Indian Strategic Studies: 2024

22 October 2024

India and the US 2024 Election

Andrew Latham and Will Kochel

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris offer two distinct visions for U.S. foreign policy: Trump’s “America First” approach and Harris’s commitment to liberal internationalism. But here’s the rub – neither vision is likely to result in a significant enhancement of the India-U.S. strategic relationship.

On the one hand, Trump’s transactional diplomacy and tolerance of India’s ties with Russia, as well as its membership in the anti-U.S., counter-hegemonic BRICS coalition, may avoid immediate conflict, but will fail to elevate the partnership to a more strategic level. On the other hand, Harris’s focus on human rights and a tougher stance on India’s relationship with Russia and BRICS could create friction, particularly given India’s insistence on maintaining its strategic autonomy.

Both candidates, however, have one thing in common. They overlook the deeper structural issues – from ongoing trade disputes to India’s domestic political trajectory – that continue to impede a more meaningful and enduring India-U.S. alliance.

Why India and Canada Expelled Each Other’s Top Diplomats

Rishi Iyengar and Amy Mackinnon

A long-simmering diplomatic spat between India and Canada escalated dramatically on Monday as Ottawa expelled six Indian officials, including the country’s top diplomat, implicating them in the killing of a Sikh separatist who was fatally shot outside a temple in British Columbia last year.

India, which has rejected the allegations, responded in kind by ejecting six Canadian diplomats, including the country’s acting high commissioner.

Latest Taiwan drills show off PLA deterrence

Jeff Pao

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched and completed the Joint Sword-2024B Exercise near Taiwan on Monday with a strong focus on deterring the United States from intervening in any possible battles in the Taiwan Strait.

The Eastern Theater Command of the PLA said Monday it had deployed the Liaoning aircraft carrier group to conduct exercises, along with its army, navy, air force and rocket force troops, on vessel-aircraft collaboration, joint air control and strikes on sea and land targets in the waters and airspace to the east of Taiwan.

”The drills aim to test the joint combat capabilities of multiple services in integrated operations inside and outside the island chain,” said Li Xi, spokesperson of the Eastern Theater Command.

He added that the drills, conducted in the Taiwan Strait and the north, south and east of the island of Taiwan, are a powerful deterrent to the separatist activities of “Taiwan independence” elements, and are legitimate and necessary actions to safeguard national sovereignty and national unity.

As of 4:30 pm, the Taiwanese military said the PLA had deployed a record total of 125 aircraft, 17 warships and 17 coast guard vessels in its exercise on Monday.

Chinese hackers access US telecom firms, worrying national security officials

Sean Lyngaas and Evan Perez

A highly skilled group of Chinese government-linked hackers has in the last several months infiltrated multiple US telecommunications firms in a likely search for sensitive information bearing on national security, multiple sources briefed on the matter told CNN.

US investigators believe the hackers potentially accessed wiretap warrant requests, two of the sources said, but officials are still working to determine what information the hackers may have obtained. US broadband and internet providers AT&T, Verizon and Lumen are among the targets, the sources said.

US officials are concerned about the potential national security damage done by the hacking, which they only recently discovered. It’s the latest sophisticated hack targeting US federal agencies that investigators have linked to China, and it comes amid tensions between Washington and Beijing over cyber-espionage and other high-stakes national security issues.

The Qin Gang Saga Reveals Security Gaps

Matthew Brazil

In June 2023, then-Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Qin Gang (秦刚) disappeared from public view. Speculation about his fate ensued, including rumors of torture and execution for being a Western spy. This year, however, reports have trickled out indicating that he remains alive and an active, if demoted, member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The first signs of leniency emerged months ago. Qin was referred to as “comrade” and allowed to resign, rather than be expelled, from his seats at the National People’s Congress in February and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee in July (Xinhua, February 27; Gov.cn, July 18). In late August. Western outlets including Intelligence Online and The Washington Post cited unnamed sources to report that the deposed minister was now a deputy director at World Affairs Press, a publishing arm under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), Qin’s career work unit (Intelligence Online, 28 August; The Washington Post, 8 September).

If Qin is working at World Affairs Press, it appears to be a state secret, albeit an open one. The organization’s “Company Leadership (公司领导)” page shows only two deputy directors, Yan Nan (闫楠) and Gu Yu (谷雨) (World Affairs Press, accessed September 30). No page on the site includes Qin Gang, even those with photos of employee gatherings (World Affairs Press, accessed September 30). A reporter for The Washington Post who visited the World Affairs Bookshop in August was told by staff that they had not heard of Qin Gang being one of their own (The Washington Post, 8 September).

Apple is losing to Huawei in China. Here's why

Britney Nguyen

Since releasing its Mate 60 Pro series last August, Chinese tech giant Huawei has made a comeback in China’s smartphone market, knocking Apple (AAPL-0.89%) from its pedestal.

Huawei and other homegrown smartphone makers have experienced double-digit growth this year, boosting smartphone shipments in China by 8.9% year-over-year in the second quarter, according to the International Data Corporation.

China’s Vivo, Huawei, Oppo, Honor — a former subsidiary of Huawei — and Xiaomi made up the top sharers of China’s smartphone market, respectively. Apple, meanwhile, fell to sixth place. And despite cutting prices on some iPhone models to compete, the data showed Apple’s year-over-year sales declined 3.1%.

