Quotes of the Day:

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”

― Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“If the mind is to emerge unscathed from this relentless struggle with the unforeseen, two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.”

― Carl Von Clausewitz, On War: Volume 1

“Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency.”

― B.H. Liddell Hart, Why Don't We Learn from History?

1. Exchange between Admiral Paparo and Cui Tiankai, who was the longest-serving Chinese Ambassador

2. China Is ‘Prepositioning’ for Future Cyberattacks—and the New NSA Chief Is Worried

3. 35 Years After Tiananmen, China’s Conduct Again Triggers Alarm

4. A new axis? by Sir Lawrence Freedman

5. Preventing and Waging War in the AI–CYBER Era

6. The Real Threat to Taiwan

7. What to Know About Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s Newly Elected President

8. A former Israeli hostage recalls the brutality of Hamas captivity

9. Why Washington Failed in Niger

10. Covert Connections: The LinkedIn Recruitment Ruse Targeting Defense Insiders

11. South China Sea: Beijing warns neighbours of US ‘geopolitical self-interest’ in region

12. Failure Is for Other People – Not for our ruling elites in government and nonprofit agencies

13. Why You Shouldn’t Come to the Naval War College

14. How Hamas Ends – A Strategy for Letting the Group Defeat Itself

15. Two far-right Israeli ministers threaten to topple the government if it accepts Biden peace plan

16. The ‛International Community’ Has No Right to Exist

17. Facing up to China’s Hybrid Warfare in the Pacific

18. Putin’s Hidden Game in the South Caucasus

19. Opinion | Using Math to Analyze the Supreme Court Reveals an Intriguing Pattern

20. On D-Day, the U.S. Conquered the British Empire

21. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 2, 2024

23. Competing US-China Defense Tactics Dominate Singapore Forum

1. Exchange between Admiral Paparo and Cui Tiankai, who was the longest-serving Chinese Ambassador

Exchange between Admiral Paparo and Cui Tiankai, who was the longest-serving Chinese Ambassador

This is quite a fascinating exchange between Admiral Paparo and Cui Tiankai, who was the longest-serving Chinese Ambassador. Please go to the link to view the proper formatting and all the tweets and video.

 It is interesting how the Ambassador invokes Kissinger who he says said China is doing the right thing.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1796584252554744050.html

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Admiral Paparo’s reaction after going back & forth with the longest-serving Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. at #SLD24

“You’re speaking as if all the panelists here want to fight. We are the life insurance policy against fighting. We have children in uniform. And that is the very last thing that we do.

Deterrence is our first duty. The assumption somehow that all of us want to fight, & you are the lone human being on this panel that wants peace — if that is the point you're making, my dear friend, that is not the case.”

Thread with a few clips & quotes:

Admiral Paparo, Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, was part of a panel with Cui Tiankai, who was the longest-serving Chinese Ambassador to the U.S., at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

“We’re sitting on a panel called deterrence & reassurance. And the very first statement that we made was that deterrence is our first duty... we want peace every bit as much as you do.”

Paparo was responding to this commentary from Tiankai, who said “having two major military blocks confronting each other, with very high risk of real war or even nuclear wars — is that a right approach?” 

“I certainly understand you. I'm not questioning your personal intention or your willingness, your devotion to peace. I have no question about that. But I remember Dr. Henry Kissinger told me time and again that the First World War started without anybody planning for it.

So we have to warn against that. Despite all the good intentions — things could still go wrong.”

“Dr. Kissinger told me two months before he died: I approve of what you're doing. And I think you should be as strong as you possibly can until such time as you have the ability to have a more constructive bilateral relationship.” 

Last year at Shangri-la, China’s Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu shook hands with U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin in a “surprise exchange,” but refused direct talks. A month or two later, Li disappeared from the public eye, & formally stripped of his titles in October.

During the panel discussion, Paparo referenced the Pacific Century:

On day two of #SLD24, the U.S. Secretary of Defense responded to a question from a Chinese PLA Colonel in the audience (and got a round of applause):Unroll available on Thread Reader

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

2. China Is ‘Prepositioning’ for Future Cyberattacks—and the New NSA Chief Is Worried

Excerpts:

“We see it as very unique and different—and also concerning,” Haugh said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on the sidelines of a security conference in Singapore. “And the concern is both in what is being targeted and then how it is being targeted.” 

The U.S. believes the Chinese hacking network—known as Volt Typhoon among cybersecurity experts and U.S. officials—aims to “preposition” in critical infrastructure networks for future attacks. “We can see no other use,” said Haugh, who took charge of the National Security Agency and the military’s Cyber Command in February. 

“We see attempts to be latent in a network that is critical infrastructure, that has no intelligence value, which is why it is so concerning,” he said.

This is from the concepts in Unrestricted Warfare (which at its foundation is the playbook for how to defeat a superpower):

U.S. officials worry that in a conflict over Taiwan, for instance, China could use its latent access to launch damaging cyberattacks against key pieces of infrastructure in America or allied countries—ranging from water supplies and power grids to transportation services—disrupting lives and potentially injuring civilian populations. 

China Is ‘Prepositioning’ for Future Cyberattacks—and the New NSA Chief Is Worried

‘We see it as very unique and different—and also concerning,’ Gen. Timothy Haugh said in a WSJ interview.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/china-is-prepositioning-for-future-cyberattacksand-thenew-nsa-chief-is-worried-5ede04ef?mod=latest_headlines

By Niharika Mandhana

Follow and Gordon Fairclough

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June 3, 2024 5:30 am ET

SINGAPORE—As the U.S. military’s new cyber chief and the head of the nation’s main electronic spy agency, it is Gen. Timothy Haugh’s job to be concerned about China’s clandestine efforts to steal sensitive American data and weapons know-how. 

But he is also contending with an unusual Chinese threat, one that is designed not to extract military secrets or data of any kind but to lurk in the infrastructure that undergirds civilian life, as if lying in wait for the right moment to unleash chaos. 

“We see it as very unique and different—and also concerning,” Haugh said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on the sidelines of a security conference in Singapore. “And the concern is both in what is being targeted and then how it is being targeted.” 

The U.S. believes the Chinese hacking network—known as Volt Typhoon among cybersecurity experts and U.S. officials—aims to “preposition” in critical infrastructure networks for future attacks. “We can see no other use,” said Haugh, who took charge of the National Security Agency and the military’s Cyber Command in February. 

“We see attempts to be latent in a network that is critical infrastructure, that has no intelligence value, which is why it is so concerning,” he said.

Unlike other state-backed hackers who typically use tools to target a network and then take data, these Chinese intrusions involve neither. “One of the reasons we believe it is prepositioning is—there are not tools being put down and there’s not data being extracted,” Haugh said.  

U.S. officials worry that in a conflict over Taiwan, for instance, China could use its latent access to launch damaging cyberattacks against key pieces of infrastructure in America or allied countries—ranging from water supplies and power grids to transportation services—disrupting lives and potentially injuring civilian populations. 

It was revealed last year that a state-sponsored Chinese campaign targeted a range of networks on Guam. PHOTO: ANTHONY HENRI OFTANA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Especially concerning was the targeting of water systems, said Haugh. That was one of the networks Volt Typhoon infiltrated on Guam, a U.S. territory in the Western Pacific that is critical to military operations, especially in the event of a fight with China.

“It is very difficult to come up with a scenario where targeting a water supply for a civilian population, even if part of that population is also military, is an appropriate target,” he said. “And so I think that’s an area that just brings pause.”

“From a military perspective, it is inconsistent with how we would approach a proportional military necessity target,” he said. 

Asked if Volt Typhoon had penetrated U.S. military networks, Haugh said: “We know that those tactics have been tried and so those are areas that of course everyday we’re very vigilant.”

Microsoft revealed last year that the state-sponsored Chinese campaign went after a range of networks on Guam and elsewhere in the U.S., including communication, transportation, maritime and other sectors. The company said the hackers were likely developing capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the U.S. and Asia during future crises.  

In January, the U.S. government said it had disrupted the Chinese hacking operation, but officials have continued to warn that Beijing’s efforts are at a scale greater than they have seen before. 

In response to a question about whether China’s inroads may be more widespread than known so far, Haugh said: “I would suspect that there will be additional areas that we’ll continue to discover but what we want to do is make the tradecraft widely known.”

Volt Typhoon uses tactics that make it harder to detect.

If they were taking data out, that would allow cyber defenders to see where the data went, how much, and what was being targeted, Haugh said, adding: “In this case, we don’t see that.” 

Private Chinese firm I-Soon claims to have hacked into dozens of targets. PHOTO: DAKE KANG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

To gain access, he said, Chinese hackers subvert the identity of a user on the network, allowing them to then operate as a user and use tools inherent in the system they are targeting—a tactic known as living off the land. To combat them, U.S. cyber defenders were monitoring user activity in addition to using traditional approaches, he said. 

U.S. officials went public with the details of the campaign to allow other countries and critical-infrastructure operators in America to understand what the threat looks like and how to fight it, Haugh said. Hackers exploit vulnerabilities to gain access to user credentials so “what we really want is to be able to continue to up the defenses” to make it harder for them, he said. 

More broadly, Chinese cyberattacks against the U.S. are growing consistently in number and sophistication, he said. 

It was hard to quantify “because, of course, we don’t see everything all the time,” Haugh said. But he pointed to the operations of one private Chinese firm I-Soon, which were revealed in leaked documents earlier this year, as a window into the scope and scale of the country’s state-backed activities.

I-Soon claimed to have hacked into dozens of government targets, including ministries in Malaysia, Thailand and Mongolia, and also claimed to have penetrated universities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and France. The documents showed some of its biggest customers were local and provincial-level bureaus of China’s Ministry of State Security, the Ministry of Public Security and the People’s Liberation Army.

Beijing routinely denies accusations of cyberattacks and espionage linked to or backed by the Chinese state and has accused the U.S. of mounting its own cyberattacks. The U.S. has been gathering evidence against Beijing for years, charging Chinese hackers with stealing secrets.

Haugh said he is working especially closely with U.S. defense contractors to stop China from stealing sensitive information relating to American weapons. 

“We know that there’s certainly been a consistent pursuit of that technology,” he said. “What we would think about is, ‘Where do we have an advantage?’ And likely it will be targeted.”

The bodies Haugh oversees have relationships with over 1,000 defense-related companies. “If they see a threat they can share it with us, and we do the same with them—every day across a thousand companies,” he said. 

Gen. Haugh said he is especially concerned about the targeting of water systems. PHOTO: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

Haugh also stays in close touch with the U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific Command, which deals most directly with issues around China, Taiwan and the South China Sea.  

His job, he said, was to give them secure networks to communicate internally and with partners, and, in a crisis, to enable them to operate unaffected by any hacker that would target them. Since last year, Cyber Command’s mission also expressly includes working with other countries to help improve their defenses.  

“We’ve found really strong partners that want to just be able to ensure they’ve got well-defended networks, that they’re also being able to have defended critical infrastructure and that their economy can operate unimpeded,” he said. 

Write to Niharika Mandhana at niharika.mandhana@wsj.com and Gordon Fairclough at Gordon.Fairclough@wsj.com

3. 35 Years After Tiananmen, China’s Conduct Again Triggers Alarm

I remember being out on a field training exercise and our communications sergeant getting the news of Tiananmen. We huddled around the HF radio as he worked to tune in news reports. Our thoughts were, will there be a revolution in China?

The question for us now is can we use Tiananmen and China's present conduct in an information campaign to our advantage? How is the GEC exploiting this?

35 Years After Tiananmen, China’s Conduct Again Triggers Alarm

In 1989, blowback was swift; alienation today is ‘systematic, progressive, long-term.’

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/35-years-after-tiananmen-chinas-conduct-again-triggers-alarm-87700da4?mod=latest_headlines

By James T. AreddyFollow

Updated June 3, 2024 12:04 am ET

China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists sparked a seminal crisis in Beijing’s relationship with the West. On the massacre’s 35th anniversary, China’s leaders face familiar international blowback over their conduct.

Instead of gunfire, today’s sources of discomfort about China are a mix of its aggressive industrial policy and militarization toward neighbors, plus a national-security agenda from Chinese leader Xi Jinping that has curtailed personal freedoms at home and shaped affairs abroad. 

A poor and relatively backward nation in 1989, China is now an economic powerhouse backed by a formidable military and diplomatic corps vying to reset the global order and impose its will internationally.

Beijing’s image is undergoing “a systematic, progressive, long-term falloff, not a one-time shock” like the one triggered in 1989, said David Shambaugh, a distinguished visiting fellow at California’s Hoover Institution who has studied China for four decades and who sees parallels and differences with the post-Tiananmen situation. 

Paramedics evacuated an ailing student hunger-striker from Tiananmen Square in 1989, as Beijing magistrates joined workers demonstrating in Beijing streets .

CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

While Beijing is now in a far stronger position to resist the pressures, today’s international disquiet about China is wider spread than it was after Tiananmen and not confined to the West, Shambaugh said.

Foreign investment into China is declining, many governments are rethinking trade ties, and Beijing’s human-rights record has moved back toward the center of international attention, a confluence of negative forces China hasn’t experienced since the aftermath of 1989. 

The headwinds are apparent in a long-running Gallup poll of American attitudes about China—a 20% favorability rating today, far below 34% shortly after the June 4, 1989, massacre and evidence that many sense a new Cold War. Strikingly, Gallup numbers show the Soviet Union had a far higher favorability rating—62%—in 1989, as the Cold War was petering out and a self-assured U.S. faced no serious rival.

Chinese growth has also sagged closer than ever to post-Tiananmen lows, 3.9% in 1990, in an interruption to sometimes double-digit rates in years before. The economic malaise speaks to man-on-the-street pessimism about central policymaking and it is augmented by faint hints of Tiananmen-like public disorder. 

History lesson

After Tiananmen, China tightened domestic security with an eye on eliminating chances for future mass antigovernment protests. Its carrot was the simultaneous pursuit of liberalizing economic policies that swelled wealth and advanced modernization.

For weeks in the Spring of 1989, pro-democracy demonstrators and Chinese authorities faced off in Beijing, bringing many activities to a halt amid a tension that a crackdown could be imminent.

CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

In particular, authorities doubled down on an implied pact with the population: economic improvements in exchange for unquestioned party power.

Lawyer Jerome Cohen’s blue-chip American clients fled China like a bomb went off in 1989, rattling Beijing’s leaders. “They knew they had done a terrible thing in terms of their international relations and they tried very hard to moderate the effects,” he said.

A key step came in early 1992 when then-leader Deng Xiaoping toured Guangdong province, beckoning foreign investors back with a signal China would adopt a to-get-rich-is-glorious outlook. It worked despite the horror of Tiananmen, Cohen said, because it seemed “the future of China was still in play.” 

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Pro-Beijing groups in Hong Kong opened a food “carnival” in a public park that used to hold an annual candlelight vigil for the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protests in China. Organizers denied trying to block a commemoration. Photos: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

China did more than just rejoin the international community. It became the world’s biggest trading nation and a top recipient of foreign investment, rocketing into the No. 2 spot among global economies, up from 11th in 1989. 

The boom drowned out Beijing’s critics. For years, a leading Tiananmen protester, Zhou Fengsuo, was asked a question that dismayed him: “Didn’t the massacre of students stabilize China?”

Zhou tended to hit back, “if killing people would lead to higher prosperity, would you do it?” Now that views of China are darkening, Zhou said, “Nobody asks me that question anymore.” 

Protesters set fire to a military vehicle near Tiananmen Square in 1989, as soldiers moved to confront dissident students.

TOMMY CHENG/AFP/GETTY IMAGES, CATHERINE HENRIETTE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Pushing back

Back in 1989, it was still possible for the West to isolate China. 

After the crackdown, Deng had famously instructed cadres to adopt a nonconfrontational response to international condemnation: China would hide its strengths and bide its time. 

Xi has gone the opposite direction, abandoning Deng’s dictate by unleashing “wolf warrior diplomats” who angrily rebut China critics and poke the country’s neighbors by asserting territorial claims. 

Leverage against China is limited these days, given its power and trade links, even if more of the world—swaths of Asia and the global South—demonstrates misgivings about Chinese militarism, mercantilism and influence. 

“We’re dealing with a different country today,” Shambaugh said. Plus, “today it’s the West, and the United States in particular, with doubt about who it is and where it’s going,” he said.

A close relationship Xi has nurtured with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin—even as he prosecutes a war against Ukraine—demonstrates China’s intent to challenge the post World War II global order. The pair met in mid-May to celebrate the 75th year of bilateral relations but ignored a key 35th anniversary: Mikhail Gorbachev’s monumental 1989 trip to Beijing.

The first visit to Beijing in 30 years by a Soviet leader took place in May 1989 against the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations as Mikhail Gorbachev met Deng Xiaoping. PHOTO: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The backdrop to that first visit to Beijing for a Soviet leader in three decades was the student occupation of Tiananmen Square and disharmony in the Chinese Communist Party about how to respond. Six months later, the Berlin Wall fell, spelling doom for the Soviet Union and threatening other communist regimes, like China.

Xi’s governing philosophy today reflects the twin crises of 1989, according to China scholar Joseph Torigian at American University. “June 4 and collapse of the Soviet Union for a young man were a real lesson about the fragility of political institutions,” Torigian said. Xi exhibits a phobia that reform will lead to chaos, believes national unity requires a strong military and distrusts the West, he adds.

Left, Lin Zhaorong was one of the seven men executed in 1989 following the military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement. Student leader Liu Gang after his arrest for 'counter revolutionary' activity.

AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Threats defused

Despite authorities’ best efforts to erase the memory of Tiananmen, it is echoed in episodes of defiance, said the former protester Zhou, who is the New York-based executive director of Human Rights in China.

“Sitong Bridge,” for instance, is now code for a lone wolf’s 2022 protest against Xi’s third term, and unfiltered internet searches of the words will display photos of “bridge man” on a Beijing overpass, the same way looking up “Tiananmen Square” online shows the “tank man” who halted the People’s Liberation Army in 1989. Likewise, “white paper” refers to the Beijing and Shanghai students who in late 2022 stunned the government with a campaign against draconian Covid lockdowns, which authorities abandoned shortly afterward. 

All of this is censored online in China, but the average household can’t help but notice that China is losing dynamism. 

Zhou Fengsuo, a Tiananmen Square protester in 1989, took part last year in a vigil in Tokyo to mark the 34th anniversary of the crackdown. PHOTO: PHILIP FONG/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Confidence is slumping, tugged by a real-estate crisis that seems to defy solutions. China’s youth are disillusioned as job prospects narrow. Women are foregoing motherhood, worsening an already troubling population slide. 

And in droves, Chinese, rich and poor, are undertaking risky endeavors to emigrate, just as they did in 1989.

In Washington, both sides of the aisle have concluded that embracing engagement with China years ago backfired. The mindset that Beijing is an adversary is reflected in a stream of rules from President Biden to prohibit export to China of sophisticated semiconductors and a proposal by former President Trump to reimpose post-Tiananmen pressure, like an annual review of most-favored-nation trade treatment.

Over the past 35 years, Beijing has poured enormous resources into ensuring Tiananmen isn’t repeated. But the party’s implicit deal with China’s people is stressed.

“The political piece of the puzzle is still there,” Shambaugh said, but a vanquished sense of opportunity shows “the basic compact is not what it was.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke at Tiananmen Square in 2021 during a ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Chinese Communist Party. PHOTO: NG HAN GUAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Write to James T. Areddy at James.Areddy@wsj.com

4. A new axis? by Sir Lawrence Freedman

Excellent analysis (with a historical foundation) from Sir Lawrence Freedman. (I have included the first two interesting comments as well).

This is a very important excerpt:

This question is not solely one for Washington. One problem with Zelikow’s framing is that is too American-centric. He acknowledges that in the past the British and French were an important part of the geopolitical mix but now the:

‘anti-imperialists, the anti-hegemonists … focus on America as the anchor and symbol of what they resent — the supposed confinement, power wrapped in pieties, opposing national assertion by new great powers.’

While it is obviously the case that the size, wealth, and reach of the US sets it apart, and Washington’s policy choices make all the difference, it is nonetheless odd to talk about the meaning and strength of an adversary partnership without considering the strength of the American alliance system. This is in principle one area of comparative advantage. America’s allies bring significant strengths to their common endeavours, even though they also have their distinctive preoccupations. And it is not just America’s allies. India is now a major player, with a deep-seated suspicion of Chinese policy, yet somehow it is routinely neglected in assessments of the developing international system.

A new axis?

https://samf.substack.com/p/a-new-axis?r=15i4j0&utm

LAWRENCE FREEDMAN

JUN 02, 2024

It has become a cliché to say that this is an unusually dangerous time in world politics. The list of threats to help make the point has become familiar: Russia, persisting with its aggression in Ukraine and menacing all its European neighbours; China, reminding Taiwan that reunification is bound to come, if necessary by force; Iran, close to a nuclear capability and stirring up trouble around the Middle East and elsewhere; North Korea, developing its weapons of mass destruction. 

These countries are by no means the only ones making the world dangerous, but they share two features. They are all deeply hostile to the US and its allies and increasingly they work together. Thus China, North Korea, and Iran have all become important, in different ways, to Russia’s war effort. They have also been taking bilateral and multilateral steps to institutionalise their developing relationships, meeting regularly and issuing communiques which claim that they are the ones upholding global norms and that is the West that is undermining them.

There is growing concern that in this way they are becoming less a set of separate threats and instead are coalescing into one big threat. They may still have their differences but have concluded that a united front is essential to confront the West. Recently Philip Zelikow, with a distinguished career both as a historian and a diplomat, has written a rich and substantial essay about a new Axis in the tradition of the anti-American partnerships that led to the Second World War (Italy, Germany, Japan) and which marked the early Cold War (The Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China). He shows the continuities between the current Axis and those of the past as well as its distinctive features.

The leaders of the new Axis are ‘feeling their way.’ Zelikow describes them as ‘wondering if it is their historical mission to usher in a new age of what they may think of as necessary violence.’ For its part the United States is trying to keep ‘the new age at bay’, drawing their own lessons from history as they try to assess whether the power dynamics are shifting and how they should respond.

In the medium- and long-term Zelikow is confident that the fundamentals favour the US but he is worried about the short-term, While he acknowledges that there are many uncertainties about how events may unfold over the coming couple of years, the US appears to have lost the initiative. It is waiting to see if its adversaries will act. He sees the reasons for caution but is concerned that:

the anti-American partnership has probably decided to double down. They are probably preparing in earnest for a period of major confrontation. My view on this rests on my analysis of the history presented above as well as some key assessments of Moscow, Tehran, Beijing, and — to a lesser extent — Pyongyang.

This is not a prognosis to be dismissed lightly, but it raises questions. Are these countries really acting in concert or are they still following their own distinctive agendas that happen to overlap for now, prompting increasing cooperation, but with the possibility of diverging later? Has a shared decision to double down already be taken, or is this more of a process, as they watch each other to see how well they are getting on with their own fights? Far far will they go to support each other?

Putin decided some time ago to double down while Iran appears to be trying to exercise some control over the risks it faces as a result of the upsurge of violence in the Middle East, set off by one of its proxies. It is China that will make the difference. China makes or breaks this Axis. The other putative members need China more than China needs them. It is China that has the capacity to create a truly world crisis. Xi Jinping has made it clear that he thinks China should prepare for war. It is less clear that he seeks one. So the question of how worried we should be about this Axis and what is to be done is essentially one about China.

This question is not solely one for Washington. One problem with Zelikow’s framing is that is too American-centric. He acknowledges that in the past the British and French were an important part of the geopolitical mix but now the:

‘anti-imperialists, the anti-hegemonists … focus on America as the anchor and symbol of what they resent — the supposed confinement, power wrapped in pieties, opposing national assertion by new great powers.’

While it is obviously the case that the size, wealth, and reach of the US sets it apart, and Washington’s policy choices make all the difference, it is nonetheless odd to talk about the meaning and strength of an adversary partnership without considering the strength of the American alliance system. This is in principle one area of comparative advantage. America’s allies bring significant strengths to their common endeavours, even though they also have their distinctive preoccupations. And it is not just America’s allies. India is now a major player, with a deep-seated suspicion of Chinese policy, yet somehow it is routinely neglected in assessments of the developing international system.

