell
1. Winning the Irregular World War
2. Military students innovate technology solutions for US Special Operations Command
3. Asia is much more important to U.S. interests than the Middle East
4. Inside the Air Force’s Newest SOF Career: Special Reconnaissance
5. U.S. Drones Are Flying Over Gaza to Aid in Hostage Recovery, Officials Say
6. Blinken’s Mission in Israel: Conveying Support While Pushing to Reduce Harm to Civilians
7. Opinion | Should Israel agree to a cease-fire? Commentators weigh in.
8. Minuteman III Ballistic Missile Self Destructs During Test Launch
9. Minuteman missile failure draws Russian mockery of US nuclear arsenal
10. How Hamas Won Hearts and Minds on the American Left
11. It’s U.S. vs. China in an Increasingly Divided World Economy
12. Yellen: Indo-Pacific allies should not have to choose between US, China
13. Senate finally confirms Adm. Franchetti as Navy’s top officer
14. No. 2 Marine confirmed by Senate amid top Marine’s health crisis
15. This Russian Suicide Drone Is Blunting Ukraine’s Advance
16. As Ukraine braces for winter drone attacks, allies rush to provide defenses
17. SOCOM's potential new firearm is a revolution
18. Iran’s Ever-Expanding Ring of Fire
19. The Case For A Robust U.S. Amphibious Warfare Force
20. U.S., Canadian Warships Sail Through Taiwan Strait, China Says U.S. ‘Hyped Up’ Transit
21. Inflection Point: How to Reverse the Erosion of U.S. and Allied Military Power and Influence
22. Washington’s Willful Blind Spot on China
23. The End of Israel’s Gaza Illusions
24. Satellites and social media offer hints about Israel's ground war strategy in Gaza5.
25. U.S. Hasn't Ruled Out Hostage Rescue Operation in Gaza: Report
26. The Iran-Russia Military Axis
1. Winning the Irregular World War
Excerpts:
U.S. adversaries have historically relied on proxy forces—both civilian and military—to wage irregular warfare, but are now demonstrating a growing willingness to deploy their own forces to undermine U.S. allies and partners in a bid to displace the U.S.-led international order.
...
The U.S.-Ukraine security partnership is an extraordinary military assistance success story, one that has already paid outsized strategic dividends for the United States. The unprecedented size and speed of U.S. support have been remarkable, as has the impressive amount of careful yet swift coordination of the effort across the many departments and agencies of the U.S. government necessary for getting assistance out the door.
...
But a key and often overlooked element to this success is the blending of conventional and irregular types of advising and assistance. This secret sauce is what we term blended assistance: a carefully calibrated mix of U.S. conventional and irregular warfare tools that adroitly combine traditional military tools with irregular, defensive, whole-of-society efforts to resist foreign invasion.
Conclusion:
To outcompete our strategic rivals and increase the heretofore limited returns on U.S. military assistance abroad, the White House, Congress, and the Defense and State Departments must work together to quickly move toward and adequately fund a robust blended assistance model. Doing so would give the United States a leg up in the ongoing irregular world war, while also sending a strong deterrent message to adversaries considering future conventional wars.
Excellent essay with important insights. My criticism (truth in advertising I have been a co-author with Daniel on a number of papers), is that the focus is on programs and budgets. What we really need to be able to do is plan, execute, and orchestrate irregular warfare campaigns. Design a campaign plan(s) and identify the resources, forces (to include interagency) and authorities and permissions required and then allow Congress to develop programs to support the campaign plan(s). It should be policy, strategy, campaigns, and the programs with funding, authorities, and permissions. Instead we just try to fit existing programs into whatever problem we are trying to solve.
Winning the Irregular World War
Newsweek · November 2, 2023
Though it is rarely said out loud, the United States is currently in an irregular world war with its strategic competitors, namely China and Russia. America needs to act now to help prevent and prepare for future conventional great-power wars, which would be devastating to all sides in both blood and treasure.
The Pentagon defines irregular warfare as a "campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities." What this means, in effect, is activities that fall below the level of traditional armed conflict between nation states. It is an approach to warfare that emphasizes the importance of local partnerships and gaining legitimacy and influence among local populations, rather than clearing or occupying territory. It is also often referred to as "hybrid" or "gray-zone" activities.
U.S. adversaries have historically relied on proxy forces—both civilian and military—to wage irregular warfare, but are now demonstrating a growing willingness to deploy their own forces to undermine U.S. allies and partners in a bid to displace the U.S.-led international order.
This troubling development was demonstrated most dramatically in Ukraine in the lead up to the 2022 full-scale invasion, where Russian forces fought alongside proxy separatists and set the stage for their later escalation to a conventional invasion.
The United States is not currently ready for this irregular fight. If the United States hopes to prevail in this asymmetrical world war, it must upgrade its abilities to provide self-defense and resistance support to its allies and partners, and better coordinate its disparate efforts to counter Russia and China across departments and agencies.
A failure to do so could spell disaster for close U.S. partners facing similar threats as Ukraine, such as Taiwan. Smart U.S. irregular and special operations support to Ukraine over the 2014-2022 period offers an all-too-rare template to get it right.
The U.S.-Ukraine security partnership is an extraordinary military assistance success story, one that has already paid outsized strategic dividends for the United States. The unprecedented size and speed of U.S. support have been remarkable, as has the impressive amount of careful yet swift coordination of the effort across the many departments and agencies of the U.S. government necessary for getting assistance out the door.
Security support has also been well synchronized with other diplomatic and intelligence initiatives. In the past, such whole-of-government approaches have been prone to so-called stove piping, with disjointed or overlapping objectives that are, all-too-often, working at cross purposes.
But a key and often overlooked element to this success is the blending of conventional and irregular types of advising and assistance. This secret sauce is what we term blended assistance: a carefully calibrated mix of U.S. conventional and irregular warfare tools that adroitly combine traditional military tools with irregular, defensive, whole-of-society efforts to resist foreign invasion.
From the United States' side this has included congressional flexibility, instituted in 2017, that allowed assistance to flow to state as well as non-military forces resisting Russian aggression. It has also included multi-year support focused on building the resistance capabilities of specialized Ukrainian forces, and robust long-term support for building Ukraine's internal defense capabilities.
Ukrainian servicemen of the 3rd assault brigade take part in a tactical training in an undisclosed location in the Donetsk region on Oct. 13, 2023. GENYA SAVILOV/AFP via Getty Images
Despite the resounding success story of blended assistance—and the obvious implications for other impending threats from strategic competitors—the U.S. government is not currently set up to replicate this model beyond Ukraine.
Currently, U.S. military assistance remains optimized for historical threats, such as counterterrorism and counternarcotics, and is still poorly postured to meet the growing irregular challenges. Support for allied and partner internal defense and resistance support worldwide—the type of assistance that has been key to Ukrainian success—accounts for a tiny share of the $3.7 billion allocated by the U.S. government to the Pentagon for security cooperation activities.
The only program and pot of money specifically designed to help partners resist foreign aggression is capped at a mere $15 million annually (there are ongoing discussions to raise this to $25 million).
To replicate the rare strategic military assistance success story in Ukraine, the United States must greatly expand the ability of policymakers to blend different types of conventional and irregular support, and double down on the relatively meager resources currently dedicated to irregular warfare tools.
Proposed congressional legislation offers a step in the right direction. The current Senate draft of the National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes annual funding for the Pentagon, adds "foreign internal defense" support to the broader security cooperation toolkit. This is a good first step.
But is likely insufficient without a significant expansion of the funding available to build the self-defense capabilities of U.S. allies and partners to resist both internal subversion and external threats. Raising this to $25 million would be welcome, but much more is needed (even this new capped amount is still less than 1 percent of the $3.7 billion overall security cooperation budget). A surge in funding will also require an increased effort to build up the oversight institutions and capability of partner special operations forces to carefully vet all support recipients. This will help ensure this support flows to well-qualified partners who will fight both effectively and responsibly.
To outcompete our strategic rivals and increase the heretofore limited returns on U.S. military assistance abroad, the White House, Congress, and the Defense and State Departments must work together to quickly move toward and adequately fund a robust blended assistance model. Doing so would give the United States a leg up in the ongoing irregular world war, while also sending a strong deterrent message to adversaries considering future conventional wars.
Alexander Noyes is a political scientist at the nonprofit, non-partisan RAND Corporation, and former senior advisor for security cooperation assessment, monitoring, and evaluation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy.
Daniel Egel is a senior economist at RAND and coauthor of The American Way of Irregular War.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek · November 2, 2023
2. Military students innovate technology solutions for US Special Operations Command
Military students innovate technology solutions for US Special Operations Command
Working with mentors and military operators, cadets are addressing challenges in such areas as autonomy, data analytics, communications, and blood delivery.
Kylie Foy | MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Publication Date:
October 31, 2023
news.mit.edu · by Kylie Foy | MIT Lincoln Laboratory
All eyes were on the robot-dog pacing the hangar on Hanscom Air Force Base. The robot was just one technology, among small drones, autonomous mapping vehicles, and virtual-environment simulators, set up for military cadets to interact with. The goal was to open cadets' minds to possibilities. Over the next year, they will be applying such technologies to challenges facing the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) for a program called SOCOM Ignite.
SOCOM Ignite connects military students with research scientists and special operations forces to address SOCOM’s pressing technology challenges, while ushering in new generations of technology-savvy officers and operators. Now in its fourth year, the program invites cadets from across the nation’s military academies and Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) programs to participate.
"We started as just a two-day hackathon having less than 10 cadets, and now we are a year-long program with more than 80 cadets from more than 19 different universities, representing the Army, Navy, and Air Force. We hope to extend to the Marines and any other group out there," says Raoul Ouedraogo, who helped establish the program and is a leader within MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Homeland Sensors and Analytics Group.
Lincoln Laboratory researchers serve as the technical mentors in the program. To start the program this year, they offered new "innovation incubators," or crash courses on the basics of machine learning and autonomy, two topics of high interest to SOCOM. Following those sessions, a formal kick-off ceremony brought in SOCOM leaders to explain the impact of the program for the command’s mission. SOCOM is the nation’s only unified combatant command that oversees special operations forces across all branches of the armed services.
"What makes SOCOM so important to the Department of Defense is that we are pathfinders. We look at advanced concepts, take those visions and dreams, and make them real," says SOCOM Senior Enlisted Leader (Retired) Greg Smith.
"We have a mix of academy cadets and ROTC students, providing diverse perspectives. We have access to users in the SOCOM community, whose time is precious, and to technology mentors, who do this for a living. Those three things make this a unique program," Lisa Sanders, the director of science and technology for Special Operations Forces, Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, USSOCOM, said at the ceremony. "SOCOM also has acquisition authority — people who get ideas on the market. The ideas that you come up with will make a meaningful difference."
After the opening ceremonies, the cadets traveled to the MIT campus for a weekend-long hackathon, which took place Sept. 16-17. At the hackathon, SOCOM operators presented more than a dozen Ignite challenges to the cadets. Cadets then formed teams to begin brainstorming concepts, working first-hand with special operations forces and laboratory technical experts to refine their ideas.
The challenges are diverse in their needs. One challenge is to develop a way to deploy air tags from small uncrewed air vehicles (UAVs) onto ground vehicles. Another is seeking algorithms and hardware to enhance autonomous UAV flight and mapping indoors. New this year, a biotechnology challenge calls for methods to improve the storage and delivery of blood in a tactical environment.
"The hackathon experience was inspiring. It was great to see such a large number of cadets coming from different institutions attend and have a desire to conduct meaningful research," says Jack Perreault, a recent West Point graduate whose team is applying computer vision and speech recognition to the process of reporting and triaging casualties. "Getting insight on how our technical skills can help enable operators achieve their missions has left the greatest impact on me overall."
The cadets will continue working on their concepts and receive funding to build prototypes throughout the school year. Over the winter, some might visit Fort Liberty, which houses the headquarters of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, to showcase their solutions to users and update SOCOM leaders on their progress. In the spring, they’ll return to Lincoln Laboratory for final presentations. After that, Lincoln Laboratory and various SOCOM components will take on some cadets as interns or military fellows to continue their research. Perreault is one such military fellow, developing his SOCOM solution at the laboratory while pursuing a master's degree at Boston University.
U.S. Air Force cadet Christopher Christmas is also continuing his work as a research assistant at the laboratory. A third-time SOCOM Ignite participant, he is pursuing a system that can ingest data from distributed sensors and generate useful information, sending it to the right people and in a scalable way.
Christmas recommends SOCOM Ignite to any cadet looking for an opportunity to make an impact. "It's an excellent leadership experience, exposing cadets to unique career fields and officers of various ranks. It has completely altered the trajectory of my life in the best way possible."
news.mit.edu · by Kylie Foy | MIT Lincoln Laboratory
3. Asia is much more important to U.S. interests than the Middle East
INDOPACOM, happy. CENTCOM, sad.
Interesting that there is only a brief passing mention of South Korea with no mention of north Korea at all.
Graphics at the link: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/asia-is-much-more-important-to-us?utm
Excerpts:
Because the U.S. is no longer a hyperpower and can no longer do everything everywhere all at once, though, we have to prioritize where to send our money, weapons, and — perhaps most importantly — our diplomatic attention. Right now, the two regions with active conflicts are Europe and the Middle East, and so our resources are going there instead of to Asia. In fact, Biden has been taking a softer approach toward China in 2023 than in the first two years of his presidency; part of this is probably because China’s economic woes make it seem like less of an imminent threat, but part of it is must be due to the fact that the wars in Ukraine and now Israel are absorbing U.S. attention and effort.
...
In sum, Asia wants and needs the U.S. to protect it. It needs U.S. military power and economic engagement, not to crush China, but to preserve the status quo that has worked so well. Developed Asian countries want to keep being rich and free, and developing Asian countries want to keep getting rich on their own, and to do this they need the U.S. to deter Xi Jinping from trying to upend the modern world’s greatest success story.
The Middle East is in basically the exact opposite situation.
...
Of course, so far I’ve mostly talked about the benefits of American power for other countries, and what other countries want the U.S. to do. But the U.S. is not a purely altruistic entity; our own interests always have to figure prominently in our decisions. These interests, too, suggest a focus on Asia instead of the Middle East.
U.S. trade is dominated by our neighbors, Canada and Mexico. But Asia is by far more important to both our imports and exports than the Middle East.
...
The U.S. should therefore continue to maintain as light a presence in the Middle East as possible. This doesn’t mean we should withdraw completely. There are extreme cases where judicious, targeted applications of American power can prevent some of the catastrophes that regularly plague the region — protecting the Syrian Kurds from genocide, restraining Israel’s brutality toward the Palestinians, or helping Israel protect itself from wholesale destruction by Iran and its proxies. But these should always be done with a minimum of force and money and attention, and always with an eye toward withdrawing again.
In Asia, meanwhile, the U.S. should be beefing up both our defensive power and our engagement with other countries. We need to accelerate the supply of defensive weapons to Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines, and to keep building and strengthening and expanding multilateral organizations like the Quad. We need to re-engage economically by re-joining the modified TPP, and by creating a dense network of other economic agreements in Asia. And in general, we just need to pay a lot of attention to the region, making sure our allies and quasi-allies and potential allies know we’re there for the long haul, and won’t suddenly withdraw to go plunge into some foolish conflict in the Middle East.
It will take a lot of discipline and a lot of explanation from the Biden administration and its successors to keep pivoting to Asia even in the face of the Israel-Gaza war and other divisive, emotional, headline-grabbing conflicts. But we have to do it anyway.
Asia is much more important to U.S. interests than the Middle East
We need to prioritize, and our priorities should be clear.
NOAH SMITH
NOV 1, 2023
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Photo by Ryan Mac on Unsplash
“Some damn fool thing in the Balkans” — Otto von Bismarck
In this world of proliferating conflicts, the United States no longer has the power or the money to handle everything at once. We are no longer a hyperpower or a global hegemon. But retreating into a shell of isolationism and letting the world burn, as the MAGA faction of the Republican Party would have us do, is also not an option. The U.S. economy depends critically on other nations’ products, and this will always be true; but even if it weren’t the case, abandoning the world to a bloc of totalitarian powers would ultimately put the U.S. itself in grave danger. This was the basic point made in the Roosevelt Administration’s Why We Fight film series, and it remains true today. Oceans are not an insurmountable barrier; a Eurasia dominated by China, Russia, and Iran would eventually force the U.S. to its knees through a combination of economic sanctions and military threats.
Because the U.S. is no longer a hyperpower and can no longer do everything everywhere all at once, though, we have to prioritize where to send our money, weapons, and — perhaps most importantly — our diplomatic attention. Right now, the two regions with active conflicts are Europe and the Middle East, and so our resources are going there instead of to Asia. In fact, Biden has been taking a softer approach toward China in 2023 than in the first two years of his presidency; part of this is probably because China’s economic woes make it seem like less of an imminent threat, but part of it is must be due to the fact that the wars in Ukraine and now Israel are absorbing U.S. attention and effort.
But whether or not that tentative detente is a good idea or a mistake, an overall shift in focus away from Asia would definitely be a miscalculation. Regardless of how hawkish the U.S. wants to be toward China, it makes sense to be investing more diplomatic energy and military preparation into the region. In particular, the urge to plunge back into Middle Eastern conflict should be strongly resisted. This is both because Asia is a more strategically important region, and because American power is more suited to producing a more positive outcome in Asia than in the Middle East.
Asia is worth protecting
As regular readers of this blog know, I lived in Japan for several years, and I’ve had a chance to travel to much of the rest of East Asia. It is among the most astounding pinnacles of civilization ever created by humankind. East Asian cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, and until recently, Hong Kong are arguably the world’s most magnificent — hyper-dense and efficient and bustling with life and creativity and personal freedom, but also extremely safe. East Asia is a wealthy region with high quality of life across the board, rivaled only by North Europe and parts of the Anglosphere. Maciej Cegłowski called them “Zeroth World”, and I think that is an apt description.
Meanwhile, South and Southeast Asia are now the world’s great growth center. These countries are heaving two billion people out of poverty in an episode of industrialization exceeded only by China’s recent accomplishments.
Both the spectacular achievements of East Asia and the inspiring development of South and Southeast Asia are, however, under threat. China, flush with power from its recent industrialization and ruled by the dictatorial and increasingly aggressive Xi Jinping, is continuously and vocally threatening to plunge Asia into war — over Taiwan, over its territorial claims in the South China Sea, and so on.
Those threats may never materialize. Xi may decide he’s content with saber-rattling, until he’s replaced in a decade by someone more reasonable. Detente may prevail, and war may be averted for a generation. But if war does break out, China’s sheer power — which utterly dwarfs anything Russia or Iran can bring to bear — will rain destruction on much of the region.
Asian countries don’t want that, of course. But they also don’t want to submit to a future of CCP hegemony. 2019 gave the world a taste of what that would look like. After Xi decided to do away with key elements of the “One country, two systems” policy that had given Hong Kong substantial personal freedoms, there was a massive wave of protests, which at its peak drew 2 out of every 7 Hong Kong residents into the streets.
I saw a few of those protests with my own eyes, and I strongly recommend the documentary “Revolution of Our Times” if you want to know what it was like. China used a draconian new security law to crush the protest movement in 2020, eliminating much of the unique culture, vitality, and freedom that had made the city one of the world’s greatest. One example is Hong Kong’s unique film industry, which inspired and entertained the world, but which China is now censoring heavily. That’s just one tiny piece of a more general destruction of civil society, individual expression, the Cantonese language, etc.
The crushing of Hong Kong didn’t involve mass death, but it proved to the rest of Asia that China was not a status quo power. Opinions of China in the region began to plummet, while opinion of the U.S. remained robustly positive. Countries from India to the Philippines to Vietnam began to deepen their alliances, quasi-alliances, and “strategic partnerships” with the U.S. They also began to form balancing coalitions with each other, but these wouldn’t be sufficient to resist Chinese power without the U.S. in the mix, and everyone knows it.
Note that this is different from Europe. The EU and the UK together have more than enough people, industrial capacity, and technology to defend against Russian aggression indefinitely with minimal American assistance, should they choose to do so. The only reason the U.S. remains key to Ukraine’s war effort is that Europe has been reluctant to step fully into that role. Over time, that will hopefully change. But in Asia, China is so strong that U.S. power is indispensable.
In sum, Asia wants and needs the U.S. to protect it. It needs U.S. military power and economic engagement, not to crush China, but to preserve the status quo that has worked so well. Developed Asian countries want to keep being rich and free, and developing Asian countries want to keep getting rich on their own, and to do this they need the U.S. to deter Xi Jinping from trying to upend the modern world’s greatest success story.
The Middle East is in basically the exact opposite situation.
The Middle East needs to reform itself
In the old days, Muslim scholars used to refer to the world outside Islam’s control as “dar al-harb”, meaning “house of war”. Today, that term might accurately describe the Middle East. The Israel war, brutal as it is, is likely to be smaller in scale than other monster-sized wars that have shaken the region in recent decades. The Iraq War killed over half a million. The Syria war killed over half a million. The war in Yemen has killed almost 400,000. The war against ISIS killed almost 200,000. And those are on top of various smaller conflicts like the war in Libya.
There are legitimate fears that the Israel war will lead to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians — or that in the longer term, Palestinians will ethnically cleanse the Israelis. Such fears are well-founded; mass expulsion and brutalization along ethnic and religious lines has been commonplace in the Middle East for many decades now. Israel itself is largely populated not with the descendants of European refugees from the Holocaust, but by the descendants of Middle Eastern Jews who fled campaigns of violence in Muslim countries in the mid-20th century. Syria’s government was so brutal in part because the ruling Alawite minority fears a genocide if it loses power. The Yazidis were massacred and enslaved by ISIS. Much of the Iraq War was actually just Iraqi Sunni and Shia ethnically cleansing each other from various regions and neighborhoods of the country. Saddam Hussein famously brutalized the Kurds. And so on, and so on.
There’s nothing inherent in the genetics or the culture of the Middle East that make it destined to be more warlike and chaotic than Asia; indeed, up through World War 2 that relationship was largely reversed. Why the Middle East has become a land of war is a complex story. The meddling of outside powers like the U.S. and Russia certainly exacerbated things. The curse of oil, which gave some Middle Eastern countries money to fight with without being forced to develop strong institutions, has a lot to do with it. And of course religion is a factor.
But the point is that the Middle East has been trapped in a bad equilibrium for many years now, where rulers live in the lap of luxury while the impoverished masses focus on sectarian conflict and vengeance. Except for Israel and Turkey, the economies of the region are generally stagnant.