Apple’s iPhone shipments in China experienced “marginal decline” in the second quarter of this year, Counterpoint Research said, noting that during the same period last year, Apple had the third-highest number of shipments — only behind Oppo and Vivo — while Huawei was in sixth place.

China’s Joint Swords 2024B

Mick Ryan

Just last week, Taiwan celebrated its national day. Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te gave an address on 10 October that included a statement that China "has no right to represent Taiwan" and that his mission as president would be to "resist annexation or encroachment upon our sovereignty."

After the speech by the President of Taiwan, the predictable Chinese Communist Party response arrived. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Mao Ning stated that Lai had tried to “sell the fallacy of Taiwan independence,” and accused him of a “pernicious intention to escalate tensions across the Taiwan Strait for political gain.”

As I wrote in my last weekly update, there was some speculation in the wake of the Chinese statement that the PLA would use Lai's National Day speech as a pretext to launch military exercises around Taiwan, similar to the Joint Swords 2024A exercise conducted in May this year. While PLA activity around Taiwan immediately after the Taiwanese president’s speech held steady for a couple of days at an average of 10-20 aircraft and 4-7 ships, the situation changed in the past 24 hours.

Artificial Intelligence Is Accelerating Iranian Cyber Operations

Michael Mieses, Noelle Kerr & Nakissa Jahanbani

In late June and early July, Iranian hackers stole information from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and sent it to Biden campaign officials, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). This was far from a one-off. Recently, Tehran has increased its asymmetrical advantage by harnessing cyber capabilities through the internet and social media, a trend that extends back even further. Over the past few decades, Iran has been quietly building its cyber capability in the shadow of great powers.

These recent activities took place after sustained Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea and attacks on U.S.-backed installations in Iraq and Syria. Iran’s cyber activities are part of a broader hybrid strategy combining conventional military power, economic leverage, and the strategic use of proxies. While there is considerable information about Iranian offline proxies, its cyber proxies largely fly under the radar. Though they are less visible than their offline counterparts, cyber proxies are nonetheless a powerful asymmetric tool.

Iran’s multifaceted approach in the cyber domain allows Iran to project power and influence in the Middle East while avoiding direct conventional military confrontations with stronger adversaries. Iran uses cyber operations to complement its broader geopolitical strategies, often employing cyber espionage and sabotage to gain strategic advantages or to retaliate against sanctions and military threats. As Iran increasingly incorporates AI technologies into its cyber operations, the likelihood of more disruptive and damaging activities escalates, presenting a substantial challenge not only to regional stability but also to global security.

Iran, Russia and North Korea changed cyber attack tactics in the last year, says Microsoft

Mickey Carroll

Microsoft users face more than 600 million cyber attacks every day, partly fuelled by a growing trend of cybercrime gangs working with nation states, according to a new report by the company.

In this year's Digital Defence report, Microsoft said countries like Russia, Iran and North Korea have changed how they worked in the last year, including starting to experiment with AI.

"We must find a way to stem the tide of this malicious cyber activity," said Tom Burt, the company's vice president of customer security and trust.

"That includes continuing to harden our digital domains to protect our networks, data, and people at all levels."

Russia appears to have "outsourced" some of its cyber espionage to criminal gangs, especially around its spying in Ukraine, and in June, a suspected cyber crime group managed to compromise at least 50 Ukrainian military devices.

Saudi Arabia Energy Profile: World’s Top Crude Oil Exporter – Analysis

Saudi Arabia was the world’s third-highest crude oil and condensate producer, the world’s top crude oil exporter, and OPEC’s top crude oil producer in 2023.1

As part of its OPEC+ membership, Saudi Arabia agreed to 0.5 million barrels per day (b/d) in additional crude oil production cuts that began in May 2023. In June 2024, OPEC+ extended these cuts through December 2025. Saudi Arabia unilaterally cut an additional 1.0 million b/d of OPEC+ production starting in July 2023, which (at the time of writing) it plans to gradually restore from November 2024 through the end of 2025.2

Saudi Arabia seeks to increase its electricity generation capacity from natural gas and renewable energy sources as part of the country’s Vision 2030.3 The Saudi Power Procurement Company (SPPC) awarded bids for four natural gas-fired power plant projects in October 2023 and began receiving bids for four additional projects in January 2024. Each project has 1.8 gigawatts (GW) of additional capacity.4 Saudi Arabia’s government has over 21 GW in planned renewable energy projects as of mid-2024, the majority of which are for solar power.5

Petroleum and other liquids

Saudi Arabia produced 9.5 million b/d of crude oil in 2023, a 9% decrease from 10.4 million b/d in 2022. This decrease reflects OPEC+ production cuts from 2023 intended to balance the market amid increased production from non-member countries. Total liquid fuels production in Saudi Arabia decreased 8%, from 12.1 million b/d in 2022 to 11.1 million b/d in 2023.6

Between Russia And Iran All Is Well That Ends Well – OpEd

M.K. Bhadrakumar

The mystery about the hastily-arranged ‘working meeting’ between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian at Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, on Friday has only deepened after the event. This was their first-ever meeting. Putin didn’t even have the post-event presser.