An Axis and an Alliance

Zelikow assumes, but does not quite spell out, the difference between an Axis and an Alliance. It is a difference that is worth exploring because it helps to illuminate what is at stake in the current situation and how it might be managed. Although by 1942 ‘the Axis powers’ (Germany, Italy, and Japan) had become a war-time alliance, the label was introduced much earlier by Benito-Mussolini, the Italian dictator. He did so in 1936, on the occasion of the signing of a protocol asserting a lasting friendship between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (perhaps not dissimilar to the Putin-Xi declaration of early February 2022 about their ‘partnership without limits’). This was a signal that Italy had moved well away from its previous alliance with Britain and France. To a massive crowd in Milan, Mussolini explained how this represented the future:

‘This Berlin-Rome protocol is not a barrier, it is rather an axis around which all European States animated by a desire for peace may collaborate on troubles.’ 

The idea of this Axis was that it represented a line around which the European system would now be centred. It could also claim to represent the future because of their shared ideological disposition. They presented their authoritarian, nationalist, militaristic, and personality-driven regimes as the way forward, pushing aside the decadent liberal democracies, floundering in the face of economic chaos. For Hitler and Mussolini the real enemy was Soviet Bolshevism.

Yet when it came to actual alliances different considerations applied. Even as Britain and France declared war on Germany, Mussolini tried to keep his options open. It was only when he became more confident of a German victory that he decided to join in, hoping that this would give him a seat at the ensuing peace conference. General Franco, another right-wing dictator who had come to power with German and Italian support, kept Spain neutral. The war began just after Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin had agreed a non-aggression pact in August 1939 despite their ideological antagonism. This was captured by cartoonist David Low’s famous ‘Rendezvous’ cartoon. Hitler: ‘Scum of the earth I believe?’ Stalin: ‘Bloody murderer of the masses I presume?’ (Low had a series of cartoons before the war which showed Hitler and Mussolini riding a tandem bike – ‘Hit and Muss on their Axis’). As Zelikow reminds us, as late as November 1940, Stalin was discussing his conditions for the Soviet Union to become the fourth major Axis power, not long after Japan had joined with Germany and Italy in what was then called the Tripartite Pact.

And even well into the war, with the membership settled, these countries never had the same degree of consultation and coordination as did the US and UK. Japan, for example, held out against declaring war on the Soviet Union, even though Hitler had quixotically declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor.

After the Second World War, and the communist victory in the Chinese civil war, a new Axis was formed, although it was described then, at least in West, as a ‘Bloc’ (also consisting of the Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, and North Korea and North Vietnam in Asia). Although the Soviet Union and Communist China were bound together by their Marxist-Leninist ideology, they soon began to bicker about what this ideology meant, especially in the nuclear age, and who was best placed to interpret it - Mao Zedong or Nikita Khrushchev. Their interests were also not wholly aligned, with Mao showing greater revolutionary fervour and ready to take the fight to the imperialists, while Khrushchev was more cautious, speaking more about ‘peaceful co-existence’. In 1963 the Sino-Soviet Bloc split amidst bitter arguments. A decade later the US was able to forge links with both communist giants, playing one off against the other.

The idea of an Axis briefly reappeared in President George W Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ speech of January 2022. This Axis had a somewhat arbitrary membership of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea (Syria might have been included – North Korea was a late addition). These countries did not present themselves as an Axis. It hadn’t been that long since Iraq and Iran had been war. The speechwriter version was ‘Axis of Hatred’ but Bush thought it sounded better as ‘Axis of Evil’. Later, however, Iran announced that it had formed an ‘Axis of Resistance’ with Syria and Hezbollah. Now this Axis has been extended to include Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen as well as Iraqi militias such as Kata’ib Hezbollah. This Axis has some coherence because of their Islamist ideology and as all members depend on Teheran.

A New Axis?

Would the members of Zelikow’s new Axis self-identify in the same way? Russia and China may not use the term but they describe their relationship in a way that fits the idea of an Axis around which the international system might now be centred, reflecting a reaction against US attempts to impose its rules grows in strength. In their communique accompanying their latest meeting, Putin and Xi spoke of their partnership as ‘one of the main stabilising factors on the international arena.’ Their intention was

‘to increase interaction and tighten co-ordination in order to counter Washington’s destructive and hostile course towards the so-called “dual containment” of our countries.’

A desire to push back against the United States is not all that Russia and China have in common. They are both autocracies, led by men in their early 70s who have spent years consolidating their power and squashing all forms of dissent. Putin’s ideology, however, is explicitly reactionary and ethno-nationalist, with strong religious undertones. By contrast Xi is much more of a traditional Marxist-Leninist, pushing for socialism with Chinese characteristics – as interpreted by himself. While Putin fancies himself as a historian, Xi expects to be known as a great theorist in the Marxist tradition. But when it comes to foreign policy both are assertive nationalists.

What about Iran? Is this a natural addition to the Axis? The Ayatollahs used the communists to get to power and then crushed them in order to create a clerical state. Unlike Russia and China, it is facing something of a leadership crisis as the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, is ailing and one possible successor, President Ebrahim Raisi, has just died in a plane crash. The regime is systematically repressive but its hold on power feels more tenuous.

Russia has had good relations with Iran for some time, cemented by its intervention in Syria after 2015 when it helped the Assad regime survive at a time when Iran and Hezbollah were struggling in their fights against rebel forces. Iran has returned the favour by supplying drones and missiles to Russia. China’s position is more ambiguous. It accounts for a high proportion of Iran’s oil exports but, despite past promises, it invests little inside Iran. It also wants to stay friendly with the Gulf states who remain wary of the role of Iranian proxies in the region.

North Korea is part of Russia’s supporters club and also very dependent on China to keep its economy going. It has taken the cult of personality to a new extreme, with Kim Jong-un the only person in North Korea the people are allowed to love. It is developing a capacity to inflict great harm on its neighbours and even potentially the US. Its rhetoric is systematically belligerent. It dabbles in cyber-attacks. So it should not be underestimated but to the extent that this Axis has a grand strategy, Pyongyang is not going to be close to the driving seat.

The idea of this Axis therefore depends on Russia and China. The way their partnership has developed in recent years does represent a new factor in international affairs. Despite China’s claim to be committed to the established international order and multilateralism it has found itself following Russia along a disruptive path. The Economist recently noted:

‘that China is facilitating Russia’s efforts to wreck the working of the United Nations, despite Beijing presenting itself as the defender of the international system. China has described the UN Charter as the basis for a settlement of the Russo-Ukraine War yet it holds back from pressing Russia to make any large concessions.’

This is Xi’s choice. He does not want to be seen to be abandoning Putin and does not want him to fail. But it is a choice. He is not under any obligation. While he may give Putin considerable latitude, there are limits on the partnership, for example when it comes to threats to use nuclear weapons, and he has made it clear that Russia is not an ally. Most importantly, he never pretends that this is a coming together of equals. China is by far the senior partner.

This is particularly evident in the economic sphere. They share some economic interests – they would like to weaken the role of the dollar and help each other circumvent sanctions. China is pleased by Russian and Iranian oil at favourable rates but is not going to make big investments in either for the sake of solidarity. It still resists the construction of a new pipeline from Russia to China, and is steadily talking over Russia’s arms export business in Africa because Russia can’t fulfil its orders.

With every year of the war the inequality in the relationship becomes more apparent. The position has been transformed since the old Soviet days when China was the junior partner and guided by Moscow. Now the relationship has been upended. There has long been a fear in Moscow that China could do to Russia what Russia is now doing to Ukraine and take chunk of its territory. After all, if Putin can go back to old history books to generate his tendentious claims that Ukraine is not a proper country but really part of Russia, China could use similar arguments to prove that Vladivostok is really a Chinese City. It was handed over in 1860 as part of one of the unequal treaties of the time about which China regularly complains.

Russia has left itself without any options. Political and economic relations with all but a few European states are at rock bottom. The entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO has not only provided the alliance with a political boost, but it has strengthened it militarily. When it is time for the reckoning on this war, the complete alienation from Europe and the dependence on China will be firmly on the debit side of the ledger in Moscow. Circumstances may lead China and Russia to stay close, but this is not a natural friendship.

Has the Die Been Cast?

According to Zelikow Xi and Putin ‘regard themselves as world-historical men of destiny’, ‘capable of decisive, strategic action.’ Their propaganda ministries have been active ‘preparing their populations for a time of war, great sacrifice, and existential struggle.’ 

The reasons why Russia. Iran, and North Korea might already think that they are engaged in an existential struggle are evident, though it is doubtful that is what Putin had in mind when he attacked Ukraine, in an operation he expected to end quickly and with a minimum of fuss. while Iran prefers to work through proxies and does not give the impression of embracing a great confrontation.

What about China? Difficult to be sure, says Zelikow,

‘since its government has visibly sought a policy of “peaceful coexistence” with the United States. I think it is most likely that Beijing has assessed that the die has been cast for a period of escalating confrontation.’

Xi has made it abundantly clear that if Taiwan tries to chart a truly independent course then he will have to act. He is also developing military capabilities that will enable China to do so. But that does not mean that the clock is already ticking. As Zelikow observes a war over Taiwan would cause chaos in the international economy, and that may act as a deterrent, especially at a time when China is struggling with other economic problems. Also China has other means of exerting power. It is proving to be adept at subverting the sovereignty of other neighbouring states, for example in the South China Sea, without all-out war, and this may provide a better guide to Xi’s strategy. He can make it progressively more difficult for Taiwan to act as if it were an independent state. This is not to preclude the possibility that Xi considers gaining control over Taiwan so essential to his legacy that he accepts all the risks that would go with launching a war. Zelikow is not alone in thinking that the die has been cast, which is why this scenario is the starting assumption for so much US military planning. As with support for Russia’s war effort, a decision by Xi to launch a war on Taiwan, and accept a fight with the US, represents a choice. It is not an inevitability, and will be undertaken for Chinese reasons and not to please his partners.

The particular targets for this Axis are therefore all local. Whatever their shared anti-Americanism, and unlike the Second World War Axis, they have shown no inclination as yet to declare war on each other’s enemies.

Western responses also reflect the particular circumstances of the individual theatres, although members of the US alliance system increasingly do see the challenges in global terms, as with France and the UK both engaged more in the Indo-Pacific. With Ukraine, the levels of material support from all allies are picking up after a dip which caused serious problems. Kyiv still has some difficult months to navigate before it can be confident that the situation has stabilised and it can start to push back. If it continues to struggle this could create more of a sense of crisis in NATO. Allies are already talking about options that would have been seen as too risky before. We have just seen the Biden Administration relent on its prohibition that its weapons cannot be used to attack targets in Russia to help ease the pressure on Ukrainian forces in Kharkiv.

Meanwhile in the Middle East none of the Iranian sponsored groups – including Hamas – have been defeated in the current round of fighting even if they can not claim victory. Washington has tried, largely unsuccessfully, to nudge Israel towards a strategy that is not only more humane but also offers a long-term prospect of stable relations with Palestinians. The US has shown that it knows how to deter Iran during this conflict. The problem with its diplomacy lies with Israeli intransigence, or at least paralysis at the top levels of the Israeli government. The other actors with whom the US has to work – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar – are not members of any Axis but they wish to avoid being too closely associated with the West.

In the Indo-Pacific, US diplomacy has options that do not only involve allies such as Japan and Australia but also India and Indonesia who have views of their own. When China looks out it sees more than the US. Moreover to the extent that a lot of the issues with China away from Taiwan and the South China Seas are about trade, the US and Europeans are not the only ones worried about China dumping surplus manufactured goods on overseas markets because its own domestic demand is insufficient.

There is of course another factor that Zelikow does not mention. He assumes that the US is working with its current policies and plans. But that may change next January should Donald Trump get elected for a second term. We know Trump is unimpressed by alliances or open trade. I doubt if he is itching for a military confrontation with China but he is up for an economic confrontation, and will be inclined to impose hefty tariffs on China and nag the Europeans to do more with NATO. He claims to have a great peace plan for Ukraine which looks likely to leave both Putin and Zelensky unimpressed. Trump showed little interest last time in coordinating his policies with his allies. Hence the anxiety that should he get another term the damage to America’s network of alliances could be lasting.

This may end up giving China, Russia, Iran and North Korea new opportunities (recall Trump’s curious romance with Kim Jong-un) and may push them to modify or even aggravate their relations with the US and the West. For now Russia gets help from this Axis with its aggression in Ukraine but it is still fighting alone. Iran gets diplomatic cover and may get material support but it is also working its regional conflicts alone. They are not going to war for each other. It is possible to imagine scenarios in which they all take on the West at the same time, but we are not there yet, at least so long as the situation with China remains uncertain.

It may be that the US faces a new Axis but that does not mean that this collection of states will always act in concert or that their interests will always align. In practice that may not make much difference if China decided to go for a big push against Taiwan. In practice this would be like a new Axis. Zelikow emphasises that he is not using his gloomy assessment simply to call in the West for more defence production or power projection. That may not be of much help because if this is a short-term challenge the US and its allies will have to cope with what is already available, and that will require careful consideration of where interests lie and astute diplomacy, as well as countervailing force. Of course if the die has not been cast then ramping up military preparedness in the West remains prudent.

The US does have the advantage that it need not face these challenges alone, but only if it remembers its allies and keeps them engaged. Zelikow warns that we should not assume that because in the past alliances of democracies turned out to be stronger than axes of tyrannies that can guarantees future success. But as we remember the liberation of Europe from Nazi occupation 80 years ago it should provide some solace.

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5 Comments

Paul M Sotkiewicz

20 hrs ago

Thoughtful and deep an analysis from which I draw the following conclusions: 1) This is only an Axis premised on distaste for perceived US and EU hegemony. 2) Each state within the so-called axis is acting on it regional self interest and not actively or implicitly coordinating actions. 3) Russia is increasingly becoming a vassal state to China economically and politically. 4) The US needs to reach out to other partners in the Indo-Pacific like India, Indonesia, Vietnam to counter China. 5) the so-called axis can be easily splintered given their own local conditions and situations.

It is the last point that needs to be explored and exploited. Iran is a mess domestically both economically and simmering social political unrest. China has its own economic problems that could lead to popular unrest with a real estate bust and higher unemployment. And currently, Russia and NKorea are wholly dependent on China and increasingly so.

I, for one, do not see the die being cast as there are too many moving parts to draw that conclusion just yet. But ramping up defensive and military capabilities in the US/EU is a prudent move along with onshoring key manufacturing will help prepare for any contingency.

Mark Segal

21 hrs ago

As usual a very insightful, multi-dimensional analysis. The one thing that worries more than anything coming from the so-called "axis" countries is the rot that is setting into the West, of which the USA is the prime and most dangerous example. The very possible re-election of Donald Trump could spell the end of democracy as we know it, for numerous reasons both domestic and international. In Europe there is a far-right resurgence taking place, the most obvious evidence of which is the shrieking melon-head in Italy (Hungary I don't even count - it has no democratic tradition, so it was easy for Orban to sell his nationalist agenda). Elections are close at hand in Europe and the polls indicate the far right may do very well, further undermining democracy if the polls prove correct. Our ignorant, under-educated electorates are the biggest problem facing the survival of democracy as we know it.

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5. Preventing and Waging War in the AI–CYBER Era

Excerpts:

The United States appears to want its AI systems to have humans involved to control AI actions, in other words, AI-assisted weapons and defense systems. While human involvement may reduce the risk of faulty AI logic, it introduces the risk of human error. It also slows response time which can be beneficial for diplomacy to diffuse a crisis but can also lead to disaster. While the pressure to act quickly and avoid human error by delegating critical decisions to machines will be great, the requirement for human involvement at least ensures moral agency and accountability. Will moral agency and accountability trump responding quickly to AI-deciphered threats?

All nations are obligated to act in a manner that maximizes their own security. The military value of AI-enhanced autonomous weapons systems is enormous. Equally important, AI-enhanced information processing will shorten decision-making cycles making finding and striking targets easier. Adversaries will speed up their own operations with autonomous reactions at machine speed that will vastly increase the tempo of operations. This tempo will increase the pressure to eliminate humans from decision cycles and turn over control to machines for both tactical and operational decision-making. The result will be greater automation and less human control leading up to and during conflict.

While nations are obligated to act to secure their own interests, they also have an obligation to maintain peace. Attempts to control their development and deployment will be challenging but countries have a choice about how autonomous weapons will be used and how decisions will be made. Without effective restriction, international stability will be weakened. Reduced human control over warfare poses increased danger to everyone, everywhere. Actions must be taken to address the worst dangers of machine-controlled decision-making and use of autonomous tools of war. International cooperation is needed to establish rules that limit how AI-enhanced military weapons and decision-making technologies are used. In addition, developing frameworks for some level of transparency for future and perhaps more consequential AI advances will also be required. In other words, establishing an international regime to ensure mutual restraint in employing AI-enabled defense systems will be key to maintain global order and peace. Policymakers around the world have begun to understand the risks and challenges posed by AI. Let’s hope they follow through to erect safeguards for everyone’s sake.

Preventing and Waging War in the AI–CYBER Era

It is a generally accepted proposition that artificial intelligence will transform human existence. It will enable every facet of human life and will likely surprise us, too, due to its capacities to learn and evolve. AI’s impact on national security and waging war are obviously serious matters.

Thursday, May 30, 2024  5 min read

By: Hy Rothstein

Research Team: Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group

https://www.hoover.org/research/preventing-and-waging-war-ai-cyber-era

It is a generally accepted proposition that artificial intelligence will transform human existence. It will enable every facet of human life and will likely surprise us, too, due to its capacities to learn and evolve. AI’s impact on national security and waging war are obviously serious matters. Advanced technologies have already diminished the need for traditional human operated planes, ships, and vehicles. Operators can fly, sail, and drive these systems remotely from thousands of miles away in a comfortable and secure environment. AI can and will likely eliminate the need for the remote operators too. One obvious question is: How will AI, robotics, and autonomous weapons systems change the nature of war?

It is important to remind ourselves that war and warfare have distinct meanings. War is fundamentally political, violent in nature, and takes place in and among societies. It has an enduring and unchanging “nature.” One only has to watch the nightly news to see war up close in Ukraine and Gaza to validate war’s enduring nature. Warfare, however, is merely the way war is made, its “character.” Warfare is shaped by technology, law, ethics, culture, methods of social, political, and military organization, and other factors that change.

If we accept Clausewitz’s distinction between “nature” and “character,” is the world on the cusp of a generational turning point for warfare today? History is not a perfect indicator of the future, but its lessons should not be ignored. History should dampen our inclination to overestimate how technology will affect war’s “character” and more importantly, its outcome, the only measure that matters.

The well-known military historian and army officer who saw combat service in Burma during World War II, Trevor Dupuy, studied war in all its dimensions. In his book, Understanding War, he documents that the rates of advance of an army in contact with the enemy have, at best, increased very slightly since the early nineteenth century. Napoleon’s advance rate to Moscow in 1812 was about 14 kilometers per day while Hitler’s armored blitzkrieg to the same objective in 1941 was 10 kilometers per day. This is in sharp contrast to what improved technology would seem to permit. While Dupuy is hesitant to draw firm conclusions, he does suggest that advanced technologies do not guarantee better outcomes. The ability of the enemy to counter advanced technologies comes quicker and cheaper than their development and employment. Dupuy’s insight should be instructive.

Stephen Biddle, a well-respected contemporary military analyst, argues in his book, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern War, that military doctrine and tactics are far more important to battle outcomes in modern warfare than technological advantages. Technological and resource advantages matter only if they can be harnessed in a manner to achieve political outcomes through battlefield success. Biddle reminds us of the critical nature of nonmaterial factors. Smart force employment and purpose can negate the potential effects of advanced technology. The evidence of this has been demonstrated in various conflicts from the American Revolution through Ukraine’s defense against Russia. Biddle’s work reinforces Dupuy’s analysis. Dupuy cautions against expecting too much from advanced technologies and Biddle reminds us that nonmaterial factors like doctrine, tactics, and purpose can compensate for substantial technical and material disadvantages.

The “nature” and “character” of future armed conflict will likely be predictable and recognizable. However, emerging AI and CYBER technologies will generate profound and elusive challenges for deterrence and wartime decision-making. It is necessary to outline a rudimentary baseline to fully understand the new challenges. The two World Wars were contests between advanced economies that harnessed the industrial revolution to build highly organized modern militaries. Prior to the beginning of the wars, countries were building military arsenals to counter the arsenals being built by opposing powers. Mobilization, training, and logistics structures were also developed to optimize the employment of these capabilities. Alliances were formed to create an equilibrium against potential foes to deter aggression. But great wars were fought and new technologies to generate greater security were sought that were increasingly more destructive.

The quest for ultimate security led to the development of the atomic bomb along with long-range delivery systems. Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons creating a situation where almost any future use would be out of proportion to any objective other than, perhaps, survival. As a result, during the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union recognized the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons, worked to limit their existence, created as much transparency as possible, and very deliberately worked to avoid any strategy that would couple the achievement of a political or military goal to the use of a nuclear weapon. The understanding between superpowers, official and unofficial, worked to avoid nuclear war.

Towards the end of his long and productive life, Henry Kissinger applied his great intellect and experience to investigate the implications of AI and CYBER weapons on security and world order. His observations are predictably insightful, highlighting significant challenges for maintaining some semblance of global power equilibrium in the AI and CYBER era. Political power and influence have generally been associated with military power. States continuously assess their relative position within the international system mostly to maintain order and deter aggression. The system is dynamic and normally responds when equilibrium is lost. But maintaining an equilibrium and knowing when it is lost require a clear and accepted recognition of the elements that constitute military power. Miscalculations and the risk of conflict increase when assessments of relative power are faulty resulting in a real or perceived change in the system’s equilibrium.

CYBER weapons perplex the ways power calculations have previously been made. CYBER capabilities, much more so than nuclear capabilities, have civilian applications that make their status as weapons ambiguous. More importantly, a CYBER weapon’s effectiveness lies in its user not disclosing its existence or minimally, not disclosing its full capability. Furthermore, recognizing when CYBER warfare began, and who the belligerent is, may not be clear. The notion of a CYBER Pearl Harbor would constitute an unambiguous attack, but what about a more likely action of a distributed denial of service attack, or CYBER enabled industrial sabotage, or espionage stealing state and industry secrets? While nuclear and conventional weapons exist in physical space, and their aggregate potential to do harm can be calculated, CYBER weapons deny any similar calculation and perhaps, an appropriate response to their use.

The attributes of CYBER weapons also make controlling their proliferation difficult. Unlike a nuclear weapon whose disclosure does not negate the weapon’s capability, disclosing the nature of a CYBER weapon would almost certainly forfeit its utility. Therefore, a state has an incentive to hide its CYBER capabilities, thus destabilizing the international security order. Complicating this problem is the relatively low cost of acquiring CYBER weapons and the deniability associated with their use. Instability, unpredictability, and the increased number of CYBER-capable actors may generate policies that value preemption over patience to avoid a CYBER knockout blow. Maintaining world order in the CYBER era will present a formidable challenge.

Artificial intelligence, joined to the destructiveness of nuclear weapons and the capabilities and destabilizing nature of CYBER weapons, will have a profound impact on security policy and military strategy. The current decision-making calculus for civilian and military leaders, friend and foe, is generally predictable and beneficial because it is based on a cognitive framework that has been defined by decades of experience and often during crisis. Integrating AI into decision-making and weapons systems will introduce a separate logic that is incomprehensible and operates faster than human thought. AI can certainly be designed with human override but doing so slows the response and potentially opens windows of vulnerability, especially if the enemy’s military systems are functioning at machine speeds.

Imagine an adversary who has engineered its AI to make independent decisions about targeting and employing weapons systems, including nuclear weapons. Complicating this scenario are the capabilities of AI to quickly generate vast amounts of false, but plausible information. This AI variant of psychological warfare will create realistic pictures and videos of public figures making statements that were never made and recording events that never happened. What types of policy and strategy changes would this produce? Would patience prevail or would the rapid logic and direction generated by AI be viewed as essential to act quickly against a perceived imminent enemy attack?

The reliance on AI will likely be reciprocal to the perceived use of AI by adversaries. Concepts of deterrence and arms control necessary for an equilibrium in the international system will be elusive. Even more than CYBER, AI technology has dual civilian and military applications. Equally important, and unlike nuclear capabilities, the proliferation of AI technologies is rapid, undetectable, and inexpensive thereby increasing the number of actors who possess destabilizing capabilities.