In other words, unlike in Asia, the Middle East doesn’t really have much of a status quo worth protecting. This is a region that deeply needs reform, on pretty much every level of society — economic, political, religious, and cultural. That reform cannot be accomplished by application of U.S. power. The Iraq War, which was the most prominent and failed attempt to do so, ended up poisoning local attitudes toward America for a generation.
In other words, Middle Easterners, unlike Asians, do not want American power in their region. Nor is there much that American power can accomplish.
The U.S. economy depends on Asia, not on the Middle East
Of course, so far I’ve mostly talked about the benefits of American power for other countries, and what other countries want the U.S. to do. But the U.S. is not a purely altruistic entity; our own interests always have to figure prominently in our decisions. These interests, too, suggest a focus on Asia instead of the Middle East.
U.S. trade is dominated by our neighbors, Canada and Mexico. But Asia is by far more important to both our imports and exports than the Middle East.
Source: HowMuch.net
Source: HowMuch.net
And thanks to the rapid growth in South and Southeast Asia, the region’s importance to the U.S. economy is only set to grow — even if we keep decoupling from China.
The Middle East, meanwhile, is absolutely tiny as a trading partner. In particular, the U.S. isn’t dependent on Mideast oil at all. Thanks to fracking, we are a net exporter of crude. Saudi Arabia and UAE and Kuwait could get eaten by Godzilla and our oil refineries would just keep humming. (By the way, U.S. oil production just hit a new record under Biden.)
Now, it’s true that some of our allies, like Japan and South Korea, do still buy quite a bit of Middle Eastern oil. And if there were big disruptions to Middle Eastern oil supply, global prices would rise a lot, causing a windfall for U.S. oil producers but hurting other types of U.S. business. But thanks to the rise of electric vehicles, oil is becoming less important to the global economy by the day. Total oil consumption is forecast to flatline soon.
Source: IEA
Mideast conflicts that raise the price of oil relative to electric vehicles and other substitutes will only accelerate this trend.
The Middle East is therefore rapidly diminishing in economic importance to the U.S., even as Asia continues to become more crucial. Cutting the U.S. off from the Asian economic supercluster would deeply wound our nation’s prosperity, while there’s really not a lot we need from the Middle East anymore.
The U.S. should therefore continue to maintain as light a presence in the Middle East as possible. This doesn’t mean we should withdraw completely. There are extreme cases where judicious, targeted applications of American power can prevent some of the catastrophes that regularly plague the region — protecting the Syrian Kurds from genocide, restraining Israel’s brutality toward the Palestinians, or helping Israel protect itself from wholesale destruction by Iran and its proxies. But these should always be done with a minimum of force and money and attention, and always with an eye toward withdrawing again.
In Asia, meanwhile, the U.S. should be beefing up both our defensive power and our engagement with other countries. We need to accelerate the supply of defensive weapons to Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines, and to keep building and strengthening and expanding multilateral organizations like the Quad. We need to re-engage economically by re-joining the modified TPP, and by creating a dense network of other economic agreements in Asia. And in general, we just need to pay a lot of attention to the region, making sure our allies and quasi-allies and potential allies know we’re there for the long haul, and won’t suddenly withdraw to go plunge into some foolish conflict in the Middle East.
It will take a lot of discipline and a lot of explanation from the Biden administration and its successors to keep pivoting to Asia even in the face of the Israel-Gaza war and other divisive, emotional, headline-grabbing conflicts. But we have to do it anyway.
4. Inside the Air Force’s Newest SOF Career: Special Reconnaissance
Inside the Air Force’s Newest SOF Career: Special Reconnaissance
airandspaceforces.com · by David Roza · November 2, 2023
Nov. 2, 2023 | By David Roza
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Editor’s Note: This is the first of three-part series on Air Force Special Reconnaissance. The second will be published on Nov. 3.
FORT LIBERTY, N.C.— In most professions, the path of least resistance is the best, but the opposite is often true for the Air Force’s newest special warfare field: special reconnaissance (SR).
“Going through sniper school, you try to walk through the worst terrain that you can find because that’s where nobody else wants to go,” said Tech Sgt. J, an SR Airman whose full name was withheld for security reasons. “Vines and sticks grabbing onto your ghillie suit … it can be a pretty humbling experience.
Sneaking through swamps is one of many key skills in SR, where the goal is to provide timely and accurate intelligence needed to apply airpower. They are trained on the full range of reconnaissance tools, from crawling in a ghillie suit and peering through a sniper scope to flying small drones to using other equipment to gather intelligence through cyberspace and electronic warfare.
“All the other sister services have their own reconnaissance assets,” J said. “The Air Force was looking at a more niche capability, specifically for what kind of problems pilots are going to have.”
A U.S. Air Force Special Tactics operator from the 24th Special Operations Wing provides security for an MC-130J Commando II transport during a training exercise June 17, 2021, at Melrose Air Force Range, New Mexico. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff. Sgt Ridge Shan
SR first emerged in 2019 as the replacement for special operations weather teams (SOWT), which gathered weather and environmental intelligence in hostile territory. In the years before that shift, SOWT Airmen started adopting some of the skills that make up the core of SR today. Though SR training still includes some weather elements, the main purpose of the field is to conduct air-minded reconnaissance as the Air Force and the wider U.S. military prepare for a possible conflict against a near-peer adversary like China.
“Basically we are looking at solving the integrated air defense problem that China, Russia, or Iran is going to have,” J said. “We’d be looking at opening airways for follow-on forces. The Air Force doesn’t want to have to rely on Army assets to open up those airways.”
In a future conflict, SR Airmen may find themselves observing enemy anti-air defenses, gathering intelligence on enemy troop movements, conducting real-time battle damage assessments after an airstrike, or scouting aircraft landing zones. Satellites or aerial reconnaissance may be unavailable, which is why SR Airmen are trained in the old-school method of crawling through the bush.
“We weren’t doing that in Afghanistan because there was no reason to accept that risk—we could just put an MQ-9 over the target for a week,” said Capt. Max Krasnov, a special tactics officer and training flight commander with the 352nd Special Warfare Training Squadron at Pope Army Airfield, N.C. SR “ensures that the Air Force has a way to get the ground truth under any situation. That’s why they are trained to the full gamut of reconnaissance techniques that are currently available.”
In terms of cyber and electronic warfare, J said his career field serves as “the link between the big computers and the target,” but he could not share specific capabilities due to security concerns. Krasnov offered a watered-down version of what cyber reconnaissance might look like.
“If I were to walk into a hotel lobby, log onto the guest Wi-Fi on my cell phone, and get the IP address that my phone connected to, I am gathering information about that hotel,” he said. “Play with your imagination as to where that can go.”
Trainees from the 352nd Special Warfare Training Squadron conduct a simulated ambush during small unit tactics training on Mackall Army Airfield, North Carolina, Oct. 24, 2023. U.S. Air Force photo by Capt. Xiaofan Liu
The wide range of skill sets involved in SR mean there are plenty of rabbit holes for Airmen to dive down.
“What I think is a cool thing about the career field is there are certain vectors that guys can really nerd out about,” J said. “Maybe a dude just really wants to deep dive into drones, you can do that. Guys want to go cyber warfare or higher-level intelligence gathering, we have avenues for that.”
Only 50 SR Airmen currently exist, though the Air Force hopes to grow that number to over 100. One of those could soon be Airman 1st Class S, a trainee in the SR Apprentice Course at Pope. While SR does not have the decades of lore enjoyed by other special warfare fields, such as combat control or pararescue, that was part of the attraction for S, whose full name was withheld.
“It was new and there are only a few people doing it … so I was curious to see what it was like,” he said.
Other service members feel the same way, including at least three prior Marines and a prior Green Beret.
“There has actually been, in my opinion, a surprising amount of cross-trainees or prior service people coming through,” said J, who listed long-range-shooting and cyber warfare as two reasons why some of them sought out SR.
Being so new, SR Airmen often have to explain what they do when they arrive downrange, but J considers that a strength rather than a weakness.
“I honestly think that it is a benefit for the kind of people we attract, because then they are forced to go out and prove themselves and their capabilities,” said the former SOWT.
J spoke from experience, having been attached to a team of Green Berets in Afghanistan a few years ago.
“I showed up and I said, ‘Hey, this is my little drone, this is what I can provide for you guys. I’ve got this training up into this shooting school, I’m a jumpmaster, I can do all this,’” he said. “And then the next step is to go to the range of that team and out-shoot them.”
Air
airandspaceforces.com · by David Roza · November 2, 2023
5. U.S. Drones Are Flying Over Gaza to Aid in Hostage Recovery, Officials Say
Graphics with the apparent aircraft tracks are at the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-gaza-hostages-us.html
U.S. Drones Are Flying Over Gaza to Aid in Hostage Recovery, Officials Say
The military has been sending weapons and advisers to Israel, but the flights suggest a more active American role.
5 mi.
10 km.
© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap
Approximate paths of American military drone flights over the Gaza Strip. Flights shown here are from Oct. 28 to Nov. 2, of which at least six flights were over Gaza. Source: Flight path data from FlightRadar24. Paths are approximate based on each flight's reported position about every minute. By Matthew Bloch
By Riley Mellen and Eric Schmitt
Nov. 2, 2023
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The U.S. military is flying surveillance drones over the Gaza Strip, according to two Defense Department officials and an analysis by The New York Times. The officials said the drones were being used to aid in hostage recovery efforts, indicating that the U.S. is more involved than previously known.
The aircraft are MQ-9 Reapers operated by U.S. Special Operations forces and were first spotted on Saturday on Flightradar24, a publicly accessible flight-tracking website, though Pentagon officials said that the aircraft have been active in the area since the days after the Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel by Hamas.
While Israel frequently conducts reconnaissance flights over Gaza, U.S. defense officials said it was believed to be the first time that U.S. drones have flown missions over Gaza.
The flights are operating at a critical juncture. Israel is in the early stages of a ground invasion in Gaza and says Hamas is holding more than 240 hostages, 10 of whom are believed to be Americans.
The unarmed surveillance flights are not supporting Israeli military operations on the ground, according to the Defense Department officials. Two officials said the goal was to assist in locating hostages, monitor for signs of life and pass potential leads to the Israel Defense Forces.
The U.S. military has been providing military aid, including bombs and artillery rounds, to Israel, and has deployed two aircraft carriers and hundreds of troops to the Middle East since the Oct. 7 attack. Several dozen American commandos have been dispatched to Israel to help advise on hostage recovery efforts. But the surveillance flights suggest that the Pentagon is taking a more active role in a key I.D.F. mission to rescue hostages.
The flights are concentrated in southern Gaza, approximately 15 miles from the Israeli military’s initial push in the north. There appear to be at least six separate MQ-9 aircraft involved in the effort, according to Amelia Smith, an aviation researcher who has been tracking the flights. Several aircraft analyzed by The Times and Ms. Smith loitered over Gaza for about three hours, at 24,000 to 26,000 feet.
The MQ-9 was designed as the U.S. Air Force’s first “hunter-killer” drone, but it is primarily used for surveillance missions because of its sophisticated sensors and ability to loiter above an area for more than 20 hours at a time. It has been used to conduct airstrikes and collect intelligence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. The MQ-9 is used by many militaries around the world, but not by Israel.
Riley Mellen is a reporter on The Times’s visual investigations team, which combines traditional reporting with advanced digital forensics. More about Riley Mellen
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades. More about Eric Schmitt
6. Blinken’s Mission in Israel: Conveying Support While Pushing to Reduce Harm to Civilians
Every day we are removed from the horror of October 7th support for Israel erodes. Hamas, with the help of nation state allies, misguided people, pro-Hamas media – anti Israel media and useful idiots is shaping the information domain. The calls for a cease fire will become very loud and no one will remember what happened to the innocent Israeli women, children, and men on October 7th.
Israel-Hamas War
Blinken’s Mission in Israel: Conveying Support While Pushing to Reduce Harm to Civilians
Image
A power outage in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday.Credit...Yousef Masoud for The New York Times
Here’s what we know:
Arriving in the Middle East as the U.S. stance has shifted, the secretary of state is expected to push Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “humanitarian pauses” in military operations.
Blinken is expected to push Netanyahu for ‘humanitarian pauses’ in military operations.
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Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken arriving in Tel Aviv on Friday.Credit...Pool photo by Jonathan Ernst
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken arrived in the Middle East on Friday on a complex diplomatic mission in which he will reaffirm the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip while pressing its leaders to take concrete steps to reduce the number of civilian casualties.
The U.S. stance on the war has shifted over the past three weeks. While President Biden continues to declare unambiguous support for Israel, saying the country has a right to defend itself, concern has been growing within his administration about the mounting Palestinian death toll and worsening humanitarian conditions due to Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 that killed 1,400.
The Gazan health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, says that more than 9,000 people have been killed in the territory, provoking outrage around the world. Gaza is also dangerously low on food, fuel and water after Israel cut off access to those necessities.
In meetings scheduled with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv on Friday, Mr. Blinken is expected to push what American officials call “humanitarian pauses” in military operations against Hamas in Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu paused the operations last month to enable the release of two American hostages held in the territory, Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17.
Mr. Blinken said he would discuss with Israeli leaders “concrete steps” that the Biden administration believed Israel should take to reduce the number of Palestinian civilians killed and injured in its air and ground campaign.
Pauses in the fighting would allow for humanitarian aid to be distributed and more people to exit Gaza through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. The first several hundred people, were allowed to leave this week.
Mr. Blinken said he would also discuss with Israeli leaders and others in the region the importance of getting more aid into Gaza. About 50 to 60 trucks with aid are now entering Gaza each day but that needs to increase, he said.
From Israel, Mr. Blinken will travel to Amman, Jordan, later on Friday for talks with the country’s leaders and other regional partners about securing the release of the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas in its attacks, as well as about preventing the conflict from escalating in the West Bank and along the Israel-Lebanon border. Tensions are high on the border after weeks of intense clashes with the militant group Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas.
Mr. Blinken acknowledged on Thursday that it was challenging for Israel to fight Hamas without causing civilian casualties because, he said, the group puts its leaders, fighters, weapons and munitions inside and underneath hospitals, schools and mosques.
Israel has “a responsibility to do everything possible to protect civilians who may be caught in harm’s way,” he said. “We have to rise to that responsibility.”
Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.
— Adam Entous reporting from Tel Aviv
7. Opinion | Should Israel agree to a cease-fire? Commentators weigh in.
A cross section of diverse views. Where you stand depends on where you sit.
Opinion | Should Israel agree to a cease-fire? Commentators weigh in.
The Washington Post · by Christian Caryl · November 2, 2023
Opinion Should Israel agree to a cease-fire? Commentators weigh in.
By
and
Damir Marusic
November 2, 2023 at 5:51 p.m. EDT
The death toll from the Israeli attacks on Gaza now stands at more 9,000. The Israeli government and military remain single-mindedly focused on their stated goal of eliminating the threat posed by Hamas in the wake of its Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, during which more than 1,400 people were killed. But around the world, there are signs of mounting concern about the costs to the Palestinian population.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decisively rejected a cease-fire, saying “this is a time for war.” International humanitarian organizations are calling attention to the daunting scale of civilian suffering. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, told the Security Council that “an immediate humanitarian cease-fire has become a matter of life and death for millions.” On Wednesday, even President Biden — who has otherwise stood out with his staunch support for Israel — urged a humanitarian “pause.”
We asked several commentators from the region and beyond to share their perspectives on the issue.
A humanitarian pause, but no more
Yossi Beilin: Palestinian civilians are suffering in southern Gaza, and Israel should agree to a very short humanitarian intermission — but not to an armistice.
I hate myself for writing this. All my life, I have tried to find common ground between Israelis and Palestinians, but this war must end by driving Hamas from power in the Gaza Strip. A long cease-fire might help this Islamic State-like movement remain in power. Hamas, unlike the Fatah-led Palestine Liberation Organization, has never agreed to the principle of a two-state solution, never recognized Israel and never accepted the 1993 Oslo Accords (even though it was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council according to that agreement). Hamas seized control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority by brute force in 2007.
Hamas showed its monstrous face last month, murdering at least 1,400 innocent Israelis — men, women, the elderly, small children, entire families — leaving many of the bodies mutilated or dismembered. As long as it continues to take and hold hostage not only the 240 Israelis but also the Gaza Strip inhabitants, it will do whatever it can to thwart any peace plan based on a two-state solution.
The Hamas leadership of Gaza should be replaced, preferably by the Palestine Liberation Organization. If this proves impossible, its place can be taken by an Arab trusteeship for a year or two. Once the Hamas leadership is replaced, only the Palestinian Authority will be left to represent Palestinians. A future Israeli government (which would follow the current one led by Netanyahu, which is unlikely to last much longer) should then take the opportunity to negotiate a permanent peace treaty.
Thanks to the many negotiations that have taken place over the years, both sides know by heart the answers to all the main issues. It shouldn’t take ages to get to a permanent agreement — ideally one based on the idea of a confederation between two sovereign and independent states.
Yet, if Israel stops the war now, leaving Hamas in power, it will be very difficult to think about achieving a peaceful solution in the foreseeable future.
Yossi Beilin is a former Israeli minister of justice and a co-initiator of the Oslo Process.
The slaughter must end
Ahmed Alnaouq: Last week, Israel bombed my family home in Gaza, killing my father, as well as two brothers, three sisters and all of their children, in an instant. One friend described their bodies as “bags of meat” — an arm here, a leg there.
I write to you in mourning. Even now, we Palestinians are not granted the luxury to grieve. Instead, we are burdened with the responsibility to talk, to communicate the extent of our suffering and the injustice wielded against us.
So, first, I must say this: We demand an immediate cease-fire. We demand a lifting of the Israeli siege of Gaza and the restoration of electricity, fuel, water and food. And we demand unimpeded humanitarian access in line with international law.
Today, the word “genocide” is being widely used. I can’t think of another word that captures the magnitude of what Israel, a nuclear-armed military power, continues to unleash on a captive population of children and refugees. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the quiet part out loud: “Gaza won’t return to what it was before,” he said. “We will eliminate everything.”
But we Palestinians already knew what Gallant had in mind. Corralled in Gaza for the past 17 years, burdened with mass unemployment and poverty — even before white phosphorus filled the skies, or before we lay crushed beneath the rubble — we could not breathe. We were held captive like prisoners who had never committed a crime or shot down when we attempted to peacefully protest our incarceration.
Our 1 million children have never traveled outside Israel’s militarized cage and know nothing but the buzz of drones in the sky tracking their every move.
In the past week, I have lost everything. But I do not seek revenge. There is no “military solution” here, only a collective responsibility to finally grant Palestinians what they have demanded for decades, what they are owed: justice, freedom and their very basic rights as human beings.
Ahmed Alnaouq is the head of We Are Not Numbers, which pairs Palestinian writers with mentors overseas.
Cease-fire? Not so fast.
James Jeffrey: In the abstract, cease-fires appear desirable, if only to halt killing. But in existential wars such as the one that Israel is fighting, they are but one option when considering national interests and, potentially, state survival.
Cease-fires usually occur when warring parties simultaneously decide that ending fighting yields more benefits than continuing. One occurred in Korea in 1953, and one in Kuwait in 1991. In Gaza, Hamas seeks a cease-fire to preserve its fighting capabilities and to solidify its Oct. 7 victory. But Israel rejects one, citing the United States after Pearl Harbor, as it sees destroying Hamas as both feasible and essential for its security.
Jerusalem is not indifferent to concerns about civilian victims. But it places the Gaza war within a larger struggle involving its enemy Iran instigating conflicts in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen as well as Gaza. Israel thus fears that abandoning its fight before Hamas is largely destroyed would not only later generate a bigger Oct. 7 — perhaps including Lebanese Hezbollah and even Iran — but also advance Iran’s regional agenda and thus yield more mass killings and failed states.
Less frequently, cease-fires result from one combatant’s powerful sponsor pressing it to end fighting. The United States, as Israel’s main supporter and deterrent to Iranian intervention, is the only outside force that could restrain it. The Biden administration, so far, has rejected cease-fire advocacy, but it might be wavering. The United States does not have existential interests in the war, and a cease-fire would ameliorate many of its worries: the fate of the hostages, the dangers of further escalation, the threat of wider regional instability and sharing the international blame for civilian casualties. But other factors restrain Washington. Biden knows that reducing support to an embattled partner could weaken the collective security system already under strain from Russia, China and Iran.
Moreover, Washington must consider that, unlike with the Lebanon War in 2006, an Israel fighting an existential struggle might reject a U.S. cease-fire demand. Would Biden then endanger Israel, encourage Iran and undercut collective security by pulling the carrier strike groups and stopping the flow of weapons?
James Jeffrey served as a Foreign Service officer in seven U.S. administrations, most recently as special representative for Syria engagement and special envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.
Biden can stop the killing
Laila El-Haddad: In the hour or so it takes me to finish writing this piece, four more Palestinian children will have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza — just as has been the case every hour for the past three weeks. This is not hyperbole. It’s a fact, and Biden can stop it.
Children make up more than 40 percent of the 9,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli bombs since Oct. 7. This week, the Israelis added hundreds more to the toll by staging a series of devastating strikes on the Jabalya refugee camp. The resulting civilian casualties are not a “price of waging war,” as Biden so callously put it. Nor is there any justification for bombing hospitals, schools, U.N. facilities, churches and mosques, or leveling entire neighborhoods, or cutting off food, water and electricity to a civilian population already traumatized by 55 years of violent military occupation, 16 years of a suffocating and illegal siege, as well as previous bombardments.
In a televised address on Saturday, as Israel was launching its ground invasion, Netanyahu framed Israel’s military assault on Gaza as a holy war, citing the biblical story of the Amalekites — who are singled out for annihilation down to the last man, woman and child. Netanyahu previously threatened to turn parts of Gaza “into rubble,” which is exactly what Israel has been doing. An Israeli military spokesperson admitted that the military was disregarding “precision” in favor of “damage and destruction.” Thousands of Palestinians have been ordered to leave their homes in what is effectively an act of ethnic cleansing.
Yet “cease-fire” seems to have become a dirty word for Biden and other Western leaders. Underlying this is the racist implication that the lives of one group of people, Israelis, matter more than those of another, Palestinians. This kind of dangerous reasoning also holds that Israel can attain peace only through force — by subjugating Palestinians and forever denying them their freedom and rights.
Such a stance is as delusional as it is myopic. Declaring a cease-fire is a strategic, political and moral imperative that offers our main chance to prevent an all-out conflagration in the region and beyond — something that would ultimately run contrary to U.S. interests. Most important, though, there is also the overriding need to stop civilian casualties — above all for the sake of the children being killed every hour. There is no time to waste.
Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian author, social activist, policy analyst and journalist.