Why such a meeting was considered necessary becomes an intriguing thought, as the two leaders are to meet in Kazan within days on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit on October 22-24.

Russia and Iran have had a difficult relationship through centuries. It remains complicated, as the protracted negotiations over their strategic partnership treaty have shown. They have serious conflict of interests, as the controversial idea of Zangezur Corridor makes plain.

The two countries are potential competitors in Europe’s energy market. Both are tough practitioners of strategic autonomy. Their partnership in a future multipolar world order belies an overall prediction.

Iran’s Year of Living Dangerously

Ali Vaez

Over four decades, in an effort to preserve itself, project regional influence, and deter adversaries, the Islamic Republic of Iran has invested in three projects: funding and arming a network of nonstate allies; developing ballistic missiles that can reach its rivals; and launching a nuclear program that can be either dialed down to deliver economic benefits or dialed up to deliver a nuclear weapon. Setbacks to the first, mixed results from the second, and uncertainty over the third have increasingly called this strategy into question.

After Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, groups in the Iranian-backed “axis of resistance” quickly mobilized on multiple fronts. In Yemen, the Houthis’ missiles and drones menaced maritime traffic in the Red Sea. In Iraq and Syria, militias launched drones and rockets at U.S. forces. And in Lebanon, Hezbollah ramped up cross-border fire into Israel. As Israel waged its military campaign in Gaza, Israel also sought to douse Iran’s ring of fire, including by targeting Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel. In April, an Israeli strike on an Iranian consular facility in Damascus—which the leadership in Tehran considered a direct hit on sovereign territory—killed several of the IRGC’s senior commanders. In response to the mounting losses of IRGC officers in Lebanon and Syria, Tehran, for the first time, mounted a direct military attack against Israel. Iran indirectly telegraphed its strike in advance to the United States, rendering the barrage of drones and missiles largely ineffective. But Iran’s leaders nonetheless declared their attack a success.

Iran’s Nuclear Tipping Point

Carol E. B. Choksy and Jamsheed K. Choksy

When it comes to Iran’s capacity and desire to develop nuclear weapons, conventional wisdom in the West has generally held that Tehran treasures its so-called threshold status—in which it possesses the ability to quickly manufacture such armaments but does not do so. Threshold status should, in theory, afford Iran the leverage that comes with having a nuclear deterrent without the blowback.

A Mysterious Hacking Group Has 2 New Tools to Steal Data From Air-Gapped Machine

Dan Goodin

Researchers have unearthed two sophisticated tool sets that a nation-state hacking group—possibly from Russia—used to steal sensitive data stored on air-gapped devices, meaning those that are deliberately isolated from the internet or other networks to safeguard them from malware.

One of the custom tool collections was used starting in 2019 against a South Asian embassy in Belarus. A largely different tool set created by the same threat group infected a European Union government organization three years later. Researchers from ESET, the security firm that discovered the toolkits, said some of the components in both were identical to those fellow security firm Kaspersky described in research published last year and attributed to an unknown group, tracked as GoldenJackal, working for a nation-state. Based on the overlap, ESET has concluded that the same group is behind all the attacks observed by both firms.

Quite Unusual

Not only Israel: The burning fronts in the global cyber war

Denis Vitchevsky

It’s easy to forget, but nearly two decades have passed since the first documented state-attributed cyberattack. In 2007, Estonia’s infrastructure was crippled, likely by Russia, following a diplomatic dispute. Three years later, malware targeting Iranian centrifuges was discovered and named Stuxnet. While the field of cyber warfare still feels like a new frontier, the children born in the year Estonia was attacked will be enlisting next year—some of them to develop new cyber tools.

When the first instances of cyber warfare surfaced, one of the biggest concerns was the lack of rules or restraints. Apocalyptic predictions warned of poisoned water supplies, rigged elections, remote power plant explosions, derailed trains, missile launches, and more. Fortunately, little of that has come to pass.

There are many reasons why cyber warfare hasn’t wreaked global havoc yet. Some of the initial fears were unfounded—many critical systems aren’t actually connected to the internet, and targeted attacks like the one on Iranian centrifuges are far from easy.

Sanctions, cyber wars, and global collaboration: Huawei executive sheds light on future cybersecurity challenges

Tawney Kruger

The U.S. sanctions on Huawei, particularly during the Trump administration, have significantly shaped the global cybersecurity landscape, intensifying the challenges faced by the Chinese tech giant. “We faced tremendous headwinds in new deals because of alleged trust issues,” explained Dr. Aloysius Cheang, Huawei’s President of Cybersecurity & Privacy Protection and Chief Security Officer for the Middle East and Central Asia in an interview with Daryo's Tawney Kruger at the Cyber Security Summit in Tashkent. “They were using cybersecurity as a weapon against us,” he added, emphasizing how Huawei became a central figure in the U.S.-China trade war.

Under the Trump administration, the U.S. pushed a paradigm of “trusted and untrusted vendors,” often placing Huawei in the latter category.

“The Trump administration had pushed out a trusted and untrusted vendor paradigm,” the Huawei executive explained.