The United States appears to want its AI systems to have humans involved to control AI actions, in other words, AI-assisted weapons and defense systems. While human involvement may reduce the risk of faulty AI logic, it introduces the risk of human error. It also slows response time which can be beneficial for diplomacy to diffuse a crisis but can also lead to disaster. While the pressure to act quickly and avoid human error by delegating critical decisions to machines will be great, the requirement for human involvement at least ensures moral agency and accountability. Will moral agency and accountability trump responding quickly to AI-deciphered threats?

All nations are obligated to act in a manner that maximizes their own security. The military value of AI-enhanced autonomous weapons systems is enormous. Equally important, AI-enhanced information processing will shorten decision-making cycles making finding and striking targets easier. Adversaries will speed up their own operations with autonomous reactions at machine speed that will vastly increase the tempo of operations. This tempo will increase the pressure to eliminate humans from decision cycles and turn over control to machines for both tactical and operational decision-making. The result will be greater automation and less human control leading up to and during conflict.

While nations are obligated to act to secure their own interests, they also have an obligation to maintain peace. Attempts to control their development and deployment will be challenging but countries have a choice about how autonomous weapons will be used and how decisions will be made. Without effective restriction, international stability will be weakened. Reduced human control over warfare poses increased danger to everyone, everywhere. Actions must be taken to address the worst dangers of machine-controlled decision-making and use of autonomous tools of war. International cooperation is needed to establish rules that limit how AI-enhanced military weapons and decision-making technologies are used. In addition, developing frameworks for some level of transparency for future and perhaps more consequential AI advances will also be required. In other words, establishing an international regime to ensure mutual restraint in employing AI-enabled defense systems will be key to maintain global order and peace. Policymakers around the world have begun to understand the risks and challenges posed by AI. Let’s hope they follow through to erect safeguards for everyone’s sake.

6. The Real Threat to Taiwan

Finally, someone recognizes that a superior political warfare strategy is required.

And we must consider if it is China's strategy to make us prepare (and expend resources for expensive capabilities) for a war that we want to fight (or at least develop a military such a fight) but that China has no intention of starting.  

That said, we must also keep in mind what Sun Tzu said - never assume your enemy will not attack, make yourself invincible. We and Taiwan and like minded democracies/responsible members of the international community need to become invincible both from a military perspective and from a political warfare perspective. We have to develop advanced military capabilities but we must not neglect China's political warfare and unrestricted warfare strategies. It is not either/or. It is both/and.

Conclusion:

Nothing will deter war indefinitely. But these steps will buy time. Absent a coherent focus on political warfare, Taiwan will remain vulnerable. The U.S. may be preparing for a war that will never be fought.

The Real Threat to Taiwan

China is unlikely to invade but determined to subvert and manipulate the island’s politics.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-real-threat-to-taiwan-legislature-manipulation-china-dbfcd442?mod=latest_headlines

By Seth Cropsey and Harry Halem

June 2, 2024 4:40 pm ET

Taiwanese soldiers launch a a U.S. Stinger missile during live exercises in Taiwan, April 16. PHOTO: /ASSOCIATED PRESS

The U.S. is preparing for a crisis in the Taiwan Strait but getting China’s calculations wrong. The assumptions are twofold: that China won’t invade unless provoked, and that China still needs to get its military built to attack. Most Americans miss the centrality of manipulation and subversion to Chinese strategy. Taiwanese political security, not simply military deterrence and rhetorical balancing, are key to Chinese success.

Taiwan’s politics are a complicated accident of history. From 1949 to 1987 the island was governed by the Chinese Nationalist Party, or KMT. It is now the major opposition party, and because of the Taiwanese system’s design is the largest party in the legislature and holds an informal majority alongside the populist Taiwan People’s Party. The KMT is little more than a series of patronage networks with no formal ideology. Its leaders fantasize about eventual reunification with a democratic mainland China. Unlike the KMT, the center-left Democratic Progressive Party, which just won a third presidential term, has a distinct ideology. It seeks recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign nation, which angers Beijing.

By any modern measure, Taiwan is a state. It has its own government, military, police service, taxation, education and court system. There is no scenario under which Taiwan voluntarily accedes to China’s dominion. Only force can make it happen.

A cross-strait surprise attack is improbable. It would be militarily risky for China, and Taiwan and the U.S. would easily detect preparations. But if Beijing can freeze Taipei’s decision-making process, disrupt its military preparations, and erode state capacity, it can ensure Taiwan remains vulnerable and without allies. China’s insistence that formal Taiwanese independence will trigger war keeps the U.S. from maintaining a large-scale presence on the island. The result is limited diplomatic and intelligence contact between Washington and Taipei.

This leaves Taiwan vulnerable to political subversion. Chinese meddling in its elections is well known. China has sought to co-opt local social groups, including Taiwan’s largest Buddhist association. China has sponsored delegations of former Taiwanese military officers and government officials for nominally cultural and economic visits to the mainland, and it has provided benefits to Taiwanese entrepreneurs who conduct business in China. Politically, the Chinese Communist Party and machinery of Chinese state clearly display a preference for the KMT, while refusing formal contact with the DPP. Just over a month ago, the KMT’s legislative whip, Fu Kun-chi, met with Wang Huning, the fourth-ranked member of the Politburo Standing Committee, and Song Tao, who is responsible for political subversion in Taiwan.

China is also subverting the work of the Taiwanese legislature. In late May the KMT rammed through new laws that empower the legislature in the name of democratic transparency. The legislation is meant to handcuff the executive by allowing the legislature to investigate all executive actions and compel military officers and senior diplomats to reveal sensitive state secrets, under threat of heavy fines and other legal pressure. This would make Taiwan a far less credible partner, since any large-scale military or intelligence cooperation is at risk of discovery. Similarly, the KMT has proposed a $61 billion infrastructure project on Taiwan’s east coast, a sum well beyond Taiwanese capacity absent steep defense cuts and external financing, invariably from China.

There is no direct evidence of the Communist Party’s orchestration in Taiwan’s legislature, but this pattern of events is worrying. Beijing spent more than a decade pressuring Taiwan and accusing the DPP of being illegitimate. Now the KMT has shepherded new laws that will undermine Taiwanese security, all against the backdrop of major military exercises around Taiwan.

China’s plan is clear. It hopes to freeze Taiwanese politics, making Taiwan an unreliable partner for the U.S., Japan and other regional powers. As tensions escalate, China will manufacture crises that justify progressive encroachments, while subsequently conducting a “peacekeeping operation” akin to Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine.

The U.S. needs a clear plan in response. Washington should put its full weight behind President Lai Ching-te and the DPP, sponsoring programs within the Taiwanese civil service and military to identify competent and reliable people ahead of a crisis. The U.S. can also expand funding for civil society in Taiwan by pushing back against Chinese influence and manipulation. Washington’s commitment to the one-China policy need not change. After all, Henry Kissinger’s point during the 1972 Shanghai communiqué negotiations was to ensure that the U.S. retained diplomatic flexibility for future contingencies. China should be forced to challenge a renewed U.S.-Taiwan commitment.

Nothing will deter war indefinitely. But these steps will buy time. Absent a coherent focus on political warfare, Taiwan will remain vulnerable. The U.S. may be preparing for a war that will never be fought.

Mr. Cropsey is president of the Yorktown Institute. He served as a naval officer and as a deputy undersecretary of the Navy and is author of “Mayday” and “Seablindness.” Mr. Halem is a senior fellow at Yorktown.

7. What to Know About Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s Newly Elected President

What to Know About Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s Newly Elected President - The New York Times

By Natalie Kitroeff

Reporting from Mexico City

June 3, 2024

Updated 6:49 a.m. ET

nytimes.com · by Natalie Kitroeff · June 3, 2024

Here are five key insights into Mexico’s new president as people wonder whether she will diverge from Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policies or focus on cementing his legacy.

Listen to this article · 8:03 min Learn more

Mexico’s newly elected president, Claudia Sheinbaum, in Mexico City on Sunday.Credit…Fred Ramos for The New York Times

By Natalie Kitroeff

Reporting from Mexico City

June 3, 2024, 2:29 a.m. ET

Claudia Sheinbaum’s list of accolades is long: She has a Ph.D in energy engineering, participated in a United Nations panel of climate scientists awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and governed the capital, one of the largest cities in the hemisphere.

On Sunday, she added another achievement to her résumé: becoming the first woman elected president of Mexico.

Ms. Sheinbaum, 61, captured at least 58 percent of the vote in a landmark election on Sunday that featured two women competing for the nation’s highest office — a groundbreaking contest in a country long known for a culture of machismo and rampant violence against women.

Now that she has clinched the presidency, Ms. Sheinbaum’s next hurdle will be stepping out of the shadow of her predecessor and longtime mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the outgoing president.

She and Mr. López Obrador are “different people,” she said in an interview. He’s an oilman who invested in environmentally questionable projects; she’s a climate scientist. Yet Ms. Sheinbaum has appealed to voters mainly by promising to cement his legacy, backing moves like his big bet on the national oil company and proposed constitutional changes that critics call antidemocratic.

Their alliance has also left many Mexicans asking: Can Ms. Sheinbaum be her own leader? Or will she just be his pawn?

“There’s this idea, because a lot of columnists say it, that I don’t have a personality,” Ms. Sheinbaum complained to reporters earlier this year. “That President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tells me what to do.”

She insists she will govern independently from Mr. López Obrador and has some different priorities. But veering too far from his agenda could be very risky.

Supporters of Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico City in May.Credit…Marian Carrasquero for The New York Times

Here are five things to know about the newly elected president of Mexico that help inform whether she will stray from Mr. López Obrador’s policies or dedicate herself to cementing his legacy.

1. Sheinbaum will inherit a host of challenges.

A former ballet dancer, Ms. Sheinbaum calls herself “obsessive” and “disciplined.” But discipline may not be enough, analysts say.

As president, she already stands to inherit a long list of troubles. The state-owned oil company is buckling under debt, migration through the country has reached historical highs and cartel violence continues to torment the country.

She has said she would continue Mr. López Obrador’s policy of addressing the drivers of violence instead of waging war on the criminal groups, but will also work to lower rates of impunity and build up the national guard.

With a U.S. presidential election just months away, she told The New York Times that she was prepared to work with whichever candidate wins. Publicly, she has echoed Mr. López Obrador’s emphasis on tackling migration by addressing its root causes.

In a hint of potential change, she said in a recent debate that she would seek to reform the country’s migration authority, an agency often accused of corruption.

2. She’s seen as reserved, even aloof.

The Times spoke with two dozen people who have worked with or know Ms. Sheinbaum and also visited campaign events, reviewed her writings and her media appearances and interviewed her, once in 2020 and again this year.

What became clear is that Ms. Sheinbaum, (pronounced SHANE-balm), has long seemed more comfortable quietly getting things done than selling herself or her achievements.

The granddaughter of Jewish immigrants who fled Europe, she rarely discusses being Jewish or almost anything about her personal life, colleagues say. When interviewers ask her about the Nobel Prize she shared with a panel of climate researchers, she notes how many others were involved in the work.

She is known as a tough boss with a quick temper who can inspire in her staff fear and adoration at the same time. Publicly, though, her affect is so controlled it verges on aloof.

Some say her professorial demeanor could pose a challenge in a political landscape defined by Mr. López Obrador, who built his party into a juggernaut by relying on the force of his personality.

“She needs him,” said Carlos Heredia, a Mexican political analyst. “She doesn’t have the charisma, she doesn’t have the popularity, she doesn’t have the political stamina of her own, so she needs to borrow that from López Obrador.”

For some Mexicans, however, a thrills-free woman may be an ideal antidote to an entertaining man who plunged the country into partisan turmoil.

Figures of Claudia Sheinbaum and then-President López Obrador during a rally in Mexico City in May.Credit…Marian Carrasquero for The New York Times

3. She’s long sought to keep Mr. López Obrador happy.

The candidate’s political career began when Mr. López Obrador was elected mayor of Mexico City in 2000 and invited her to a meeting at a diner. “What I want is to reduce pollution,” she recalled Mr. López Obrador telling her. “Do you know how to do that?”

Ms. Sheinbaum, who by then had written more than a dozen reports on energy use and carbon emissions, said yes. She became his environment minister. In meetings, she seemed willing to do almost anything to make her boss happy, according to several people who worked with her.

“The phrase she used over and over again was ‘The mayor said to,’” said Mr. Heredia, who worked with her in city government under Mr. López Obrador. What that meant, according to Mr. Heredia: “We are not a cabinet for giving ideas,” he said. “We are a group of people here to execute what he decides.”

In the years that followed, Ms. Sheinbaum straddled academia and politics, but she always stayed close to Mr. López Obrador. When he founded his Morena party in 2014, he asked her to run on the party’s ticket to become mayor of Tlalpan, a borough of Mexico City. With his backing, she won.

4. She is known for being a demanding boss.

In 2018, Mr. López Obrador was swept into the presidency in a landslide and Ms. Sheinbaum became Mexico City’s mayor. She quickly gained a reputation as an exacting boss.

“One doesn’t go to her meetings to tell her, ‘I’m working on it,’” said Soledad Aragón, a former member of Ms. Sheinbaum’s cabinet. When she walked into a room, Ms. Aragón said, everyone sat up straight.

As mayor, she could remember specific numbers mentioned in a meeting weeks after it occurred, Ms. Aragón said, calling her “brilliant” and “demanding,” especially of herself, adding: “It has gotten results.”

Claudia Sheinbaum in her office in Mexico City in 2020.Credit…Meghan Dhaliwal for The New York Times

Five officials who have worked with Ms. Sheinbaum, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said that she was quick to anger at times and would yell at her subordinates in front of large groups. Through a spokesman, Ms. Sheinbaum declined to comment on the accusation.

Her defenders say some people merely reacted badly to a woman in charge.

“I know that in her government, sometimes people got offended or felt bad because she yelled at them,” said Marta Lamas, a longtime feminist activist who has been close to Ms. Sheinbaum and her team. “But if a man yells, it wouldn’t be an issue because culturally, it’s different.”

“People say it in a critical way: ‘She’s tough,’” Ms. Aragón said. “What do you want, someone soft in charge of the city?”

5. She is a true believer in Mr. López Obrador’s vision.

For years, Ms. Sheinbaum has tried to explain how she can be so in step with Mr. López Obrador while also being herself. The answer, she says, is simple: She genuinely believes in him.

In 2022, a radio host asked her a pointed question from a female listener: “Why don’t you choose to be a woman who governs with her own ideas? Why don’t you get out of AMLO’s circus?” she asked, using Mr. López Obrador’s nickname. “Why have the same rhetoric with the same words?”

Ms. Sheinbaum didn’t hesitate.

“If you think the same as another person, it’s not that you’re copying them; you just agree with the ideas,” she said. “You can’t deny what you believe.”

Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.

is the Mexico City bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

See more on: Andrés Manuel López Obrador

nytimes.com · by Natalie Kitroeff · June 3, 2024

8. A former Israeli hostage recalls the brutality of Hamas captivity

We must not forget what Hamas has done and continues to do.

A former Israeli hostage recalls the brutality of Hamas captivity

Moran Stella Yanai was abducted on Oct. 7 and was sure that her life “would end,” she said.

By Shira Rubin

June 1, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Shira Rubin · June 1, 2024

BEER SHEVA, Israel — Moran Stella Yanai has told her story more times than she can count. She does not want to keep reliving Oct. 7, does not want that day to define her. But it feels like a duty now, she said, to speak for those who are not yet free.

“They cannot defend themselves in there,” Moran, 40, said, speaking from her living room in the southern Israeli city of Beer Sheva — just 25 miles from Gaza — surrounded by her jewelry and her art, Jewish religious texts, and by her dog and cat, both rescues.

“I want my sisters and brothers out of this hell.”

Six months after her release, Moran shared her experience in Hamas captivity with The Washington Post, recounting the terror of her abduction, the cruelty of her captors and the lasting toll of the ordeal on her mind and body. She hoped it would remind the public of the 125 hostages remaining in Gaza, she said. They include 17 women, and two children under the age of 5. At least 39 are already confirmed dead.

Their plight has anguished Israeli society, and their return remains a stated goal of the country’s war in Gaza. Some families of hostages have taken to the streets to demand the government reach an agreement with Hamas for their release. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains that only military pressure can secure a deal to free them.

Some of the 105 hostages released during a one-week cease-fire in late November have been hospitalized or placed in intensive rehabilitation programs. Others have stayed in the public eye — hoping to keep their stories in the headlines, out of fear they will be forgotten.

Moran has been in constant motion, meeting with activists, diplomats and even the U.N. secretary general. She has addressed audiences in Israel and around the world. The night before, she had stood on a stage in Tel Aviv, before 100,000 protesters, in a plaza now known as “Hostage Square.”

“Bring them home — NOW!,” she chanted.

‘Welcome to Gaza’

Moran, a designer and an artist, was captured three times on Oct. 7. She had gone to the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel to sell her handmade jewelry. It was her biggest venue yet. She hoped it would be the start of a new chapter in her life.

As Hamas gunmen descended on the site of the rave, she ran for her life, walking when she could no longer run. For five hours, she said, she wove through potato fields and across desolate stretches of desert.

She sent desperate voice messages to her parents. She was sure, she recalled, that her life “would end.”

She was eventually caught by a group of militants, who live-streamed a video showing Moran begging for her life in a ditch. “This is one of the Jewish dogs,” a man narrates.

She said she convinced them that she was Arab, using her limited Arabic vocabulary and pointing to her necklace, which had her middle name, Stella, in Arabic font — a gift from an Egyptian friend. They let her go.

“I found myself alone in the field without anyone from the party,” she said. “No army, no terrorists, nothing. And that’s when I hear more screams in Arabic coming toward me.”

Another group of gunmen had found her, but she used the same strategy to negotiate her release.

“I used all the empathy that I have, all the compassion that I have, never mind that I was a woman with 10 men, never mind that they were terrorists who came to kill me,” she said.

She then climbed a thin tree, hoping to find a hiding place, but fell and fractured her ankle in two places. Limping and exhausted, she said she fell into the hands of a larger and more organized pack of militants — 13 in total — who seized her and did not let go. They ripped off seven of her rings, her body chain, her bracelets, and most of her other jewelry, she recalled, and packed her into one of their stolen Israeli getaway cars.

From that moment, and throughout her captivity, she said, she was keenly aware of her body and its vulnerability.

The men laid her down across their laps, like a hunted animal, she thought. They beat her on the short ride to Gaza, she said. She remembers trying to close her eyes, but the group’s leader pulled her hair and shouted at her to keep them open. He forced her to watch the gunmen as they glared at her and, as the rocky desert road gave way to city blocks, to see the revelers who lined the streets, cheering and jeering. She said some tried to strike her on the head as the men transferred her from the car to a hospital.

“Welcome to Gaza,” the group’s leader told her.

“They felt like they had won a prize,” Moran recalled. “It was the biggest party I’ve ever seen.”

In her hospital bed, she found herself surrounded by other men, who rapidly removed her shoes, emptied her pockets and ripped off her remaining jewelry, she said. She was still in shock.

“Suddenly, a doctor comes out of nowhere and says in completely clear Hebrew, ma shlomech — how are you?” she recalled. “All I could think of was whispering, ‘help me, help me, please help me.’”

She believed, briefly, that her nightmare might be over.

“But he just smiled at me, that’s like a horror movie,” she said. “That was the moment I did the switch in my head, and I understand that I am in a very bad situation. From then on, it was — survival, commence.”

The doctor inspected her quickly and had a cast on her ankle within minutes.

During one transfer between hideouts, she said, her guards tore off her cast and forced her to walk down six flights of stairs in high heels that were too large for her feet.

She told them she was in excruciating pain, she said, but they shouted at her to keep going. Limping was forbidden. She swallowed the pain, reminding herself that, under the circumstances, “you choose your battles really carefully.”

‘They used us’

Moran recounted being moved from house to house over the next seven weeks, with new guards each time. She lived in fear of them, she said, but also depended on them for survival.

“They didn’t rape me, they didn’t touch me,” she said.

What haunts her most are the firsthand accounts of rape from other female hostages, whispered to her in captivity. She holds their secrets, not divulging names to protect their privacy, and to not further endanger their lives.

Their stories “broke me a little bit,” she said. “But they also gave me so much strength to fight even harder for my brothers and sisters, to get them home.”

A March report by the United Nations found “reasonable grounds to believe” that sexual assault, including rape and gang rape, occurred across multiple locations on Oct. 7. On May 20, the chief prosecutor of the world’s top court, the ICC, said he would seek arrest warrants for Hamas military chief Yehiya Sinwar and two other Hamas leaders on charges that included “rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity.”

In a statement, Hamas accused the ICC prosecutor of attempting “to equate the victim with the executioner” by seeking arrest warrants against “Palestinian resistance leaders.” The group did not address the specific charges of rape and sexual violence.

Amit Soussana, a released Israeli hostage, told the New York Times in March that she was sexually abused at gunpoint during her captivity. Aviva Siegel, another hostage, told Israel’s Channel 12 in February that Hamas captors dressed the hostages “in dolls’ clothes.” One day, she said, the captors forced three young women to leave the door open as they showered “so they could peek at them without clothes on.”

Moran said her captors were always near, sleeping beside her and the other hostages. They insisted on being present when she used the bathroom.

She described the psychological torture as relentless and repetitive. Her guards said her family had forgotten about her, that there was no country for her to return to. She was told the people next door would kill her if she made too much noise, that the Israeli air force wanted her dead.

On her second day in Gaza, she recalled, a bomb shattered a window of her room. Night after night, the Israeli airstrikes intensified. Without access to radio or television, she had no understanding of the conflict that raged around her.

More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in nearly eight months of war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children.

Moran tried to prepare herself for death, or for sexual violence — an anxiety she said became more acute every time she moved to a new hideout with new men watching over her.

The new guards would perform what they called “checks,” she said, inspecting the hostages’ bodies for “IDF radio chips.” When they ordered her to take off her pants, Moran refused. “I told them, you know this is forbidden in Islam. They would say ‘no, this is necessary.’”

When she held firm with a “hard no,” she said, the men would back down.

She tried to humanize herself in the eyes of the militants, she said, recalibrating her strategy with each new cast of guards. It was difficult, though, to convince them that she wasn’t an Israeli soldier.

In the first house she was kept in, a Hamas interrogator, flanked by other men, demanded to know where Moran served. At first, she was confused. Then he grabbed her pants, and she realized she was wearing what looked like olive green fatigues and army boots.

She remembers trying to explain that she was an artist, that she had been taken from a music festival where she was trying to sell her jewelry, that she didn’t want a war. The men laughed, she said.

In the days that followed, visitors — including women and children, she said — were brought to gawk at her and listen to tales spun by the gunmen, who would later recap the stories for her in broken English. They said she was an Arab who had betrayed her country and been recruited into the Israeli army. She is half Egyptian and half Moroccan, one of millions of Israelis with roots in North Africa and the Middle East.

She couldn’t risk telling them that she often traveled to Egypt; that she had a network of suppliers there, one of whom she considered a good friend.

“I had no right to speak or to defend myself, or to say you’re making up a story about me,” she recalled thinking.

Wherever she was held, the rules were the same, she said. Begging, speaking audibly, crying, or expressing any kind of emotion was forbidden — unless ordered otherwise. In one hideout, she described her captors forcing her to perform a scene they had choreographed. Over and over, she was made to rest her face between her hands, to pout like “a lost little girl,” and use a soft, high-pitched voice when asking for food or water.

The guards howled with laughter, she said. “They used us as a game.”

Moran was returned to Israel on Nov. 29 as part of a temporary truce. Over a week in November, Hamas freed 105 hostages in exchange for a pause in the fighting and the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

She discovered she was allergic to the lice that had infested her scalp. She had lost 17 pounds, 12 percent of her body weight and is now “half deaf” from the constant explosions, she said.

She also began intensive physical therapy for her ankle and was diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome, a rare chronic condition. After being examined in an Israeli hospital, she was told the slapdash treatment in Gaza had complicated her recovery.

It took her time to figure out what she had missed, and longer to fully comprehend some of it. 360 people had been killed at the Nova festival on Oct. 7, nearly 1,200 in total across Israel, most of them civilians like her. When she learned children were among the hostages, she couldn’t believe it at first.