A cease-fire would be a victory for Hamas
Yaakov Katz: Israel’s agreement to a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip would be a victory for the Palestinian terrorist group, which killed more than 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7 in the most brutal ways known to mankind, and it would send a message to other terrorists that violence and the butchering of civilians are rewarded. A cease-fire would leave Hamas with most of its fighters alive, with most of its military infrastructure in Gaza (including its extensive tunnel network) intact, and still in possession of the 240 hostages it abducted from Israel. To ensure that Hamas can no longer attack Israel will require not only the destruction of Hamas’s military capabilities but also the removal of Hamas from a governing position over the Gaza Strip.
It would be a catastrophic mistake for Israel to agree to a cease-fire, especially as Hamas leaders have openly declared that they plan to continue attacking the Jewish state until it is annihilated. The days when Israel heard threats from Hamas and thought it could contain them are over. After Oct. 7, the Israeli people know better.
The only cease-fire proposal that Israel would need to seriously consider would be one that included the release of all hostages in exchange for a cessation of Israel’s ground offensive. That would be an offer that the Israeli government would have a hard time rejecting and would lead to a significant domestic debate.
Israel’s goals cannot be achieved by a cease-fire, like those that have ended previous rounds of fighting between Israel and Hamas. There is a need for an international effort that will lead to the creation of a new leadership in Gaza and prevent Hamas from rebuilding its capabilities. Only then will Israel be safe.
Yaakov Katz, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is a former editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post.
Israel’s awful predicament
Lawrence Freedman: According to Netanyahu, there can be no cease-fire until Israel’s military operation has achieved its objectives. This is not straightforward. It is not clear how Israel can achieve a Hamas-free Gaza and ensure that it stays that way. Hamas is sufficiently embedded in Palestinian society to regenerate over time, even if its governing infrastructure is degraded. Most important, Israel is unable — and knows it is unable — to replace Hamas with an alternative government. So, even if Israel thought it was time to terminate the operation, there would be no one with whom to negotiate a cease-fire.
Israeli officials have said the operation could last months. In practice, it is unlikely that it could continue that long. Even if Israel’s economy can sustain the level of mobilization and the general disruption that war brings, the suffering of the Palestinian people is already of international concern. Furthermore, some of those trapped in Gaza are hostages, including many foreign nationals. Pressure on Israel will only intensify.
Intense international diplomacy is underway with Israel’s Gaza incursion as a backdrop, much of it involving conversations between Arab and Western countries. They are discussing not just easing the humanitarian crisis but also keeping the war contained by ensuring that Iran and its clients, particularly the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, do not get involved. They are also scrambling to find a model for how Gaza will be governed after the war — a model that excludes Hamas.
It should be noted that, even if Hamas manages to survive and stay in power, the reconstruction effort will be beyond its capacity or resources. Given the group’s responsibility for provoking the conflict by its actions on Oct. 7, there will be continuing pressure to deny it funding, leaving it to international agencies and charities to disburse funds allocated for reconstruction.
The most optimistic scenario is one in which a package, backed by key Arab and Western states, is available and can be implemented as soon as Israel stops its military operation. The least optimistic scenario is that diplomacy proves as inconclusive as Israel’s military action.
Lawrence Freedman is emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London and writes on the Substack “Comment Is Freed.”
A pause that goes on
Matthew Duss: The Israeli bombing campaign launched in the wake of Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 pogrom has killed more than 9,000 people in Gaza, some 40 percent of them children, in a community that has already endured decades of occupation and blockade. While the Israeli government has both the right and responsibility to protect its people, it does not have the right to commit a massacre, which is what the world is witnessing.
Pressure is building for a halt to this carnage. Some have called for a cease-fire, others for a truce, still others for a “humanitarian pause,” for which the Biden administration has now voiced support. Whatever term one prefers to use, such a halt that begins as a temporary measure, but which could be extended, is vitally necessary to prevent further loss of life on a mass scale.
A cease-fire would also help calm tensions in the West Bank — where Israeli settlers have accelerated their campaign of expulsion and 130 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since Oct. 7 — and elsewhere in the region, reducing the risk of further escalation, something the Biden administration clearly and rightly is seeking to avoid.
While the hope is that such a cease-fire will be extended, it is worth noting that a cease-fire is not a peace treaty. Contrary to the claims that such a move would only benefit Hamas’s ability to rearm (something that more than 15 years of blockade and multiple previous wars against Gaza have been unable to prevent), a cease-fire is an ad hoc measure under which combatants do not waive their right to resume military operations if other efforts to permanently end an armed conflict fail.
But such a measure is needed right now to save lives and to potentially open a path to saving more.
Matthew Duss is executive vice president at the Center for International Policy. He was foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) from 2017 to 2022.
The Washington Post · by Christian Caryl · November 2, 2023
8. Minuteman III Ballistic Missile Self Destructs During Test Launch
Minuteman III Ballistic Missile Self Destructs During Test Launch
Though the failure of a Minuteman III missile is concerning, it is precisely why these tests are routinely carried out.
BY
JOSEPH TREVITHICK
|
PUBLISHED NOV 1, 2023 8:00 PM EDT
thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick · November 1, 2023
The U.S. Air Force says an unarmed LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) was "safely terminated" over the Pacific Ocean after an unspecified "anomaly" occured during a routine test launch overnight. A delegation from South Korea also observed this particular test, in line with a new bilateral strategic cooperation agreement the country signed with the United States earlier this year.
The most recent LGM-30G missile test flight came to an end at approximately 12:06 AM PST, according to a press release from Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). The missile had been launched from a test silo at what is now Vandenberg Space Force Base and U.S. Space Force's Space Launch Delta 30 was the unit that commanded the termination – a euphemism for the self-destruction of the Minuteman III.
A picture of a previous, successful Minuteman III test launch. USAF
"An anomaly is any unexpected event during the test," AFGSC's press release explains. "Since anomalies may arise from many factors relating to the operational platform itself, or the test equipment, careful analysis is needed to identify the cause."
The U.S. military routinely conducts test launches of unarmed Minuteman III ICBMs to demonstrate the reliability of these missiles, which make up one leg of America's nuclear deterrent triad, as well as for other test and evaluation purposes. The U.S. Air Force currently has some 400 Minuteman III missiles, each loaded with a single nuclear warhead, loaded into silos spread across five states.
Last night's failure is concerning, but identifying issues with the Minuteman III and the nuclear command and control enterprise is why these tests occur.
There are no clear indications as of yet as to what might have led to the termination of this Minuteman III test. At least one observer on the ground did capture an image showing what looked to be an unusual upswing in the trajectory of the missile after it was launched last night, as well as other potentially salient details. This could all be related to the anomaly the missile experienced or its subsequent termination.
"A Launch Analysis Group is forming to investigate the cause," it adds. "The group will include representatives from Air Force Global Strike Command, the 377th Test and Evaluation Group, the 576th Flight Test Squadron, Space Launch Delta 30 Safety Office, and [the] Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, among other organizations."
The Air Force says was still able to generate some useful data from this failed test launch.
This is not the first time one of these missiles has failed or a routine test has otherwise been aborted. In 2021, the Air Force disclosed that it had aborted another routine test launch with the missile still on the ground for unspecified reasons. Before that, in 2018, the flight of another LGM-30G was terminated over the Pacific after it experienced an anomaly. There had been other Minuteman III test failures prior to that, as well.
A Minuteman III missile in its silo. USAF
South Korea's Ministry of Defense was actually the first to issue a press release about last night's Minuteman III launch, but did not make any mention of the missile's termination.
"This joint visit by the ROK-US Department of National Defense Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) delegation to the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch site was carried out at the suggestion of the US as part of the ROK-US joint implementation of extended deterrence in accordance with the Washington Declaration, and the Korean side's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)," according to a machine translation of the statement. "This is the first ICBM launch observation event in seven years since 2016, and the second in history."
The South Korean release says that officials from that country were also shown a part of the Ground-based Mid-course Defense (GMD) anti-ballistic missile system that is deployed at Vandeberg, which includes silo-launched Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI), during their visit.
A GBI interceptor in its silo. MDA
South Korean officials observing the Minuteman III test follows other notable examples of new strategic engagement between the two countries, which aimed primarily at deterring North Korea, already this year. In July, a U.S. Navy Ohio class nuclear ballistic missile submarine made a visit to a South Korean port for the first time in some four decades. Last month, a U.S. Air Force nuclear-capable B-52 bomber touched down in that country, the first time one of these aircraft had landed there in at least 30 years.
“It was a good opportunity to confirm on the spot the strong will and ability of the United States to fulfill its extended deterrence pledge against the Republic of Korea," South Korea's Deputy Minister for National Defense Policy Heo Tae Keun said in a statement, again without mentioning the launch incident. "U.S. strategic assets, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), are an empirical means of demonstrating America’s extended deterrence through action to U.S. allies and partners."
“This intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test launch is part of regular military activities, ensuring that the U.S. nuclear deterrent is effective and reliable in responding to threats in the 21st century, ensuring the security of the alliance and maintaining the power of U.S. nuclear power," the South Korean release also quoted U.S. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Vipin Narang as having said. “It shows our preparedness well."
As already noted, the potential for failure is, of course, one of the central reasons why the Air Force routinely tests Minuteman III missiles. This incident also comes as the service is pushing ahead with plans to replace these missiles with new LGM-35A Sentinel ICBMs. The goal is for the first operational Sentinels to be loaded into silos sometime in the next decade.
An artist's conception of a future LGM-35A Sentinel ICBM. Northrop Grumman
In the meantime, Minuteman IIIs will continue to be an important part of America's nuclear arsenal, which will require routine tests like the one that just failed to help ensure their reliability.
Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com
thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick · November 1, 2023
9. Minuteman missile failure draws Russian mockery of US nuclear arsenal
Minuteman missile failure draws Russian mockery of US nuclear arsenal
Newsweek · by Brendan Cole · November 2, 2023
The U.S. Air Force's termination of an unarmed LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) over the Pacific Ocean had prompted mockery from sources in Russia, where major weapons tests have just taken place.
There are around 400 of the nuclear-capable Minuteman ICBM at U.S. Air Force bases in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. They form a key part of the U.S. military's arsenal, making up one leg of the U.S. nuclear deterrent triad.
First deployed in 1970, the missile has a range of over 6,000 miles and can travel at a speed of about 15,000 miles per hour. The U.S. regularly tests them to check their reliability. Air Force Global Strike Command said in a statement that Space Launch Delta 30 "safely terminated" the missile just after midnight on Wednesday "due to an anomaly" during a test launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The statement said there are lessons learned from every test launch and that "since anomalies may arise from many factors...careful analysis is needed to identify the cause."
The defense publication The War Zone said that the launch failure "is concerning" and there are "no clear indications" yet as to what caused the problems. One observer on the ground captured an image of what looked like "an unusual upswing in the trajectory of the missile" following launch, which could have been linked to the failure.
This image from September 14, 2023, shows the launch of a Firefly Aerospace Alpha rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. On November 2, 2023, the base test launched a Minuteman III.
X (formerly Twitter) user M51.4ever, which posts about strategic systems, shared a graphic of the launch, writing there was an "uncontrolled descent of the 1st stage after jettison."
M51.4ever told Newsweek that the Minuteman III "despite being very old, remains a reliable system. The last inflight failure was in 2018, and there had been 16 consecutive successful launches until yesterday."
"Despite the test being described as 'operational test launch,' it is also worth noting that they might have tried something new, like a non-standard trajectory or new equipment, maybe for the Sentinel," which is the successor to the Minuteman III, they said.
"This is an unfortunate failure, but it does not raise major concerns on the reliability of Minuteman III. And even if it were the case, most of U.S. nuclear warheads are mounted on Trident II D5 SLBM, also very reliable, so U.S. deterrence is safe."
In May 2021, the Air Force disclosed that it had aborted another routine test launch with the missile still on the ground for unspecified reasons. Before that, in 2018, the flight of another LGM-30G was terminated over the Pacific.
4/4 Finally, @Murf411_ picture of the launch revealed more details that I initially saw, most notably the uncontrolled descent of the 1st stage after jettison. This is also visible in the video found by @eyes_roger
I made an annotated versionhttps://t.co/33qcucNPQE pic.twitter.com/UaDd3jx58e
— M51.4ever (@M51_4ever) November 1, 2023
The Kremlin said it had been informed of Wednesday's test launch ahead of time. While it has not commented on it, Russian media outlets reported the American failure was notable. Military expert Alexei Leonkov told RIA Novosti the U.S. is "launching old missiles that have already exceeded their planned service life."
The Telegram account of Yadernih Burevestnik said that the failure was "really unusual" and will probably be used to "confirm the need to intensify the modernization of the (nuclear) triad."
The Telegram account Russian Engineer posted, "very serious news about the state of US nuclear forces." Another failure like the one this week "could call into question the entire Minuteman silo missile."
The post added that the U.S. has no missiles in production, "only projects," meaning that "the main burden of nuclear deterrence will fall on 14 Ohio-class submarines with Trident missiles."
Mikhail Sheinkman, a columnist for state-run news agency Sputnik, mocked the age of the missile, although noted it is "significantly younger than Joe Biden."
"By military-technical standards, if an ICBM is already over 50, then this is also too old," Sheinkman wrote, and referring to the language used by the U.S. Air Force, added, "The main anomaly still lives in the White House."
The Drive reported there are plans to replace these missiles with new LGM-35A Sentinel ICBMs, which are expected to be operational in the next decade. Newsweek reached out to the Air Force Global Strike Command for comment.
It comes amid growing tensions with Moscow which has upped its nuclear rhetoric since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On Thursday, Russia revoked its ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which outlawed nuclear explosions, including live tests of nuclear weapons.
The Kremlin said last month it had successfully fired a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile, launched a ballistic missile from a nuclear-powered submarine from the Barents Sea, and test-fired cruise missiles from Tu-95MS long-range bombers.
However, Russia has had its own problems with missile tests. The independent Russian news outlet Sirena reported on Wednesday that at least six missile tests have been unsuccessful since June 30.
The tests involved Russia's next-generation "Poseidon" nuclear-capable torpedo, its Sarmat weaponry, its Yars intercontinental ballistic missile, and the Bulava, an intercontinental-range, submarine-launched ballistic missile.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek · by Brendan Cole · November 2, 2023
10. How Hamas Won Hearts and Minds on the American Left
So troubling. But we really need to understand how this happened so we can prevent it again. Everyone conducts information and influence operations better than we do and our populations seem very susceptible to influence activities.
I think it is also important to consider the time component with this. 30 years is much too long for us but not for our adversaries.
Excerpts (but please read the entire oped):
Academia may be even friendlier to Hamas than the leftist political world. The recent campus demonstrations are evidence of the affinity, but the connections run deeper. The United Association for Studies and Research, or UASR, a think tank established in Chicago in 1989, is the brainchild of Musa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas operative based in Doha, Qatar, who is now the organization’s second in command.
Over the years, UASR organized events and joint publications with prominent U.S. universities. Scholars affiliated with Duke, Johns Hopkins, Fordham and the University of Maryland sat on the editorial board of its quarterly, the Middle East Affairs Journal. UASR’s executive director Ahmed Yousef returned to Gaza in 2005 to become senior adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Mr. Yousef used his experience with American media to place op-eds with the
New York Times and other Western publications.
How Hamas Won Hearts and Minds on the American Left
For 30 years, the terror organization has made a concerted effort to appeal to Western intellectuals.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-hamas-won-hearts-and-minds-on-the-american-left-1abafc2f?mod=hp_opin_pos_4#cxrecs_s
By Lorenzo Vidino
Nov. 2, 2023 1:12 pm ET
Demonstrators rally against Israel in Washington, Oct. 13. PHOTO: CHIN HEI LEUNG/ZUMA PRESS
Support for Hamas on college campuses and in city streets has shocked Americans. But we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s the fruit of an influence campaign dating back at least 30 years.
In October 1993, the Federal Bureau of Investigation wiretapped a Philadelphia hotel room where a dozen senior Hamas members—some of them U.S.-based—had gathered. The men had called the meeting weeks after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. For days they debated how to sabotage the agreement and generate support for Hamas among American Muslims, the political class and wider society. They correctly foresaw that the U.S. government would designate Hamas a terrorist organization and agreed on a strategy to frame the conflict in religious terms for Muslims while using more-palatable frames for non-Muslim Americans. They plotted to create an array of mainstream organizations to conduct this dual-track work.
“Let’s not hoist a large Islamic flag, and let’s not be barbaric-talking,” one of the participants said. “We will remain a front so that if the [terror designation] happens, we will benefit from the new developments instead of having all of our organizations classified and exposed.”
“I swear by Allah that war is deception,” another said. “Deceive, camouflage, pretend that you’re leaving while you’re walking that way.”
Thirty years later, this strategy has proved effective. Widespread support for Hamas’s barbaric actions on Oct. 7 didn’t come out of thin air. Several things gave life to the phenomenon—from the identification of Israel with “white privilege” to old-fashioned anti-Semitism—but the terror group’s networks in the U.S. and Europe played a key role.
Now run largely by Western-born activists, these networks understand how politics and media narratives work in the West. They frame the conflict in religious terms to local Muslim communities, labeling Israelis as “infidels” and evoking hadiths about the killing of Jews. On college campuses those same networks use the language of postcolonial theory to tar the Israelis as “European settlers.” Unsurprisingly, a few days ago, a Hamas leader told a Vice.com journalist that “the same type of racism that killed George Floyd is being used by [Israel] against the Palestinians”—a comparison tailored to the ears of Western progressives.
A diverse web of fellow travelers and useful idiots have aided this influence operation—including politicians in the U.S. and Europe. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the British Labour Party from 2015-20, is perhaps the best example. He called Hamas and Hezbollah “our friends.” But Mr. Corbyn isn’t alone. In June, politicians from all over Europe attended the European Palestinians Conference in Sweden. The organizer, Amin Abu Rashed, a well-known Hamas supporter, was arrested weeks later in the Netherlands for allegedly raising millions for the terrorist organization. He has declared his innocence but Dutch law allows him to be held in pretrial detention.
Academia may be even friendlier to Hamas than the leftist political world. The recent campus demonstrations are evidence of the affinity, but the connections run deeper. The United Association for Studies and Research, or UASR, a think tank established in Chicago in 1989, is the brainchild of Musa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas operative based in Doha, Qatar, who is now the organization’s second in command.
Over the years, UASR organized events and joint publications with prominent U.S. universities. Scholars affiliated with Duke, Johns Hopkins, Fordham and the University of Maryland sat on the editorial board of its quarterly, the Middle East Affairs Journal. UASR’s executive director Ahmed Yousef returned to Gaza in 2005 to become senior adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Mr. Yousef used his experience with American media to place op-eds with the
New York Times and other Western publications.Hamas also has funding networks in the West. In 2008 federal prosecutors introduced transcripts from the Philadelphia meeting as evidence against the Holy Land Foundation. The Texas-based front charity, also founded by Mr. Marzook, was found guilty of funneling more than $12 million to Hamas over a decade, the largest terrorism financing prosecution in U.S. history.
Hamas is more than a terrorist organization intent on killing Jews and eradicating Israel. It is also a savvy international political player that has used the West as a staging ground for an influence operation aimed at policy makers, public opinion and Muslim communities. While some of what Hamas does on American soil is constitutionally protected, it is all in the service of its morally repugnant agenda. If, as President Biden said, “Hamas is ISIS,” there should be no space in politics, academia or the media for those who spin the terrorists’ talking points.
Mr. Vidino is director of the program on extremism at George Washington University.
11. It’s U.S. vs. China in an Increasingly Divided World Economy
Graphics at the link.
It’s U.S. vs. China in an Increasingly Divided World Economy
Trade and investment flows settle into new patterns around two rival power centers—with major risks
https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/economy-us-china-tariffs-trade-investment-1c58d24e?mod=hp_lead_pos2
By Jason DouglasFollow
and Tom FairlessFollow
Nov. 3, 2023 12:01 am ET
China passed a significant milestone last fall: For the first time since its economic opening more than four decades ago, it traded more with developing countries than the U.S., Europe and Japan combined. It was one of the clearest signs yet that China and the West are going in different directions as tensions increase over trade, technology, security and other thorny issues.
For decades, the U.S. and other Western countries sought to make China both a partner and a customer in a single global economy led by the richest nations. Now trade and investment flows are settling into new patterns built around the two competing power centers.
In this increasingly divided world economy, Washington continues to raise the heat on China with investment curbs and export bans, while China reorients large parts of its economy away from the West toward the developing world.
Benefits for the U.S. and Europe include less reliance on Chinese supply chains and more jobs for Americans and Europeans that otherwise might go to China. But there are major risks, such as slower global growth—and many economists worry the costs for both the West and China will outweigh the advantages.
The strategies are growing harder to unravel as both sides sink more resources into them.
Chinese factories are replacing Western chemicals, parts and machine tools with those from home or sourced from developing nations. China’s trade with Southeast Asia surpassed its trade with the U.S. in 2019. China now trades more with Russia than it does with Germany, and soon will be able to say the same about Brazil.
China’s outbound investment now mainly goes to resource-rich places like Indonesia or the Middle East, rather than to the U.S.
Major Western companies including
Apple, Stellantis and HP are looking to shift production from China. Financial firms like Sequoia Capital have moved to curb or ringfence their China activities.More than one-third of U.S. companies surveyed by the U.S. China Business Council, which represents American companies in China, said they’ve reduced or paused planned investment in China over the past year, a record high and well above 22% last year.
“The world is splintering into rival spheres,” said Noah Barkin, senior adviser with Rhodium Group, a New York-based advisory firm. “There is a momentum…that in a way is self-propelling. There is a risk it accelerates over time and becomes more difficult for governments to manage.”
A nickel processing facility in Indonesia. China has invested in Indonesian nickel factories to supply its EV industry. PHOTO: ULET IFANSASTI FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Slow growth
The International Monetary Fund said in October that fragmentation between China and the West was weighing on the world’s economic recovery this year. A more severe break between U.S.- and China-led blocs could cost the global economy as much as 7% of gross domestic product, worth trillions of dollars, IMF research suggests.
The economic split deprives companies of access to vital markets that drive profits and makes it harder to share technology and capital, depressing growth.
Costs are already adding up for major companies, especially in European nations like Germany, which thrived in recent decades by selling autos and high-end machinery to China. German and Japanese automakers like
Volkswagen and Toyota now account for about 30% of China’s auto market, down from almost 50% three years ago, as Chinese brands have expanded, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.From China’s standpoint, an economic sphere of influence with Beijing at the center might not offer enough growth to keep the country from slipping into long-term stagnation as it faces collapsing birthrates and excessive debts. China’s success has depended heavily on access to the West’s big-spending consumers and technologies.