This narrative led to initiatives such as the 5G Clean Network, which sought to exclude Huawei from playing any role in global 5G infrastructure. “They have the 5G clean power thing they were pushing,” he remarked, underscoring the U.S. government’s efforts to block Huawei from participating in critical telecommunications networks worldwide.

A “Land-For-Land” Solution to the Ukraine War?

Andreas Umland

Beijing’s and other non-Western capitals’ calls for a ceasefire and negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv have acquired a new meaning after the Ukrainian occupation of western Russian lands. A Chinese or other non-Western push for Russo-Ukrainian accommodation could now lead to meaningful peace talks.

Ukraine’s unexpectedly successful and deep incursion into Russian territory on August 6, 2024, has changed the conversation about the Russo-Ukrainian War. The most important international impact that the Ukrainian surprise action may eventually have is on officially neutral non-Western countries such as China, India, or Brazil. The West was and will be supportive of Ukraine—irrespective of the Kursk operation and its outcome. In contrast, a prolonged Ukrainian occupation of legitimate Russian state territory introduces a new dimension into non-Western approaches to the war.

If Moscow does not reverse the Ukrainian offensive soon and fully, it will change Kyiv’s position and leverage in hypothetical negotiations, which many third actors have officially promoted since the war started in 2014. So far, Kyiv has had to rely solely on moral and legal arguments referring to the rules-based world order in its communication with foreign partners. Now, in contrast, a less normatively driven, more transactional, and more straightforward “land-for-land” deal between Russia and Ukraine has become theoretically feasible.

Ukraine bridles at no-holds-barred US support for Israel

Veronika Melkozerova, Robbie Gramer and Paul McLeary

The U.S. this week deployed an advanced air defense system and dozens of troops to protect Israel from Iranian ballistic missiles, but there is nothing like that level of help for Ukraine even though it daily faces Russian drone, missile and bomb attacks.

In Kyiv, that’s being called out as a double standard.

“If the allies shoot down missiles together in the sky of the Middle East, why is there still no decision to shoot down drones and missiles over Ukraine?” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked last month.

When U.S. and British air defense systems and fighter planes helped knock down hundreds of Iranian missiles Oct. 1., Ukraine’s foreign ministry said: “We call on Ukraine’s allies to defend Ukrainian airspace with the same determination and without hesitation from Russian missile and drone attacks, recognizing that human life is equally precious in any part of the world.”

The allies also intervened in April.

The reason why the U.S. acts boldly in Israel and cautiously in Ukraine is clear: Russia is armed with nuclear weapons and Iran isn’t.

Is the U.S. Helping Israel—or Emboldening It To Take Bigger Risks? | Opinion

Daniel R. DePetris

On October 1, Israel dodged a bullet—or, more accurately, a barrage of 180 ballistic missiles. Iran's strike, meant to avenge Israel's assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and a senior Iranian general days earlier, did little damage to Israel's military infrastructure. For the most part, Israel's air defense system, aided by U.S. Navy ships based in the Eastern Mediterranean, neutralized the missiles before they landed.

A few dozen, however, did break through Israel's anti-missile network. Satellite images taken the day after the Iranian attack showed multiple impact points at the Nevatim Airbase, deep in the Negev Desert. U.S. defense officials likely had some of those images in mind over the weekend when they announced the deployment of a U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, along with a 100-strong U.S. crew, to buttress Israel's defenses.

The THAAD is a highly sophisticated air defense platform that can intercept medium- and intermediate-range missiles, above and beyond what the trademark U.S. Patriot system can do. There are only nine THAAD batteries available at any one time, so the fact that one was so rapidly moved to Israel demonstrates just how concerned the Biden administration is about hostilities with Iran flaring up in the days and weeks to come.

How Hamas Infiltrated Europ

Olivia Reingold

Since October 7, when Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,200 people in a single day, anti-Israel—and antisemitic—sentiment has roiled Europe. In the Netherlands, strangers have targeted Jewish people, calling them slurs like “child murderer” and “dirty Jew.” Over the summer, UK voters elected four anti-Israel politicians, all of whom consider the Jewish state’s retaliatory war against Hamas a “genocide”—with one even questioning reports that the terrorists raped their female victims.

On Tuesday, the European Leadership Network, a nonprofit pro-Israel advocacy group, released a report—first shared with The Free Press—that helps explain the origin of this rising hate. It states that an extensive network of Hamas-affiliated officials and activists throughout Europe use a “civilian front” of charities and nonprofits to line the pockets of the terrorist group.

The report, titled “Hamas in Europe,” identifies five European countries where it claims Hamas is most active outside of Gaza: the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Its hundreds of pages detail the histories of at least a dozen individuals with Hamas ties who are living in Europe while they fundraise, lobby for, and make media appearances on behalf of the terrorist group.

How The US Government Turned On The People – OpEd

Peter St. Onge

The catastrophic mismanagement of Hurricane Helene relief is showing the American people that Washington’s dysfunctional but, worse, it doesn’t even seem to be trying to serve the people.

Instead, we serve it. Like livestock.

So how did we get here?

The Long March of Bureaucracy

As with the economy, the seeds of our political crisis began a hundred years ago in the Progressive era.

The Progressives’ big year for taking over the economy was 1913, with the income tax and the Federal Reserve Act.