She has attended funerals for other hostages, including Itay Svirsky, 38, who was with her in the last place she was held.

Itay “didn’t resist, he kept explaining to me how I should behave,” Moran said. He was declared dead by Israeli authorities in January.

“Itay and I could have been such good friends,” she said.

The Washington Post · by Shira Rubin · June 1, 2024

9. Why Washington Failed in Niger

Excerpts:

This alone should induce caution about expanding security assistance efforts elsewhere in the region. This is especially the case with costly outlays such as the construction of major bases or permanent troop deployments. There is perhaps no way to meaningfully provide security assistance without empowering precisely those military and other state actors responsible for exacerbating regional insurgencies through human rights abuses, corruption, and massacres. Furthermore, it is not possible to train partner militaries to not launch coups.

Instead, U.S. regional policy would be better served by de-prioritizing security issues altogether. A more productive and less damaging approach would build on the recognition that security involvement in fragile states often does more harm than good, and that actions on the margins may prove more fruitful. Such action includes filling massive shortfalls in regional humanitarian funding and affording better access to U.S. markets for agricultural producers across the region, regardless of their government’s relationship with Washington. Deeper engagement in helping to fund climate adaptation and resilience in deeply vulnerable countries could also have beneficial impacts.

More broadly, U.S. policymakers also need to move away from an ideological fixation on regional competition with Russia, whose sway over regional juntas is far more limited than the exaggerated rhetoric coming out of Washington would suggest. Instead, Russian activities are constrained by the political priorities of regional governments and Moscow has little leverage over their politics. Washington should recognize that its African counterparts would rather be dealt with on terms of equality and respect, rather than as pawns in a geopolitical contest. Treating them this way, as the visiting State Department delegation reportedly did in Niamey, will only generate resentment and mistrust.

Why Washington Failed in Niger - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Nathaniel Powell · June 3, 2024

Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine pulled no punches in explaining the country’s decision to expel U.S. forces: “The Americans stayed on our soil, doing nothing while the terrorists killed people and burned towns. It is not a sign of friendship to come on our soil but let the terrorists attack us.” He went on to single out what he saw as the “condescending tone and a lack of respect” shown by a high level U.S. delegation that visited the country in mid-March. According to Zeine, Nigerien officials were insulted not only by the tone of U.S. messaging but also by demands to limit security ties with Russia and threats to impose sanctions if Niger sold uranium to Iran.

Although self-serving in many ways, Zeine’s accusations reflect an already strained relationship between the United States and Niger. This was partly linked to Washington ending security assistance after the country’s July 2023 coup and the junta’s unwillingness to accede to regional and international demands to step down.Nonetheless the root causes of the U.S. failure in Niger run deeper. The end of the U.S. military presence in Niger is above all the result of political and social dynamics driven by the American and wider Western presence there.

This reflects a broader problem in developing security partnerships with politically fragile regimes. Large influxes of security assistance can inadvertently erode the legitimacy of local state authority, reinforcing favorable conditions for coup-making. Indeed, if U.S. authorities move forward with plans to substantially expand security relationships with coastal West African states, they may face similar results.

There is no simple policy fix for this problem. Most broadly, Washington would do better to de-prioritize security and global geopolitical competition in its regional relationships. The United States simply does not have the capacity to significantly contribute to an improved regional security environment in a direct way. Instead, it should focus on issues that could have wider positive impacts such as improving export access to U.S. markets, filling humanitarian funding gaps, and investing in regional climate mitigation and adaptation measures. Although notionally unrelated to security, such measures could improve livelihoods, save lives, and, marginally but more effectively, address some drivers of regional insecurity.

Become a Member

No Longer Welcome

On April 24, the State Department announced the final decision to withdrawal U.S. forces from Niger. According to a May 19 joint announcement made by the Defense Department and Nigerien Defense Ministry, U.S. troops will complete their pullout by Sept. 15. These forces, numbering just under 650 troops, will also hand over key installations, including an expensive drone base in the northern town of Agadez. This follows the Nigerien junta’s unilateral abrogation of a 2013 status of forces agreement that served as the legal basis for U.S. military activities in the country.

The move is both embarrassing for the United States and a minor strategic setback. Niger had, at least until the July 2023 coup against former President Mohamed Bazoum, served as America’s main regional intelligence hub. However, the move should not have come as a surprise. It follows the junta’s expulsion of the roughly 1,500 French forces deployed in the country to help fight jihadist groups, and Niamey’s very public rapprochement with Russia. In both respects, the junta has followed the examples of those in Burkina Faso and Mali, which both compelled French forces to leave, with Mali further expelling a major U.N. peacekeeping operation last year.

The arrival of Russian military personnel in Niger has fed a narrative emphasizing growing Russian regional influence. Washington will likely see this in Cold War terms as a Russian success, with the deployment of Russian soldiers or mercenaries to the same base hosting U.S. forces in Niamey viewed as an additional humiliation.

Western Versus Local Perspectives

For outsiders, Niger appeared to be an island of relative stability in a region plagued by major jihadist insurgencies and a wave of military coups. Niger’s counter-insurgency strategy, implemented under Bazoum, appeared to be working. It mixed military activity with community-level dialogues to limit intercommunal conflict and outreach to jihadist rank-and-file to secure defections. Jihadist activity in Niger had been declining since Bazoum took office in April 2021. In other words, he was an ideal African ally for his Western partners. This was especially the case for France, which was already on the backfoot with its troops forced out of both Mali and Burkina Faso due to antagonistic relations with intransigent juntas.

With the deployment of Russia’s Wagner Group to Mali in late 2021, Niger’s pro-Western orientation was also valued by French and U.S. policymakers anxious to block Russian expansion in the region. Moreover, with some 1,100 troops stationed in the country to conduct security assistance missions and support intelligence gathering from major drone bases in the country, Niger was critical to U.S. regional security policy. The State Department’s 2022 Integrated Country Strategy described the country as a “linchpin for stability in the Sahel.”

However, a better understanding of the regional and Nigerien political context may have avoided such misperceptions and exposed the fragile basis of Western security policy in the Sahel in general and in Niger in particular.

Where U.S. policymakers see the region effectively through the lens of both fighting jihadists and geopolitical competition with Russia, many locals view the Western presence — until recently mostly the French — as defending unaccountable political regimes. This encourages a dynamic in which local governments’ illegitimacy is amplified by their security and economic dependence on Western countries, and in which the legitimacy and desirability of those countries is thus also called into question. The failure of foreign powers, with France at the forefront, to effectively stem the spread of regional jihadist insurgencies, has intensified this downward spiral of mutual illegitimacy, and increased the unpopularity of foreign interventions across the region.

The resulting situation is one in which the interest of the United States and its Western allies in working closely with regional governments may appear to clash with the interest of local populations who see their states as corrupt, predatory, and illegitimate. This is perhaps the fundamental flaw of the U.S. and broader Western security assistance model in both Niger and further afield. This dynamic has helped fuel the rise of a wave of regional “anti-French sentiment” in recent years directed at Paris’ backing for unpopular and unaccountable governments. It is less the product of disinformation campaigns directed by Russia, but rather the lived reality of those who have to survive under predatory governments backed by Western powers.

Hence, when juntas came to power in Mali (in two coups, one in 2020 and another in 2021), Burkina Faso (two coups in 2022), and Niger (2023), an easy way to differentiate themselves from their predecessors and justify their unconstitutional seizures of power was the rhetoric of sovereign independence from foreign powers, particularly France. This has proven effective and has afforded juntas a degree of popular support, especially in core urban areas, that their formally elected predecessors have lacked.

U.S. policymakers appeared to have hoped that Washington’s less visible military presence and lack of colonial past in the region could help them avert France’s fate in Niger. However, despite its lighter footprint, Washington’s position in Niger was still tainted by its backing for elected civilian authorities locally viewed as illegitimate. This fundamental contradiction between domestic and international legitimacy — a dynamic at play across the region — appears to have either been misunderstood by U.S. policymakers or not considered relevant in making Niger’s government a core security partner.

Civil-Military Tensions

Indeed, one key feature of Niger’s political and institutional landscape that should have informed U.S. and Western policymakers’ thinking is the country’s decades-long history of civil-military tensions and coup-making. U.S. policymakers, as well as their French and E.U. counterparts, appear to have seriously underestimated Niger’s coup risk. This is particularly striking as that the risk was widely understood by many Nigeriens as well as regional observers.

If the country’s long history of coups and troubled civil-miliary relations did not make this clear, then a failed March 2021 coup attempt aiming to derail Bazoum’s presidential inauguration should have. The wave of subsequent regional coups should have also raised red flags over Niger’s potential risk. Before Bazoum’s overthrow last year, Niger had experienced four previous coups, the most recent in 2010. These precedents should have served as a warning to Niger’s foreign backers about the fundamentally fragile political basis of their partnership.

As jihadist insurgencies erupted in neighboring Mali in 2012 and subsequently spread across borders, Western powers began to provide increasing levels of security force assistance to Niger, then ruled by Bazoum’s predecessor, former President Mahamadou Issoufou. This aid helped to fuel a series of worrying dynamics within Niger’s security forces and between these and the government. This included massive increases in defense spending which, combined with opaque procurement practices, fueled tremendous amounts of corruption.

Moreover, the increased funding boosted the institutional weight of Niger’s defense and security forces within the state. This was notably the case for specially favored units, including the presidential guard which eventually went on to overthrow Bazoum. Issoufou was reportedly paranoid about coups, especially following an alleged 2015 coup attempt, and resorted to coup-proofing measures that included co-opting high-ranking military officers into patronage networks.

Domestic Fragility

One key mistake made by both U.S. and other Western policymakers was misinterpreting Niger’s comparatively free elections (by regional standards) as conferring real democratic legitimacy. Bazoum’s foreign backers especially tended to exaggerate his democratic credentials. As interior minister under his predecessor Issoufou, Bazoum was at the forefront of government repression of opposition voices and protests. Although international observer missions generally credited his 2020–2021 election as free and fair, it suffered from irregularities, including unrealistic vote totals and levels of turnout in some communes. The opposition alleged widespread fraud and major post-election protests were violently repressed.

Under Bazoum’s rule, journalists were harassed, protest marches banned and non-governmental organization activity restricted. Moreover, Issoufou and Bazoum’s ruling Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism was deeply unpopular in key parts of the country, including the capital Niamey and its surrounding Tillabéri region. Indeed, the opposition won 78 percent of the vote in Niamey in the 2021 presidential polls.

The junta that took power in July has tapped into this anger to help legitimize their rule. As on many other governance indicators, Niger’s relatively better standing compared to other countries in the region may have distorted the perceptions of its Western partners as to the quality of its governance and its underlying political stability.

Bazoum’s foreign allies were also not wrong in identifying Bazoum as a reformer. He made sincere moves to tackle corruption in some parts of the state and to throttle powerful patronage networks. This also certainly influenced Western perceptions that Bazoum was a reliable partner. However, Western policymakers may have done well to heed Alexis de Tocqueville’s warning that “the most dangerous moment for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform itself.” Bazoum’s anti-corruption efforts and attempts to consolidate power for himself simply threatened too many deeply vested interests, and appear to have played a major role in triggering the coup.

Future Implications

As U.S. forces leave the Sahel, they appear to be looking to expand partnerships with key coastal states threatened by jihadist expansion. The commander of U.S. Africa Command, Gen. Michael Langley, recently visited Côte d’Ivoire and Benin to discuss tighter security ties. This may include discussions over new basing arrangements, particularly in Côte d’Ivoire, which has long been a key regional French partner.

On the surface, Washington has much to offer these states whose more fragile and poorer northern borderlands are vulnerable to regional jihadists. Governments across the region would welcome additional training, equipment, and intelligence cooperation. Most of these states are also wealthier, more robust, and more capable than their Sahelian neighbors on a range of measures, which make them potentially more effective security partners.

However, the democratic legitimacy of the governments of both Benin and Côte d’Ivoire are at best questionable. Benin’s President Patrice Talon has imprisoned prominent opposition figures and critical journalists, and the opposition has little weight in parliament. Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara may seek an unconstitutional fourth term of office in next year’s presidential polls.

Moreover, the past 20 years in Côte d’Ivoire have seen coup attempts, army mutinies, violently contested elections, and civil war. Ouattara himself owes his presidency in part to a French army intervention following his 2010 election victory against outgoing president Laurent Gbagbo.

The increased political salience of popular anger at French policies in part lies behind recent French decisions to substantially downgrade their regional military presence, including in Côte d’Ivoire. As the situation in Niger illustrates, the United States is not immune to the political impact of such popular sentiment. Should there be a change of government in any of its other partners, Washington may see the political foundations of its security relationships quickly melt away. Indeed, its very presence could contribute to bringing this about.

Moving Forward

Africa has a long history of Western military interventions and security engagement aiming at stabilization and countering security threats. Few of these have had lasting benefits for local populations. In the Sahel, Western security assistance has in general garnered limited returns on investment. Even if it has improved capacities at the tactical or operational level (impacts that are hard to measure), its systemic impact has contributed to coup-making and popular anger at the Western backers of regional governments.

This alone should induce caution about expanding security assistance efforts elsewhere in the region. This is especially the case with costly outlays such as the construction of major bases or permanent troop deployments. There is perhaps no way to meaningfully provide security assistance without empowering precisely those military and other state actors responsible for exacerbating regional insurgencies through human rights abuses, corruption, and massacres. Furthermore, it is not possible to train partner militaries to not launch coups.

Instead, U.S. regional policy would be better served by de-prioritizing security issues altogether. A more productive and less damaging approach would build on the recognition that security involvement in fragile states often does more harm than good, and that actions on the margins may prove more fruitful. Such action includes filling massive shortfalls in regional humanitarian funding and affording better access to U.S. markets for agricultural producers across the region, regardless of their government’s relationship with Washington. Deeper engagement in helping to fund climate adaptation and resilience in deeply vulnerable countries could also have beneficial impacts.

More broadly, U.S. policymakers also need to move away from an ideological fixation on regional competition with Russia, whose sway over regional juntas is far more limited than the exaggerated rhetoric coming out of Washington would suggest. Instead, Russian activities are constrained by the political priorities of regional governments and Moscow has little leverage over their politics. Washington should recognize that its African counterparts would rather be dealt with on terms of equality and respect, rather than as pawns in a geopolitical contest. Treating them this way, as the visiting State Department delegation reportedly did in Niamey, will only generate resentment and mistrust.

Become a Member

Nathaniel Powell is a West Africa analyst at Oxford Analytica and an honorary researcher at Lancaster University’s Centre for War and Diplomacy. He is the author of France’s Wars in Chad: Military Intervention and Decolonization in Africa.

Image: Spc. Zayid Ballesteros

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Nathaniel Powell · June 3, 2024

10. Covert Connections: The LinkedIn Recruitment Ruse Targeting Defense Insiders

Beware the use of LinkedIn.

Read the entire paper online here: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/JIPA/Display/Article/3768503/covert-connections-the-linkedin-recruitment-ruse-targeting-defense-insiders/

Read the 24 page PDF version here: https://media.defense.gov/2024/May/07/2003458327/-1/-1/1/FEATURE%20-%20LISENBEE%20-%20JIPA.PDF/FEATURE%20-%20LISENBEE%20-%20JIPA.PDF

Covert Connections: The LinkedIn Recruitment Ruse Targeting Defense Insiders

• Published May 8, 2024
• By Lt Col Caleb S. Lisenbee II, USAF

Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs -- 

Click here for PDF version.

Abstract

Foreign adversaries, particularly China, are exploiting LinkedIn to conduct virtual espionage against current and former US Department of Defense (DOD) members. They create fake profiles and lucrative job solicitations to entice targets into divulging sensitive information or becoming recruited assets. This low-risk, low-cost tactic circumvents robust physical and cybersecurity defenses. Every DOD professional is a potential target, from senior leaders to junior personnel, as adversaries seek insights into future capabilities, vulnerabilities, research, operational concepts, and human intelligence networks. Successful recruitment can devastate national security by enabling technological replication, battlefield strategy countering, and compromising of critical personnel. Consequences for individuals include potential treason charges and ruined careers. To combat this threat, a focused US government counterespionage campaign is recommended, coupled with enhanced training, policies, and legal statutes explicitly addressing virtual espionage. Defensive measures must match the scale and sophistication of the virtual threat.

***

Unsolicited messages on LinkedIn, often masquerading as legitimate business opportunities, have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. These seemingly innocuous communications frequently mask ulterior motives, particularly when honing in on individuals with defense and security backgrounds. Beneath the guise of professional networking lurks a mounting peril of virtual espionage, with foreign adversaries leveraging the platform’s perceived reliability to ensnare unwitting recruits for nefarious ends. Take, for instance, the following solicitation: “Paid Consulting Opportunity: I hope you’re doing well. I’m currently working with a client who is researching security solutions. Based on your background, I think you’d be a great fit. If you’re interested, it would be a ~1 hour phone call, and you would be compensated for your time on the phone with them at a prorated hourly rate of your choosing; typical rate range is $200-300.” This message stands as but one among a slew of suspicious unsolicited missives I have encountered on LinkedIn, a platform often hailed as the epitome of trustworthiness, particularly for networking purposes.[1] Many of my peers—coworkers, colleagues, and friends alike—have attested to receiving similar offers over recent years. Foreign adversaries are leveraging LinkedIn in attempts to recruit both current and former Department of Defense (DOD) members, masquerading under the pretext of consulting, in a bid to gain strategic advantages in the great power competition. This is facilitated by the low costs and risks associated with utilizing the platform for virtual espionage. In this article, I aim to elucidate this argument by identifying the targeted demographics and the sought-after information or positions by adversaries. Moreover, I will explore the repercussions of these attacks on the nation and the individuals who fall prey to them. Additionally, I will delve into the intricacies of espionage and the underlying psychological mechanisms of social engineering, shedding light on how adversaries pinpoint their targets on LinkedIn. Finally, I will offer recommendations on how to counter this looming threat. The United States possesses the capability to impose costs on adversaries engaged in virtual espionage, effectively making them pay for their transgressions.

As outlined in the current National Security Strategy, great-power competition stands as the foremost security challenge confronting the United States, with China emerging as the primary pacing threat. Adversaries persist in their endeavors to gather intelligence, engage in espionage, and pilfer critical information through any available means. Foreign intelligence operatives adeptly exploit human targets to establish connections with high-value individuals (HVI) within a target’s professional network. In today’s digitally driven world, virtual espionage looms as a formidable menace.

The 2023 US National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS) highlights that “theft of data is growing rapidly and opening up novel vectors for malicious actors to surveil, manipulate, and blackmail individuals.”[2] The aspect of manipulation is particularly concerning when considering the exploitation of current and former DOD members for secrets, information, experience, and insights. Technology increasingly intertwines with human life, enhancing and enabling various aspects, including professional networking and collaboration. Social media platforms, particularly Microsoft’s professional networking site LinkedIn, offer foreign intelligence services a rich target environment—a fact US counterintelligence chief William Evanina substantiated in 2018.[3]

For security reasons, this article refrains from discussing specific details of the problem, such as the number of reports being investigated by federal law enforcement agencies like the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) regarding suspicious consulting offers over LinkedIn or the extent to which adversary attempts to solicit information or recruit spies from current and former DOD members have increased in recent years. Nevertheless, it is prudent to consider these questions.

That being said, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) offers insight into the magnitude of the issue through statistics from the defense industry. In FY 2022, DCSA received over 26,000 suspicious contact reports from cleared contractor facilities, some of which were linked to social media activity.[4] Furthermore, US and allied intelligence agencies have issued warnings about nations like the People’s Republic of China (PRC) engaging in LinkedIn espionage. For instance, in 2018, the US publicly accused the PRC for the first time of leveraging LinkedIn to recruit Americans.[5] Additionally, Gen C.Q. Brown, during his tenure as Chief of Staff (CSAF) of the US Air Force (USAF), alerted all Airmen in a September 2023 email about China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) recruitment efforts “to exploit their knowledge and skill to fill gaps in their military capability.”[6]

A 2023 report by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency reveals that social networking ranks among the most common contact methods for adversary intelligence services, particularly those originating from East Asia and the Pacific.[7] A consulting offer serves merely as the initial enticement, paving the way for further exploitation. In the digital age, the acquisition, storage, and analysis of personal information far surpass “any secret police files” compiled by the Soviets during the Cold War.[8] Moreover, advancements in algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) make analysis even more accessible. This article should be disseminated to all Transition Assistance Program (TAP) offices/facilitators, at the very least, to heighten threat awareness among military personnel transitioning out of service. The following section delves deeper into the target demographic.

11. South China Sea: Beijing warns neighbours of US ‘geopolitical self-interest’ in region

Every country has "self interests." "No permanent friends, only permanent interests." (William Clay)

South China Sea: Beijing warns neighbours of US ‘geopolitical self-interest’ in region

• Chinese foreign ministry says Washington has played ‘extremely dishonourable role’ by supporting Manila’s ‘abusive acts’ in contested waters
• It comes in response to Shangri-La Dialogue speech by Philippine president denouncing ‘illegal coercive’ actions in territorial disputes

Zhao Ziwen

+ FOLLOWPublished: 6:48pm, 3 Jun 2024

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3265210/south-china-sea-beijing-warns-neighbours-us-geopolitical-self-interest-region?utm

South China Morning Post · June 3, 2024

It also took aim at the United States, saying the country had played “an extremely dishonourable role” by supporting Manila.

“The United States, out of geopolitical self-interest, has played an extremely dishonourable role by supporting and cooperating with the Philippine side’s abusive acts and using the South China Sea issue to provoke tensions between China and regional countries.

“At present, it is crystal clear who the Philippine foreign policy and its maritime operations serves … Regional countries should remain highly vigilant in this regard and firmly hold the leading role of regional peace and stability in their own hands.”

Beijing said it was willing to continue to cooperate with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), including the Philippines, to manage differences and deepen maritime cooperation, according to the statement.

“With the joint efforts of China and Asean countries, the situation in the South China Sea has remained generally stable. The freedom of navigation and overflight enjoyed by all countries in accordance with the law poses no problem,” it added.

02:16

Defence ministers from China and US meet on sidelines of Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore

Defence ministers from China and US meet on sidelines of Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore

In his speech at the opening of the Shangri-La Dialogue, Marcos stressed the importance of upholding international law in asserting Manila’s claims in the South China Sea and referred to a “binding” 2016 ruling by a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which rejected Beijing’s territorial claims over the waters.

“Any effort to resolve maritime differences in the East China Sea and the South China Sea must be anchored in international law,” Marcos said in the speech, adding that “we must … respect legally settled rights”.

China views the international tribunal’s ruling as illegal and has argued that Manila’s “unilateral initiation of international arbitration” without Beijing’s consent “violated international law”.

“China did not accept or participate in the South China Sea arbitration case … nor accept any claims or actions based on the ruling. China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea will not be affected by the ruling under any circumstances,” the ministry said.

China claims most of the South China Sea, but the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have competing territorial claims over the resource-rich waterway.

Since Marcos took office two years ago, the Philippines has been the most assertive country in the region in countering Beijing’s territorial claims in the disputed waters.

Despite not having any territorial claims in the South China Sea, Washington is committed to upholding freedom of navigation in the waters and supporting its Southeast Asian allies, including the Philippines.

In his meeting with US counterpart Lloyd Austin on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun accused the US of endangering security in the region with its support of the Philippines.

He said US military activities in the disputed Second Thomas Shoal – known as Renai Jiao in Chinese and Ayungin Shoal in the Philippines – and its deployment of a missile system in the Philippines were “a real threat to regional security”.

Austin, on the other hand, underscored the “importance of respect for high-seas freedom of navigation guaranteed under international law, especially in the South China Sea” during his talks with the Chinese defence chief, according to a Pentagon statement.

South China Morning Post · June 3, 2024

12. Failure Is for Other People – Not for our ruling elites in government and nonprofit agencies

Although I think the author makes some important points I think he has spun an example or two to support his agenda. (e.g., The Chairman is not in the Chain of Command - he is the principal advisor to the SECDEF and President).

Failure Is for Other People 

spectator.org · by Karl Pfefferkorn · June 3, 202

Failure Is for Other People

Not for our ruling elites in government and nonprofit agencies, who operate in consequence-free environments.