U.S. imports from China in mid-2018 accounted for as much as 22% of all its imports. In the 12 months through August, that had shrunk to 14%, according to Census Bureau data, though in dollar terms bilateral trade has grown.
Some Western money is returning to the U.S., or going to places like Mexico and India, which attracted four times as much investment in new factories and offices as China last year, according to data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Kempower, a Finland-based manufacturer of fast chargers for electric vehicles, plans to invest $40 million over five years in the U.S., said its chief executive officer, Tomi Ristimäki. He hopes the U.S. will become as important to the company as Europe, and said he has no plans to enter China’s electric-vehicle market. “The political atmosphere has changed. We are not concentrating on China,” he said.
The production line for Jungheinrich in Shanghai in 2021. PHOTO: DING TING/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS
Jungheinrich, a Hamburg, Germany-based forklift truck manufacturer with annual revenue of nearly 5 billion euros (about $5.3 billion), put China at the top of a strategic agenda it published in 2020, aiming to expand its footprint there. The company recently replaced China with the U.S. as its priority market, said its chief executive officer, Lars Brzoska.Jungheinrich hasn’t made a decision on whether to move out of China, where it has two factories and almost 1,000 staff, Brzoska said, particularly in times of heightened geopolitical tensions.
“Everybody’s thinking about a potential invasion of China into Taiwan,” Brzoska said. “If this happens, it’s a big, big issue for the whole world. We may be better off with a different footprint.”
‘Two to tango’
China, meanwhile, has invested big sums in Indonesian nickel factories to supply China’s EV industry. Tech firms Tencent and
Alibaba have expanded across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Other Chinese companies have targeted renewable energy projects in Latin America and Africa.Latin America, Africa and developing markets in Asia now account for 36% of overall Chinese trade, compared with 33% for its trade with the U.S., Europe and Japan, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Chinese customs data. As recently as last summer, that trio of advanced markets accounted for a larger share of Chinese trade.
Part of the explanation is Chinese factories are moving to countries such as Vietnam, India and Mexico to keep selling to U.S. customers while avoiding U.S. tariffs. But China’s growing expertise in affordable smartphones, cars and machinery that appeal to developing-world customers is also helping drive the shift at the expense of Western rivals.
Chinese automaker
Great Wall Motors said last year it would spend $1.9 billion in São Paulo state in Brazil over the next decade to produce hybrid and electric cars. BYD is investing $600 million in Brazil and $500 million in Thailand, where it’s a top EV seller.
Chinese home appliance maker
Midea Group last year opened new facilities in Egypt and Thailand, and is building plants in Brazil and Mexico to serve local markets.“While it might seem that the West is driving decoupling, as they say, it takes two to tango,” said Allen Morrison, professor of global management at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management and co-author of a book on business strategy for China.
Back in China, local brands like Genki Forest are increasingly vying with Western names such as Coca-Cola. A new Huawei Technologies smartphone with ultrafast data connectivity uses a Chinese-made semiconductor, helping it compete with Apple.
As Chinese companies displace Western makers of tools and components for finished goods, the country’s use of imports in industrial production has declined by around 50% since its 2005 peak, even as exports have grown, according to data from CPB, a Dutch government agency that tracks global trade.
The widening split follows decades of integration. China’s opening up in the 1980s and its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 ignited a new phase of globalization, bringing investment to China and cheap consumer goods to Western consumers.
That economic order started to crumble when Western leaders began questioning China ties, which had decimated job markets in some U.S. and European communities. Western companies complained they had to hand over technology to Chinese partners in return for market access.
In its initial stages, economic decoupling was hesitant and mostly centered on trade in products directly affected by U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports such as semiconductors, computer hardware and auto parts.
After President Donald Trump raised tariffs on around 60% of Chinese imports, President Biden moved to prevent China from acquiring high-end computer chips and imposed new curbs on U.S. investment into China. Washington has dangled billions of dollars in subsidies to draw manufacturing back home.
Foreign direct investment into China over the four quarters through June was 78% lower than it was a year earlier, Chinese data show.
A complete decoupling between China and the West isn’t in the cards though, assuming there’s no military conflict.
China’s low production costs and vast consumer market still make it indispensable for many companies.
BASF, the German chemicals company, is investing up to around $10.5 billion in China through 2030. Starbucks, Ralph Lauren and Hormel Foods have been expanding there.
A Starbucks store in Beijing. PHOTO: TINGSHU WANG/REUTERS
A worker does a quality check on dresses for Shein in Guangzhou. PHOTO: GILLES SABRIE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Brands with links to China such as TikTok and fast-fashion giant Shein are also building large businesses in the U.S., though they face political pressure that could constrain their growth.
While U.S. imports of Chinese products such as semiconductors and IT hardware have tumbled in response to tariffs, purchases of toys, games and other products not hit by Trump-era duties have soared, according to analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Chinese officials say they still welcome Western investment, including companies like Tesla, which is scaling up battery production in Shanghai. Washington describes its policy toward China as “a small yard with a high fence,” meaning it only wants tight controls in sensitive sectors such as computer chips, but otherwise wants bilateral trade and investment to continue.
Still, the evidence suggests the loosening of economic ties between China and the U.S.-led West is gathering speed. In September, Xi skipped a meeting of the Group of 20 major economies after Beijing persuaded members of the Brics economic group, with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, to invite more members, including Egypt and Iran.
“We are at the end of the beginning,” said Adam Slater, lead economist at Oxford Economics. Decoupling “does have some momentum now, and I think it has a way to run.”
Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com and Tom Fairless at tom.fairless@wsj.com
12. Yellen: Indo-Pacific allies should not have to choose between US, China
Excerpts:
"A full separation of our economies, or an approach in which countries including those in the Indo-Pacific are forced to take sides, would have significant negative global repercussions," Yellen said. "We have no interest in such a divided world and its disastrous effects."
Yellen said the U.S. instead was pursuing the "de-risking and diversifying" of its economic ties to China, by investing in manufacturing at home and by strengthening linkages with allies and partners around the world, including Indo-Pacific countries.
Yellen said the U.S. would not compromise on national security actions, but aimed to keep them narrowly targeted, not for the purpose of "choking off growth in China."
Yellen: Indo-Pacific allies should not have to choose between US, China
Reuters · by David Lawder
WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday sought to reassure Asian countries that the U.S. approach to China would not lead to a 'disastrous' division of the global economy that would force them to take sides.
In a speech ahead of the U.S.-hosted Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in San Francisco later this month, Yellen said that a full de-coupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies was "simply not practical," especially given the complexity of Asian supply chains and the region's deep economic ties to China.
Her comments sought to assuage growing concerns about geopolitical fragmentation of the global economy into U.S.-led and China-led factions amid growing national security-driven export and technology controls between the world's two largest economies.
"A full separation of our economies, or an approach in which countries including those in the Indo-Pacific are forced to take sides, would have significant negative global repercussions," Yellen said. "We have no interest in such a divided world and its disastrous effects."
Yellen said the U.S. instead was pursuing the "de-risking and diversifying" of its economic ties to China, by investing in manufacturing at home and by strengthening linkages with allies and partners around the world, including Indo-Pacific countries.
Yellen said the U.S. would not compromise on national security actions, but aimed to keep them narrowly targeted, not for the purpose of "choking off growth in China."
Her remarks to an Asia Society event came as the U.S. is preparing to host leaders and other top officials from APEC countries in San Francisco from Nov. 11-17. The White House wants to schedule a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping alongside the summit.
TRADE, INVESTMENT LINKS
Yellen said the Biden administration was committed to expanding trade and investment with Indo-Pacific countries, emphasizing the region's strategic importance ahead of the APEC gathering.
Deeper economic links with Indo-Pacific countries will help make U.S. supply chains more resilient and tap into a dynamic and growing market for U.S. exports, she said.
"As we look toward APEC later this month, let me state unequivocally: Claims that America is turning away from the Indo-Pacific are wholly unfounded," Yellen said in the excerpts. "We are deepening our economic ties across the region, with tremendous potential benefits for the U.S. economy and for the Indo-Pacific."
The Biden administration also has called a seventh negotiating round for its Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) initiative next week in San Francisco, aimed at reaching some agreements in time for the APEC summit.
IPEF, while far short of a traditional free trade agreement, is the Biden administration's signature initiative to engage economically with Asian countries and provide them a trade and investment alternative to China.
Yellen said deeper integration with Indo-Pacific countries would benefit the region and the U.S. She noted that U.S. two-way trade with the region reached a value of $2.28 trillion in 2022, up 25% since 2019, with the region taking nearly a quarter of U.S. exports.
"The economic case for our expanding trade and investment is clear. The Indo-Pacific is a dynamic and rapidly growing region. As it grows, we gain a fast-expanding customer base for U.S. firms and workers," Yellen said.
SUPPLY CHAIN SECURITY
Part of the reason for increased trade with the region has been the migration of U.S. supply chains away from China, a trend that started with tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump in 2018 and accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yellen said economic engagement with Indo-Pacific countries, including Vietnam, is "crucial to bolstering our supply chain security" to avoid bottlenecks and shortages that occurred as the world emerged from the pandemic. She repeated her desire to diversify supply chains to countries in the region through "friend-shoring" or using trusted allies as sources of supply.
"And achieving resilience through partnering with Indo-Pacific countries means gains for Indo-Pacific economies as well," Yellen said.
Reporting by David Lawder;editing by Diane Craft
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Reuters · by David Lawder
13. Senate finally confirms Adm. Franchetti as Navy’s top officer
Senate finally confirms Adm. Franchetti as Navy’s top officer
Lisa Franchetti becomes the first woman to serve as the Navy’s chief of naval operations and as a Joint Chiefs of Staff member.
navytimes.com · by Geoff Ziezulewicz · November 2, 2023
The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Adm. Lisa Franchetti as the Navy’s 33rd chief of naval operations, ending a months-long delay caused by Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s ongoing blockade of military nominations that he began in protest of Defense Department abortion access policies.
Franchetti became not only the first woman to serve as the Navy’s top officer, but the first to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
While Franchetti was confirmed around 12:50 p.m. local time, it remains to be seen when hundreds of lower-ranking military nominations will get a vote.
Those still waiting to be confirmed include Adm. Samuel Paparo to lead U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and Vice Adm. James Kilby to receive a fourth star and become vice chief of naval operations.
Vice Adm. Stephen Koehler has also been nominated to become a four-star admiral and become the next head of U.S. Pacific Fleet.
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President Joe Biden has nominated Adm. Lisa Franchetti to serve as the next chief of naval operations.
Franchetti has for recent months been serving as CNO in an acting capacity, while still holding the title of vice chief.
The list of blocked nominees grew to 378 as of Friday but could balloon to 650 by year’s end, according to the Pentagon.
After Franchetti was confirmed, Gen. David W. Allvin was confirmed as the next Air Force chief of staff.
Later in the day, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney was confirmed as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps.
Mahoney’s stalled confirmation became doubly urgent this week after Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith was hospitalized Sunday for a condition the service has yet to disclose.
Thursday’s confirmation vote came one day after Senate Democrats threatened rule changes to overcome an eight-month blockade by the Alabama Republican Tuberville of nearly all senior military nominations and promotions.
Wednesday night, Republican Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — both of whom served in the military — spent more than four hours attempting to bring up for a vote 61 of the 378 pending nominations stalled by Tuberville, calling it an issue of national security and common sense.
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“We are punishing [these officers] for what all of us here believe is a very bad policy at the Department of Defense,” Ernst said. “But it’s a policy they have absolutely nothing to do with.”
Tuberville objected to the quick consideration of every one. Earlier in the day, he said Republicans who voted with Democrats to get around his hold would be committing “political suicide” by opposing his anti-abortion protest.
Sullivan called that stance frustrating.
“I’m hopeful we can find a way forward,” Sullivan said. “We are facing a really dangerous period, and we’re impacting readiness and morale. To my colleague who says there is no readiness problem with [these holds], that’s just ridiculous.”
Tuberville has been a target of criticism since February when he announced a total hold on routine approvals for senior military promotions and confirmations to protest the Defense Department’s abortion access policy.
Military members can receive time off and travel stipends to go across state lines for abortion procedures if they are stationed in areas where access is limited or outlawed. Administration officials have said the move is needed to provide full health care for troops and their families. Conservative lawmakers have called the policy illegal and immoral.
Tuberville’s hold does not completely block the Senate’s ability to approve promotions and nominations, but does shift the business from a few minutes of routine votes to hours and days of floor debate.
Tuberville has said he won’t lift the hold until the policy is changed or Congress votes to approve the existing rules. Democrats have accused him of grandstanding and hurting national security.
Military Times reporter Leo Shane contributed to this report.
Correction: an earlier version of this story misstated the position for which Vice Adm. Stephen Koehler was nominated. He was nominated to become the next leader of U.S. Pacific Fleet.
About Geoff Ziezulewicz
Geoff is the editor of Navy Times, but he still loves writing stories. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan extensively and was a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He welcomes any and all kinds of tips at geoffz@militarytimes.com.
14. No. 2 Marine confirmed by Senate amid top Marine’s health crisis
No. 2 Marine confirmed by Senate amid top Marine’s health crisis
marinecorpstimes.com · by Irene Loewenson · November 2, 2023
Senators rushed to confirm the No. 2 Marine Corps leader, who will lead the service while the No. 1 Marine remains hospitalized following a medical emergency.
The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney as the assistant commandant, usually the second-in-command role in the Marine Corps. But because the Marine commandant, Gen. Eric Smith, has been in the hospital after reportedly experiencing a heart attack on Sunday, Mahoney also will perform the duties of commandant for the time being.
That means Marine Corps leadership is back to where it was before September, with the assistant commandant juggling the top two jobs in the Marine Corps at once.
After Smith’s hospitalization, Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl had been performing the duties of commandant, without an assistant commandant and without an official replacement in his usual job of deputy commandant for combat development and integration.
On Thursday, after confirming the Navy and Air Force chiefs by roll-call vote, the Senate confirmed Mahoney through a roll-call vote, with 86 voting in favor and none voting against the Marine’s confirmation.
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Top Marine general in stable condition after apparent heart attack
Marine Commandant Gen. Eric Smith was hospitalized Sunday evening following what the Marine Corps called a “medical emergency.”
The Corps hasn’t had both a commandant and an assistant commandant since July 10, when Commandant Gen. David Berger retired, leaving Smith in charge as the assistant commandant. Even after Smith was confirmed as commandant by individual vote Sept. 21, Mahoney’s confirmation remained in Senate limbo.
That’s because since February Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, has refused to confirm senior military nominees through unanimous consent, in protest of a Pentagon policy covering time off and travel expenses for service members who travel out of state for abortions.
Tuberville has argued that the military’s leadership gaps aren’t his fault and that it’s on the Pentagon to reverse its abortion policy or the Senate Democrats to hold individual roll-call votes on nominees. Democratic leaders estimated in September it would take 100 days of nothing but holding votes 8 hours a day to confirm what were then 273 nominees. The number of nominees has since grown to 378.
Smith, 58, said Sept. 6 while wearing both the assistant commandant and acting commandant hats that he had been sleeping approximately five hours a night, keeping a schedule that was “not sustainable.”
“I don’t mind breaking my own back,” Smith said. “It’s just, I have to make good decisions.”
Smith said Friday, days before his hospitalization, that officially becoming commandant hadn’t diminished his workload, because he still had two full-time jobs.
Gen. Eric Smith is sworn in as the 39th Marine commandant by Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro in September in the Pentagon. (Marine Corps)
Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, on Tuesday accused Tuberville of contributing to Smith’s medical issue by holding up on military confirmations.
“One of the reasons, I think contributed to his condition was he was doing two jobs at once,” Reed told Politico. “I’ve read where he was working from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. As a result, if he had, as is normal, an assistant, he could switch off.”
Asked by Marine Corps Times for comment on Reed’s remarks, Steven Stafford, a spokesman for Tuberville, said via email on Thursday, “Coach is praying for a swift recovery.”
Tuberville, a former college football coach, often goes by Coach.
Tuberville was more blunt about Reed’s comments in a conversation with reporters on Thursday.
“Come on, give me a break,” he said, according to a video posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, by CBS reporter Alan He. “This guy is going to work 18-20 hours a day no matter what. That’s what we do. I did that for years.”
On Tuesday night, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, announced he would move forward with the individual nominations for the chief of naval operations, the Air Force chief of staff and Mahoney.
The following night, Republican Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — both of whom served in the military — spent more than four hours attempting to bring up for a vote 61 of the 378 pending nominations stalled by Tuberville, calling it an issue of national security and common sense.
“We are punishing [these officers] for what all of us here believe is a very bad policy at the Department of Defense,” Ernst said. “But it’s a policy they have absolutely nothing to do with.”
Tuberville objected to quick consideration of every one.
“My hold is on unanimous consent, not the individuals,” Tuberville wrote on X. “They can be voted on one at a time...just like always.”
On Thursday, Tuberville joined the other 85 senators in voting to confirm Mahoney in the roll-call vote.
Who’s in charge of the Marines?
Smith is now in stable condition but remains in a Washington hospital as he recovers, the Marine Corps said Wednesday.
The leadership gap that came with Smith’s hospitalization arose at an already turbulent moment for the U.S. military, which has deployed troops and resources to the Mediterranean in an effort to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spilling over into the rest of the Middle East.
The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit is in the region after leaving early from an exercise in Kuwait, although the Marine Corps has declined to provide specifics about the unit’s location.
Heckl was put in charge after Smith’s medical emergency because he was the most senior officer at Marine Corps headquarters, the Corps previously said.
Mahoney, 58, will pin on a fourth star Friday morning in a ceremony at the Pentagon, Marine spokesman Maj. Jim Stenger told Marine Corps Times.
The White House picked Mahoney in July for the assistant commandant job. Mahoney, callsign “Moe,” is a career aviator who has flown more than 5,000 hours, in the A-6, F-5, F-18 and F-35, according to his official bio and spokesman Maj. Kevin Stephensen.
Most recently, he served as the deputy commandant for programs and resources, the fiscal director of the Marine Corps. In that role, Mahoney defended Force Design 2030, the revamp that has attracted criticism from some retired Marines.
“In the Marine Corps I grew up in for the last 35 years, internal disagreements stay internal,” Mahoney told a crowd with dozens of retired Marine leaders in November 2022.
In July, the White House tapped Maj. Gen. James Adams III to replace Mahoney, but Adams’ nomination has been caught up in Tuberville’s hold. The current assistant deputy commandant for programs and resources is Marine veteran Edward Gardiner, who has helped manage the Corps’ budgeting process for more than a decade.
Gardiner will be leading programs and resources in an acting capacity upon Mahoney’s promotion, Stenger confirmed to Marine Corps Times.
Military Times reporter Leo Shane contributed reporting.
Editor’s note: This story was updated Thursday with information from Marine spokesman Maj. Jim Stenger.
About Irene Loewenson
Irene Loewenson is a staff reporter for Marine Corps Times. She joined Military Times as an editorial fellow in August 2022. She is a graduate of Williams College, where she was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper.
15. This Russian Suicide Drone Is Blunting Ukraine’s Advance
Graphics, photos and an interactive video at the link: https://www.wsj.com/world/this-russian-suicide-drone-is-blunting-ukraines-advance-8241a0e4?mod=hp_lead_pos9
- WORLD
This Russian Suicide Drone Is Blunting Ukraine’s Advance
Russia is catching up to Ukraine on battlefield drone use with unmanned vehicles like the Lancet and a new exploding successor
https://www.wsj.com/world/this-russian-suicide-drone-is-blunting-ukraines-advance-8241a0e4?mod=hp_lead_pos9
The Lancet drone is playing a key role on the battlefield for Russia. PHOTO: SERGEI ILNITSKY/SHUTTERSTOCK
By Alistair MacDonaldFollow
and James MarsonFollow
Nov. 3, 2023 6:20 am ET
KYIV, Ukraine—One of the scourges of Ukraine’s counteroffensive is an exploding drone with distinctive X-shaped wings that smashes into targets at more than 100 miles an hour.
In recent months, Russia’s Zala Lancet drone has repeatedly struck and disabled Ukraine’s Western-supplied armored vehicles that were supposed to break through Russian lines and turn the war decisively in Ukraine’s favor, according to Ukrainian soldiers and officials as well as videos posted on Russian social media.
On Thursday, the U.S. sanctioned the Lancet’s maker, Zala Aero. It also sanctioned the person it said was the company’s owner and the drone’s designer, Aleksandr Zakharov, as well as members of his family. The State Department said the U.S. was targeting individuals and entities associated with Russia’s war effort. Zala Aero didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The drones have been a key factor in preventing a significant Ukrainian advance. Combined with minefields, artillery and guided antitank missiles, they have formed a fearsome obstacle that has made the Ukrainians leery of deploying more than a couple of vehicles at a time.
“They are a serious problem,” said a Ukrainian officer serving in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, where the counteroffensive’s main thrust has advanced only a few miles since it started in June.
Explosive Drones
Russia's Lancet drone has become a significant threat on the battlefield, while Ukraine uses the U.S. supplied Switchblade. Both drones explode when they hit their targets.
LANCET-3M
RUSSIA
SWITCHBLADE 600
UKRAINE
Length: 5 ft. 5 in.
Max. weight*: 26.5 lbs
Max. speed: 186 mph
Range: 40 miles
Max. altitude: 16,404 ft.
Length: 4 ft. 3 in.
Max. weight*: 65 lbs
Max. speed: 115 mph
Range: 25 miles
Max. altitude: >15,000 ft.
*Including payload
Sources: AeroVironment, Army Recognition (Switchblade); James Patton Rogers, Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University; staff reports (Lancet-3M)
Russia’s war against Ukraine has been a major testing ground for the mass deployment of drones, from cheap commercial vehicles used for surveillance or adapted for strikes to long-distance, self-exploding machines made to eliminate high-value targets. Defense analysts say Hamas’s attack on Israel last month appeared to use some learnings from Ukraine, for instance.
Ukrainian forces have successfully used drones since the early weeks of the war, using remote-controlled aerial vehicles to spot Russian forces and direct artillery fire or drop small explosives on them.
Russia has since improved its drone capabilities and now caught up, Ukrainian soldiers say. Central to that is the increased deployment of the Lancet amid Ukraine’s counteroffensive. British military intelligence authorities said Wednesday that the Lancet represents a “step change” in the way Russia uses drones.
Zala Aero told Russian media in July that it had increased the vehicle’s range from roughly 25 miles to 40 miles.
On Monday, it said it had tested and was ready to mass produce a new exploding drone called the Izdeliye-54, or Italmas. The new drone can travel around 124 miles and has an enlarged warhead, it said.