But the political takeover was earlier — according to historian Murray Rothbard, it began precisely 30 years earlier with something called the Pendleton Act of 1883.

The Act made bureaucrats professionals who are independent of politicians. This was allegedly to fight corruption, but note that a bureaucracy that’s independent of politicians is also independent of voters.

Ukraine’s Sprawling Hybrid Warfare Could be the Middle East’s Future

Eugene Chausovsky

The Middle East teeters on the brink of a regional war, and Israel’s conflict with Hamas hit the one-year mark on Oct 7. The longer that such wars—particularly when they are centered around long-standing geopolitical hot spots—go on, the greater their potential to spread—not just militarily, but also into the tangled domains of hybrid warfare, where political, strategic, and economic demands meet. Russia’s war in Ukraine offers a telling set of examples of what might be to come in the Middle East.

While the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought global attention to the conflict, the war was already long underway. Its start came with the Euromaidan revolution in Kyiv in 2014 and Russia’s subsequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, which was followed by Russian support of pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine during the ensuing years. Attempts at international mediation and negotiations over a cease-fire ultimately proved unsuccessful, leading to a gradual escalation of tensions between Russia and Ukraine that exploded into full-scale war nearly a decade later.

A new military-industrial complex: How tech bros are hyping AI’s role in war

Paul Lushenko & Keith Carter

Since the emergence of generative artificial intelligence, scholars have speculated about the technology’s implications for the character, if not nature, of war. The promise of AI on battlefields and in war rooms has beguiled scholars. They characterize AI as “game-changing,” “revolutionary,” and “perilous,” especially given the potential of great power war involving the United States and China or Russia. In the context of great power war, where adversaries have parity of military capabilities, scholars claim that AI is the sine qua non, absolutely required for victory. This assessment is predicated on the presumed implications of AI for the “sensor-to-shooter” timeline, which refers to the interval of time between acquiring and prosecuting a target. By adopting AI, or so the argument goes, militaries can reduce the sensor-to-shooter timeline and maintain lethal overmatch against peer adversaries.

Although understandable, this line of reasoning may be misleading for military modernization, readiness, and operations. While experts caution that militaries are confronting a “eureka” or “Oppenheimer” moment, harkening back to the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, this characterization distorts the merits and limits of AI for warfighting. It encourages policymakers and defense officials to follow what can be called a “primrose path of AI-enabled warfare,” which is codified in the US military’s “third offset” strategy. This vision of AI-enabled warfare is fueled by gross prognostications and over-determination of emerging capabilities enhanced with some form of AI, rather than rigorous empirical analysis of its implications across all (tactical, operational, and strategic) levels of war.

SpaceX’s giant robotic leap for mankind

Norman Lewis

‘A day for the engineering history books.’ That is how Kate Tice, a senior engineering manager at SpaceX, characterised her company’s achievements this weekend.

She’s not wrong. On Sunday, Elon Musk’s SpaceX managed a remarkable feat. It caught the massive booster stage from its Starship rocket in a pair of giant robotic arms as it fell back to the company’s ‘Mechazilla’ launchpad in southern Texas.

SpaceX has taken another huge step closer to developing a fully reusable rocket system whose parts can be recovered and reused. As such, Sunday’s giant booster catch also marked another significant milestone in Elon Musk’s ambitious plan to send people and cargo to the Moon and, eventually, Mars.

Since its foundation in 2002, SpaceX has opened up a new frontier in space exploration. It has revived the dream of establishing Moon bases, from which humankind could potentially colonise Mars. And it has reignited the ambition of NASA, too. The US government agency originally withdrew from further Moon landings back in 1972. Now, in response to SpaceX, it has developed its Artemis lunar programme, which aims to get humans living and working on the Moon and ultimately lay the ground for future missions to Mars. Musk’s Starship will be integral to helping NASA get there.

Being Responsive to Combatant Commanders

Pete Modigliani and Matt MacGregor

The primary purpose of the defense acquisition enterprise is to acquire and deliver capabilities for the operational commanders to use to deter and if necessary, win wars.

Per Title X, the military services are responsible for organizing, training, and equipping the forces. The Combatant Commands are joint military commands responsible for geographic (e.g., INDOPACOM) or functional areas (e.g., CYBERCOM).

Ample debate over the last few decades includes the case that the Services too often put their parochial views above those of the Joint Force (we have written about this ourselves). Combatant Commanders remain frustrated by what they view as “the system” not delivering the capabilities they require at the speed and quantity needed to complete their missions.

This was a major reason for the initiation of the European (EDI) and Pacific Deterrence Initiatives (PDI). In particular PDI was driven by years of Congress getting massive unfunded lists from INDOPACOM that the Services had seemingly ignored. The 2020 $20B wish list that INDOPACOM had submitted to the Hill turned into a 2021 NDAA provision with $6.9B allocated to address the combatant command needs. Predictably, this was hijacked by the Services (and OSD) to buy more ships and planes…when commanders really needed “long-range weapons, missile defenses, and critical enablers such as logistics capabilities, training ranges, and support infrastructure.”