June 2, 2024, 10:46 PM

Former US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley (Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock)

One of the more preposterous aspects of the protests roiling American college campuses is the insistence of the students that they be spared any adverse consequences for their actions. They expect no suspensions, no expulsions, and most of all no harmful impact on their precious internships and job prospects. Civil disobedience without penalty is purely performative, and reduces their protests to a juvenile lark, the latter day equivalent of phone booth stuffing or streaking. Had Martin Luther King Jr. written a “Letter from the Birmingham Hotel” it would have lost its moral impact. Suffering the consequences of his actions was the price of his civil disobedience. Avoiding them today renders the actions of student protesters functionally meaningless.

The massive expansion of federal programs … has embedded consequence-free policy decisions deeply into American society.

But spare these kids the usual opprobrium dispensed by their elders. They are in fact acting in accordance with the consequence-free behavior embraced by many of our leading institutions. Students at our top universities endure expensive courses taught by vapid ideologues, tortuous bureaucratic ordeals imposed by incompetent administrators, and witness no penalties for rule-breaking committed for officially approved political causes.

We wish to think that once these young people leave university, the “real world” will impose consequences in the form of a mythic boss who brooks no nonsense. But that is not likely, given their career aspirations. The academic majors of student activists, as noted by the New York Post, are heavy on various “Studies” disciplines, which suggests future employment in the non-profit world, where inadequate performance is difficult to measure and rarely punished. These students avoid the STEM disciplines where failure is obvious and penalized. Non-profits offer “meaningful” employment to activists without the dread prospect of being canned for non-performance. (READ MORE from Karl Pfefferkorn: For the Democrats, It’s the Keffiyehs vs. the Tote Bags)

It would be bad enough if our massive non-profit sector were subject to no consequences for failure. We can endure a National Public Radio that fails to serve the public interest by changing the station. But we have allowed consequence-free behavior to invade institutions from which there is no escape because they literally govern on our behalf.

Consider Mark Milley, who presided over the disastrous withdrawal from Kabul. He was in a position to insist the evacuation be staged out of Bagram, where we had a large defended perimeter, yet he didn’t. Thirteen Marines died, American citizens were abandoned, and Milley retired unrebuked on a nice pension last September.

Consider George Tenet, who assured President Bush that the case for Iraqi WMDs was a “slam dunk” and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his gross intelligence failure. Consider Wendy Sherman, who negotiated the misbegotten 1994 nuclear deal with North Korea, and returned as Deputy Secretary of State. Failure had no discernable impact on these stellar careers. It’s not surprising that students at our elite institutions expect similar dispensation.

The massive expansion of federal programs over the past decades has embedded consequence-free policy decisions deeply into American society. In 1964, a young Joe Califano sold LBJ’s Great Society program as “A Hand-Up, not a Hand-Out,” yet when he became Secretary of HEW under Carter, he conceded that these programs were now an open-ended government handout. The result: a sturdy black urban working class displaced by multi-generational single-mother welfare dependents.

Our urban public schools were once the key to social advancement; now young families flee to suburban school districts for the sake of their children’s future. These grave policy debacles are apparently beyond remediation, with dire consequences for American cities.

Our young elite class has digested a critical lesson: failure is for other people. If you are a lowly high school grad working in a NAPA store and screw up the inventory, you will be fired. If you are a Columbia grad and aspiring mandarin in New York City government, you can anticipate a long career and fat pension without ever demonstrating a benefit to taxpayers.

If you work for a major non-profit, you can neglect to measure the effectiveness of your programs as long as you remain chummy with your fellow alums at the Ford Foundation. Can anyone demonstrate the positive social benefits of the untold millions granted to Greenpeace, or PETA, or the Ploughshares Fund? No, hence their attraction for college grads intent on consequence-free employment.

Peggy Noonan once drew a distinction between the “protected class” insulated from bad policy decisions, and the “unprotected” who suffer them. Those inside the protected-class bubble enjoy guaranteed employment and nice benefits while those outside suffer monthly sales goals and layoffs.

Washington remains the ultimate bubble, full of nice jobs devoted to carving up federal largesse, home to the wealthiest counties in the country, and utterly immune from recession. Unsurprisingly, our young elites draw a rational conclusion: enter that bubble, and enjoy a comfortable, rewarding life. The accumulated impact of all these elite careers protected from consequences is a governing ideology completely ignorant of the need to impose consequences. Criminals who do not fear the police or the courts run wild; predatory states witnessing a feckless withdrawal from Kabul anticipate no U.S. response to their aggression.

Fear of consequences is the guardian of order, both domestically and internationally. Our government is failing to fulfill this fundamental obligation to its citizens by ensuring that malefactors face dire consequences.

Can new policies reverse these ingrained habits? Can we install failure as a consequence for those who govern us poorly?

A good start would be to introduce our protected class to the unprotected by moving them to their neighborhoods. Let’s relocate the Environmental Protection Agency to Tulsa Oklahoma, the Agriculture Department to Ames Iowa, and Health and Human Services to Detroit. These cities could use a nice federal payroll, and agency employees would receive direct feedback on their preferred policies at their local PTA meetings. In the age of Zoom and cheap airfares, there is no reason bureaucrats can’t work at a distance from the capital. (READ MORE: Europe: With Friends Like These …)

We also need to puncture the Washington bubble by inflicting on it the sort of recession endured by other regions, meaning cut federal budgets and impose layoffs. There is no government agency that couldn’t easily lose twenty percent of its headcount and fifty percent of its consulting budget without a discernable impact on the taxpayer.

Bidenomics has engineered an illusory boom with unsustainable trillion dollar deficits, bringing the distant day of fiscal reckoning forward into the near future. We might as well get ahead of our looming federal debt trainwreck by cutting spending now. Dramatic reductions in federal budgets will require our governing elites to relearn the habit of consequences by terminating failed programs and employees. Ideally, the same sort of standards imposed by the manager of your local NAPA store will be endured by our credentialed elites in Washington.

Is this raw populism? Perhaps, but outside of our coastal enclaves, it would surely be popular. Will a future presidential candidate seize on these winning policies? For the sake of the country, one can only hope so.

Print

spectator.org · by Karl Pfefferkorn · June 3, 2024

13. Why You Shouldn’t Come to the Naval War College

A privative title to an essay that touts the intellectual rigor of the Naval War College. I guess you will not have the best year of your life at NWC (IYKYK).

But there is this alternate view from the first comment to the essay:

"When, do you think, will it be time to focus on our nation's specific maritime objectives and stop selling this Army-biased JPME cool-aide that has dumbed down the syllabus so much that you can't squeeze an ounce of seawater from it?"

Why You Shouldn’t Come to the Naval War College

By Rear Admiral Pete Garvin, U.S. Navy

June 2024 Proceedings Vol. 150/6/1,456

usni.org · June 1, 2024

If you are looking for downtime after a challenging tour or a break from the rigors and responsibilities of the fleet, I have a suggestion for you: Don’t come to the Naval War College.

August Convocation marks the beginning of the Naval War College academic year. Through rigorous academics, debate, and analysis, NWC students become better leaders and warfighters. U.S. Navy (Kristopher Burris)

Since October, naval forces in the Red Sea have been engaged in combat to protect international shipping, the longest sustained campaign of naval warfare since World War II. They have downed dozens of missiles and drones, sunk surface craft, and protected thousands of mariners. The Naval War College (NWC) has been a critical part of the Navy’s response to this challenge. Faculty traveled to support the fleet commander, and advanced research group students are analyzing the campaign to understand how the Navy can prevail in the Red Sea as well as the lessons this fight offers for other challenges. In fact, during this entire period, faculty and students at NWC have been laser-focused on understanding, preparing for, and working to prevent the next war. They have analyzed and debated the defense, legal, ethical, political, and other implications of current conflicts, asking questions of themselves, their joint and interagency colleagues, and classmates from more than 60 partner nations, challenging their own preconceived notions and experiences. Through this work, they become better leaders and warfighters.

That is why you should come to the Naval War College.

Rigorous and Open-Minded Education

Since 1884, NWC’s curriculum has inspired academic debate, a questioning mindset, and unsparingly honest confrontation of tough topics. That is how a professional military education institution produces leaders who develop doctrine, not just follow it.

In addition to analysis of Red Sea naval combat, NWC has added analysis of the United States’ longest war to its curricula. Students, many of whom made multiple deployments to Afghanistan, examine factors in the planning and conduct of Operations Enduring Freedom and Freedom’s Sentinel, as well as the August 2021 withdrawal.

Wading into this discussion takes intellectual maturity and moral courage for a generation of leaders so directly affected by the conflict. After studying timeless principles from the Peloponnesian Wars, Sun Tzu, and Carl von Clausewitz, they are thrust into the present, applying those lessons to a fight that has loomed over most of their careers. They undertake these difficult discussions about the nation’s successes and failures because they are the generation that will lead us through future challenges.

This is also why the College of Leadership and Ethics teaches the mandatory Leadership in the Profession of Arms course. The course challenges students to reflect on their own leadership successes and failures to develop the strength of character they will need to make difficult decisions going forward.

NWC’s lecture series features faculty and outside experts discussing topics directly affecting today and tomorrow’s security environment, such as artificial intelligence and emerging technologies; information warfare; Arctic exploitation; and the focus of U.S. competitors and adversaries. These lectures explore global issues that could change the character of war. Many already have.

Continuous Improvement

NWC recently asked how its curriculum could better challenge and serve students and the fleet, addressing current events and emerging topics alongside core content.

The result is a new course, Perspectives on Modern War, in which students will analyze the trends joint, combined, and interagency leaders face. They will take lessons from their core curriculum and apply them to emerging challenges in the international security environment. Content from lectures, symposia, seminars, reading assignments, and wargaming results will be synthesized to enable students to answer the most critical war-fighting questions of the day.

Alfred Thayer Mahan, Raymond Spruance, and Stansfield Turner all walked NWC’s halls. Come here to follow in their footsteps. Come to build the intellectual and decision-making capabilities needed to prevent and win future wars. Come to cultivate the mind of a warrior.

usni.org · June 1, 2024

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• ntenghtim2 
• a day ago
• You are clearly confusing the tactical advantages created by training programs such as the ones that the Navy finally set up to train a cadre of Weapons and Tactics Instructors and the objective of a naval command and staff school that is intended to help future senior leaders operate at the operational and strategic levels of warfare.
• Nothing NWC teaches had anything to do with the recent combat in the Red Sea. Nothing. I know this because you didn't mention WHY the Navy is there in the Red Sea, a critical Sea Line of Communication (as described by Mahan) that represents an economic issue for the entire world, not just the U.S. As for "success" that is debatable. We've spent billions, the adversary has perhaps spent a single percent of this. And for what? yes, our sailors valiantly kept our ships from being damaged by inexpensive drones and have pounded dozens of targets with precision weapons, but is the economic trade off worth it? Who, exactly, is benefitting from our expenditure of these irreplaceable resources? What would your bright students suggest for a way to bring this issue to a culminating point using naval power? Are there historical parallels that might be important? Who is advocating for maritime strategy inside the RCCs, DoD, JCS, NSC, and in the Oval Office? THAT is where you are (or should be) training your students to operate.
• When it comes to academics, the fact that you unironically mentioned "...Peloponnesian Wars, Sun Tzu, and Carl von Clausewitz..." and left out Mahan and Liddell Hart (two strategist who explicitly explored maritime issues) is really as telling as anything. You proudly cite the fact that we train "joint and interagency colleagues and classmates from 60 partner nations." When, do you think, will it be time to focus on our nation's specific maritime objectives and stop selling this Army-biased JPME cool-aide that has dumbed down the syllabus so much that you can't squeeze an ounce of seawater from it? If the course material at CNCS looks substantially the same as what is taught in Leavenworth, Mongomery, Quantico, or at Ft Myer, how is this making our Navy better? The answer is that it is not, at least not at sea. It may help our future staffers to normalize a budget in the Pentagon, but that is about all.
• Oh, and while I am on a tear, your new class is "...Perspectives on Modern War, in which students will analyze the trends joint, combined, and interagency leaders face." What? Really? This is your answer? You run the NAVAL WAR COLLEGE. Please excuse the caps, but you have got to be kidding. Who did you ask about what students needed? The Chinese? Actually, it can't be them. They are too busy studying Mahan, building a navy, and exploring the options to kick us out of the SCS and establish a naval blockade of Taiwan to worry about "the trends that joint, combined, and interagency leaders face." This is just embarassing.
• If Mahan and Spruance were to walk the halls, surely they would cringe if they sat in the back of a classroom and watched as the students were programmed, instead of intellectually challenged and required to develop and describe their own insights about maritime power. Turner might be pleased that the coursework has been standardized, but would hopefully be horrified that "professionalism" now has nothing to do with naval science or sea power, but instead develops officers who can run a memo up the chain, but can't describe why the lack of maritime strategy is the most critical gap in our nation's national security calculus.
• Finally, don't take this criticism personally, you perfectly described the course that the NWC has been on for decades now - couldn't have asked for a better set-up for my perspective. Congratulations on a great career and enjoy retirement!

14. How Hamas Ends – A Strategy for Letting the Group Defeat Itself

Separating the Palestinians from Hamas. Such a simple sounding concept.

When war is passion, reason, and chance do the Israelis (and its supporters) have the discipline, will, and patience to undertake this kind of strategy? (especially when passion is dominating the trinity)

But like our Prussion mentor said, in war everything is simple, but even the simplest thing is hard. This will be a hard strategy to implement and get buy-in for.

Excerpts;

But the far more likely way that Hamas could fail is through popular backlash. Hamas rules Gaza through oppression, using arrests and torture to suppress dissent. Gazans widely loathe its internal General Security Service, which surveils and keeps files on people, stamps out protests, intimidates journalists, and tracks people accused of “immoral acts.” Since October 7, many Palestinians have expressed anger at Hamas for having misjudged the consequences of the attack—a serious targeting error that has indirectly led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazans. And suffering Palestinians are well aware that Hamas built an elaborate tunnel system to protect its leaders and fighters but did nothing to protect civilians.

To help Hamas fail, Israel should be doing everything in its power to give Palestinians in Gaza a sense that there is an alternative to Hamas and that a more hopeful future is possible. Instead of restricting humanitarian aid to a trickle, Israel should be providing it in massive quantities. Instead of merely destroying infrastructure and homes, Israel should also be sharing plans for rebuilding the territory in a post-Hamas future. Instead of carrying out collective punishment and hoping that Palestinians will eventually blame Hamas, Israel should be conveying that it sees a distinction between Hamas fighters and the vast majority of Gazans, who have nothing to do with the group and are themselves victims of its thuggish rule and reckless violence.

After decades of struggling with Hamas and months of fighting a massive, brutal war against it, Israel still seems unlikely to defeat the group. But it can still win—by helping Hamas defeat itself.

How Hamas Ends

A Strategy for Letting the Group Defeat Itself

By Audrey Kurth Cronin

June 3, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns · June 3, 2024

The war in Gaza has settled into a mind-numbing pattern of violence, bloodshed, and death. And everyone is losing—except Hamas. When Israel invaded the territory last fall, its stated military objective was to destroy the terrorist group so that it could never again commit acts of barbarity like the ones it carried out during its October 7 attack. But although the war has culled Hamas’s ranks, it has also vastly increased support for the group—among Palestinians, throughout the Middle East, and even globally. And even though Israel was fully justified in taking military action after the attack, the way in which it has done so has caused immense damage to its own global standing and put intense strain on Israel’s relationship with the United States, its most important partner.

Israel’s overwhelming, unfocused military response has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, mainly women and children, even as Israelis taken hostage on October 7 languish or die in the custody of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian groups. By limiting the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, Israel has produced near-famine conditions in parts of the territory. Late last year, South Africa, with the eventual support of dozens of other countries, filed a complaint at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza. In May, the Biden administration halted some U.S. arms shipments to Israel, signaling its displeasure with Israeli plans to invade the southern Gazan city of Rafah, where more than a million civilians had taken refuge.

The Israeli war in Gaza has been a strategic disaster.

Worse yet, although Israel claims to have killed thousands of Hamas fighters, there is little evidence to suggest that the group’s ability to threaten Israel has been significantly compromised. In some respects, Israel’s response has even helped Hamas. A March 2024 opinion poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed support for Hamas among Gazans topping 50 percent, a 14-point rise since December 2023. It’s upsetting to see that the slaughter of Israeli civilians—including children and elderly people—could indirectly build sympathy for Hamas. As a nonstate actor that deliberately targets civilians with violence for symbolic and political ends, Hamas meets all the criteria for being considered a terrorist organization. The group is composed of self-serving, violent extremists who prioritize armed struggle over effective governance and the welfare of Palestinians. There is no question that eliminating Hamas would be good for Palestinians, Israel, the Middle East, and the United States.

But the Israeli government’s highly lethal response to the October 7 attack and seeming indifference to the death and suffering of Palestinian civilians has played into Hamas’s hands. Among the audiences that the group most wants to reach, including Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Arab populations throughout the region, and young people in the West, the heinous deeds of October 7 have receded from view, replaced by images that support the Hamas narrative, in which Israel is the criminal aggressor and Hamas is the defender of innocent Palestinians.

Simply put, despite some tactical victories, the Israeli war in Gaza has been a strategic disaster. For Israel to defeat Hamas, it needs a better strategy, one informed by a deeper understanding of how terrorist groups generally end. Fortunately, history provides ample evidence on that subject. Over the course of decades of research, I have assembled a dataset of 457 terrorist campaigns and organizations, stretching back 100 years, and have identified six primary ways in which terrorist groups end. These pathways are not mutually exclusive: frequently, more than one dynamic is at work, and multiple factors play a role in the termination of a terrorist group. But Israel should pay close attention to one route in particular: groups that end not through military defeat, but through strategic failure. Since October 7, Israel has been trying to crush or repress Hamas out of existence, to little avail. A smarter strategy would be to figure out how to chip away at the group’s support and hasten its collapse.

RETURN OF THE REPRESSED

The least common pathway to termination is success; a small number of groups cease to exist because they achieve their goals. One familiar example is uMkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress in South Africa, which carried out attacks on civilians early in its campaign to end apartheid. Another is the Irgun, the Jewish militant group that employed terrorism in an effort to push the British out of Palestine, force many Arab communities to flee, and help lay the groundwork for the establishment of Israel.

But it is exceedingly rare for a terrorist group to achieve its core objectives: in the past century, only about five percent have done so. And Hamas is not likely to join that list. Israel is much stronger than Hamas in every military and economic dimension, and it has the support of the United States. The only way Hamas could succeed in achieving its goal of “the complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea” would be if Israel so undermined its own unity and integrity that it destroyed itself.

A second way a terrorist group can end is by transforming into something else: a criminal network or an insurgency. Criminality and terrorism overlap, so that particular shift is more like moving along a spectrum than like morphing into something new as a group stops trying to catalyze political change in favor of exploiting the status quo for monetary gain. A shift to insurgency happens when a group mobilizes enough of the population that it can challenge the state for control of territory and resources. That, unfortunately, is a possible outcome in Gaza—and perhaps the West Bank and even Israel proper—if Israel maintains its current strategy.

A third way terrorist groups end is through successful military repression on the part of a state. That is the ending that Israel’s current campaign against Hamas hopes to bring about. Repression can succeed, although at enormous costs. Take, for example, Russia’s second campaign against separatists in Chechnya, which began in 1999 and continued for nearly a decade. Accurate figures are hard to come by, since Russian authorities prevented journalists from reporting on the conflict (and even targeted some who tried), but most independent sources have estimated that at least 25,000 civilians were killed and that hundreds of thousands were displaced. The bloodshed was massive and the destruction epic, but Russia did wipe out the main separatist groups, depopulating the region and paving the way for a pro-Russian government.

Israeli armored personnel carriers operate near Israel's border with Gaza, May 2024

Ronen Zvulun / Reuters

Similarly, in 2008–9, the Sri Lankan government set out to annihilate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by trapping the group on a small strip of land in the northeastern region of the island country. The resulting operation killed tens of thousands of civilians, according to the United Nations. But it also eliminated the LTTE leadership, effectively ending the group and the broader civil war that had raged in Sri Lanka for nearly three decades.

Overall, however, military repression has a poor track record as a form of counterterrorism. It is difficult and costly to sustain and tends to work best when members of a terrorist group can be separated from the general population, a condition that is hard to create in most places. Repressive campaigns erode civil liberties and strain the fabric of the state. Scorched-earth tactics change the character of society and raise the question of what, precisely, the government is defending.

Consider, for example, Uruguay in the early 1960s. At the time, the country had a robust party system, an educated urban population, and an established liberal democratic tradition. But when the Tupamaros, a Marxist-Leninist group, carried out a series of assassinations, bank robberies, and kidnappings, the government unleashed the armed forces. By 1972, the military had eradicated the group. Even though the attacks had ended, the army then launched a coup, suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament, and established a military dictatorship that ruled the country until 1985. In their short campaign, the Tupamaros had carried out 13 bombings (with an unknown number of casualties), executed one hostage, and assassinated fewer than ten officials. The military regime, however, killed, maimed, or displaced thousands. The Tupamaros were gone, but ordinary Uruguayans remained the victims of violence, only now at the hands of the state, as the military government destroyed the country’s democracy.

In explaining their repressive approach in Gaza, Israeli leaders have argued that Hamas is similar to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) and can be defeated in a similar way. It is true that, by 2017, a U.S.-led coalition had reconquered territory that ISIS seized in Iraq and Syria in 2014, reducing the group’s presence in those places. Yet ISIS has not ended. Instead, it has splintered into nine groups it calls “provinces,” which are based all over the world and still plot and sometimes successfully carry out bloody attacks. This past March, ISIS-K—the group’s “Khorasan province,” based in Afghanistan—attacked a concert hall near Moscow, killing more than 140 people. Moreover, unlike ISIS, which is an explicitly transnational movement, Hamas is an exclusively Palestinian group, focused on winning control of contested territory. Military force can degrade Hamas’s hold on Gaza, but without a political solution to the underlying territorial dispute, the group would soon reemerge in some form and resume targeting Israeli military forces and civilians.

Counterterrorism that is purely military rarely works.

Some might argue that the real trouble is not that Israel is relying on the wrong strategy but that it doesn’t have the right target. In this view, it is Iran, and not Hamas, that is the heart of the problem, since the theocratic regime in Tehran supports, arms, and funds the terrorist group. But any government that launches an attack against the state sponsor of a terrorist group risks getting itself into an even bigger mess. This past April, Israel and Iran engaged in an unprecedented series of tit-for-tat attacks that could have escalated into a full-blown war. But both countries eventually stepped back from the brink, and for now, Israel remains rightly focused on dealing with Hamas directly.

Ultimately, Israel’s lack of success in Gaza so far should come as no surprise: counterterrorism that is purely military rarely works and is especially difficult for a democracy to pull off. For one thing, it requires suppressing media coverage to a degree that is difficult to achieve in today’s global digital media landscape (although the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that more than 100 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began). Also, compared with other governments that have relied on military repression in fighting terrorists, many of which are authoritarian, Israel is somewhat more hemmed in by its own laws and policies and because it relies heavily on a patron—the United States—that criticizes the use of excessive force, opposes the commission of war crimes, and at least putatively conditions its military aid on lawful conduct.

OFF WITH THEIR HEADS

A fourth way that terrorist groups end is through decapitation: the arrest or killing of leaders. Direct Action, a radical left-wing French group, carried out a campaign of assassinations and bombings in the 1980s but ceased operations after the arrest of its principal leaders in 1987. In 1992, Abimael Guzmán, the leader of the far-left Peruvian terrorist militia the Shining Path, was arrested; violence immediately declined, the militants accepted a government amnesty, and the group fragmented into much smaller narco-criminal gangs over the next ten years. Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese terrorist doomsday cult, changed its name and eventually renounced violence after its leader, Shoko Asahara, was arrested in 1995.

Groups that end through decapitation tend to be small, hierarchically structured, and characterized by a cult of personality, and they usually lack a viable succession plan. On average, they have been operating for less than ten years. Older, highly networked groups can reorganize and survive.