A video posted on the Russian Defense Ministry's Telegram channel claims to show a Lancet strike on a Ukrainian base.
Russian Ministry of Defense Telegram
Ukrainian soldiers shoot at what are believed to be Lancet drones in a still image taken from video.
Ukrainian Defense Ministry
The Lancet is of “particular importance” in Russia’s fleet, according to a Ukrainian briefing document used to inform foreign allies and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. While made in Russia, the drone contains a host of foreign components, the document says.
The drone, which has cameras that relay images back to its operator, is a problem for Ukraine because it is effective on the battlefield and relatively inexpensive to make, a Ukrainian military intelligence official said.
“This is about Russia trying to adapt quickly to developments on the battlefield, to do what the Ukrainians are doing,” said James Patton Rogers, an expert in drones at the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University.
Ukraine doesn’t have a domestically made equivalent to the Lancet under production at a significant scale. The U.S. has sent Kyiv the Switchblade drone, which is made by Arlington, Va.-based
AeroVironment and has a broadly similar profile to the Lancet, but it isn’t used in large numbers.
Both sides use racing drones known as FPVs that are rigged with explosives. They are most effective against infantry and unarmored vehicles, as they lack the punch and the range of Lancets.
Russia also has surveillance drones and operates a fleet of Shahed drones bought from Iran, though these are typically used for long-distance strikes on targets including infrastructure. Moscow has, though, been slow compared with the U.S., Israel and others to develop self-exploding drones where the operator can choose its target as it flies.
The Lancet first appeared at trade shows in 2019 and was used in Syria by Russian special forces to target rebel commanders, its manufacturer has previously said.
Ukrainian servicemen cover a howitzer to hide it from Russian munitions. PHOTO: OLEKSANDR RATUSHNIAK/REUTERS
In Ukraine, officials say the Lancet has struck several Western-supplied tanks, including the German-made Leopard and a British Challenger 2.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense has frequently posted on its Telegram social-media account about what it says are successful Lancet strikes. Recent posts have said the drone has destroyed several targets, including various Western-made howitzers.
The Lancet is particularly potent because Ukraine lacks a weapon that can effectively counter them, leaving soldiers trying to down them with small-arms fire.
Metinvest, a Ukrainian steelmaker, has started production of mobile shelters made from steel and chain-link mesh called “Lancet catchers” that can be placed over military vehicles and equipment. The company, and others, also manufacture decoys to lure the Russians to waste Lancets against fake weapons.
In a rare trip to a weapons factory, President Vladimir Putin visited the site where Lancet drones are made—several hundred miles east of Moscow—in September, according to the Kremlin’s website. A month earlier, in a meeting with the head of Russia’s state arms conglomerate, he called for increased production of Lancets.
The Lancet is reliant on a host of foreign components, according to the Ukrainian government briefing document. For instance, 19 electronic parts listed by the Ukrainian government are American. Of those, six are produced by
Analog Devices, a Wilmington, Mass.-based semiconductor firm, including parts that help compress video images. Ukraine also says that so-called network controllers produced by Dallas-based Texas Instruments are found in the Lancet.A spokeswoman for Analog said the company does no business with Russia and has told its distributors to halt shipments there. Any post-sanctions shipments are the result of unauthorized resales or diversion of Analog products, she said
Texas Instruments said the company stopped sales to Russia in February 2022 after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Still, drone technology often depends on the skills of the operator.
A Ukrainian artillery commander operating outside of Bakhmut says he first encountered the Lancet in January. The drone circled his howitzer twice before diving to try to hit the big gun. It missed but caused him a shrapnel wound.
Since June, when the counteroffensive began, the commander says his positions have been hit between 25 and 30 times by Lancets, sometimes damaging the howitzers but not taking them out of action. His howitzers evade most drone action by simply hiding under trees and camouflage netting, he said. If they are damaged, the British-made M777s he uses are easy to fix, he said.
And some analysts say Russia has yet to perfect its use of the attack drones.
“The success of drones depends on how well it interfaces with soldiers and other military equipment, which Ukraine seems to be getting right,” said Steve Wright, who advises governments on drones and helps companies develop them.
For Russia, “it remains to be seen,” he said.
—Kate Vtorygina and Oksana Pyrozhok contributed to this article.
Write to Alistair MacDonald at Alistair.Macdonald@wsj.com and James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com
16. As Ukraine braces for winter drone attacks, allies rush to provide defenses
As Ukraine braces for winter drone attacks, allies rush to provide defenses
But some of the very latest U.S. systems are being held back—so far.
defenseone.com · by Sam Skove
As Ukraine braces for a repeat of last winter’s drone strikes on its electrical networks, allied nations are sending Kyiv some—but not all—of their latest in anti-drone tech.
Last year, Russia targeted infrastructure in Ukrainian cities, blacking out cities amid a cold winter and causing worries that some cities might need to be evacuated if heating systems failed.
This year, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat warned that the winter would likely bring a “record” number of Russian drone attacks. Ihnat noted Russia’s Shahed 136, an Iranian-designed loitering munition capable of flying more than a thousand miles to strike targets.
Russian drones also wreak havoc on the battlefield. September, Polish Lt. Gen. Wieslaw Kukuła told Defense One that “most” of the Polish-donated howitzers damaged by Russia were hit by loitering munitions.
Many of the new anti-drone systems the U.S. and others are sending to Ukraine consist of some form of autocannon combined with a radar tracking system and an electronic warfare jammer. Such systems meet incoming drones first with jammer emissions meant to disrupt navigation and break their links back to their Russian controllers. Drones that survive are targeted by the autocannon’s explosive shells.
Loitering munitions are increasingly using inertial guidance systems on their final approach that make them harder to jam, according to Silie Jahr, head of sales at anti-drone company MARSS. MARSS operates across the Middle East, where drone attacks have targeted the U.S. and others.
Among the gun systems announced as either sent to Ukraine or soon to be so are the MSI-DS Terrahawk Paladin and EOS’s Slinger, both announced in early October, and Kongsberg’s CORTEX Typhon, announced in August.
A fourth gun system, Northrop Grumman’s Agnostic Gun Truck (AGT), will be sent to Ukraine “very shortly” after being first announced in April, the Army said in October. With the exception of MSI’s Paladin, the systems are mounted on vehicles, with the AGT and Slinger advertised as being mounted on pickup trucks.
“We’re finding great promise with 30mm” autocannon shells for destroying drones, said Mike Parent of the Army’s Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office.
Alongside the counter-drone gun truck, the Pentagon in April announced a truck mounting counter-drone missiles that would also be sent to Ukraine. SAIC was among the companies competing to send the truck, but it is unclear which company was ultimately chosen and if the system has been sent to Ukraine.
The systems will join a panoply of other companies sending anti-drone systems to Ukraine, including jammers from DroneShield, CEO Oleg Vornik told Defense One.
Such systems are effective against the many commercially bought drones that Russia uses, according to DroneShield’s US CEO Matt McCrann. In certain cases, jamming can even be effective against drones operating with jamming countermeasures, Vornik said.
“They can go silent, but then they often like to switch on the comms back to the controller, because they want to have a confirmed kill,” said Vornik. “At that point they become your usual two-way communication situation.”
Other systems include L3Harris’s Vampire missile system, and Fortem’s DroneHunter F700, a drone that fires a net to capture enemy drones.
Valery Zaluzhny, head of Ukraine’s armed forces, appeared to nod to the system in a recent article where he said net-throwing drones were a means of gaining air superiority.
The systems join a number of weapons capable of shooting down drones that the U.S. and others have donated from their own military stocks, including Germany’s Gepard and U.S.’s Avenger, the former of which Ukraine has said is effective against Shaheds.
What’s missing
Notably absent are some of the most advanced anti-drone systems being developed or purchased for U.S. troops.
On Wednesday, Epirus delivered the first prototype of a high-power microwave anti-drone weapon to U.S. soldiers as a part of a $66 million prototyping contract.
The system, dubbed the Indirect Fire Protection Capability – High-Power Microwave, is based on Epirus’s Leonidas system and is designed to defeat drone swarms like the ones increasingly used on Ukrainian battlefields.
The U.S. has also not sent a 50-kw drone-killing laser that the Army is testing for battlefield use, nor the Army’s short-range air defense system, the M-SHORAD, or the Marine equivalent, the L-MADIS.
While the Epirus system and lasers are prototypes, so are some of the systems being sent to Ukraine. Northrop Grumman’s AGT was an experimental product with no production line until the government’s award, said Rob Menti, a Northrop air defense portfolio manager.
Other weapons sent are new, if more recently out of prototyping stages. L3Harris’s Vampire began testing only in 2021, with a prototype being selected by the Pentagon for shipment to Ukraine in August 2022. MSI’s Terrahawk Paladin entered serial production in January, said product manager Robert Gordon at London arms show DSEI.
One factor may be that such gun and radar systems are more exportable — Northrop’s AGT, for example, is designed with export in mind.
“We couldn't design an exquisite system that we couldn't export, or that the customer would find unaffordable,” said Menti.
The more complex a system is, by contrast, the longer it takes to export, a State Department official previously told Defense One.
For gear like night vision or sensor systems, “There's definitely going to be policy considerations that have to have to be weighed there, and those could prolong the adjudication of those requests,” said Catherine Hamilton, who leads State’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.
defenseone.com · by Sam Skove
17. SOCOM's potential new firearm is a revolution
Photos at the link. Might make an excellent home defense weapon.
But this question is the Flux Raider powered with a flux capacitor? (yes an attempt at humor)
As an aside, I see so much reporting on SOCOM R&D and technology and equipment, yet SOF leaders continue to emphasize the first SOF truth, humans are more important than hardware. While I beleive that is true certainly the media focuses on the hardware and few if any in the media write about the two SOF trinities of (1) irregular, unconventional, and support to political warfare, and (2) influence, governance, and support to indigenous forces and populations. which all emphasize that humans are more important than hardware. I guess it is just too hard to understand and write about.
SOCOM's potential new firearm is a revolution
https://www.sandboxx.us/news/socoms-potential-new-firearm-is-a-revolution/?mc_cid=6ad3042295&mc_eid=70bf478f36
sandboxx.us · by Travis Pike · November 2, 2023
Last year, Sandboxx News reviewed the Flux Raider and speculated it could be a great sidearm option for special operations forces; now, the 19th Special Forces Group is evaluating the Flux Raider for use.
The Raider is a very specialized grip module for the P320 pistol that was recently adopted by the Army as the M17 and M18.
One of the features that make the P320 so remarkable is its removable fire control unit (FCU) that contains the weapon’s “guts.” This allows the user to swipe grip modules, barrel lengths, slides, and even calibers quite easily. The Flux Raider allows the FCU to drop into the grip module and then slap on the slide and barrel from the M17. The Raider then provides a stock system and forward grip as well as an accessory rail for optics and lights – it essentially turns the M17 pistol into a submachine gun-sized weapon.
A pistol with a stock and optic is hardly a pistol and is instead a very short rifle. Although it’s barely bigger than a pistol, its effective range is radically increased as is control and overall accuracy. Sandboxx News theorized that the P320 with the Flux Raider would make a useful weapon for special operation forces who need something more capable than a handgun but much shorter than a rifle. Our speculation seemed to be on the money – or at least close to it.
Verified special operations use
Flux Raiders tested by 19th Special Forces Group. (Creative Commons)
The 19th Special Forces Group is testing the Flux Raider with the M17. This has been confirmed by Flux and substantiated by numerous publicized photos from the Group’s arms room.
The Green Berets have outfitted the handgun for modern warfare with a number of accessories, including, what appear to be, Aimpoint T2 optics, Surefire X300 weapon lights, and IR laser aiming devices.
Shooters can still use the iron sights with the Raider, but it’s much easier to shoot quickly and accurately with an optic; it’s also much easier to aim the weapon with one hand if you are using a red dot. The presence of a light- and laser-aiming device also makes them easily usable in dark environments.
Confirmation, rumors, and speculation
While we know the Raider is being tested by Green Berets, it seems that Flux was also awarded a contract with the U.S. Navy, which has led many to think the Raider is in testing with the Navy SEALs with some speculating that the Flux Raider may even be tested by DEVGRU, also known as SEAL Team 6.
There has been no confirmation of this, but according to sources speaking anonymously to Sandboxx News, the MP7 that SEAL Team 6 is using is on its way out. DEVGRU wants something that’s compact and capable, but they no longer want the MP7: the Flux Raider fills the role of a personal defense weapon and can be used with the ammo and magazines already in use by the U.S. military.
SOCOM is also reportedly testing the Flux Raider with another of its units that has not been disclosed. Versions of this gun are reportedly being field-modified to work with the M17 optic created by SIG. This optic attaches directly to the slide of the M17, which constitutes the need for a mod to remove the rear optic’s rail.
The future of the Flux Raider
The Flux Raider is a very small and compact platform. Although it is not much bigger than a handgun, it is much more capable and gives you an amazing sidearm.
It might not become the complete sidearm of choice for every member of SOCOM’s operation forces, but it would excel in some niche uses. For example, if you are climbing ladders and boarding ships, guns like the M17 combined with the Flux Raider offer you a very capable single-hand weapon. In general, the Flux Raider could be useful in any scenario involving very close quarters and will likely have a future with America’s elite warriors.
Read more from Sandboxx News
sandboxx.us · by Travis Pike · November 2, 2023
18. Iran’s Ever-Expanding Ring of Fire
Iran’s Ever-Expanding Ring of Fire
By Mark Dubowitz & Behnam Ben Taleblu
November 03, 2023
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/11/03/irans_ever-expanding_ring_of_fire_990473.html?mc_cid=6ad3042295&mc_eid=70bf478f36
In this photo released on Friday, Jan. 15, 2021, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, missiles are launched in a drill in Iran. Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard forces on Friday held a military exercise involving ballistic missiles and drones in the country's central desert, state TV reported, amid heightened tensions over Tehran's nuclear program and a U.S. pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic. (Iranian Revolutionary Guard/Sepahnews via AP)
Distance does not buy security. Over 1,000 kilometers away from the Jewish State, Yemen’s Houthi rebels or Ansar Allah – the helpers of God – as they style themselves, have made good on a years long promise and begun firing missiles and drones at Israel. Their arsenal, which includes land-attack cruise missiles and medium-range ballistic missiles that previously terrorized U.S. partners like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is courtesy of one source: The Islamic Republic of Iran.
Iran is home to the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. But Tehran’s theocrats have not just been hoarding these systems in a bid to develop a deliverable nuclear weapon. Iran has been refining this arsenal into a more effective battlefield weapon and sharing long-range strike capabilities with proxies it calls the “axis of resistance.”
This slow-motion proliferation has led to Israel’s encirclement with a ring of fire that risks turning any conflict involving the Jewish State into a potential multifront war. Today, Iran is counting on the rocket, drone, and missile arsenal of its proxies to constrain Israel from meaningfully acting against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which are Tehran’s proxies in Gaza. In addition to continuing to traffic weapons, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has also supported local production of rockets in places like Gaza since at least 2014.
In Lebanon, Iran has been helping Hezbollah, its oldest and most successful proxy in the Levant, turn its rockets into missiles should the order be given to penetrate and overwhelm Israel’s layered air and missile defenses using precision-guided munitions. Until that day comes, Tehran sees the sheer number of these projectiles as establishing a balance of terror against Jerusalem and preventing kinetic action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The successful disbursement of these long-range strike assets coupled with the increasing precision and survivability of Iran’s own missile arsenal has led to a dangerous phenomenon. As Iran’s missile and drone capabilities evolve, barriers to their use are dropping. This means the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia can expect more attacks by both Iran and its proxies.
In September 2019, for example, Iran used a combination of land-attack cruise missiles and suicide drones to target Saudi oil installations. In January 2020, Iran employed a barrage of precision-strike short-range ballistic missiles against U.S. positions in Iraq after the killing of Tehran’s top-terrorist mastermind, Qassem Soleimani, by the Trump administration. The move reportedly marked “the largest ballistic missile attack ever against Americans” and led to over 140 traumatic brain injuries. In January 2021, Iran-backed militants in Iraq fired drones at targets in Saudi Arabia. In July 2021, Iran launched a delta-wing kamikaze drone at an Israeli-owned tanker, killing a British and Romanian national. In January 2022 the Houthis fired medium-range ballistic missiles, drones, and land-attack cruise missiles at the UAE. And in September 2022, Iran fired close-range ballistic missiles and drones at northern Iraq and killed a U.S. citizen. In no instance did the U.S. or its partners respond with force.
Since the October 7 terror attack on Israel and the commensurate bolstering of the U.S. position in the region, U.S. troops have been subject to at least 24 separate rocket or drone attacks, albeit by Iran-backed militias. To date, the Biden administration has only kinetically responded once. On October 26, they launched a “precision self-defense strike” on facilities in Syria linked to the IRGC and Iran-backed militias. This followed an attack that resulted in at least 19 traumatic brain injuries and one death due to an ensuing cardiac event. Undeterred, Iran continues to threaten a wider war and it’s militias have already struck back.
The lesson? Restraint by America has not and will not beget restraint by Tehran.
Tehran is also extending the range of its projectiles and is attempting to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capability under the auspices of a space program. Advances in Iranian space-launch vehicles are what will allow both Europe and the U.S. homeland to come under threat from Iranian nuclear and conventional warhead-carrying missiles in the future.
But shorter-range Iranian projectiles may first reach Europe. With the lapse of UN missile prohibitions, which the Biden administration did nothing to stop, there is no legal barrier preventing Tehran from providing ballistic missiles to Moscow to complement the drones it has thus far given Putin to use against Ukraine.
These developments have rightly moved Europe, for the first time ever, to withhold sanctions relief initially intended for Tehran as required by the 2015 nuclear deal. As promised under that accord, the EU and UK were supposed to delist over 300 entities tied to Iran's nuclear, missile, and military programs. Europe's decision to hold the line on sovereign nonproliferation sanctions represents a seriousness not seen from the continent since late 2012 on the Iranian missile threat.
Will Biden use this opportunity to build a new sanctions architecture with U.S. allies to counter Iran’s projectiles, and will he work to restore UN restrictions on them before the ability to do so also lapses in 2025? Those are the easy choices. Harder ones for the administration are how it intends to keep Tehran on the sidelines of the current conflict and help restore deterrence against Iran-backed groups and the ring of fire they intend to ignite against Israel and America. Pinprick strikes simply will not do.
Mark Dubowitz is Chief Executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow.
19. The Case For A Robust U.S. Amphibious Warfare Force
The MICC probably supports this because of the huge ship building requirement. (note sarcasm about the military industrial congressional complex) (But I do agree that we need a strong amphibious force - we have to be able to project power)
The Case For A Robust U.S. Amphibious Warfare Force
This situation will only get worse if the Department of Defense is allowed to go forward with its plan to halt production of the LPD 17s.
19fortyfive.com · by Daniel Goure · November 1, 2023
Boxer Mike Tyson famously observed that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Unfortunately, over the past several decades, the United States planning for future conflicts and the force structure and defense industrial base necessary for such support has had to adjust to many “punches” from adversaries. The events of 9/11 once constituted such a blow, as did the rise of great power competitors, culminating in Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Hamas’ monstrous 10/7 attack on Israel and the prospect of a multi-front war between that state and its regional adversaries looks to be a third such punch.
U.S. Response
The Department of Defense has repeatedly come up short in predicting future conflicts. Unfortunately, the realization of its errors only occurs after the Pentagon has made major changes in force structure, acquisition programs, and support for the defense industrial base. In some instances, the U.S. military can rapidly respond to such strategic shifts. Much of the time options for change have been limited, or else the timelines associated with reversing changes made in forces and equipment require years and major costs.
The reality that the future is uncertain and that threats can readily morph puts a premium on flexible forces that can address a broad array of potential missions. This is the direction amphibious warfare should take for the U.S. going forward.
Designing forces for a single type of conflict, be it high-end wars or counterterrorism, carries enormous risks. Time after time, the U.S. military has had to pivot to fight different adversaries, often in regions that had not previously been front and center in military plans.
But despite the U.S. military’s need to respond to major geopolitical perturbations, alterations of force postures, divestments of assets deemed to no longer be relevant, and acquisitions of new platforms and equipment, some capabilities have demonstrated their enduring utility. One of these is amphibious warfare forces. The combination of amphibious warfare ships and tailored Marine Corps ground and air units embarked on those vessels has been in continual demand by theater commands for some 70 years.
For more than 40 of those years, the Sea Services have generated a unique formation called an Amphibious Ready Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG/MEU), that provides highly responsive forces to meet a wide range of regional and even strategic contingencies. The ARG/MEU is highly desired by Combatant Commanders (COCOMS).
Make Amphibious Warfare Capable of Adapting
Recent events have once again demonstrated the value of flexible military capabilities, especially naval forces. One of the Biden administration’s first actions in response to the events of October 7 was to move the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group (CSG) into the eastern Mediterranean. Because the threats to U.S. forces are increasing, a second CSG was moved into the region.
While CSGs deploy enormous power through the carrier air wing and the missiles aboard the accompanying surface ships, they primarily perform strike and air/missile defense capabilities. Recognizing the complexity of the situation in the Middle East and the potential need to deploy forces ashore, the Pentagon also is moving the Bataan ARG/MEU into the Mediterranean.
The ARG/MEU constitutes a unique capability only available to the U.S. military. The ARG consists of specially designed amphibious warfare ships, typically three. One of these ships is either a Landing Helicopter Assault (LHA) ship or Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD), essentially a smaller carrier with the ability to operate a combination of aircraft such as the F-35B, as well as helicopters and the Marine Corps MV-22 tiltrotor Ospreys. The remainder of the ARG consists of amphibious ships specifically designed to carry and support Marine Forces. These are either the older Landing Ship Dock (LSD) or its planned replacement, the Landing Transport Dock (LPD) 17. The LHAs, LHDs, and LPD 17s offer great mission flexibility, with enormous internal space for equipment, supplies, and Marines. They also offer state-of-the-art medical and intelligence facilities and the ability to operate fixed and rotary-wing aircraft.
The MEU usually consists of a reinforced Marine Corps infantry battalion with dedicated command and control, combat support, logistics, vehicles, indirect fires, and aviation elements, including both attack and transport helicopters, the MV-22 Osprey, and F-35B. It can be reinforced by additional Marine units, Special Forces, and even Army personnel.
The Bataan ARG/MEU is in the region precisely because of the wide range of threats to U.S. personnel and interests that may emerge. The ARG/MEU is uniquely valuable due to its ability to deploy forces ashore from a sovereign base in international waters, the breadth of its capabilities, and its ability to not only support the full range of military missions day-to-day but also transition to a wartime footing seamlessly and without delays.