21 October 2024

The Politics of China’s Land Appropriation in Bhutan

Robert Barnett

In dealing with its neighbors, China “always strives to find fair and reasonable solutions through peaceful and friendly consultations,” a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the United States told the New York Times in August. Why, then, has China appropriated part of a neighbor’s territory?

That neighbor is Bhutan, a country with which China has said for decades it is keen to have formal diplomatic relations, hoping to balance or reduce Bhutan’s close relations with its southern neighbor, India. Bhutan, for its part, has what it calls “friendly and cooperative relations with the People’s Republic of China” and has supported China consistently at the United Nations and elsewhere.

As China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has put it, in more poetic terms, “China and Bhutan are linked by mountains and rivers and enjoy profound traditional friendship.” And China signed a treaty with Bhutan in 1998 in which both parties proclaimed “mutual respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and agreed “not to resort to unilateral action to alter the status quo of the border.”

Russia’s Deliberately Unclear Strategy for Iran

George Friedman

Readers have no doubt noticed that much of my writing over the past two-and-a-half years has focused on Russia. Some of the reasons for this are obvious: Russia is a global military power. It is not a great economic power, but it has the capacity, along with the United States, to shape and control events on many continents. I’m deliberately excluding China from this analysis, which I’ll explain in my next article. Other powers are less apparent but no less important, and you can see them in the map below – if you know where to look.

Iran is the center of what I call the northern crisis. Its government has a geopolitical imperative to retain its frontiers, and it pursues this imperative, as many do, through the deployment of armed forces and weapons (or, at times, the appearance of deployment). This pursuit potentially threatens the countries on its eastern frontier – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan – as well as Turkey to the northwest. Most important to me, however, is that it could also threaten Russia. Iran’s intentions and capabilities are often uncertain, but in a world of complex strategy you must prepare for the worst, and in this region the worst is what usually happens.

What We Can Tell From China’s ICBM Test

Anushka Saxena

China’s decision to test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) into the Pacific Ocean on 25 September 25 was unusual—but not very unusual, because the country has similarly tested shorter-range ballistic missiles over a variety of geographies.

Still, the event calls for explanation, since it was the first ICBM test into the Pacific since 1980, and an operational weapon of that class would be capable of delivering a strategic nuclear warhead. The test was not quite ‘routine’, as the armed forces called it.

Some possible explanations are geopolitical; another is simply that the armed services needed to demonstrate operational readiness.

The weapon deployed a dummy warhead that landed near French Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean.

Images from the test, first shared on the official WeChat account of the People’s Liberation Army, suggest there was no fixed launch pad on which the launch vehicle was placed. China’s newest ballistic missiles are carried in vehicles that transport them, erect them for firing and launch them (and are therefore called TELs).

Risk and Retaliation: Israel, Iran, and the Evolving Situation in West Asia

Gaddam Dharmendra

Iran’s nighttime missile attack on Israeli territory on October 1 was another step up in the region’s escalating ladder of conflict, a scenario many were hoping to avoid but are now increasingly resigned to accept, given the developments of recent weeks.

Unlike the previous strike in April, this time, there was minimal telegraphing from Iran about its decision to launch another direct attack on Israeli territory—the second in six months. An Israeli response is expected and is generally assessed as only a matter of time. This time around, Israel is unlikely to demonstrate the restraint it had shown in April.

Iran’s Missile Strikes

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari confirmed that Iran had launched over 180 ballistic missiles, with a “small number of hits” in the center and a few others in the South. Israel’s air defense systems had intercepted a “majority of the incoming missiles.” Hagari described the attack as a “severe and dangerous escalation” and emphasized, “Operational plans are ready. We will respond wherever, whenever and however we choose.” He further reminded the public, “Iran and its proxies have been attacking Israel since the seventh of October on several fronts. Iran and its proxies seek the destruction of Israel.”

Beyond Iran and Israel: The Unseen Gulf-Europe Connection

Stephen Blank

Iran's escalation shows America must bolster ailing Europe to prevail in the global ideological showdown. With Iran now on the brink of war with Israel, the situation could rapidly evolve into a global power struggle. In that case, the involvement of Iran, a close ally of China and Russia, highlights a geopolitical shift, as these nations have formed an ‘Axis of Upheaval’ to overthrow the century of American dominance. In response, America has just reaffirmed its ‘ironclad’ support for Israel. Even Europe, despite its reservations about how Netanyahu wages war, stands behind Israel in confronting the mullahs in Tehran. Therefore as the battle lines are drawn, the Middle East could quickly become the next superpower battlefield. China says it will defend Iranian sovereignty, neither will Russia stand idly by as one of its major drone suppliers buckles under Israeli airstrikes.

This polarization has thus also triggered a diplomatic push to win over regional powers like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Whatever happens here could shape the course of global confrontations, where the West faces Russia’s advances in Ukraine, seeks to limit its destabilising influence in Africa, and confronts China’s imperial ambitions over Taiwan the South China Sea. Yet, this showdown is more than a struggle for power. Despite what the moral relativists in academia say, this is a battle of values between two global systems: the established liberal order, empowered by globalization, and a rising authoritarian model, characterized by closed economies and centralized power structures.

Stopping the world’s newest forever war - Opinion

Jos Joseph

On Oct. 7, Hamas fired rockets into Israel. This wasn’t the Oct. 7 of one year ago, but rather the one this week.

