Myanmar’s Armed Groups And Democracy Activists Are Joining Forces

Andrew Nachemson

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Soon after seizing control of Buthidaung town in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State from the Myanmar military in May, the separatist Arakan Army allegedly set fire to hundreds of homes belonging to members of the Rohingya Muslim minority. The Arakan Army has pledged to fight for the political rights of all people in Rakhine, on the border with Bangladesh, but it is mostly made up of Rakhine Buddhists, who have clashed with their Rohingya neighbors during previous bouts of communal violence. The incident was a grim parallel to the Myanmar military’s brutal crackdown on the marginalized group seven years ago.

How China's Economy Compares to the US's After Latest Results

Micah McCartney

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China's statistics bureau on Monday reported solid growth for the country in the first half of 2024, but analysts say an ongoing property crunch and muted domestic demand continue to weigh on the world's second-largest economy.

Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is set to stabilize in the second half of 2024 and into next year, auditing and financial advisory firm Deloitte predicts, with consumer demand still strong. The official updated numbers for the U.S. will be published on July 25.

China's National Bureau of Statistics reported on Monday that the country's GDP grew by 5 percent in the first half of 2024. The second quarter saw a year-on-year growth rate of 4.7 percent, slightly down from the 5.3 percent growth in Q1, indicating a slower pace but still robust compared to other major economies.

"Though the GDP growth in the second quarter is lower than the first quarter, it's still a relatively fast growth among major economies, which builds a sound foundation for the achievement of the annual GDP target," state-run media outlet the Global Times quoted Chinese economist Chen Fengying, as saying.

Beijing again set a goal of "around 5 percent" economic expansion this year after logging 5.2 percent in 2023. Many subject matter experts, including China's former No. 2 Li Keqiang, have not taken the country's growth figures at face value, however.

The data release coincided with the start of the Third Plenum in Beijing, where senior officials are expected to discuss reforms to spur economic growth in the latter half of the year​.

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are ‘deadly quartet’ – defence review chief

DAVID HUGHES

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The West faces a “deadly quartet” of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, the head of the Government’s root-and-branch defence review has warned.

Former Nato chief Lord Robertson of Port Ellen said the four states were “increasingly working together”.

Vladimir Putin has relied on supplies from the states to wage his war in Ukraine, with Iranian drones, North Korean munitions and Chinese components sustaining his ability to attack despite Western sanctions.

The strategic defence review launched by Sir Keir Starmer’s administration will examine how to strengthen UK homeland security, bolster Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and modernise and maintain the nuclear deterrent.

It will also set out a roadmap on how to reach Sir Keir’s target of spending 2.5% of gross domestic product – a measure of the size of the economy – on defence.

Former prime minister Rishi Sunak had set a 2030 goal for spending 2.5%, at a cumulative cost of £75 billion over six years, but the new Labour administration has yet to commit to a timetable.

The co-operation between Mr Putin and his allies has alarmed Western leaders, with Nato’s summit in Washington last week declaring that Beijing and Moscow had a “deepening strategic partnership” while Iran and North Korea are “fuelling Russia’s war of aggression”.

A spate of stabbings has sparked online debate about China’s economic woes

Jessie Yeung

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The fatal stabbing of two people by a man at a residential compound in southern China has ignited an online debate that has amplified during a summer scarred by a spree of similar crimes across the country.

Two days after those June 28 killings in the Guangxi region, national attention shifted to another stabbing incident, thousands of miles away – which was then followed by two others, also unrelated attacks in public places, taking the toll to seven dead in four provinces within two weeks.

The circumstances differed in each case; one perpetrator had been in a drunken argument, while another has a history of mental illness, according to police. All cases remain under investigation, and scant information has been released on the suspects or their motives.

The country of 1.4 billion has generally low violent crime rates and very tight gun controls. But China has been rocked by a number of high-profile stabbing cases in recent decades, including multiple such attacks at schools.

Israel-Hamas Truce Talks Said to Face Four Key Sticking Points Story

Dan Williams 

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(Bloomberg) -- Negotiations aimed at winding down Israel’s nine-month war on Hamas in Gaza face four key sticking points, including which hostages should be released, according to people with knowledge of the talks.

Other issues include whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sticks to his demands that Hamas be barred from northern Gaza, according to the people, who asked not be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly. Additionally, Netanyahu wants his forces to retain control of a key southern border corridor and that he should not be bound to an indefinite cease-fire.

Israel declared war on Hamas on Oct. 7, when it was attacked by thousands of militants who killed 1,200 people and took some 250 hostage. The group returned 110 captives and Israel released about three times as many Palestinian detainees during a seven-day cease-fire that ended Dec. 1. US President Joe Biden unveiled proposals for another truce May 31, but talks since then have failed to yield results.

Israel isn't as united on continuing war as we may think - opinio

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It was with bittersweet feelings that I saw new posters up in our neighborhood with pictures of fallen soldiers and the caption: “Ad Hanitzachon!” (“Until victory!”)