ARG/MEUs in Action, and Delays
For decades, U.S. Sea Services sought to continuously maintain three ARG/MEUs abroad. Today, even as the Pentagon needs to respond to a change in the strategic environment, the Navy is only able to generate sufficient forces to maintain two ARG/MEUs. There are now protracted gaps between deployments of ARG/MEUs to specific theaters. Four out of the last five ARG/MEU deployments were delayed because of unready ships. The reason for this is a lack of modern, ready ships. Indeed, the Navy faces a chronic shortage of available amphibious warfare vessels. As a result, not only can it not meet the demand for ARGs but there are few ships available for the MEU to train on, limiting their ability to generate at-sea forces.
Building in the Wrong Direction
This situation will only get worse if the Department of Defense is allowed to go forward with its plan to halt production of the LPD 17s. The defense department wants to halt the building of LPD 17s because this class of ships does not fit with its vision of the future, which is centered around a high-end war with China. Yet, as recent events have shown, the future is unpredictable. Events short of a major conflict with a near-peer adversary are likely to still dominate U.S. security concerns. At present, and likely into the future, the ARG/MEU is one of the best tools available to the Pentagon. But for this capability to respond to the rising demand for them, the Navy needs to continue to build amphibs and do so on a steady, predictable schedule.
Congress established a floor of 31 large amphibs, essentially 10 LHAs/LHDs and 21 LPD 17s. The Marine Corps also has stressed that 31 larger amphibs is the absolute minimum number they need to address current and projected demands. But if production of LPD 17s is stopped, the fleet will rapidly shrink to as few as 24 ships. Shrinking the fleet would also negatively impact the industrial base needed to support the broader Navy and make it enormously difficult and expensive to later reverse course. This is unacceptable. Instead, the defense department needs to build five LPD 17s and 2 LHAs over the next 10 years to ensure a viable 31-ship amphibious fleet.
Dr. Daniel Goure, a 1945 Contributing Editor, is Senior Vice President with the Lexington Institute, a nonprofit public-policy research organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. He is involved in a wide range of issues as part of the institute’s national security program. Dr. Goure has held senior positions in both the private sector and the U.S. Government. Most recently, he was a member of the 2001 Department of Defense Transition Team. Dr. Goure spent two years in the U.S. Government as the director of the Office of Strategic Competitiveness in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also served as a senior analyst on national security and defense issues with the Center for Naval Analyses, Science Applications International Corporation, SRS Technologies, R&D Associates, and System Planning Corporation.
19fortyfive.com · by Daniel Goure · November 1, 2023
20. U.S., Canadian Warships Sail Through Taiwan Strait, China Says U.S. ‘Hyped Up’ Transit
U.S., Canadian Warships Sail Through Taiwan Strait, China Says U.S. ‘Hyped Up’ Transit - USNI News
news.usni.org · by Sam LaGrone · November 2, 2023
Cmdr. Charles Cooper stands watch on the bridge aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Rafael Peralta (DDG-115) in the Taiwan Strait, Nov. 2, 2023. US Navy Photo
A U.S. guided-missile destroyer and a Canadian frigate sailed through the Taiwan Strait Thursday, U.S. 7th Fleet announced.
Japan-based USS Rafael Peralta (DDG-115) and Royal Canadian Navy Halifax-class frigate HMCS Ottawa (FFH-341) made the transit while tailed by Chinese warships and aircraft.
The warships, “conducted a routine Taiwan Strait transit Nov. 1 through waters where high-seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law. The ships transited through a corridor in the Strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal state,” reads the statement from U.S. 7th Fleet. “The transit was unremarkable, unprovocative, and consistent with international law. Rafael Peralta and Ottawa’s bilateral transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the commitment of the United States and our allies and partners to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
The People’s Liberation Army released a statement saying the U.S. “hyped up” the transit and confirmed they monitored the passage of Ottawa and Rafael Peralta through the Taiwan Strait.
The last reported U.S. warship to transit the Taiwan Strait was USS Ralph Johnson (DDG-114) and HMCS Ottawa (FFH-341) in September.
The transit comes as the U.S. deployed two carrier strike groups to the Western Pacific. USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) and USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) are both operating nearby.
Chinese aircraft carrier CNS Shandong (17) deployed on its own Western Pacific patrol last week. Destroyers CNS Guilin (164) and CNS Changsha (173) and frigates CNS Xuchang (536) and CNS Huangshan (570), deployed with the carrier, USNI News reported earlier this week.
The Shandong Carrier Strike Group drilled with land-based fighters near Taiwan earlier this week.
“The Taiwan Ministry of National Defense posted on social media that it had detected PLA aircraft that morning, including J-11, J-16 and SU-30 fighters, Y-20 tankers, H-6 bombers, KJ-500 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C), Y-8 electronic intelligence, Y-9 communications countermeasures and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). According to the post, 23 of the aircraft entered Taiwan’s Southwest Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and conducted joint combat patrols with the Shandong CSG. “Republic of China Armed Forces have monitored the situation and tasked CAP aircraft, Navy vessels, and land-based missile systems to respond,” wrote USNI News on Wednesday.
Sailors with the amphibious assault ship USS America (LHA 6), alongside U.S. Marines with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, observe the guided-missile destroyer USS Rafael Peralta (DDG 115) during a simulated replenishment at sea for Talisman Sabre 23, aboard the USS America, in the Coral Sea, Aug. 1, 2023. US Navy Photo
The following is the complete statement from the U.S. 7th Fleet.
TAIWAN STRAIT – Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Rafael Peralta (DDG 115) and Royal Canadian Navy Halifax-class frigate HMCS Ottawa (FFH 341) conducted a routine Taiwan Strait transit November 1 (local time) through waters where high-seas freedoms of navigation and overflight apply in accordance with international law. The ships transited through a corridor in the Strait that is beyond the territorial sea of any coastal State. The transit was unremarkable, unprovocative, and consistent with international law. Rafael Peralta and Ottawa’s bilateral transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the commitment of the United States and our allies and partners to a free and open Indo-Pacific. Cooperation like this represents the centerpiece of our approach to a secure and prosperous region where aircraft and ships of all nations may fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows.
Related
news.usni.org · by Sam LaGrone · November 2, 2023
21. Inflection Point: How to Reverse the Erosion of U.S. and Allied Military Power and Influence
A graphic with priority enhancements at the link: https://warontherocks.com/2023/11/inflection-point-how-to-reverse-the-erosion-of-u-s-and-allied-military-power-and-influence/?utm
Conclusion:
The United States cannot and should not on its own attempt to develop the requisite operational concepts, postures, and capabilities required to realize this new approach to defeating aggression. The imperative for allied and partner participation is about more than just generating the resources needed for a credible combined defense. Because deterrence is about more than raw military power, solidarity among the leading democratically governed nations is required in diplomatic and economic dimensions as well. And closer cooperation and interdependence in the defense arena will have beneficial spillover effects in other areas, helping facilitate coordinated action to meet common challenges.
To decision-makers with already-full plates, this may seem like a rather daunting to-do list. Accomplishing it will require sustained focus and the commitment of substantial resources. But the changes in strategy, posture, and operational concepts advocated here do not require wholesale changes to military force structures and platforms. The innovations that are called for are focused mainly on what the Department of Defense calls enablers — sensors, software, munitions, base infrastructure, pre-positioning, and sustainment assets. Many of the needed types of munitions are already in production, albeit in insufficient quantities. To the extent that new platforms, such as unmanned underwater vehicles and runway-independent drones, are part of the answer, they can be built using mature technologies and should be engineered for affordability rather than for high levels of survivability. Aggressively pursuing innovations along these lines does not seem like a high price to pay to meet the challenges posed by states that seek to upend the international order that has served the causes of peace and prosperity for more than 70 years.
Inflection Point: How to Reverse the Erosion of U.S. and Allied Military Power and Influence - War on the Rocks
DAVID OCHMANEK AND ANDREW HOEHN
warontherocks.com · by David Ochmanek · November 3, 2023
As diplomatic efforts in Europe and Asia intensify, so too should U.S. military planning and preparations for a world that is drastically different and more dangerous than it was just a decade ago.
For the past decade and a half, wargaming and analysis have pointed to the conclusion that the U.S. defense strategy and posture have become insolvent. The tasks that the U.S. government and its citizens expect their military forces and other elements of national power to do internationally greatly exceed the means available to accomplish those tasks. We address this problem in our new report, Inflection Point: How to Reverse the Erosion of U.S. and Allied Military Power and Influence. As we wrote, the causes of this are many and varied but the fact is that U.S. military forces no longer enjoy the kind of comprehensive superiority that was the foundation of victories over adversary states such as Iraq and Serbia in the post-Cold War era. As a result, in realistic wargames that we have been a part of, when current and programmed U.S. forces face those of China — America’s most capable state adversary — “Blue” teams playing the United States often fail in their assigned mission to prevent “Red” from overrunning Taiwan’s defense forces. And U.S. forces pay a high price for that failure, losing scores of modern aircraft and ships and incurring thousands of casualties in the opening days of the war. The forces of adversaries less capable than China, including Russia, North Korea, and Iran, are also fielding capabilities that can significantly increase the costs and risks of military intervention, compared to the operations undertaken by U.S. forces since the end of the Cold War.
This does not necessarily mean that the United States will lose the wars that it may have to fight in the future, but it does mean that the ability to deter those wars has seriously eroded. If the essence of deterrence is confronting one’s adversaries with the real prospect of failure, there is a great deal to be done to restore the credibility of America’s deterrent.
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Re-establishing a credible posture against aggression by highly capable adversaries will call for sustained, coordinated efforts by the United States, its allies, and its key partners to rethink their approaches to defeating aggression and to recast important elements of their military forces and postures. Fortunately, wargames testing the viability of new operational concepts, postures, and capabilities show a way ahead that can support robust defenses against aggression even when U.S. and allied forces lack superiority in key domains.
Projecting Military Power Without Dominance
It is time for the United States to recast the basic approach to projecting military power that has been in place since the end of the Cold War. That strategy, which we characterize as decisive expeditionary force, held that, when confronted with a major aggressor somewhere in the world threatening U.S. interests, the United States would marshal overwhelming conventional force; project that power to the region and, perhaps, the homeland of the enemy; and impose its will on that country, producing decisive victory. The strategy was predicated on U.S. military forces that were superior in all domains to those of any adversary — land, air, sea, space, and cyber.
Much of that superiority is gone — surely with respect to China but in significant ways with respect to the forces of other, less powerful adversaries as well — and it is not coming back. At its root, the problem is that the United States and its allies no longer have a virtual monopoly on the technologies and capabilities that made them so dominant against the forces of nations like Iraq, Serbia, Libya, and Afghanistan — near-real-time sensing, high-capacity communications links, precision guidance via miniaturized electronics, and advanced software being primary among these.
The good news is that U.S. and allied forces do not require superiority to defeat aggression by even their most powerful foes. If these forces are properly postured and equipped and if they learn to fight in new ways, they can impose robust obstacles to any adversary’s invasion force and, having thwarted the attack, degrade and destroy other elements of the enemy’s national power, providing strong incentives to end the conflict. The new approach to large-scale military operations that we advocate calls for major changes in three dimensions of U.S. and allied military planning and operations: force posture, sensing and targeting, and strike capabilities.
First, the posture of U.S. forces based in Europe and, especially, in the Western Pacific today is inadequate in two ways. Those forces lack sufficient combat power to seize the initiative from China or a reconstituted Russia. And U.S. and allied bases are too vulnerable to attacks by salvos of accurate ballistic and cruise missiles. Planners should find ways to bring combat power to bear in highly contested battlespaces much more quickly than was the case in the post-Cold War era — that is, without a lengthy period of mobilization and reinforcement. They should also reduce the exposure of forward-based forces to precision attacks.
Secondly, sensing and targeting — the ability to locate the enemy, understand the broader military situation, and orchestrate operations accordingly remains central to success on the battlefield. Understanding this, America’s most capable adversaries have fielded a welter of capabilities, including multilayered air defenses, counterspace weapons, cyber warfare, and electronic jamming, intended to deny these abilities to U.S. forces. Too many of the systems that U.S. forces currently rely on to build a picture of the dynamic battlespace will be unable to function effectively in this new environment. New approaches are therefore needed to enable defending forces to reach into highly contested battlespaces and observe, identify, and track enemy forces from the very outset of hostilities to enable effective attacks on the enemy.
Thirdly, strike capabilities — for Operation Desert Storm, the coalition deployed on the order of 2,000 combat aircraft at land and sea bases within 1,000 kilometers of enemy territory. That worked because Iraq’s air force was no match for America’s, and Iraq at that time had only a few hundred short- and medium-range missiles, all of which were highly inaccurate. Doing that in a conflict against an adversary like China, which fields thousands of highly accurate missiles, would be a recipe for disaster, yet U.S. forces have made little progress in developing and fielding viable alternatives. Ways should be found to generate and deliver combat power against the enemy’s invasion force from the outset of hostilities without risking the loss of excessive numbers of forces.
If U.S. and allied forces can perform these functions effectively, even in the highly contested environments that advanced adversaries will create, the prospects for deterrence and a successful initial defense will be greatly enhanced. But while being able to prevent enemy forces from achieving their principal territorial objectives is necessary for a successful campaign, it may not be sufficient to compel a termination of hostilities. U.S. and allied forces should, therefore, also be able to defend their homelands and, over time, to hunt down and destroy enemy forces that were not attrited during the counter-invasion phase of the war, and do so at manageable cost and risk.
This emerging approach is quite different from the operations undertaken by U.S. forces since the end of the Cold War, but something akin to it will be necessary to defeat aggression by powerful states that have the ability in a conflict to seize the initiative and move quickly to secure their principal objectives. U.S. and coalition forces simply cannot count on having the time they would need to deploy to the theater and fight to gain dominance in key domains before attacking the enemy’s invasion force at scale. And herein lies the nub of the problem: Neither today’s force nor forces currently programmed by the U.S. Department of Defense appear to have the capabilities needed to execute this new approach. Significant changes to the U.S. defense program and to the forces of key allies and partners will be needed to ensure that those forces can, in combination, respond promptly to threats of an invasion, establish robust means for finding and targeting the enemy invasion force, rapidly damage and contain that force, and conduct sustained follow-on operations.
Especially in the case of China, speed is of the essence. It is not known whether China’s military and political leaders yet have confidence in the ability of their forces to prevail in a major conflict with Taiwan and the United States, but the U.S. defense establishment has surely not done enough to deny them that confidence. U.S. forces, posture, and operational concepts over the past two decades have remained an essentially static and predictable target against which China has developed increasingly potent threats.
Decisive action is needed to solidify a new operational concept for joint and combined forces; select key investment priorities; produce game-changing systems at scale; and field these in new, resilient postures in both the Indo-Pacific and European regions.
Priorities for Force Modernization
Fortunately, numerous opportunities exist that can allow U.S. and allied force planners to field forces that can execute all four elements of the new approach.
First, with regard to posture, the United States should deploy additional forces and support assets in the Western Pacific and in Europe, ensuring that they can be operated during wartime in ways that make them difficult for the enemy to locate, track, and attack. When possible, priority should be accorded to systems that can be deployed in large numbers and that are less reliant than current systems on elaborate base infrastructures and logistics tails. Promising candidates include unmanned undersea vehicles; runway-independent unmanned aerial vehicles; and, in Europe, mobile artillery, rocket, and missile systems. For forces, such as manned aircraft, that need runways and other fixed infrastructure, cost-effective passive measures, such as expedient aircraft shelters, fuel bladders, runway repair assets, and force dispersal, can significantly increase survivability.
Second, the United States, its allies, and its partners should jointly develop and deploy systems that can be used to create robust sensing and targeting grids in contested battlespaces. New technologies for sensors, autonomy, and automatic target recognition make it possible for small air, space, land, and maritime platforms to collect and share data and to process those data onboard, generating the information that joint and combined forces need to target moving enemy forces. Key attributes of these sensing grids should be affordability and mass. The sensors and the platforms carrying them should be inexpensive enough that the defending force can feed them into the battlespace in large numbers and do so quickly enough to overwhelm or exhaust enemy defenses. Promising candidates for this include maritime drones; unattended ground sensors; small unmanned aerial vehicles; and small satellites, including civil-sector constellations. Examples of all of these exist today, albeit at varying levels of maturity.
Third, in order to be confident of defeating invasions by China or a reconstituted Russia, American, allied, and partner forces need much larger quantities of specialized weapons and munitions than they have heretofore fielded. Weapons that can engage moving forces — ships, armored columns, and aircraft — from stand-off deserve special emphasis because they can enable effective attacks on the invasion force without requiring that the enemy’s air defenses first be suppressed or dismantled. Promising candidates include stand-off antiship cruise missiles and antiarmor weapons that can be delivered by long-range bombers, mobile missile launchers, and large-displacement unmanned underwater vehicles. Hypersonic weapons, although not a panacea, can make important contributions to denying a fait accompli by destroying the invader’s surface-to-air missile systems, thus increasing the survivability of subsonic weapons. The war in Ukraine is also highlighting the value of small, “killer” drones, also known as loitering munitions, for locating and attacking moving vehicles, even in the face of conventional air defenses.
The table below summarizes the sorts of capabilities that wargaming and associated analysis show are called for in order to enable the new approach to power projection described here.
Conclusion
The United States cannot and should not on its own attempt to develop the requisite operational concepts, postures, and capabilities required to realize this new approach to defeating aggression. The imperative for allied and partner participation is about more than just generating the resources needed for a credible combined defense. Because deterrence is about more than raw military power, solidarity among the leading democratically governed nations is required in diplomatic and economic dimensions as well. And closer cooperation and interdependence in the defense arena will have beneficial spillover effects in other areas, helping facilitate coordinated action to meet common challenges.
To decision-makers with already-full plates, this may seem like a rather daunting to-do list. Accomplishing it will require sustained focus and the commitment of substantial resources. But the changes in strategy, posture, and operational concepts advocated here do not require wholesale changes to military force structures and platforms. The innovations that are called for are focused mainly on what the Department of Defense calls enablers — sensors, software, munitions, base infrastructure, pre-positioning, and sustainment assets. Many of the needed types of munitions are already in production, albeit in insufficient quantities. To the extent that new platforms, such as unmanned underwater vehicles and runway-independent drones, are part of the answer, they can be built using mature technologies and should be engineered for affordability rather than for high levels of survivability. Aggressively pursuing innovations along these lines does not seem like a high price to pay to meet the challenges posed by states that seek to upend the international order that has served the causes of peace and prosperity for more than 70 years.
Become a Member
David Ochmanek is a senior international/defense researcher at the RAND Corporation. From 2009 until 2014, he was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development. Prior to joining the Office of the Secretary of Defense, he was a senior defense analyst and director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program for Project AIR FORCE at RAND. He has also served in the U.S. Air Force and the Foreign Service of the United States.
Andrew Hoehn is senior vice president and director of research and analysis at RAND Corporation. He is the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy where he was responsible for developing and implementing U.S. force planning and assessments in addition to long-range policy planning.
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by David Ochmanek · November 3, 2023
22. Washington’s Willful Blind Spot on China
"Determined to misunderstand?"
Excerpts:
Antagonism and the lack of strategic empathy on both sides are thus preventing Washington and Beijing from recognizing and genuinely responding to each other’s perspectives. Beijing, arguably the petitioner in the bilateral relationship because of China’s relative disadvantages, routinely invokes the need for diplomacy aimed at pursuing “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation.” Washington, openly confident of its relative strengths and openly critical of what it claims are Beijing’s true strategic intentions, generally dismisses this as CCP propaganda. In contrast, the U.S. side routinely describes U.S.-China diplomatic interaction as aimed minimally at “responsibly managing the competition and maintaining open channels of communication”—as Biden reportedly expressed personally to Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in late October. This suggests a U.S. lack of interest in aiming higher or perhaps a lack of readiness to assume the necessary requirements and responsibilities of doing so.
The biggest obstacle to American understanding of China thus appears to be Washington’s seeming determination to misunderstand China—rather than grant any credibility and legitimacy to its strategic outlook and goals. This only reinforces Beijing’s adversarial response. Washington will not be able to work constructively with Beijing toward overcoming bilateral mistrust—and sharing global leadership, which ultimately will be necessary—until it is prepared to consider the Chinese point of view and recognize that the long-term risks of misunderstanding and antagonizing Beijing are greater than the risks of taking into account China’s strategic interests and concerns.
Washington’s Willful Blind Spot on China
The biggest obstacle to American understanding of China appears to be Washington’s seeming determination to misunderstand China—rather than grant any credibility and legitimacy to its strategic outlook and goals.
The National Interest · by Paul Heer · October 31, 2023
China’s international behavior appears to be getting increasingly bold, more assertive, and coercive. Beijing’s diplomatic efforts to claim a global leadership role are accelerating as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping promulgates his signature “Global Security Initiative” and his pursuit of the “reform of global governance” toward the goal of a “community of common destiny for mankind.” With a particular focus on the Global South, Xi recently hosted the third “Belt and Road Forum” and is centrally involved in expanding the “BRICS” group. All these projects are clearly aimed at boosting Beijing’s international clout relative to Washington’s.
Meanwhile, China’s economic diplomacy and questionable trade practices continue to be aimed at maximizing Beijing’s global economic footprint and leverage relative to the United States. Its overseas influence and intelligence operations—both covert and overt—appear increasingly pervasive and, in some cases, increasingly malign. And China’s military behavior in the South China Sea and on the Taiwan Strait is getting more belligerent.
Echoing earlier Biden administration policy documents, the U.S. Defense Department’s annual report on “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China,” released in mid-October, assesses that Beijing’s overall objective is to “revise the international order in support of the PRC’s system of governance and national interests.” To that end, Beijing’s strategy “entails deliberate and determined efforts to amass, improve, and harness the internal and external elements of national power” that will give China a “leading position” in the “enduring competition” between the “ideological systems” of the PRC and the United States.
The prevailing American view is that these Chinese objectives and ambitions are driven by the authoritarian nature of the CCP political system and by Xi Jinping’s personal leadership in particular. There is truth in this, but it overlooks—and in some respects denies—the reactive component of Chinese international behavior: the extent to which it is a response to external variables and the strategic environment as Beijing sees it. Indeed, it is essential to examine the extent to which Chinese leaders feel the need to push back against what they view as foreign challenges to—or disdain for—China’s interests and security.