Hamas, then, is not a good candidate for a decapitation strategy. It is a highly networked organization that is almost 40 years old. If killing Hamas leaders could end the group, it would have happened long ago—and the Israelis have certainly tried. In 1996, Israeli security forces set off an explosive device inside a mobile phone used by Yahya Ayyash, a senior figure in Hamas and the group’s chief bomb maker; he died instantly. With the outbreak of the second intifada a few years later, the assassinations ramped up, and in 2004, Israel killed Hamas’s founder, Ahmed Yassin.

A 2006 study by the scholars Mohammed Hafez and Joseph Hatfield examined rates of Hamas violence before and after such assassinations and concluded that their impact was negligible. Subsequent studies have reached similar conclusions. Targeted killings have barely affected the group’s capabilities or intentions. Yet in the wake of October 7, the Israeli government reached for the tactic again. A few weeks after the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters that Israel would “assassinate all the leaders of Hamas, wherever they are.” Ronen Bar, the chief of Israel’s internal intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, told members of the Israeli parliament that Israel would kill Hamas leaders “in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everywhere.” Since last October, Israel has reported killing over 100 Hamas leaders, including some senior commanders in the group’s military wing.

But these assassinations, although degrading Hamas’s military strength in Gaza, have not affected the group’s long-term capabilities; over the decades, it has demonstrated an ability to replace key leaders. And in addition to yielding few tactical gains, this approach has created strategic costs. When killing a leader may prevent an imminent attack, it is justified self-defense. But endless targeted killings not publicly connected to specific operations lead many observers to see a state’s actions as morally equivalent to those of the terrorist group itself. That is especially true the wider the list of targets grows: consider, for example, an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in April that killed three sons and four grandchildren of the Qatar-based Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, which allowed him to portray himself not as a terrorist mastermind but as a grieving father and grandfather.

THE TALKING CURE

Instead of trying to kill Hamas leaders, Israel might try negotiating with them on a long-term political solution. That idea would be anathema to most Israelis, of course. And no one familiar with the long history of failed negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians—not to mention the profound anger that both groups currently feel—would be foolish enough to recommend peace talks now.

But negotiation does represent a fifth way that terrorism can end. Think, for example, of Northern Ireland, where the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s decades-long campaign of terrorism. In 2016, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia entered into a complex agreement with the government and agreed to disarm and operate as a normal political party. Like Hamas, those groups had enthusiastically murdered civilians. Talking to them was difficult for officials, and accepting former members back into society was hard for the public, especially the group’s victims and their families. But the bloodshed stopped, and in the end, states gave up relatively little.

Negotiations are risky for terrorist groups because showing up at the bargaining table gives away useful intelligence and undercuts the narrative that there is no alternative but to engage in violence. Only about 18 percent of terrorist groups ever negotiate at all, and talks usually drag on while violence continues, just at a lower level. Groups that have been around a long time are more likely to negotiate; the average lifespan of a terrorist group is eight to ten years, but groups that negotiate tend to have been around for 20 to 25 years.

Palestinians walk amid houses destroyed in Israeli strikes, Gaza, May 2024

Mohammed Salem / Reuters

Of course, there must be something tangible to negotiate over, and the most successful negotiations with terrorist groups involve conflicts over territory as opposed to religion or ideology. But even in the absence of an agreement, serious talks can cause divides within terrorist groups, splitting those who seek a political settlement from those still wedded to fighting. (On the other hand, negotiations sometimes prove futile: before moving to wipe out the LTTE, the Sri Lankan government spent more than five years negotiating with the group in talks brokered by Norway.)

Negotiations may not seem a likely way for Hamas to end. For one thing, the group has a long history of scorning talks with Israel. In the 1990s, it would engage in spoiler attacks when it believed the peace process was making progress. And today, Hamas is more committed than ever to pursuing a variant of the so-called one-state solution that would involve obliterating the other side, as are some Israeli extremists.

Still, Hamas and Israel have conducted negotiations in the past, generally through intermediaries such as Qatar—including talks that led to a short cease-fire and an exchange of hostages and prisoners last November. It seems possible that external actors such as the United States, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia might eventually find a way to push Israel and the Palestinians into a renewed diplomatic process aimed at creating a two-state solution. And it is possible to imagine Hamas, or at least some faction or remnant of the group, being involved in some way. Such negotiations would be long, fraught, and hamstrung by extremists on both sides. But merely announcing a process would have salutary effects. Indeed, it could even create the conditions for what might be the most likely way for Hamas’s terrorism to end: self-defeat.

THEIR OWN WORST ENEMIES

Most terrorist groups end in a sixth way: because they fail, either by collapsing in on themselves or by losing support. Groups that implode sometimes die out during generational shifts (the far-left Weather Underground in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s), disintegrate into factions (remnants of the IRA after the Good Friday Agreement), break down over operational disagreements (the Front de Libération du Québec, a Canadian separatist group, in the early 1970s), or fracture over ideological differences (the communist Japanese Red Army in 2001).

Groups also fail because they lose popular support. Sometimes, that is because governments offer members a better alternative, such as amnesty or jobs. But by far the most important reason terrorist groups fail is that they miscalculate, especially by making targeting errors that stir revulsion among important constituencies. The Real IRA’s August 1998 bombing of Omagh, a small market town in Northern Ireland, killed 29 people, including a number of children. Widespread disgust at the attack unified disparate parts of society and solidified support for the Good Friday Agreement. Chechen separatists made a similar mistake in 2004 when they seized a school in Beslan, Russia, leading to the deaths of more than 300 people, including almost 200 children, and sparking a near-total collapse of support for the separatist cause inside Chechnya and throughout Europe. The following year, suicide bombers belonging to al Qaeda in Iraq (the forerunner of ISIS) attacked three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing around 60 people. Opinion polls later showed that, in the aftermath, 65 percent of Jordanians changed their view of al Qaeda from positive to negative. (Historically, at least a third of al Qaeda’s victims have been Muslims, which is the main reason that the group has not become the popular movement that Osama bin Laden hoped it would be.)

Hamas has all the ingredients of a group that can fail. Most important, perhaps, is the fact that it is not popular. Shortly after the group took control of Gaza in 2007, Palestinian support for Hamas began to deteriorate. According to polling by the Pew Research Center, 62 percent of people in the Palestinian territories had a favorable view of Hamas in 2007. By 2014, only a third did. Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist and pollster, has found that support for Hamas generally spikes during confrontations with Israel but then dissipates when the group fails to deliver positive change.

Israel’s excessive use of military force, however, has strengthened Hamas’s hold and aided the group’s propaganda about what happened on October 7. According to a poll that Shikaki conducted in March, 90 percent of Palestinians dismiss the idea that Hamas engaged in war crimes that day. Any revulsion that ordinary Gazans might have felt about what Hamas did in their name was likely overwhelmed by their horror over what Israel has done to their loved ones, homes, and cities.

Hamas has all the ingredients of a group that can fail.

Still, Hamas has fissures that could widen and even lead to its collapse. Its military and political leadership are not always in sync: according to The New York Times, the group’s Gaza-based military leader, Yahya Sinwar, launched the October 7 attacks with a handful of military commanders, keeping Hamas’s political leader, Haniyeh, in the dark until just a few hours before the operation began. Reporting by Reuters revealed that some Hamas leaders seemed shocked by the timing and scale of the attacks. The group also faces pressure and competition from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is smaller than Hamas but more closely aligned with Iran. And with much of Hamas’s organization in Gaza destroyed, other power structures, including clans and even criminal networks, could vie for control and undercut the group.

But the far more likely way that Hamas could fail is through popular backlash. Hamas rules Gaza through oppression, using arrests and torture to suppress dissent. Gazans widely loathe its internal General Security Service, which surveils and keeps files on people, stamps out protests, intimidates journalists, and tracks people accused of “immoral acts.” Since October 7, many Palestinians have expressed anger at Hamas for having misjudged the consequences of the attack—a serious targeting error that has indirectly led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazans. And suffering Palestinians are well aware that Hamas built an elaborate tunnel system to protect its leaders and fighters but did nothing to protect civilians.

To help Hamas fail, Israel should be doing everything in its power to give Palestinians in Gaza a sense that there is an alternative to Hamas and that a more hopeful future is possible. Instead of restricting humanitarian aid to a trickle, Israel should be providing it in massive quantities. Instead of merely destroying infrastructure and homes, Israel should also be sharing plans for rebuilding the territory in a post-Hamas future. Instead of carrying out collective punishment and hoping that Palestinians will eventually blame Hamas, Israel should be conveying that it sees a distinction between Hamas fighters and the vast majority of Gazans, who have nothing to do with the group and are themselves victims of its thuggish rule and reckless violence.

After decades of struggling with Hamas and months of fighting a massive, brutal war against it, Israel still seems unlikely to defeat the group. But it can still win—by helping Hamas defeat itself.

• AUDREY KURTH CRONIN is Director of the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology and the author of How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns.

Foreign Affairs · by How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns · June 3, 2024

15. Two far-right Israeli ministers threaten to topple the government if it accepts Biden peace plan

Two far-right Israeli ministers threaten to topple the government if it accepts Biden peace plan

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/02/middleeast/israeli-ministers-biden-ceasefire-plan-intl/index.html

By Eugenia Yosef, Sophie Tanno and Benjamin Brown, CNN

 5 minute read 

Updated 6:17 PM EDT, Sun June 2, 2024

CNN — 

Two far-right Israeli ministers have threatened to resign and bring down the governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he accepts a peace proposal laid out by US President Joe Biden.

Biden unveiled on Friday what he said was a three-phase Israeli proposal to end the conflict in Gaza that would pair a release of hostages with a “full and complete ceasefire.”

During a speech at the White House, Biden said Hamas had been degraded to a point where it could no longer carry out the type of attack seen on October 7 that launched the current war in Gaza.

“It’s time for this war to end,” he said, a clear indication that – as far as he is concerned – Israel’s war goals have been met.

But the Israeli government’s two most prominent far-right members, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, made it explicitly clear they reject an immediate ceasefire. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also signaled he is not ready either, casting doubt over Biden’s proposal.

RELATED ARTICLE

Opinion: This deal can end the war in Gaza

In a statement on social media, Smotrich said he had “made it clear” to Netanyahu that he would not “be part of a government that will agree to the proposed outline and end the war without destroying Hamas and returning all the hostages.”

Smotrich demanded the fighting to continue until the “destruction of Hamas and the return of all the hostages,” as well as the “creation of a completely different security reality in Gaza and Lebanon.”

National Security Minister Ben Gvir meanwhile described the deal as “reckless” and “a victory for terrorism,” as well as a security danger to Israel.

“If the prime minister implements the reckless deal under the conditions published today, which mean the end of the war and the giving up on the elimination of Hamas, Otzma Yehudit will dissolve the government,” he said, referring to the far-right party he leads and which helps prop up Netanyahu’s majority in parliament.

Biden had alluded to the tensions in the Israeli government in his speech, making a direct appeal to ordinary Israelis to voice their support.

“I know there are those in Israel who will not agree with this plan and will call for the war to continue indefinitely. Some, some are even in the government coalition,” he said.

Netanyahu under pressure

The proposal would first see hostages freed and Israel withdrawing from “all populated areas of Gaza,” and eventually culminate in a reconstruction plan for Gaza, which has been left in ruins from the fighting.

The plan has been widely welcomed, with the UN and other international powers urging Israel and Hamas to accept it.

Hamas said it viewed the plan “positively” and was ready “to deal positively and constructively with any proposal based on a permanent ceasefire.”

Less than an hour after Biden detailed the proposal, Netanyahu insisted Israel will not end the war in Gaza until it had achieved all of its goals, including the destruction of Hamas.

The extent to which Netanyahu agrees with the plan is unclear, as the statement also said that the “exact outline” of Israel’s proposal allows Israel to “maintain these principles.”

On Sunday, the Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant warned Israel will “not accept” any deal to end the war which would allow Hamas to rule over Gaza. During a visit to the Israeli military’s Southern Command headquarters on Sunday, Gallant said options for a “governing alternative to Hamas” are being considered.

“We will not accept the rule of Hamas in Gaza at any stage in any process aimed at ending the war,” Gallant said, according to a readout from his office.

However, Hamas has made it clear it will not accept any other group governing Gaza. On May 16, the group’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh noted that, in regards to “the day after the war,” there had been “calls to remove Hamas.”

“We say that Hamas is here to stay,” Haniyeh responded.

On Sunday the White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the administration was currently “waiting for an official response from Hamas” on the Israeli ceasefire proposal.

Pressed on whether there would be a situation in which Hamas would agree to the proposal but Israel would not, speaking on ABC’s “This Week” Kirby said that the Biden administration has “every expectation” that Israel would agree.

“We have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal, as was transmitted to them, an Israeli proposal, that Israel would say yes,” Kirby added.

RELATED ARTICLE

What seven more months of war would mean for Palestinians, Israelis and the world

Netanyahu faces pressure from more than just within his own coalition. On Saturday protesters again took to the streets, demanding his resignation and early elections.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has offered to back Netanyahu in accepting the proposal, and condemned the comments by Smotrich and Ben Gvir.

“The threats of Ben Gvir and Smotrich are the neglect of national security, of the hostages and of the residents of the north and the south,” he said.

“This is the worst and most reckless government in the country’s history. For them, there will be a war here forever, zero responsibility, zero management, a complete failure.

Netanyahu’s government is facing growing international calls to end the war in Gaza as the conflict approaches its ninth month.

The war was triggered by Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7, which left around 1,200 people dead and saw more than 200 people taken hostage. The Israeli campaign in Gaza since then has killed more than 36,000 people.

CNN’s Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this report.

16. The ‛International Community’ Has No Right to Exist

I guess I should switch from using "the international community" to the "tiny cabal" or "tiny sect."

​Conclusion:

The international community is not working. Because it is not working, it is killing people. It’s time for those disinclined towards terrorism, genocide and their attendant pathologies to give up on the mad dreams of long-dead progressives. They must finally pull the curtain down on a blood-soaked and very expensive farce that has already gone on for far too long.

The ‛International Community’ Has No Right to Exist - Algemeiner.com

by Benjamin Kerstein / JNS.org

algemeiner.com · by The Algemeiner · June 2, 2024

Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, delivers a speech remotely at the UN General Assembly 76th session General Debate in UN General Assembly Hall at the United Nations Headquarters on Friday, September 24, 2021 in New York City. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI Pool via REUTERS

Recent decisions against Israel by the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice, which are clearly intended to rescue Hamas and aid and abet its genocidal war on the Jewish state, can only reinforce a truism often expressed by Israelis: Kol ha’olam negdeinu. “The whole world is against us.”

Israelis have reason enough to feel this way, but it is worth asking whether it’s actually true. What, after all, is the “whole world”?

If the term refers to world popular opinion, then it is almost certainly wrong. It is unlikely that the majority of the world’s 8 billion human beings particularly care about Israel. If they do, it can only be in the most shallow and cursory way.

In another sense, however, Israelis’ angry rumination is quite accurate: What is often called the “international community” is most certainly against Israel.

The phrase “international community” is usually used as shorthand for the entire world. In fact, the international community is an elite, a clique, even something like a religious sect. It is made up of the vanishingly small minority of privileged and powerful people who work at or with an alphabet soup of international organizations and NGOs led by the United Nations.

It is worth emphasizing how small this cabal actually is. The largest international organization—the United Nations—employs some 116,000 people in total. This is approximately half the number employed by Microsoft. Most international organizations, including ostensibly independent NGOs, are much smaller. Even with various envoys and diplomats from each participating country thrown in, it is highly unlikely that the “international community” consists of more than 500,000 people. If, for the sake of argument, we double that number to 1 million, it would constitute only 0.0125% of the global population. This may be a “community” and is certainly “international,” but it is by no means “the world.”

This tiny sect received its privileges via a series of historical anomalies. It was constructed out of the wreckage of World War II when, hoping to prevent a World War III, the victorious Allies formed the United Nations—the brainchild of progressive U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who hoped to realize his predecessor Woodrow Wilson’s failed vision of the League of Nations.

Indeed, for a brief moment before the Cold War began in earnest, there were wild hopes that the United Nations would usher in a new era in human history: Disputes and conflicts would be settled according to international law via what was essentially an enormous debating society/charitable organization. The old imperial rivalries and balance-of-power diplomacy would disappear. War would become a thing of the past. The blessings of liberty and democracy would be bestowed upon the entire human race.

Needless to say, it didn’t happen. History continued on exactly as it had before: The great powers and the balance between them continued to define global affairs, and a third world war was prevented not by the world body but by the atomic bomb. In response, however, the international community that grew up around the United Nations simply pretended this was not the case. Instead, it created a hermetic bubble in which the international community was competent and effective at its job of ensuring peace and dispensing global charity. This should not have been surprising. After all, those involved made good money out of the charade.

This perpetual farce would have been amusing but not disastrous except for the fact that the international community swiftly began to take on a very sinister form. The reasons are well-known. Put simply, most of those who made up the international community represented authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. Thus, the international community inevitably became more and more amenable to authoritarianism and totalitarianism, so long as it was practiced by the right people. Beginning in the 1970s, as terrorism became a major tool of the world’s tyrants, the international community increasingly endorsed the most horrendous atrocities and the organizations that committed them. It was inevitable that this would end in a scramble to rescue a genocidal terrorist organization from near-certain destruction.

The international community, in other words, ceased to be farce and became a weapon—a kind of diplomatic suicide-bomber. For example, it is very doubtful that Hamas would have launched the Oct. 7 attack if it did not think that the international community would rescue it from Israel’s retaliation. We don’t yet know if Hamas was wrong. The blood of a great many people, in other words, is on the international community’s hands.

Clearly, in its current state, the international community has no right to exist. This raises a complex dilemma, however, which is if and how to replace it.

Despite the difficulties, it isn’t hard to see how alternative institutions could be created. For example, the democratic nations and their allies could easily form their own independent alignments like NATO without bankrolling a gang of parasites dedicated to enabling crimes against humanity in the name of human rights.

Moreover, if the international community did not exist, very little would change. The old ways of doing things have persisted and will likely continue to do so. International affairs would go on much as they always have through balance-of-power diplomacy. The only difference would be that the world would be free of much of the terrorism and war that the international community fosters through collaborationism and corruption.

More importantly, perhaps, the world will at last have accepted reality. This is a good thing in and of itself. It is dangerous to live by lies because the results are always incompetence, hypocrisy and ultimately self-destruction. Thus the essential admonition: If something isn’t working, stop doing it.

The international community is not working. Because it is not working, it is killing people. It’s time for those disinclined towards terrorism, genocide and their attendant pathologies to give up on the mad dreams of long-dead progressives. They must finally pull the curtain down on a blood-soaked and very expensive farce that has already gone on for far too long.

algemeiner.com · by The Algemeiner · June 2, 2024

​17. Facing up to China’s Hybrid Warfare in the Pacific

Excerpts:

China’s aggressive gray-zone activities operate below the threshold of traditional warfare, making it difficult to get the political will for a coordinated response. However, the 2018 Boe Declaration redefined the concept of security in the Pacific region and highlighted the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of Pacific Island Forum Members.

Now is the time for its signatories, the developing island states of the Pacific, and Australia and New Zealand, to work collectively to face up to the challenge of China’s hybrid warfare in the Pacific, in the same way they are now working collectively to address the main nontraditional security challenge in the region, climate change.

The continued peace and security of the Pacific depends on it.

Facing up to China’s Hybrid Warfare in the Pacific 

thediplomat.com

The China Coast Guard is expanding its reach in the Pacific, part of a broader campaign to increase Beijing’s security role in the region.

By Anne-Marie Brady

June 03, 2024

A crewman of a China Coast Guard vessel gestures at a Philippine government vessel to move away as the latter tries to enter the Second Thomas Shoal, March 29, 2014.

Credit: AP Photo/Bullit Marquez

This year, for the first time ever, the People’s Republic of China registered 26 China Coast Guard (CCG) vessels to operate in the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission Convention Area. The Convention manages 20 percent of the globe, from the Aleutians in the North Pacific, all the way down to the Southern Ocean.

It is also the area of the First, Second, and Third Island Chains.

The CCG, widely used for gray-zone operations in disputed waters, will soon legally be allowed to board any foreign fishing vessels on the high seas in the First, Second, and Third Island Chains.

The area of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission. Map via the Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

Since 2020, China has also had four Coast Guard vessels registered to monitor foreign fishing vessels in the North Pacific Fishing Commission Area. Starting from June this year, China will have the third largest maritime security presence patrolling throughout the whole of the Pacific, after the United States and Australia.

The CCG is the maritime branch of the People’s Armed Police of China, which is led by the Central Military Commission of China. Its vessels are built to People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) specifications. The Coast Guard operates directly under the PLAN in a time of war.

In a steady process of attrition, Xi Jinping’s China is challenging the existing strategic order, and doing so through acts below the threshold of warfare.

China is using multiple channels, and notably dual-use military-civil activities, to normalize and legitimize its growing military and intelligence presence in the Pacific. China’s hybrid warfare activities are now the most significant traditional security threat in the Pacific. Xi has made it clear that Beijing does not share the values of the rules-based international order and has been telling the Chinese people to prepare for war.

For more than 70 years the sea lines of communication and chokepoints of the Pacific have been protected under the strategic denial policy of the United States and its regional security partners, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand.

The United States and its partners’ strategic denial set up was one of the lessons-learned recommendations after World War II. It is aimed to exclude adversaries that do not share the same security interests and values from establishing a military presence in the Pacific.

The inherent weakness of the policy has always been that the many small island developing states within the Pacific benefit from the security guarantee but have no alliance commitment to it. There is no military agreement that binds the Pacific island nations together, though the 2000 Biketawa and 2018 Boe Declarations state that any security challenges in the region should be dealt with collectively.

In the Xi Jinping era, China has aggressively targeted states along the First, Second and Third Island Chain with gray-zone activity, foreign interference, and repeated attempts to set up a China-centered security alliance for the region.

But China’s actions did not just begin when Xi came to power. For more than 24 years, the PLA has been providing in-depth training, doctrine, weapons, military vehicles and vessels, uniforms, and military buildings to the military forces of Tonga, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea. China’s domestic intelligence agency, the Ministry of Public Security, has signed secret cooperation agreements with police departments in Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, and Solomon Islands. PLAN vessels have been visiting the Pacific for 20 years for both military diplomacy and spying trips. The PLA is also accessing the Pacific by using PLA vessels and planes for humanitarian and disaster relief.

A global military power requires friendly ports, airfields, and satellite ground stations in foreign countries. From Kiribati to Vanuatu to French Polynesia, Beijing-connected companies have repeatedly tried to gain access to militarily significant airfields and ports. China has been thwarted in all those efforts.

Instead, over the last 10 years, funded by the Asian Development Bank and World Bank, China’s state-owned enterprises have built the bulk of all strategic airports, ports, and ring roads in the island developing nations of the Pacific.

China’s government sponsors foreign interference activities in every state and territory of the Pacific, which has a corrosive effect on local politics. That makes it hard for states to defend themselves against China’s malign activities that affect their sovereignty such as illegal, unreported, unregulated (IUU) fishing.

China’s distant-water fishing vessels without doubt the worst offenders for illegal fishing in the waters of the Pacific. For years China has been ranked by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime as the number one IUU fishing state in the world. China’s distant-water fishing fleet is also ranked the worst in the world for human trafficking. The Chinese industrial fishing vessel illegal drift nets kill everything in their path, leaving nothing for local fisher folk. Chinese government documents describe the foreign territorial waters and high seas these vessels operate in as China’s “distant water fisheries,” part of an entire industrial chain.

Within China’s distant-water fishing fleet hides a state-subsidized maritime militia, which works in tandem with the CCG and PLAN to haze and intimidate maritime states such as Vietnam and the Philippines over territorial disputes. The Biden administration have labelled China’s IUU fishing fleet, and their role as a maritime militia acting with with China’s maritime security forces, as a “national security concern.”

China’s aggressive gray-zone activities operate below the threshold of traditional warfare, making it difficult to get the political will for a coordinated response. However, the 2018 Boe Declaration redefined the concept of security in the Pacific region and highlighted the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of Pacific Island Forum Members.

Now is the time for its signatories, the developing island states of the Pacific, and Australia and New Zealand, to work collectively to face up to the challenge of China’s hybrid warfare in the Pacific, in the same way they are now working collectively to address the main nontraditional security challenge in the region, climate change.

The continued peace and security of the Pacific depends on it.