Although the rocket attack was ineffective, the fact that Hamas is still firing rockets from northern Gaza into Israel should bring into question the effectiveness of Israel’s brutal response against the insurgent groups that surround its borders.

Americans, right and left, now have an aversion to the forever wars that we once took up in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. Now however, it seems that our ally is the one hell-bent on engaging in a forever war of its own, with Americans paying the bills.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now called his nation’s conflict a seven-front war. Of the fronts, only one is a politically recognized entity, Iran. The rest — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Iranian-armed militias in Syria and Iraq, and militants in the West Bank — can best be described as insurgent groups or terrorist organizations. These are not recognized governments, standing armies (although Hezbollah is very well trained and armed) or traditional militaries.

This isn’t Lebanon’s war

Fadi Nicholas Nassar and Ronnie Chatah

Fadi Nicholas Nassar is director of the Institute for Social Justice and Conflict Resolution, an assistant professor at the Lebanese American University and director of the Lebanon Program at the Middle East Institute. Ronnie Chatah is a political commentator and host of The Beirut Banyan podcast. He is the son of assassinated Lebanese diplomat Mohamad Chatah.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri are calling for a cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel. This is a ruse.

It is a ruse aimed at exploiting international reluctance to confront the inconvenient truth: Lebanon isn’t a state broken by corruption and poor leadership, rather it is one coerced into failure by the world’s most powerful paramilitary force.

For two decades, Lebanon’s failed political class has proven only one thing — a consistent commitment to dismantling the state. Deliberately undermining the opportunities provided by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which was drafted with the goal of ending the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, they entrenched a status quo that all but ensured a perpetual cycle of war between Lebanon and Israel. And for the past year, they stood by Hezbollah’s gamble to turn the country into a battlefield, on the pretext of saving Hamas.

Zelensky presents 'victory plan' to Ukrainian parliament

James Waterhouse

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has presented MPs with a long-awaited "victory plan" that aims to strengthen his country's position enough to end the war with Russia.

Zelensky told parliament in Kyiv the plan could finish the war - which began with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 - next year.

Key elements include a formal invitation to join Nato, the lifting by allies of bans on long-range strikes with Western-supplied weapons deep into Russia, a refusal to trade Ukraine’s territories and sovereignty, and the continuation of the incursion into Russia's western Kursk region.

The Kremlin dismissed the plan with a spokesman saying Kyiv needed to "sober up".

Addressing MPs on Wednesday, Zelensky also criticised China, Iran and North Korea for their backing of Russia, and described them as a "coalition of criminals".

Zelensky unveils Ukraine's victory plan, says it's doable but 'depends on our partners'

Martin Fornusek

President Volodymyr Zelensky presented Ukraine's much-debated victory plan at parliament on Oct. 16, though some parts remained classified.

The proposal is comprised of five points: an invitation to join NATO, a defense aspect, deterrence of Russian aggression, economic growth and cooperation, and post-war security architecture.

The plan involves three secret addenda that have been shared with international partners. David Arakhamia, the ruling party's parliamentary leader, said the classified parts would be presented to faction leaders.

"If the plan is supported, we can end the war no later than next year," Zelensky said in the parliament in the presence of Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov, and Western diplomats.

"Ukraine's victory plan is a plan to strengthen our state and our position. To be strong enough to end the war. To make sure that Ukraine has all its muscles," Zelensky said.

Assessing the Assessors

Lawrence Freedman

People in my strange line of work spend a lot of time considering wars that probably will not happen, or if they do will come about in forms that had not been anticipated and with correspondingly unexpected outcomes. They face the familiar problems that come with trying to predict events that depend on confluences of circumstances. One can never weight the known factors accurately or be sure of their interaction with each other, let alone the unknowns, or account for the eccentric choices made by key players or the chance developments that can affect their calculations.

At any rate many of these expert debates on future wars are not really about prediction. They are more about influencing policy choices, from weapons procurement to diplomatic initiatives. The direst scenarios are drawn up to show what will happen if the wrong choices are made. I explored all this in a book published in 2017 which charted the history of the ‘Future Wars’ literature.

America’s AI Leadership Depends on Energy

Jason Bordoff and Jared Dunnmon

Hollywood thrillers rarely change the course of history, but if they had their own category at the Academy Awards, a good candidate might be The China Syndrome. Released 45 years ago, the hit film depicts a disaster at a nuclear plant in California, sparking fears that the reactor’s core would melt down through the containment vessel—all the way to China (hence the name). Less than two weeks after its release, life imitated art as a partial nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania quickly turned public opinion against nuclear energy and effectively halted the expansion of nuclear power in the United States.

Yet after almost a half-century, the advent of artificial intelligence, described by Google CEO Sundar Pichai as “more profound than electricity or fire,” has achieved what many thought impossible. Last month, Microsoft and Constellation Energy announced they would spend $1.6 billion to restart the remaining functional reactor at Three Mile Island to fuel the tech firm’s plunge into AI, a technology with vast energy requirements due to its needs for computational power. With a global race underway to capitalize on AI’s economic and military potential—and as China quickly catches up to the United States—fears of another kind of China shock are trumping yesterday’s nuclear angst.