This is not to suggest that Beijing’s characterization of China’s interests and security is wholly valid or should be taken at face value. CCP leaders routinely blur the distinction between the regime’s interests and the nation’s, and they exaggerate the threats to the security of both in order to rationalize objectionable domestic and foreign policies. At the same time, China does have legitimate interests and security concerns that it perceives as being challenged or disregarded by other countries. Indeed, foreign governments themselves sometimes blur the distinction between China and the CCP regime—potentially alienating the former in their efforts to avoid conceding anything to the latter. U.S. officials often distinguish between their problems with the CCP and their support for the Chinese people, but usually with an eye to the Chinese people’s presumed democratic aspirations and little reflection on their external national ambitions.
For example, Chinese foreign policy often invokes the need to rectify the “century of humiliation”—the period from the Opium War of the 1840s through World War II in the 1940s, during which China was attacked, colonized, and exploited by foreign powers. This is cited to defend China’s sovereignty claims and pursuit of great power status. Because much of this narrative has been exaggerated and propagandized by the CCP, U.S. officials often dismiss its validity and contemporary relevance. But the “century of humiliation” is not merely a CCP slogan. It evokes real historical experiences that remain a visceral source of genuine Chinese nationalism (even among anti-Communists) and affects how Chinese people view their country’s rightful place in the world.
From Beijing’s perspective, it often appears as if Washington is unwilling to publicly acknowledge that China has any legitimate concerns or national interests. Indeed, one is hard-pressed to find official U.S. statements that do so because the political environment in Washington—in which the Republicans and Democrats are competing to be toughest on Beijing—seems to proscribe conceding the validity of any aspect of the Chinese point of view. It also seems to proscribe acknowledging that Chinese behavior might in any way be reactive to U.S. policies and actions. Instead, U.S.-China tensions are attributed almost exclusively to the nature of the CCP, the unreasonableness of its international behavior, and its expansive strategic ambitions.
Beijing also perceives that its positions on international issues—unless they support U.S. policies—are similarly dismissed as duplicitous, disingenuous, or self-serving. This has been reflected in China’s approach to the war in Ukraine, where Beijing has asserted that Russia has “legitimate security interests” that were compromised by NATO expansion, and its approach to the Israel-Gaza war, where it has sought to promote the legitimate security interests of the Palestinians. Although Beijing maintains these views for genuine strategic reasons, in both cases, the Chinese position has been largely rebuffed in Washington as implicitly supporting aggression and inadequate to advancing peace.
On territorial and sovereignty issues, Beijing also sees Washington as generally dismissive of assertions that China’s aggressive behavior is in any measure a reaction to steps taken by other countries. In the South China Sea, there is a long and complex history to the interactive dynamic that has fueled regional tensions, but Beijing garners no empathy for its view that other countries have also assertively pushed the envelope in pursuit of their sovereignty claims. This is especially evident with regard to Taiwan. There is virtually no public acknowledgment in Washington that Beijing’s escalatory behavior on the Taiwan Strait might be a response to policies and statements emanating from Taipei and Washington, which have eroded the “one China” understandings that largely maintained stability for four decades. Instead, the rising cross-strait tensions are attributed almost exclusively to Chinese impatience and internally driven aggression.
Beijing also sees Washington as largely disregarding Chinese assessments of the strategic environment, especially when they incorporate judgments about U.S. intentions. The new 2023 DOD report on China states that PRC leaders view the United States as “deploying a whole-of-government effort meant to contain the PRC’s rise.” This correctly summarizes Beijing’s view, but it overlooks the fact that the U.S. government is expressly engaged in a “whole-of-government effort” to counter, constrain, and compete against China. Many U.S. politicians have even explicitly referred to this strategy as “containment.” Similarly, the DOD report states that PRC leaders have “characterized China’s view of strategic competition in terms of a rivalry among powerful nation-states. . . as well as a clash of opposing ideological systems.” This, too, is correct, but it overlooks the fact that the Biden administration itself routinely talks about “strategic competition” with China in terms of a rivalry between great powers and a clash between ideological systems. It thus should not be surprising if Beijing views Washington’s own rhetoric as disingenuous and self-serving.
Nor should it be surprising, given all these indicators of Washington’s apparent disregard for the Chinese perspective, that Chinese leaders are inclined to discount U.S. concerns in a similar fashion. More importantly, they are also inclined and even motivated to double down with their own competitive “whole-of-government” approach to confronting the challenge they perceive from the United States. In short, Beijing’s increasingly active pursuit of global influence relative to—and at the expense of—Washington is a predictable response to its failure to make headway in getting U.S. acknowledgment of and attention to Chinese interests and security concerns. Indeed, Beijing has arguably grown more ambitious, arrogant, and provocative in its international behavior because of its frustration with the lack of substantive progress in engagement with Washington. From the Chinese perspective, the U.S. side has made the strategic competition a zero-sum game. Beijing will act accordingly by using its levers of power and influence to bolster China’s position and effect changes in “global governance” that are more conducive to Chinese interests and strategic objectives. This is central to the reactive component of China’s international behavior, which is no less a driver of that behavior than the nature of the CCP regime or Xi Jinping’s personal ambitions.
Would the United States, or any other confident and powerful nation, react differently to circumstances in which its interests, security, and strategic perspective appear to be largely rejected—or deemed illegitimate—by a strategic rival? How do we expect Beijing to act in such circumstances? For example, how do we expect Beijing to act with regard to the Taiwan issue? By admitting the error of its ways, its exclusive responsibility for cross-strait tensions, and its relative vulnerability in a potential conflict scenario, thus abandoning its pursuit of unification with Taiwan? That is not going to happen because Beijing’s commitment to its position on Taiwan is visceral, and its calculus of its relative leverage is strong and may be getting stronger. Nor will Beijing retreat from its strategic calculus or principles about Ukraine, Gaza, the South China Sea, global governance, or a range of other international issues because Washington believes it has the balance of leverage and the moral high ground.
Again, none of this is meant to suggest that Beijing’s strategic ambitions and behavior are benign or that Washington should acquiesce to them. China seeks to maximize its global power, influence, legitimacy, and security relative to and at the expense of the United States. And it does seek revisions to the international system that facilitate and advance that goal. But that goal is partly a product of Beijing’s assessment that Washington is determined to minimize China’s power, influence, and legitimacy—and thus its security—and is unwilling to accept the validity of China’s external interests or pursuit of a global leadership role. This is the zero-sum contest that Beijing believes Washington has imposed upon China, even though Washington appears to judge that Beijing is responsible for making it zero-sum.
Does the United States really fear that China will succeed in supplanting it as the global hegemon by winning the hearts and minds of much of the rest of the world and imposing on it the CCP system of governance and development? That overestimates Beijing’s strategic intentions, underestimates the agency of other countries, and reflects a striking lack of confidence in the global appeal and legitimacy of democracy and capitalism. In any event, the international system is reshaping itself in the wake of historic shifts in the distribution of wealth, power, and influence—not because China has launched an effort to reshape it. Beijing, nonetheless, is taking advantage of the opportunity to drive the process to its benefit, while Washington appears instead to be resisting or denying the historical trend. The United States should be competing with Beijing to capitalize on it, with confidence in the assets and strengths it brings to the process.
China’s competitive moves against the United States and its efforts to cultivate support from other countries are partly driven by Beijing’s judgment that this probably will be more productive than seeking U.S. acknowledgment of and attention to its views through reciprocal engagement. Chinese leaders will not abandon the latter in their bilateral interactions with Washington, but they feel the need to maneuver for advantage both multilaterally and globally. They recognize that the United States has prioritized strategic competition with China over cooperation and engagement, so they are accelerating their plans to meet that competition. In short, Beijing will step up its efforts to score points against Washington because it judges that it is not scoring points with Washington and sees diminishing prospects for doing so.
Antagonism and the lack of strategic empathy on both sides are thus preventing Washington and Beijing from recognizing and genuinely responding to each other’s perspectives. Beijing, arguably the petitioner in the bilateral relationship because of China’s relative disadvantages, routinely invokes the need for diplomacy aimed at pursuing “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation.” Washington, openly confident of its relative strengths and openly critical of what it claims are Beijing’s true strategic intentions, generally dismisses this as CCP propaganda. In contrast, the U.S. side routinely describes U.S.-China diplomatic interaction as aimed minimally at “responsibly managing the competition and maintaining open channels of communication”—as Biden reportedly expressed personally to Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in late October. This suggests a U.S. lack of interest in aiming higher or perhaps a lack of readiness to assume the necessary requirements and responsibilities of doing so.
The biggest obstacle to American understanding of China thus appears to be Washington’s seeming determination to misunderstand China—rather than grant any credibility and legitimacy to its strategic outlook and goals. This only reinforces Beijing’s adversarial response. Washington will not be able to work constructively with Beijing toward overcoming bilateral mistrust—and sharing global leadership, which ultimately will be necessary—until it is prepared to consider the Chinese point of view and recognize that the long-term risks of misunderstanding and antagonizing Beijing are greater than the risks of taking into account China’s strategic interests and concerns.
Paul Heer is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He served as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia from 2007 to 2015. He is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2018).
Image: Shutterstock.
The National Interest · by Paul Heer · October 31, 2023
23. The End of Israel’s Gaza Illusions
Excerpts:
Almost a month since the October massacre, the war in Gaza has just begun. Waging it, Israel will need to attain its goals and continue fighting for Hamas’s enduring defeat over years to come. Even if a wider war is avoided now, including in the north and with Iran, Tehran’s ring of terror armies around Israel will still need to be melted sooner or later, and surely before Iran attempts to become a nuclear-armed power. Israel’s next defense leadership will need to rebuild and rebolster its intelligence and early warning capability, its decisive military power, its defense forces, its civil defense and first response capability, its border defenses, and its community protection arrangements.
Given that Iran is waging a multifront warfare against Israel and the threat of its proxy terror armies is increasing, Israel will need to make countering Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” a highest national priority for years to come. At the same time, Israel must avoid triggering a “lost decade” in its economy, as occurred in the mid-seventies following the strategic surprise of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Beyond flexing its military muscle, Israel will need to cultivate and strengthen its relations with regional and global partners, advance the U.S.-led security architecture in the Middle East, and seek bold new paths to break out of the dead-end conflict with the Palestinians.
Israel will require a long and painful healing to regain its balance, its defense posture, and its composure. But first and foremost, it will need to come to terms with the fact that this war is different from any it has fought in many years and that it must transform its approach to security. Both will take a long time and extraordinary effort. But unless Israel commits unwaveringly to these fundamental tasks, it could soon find itself in another terrible crisis. The unifying energy that has brought the country together since the attacks gives hope that it can rise to the challenge.
The End of Israel’s Gaza Illusions
This War Is Unlike Any Other—and Must Begin at Home
November 3, 2023
Foreign Affairs · by Assaf Orion · November 3, 2023
In the nearly four weeks since Hamas’s heinous October 7 attacks, Israel has begun a deep transformation that will be felt for years to come. As Israeli forces embark on the more difficult stages of a ground campaign to defeat Hamas, two themes have become particularly important. First, it is crucial to understand that this is not just another round of conflict in Gaza. To be successful, the country must countenance a war of exceptional scope and difficulty that could last for many months.
Israel will have to deploy military strategies drawn from long-war paradigms alongside a multiyear counterinsurgency campaign that also leverages diplomatic, informational, and economic tools. In this comprehensive mission, Israeli forces can learn much from prior campaigns, including some from earlier eras in the country’s history. But they will also need to be resolute, patient, and nimble in fighting a war that in many ways will be different from any previous one Israel has fought.
The second insight is that the horrific massacre of at least 1,200 Israelis by Hamas death squads marked a catastrophic collapse of Israel’s existing security strategy. The failure of Israeli intelligence and security forces and of their overseers in the government cannot be overstated. The old deterrence model—which assumed that Hamas could be contained through defensive technology and occasional limited and indecisive deterrence operations in Gaza—is dead. The Israeli defense establishment will have to consider bold new approaches at every level to prevent such disasters in the future. Never again.
In this regard, Israel’s political and security leadership has much to answer for. Although the full details have yet to be uncovered, stark findings have already come to light. Potential warning signs were ignored, dismissed, or downplayed, and misguided security priorities may have made the attack more deadly. In addition to a comprehensive postwar inquiry about what went wrong, the Israeli public will demand a full accounting from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about his own role in the debacle.
Much will depend on how well Israel can achieve its difficult war goals against Hamas and how quickly it can create a new and effective security paradigm in the conflict’s wake. Beyond Gaza, Israel will need to address the broader network of threats and armed groups backed by Iran now menacing the country on multiple fronts. These include threats from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, as well as from within the Palestinian population in the West Bank.
THE DETERRENCE DELUSION
The deterrence model that previously guided Israeli security policies toward Gaza took shape over many years. After Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas forcefully took control of the strip in 2007, the Israeli government sought to contain Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), relying on intelligence early warnings, strong border defenses, and the occasional use of force to deter further aggression. Fairly frequently, flare-ups would arise that escalated to larger military conflicts, as was the case in 2006, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2022, and May 2023. In each of these operations, it became clear that Hamas was acquiring stronger and better weapons, including longer-range rockets with larger warheads, along with drones that could pose aerial and naval threats.
It also was apparent that Hamas was building a large and increasingly sophisticated network of underground tunnels. During each conflict, Hamas did its best to punch through Israel’s defenses and reach the communities around Gaza’s border. But Israel’s antirocket defenses also improved, as did its antitunnel defenses, and these Hamas operations mostly failed—on the ground, underground, in the air, and at sea.
Despite Hamas’s growing capabilities, these failures convinced Israel that its defense strategy was working: Hamas was unable to effectively strike Israel’s population; and it faced significant retribution for attempting such strikes and could be rewarded with material support for keeping calm. Israeli officials also concluded that trying to destroy Hamas’s forces outright would be too costly and might create dangerous new problems. That assumption was widely shared by Western officials: toppling Hamas, they feared, would result in a power vacuum that Israel would have to fill by directly ruling Gaza—a prospect that Israel has long shunned.
Limiting conflict with Hamas served Netanyahu’s goal of splitting the Palestinians.
Thus, the Israeli government kept conflicts with Hamas limited in scope and generally fairly short. Each flare-up lasted between several days and a few weeks—the 2014 conflict lasted almost two months—and usually ended with some kind of cease-fire arrangement mediated by Egypt and combined with economic measures. This limited-conflict concept, combined with Israel’s tacit acceptance of Hamas rule in Gaza, also served Netanyahu’s goal of splitting the Palestinian system: by allowing Hamas to maintain control of the strip, Israel could weaken the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and sidestep a political dialog with it.
But this approach also allowed Hamas, supported by Qatar, to acquire the resources it needed to transform its military into a highly capable army of terror. Despite the growing threat of Hamas’s rocket arsenal, for example, Israel chose not to forcefully disrupt Hamas’s weapons programs except during these intermittent, short-lived conflicts. In between, Hamas continued to develop new strategies to challenge Israel without crossing the threshold into a wider escalation. For example, beginning in 2018, Hamas began organizing the so-called Marches of Return—encouraging large numbers of Palestinians to gather near the border fence with Israel. Viewed in the West as demonstrations against Israel’s blockade of Gaza, these marches provided a way for Hamas to cover up its military activities. Hamas embedded its armed fighters in the crowds, using them as a cover to reach the border fence and try to launch attacks against units of the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli communities near Gaza.
The IDF was able to repel these attackers and prevent a border breach by dispersing the crowds with nonlethal weapons and targeting the leaders, killing hundreds over many months. Yet the marches also provided a way for Hamas fighters to prepare for its October 7 offensive. Thus, in the weeks before the October massacre, there were again large gatherings of people near the border fence. Six Gazans died when an explosive device blew up on September 13 in what was very likely part of the preparations for the attack. Also in the weeks before the October 7, tractors were brought to the border area under the pretext of agricultural work and to prepare for the border protests. Later, these tractors would be used to tear down the fence and open the way for Hamas’s death squads.
A DOUBLE RECKONING
On the morning of October 7, the last day of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, Israel woke up to a double catastrophe. The attack by about 3,000 Hamas terrorists against Israel’s southern communities and defense forces was utterly devastating for the Israeli population, leaving at least 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 240 kidnapped in Gaza. But it also was devastating for Israeli defense policy.
The government and security establishment had failed to prevent a well-known extremist group—one that it had been closely monitoring for many years—from carrying out horrific atrocities against Israeli civilians. The terrorists rampaged for hours through dozens of communities, shattering Israelis’ sense of security across the country. First responders heroically fought the attackers, many paying with their lives, but several hours passed before a more organized military response was able to reach the attacked communities. For many victims, it was too late.
Almost instantly, the concepts, policies, and beliefs that had for so long governed Israeli security doctrine came crashing down. Among them were the assumptions that the Palestinian conflict could be contained, that Hamas had put its own governance and the economic well-being of the Gaza Strip ahead of its jihadi ideology and its genocidal plans for Israel, and that simply having a far stronger military than Hamas’s was sufficient. It had become almost axiomatic that simply employing advanced ground and air defense technologies, such as the border fence and Iron Dome, with occasional recourse to airstrikes from the outside, could prevent major attacks, allowing Israelis to contain Hamas with moderate costs and relatively limited manpower.
A home destroyed in the October 7 Hamas attacks, Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Israel, November 2023
Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters
Israelis know there is no going back to the old model. On November 1, the Hamas politburo member Ghazi Hamad said that Hamas will repeat such attacks until Israel is annihilated. Unless Hamas is neutralized, the horrors of October 7 could be visited upon every home in the country. Therefore, unlike in any previous Gaza campaign, Israeli forces must not just reestablish deterrence but eliminate the Hamas threat entirely.
Since the attacks, this campaign has steadily advanced, step by step. In the days after the attacks, Israel’s Southern Command closed the Gaza border, preventing additional attacks into Israel and capturing or killing any terrorists remaining on Israeli land. Central Command began arresting hundreds of Hamas members in the West Bank, where Hamas seeks to undermine the PA and promote terror against Israel, and foiling active threats from Palestinian cities and refugee camps. Meanwhile, the Israeli air force has been hitting thousands of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. Finally, on October 27, Israeli ground forces entered Gaza and began slowly advancing toward Gaza City, the center of Hamas’s political organization and terror army.
At the same time, Israel continues to face rocket and missile fire from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and even Yemen. The IDF’s Northern Command is engaged in continuous exchanges with Hezbollah on the northern border with Lebanon, where Hezbollah has been launching rockets missiles, drones, and deploying snipers at Israeli forces, positions, aircraft, and occasionally civilian communities, in an effort to divert Israeli defense resources away from Gaza. Since October 7, more than 50 Hezbollah fighters have been killed as well as about a dozen Hamas and PIJ fighters, who had been attacking alongside Hezbollah. Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthis have fired drones and cruise and ballistic missiles, most of which have been intercepted by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Israeli border communities have been evacuated, and sirens frequently send people into shelters and saferooms across the country. These threats will continue for the foreseeable future.
MONTHS, NOT WEEKS
As Israel begins large-scale ground operations in Gaza, it is crucial to recognize that it will be impossible to defeat Hamas quickly. In contrast to most previous Israeli operations since the First Lebanon War in 1982, a long campaign will be necessary to degrade, isolate, and, over time, eradicate Hamas from Gaza, just as it took years for the U.S.-led coalition to deliver an enduring defeat of the Islamic State (or ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. To achieve lasting results, moreover, a long war cannot rely exclusively on force. It must include diplomatic, informational, legal, and economic efforts, supported by both regional and international partners.
Israel, then, will not be able to model its current campaign against Hamas on previous operations in Gaza. Instead, Israeli strategists will need to draw inspiration from the longer conflicts in Israeli history, including the 1948–49 War of Independence, the 1967–70 War of Attrition, and Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, which sought to uproot the threat of terrorism from the West Bank, after hundreds of Israelis were killed in the Second Intifada.
These long wars provide relevant lessons in how to conduct such a campaign. This is a model of war that involves continuous, full-mobilization and whole-of-society efforts in which military actions of varied intensity are conducted across multiple fronts and results are delivered not immediately but over a longer time span. These earlier wars also underscore the high costs and potential risks of long campaigns, including the exceptional resources needed for the war effort and war economy and the deep national resolve necessary to stay the course over months and even years.
Operation Defensive Shield, which ran from March to May 2002, for instance, was a focused operation to eradicate Hamas and PA terror cells, employing five IDF divisions in West Bank towns and cities. Effectively breaking the second intifada, this larger operation became a turning point that, along with continuing counterterrorism efforts, reduced the number of terror attacks and victims. But in contrast to what Israel faced in the West Bank in 2002, the current threat from Hamas in Gaza is much more complicated, with a heavily-armed enemy that is hidden in dense urban areas amid a very large civilian population. Thus it is necessary to bring a more powerful use of force, alongside efforts to avoid a humanitarian crisis and informational efforts to counter intense Hamas propaganda in the fight for world opinion.
To achieve lasting results, a long war cannot rely exclusively on force.
Specific aspects of the current war can also draw on special operations from earlier decades. For example, according to reports, the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, has established an operations room to hunt down the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre, echoing Israel’s campaign to eliminate the Black September terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics. That effort required ongoing intelligence and operational efforts across the globe and political backing in a multiyear campaign; it resulted in some mishaps, but it established the firm understanding that Israel will not accept any such attacks on its people. Hamas leaders are naturally high on Israel’s target list, and several Hamas military leaders, some of whom were involved in the October 7 offensive, have already been killed during the fighting in Gaza.
Of course, the long-war paradigm has pitfalls of its own. Israel’s drawn-out campaign in Lebanon offers a cautionary tale. Beginning in 1982 with the successful eradication of armed Palestinian organizations in Lebanon and the deportation of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat from Beirut, the operation dragged Israel into Lebanon’s quagmire and devolved into a protracted war with Hezbollah, which effectively lasted until the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. This legacy explains much of Israel’s reluctance over the past two decades to wage large and decisive ground operations, contributing to the rationale for the limited conflict approach to Gaza.
It is thus realistic to expect that the unfolding war against Hamas in Gaza will not be limited to a single, finite offensive. Instead, it will probably take shape around an extended series of military operations, each degrading specific Hamas capabilities, until the group can be defeated. As has already become clear, the war effort is now focused on an intense offensive in Gaza, combining heavily armored ground units with extensive firepower from air, land, and sea and supported by a large array of intelligence. The ground forces are facing well-prepared enemies above and below ground, who are using civilians and sensitive locations, such as hospitals, both as human shields and as fodder for anti-Israel propaganda. Israel will need to defeat Hamas in the open and in urban areas, in the tunnels, on the beaches, in the air, and in the international media.
But Israel cannot neglect other fronts in the meantime. In parallel to the Gaza operation, a strong defensive strategy has to be maintained to thwart all incoming threats. And given the critical support of the United States in this war, Israel also has to draw some lessons from coalition warfare, which is unusual for its military and strategic culture. Recalling British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s words, Israel would do well to remember that the only thing worse than having allies is not having them, and it must make a continual effort to communicate and coordinate with its partners in the world and in the region.