Authors

Guest Author

Anne-Marie Brady

Anne-Marie Brady is a specialist on Chinese, Pacific, and polar politics at the University of Canterbury in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @Anne-MarieBrady.

thediplomat.com

​18. Putin’s Hidden Game in the South Caucasus

Excerpts:

All these variables make Russian behavior in the region, as elsewhere, highly unpredictable. Since Azerbaijan’s capture of Nagorno-Karabakh, speculation has mounted as to what could happen in Abkhazia, the breakaway territory bordering Russia in the northwest corner of Georgia that has been a zone of conflict since the 1990s. Could Russia move to annex it fully, thus securing a new naval base on the Black Sea? Or—as some recent rumors have suggested—could a deal similar to the one with Azerbaijan be in the offing, whereby Moscow allows Georgia to march into Abkhazia unopposed in return for Georgia renouncing its Euro-Atlantic ambitions? Either of these are theoretically possible—though it is also quite likely that Putin prefers the status quo and continues to focus on Ukraine.

At the same time, the most obvious benefit the South Caucasus countries have derived from the post-2022 situation—a stronger economic relationship with Russia—is unstable. Close trading ties to Russia give Moscow dangerous leverage, especially in the case of Armenia and Georgia, which have fewer resources and other places to turn for support. And if Western secondary sanctions on businesses that trade with Russia are tightened, that would put a squeeze on South Caucasian intermediaries.

Not everything is going Putin’s way. Russia’s military withdrawal from Azerbaijan is a sign of weakness. So, too, arguably, is Armenia’s pivot to the West and the Georgian public’s mass resistance to what the opposition labels the “Russian law.” But if Russia looks weaker in the region, the West does not look stronger. There are significant pro-European social dynamics at work, but they face strong competition from political and economic forces that are pulling the South Caucasus in very different directions.

Last month, the Georgian government awarded the tender to develop a new deep-water port on the Black Sea at Anaklia to a controversial Chinese company. That project used to be managed by a U.S.-led consortium. In other words, Europe and the United States is competing for influence not just with Russia but also with other powers, as well. Nothing can be taken for granted in a region that is as volatile as it has ever been.

Putin’s Hidden Game in the South Caucasus

Azerbaijan’s Rise, Georgia’s Drift, and Russia’s Quest for a Gateway to Iran and the Middle East

By Thomas de Waal

June 3, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by The End of the Near Abroad · June 3, 2024

On April 17, a column of Russian tanks and trucks passed through a series of dusty Azerbaijani towns as they drove away from Nagorno-Karabakh, the highland territory at the heart of the South Caucasus that Azerbaijan and Armenia had fought over for more than three decades. Since 2020, Russian peacekeepers had maintained a presence there. Now, the Russian flag that flew over the region’s military base was being hauled down.

Although it caught many by surprise, the Russian departure further consolidated a power shift that began in late September 2023, when Azerbaijan seized the territory and, almost overnight, forced the mass exodus of some 100,000 Karabakh Armenians—while Russian forces stood by. Azerbaijan, an authoritarian country that shares a border with Russia on the Caspian Sea, has emerged as a power player, with significant oil and gas resources, a strong military, and lucrative ties to both Russia and the West.

Meanwhile, the region’s other two countries, Armenia and Georgia, have been experiencing tectonic shifts of their own. In the months since Azerbaijan’s takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, a traditional ally of Russia, has swung ever more firmly toward the West. Meanwhile, the ruling party in Georgia is breaking with three decades of close relations with Europe and the United States and seems intent on emulating its authoritarian neighbors. In May, the Georgian parliament passed a controversial law to crack down on “foreign influence” over nongovernmental organizations—a law that derives inspiration from Russian legislation and sends Moscow a signal that it has a dependable partner on its southern border.

Obscured in this reordering of the South Caucasus are the complex motives of Russia itself. The region—known to Russians as the Transcaucasus—has held fluctuating strategic significance over the centuries. The imperial touch was not as heavy there as in other parts of the Russian Empire or Soviet Union. Following the end of the Soviet Union, Moscow tried to keep its leverage through manipulation of the local ethnoterritorial conflicts there, maintaining as many troops on the ground as it could.

But the war in Ukraine and the Western sanctions regime has changed that calculus. By deciding to remove troops from Azerbaijan, the Kremlin is acknowledging that economic security in the South Caucasus—for now at least—is more important than the hard variety. Russia badly needs business partners and sanctions-busting trade routes in the south. And at a time when it is increasingly squeezed by the West, it also sees the region as offering a coveted new land axis to Iran.

BAKU’S BIG PLAY

At first blush, the unilateral Russian withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh this spring was puzzling. For much of the past three decades, Azerbaijanis and Armenians have fought over the territory, which is situated within Azerbaijan but has had a majority ethnic Armenian population. In 2020, Azerbaijan reversed territorial losses it had suffered in the 1990s and would have captured Nagorno-Karabakh, as well, were it not for Russia’s last-minute introduction of a peacekeeping force, mandated to protect the local Armenian population. Those peacekeepers stood by, however, as Azerbaijan marched into Karabakh last September. Still, they had a mandate to stay on until 2025. As well as projecting Russian power in the region, they could also have facilitated the return of some Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Of course, for Russia, the 2,000 men and 400 armored vehicles that were transferred out of the territory provide welcome reinforcements for its war in Ukraine. But that was not the whole story. By deciding to leave the region, Russia handed Azerbaijan a triumph, allowing its military to take unfettered control of the long-contested territory. For most Armenians, it was a fresh confirmation of Russia’s abandonment. Almost immediately, observers speculated that some kind of deal had been struck between Russia and Azerbaijan.

As the largest and wealthiest of the three South Caucasus countries, Azerbaijan has profited most from Russia’s shift. It is a player in East-West energy politics, providing oil and gas that is carried by two pipelines through Georgia and its close ally Turkey to European and international markets. Sharing a border with Iran, it also serves as a north-south gateway between Moscow and the Middle East. It helps that the Azerbaijani regime—in contrast to Armenia’s democratic government—is built in the same autocratic mold as Russia’s. Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s longtime strongman president, has even deeper roots in the Soviet nomenklatura than does Vladimir Putin: his father was Heydar Aliyev, a veteran Soviet power broker who was also his predecessor as the leader of postindependence Azerbaijan, running the country from 1993 to 2003. The younger Aliyev and Putin also know how to do business together, in a relationship built more around personal connection and leadership style than on institutional ties.

Relations were not always so good. In tsarist and Soviet times, Moscow took a more overtly colonial approach toward the Muslim population of Azerbaijan, giving Russian endings to surnames and imposing the Cyrillic script on the Azeri language. Azerbaijanis still resent a bloody crackdown in 1990, when, during the last days of the Soviet Union Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sent troops into Baku to suppress the Azerbaijani Popular Front Party, killing dozens of civilians. During much of the long-running Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Moscow gave more support to the Armenians.

After the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, however, Russia began a new strategic tilt toward Azerbaijan. The withdrawal of peacekeepers this spring looks like the key component of a full Baku-Moscow entente. Just five days after the Russian peacekeepers left, Aliyev traveled to Moscow, where he discussed enhanced north-south connections between the two countries. After the talks, Russian Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev said that Azerbaijan was upgrading its railway infrastructure to more than double its cargo capacity—and allow for much more trade with Russia.

For Moscow, this is all part of a race with the West to create new trade routes to compensate for the economic rupture caused by the war in Ukraine. Since the war started, Western governments and companies have been trying to upgrade the so-called Middle Corridor, the route that carries cargo from western China and Central Asia to Europe via the Caspian Sea and the South Caucasus—thereby bypassing Russia. For its part, Russia has been trying to expand its own connections to the Middle East and India via both Georgia and Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan, thanks to its favorable geographical position and nonaligned status, has been able to play both sides. It is a central country in the Middle Corridor. It is increasing gas exports to the EU, after a deal with the European Commission in 2022. But it is also ideally positioned to trade with Russian energy exporters too. In a report released in March, the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies suggested that Azerbaijan, working with its close ally Turkey, could help create a hub for Russian gas to reach foreign markets without sanction. And because of Azerbaijan’s growing status as the regional power broker, it also could enable Russia to realize its aims of building stronger connections to Iran.

TRAINS TO TEHRAN

A key part of Russia’s shifting ambitions in the South Caucasus is to rebuild overland transport routes to Iran. The most attractive route is the one that Azerbaijan calls the Zangezur Corridor, a projected road-and-rail link through southern Armenia that would connect Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan, an Azerbaijani exclave that borders both Iran and Turkey. By reopening the 27-mile route, Moscow would have a direct rail connection to Tehran, which has become an important arms supplier to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.

In fact, this north-south axis would effectively revive what was known as the Persian Corridor during World War II—a road-and-rail route running north from Iran through Azerbaijan to Russia that supplied no less than half of the lend-lease aid that the United States provided the Soviet Union during the conflict. By a strange twist of fate, this same axis is now vital to Moscow in its current struggle against the United States and the West.

A long-closed route through Armenia would connect Russia with Iran.

Back in November 2020, the Russians thought they had a deal to get this route open when Putin, Aliyev, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a trilateral agreement that formally halted that year’s conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and introduced the Russian peacekeeping force. The pact included a provision calling for the unblocking of all economic and transport links in the region, and it specifically mentioned the route to Nakhchivan across Armenia. Moreover, it also stated that control over this route would be in the hands of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or the FSB.

Since then, the corridor has remained closed because Armenia and Azerbaijan could not agree on the terms of its operation. Yet Russia’s insistence that its security forces should be in control has remained constant. On his return from Moscow in April, Aliyev also alluded to this, telling an international audience that the 2020 agreement (whose other provisions are all now redundant) "must be respected." Opening the corridor, then, may be the essence of the new deal between Azerbaijan and Russia: in return for Russia pulling its forces out of Karabakh—a step that handed the Azerbaijani leadership a major domestic victory—Azerbaijan may acquiesce to Russian security control over the planned route across southern Armenia.

If such a plan is carried out, it would amount to a coordinated Azerbaijani-Russian takeover of Armenia’s southern border—a nightmare for both Armenia and the West. The Armenians would lose control of a strategically vital border region. The United States and its Western allies would see Russia take a big step forward toward establishing a coveted overland road-and-rail link with Iran. Moreover, Armenia on its own lacks the capacity to prevent Russian and Azebaijan from acting.

ARMENIAN ALIENATION

No former Russian ally has seen such a dramatic breakdown in its relations with Moscow as Armenia. The two countries have a long historical alliance built on their shared Christian religion. Russia was the traditional protector of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and Armenians who lived in the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union tended to enjoy more upward social mobility than other non-Slavs: some of them reached the highest echelons of the Soviet elite.

But all that has changed over the past few years. Russian relations with Armenia began to cool off in 2018, when Armenia’s Velvet Revolution brought Pashinyan, a populist democrat, to power. That transition was barely tolerated in Moscow, which feared another “color revolution” bringing an unfriendly government to power on its border. After the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, Moscow continued to support the Armenians, but relations were increasingly strained. For Yerevan, Azerbaijan’s seizure of the territory last fall, with Russian acquiescence, became the last straw.

As the Kremlin failed to honor its security commitments to Armenia, Pashinyan began to move his country decisively toward the West. Last fall, he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pushed Armenia to formally join the International Criminal Court, meaning that Putin, who has an ICC arrest warrant on his head, could theoretically be arrested if he sets foot in Armenia. And in February, Pashinyan also suspended Armenia’s participation in the Russian-led military alliance, the Collective Treaty Security Organization. Some European politicians have now mooted the idea of eventual EU membership for Armenia.

With Nagorno-Karabakh removed from the equation, Pashinyan is also pressing harder to reduce his country’s dependence on Russia. Armenia has asked Russia to remove the Russian border guards who have been stationed in Armenia’s Zvartnots airport since the 1990s by August 1. Other Russian border guards who are stationed on Armenia’s borders with Iran and Turkey will stay for now, but the deployment in 2023 of an EU civil monitoring mission in southern Armenia shows where the Armenian government’s strategic preferences lie.

Ethnic Armenians fleeing to Armenia following Azerbaijan's seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh, September 2023

David Ghahramanyan / Reuters

Armenia’s pivot to the West, however, comes at an extremely unfavorable moment. Flush with victory and benefiting from strong ties with both Russia and Turkey, Azerbaijan shows no signs of letting up its pressure on Armenia. Meanwhile, the other big regional powers around Armenia—Iran, Russia, and Turkey—are aware that the West is overextended. Despite their many differences, they have a common agenda, shared with Azerbaijan, to cut down the West’s strategic profile in the region and elevate their own. In April, for example, top U.S. and European officials in Brussels announced an economic aid package for Armenia. In response, Iran, Russia, and Turkey each issued almost identical statements deploring the West’s dangerous pursuit of “geopolitical confrontation,” ] by which they meant Western intervention in Armenia.

The new confrontation over Armenia is not just a matter of posturing. Pashinyan’s government has evidently concluded that its future lies with the West. Although this shift makes sense in the longer term, it carries many shorter-term risks. Armenia is overwhelmingly dependent on Russian energy and Russian trade: Moscow supplies 85 percent of its gas, 90 percent of its wheat, and all the fuel for its lone nuclear power plant, which provides one-third of Armenia’s electricity. And Armenia’s own economy is still heavily oriented toward the Russian market. These ties give Moscow enormous economic leverage; it could seek to bend the country to its will by sharply raising energy prices or curtailing Armenian trade.

Meanwhile, Armenian officials and experts fear even more direct military threats to the country’s sovereignty. One is that Azerbaijan, in coordination with Russia, has the military capacity to seize control of the so-called Zangezur Corridor by force, if it chooses to, in a few hours. Another is that rogue domestic forces in Armenia, with foreign backing, could try to overthrow the Pashinyan government by violence or organized street protests in an effort to destabilize the country and allow a more pro-Russian government to take power.

These threats come in parallel to diplomacy. Azerbaijan continues to pursue bilateral talks with Armenia to reach a peace agreement to normalize relations between the two countries. Whether the two historic adversaries can avoid sliding back into war depends largely on the extent to which Western powers, despite their commitments in Ukraine, are prepared to invest political and financial resources to underwrite such a settlement.

GEORGIAN AMBIGUITY

As if the threat of a dangerously weakened Armenia and a new Russian-Iranian land corridor were not enough, the West also faces a growing challenge from Armenia’s neighbor Georgia. As Armenia tries to move West, the government of Georgia, a country that has enjoyed huge support from Europe and the United States since the end of the Cold War, is seemingly doing the opposite.

Post-Soviet Russia has a long history of meddling in post-Soviet Georgia, and most Georgians retain a deep antipathy to Moscow. In 2008, Georgia cut off diplomatic relations after Russian forces crossed the border and recognized the two breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent. A 2023 poll found that only 11 percent of Georgian respondents wanted to abandon European integration in favor of closer relations with Russia.

Nonetheless, the ruling Georgian Dream party—founded and funded by Georgia’s richest businessman, Bidzina Ivanishvili, and in power since 2012—is burning bridges with its Western partners. The most conspicuous feature of this shift, though not the only one, is the controversial “foreign influence” law, which seeks to limit and potentially criminalize the activities of any nongovernmental organization that receives more than 20 percent of its funding from abroad—meaning nearly all of them. The move sparked mass protests, especially from young people, who call it “the Russian law” because it mimics Moscow’s own 2012 “foreign agents” law and seems similarly designed to stifle civil society and remove checks on the arbitrary exercise of power. The law is also a slap in the face for the European Union, coming just months after Brussels formally offered Georgia candidate status and a path toward accession to the union.

Most Georgians retain a deep antipathy to Moscow.

Georgian Dream’s first priority seems to be domestic: to consolidate its own power and eliminate opposition. The party is tightly focused on trying to win—by whatever means possible—an unprecedented fourth term in office in Georgia’s October parliamentary elections. Still, the sharp anti-Western turn sends friendly messages to Russia. Another refrain of the ruling party is that it will not allow Georgia to become a “second front” in the war in Ukraine.

Just as the Azerbaijani leadership does, the men who run Georgia understand Moscow. Ivanishvili, who as Georgian Dream’s kingmaker is the country’s effective ruler, made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s and learned to win in the ruthless business environment of that era; a coterie of people around him have made plenty of money from Russia since the Ukraine war began. Moreover, Georgia has opened its doors to Russian business and banking assets, and direct flights between the two countries have resumed. The Georgian elite seems prepared to pay the cost: one insider, former Prosecutor General Otar Partskhaladze, is now under U.S sanctions.

If the Georgian opposition manages to overcome its historic divisions and win this fall—no easy task—Georgia’s pro-European trajectory will resume. But much could happen before then. Perpetual crisis in Tbilisi now seems assured for the remainder of this year, if not beyond. Neither side will back down easily. The government has lost all credit with its Western partners, yet to call on Russia for assistance would be extremely dangerous. The uncertainty adds another wild card to any larger calculations about the strategic direction of the South Caucasus.

LOSING CONTROL

Putin recognizes the value of the South Caucasus to Russia, but since 2022, he has had little time for it. Moscow has no discernable institutional policy toward the region as a whole—or for other regions beyond Ukraine. The war has accentuated the habit of highly personalized decision-making by a leader in the Kremlin who seems uninterested in consultation or detailed analysis.

This has left the region’s three countries with strikingly different approaches. Azerbaijan’s Aliyev, with his two-decade-old relationship with the Russian president, seems most comfortable with Putin’s way of doing business. He can also derive confidence from the strong personal and institutional support he gets from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In the case of Georgia, with which Russia has no diplomatic relations, there are no face-to-face meetings or structured talks. (If Georgia’s de facto leader, Ivanishvili, ever met Putin, it would have been in the 1990s long before either man was a big political player.) Once again, everything is highly informal and conducted by middlemen. Here, too, business stands at the heart of a mutually beneficial relationship. Paradoxically, the one country in the region that has long-standing formal and institutional links to Russia—Armenia—is also keenest to break off the relationship.

Speculation has mounted about what Russia may be planning for Abkhazia.

All these variables make Russian behavior in the region, as elsewhere, highly unpredictable. Since Azerbaijan’s capture of Nagorno-Karabakh, speculation has mounted as to what could happen in Abkhazia, the breakaway territory bordering Russia in the northwest corner of Georgia that has been a zone of conflict since the 1990s. Could Russia move to annex it fully, thus securing a new naval base on the Black Sea? Or—as some recent rumors have suggested—could a deal similar to the one with Azerbaijan be in the offing, whereby Moscow allows Georgia to march into Abkhazia unopposed in return for Georgia renouncing its Euro-Atlantic ambitions? Either of these are theoretically possible—though it is also quite likely that Putin prefers the status quo and continues to focus on Ukraine.

At the same time, the most obvious benefit the South Caucasus countries have derived from the post-2022 situation—a stronger economic relationship with Russia—is unstable. Close trading ties to Russia give Moscow dangerous leverage, especially in the case of Armenia and Georgia, which have fewer resources and other places to turn for support. And if Western secondary sanctions on businesses that trade with Russia are tightened, that would put a squeeze on South Caucasian intermediaries.

Not everything is going Putin’s way. Russia’s military withdrawal from Azerbaijan is a sign of weakness. So, too, arguably, is Armenia’s pivot to the West and the Georgian public’s mass resistance to what the opposition labels the “Russian law.” But if Russia looks weaker in the region, the West does not look stronger. There are significant pro-European social dynamics at work, but they face strong competition from political and economic forces that are pulling the South Caucasus in very different directions.

Last month, the Georgian government awarded the tender to develop a new deep-water port on the Black Sea at Anaklia to a controversial Chinese company. That project used to be managed by a U.S.-led consortium. In other words, Europe and the United States is competing for influence not just with Russia but also with other powers, as well. Nothing can be taken for granted in a region that is as volatile as it has ever been.

• THOMAS DE WAAL is a Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe and the author of The End of the Near Abroad.

Foreign Affairs · by The End of the Near Abroad · June 3, 2024

19. Opinion | Using Math to Analyze the Supreme Court Reveals an Intriguing Pattern

This is fascinating, interesting, and important analysis. It gives some hope to people like me who want to believe that all supreme court justices can place the law above partisanship. Of course they each have their own ideological views but partisanship may not be the priority for them - simply how they view the law.

Please go to the link to view the graphics: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-court-justice-math-00152188?utm

Opinion | Using Math to Analyze the Supreme Court Reveals an Intriguing Pattern

Politico

Opinion | Using Math to Analyze the Supreme Court Reveals an Intriguing Pattern

The conservative wing isn’t always aligned, and that leads to some surprising outcomes.

POLITICO illustration by Jade Cuevas (source images via Getty Images and iStock)

Opinion by Sarah Isgur and Dean Jens

06/02/2024 07:00 AM EDT

Sarah Isgur is a graduate of Harvard Law School who clerked on the Fifth Circuit. She was Justice Department spokeswoman during the Trump administration and is the host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions for the Dispatch.

Dean Jens is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Central Florida.

If you only get your Supreme Court news from political pundits, you might have gotten the wrong idea about a case decided last year on whether to let Florida ban drag shows. The vote on the high court was 6-3, and you would probably have assumed the court’s six Republican appointees voted on one side and the court’s three liberals on the other.

But that’s not what happened. In the Florida case, three conservative justices — John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — voted with liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson to hold that the law could not be enforced while a related lawsuit was pending.

This 6-3 alignment isn’t new and isn’t rare, as one of us has written before. But our new mathematical analysis of the court’s decisions from the 2022-2023 session shows just how much it makes sense to think of this Supreme Court as a 3-3-3 court — one whose divides are driven not just by ideology, but a range of other legal considerations as well. As the court nears the end of its 2023-2024 term, with a raft of contentious decisions about to land, this will be helpful to keep in mind.

Here are some patterns from the Supreme Court’s last term that might surprise you. About 50 percent of the court’s cases were decided unanimously. Only five of 57 cases — just 8 percent — were decided 6-3 with the six Republican appointees all on one side and the three Democratic appointees on the other. Ninety percent of the 57 cases were decided with at least one liberal justice in the majority. Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Barrett were all in the majority over 90 percent of the time, while Justices Jackson, Sotomayor, and Kagan were all more likely to be in the majority than either Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas. The three liberal justices voted together in fewer than a quarter of the non-unanimous cases, and the six conservatives voted together only 17 percent of the time.

Using statistical tools to help analyze these patterns backs up our 3-3-3 court theory.

In the chart below, we calculate how the court’s current lineup of nine justices ruled relative to each other in the 2022-2023 session, the first in which all nine of them served on the court together. The numbers in the chart represent the frequency, in percent, of how often each justice ruled the same way as another justice.

You can use this grid to see how often two justices voted the same way. To start, it might be surprising to see that Kagan and Alito — far apart on any ideological map — still agreed with each other over 60 percent of the time. But if you focus on each of the three justices in the middle — Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett — they agreed with each of the other two at least 89 percent of the time, while agreeing with members of the liberal block about 80 percent of the time. In fact, they were more likely to agree with the liberal block than the other conservatives. For example, Roberts and Kavanaugh agreed with each of the liberals more often than they did with Thomas.

That chart helps show how the justices’ decisions relate to each other, but there’s another way to graph the same data. Statisticians use a numerical algorithm called a singular value decomposition to look for the strongest relationships between rows and columns in a table of numbers like the one above. A singular value decomposition simplifies datasets to find the broadest mathematical relationships across the data and plots them on two axes.

When you run the same data through a singular value decomposition, the justices clearly cluster into three groups.

While the 3-3-3 alignment jumps off the page, the math doesn’t tell you why the justices’ decisions line up this way — for that you need human analysis. Here’s ours.

The x axis corresponds to what we believe are the justices’ ideological preferences, so we consider it the ideology axis. Justices on the right are more conservative; justices on the left more liberal. (Although it’s worth noting that legally conservative is not always the same as politically conservative — Neil Gorsuch, for example, is well known for his rulings in favor of criminal defendants and Native American tribes.)

The y-axis, which places Barrett, Kavanaugh and Roberts on one end and the other six justices on the other, appears to be measuring something else. We believe the dispersion along this axis can be explained by the justices’ institutional or “consequentialist” concerns — in other words, how much a justice considers questions outside the facts and the law of a specific case in reaching their positions. This might include things like how much weight to give the court’s previous decisions, how easy it will be for lower courts to apply the new rule, or whether to decide a case more narrowly or more broadly. For close court watchers, this makes sense as we think about why justices like Gorsuch and Barrett — who are next to each other on the ideological axis — are only about as likely to agree as Barrett and Kagan, who are much further apart ideologically but closer on institutional concerns.