Drone attack on Israel puts spotlight on Iron Dome's limitations

Jonah Fisher

Slow, small and relatively cheap to make, drones have become a deadly headache for Israelis in this year-long war.

Hezbollah’s attack on an army base near Binyamina in northern Israel on Sunday, which killed four men and injured dozens more, was the most damaging drone strike on the country to date.

It’s led to fresh questions about how well equipped Israel’s hugely expensive air defence system is to stop them.

Visiting the damaged army base on Monday morning, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said “significant efforts” were being put into solutions that would prevent future drone attacks.

Some parts of the air defence system work well. Here in northern Israel we hear booms at regular intervals as the Iron Dome intercepts rockets that Hezbollah fires from southern Lebanon. Israel says it hits more than 90% of its targets.

But the Iron Dome works because Hezbollah’s rockets are crude – and it’s possible to calculate where its rockets will go at take-off and then intercept them.

Stopping drones is more complicated. And has in this war become a recurring problem.

America’s Foreign Policy Inertia

Christopher S. Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim

As the world evolves, the United States must adapt or suffer the consequences. The process of adaptation, however, is usually plodding, if it happens at all. Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden each attempted to steer U.S. foreign policy in new directions but met resistance from both domestic and foreign actors. The difficulty they encountered is no surprise. Since World War II, many U.S. leaders have attempted to change the country’s foreign policy, and their efforts have often fallen short. Inertia is a powerful force.

Battlefield and diplomatic odds stacking against Ukraine

Stefan Wolff

In May 2023, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, embarked on a whistle-stop tour of European capitals to shore up support from his Western partners in the run-up to Ukraine’s summer offensive that year. His tour was a relative success – the subsequent offensive less so.

Fast-forward 18 months, and Zelensky has once again been visiting London, Paris, Rome and Berlin in search of Western support. This time, he sought backing for his victory plan. But the odds now are clearly stacked against Ukraine on the battlefield while Zelensky also faces an uphill struggle on the diplomatic front.

The initial plan for Zelensky and his allies had been to convene at a meeting of the Ramstein group. This is the loose configuration of some 50 countries that have supported Ukraine’s defense efforts since the start of the full-scale Russian aggression in February 2022.

With the US president, Joe Biden, scheduled to attend after a state visit to Germany, the gathering at Ramstein Air Base in Germany had been pitched at the level of heads of state and government. It was expected that there would be some big announcements of continuing support for Ukraine.

Reverse racism ruined South Africa Today's wary coalition recognises difference

Brian Pottinger

Jan van Riebeeck, commander of the Dutch post at the Cape, ranted in a diary entry of 28 January 1654 that the indigenous people’s misdeeds were hardly bearable any longer: “Perhaps it would be a better proposition to pay out this guilty gang, taking their cattle and their persons as slaves in chains for fetching firewood and doing other necessary labour.”

Under orders from the Dutch East India Company not to antagonise the locals on whom it depended for trade, van Riebeeck restricted himself to planting a protective bitter almond hedge along the borders of his besieged encampment while continuing to negotiate with the enemy. Thus was early laid the pattern of future South African race relations: an equilibrium of teeth-gritting mutual tolerance mitigated by social distance and punctuated by sporadic violent irruptions, conquests and subjugation.

Remarkably, a single South African constitutional order emerged 340 years after van Riebeeck’s almond hedge through the Act of Union of 1910, and after another 84 years, in 1994, a functioning modern democracy. It is the one we have now, an imperfect and in many ways still teeth-gritting order, but somehow hanging together, somehow prevailing over a society where race may be the driving narrative but economic self-advancement, the consuming passion.

AUSA NEWS: Army Concerned About Kamikaze Robots in All Domains — Not Just Air

Allyson Park

With kamikaze drones being widely used in the Ukraine war, countering unmanned aerial systems remains a weapon of concern for the U.S. Army. However, the service is not only focusing on combating aerial systems, but those on land and sea as well, officials said Oct. 14.

The problem of armed drones — also known as loitering munitions — is not going anywhere, and the Army is faced with a lot of strategic choices regarding counter-unmanned aerial systems, Maj. Gen. David Stewart, director of the counter-unmanned aircraft systems and director of fires at the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, said.

“Number one up front, I would tell you the department is moving toward [counter-unmanned systems], so that’s air, sea and land, not just the air part,” he said in a panel discussion at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting and exposition. “So, when we wrap our arms around that as a department, we’re really seeing that this uncrewed, unmanned threat is coming from all different areas.”

Army races to widen the bottlenecks of artillery shell production

Jen Judson

The U.S. Army has started diversifying its supplier base for 155mm artillery shells, moving away from the bottleneck of a single source that has endangered the flow of fresh ammo, according to a top service official.

The service is racing toward a goal of shoring up all major single sources that provide parts or materials for 155mm munitions by the end of 2025.

“There’s going to be a lot of ribbon cuttings between now and the end of the year,” Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

The Pentagon is investing billions of dollars to increase the capacity of 155mm munition production as it races to replenish stock sent to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion, which began in early 2022, and to ensure the U.S. has what it might need should conflict erupt across multiple theaters at once. The Army planned to spend $3.1 billion in FY24 supplemental funding alone to ramp up production.

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