Defining what it means to defeat Hamas is also important. Beyond a military defeat and ending Hamas rule in Gaza, the war needs to address Hamas’s power elsewhere and in other dimensions. Uprooting the group as an ideological and social movement, one that now has deep reach in Palestinian society, will demand more than just crushing it on the battlefield. Hamas’s radical ideology and narratives, which are a threat to moderate Arab states as well as to Israel, must be countered by local and regional voices. Having Qatar’s Al Jazeera on Hamas’s side gives Hamas an important advantage among Arab populations across the region, which are stirred by constant visuals of destruction and suffering in Gaza. Initial Israeli military wins must be followed by continuous efforts to prevent Hamas’s resurgence and to allow the ascendance of a moderate alternative. In other words, Israel must find ways to rally Palestinian and regional parties to bring about a sustainable solution.
THE HUMAN STAIN
The unprecedented nature of the October 7 attacks has also left Israel with difficult humanitarian dilemmas. One is the mounting numbers of Palestinian fatalities, which the Hamas Health Ministry reports has exceeded 9,000, along with many more injured. This number does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. To uphold international law and maintain legitimacy for its necessary war in Gaza, Israel warned north Gaza residents to evacuate to the southern part of the Strip, decreasing the risk of their becoming collateral damage in Israeli strikes on Hamas targets. Hamas, however, urged residents to stay put and has continued to use them as human shields.
Crucial for Israel is the question of the more than 240 hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, including both Israelis and foreign nationals. Alongside its military operations, Israel, with the help of international and regional partners and mediators, will need to do everything it can to secure the hostages’ safe release. In this context, military operations cut both ways. On the one hand, they can serve to raise pressure on Hamas to release the hostages and they may increase the possibility of rescue operations—as was demonstrated by the rescue of one hostage by Israeli forces three days after the ground offensive began.
But military operations also raise the risk to the hostages themselves, who are used by Hamas as human shields. Hostage release deals may be conducted before the fighting ends by holding humanitarian pauses or opening safe corridors, and Hamas will do its best to exploit any suspension in fighting to unhinge Israel’s military operations and heighten the tensions between the Israeli public, the government, the armed forces, and foreign countries whose citizens are among the hostages.
At the same time, the Israeli government has had to evacuate dozens of Israeli communities from the southern border area around Gaza and the northern border with Lebanon. Currently, about 130,000 Israelis—more than one percent of the populace—are internally displaced. Israel must care for this large displaced population and guarantee its security from cross-border threats in Gaza and Lebanon before the residents are able to return. This will demand not only adopting a new and robust defense posture but also convincing Israelis that they will not find themselves in another October 7 ordeal, or worse. Some voices have already called for the IDF to establish security zones to push enemy threats away from Israel’s southern and northern borders—deep into Gaza and Lebanon.
Although Israel can do much in its current offensive in Gaza, Lebanon remains a major problem. After the 2006 war, Hezbollah blatantly crushed the concept of a buffer zone with Israel, which had been mandated by UN Security Council Resolution 1701. The growing numbers of dead Hezbollah combatants are proving both that its elite Radwan units are deployed on Israel’s border and that Hezbollah poses an imminent threat to Israel’s northern communities, which are now evacuated. If diplomacy and economic tools, along with limited force, fail to remove the threat, other much more costly options will have to be considered.
NEW GAZA, NEW ISRAEL
Once Israel has achieved its military objectives against Hamas, it will need to deal with larger questions. The first is how to stabilize Gaza. Israel cannot be responsible for Gaza’s governance, but the Israeli government will have to act responsibly and allow interested parties and partners to provide for the needs of the Palestinian civilian population there and prevent the resurgence of terrorist threats. Global and regional partners, including the Gulf states, as well as the members of the Abraham Accords and Israel’s older regional partners, Egypt and Jordan, will be critical partners in supporting a moderate, legitimate, and responsible Palestinian administration; providing political backing and financial support; and helping it face the daunting task of reconstruction, governance, deradicalization, and stabilization.
The effort to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, until recently the focus of much attention by the U.S. and Israeli governments, took a major hit by the Hamas attack, which aimed to derail it. Although it is less likely to make significant and formal progress while the war is unfolding, Saudi Arabia remains a relevant player in helping shape Gaza’s future and Israeli-Palestinian relations, perhaps even more so now. The role of Qatar, however, must be limited. It has funneled billions of dollars to Gaza, furnishing Hamas with resources it has used for building its terror army, supporting its cause through the powerful reach of Al Jazeera across the Arab world, and hosting Hamas’s political leadership in Doha.
In essence, Gaza must ultimately be governed by capable Gazans and Palestinians, who are provided with regional and international support, as well as careful oversight to prevent the resurgence of terrorism. The PA could have a potential leadership role there if it can pull its act together and rally popular, regional, and international support, commit to preventing terrorism, and overcome likely violent counterefforts by Hamas, which will surely try to regroup after the major Israeli operations end. Delegating security and basic governance to moderate Palestinian groups would be in line with the approach taken by Israel’s defense establishment toward the West Bank, where Palestinian security forces share Israel’s goals of countering Hamas and other extremist groups. But it is much less in line with the current Israeli government’s right-wing members, who see the PA as an agent of terror that is no better than Hamas.
Sooner or later, the Israeli public will demand accountability and change.
Although U.S. President Joe Biden has expressed his hope for a two-state solution, the current circumstances have made that vision seem beyond reach. Preserving the two-state option for the future was already a challenge, given the PA’s abysmal situation and Israel’s increasingly polarized politics in the years and months before October 7. Since then, it has become even more far-fetched. Yet Arab and Western leaders insist that the PA has to be part of the Gaza endgame. The PA itself, while unenthusiastic about actually governing Gaza, already links its role there with a wider framework addressing the Palestinian theater as a whole. One may assume that the aftermath of the war will include some political process with PA and regional participation, perhaps as part of wider integration efforts.
Most important for Israel will be devising a new security approach to protect its borders and keep its population safe. Ultimately, Israel’s national security begins at home. After the Netanyahu government was established in December 2022, political turmoil about the government’s judicial overhaul and protests swept the country for months, weakening its resilience, defense, and deterrence and contributing to its enemies’ sense that it was ripe for attack. West Bank strife drew forces and attention there, at the expense of the Gaza border, while maintaining understandings with Hamas about economic measures deepened the common belief that escalation was unlikely. All these factors contributed to the disastrous intelligence, military, and policy failures that allowed October 7 to happen.
Israel’s chiefs of defense and intelligence have already accepted responsibility for their part and they will surely resign after the war ends. Netanyahu has so far declined to take responsibility for the catastrophe occurring under his leadership and continues to maneuver between deflection and denial, promising “answers after the war.” The long-war concept, so far indefinite in duration, could allow the current government to stay in power despite the unprecedented crisis in Israel. Yet although the timeline is still unknown, the Israeli public, currently mobilized for the war effort, will sooner or later demand accountability and change.
THE WAR AT HOME
Almost a month since the October massacre, the war in Gaza has just begun. Waging it, Israel will need to attain its goals and continue fighting for Hamas’s enduring defeat over years to come. Even if a wider war is avoided now, including in the north and with Iran, Tehran’s ring of terror armies around Israel will still need to be melted sooner or later, and surely before Iran attempts to become a nuclear-armed power. Israel’s next defense leadership will need to rebuild and rebolster its intelligence and early warning capability, its decisive military power, its defense forces, its civil defense and first response capability, its border defenses, and its community protection arrangements.
Given that Iran is waging a multifront warfare against Israel and the threat of its proxy terror armies is increasing, Israel will need to make countering Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” a highest national priority for years to come. At the same time, Israel must avoid triggering a “lost decade” in its economy, as occurred in the mid-seventies following the strategic surprise of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Beyond flexing its military muscle, Israel will need to cultivate and strengthen its relations with regional and global partners, advance the U.S.-led security architecture in the Middle East, and seek bold new paths to break out of the dead-end conflict with the Palestinians.
Israel will require a long and painful healing to regain its balance, its defense posture, and its composure. But first and foremost, it will need to come to terms with the fact that this war is different from any it has fought in many years and that it must transform its approach to security. Both will take a long time and extraordinary effort. But unless Israel commits unwaveringly to these fundamental tasks, it could soon find itself in another terrible crisis. The unifying energy that has brought the country together since the attacks gives hope that it can rise to the challenge.
- ASSAF ORION is Liz and Mony Rueven International Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He was formerly the head of strategic planning on the Israel Defense Forces General Staff.
- MORE BY ASSAF ORION
Foreign Affairs · by Assaf Orion · November 3, 2023
24. Satellites and social media offer hints about Israel's ground war strategy in Gaza
Commercial satellites and a population with social media can make OPSEC and deception very challenging.
Graphics and imagery at the link: https://www.npr.org/2023/11/03/1210326996/one-week-into-israels-ground-war-in-gaza-satellites-and-socialf-media-give-hints?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm
Satellites and social media offer hints about Israel's ground war strategy in Gaza
NPR · by By · November 3, 2023
Israeli ground forces have been in Gaza for a week. So far, their focus seems to be on Gaza City. Israel Defense Forces/AP
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country's military leadership have been tight-lipped about Israel's push into the Gaza Strip. But one week into the ground operation, satellite imagery and social media posts are providing some clues about where Israeli forces are moving, and about the overall strategy of their campaign — whose goal, officials say, is destroying Hamas.
NPR examined available satellite images, as well as social media posts from both bystanders and the Israel Defense Forces. Based on those images and conversations with military experts, here's what can be gleaned about the operation so far.
Israeli forces have encircled Gaza City, probably in preparation for prolonged operations
Israeli forces appear to be at the edge of Gaza City along three axes: two from the north, which are pushing down toward the city itself, and one from the southeast that has moved across the entire Gaza Strip.
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It's that third axis south of Gaza City that appears to have covered the most ground in the first week. Eyewitness video posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Oct. 30 showed what appears to be an Israeli tank engaging a civilian vehicle on one of the main north-south roads between Gaza City and the southern parts of the strip.
High-resolution satellite imagery taken by the company Planet on Oct. 31 shows roughly two-dozen Israeli armored vehicles stationed near the road, presumably to control access.
A satellite image from October 31 shows around two dozen Israeli armored vehicles positioned near Salah Al Din Road in the Gaza Strip. The road is a main artery between Gaza City and the south of the strip. Planet Labs PBC
A second satellite image from a European Space Agency satellite taken on Nov. 1 showed evidence that Israeli armor had advanced to within three-quarters of a mile (a little over a kilometer) of the coast. Eyewitness videos also appeared to document heavy fighting in the neighborhood of Tal Al Hawa, on the southern end of Gaza City near the coast.
Clashes reported in the vicinity of Al-Rashid Street near Tal Al-Hawa, a neighbourhood in southern Gaza City. pic.twitter.com/wSdBOKotRe
— Aurora Intel (@AuroraIntel) November 1, 2023
Late Thursday, the Israeli military said it had completely encircled Gaza City, cutting it off from the rest of the territory.
That's a standard tactic on any battlefield, says Gian Gentile, a senior historian at the Rand Corp, and a retired colonel in the U.S. Army.
"Isolating an objective is a basic approach to war-fighting," he says.
So far, there don't appear to be enough Israeli forces present for a full occupation of the city
An image from Planet taken Oct. 30 shows dozens of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles arrayed in staging areas along the northern edge of Gaza City. Film and still images released by the Israeli military show forces in the same area.
Based on the satellite imagery, the Israelis probably have a brigade consisting of several thousand troops operating in the northwest part of the city alone, says Sean MacFarland, a retired three-star general in the U.S. Army who conducted operations against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
A satellite image from the commercial company planet shows Israeli armored vehicles parked on the northern edge of Gaza City. Thousands of Israeli troops have entered the area, but the force is likely too small to occupy the whole city. Planet Labs PBC
"It looks like they're starting to push in to establish a presence on the outskirts that they can use to launch operations deeper into the city," he says. Iraqi forces employed a similar tactic when attempting to regain control of the city of Ramadi from ISIS forces in 2015.
But even if the other two axes also contain about a brigade, that wouldn't be nearly enough to fully occupy or even conduct a building-by-building sweep of a dense, urban environment like Gaza City, says Gentile.
"If you wanted to physically control Gaza City, with the population size, all the roads, all the angles and everything else, it would require multiple divisions to do that," Gentile says. (A division consists of multiple brigades.)
MacFarland says, going block by block to clear the city "would probably require more troops than the Israelis want to commit to that effort," in part because they need their forces in the north to protect the border with Lebanon.
Israeli armored vehicles move past destroyed buildings during the ground operation in the Gaza Strip. Experts say that Israel is unlikely to commit enough troops to fully secure Gaza City. Israel Defense Forces/AP
"What they may choose to do instead is control the city from the outskirts and conduct operations inside," he says. Such raids might allow them to destroy tunnels and other key parts of Hamas infrastructure without committing to a full occupation.
"They're pushing in with ground forces, but their objective does not appear to be holding territory and setting up checkpoints," agrees Seth Jones, who oversees the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
He believes that Israel is more likely to use airstrikes, armor and dismounted infantry to strike at individual targets. "I think that is what they're doing, it's very specifically designed to go after infrastructure," Jones says.
Israeli troops appear to be operating under rules of engagement that allow significant civilian casualties
On Oct. 31, Israeli fighter jets conducted a massive airstrike on a section of the Jabalia refugee camp just north of Gaza City. According to the Israel Defense Forces, the strike was conducted with intelligence gathered by Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service.
Palestinians check the destruction in the aftermath of an Israeli strike the previous night in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees. The strike is believed to have killed many dozens. BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images
The Israeli military said dozens of Hamas fighters were killed, along with a senior Hamas commander. Photos from the site showed a massive crater, consistent with a collapsed tunnel beneath the site, and many injured civilians. The health ministry in Gaza reports that nearly 200 people have died, and 120 are still missing.
The incident underscores a dangerous new phase in operations, says Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon intelligence officer who now works for Pax, a Dutch nonprofit working to protect civilians against acts of war. In the opening weeks of the war Israel conducted strikes on predetermined targets. Now they're striking quickly at "dynamic targets" with little warning or no warning for civilians in the area.
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Israel has tried to warn civilians in broad terms to leave northern Gaza, says Alex Plitsas, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in the Middle East programs group. "They've attempted to clear the battlefield; they've asked people to leave," he says.
But Garlasco, who has also worked as a U.N. war crimes investigator, says that Israel's obligations don't end with telling civilians to get out.
"While Israel has a right to defend itself, that right is not unlimited," he says. They must target military objects and not civilians, he says, and they must also operate under the principle of proportionality. "Any attack they make, the military gain can not be outweighed by the civilian harm," he says.
In a statement Wednesday, the United Nations' human rights office appeared to echo those concerns, warning that strikes on the Jabalia camp "could amount to war crimes."
Despite these worries, Israel appears to be using a great deal of heavy weaponry in its fight, some of which appears to be older, non-precision bombs, Garlasco says. Unguided bombs and artillery run the risk of incurring greater civilian casualties in a densely populated area like Gaza City.
"I'd say Israel is playing pretty fast and loose with the laws of war right now," Garlasco says.
The fight ahead is likely to grow even more violent, and the situation for civilians inside Gaza more desperate
Israeli and Hamas forces are already involved in pitched fighting in different parts of the city. So far 24 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting in Gaza since the ground invasion began last week according to Israeli officials, while Hamas has not released full casualty numbers for its fighters.
Those numbers will inevitably grow, says Gentile, who participated in urban warfare in Iraq in 2006. That's in part because both Israel and Hamas view this as an existential battle.
Gentile suspects that Israel may be able to achieve its stated objective of largely destroying Hamas, but that the civilian toll will be high.
Palestinians wounded in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip are brought to a treatment room of Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al Balah on Tuesday. Basic medical supplies are running short. Adel Hana/AP
"Warfare in general is highly destructive against civilians, and it becomes even more so in a dense urban environment like Gaza City," he says.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza may be what limits Israel's ability to reach its goals, says Plitsas. Through another group, Special Operations Association of America, he just helped get a number of NGO workers out of Gaza and the stories they told him were harrowing:
"They were treating burns with saline and iodine only. There's no post-wound care, no antibiotics, hospitals were performing surgery without anesthesia because they had no choice," he says.
Ultimately, he says, it's difficult to imagine that Israel will be able to maintain broader international support unless it can show that it is trying to help civilians and minimize casualties.
"I think the humanitarian conditions on the ground are an Achilles heel for the operation," he says. "That needs to get addressed, and addressed very, very quickly."
NPR's Greg Myre Contributed to this report from Tel Aviv.
NPR · by By · November 3, 2023
25. U.S. Hasn't Ruled Out Hostage Rescue Operation in Gaza: Report
From Rolling Stone, that renowned national security journal (note sarcasm)
U.S. Hasn't Ruled Out Hostage Rescue Operation in Gaza: Report
A Pentagon official indicated to Forever Wars that Special Operations Forces are prepared for delicate “contingencies” to rescue Americans held by Hamas
Rolling Stone · by Nikki McCann Ramirez · November 2, 2023
U.S. Special Operations Forces are reportedly prepared for delicate “contingencies” that could involve direct U.S. involvement in efforts to recover American hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.
According to Spencer Ackerman of Forever Wars, a senior Pentagon official indicated that “if the time comes where [SOF] are needed,” to aid in the recovery of the hostages then “yes,” involvement by Special Forces would be considered. Ackerman added that his own understanding is that “this option is in the break-glass-in-case-of-absolute-emergency category.”
There are currently no concrete plans for such involvement and the United States must toe the line between effective advocacy for the hostages, as well as other Americans who remain trapped in the besieged Gaza Strip, and the potential for backlash from other major players in the region should the United States involve itself in ground operations within Gaza.
Threats of other nations escalating the conflict into a full-blown regional war already have U.S. officials on edge. In late October, the United States cautioned both Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah against inserting themselves into the war.
The U.S. Special Forces currently stationed in Israel have been aiding in intelligence analysis aimed at tracking down the locations of more than 200 hostages seized on October 7 by Hamas militants, among them an estimated 10 Americans. Five hostages have been released so far, including two Americans. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden called for a “pause” in the conflict to “give time to get the [hostages] out.”
“We are continuing to see if there are ways to make that happen. We are prepared to support humanitarian pauses so that hostages can get out safely,” Jake Sullivan, U.S. National Security Adviser, told ABC News on Sunday. “We will keep working at that every day because the president has no higher priority than the safe return of American citizens and wants to support the return of citizens of other countries and Israelis as well.”
What progress has been made in securing the release of the hostages remains unknown. On Thursday hundreds of foreign nationals and dual citizens who had been trapped within the Gaza Strip were cleared to leave the region through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
Rolling Stone · by Nikki McCann Ramirez · November 2, 2023
26. The Iran-Russia Military Axis
The Iran-Russia Military Axis
The two countries are increasingly working together against U.S. allies and interests.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-russia-ukraine-israel-hamas-vladimir-putin-military-aid-6b9ed2f5?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
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Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi (R) greets Russia foreign minister Sergei Lavrov (L), in Tehran on October 23 PHOTO: IRANIAN PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE HAND/SHUTTERSTOCK
Republican critics of aiding Ukraine claim that there’s no connection between Russia’s aggression and the war in Israel. They’re ignoring the major strategic development in the last year, which is the deepening military alliance between Russia and Iran that threatens U.S. interests.
The Journal reported Thursday that the U.S. has intelligence that Russia’s Wagner mercenary group is planning to send air defenses to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah is one of Iran’s proxy militias and has threatened to open a second front against Israel. The air defenses would complicate Israel’s ability to defend its cities from Hezbollah’s missile attacks.
This is merely the latest example of increasingly close Russian-Iran military ties. Iran last year began providing Russia with Shahed drones that helped Moscow attack Ukrainian cities. Now Tehran is helping to build a drone factory in the Russian town of Yelabuga that will produce thousands of unmanned aerial vehicles for military use.
Russia has been burning through munitions, and between November 2022 and April 2023 Iran supplied Russia with more than 300,000 artillery shells and a million rounds of ammunition. Iran has the Middle East’s biggest missile arsenal, and one concern is that it will help Russia replenish its dwindling stock. United Nations restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program expired on Oct. 18, and Russia would surely use its Security Council veto to block its renewal.
Iran and Russia see a mutual benefit in forcing Europe and the U.S. to defend Ukraine and Israel at the same time. Hamas is also an Iran proxy militia, and last week Hamas leader Khaled Mashal said “Russia has benefited from our [attack] because we distracted the U.S. from them and from Ukraine.”
So what is Tehran getting in return? White House spokesman John Kirby saidin December that Iranian pilots have trained in Russia to fly the Sukhoi Su-36 and could begin receiving the jet fighter “within the next year.” Tehran also wants Russian Su-35s, which the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says “could represent the most significant upgrade of Iran’s air capabilities in several decades.” Gen. Erik Kurilla, the leader of U.S. Central Command, said in March that “we think that will happen at some point this year."
Israeli officials told Bloomberg this spring that Tehran also wants Russian S-400 air-defense systems that would make it far more difficult to conduct a strike on Iran’s nuclear program. CRS points to reports that, in return for drones, Russia has provided Tehran with “digital surveillance capabilities.” This helps Iran censor and suppress internal dissent.
Russia and Iran have also been collaborating for several years to preserve the Assad regime in Syria, which includes putting pressure on the 900 or so U.S. troops in that country. Russia has provided intelligence assistance to Iran, increased harassment of U.S. troops, planes and drones in Syria, and provided at least 17 trucks of weapons to Iranian-backed militias there this year, says the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.
An American withdrawal from Syria would squeeze the non-Islamist opposition to Assad. And it would further open a land corridor through Syria and accelerate Iranian arms shipments to Iran’s Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. The larger joint Russia-Iran goal is to push the U.S. out of the Middle East.
The cooperation is also diplomatic. Russia is helping to rehabilitate Iran in world affairs, and this year Iran joined the so-called BRICS coalition of large developing countries and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
A school of conservative isolationist thought is that the U.S. should let powers like Russia and Iran dominate their regions. Withdraw to our shores and those countries will leave us alone. But as we’ve learned in Ukraine and now Israel, those powers aren’t content with the status quo. They want to expand their empires and subjugate (or in the case of Israel exterminate) their neighbors.
America’s enemies are working together, and it is strategic folly to think the U.S. can treat them like isolated problems. Letting Russia subjugate Ukraine will give Vladimir Putin an opening to further help Iran against Israel.
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Appeared in the November 3, 2023, print edition as 'The Iran-Russia Military Axis'.
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
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