To be sure, other court watchers may interpret what the axes mean differently. But our interpretation that the y axis represents an “institutionalist” axis aligns with what some of the justices have said publicly. For instance, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Alito said that the “simplest difference” explaining why the six conservative justices differ on cases is respect for precedent, but he also pointed to the chief justice’s desire for consensus and the consideration by some justices of the real world effects of a decision.

Why would respect for precedent sort the justices differently? When a justice believes a previous case was decided correctly, reaching a decision is easy, and they affirm the prior decision. But when the previous decision now seems wrong or lower courts have had trouble applying it, some justices believe that you let the incorrect decision stand for the sake of consistency and reliability. Others, like Thomas, believe the answer is: change the precedent, decide the case correctly and move forward. In our chart, the “high institutionalist” justices who are less inclined to overturn precedent are at the top of the y axis while the “low institutionalist” justices more comfortable with overturning precedent wind up on the bottom of the y axis.

There are also differences in how justices weight the consequences of their decisions. Does it matter that the outcome of a decision may have chaotic results for the people it affects on the ground? Or is it the job of a justice simply to say what the law is and let the elected branches figure out how to deal with the fall out? Gorsuch firmly believes the latter. And then there is the question about the credibility of the institution itself. Is it important that the American people see the justices agreeing as much as possible even if it means leaving hard questions for another day? For the chief justice, consensus — having as many justices as possible join an opinion — is in itself a value. All of those factors can be thought of as part of what we consider the “institutionalist” spectrum.

Some might think this analysis is flawed because it gives all the non-unanimous cases the same weight instead of focusing more on the most important or most “politically divisive” cases in which all six conservatives lined up against three liberals. A critic might argue that, in those cases, political bias overwhelms all other legal considerations, including “institutionalism.”

But first, we have to agree on what makes a case important. Is it the number of people affected? Is it the economic impact? There isn’t a right answer to this question — but if one defines “important” as the most politically divisive, then it becomes circular. The most politically divisive cases wind up being … the most politically divisive, both on and off the court.

Let’s look at the three cases from last term that were described as the most politically divisive that were decided along that ideological, x-axis.

The Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s student loan debt forgiveness plan. That was a 6-3 case that lined up ideologically and was by nearly any measure an important one. But if that case were decided only along the ideological axis, then why did five of those conservative justices uphold the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement plan? That decision held that states — in this case Texas and Louisiana — couldn’t sue to force the president to deport undocumented immigrants who had been convicted of crimes while in the United States? This was also considered a highly political case while it was pending before the court, but because it was decided 8-1 in favor of the Biden administration, it barely got any attention. If it had been decided 6-3 against the Biden administration, it no doubt would have been considered divisive — which just highlights the problem with the definition.

The Supreme Court also decided three cases about how to deal with the country’s history of racial discrimination last term. The court upheld section 2 of the Voting Rights Act which requires states to consider race in creating congressional districts. That was a 5-4 decision with the chief justice, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh and Jackson in the majority. The court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act which gave adoption placement preferences based on tribal status. That was 7-2. And it struck down Harvard and North Carolina’s race-based admissions policies by a 6-3 vote along ideological lines. Only the last case got major headlines. Why? Perhaps because the other two didn’t line up strictly on ideological lines, and therefore were not divisive.

The case that arguably had the biggest legal and economic impact from last term upheld a Pennsylvania law that required out of state businesses to agree to be sued in Pennsylvania court if they wanted to do business in the state. It was a 5-4 decision. Justices Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, Gorsuch and Jackson were in the majority and the chief justice, Kagan, Kavanaugh and Barrett were in the dissent.

The bottom line is this. Cases are “important” based on whom you ask. And they’re “divisive” when that person’s important cases don’t come out the way they wanted them to.

These charts don’t aim to show that ideology doesn’t play a role in today’s Supreme Court. But they also show that ideology alone can’t explain most of the outcomes at the Supreme Court. We can see that dynamic at play in the Florida drag show case: Kavanaugh and Barrett explained that their decision had nothing to do with the merits of whether Florida should lose, but that they thought the legal questions they were being asked to consider were too far-ranging and that the court shouldn’t weigh in at all, at least at this point. That’s an institutional concern, and it separated them from their ideologically conservative colleagues who wanted to uphold the law. In the end, three justices believed Florida should win, three justices believed Florida should lose, and three justices believed the court should stay out of it. And that’s how you get a 3-3-3 court.

These dynamics are crucial to consider when it comes to understanding the highest profile cases the high court could be deciding this term — including to what extent Donald Trump is immune from criminal prosecution or whether states can ban mailed abortion drugs. There are serious legal arguments on both sides of these questions and no controlling precedent. At oral argument, institutionalist questions from the chief justice and Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett — the justices most likely to be in the majority — were abundant. But the questions that dominated the news coverage of the arguments came from Justices Alito and Sotomayor, two of the lowest on the institutionalist axis but also the furthest apart on the ideological axis — and also two of the justices least likely to be in the majority.

Ideologically, conservatives have generally favored empowering states and granting broad discretion to the president as head of the executive branch. But institutionally, both of these cases have the potential to affect the public’s trust in the court and to have far-reaching consequences beyond the next election. In the coming months, the chart indicates that while the more ideological judges are likely to rule in concert with their ideology, you can expect the more institutionalist justices, like Roberts, to be thinking about the consequences of their decisions on the credibility of the court and the impact on the political system.

We will see in the next few months whether — and how — that second axis might matter.

POLITICO

Politico

20. On D-Day, the U.S. Conquered the British Empire

And something a little different for this week's D-Day ceremonies.

On D-Day, the U.S. Conquered the British Empire

On June 6, 1944, the British found themselves suddenly and irrevocably overtaken by their former colony.

By Michel Paradis

The Atlantic · by Michel Paradis · June 3, 2024

For most Americans, D-Day remains the most famous battle of World War II. It was not the end of the war against Nazism. At most, it was the beginning of the end. Yet it continues to resonate 80 years later, and not just because it led to Hitler’s defeat. It also signaled the collapse of the European empires and the birth of an American superpower that promised to dedicate its foreign policy to decolonization, democracy, and human rights, rather than its own imperial prestige.

It is easy to forget what a radical break this was. The term superpower was coined in 1944 to describe the anticipated world order that would emerge after the war. Only the British empire was expected to survive as the standard-bearer of imperialism, alongside two very different superpower peers: the Soviet Union and the United States. Within weeks of D-Day, however, the British found themselves suddenly and irrevocably overruled by their former colony.

That result was hardly inevitable. When the British and the Americans formally allied in December 1941, the British empire was unquestionably the senior partner in the relationship. It covered a fifth of the world’s landmass and claimed a quarter of its people. It dominated the air, sea, and financial channels on which most global commerce depended. And the Royal Navy maintained its preeminence, with ports of call on every continent, including Antarctica.

The United States, by contrast, was more of a common market than a nation-state. Its tendency toward isolationism has always been overstated. But its major foreign-policy initiatives had been largely confined to the Western Hemisphere and an almost random collection of colonies (carefully called “territories”), whose strategic significance was—at best—a point of national ambivalence.

In the two years after Pearl Harbor, the British largely dictated the alliance’s strategic direction. In Europe, American proposals to take the fight directly to Germany by invading France were tabled in favor of British initiatives, which had the not-incidental benefit of expanding Britain’s imperial reach across the Mediterranean and containing the Soviet Union (while always ensuring that the Russians had enough support to keep three-quarters of Germany’s army engaged on the Eastern Front).

Things changed, however, in November 1943, when Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt held a summit in Cairo. The British again sought to postpone the invasion of France in favor of further operations in the Mediterranean. The debate quickly grew acrimonious. At one point, Churchill refused to concede on his empire’s desire to capture the Italian island of Rhodes. George Marshall, the usually stoic U.S. Army chief of staff, shouted at the prime minister, “Not one American is going to die on that goddamned beach!” Another session was forced to end abruptly after Marshall and his British counterpart, Sir Alan Brooke, nearly came to blows.

With the fate of the free world hanging in the balance, a roomful of 60-year-old men nearly broke out into a brawl because by November 1943, America had changed. It was producing more than twice as many planes and seven times as many ships as the whole British empire. British debt, meanwhile, had ballooned to nearly twice the size of its economy. Most of that debt was owed to the United States, which leveraged its position as Britain’s largest creditor to gain access to outposts across the British empire, from which it built an extraordinary global logistics network of its own.

From the April 2023 issue: The age of American naval dominance is over

Having methodically made their country into at least an equal partner, the Americans insisted on the invasion of France, code-named “Operation Overlord.” The result was a compromise, under which the Allies divided their forces in Europe. The Americans would lead an invasion of France, and the British would take command of the Mediterranean.

Six months later, on June 6, 1944, with the D-Day invasion under way, the British empire verged on collapse. Its economic woes were exacerbated by the 1.5 million Americans, and 6 million tons of American equipment, that had been imported into the British Isles to launch Operation Overlord. Its ports were jammed. Inflation was rampant. Its supply chains and its politics were in shambles. By the end of June 1944, two of Churchill’s ministers were declaring the empire “broke.”

The British continued to wield considerable influence on world affairs, as they do today. But after D-Day, on the battlefields of Europe and in international conference rooms, instead of setting the agenda, the British found themselves having to go along with it.

In July 1944, at the Bretton Woods Conference, the British expectation that global finance would remain headquartered in London and transacted at least partially in pounds was frustrated when the International Monetary Fund and what would become the World Bank were headquartered in Washington and the dollar became the currency of international trade. In August 1944, America succeeded in dashing British designs on the eastern Mediterranean for good in favor of a second invasion of France from the south. In September 1944, the more and more notional British command of Allied ground forces in Europe was formally abandoned. In February 1945, at a summit in Yalta, Churchill had little choice but to acquiesce as the United States and the Soviet Union dictated the core terms of Germany’s surrender, the division of postwar Europe, and the creation of a United Nations organization with a mandate for decolonization.

How did this happen so quickly? Some of the great political historians of the 20th century, such as David Reynolds, Richard Overy, and Paul Kennedy, have chronicled the many political, cultural, and economic reasons World War II would always have sounded the death knell of the European imperial system. Some British historians have more pointedly blamed the Americans for destabilizing the British empire by fomenting the forces of anti-colonialism (what D. Cameron Watt called America’s “moral imperialism”).

Absent from many such accounts is why Britain did not even try to counterbalance America’s rise or use the extraordinary leverage it had before D-Day to win concessions that might have better stabilized its empire. The French did precisely that with far less bargaining power at their disposal, and preserved the major constituents of their own empire for a generation longer than the British did. The warning signs were all there. In 1941, Germany’s leading economics journal predicted the rise of a “Pax Americana” at Britain’s expense. “England will lose its empire,” the article gloatingly predicted, “to its partner across the Atlantic.”

Read: How Britain falls apart

The American defense-policy scholar and Atlantic contributing writer Kori Schake recently made a persuasive case that Britain came to accept the role of junior partner in the Atlantic alliance, rather than seek to balance American power, because the two countries had become socially, politically, and economically alike in all the ways that mattered. Britain, in other words, had more to lose by confrontation. And so it chose friendship.

The argument makes sense to a point, especially given how close the United Kingdom and the United States are today. But the remembered warmth of the “special relationship” in the 1940s is largely a product of nostalgia. British contempt for American racism and conformist consumerism seethed especially hot with the arrival in the U.K. of 1.5 million Americans. And American contempt for the British class system and its reputation for violent imperialism equally made any U.S. investment in the war against Germany—as opposed to Japan—a political liability for Roosevelt.

The British elite had every intention of preserving the British empire and European colonialism more generally. In November 1942, as Anglo-American operations began in North Africa, Churchill assured France that its colonies would be returned and assured his countrymen, “I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”

The British assumed that America’s rise was compatible with that goal because they grossly miscalculated American intentions. This was on stark display in March 1944, just over two months before D-Day, when Britain’s Foreign Office circulated a memorandum setting out the empire’s “American policy.” Given how naive the Americans were about the ways of the world, it said, Britain should expect them to “follow our lead rather than that we follow theirs.” It was therefore in Britain’s interest to foster America’s rise so that its power could be put to Britain’s use. “They have enormous power, but it is the power of the reservoir behind the dam,” the memo continued. “It must be our purpose not to balance our power against that of America, but to make use of American power for purposes which we regard as good” and to “use the power of the United States to preserve the Commonwealth and the Empire, and, if possible, to support the pacification of Europe.”

It is easy to see why members of Britain’s foreign-policy elite, still warmed by a Victorian afterglow, might discount Americans’ prattling on about decolonization and democracy as empty wartime rhetoric. If anything, they thought, Americans’ pestering insistence on such ideals proved how naive they were. Churchill often grumbled with disdain about Americans’ sentimental affection for—as he put it—the “chinks” and “pigtails” fighting against Japan in China, scornful of the American belief that they could be trusted to govern themselves.

And the face America presented to London might have compounded the misapprehension. Roosevelt was expected to choose George Marshall to be the American commander of Operation Overlord, a position that would create the American equivalent of a Roman proconsul in London. Instead, he picked Dwight Eisenhower.

Roosevelt’s reasons for choosing Eisenhower remain difficult to pin down. The president gave different explanations to different people at different times. But Eisenhower was the ideal choice for America’s proconsul in London and Europe more generally, if the goal was to make a rising American superpower seem benign.

Eisenhower had a bit of cowboy to him, just like in the movies. He was also an Anglophile and took to wearing a British officer’s coat when visiting British troops in the field. He had a natural politician’s instinct for leaving the impression that he agreed with everyone. And he offered the incongruous public image of a four-star general who smiled like he was selling Coca-Cola.

He was also genuinely committed to multilateralism. Eisenhower had studied World War I closely and grew convinced that its many disasters—in both its fighting and its peace—were caused by the Allies’ inability to put aside their own imperial prestige to achieve their common goals. Eisenhower’s commitment to Allied “teamwork,” as he would say with his hokey Kansas geniality, broke radically from the past and seemed hopelessly naive, yet was essential to the success of operations as high-risk and complex as the D-Day invasion.

Eisenhower, for his part, was often quite deft in handling the political nature of his position. He knew that to be effective, to foster that teamwork, he could never be seen as relishing the terrifying economic and military power at his disposal, or the United States’ willingness to use it. “Hell, I don’t have to go around jutting out my chin to show the world how tough I am,” he said privately.

On D-Day, Eisenhower announced the invasion without mentioning the United States once. Instead, he said, the landings were part of the “United Nations’ plan for the liberation of Europe, made in conjunction with our great Russian allies.” While the invasion was under way, Eisenhower scolded subordinates who issued reports on the extent of French territory “captured.” The territory, he chided them, had been “liberated.”

The strategy worked. That fall, with Paris liberated, only 29 percent of French citizens polled felt the United States had “contributed most in the defeat of Germany,” with 61 percent giving credit to the Soviet Union. Yet, when asked where they would like to visit after the war, only 13 percent were eager to celebrate the Soviet Union’s contributions in Russia itself. Forty-three percent said the United States, a country whose Air Force had contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of French civilians in bombing raids.

In rhetoric and often in reality, the United States has continued to project its power, not as an empire, but on behalf of the “United Nations,” “NATO,” “the free world,” or “mankind.” The interests it claims to vindicate as a superpower have also generally not been its imperial ambition to make America great, but the shared ideals enshrined soon after the war in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Had the D-Day invasion failed, those ideals would have been discredited. Unable to open the Western Front in France, the Allies would have had no choice but to commit to Britain’s strategy in the Mediterranean. The U.S. military, and by extension the United States, would have lost all credibility. The Soviets would have been the only meaningful rival to German power on the European continent. And there would have been no reason for the international politics of national prestige and imperial interest to become outmoded.

Instead, on D-Day, American soldiers joined by British soldiers and allies from nearly a dozen countries embarked on a treacherous voyage from the seat of the British empire to the shores of the French empire on a crusade that succeeded in liberating the Old World from tyranny. It was a victory for an alliance built around the promise, at least, of broadly shared ideals rather than narrow national interests. That was a radical idea at the time, and it is becoming a contested one today. D-Day continues to resonate as much as it does because, like the battles of Lexington and Concord, it is an almost-too-perfect allegory for a decisive turning point in America’s national story: the moment when it came into its own as a new kind of superpower, one that was willing and able to fight for a freer world.

The Atlantic · by Michel Paradis · June 3, 2024

21. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 2, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-2-2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 2, 2024

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with US and Singaporean officials and highlighted the upcoming Global Peace Summit during the International Institute for Strategic Studies' (IISS) Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 2.
• The provision of Western air defense systems and the lifting of Western restrictions on Ukraine's ability to strike military targets Russian territory with Western-provided weapons remain crucial for Ukraine to repel Russian glide bomb and missile strikes against Kharkiv City.
• Ukrainian field commanders are reportedly compensating for training difficulties that mobilization has exacerbated by training new personnel on the frontline.
• Ukrainian field commanders' decisions to train newly-deployed personnel on the front before committing them to combat indicates that the overall quality of Ukrainian forces will likely remain higher than that of Russian forces in the near- to mid-term.
• The New York Times (NYT) published an investigation on June 2 into the forced relocation and deportation of 46 Ukrainian children from a foster home in occupied Kherson Oblast during 2022.
• The Telegraph reported on June 1 in a since-removed article that British officials ordered the United Kingdom's (UK) Security Service (MI5) to refocus its counterintelligence efforts towards Russian, People's Republic of China (PRC), and Iranian agents operating in the UK.
• Russian war commentator Alexander Artamonov drew backlash from Kremlin-affiliated Russian propagandists for claiming that Ukrainians are "second-class citizens." contradicting the Kremlin’s false efforts to portray Ukrainian and Russian people as one nation.
• Russian forces recently advanced near Vovchansk, Avdiivka, Donetsk City, and Krynky.
• Russia continues to indoctrinate Russian minors into military-political thinking to set conditions for long-term force generation.

22. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 2, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-june-2-2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 2, 2024

Key Takeaways:

• Gaza Strip: Israeli forces launched a raid targeting Palestinian militias in Sabra and Zaytoun neighborhoods of Gaza City.
• Political Negotiations: Hamas stated that it will engage the latest Israeli proposal constructively, so long as the proposal meets Hamas’ maximalist demands.
• West Bank: Israeli forces engaged Palestinian fighters in eight locations across the West Bank.
• Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Lebanese Hezbollah conducted 11 attacks into northern Israel.
• Iraq: The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed a drone attack targeting Israel.
• Yemen: The Houthis claimed six drone and missile attacks targeting commercial and US naval vessels.

23. Competing US-China Defense Tactics Dominate Singapore Forum

I am biased but I agree with our SECDEF.

Competing US-China Defense Tactics Dominate Singapore Forum

• Austin says stronger partnerships reflect sovereign choices
• China accuses US of seeking to build an Asian version of NATO

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-02/conflicting-us-china-defense-strategies-dominate-singapore-forum?sref=hhjZtX76

By Philip Heijmans, Peter Martin, and Josh Xiao

June 2, 2024 at 6:00 AM EDT

Updated on June 2, 2024 at 9:11 PM EDT

Global defense leaders descending on Singapore this weekend confronted conflicting visions of the region: the US touted expanding military exercises and partnerships across the Indo-Pacific, while China criticized “outside forces” for interfering with peace and stability.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin addressed the Shangri-La Dialogue on Saturday and name-checked nearly every country as US partners or allies. He praised recent joint drills with Indonesia and the Philippines, improved coordination with Japan, India, South Korea and Australia, and strengthened ties with Papua New Guinea, Thailand and Vietnam.

“We are witnessing a new convergence around nearly all aspects of security in the Indo-Pacific,” Austin said. “It isn’t about bullying or coercion — it’s about the free choices of sovereign states.”

China didn’t see it that way. Its delegation quickly pushed back on the American narrative. Officials from Beijing ramped up their public outreach at the annual forum with a series of news conferences, speeches and high-profile interjections to blast US support for Taiwan, warn against the development of an Asian NATO, and accuse Washington of instituting a “technology blockade” against Beijing.

“They keep testing China’s red lines,” new Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun said in his keynote address on Sunday. He warned that the US was pursuing a “salami-slicing strategy” by pushing through Taiwan-related legislation, continuing arm sales to the self-governed island, and having “illegal” official contact with Taipei.

• Read More From the Shangri-La DialogueChina Defense Chief Swipes at US at His First Global Forum
• Zelenskiy Asks Asia Leaders to Join Summit to End Russia’s War
• Pentagon Chief Touts China Talks, Efforts to Box Beijing In
• Marcos Swipes at China, Vowing Not to Yield in Disputed Sea

Chinese officials acknowledged they were taking a more public approach. Some regional analysts interpreted that as an effort to counter the concerns about a potential conflict caused by recent clashes with the Philippines in the South China Sea and deployments of military aircraft and ships around Taiwan.

The accumulation of defiant words “have China on the rattled rhetorical defensive,” said Rory Medcalf, the head of the National Security College at the Australian National University.

For many countries in the region, there’s a gap between “what China says versus what China does,” NATO Military Committee Admiral Rob Bauer said in an interview.

The three-day event opened with a dramatic display of the simmering tensions on Friday, when Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivered a dinner speech blasting Beijing’s policies in the South China Sea as Dong looked on from a front-row table. “Filipinos do not yield,” he said from the podium.

Soon after, the Chinese delegation fired back. Major General Xu Hui, president of the International College of Defense Studies at China’s National Defense University, stood up in the question-and-answer session to accuse the Philippine leader of “ruining” regional peace and steering Asia toward war.

“There is no such thing as a regional issue any longer,” Marcos responded, calling the crisis in the waterway a global concern.

The Chinese delegation wasn’t done: they called a 10:30 p.m. news conference to rebut charges that the country bullies others.

That confrontation was just one of a series of tense moments during the gathering in which the US and China had initially sought to smooth over past disagreements. In a shift from last year’s event, when the two nations’ defense ministers shook hands but never sat down to talk, Austin and Dong met for 75 minutes on Friday.

“There’s clearly more stability in the relationship than maybe a year ago,” said Cui Tiankai, a former Chinese ambassador to Washington who maintains close ties with the leadership in Beijing. “Things are going in the right direction, but very slowly.”

Austin’s address on Saturday was muted in its direct criticisms of China, but it prompted a question from Cao Yanzhong, a research fellow at China’s Academy of Military Sciences. Cao asked whether the US is seeking to establish a NATO-like presence in the region, saying the alliance’s expansion was a root cause of the war in Ukraine.

Austin told the delegate that the war was a result of Russian aggression and President Vladimir Putin’s belief he could “roll over” his neighbor.

Dong’s speech on Sunday was more direct, knocking the US for “hollowing out” Beijing’s One-China policy on Taiwan and “misleading” nations in the South China Sea.

China’s delegation suggested it would be doing more to make its case about regional hotspots.

“This shows how our People’s Liberation Army delegation is open, transparent, more confident to interact with the world,” said Senior Colonel Zhu Qichao, a deputy director at the National University of Defense Technology.

China isn’t alone in upping its public relations game. The Philippines has recorded and distributed footage of its own conflicts with China, including multiple episodes where Chinese ships have used water cannons and lasers on Philippines vessels attempting to travel near disputed islands and reefs.

Beijing was less outspoken when it came to the rare visit to Asia by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy amid a renewed Russian offensive in his country’s northeast. The Ukrainian leader sought to rally support for his forthcoming summit in Switzerland, but also accused China of seeking to undermine the gathering by pressing other countries not to attend.

“We need the support of Asian countries,” Zelenskiy said. “It is much needed.”

China has refused to participate on the grounds of impartiality, saying Russia should have been invited to Ukraine’s event. Beijing is instead joining Brazil in calling for a conference recognized by both Russia and Ukraine.

Heading into the final day of the conference, Singapore’s defense minister — who characterized the lack of US-China talks at last year’s forum a major disappointment — praised Beijing’s efforts to communicate and said the resumption of talks by both sides was good news.

“China has learned that they can put up their voice,” Ng Eng Hen told reporters. “That’s how it should be. What’s the alternative? If words don’t fly, bullets do.”

— With assistance from Andreo Calonzo and Alfred Cang

(Updates with comments from NATO official from paragraph 8)

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com