Bitter because of all the soldiers and civilians who have been killed in the Hamas onslaught of October 7 and the ensuing war. And sweet because the posters are a welcome balance to the huge banners we have seen for months calling for the Gaza captives to be brought home “now!”

Let me explain “balance,” and qualify it. “Until victory” is the exact opposite of “Bring them home now!” For Hamas to release the hostages “now,” Israel would have to accede to all of its demands – which would mean accepting defeat in the war. And let’s be honest: Freeing the hostages by surrendering to Hamas is not “victory,” even though the Hostages and Missing Families Forum and their supporters have been telling us for months that it is.

On the other hand, the posters calling for “victory” express the feelings of the fallen soldiers and their families – or at least the vast majority of them. All that I have heard from those families and from the soldiers still fighting is that, this time, we must not stop until Hamas is destroyed.

Ending the war before victory is achieved means that the fallen have died in vain. It’s not me who is saying this: The families of the soldiers on the battlefield are saying this. The soldiers who are still fighting are saying this. And the fallen soldiers said this before they died.

The NATO summit was no great success

JOSEPH BOSCO

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After the NATO summit concluded in Washington last week, President Biden said there was a “consensus that it was a great success.” But that was only because the summit’s goals were so limited.

The first objective was to retain the alliance’s long-term commitment to send arms to Ukraine. In furtherance of that aim, the members issued a declaration in support of Ukraine and promised additional aid.

Beyond increasing the volume of the aid, members also addressed widening its source. The U.S., which has been Ukraine’s main arms supplier, encouraged other members to develop their own capacities to build weapons systems for Ukraine’s immediate use and to provide for their own defenses against future threats.

As an indication of how Vladimir Putin’s invasion has awakened European nations to the dangers presented by an expansionist, revanchist Russia, Biden noted in his welcoming remarks, “[T]oday, all NATO members are making the pledge to expand our industrial base and our industrial capacity, like our defense-spending commitment. This is a critical step to maintaining our security.”

The development reflects Europe’s belated recognition that the threat Ukraine is now confronting is not limited in time or geography but is long-term and widespread — and includes much of Europe. Following the summit, the alliance’s members also pledged to back Ukraine’s “irreversible path” to NATO membership.

Both statements of intent fell far short of what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wanted from the NATO summit, however, and especially from the United States. “Ukraine can significantly limit Russian actions in south Ukraine and push the occupiers out,” he said in his address, “if the American leadership assists us with the necessary deep strike capabilities against Russian military and logistics in our Ukrainian Crimea.”

JD Vance's Marine Corps Service Would Set Him Apart from Most Vice Presidents

Drew F. Lawrence

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday selected Ohio Sen. JD Vance -- a Marine veteran, author and once-critic of the former president -- as his running mate for the 2024 election.

Vance, 39, is the first post-9/11 veteran to find a spot on a major party ticket and, if elected, would likely be the first Marine veteran to serve as the second-in-command, a Military.com analysis of vice presidential biographies found. He is the first veteran on a major party ticket since John McCain in 2008.

Of the 49 vice presidents in U.S. history, less than half had some sort of military experience. Examples included service in militias, the National Guard, the U.S. Navy and Army. Military.com could not find any evidence that any vice president served in the Marine Corps.

In a statement Monday, the CEO of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Allison Jaslow, supported the former president's decision in selecting Vance.

"The post-9/11 generation of veterans is ascendant in America today," Jaslow said. "We applaud former President Trump for choosing a post-9/11 veteran to join him in his candidacy to be commander in chief again, and notably, someone who served in the enlisted ranks and is representative of the average veteran."

Air Force issues presolicitation for next-gen target tracking

JON HARPER

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A screen displays a map of a simulated conflict during a joint training exercise with NATO partners April 28, 2023 in Blue Ash, Ohio. The Air Force is working to harness emerging information and communications technology and artificial intelligence technologies to provide targeting and decision support with the speed, adaptability, and resilience needed to fight in a highly contested environment. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Shane Hughes)

The Department of the Air Force released a presolicitation Tuesday as it looks for new target-tracking capabilities fueled by AI and other cutting-edge technologies.

The Air Force plans to spend approximately $99 million on the multiyear innovation effort and multiple awards are anticipated, according to the announcement.

The department is seeking research to “design, develop, test, evaluate, and deliver innovative technologies and techniques for Next Generation Target Tracking architectures, which exploit a wide array of data sources and leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Machine Inferencing (MI) algorithms in a High Performance Computing (HPC) enabled framework,” per the presolicitation.

That includes 3D pixel, vector, and point cloud processing and accelerations, as well as methods to use AI and machine learning for “identification, classification and pattern learning that inference over information from multiple data modalities” such as open-source intelligence, signals intelligence, imagery and geospatial intelligence.

The Air Force Research Lab, which will oversee the effort, also seeks tools to aid the ingestion and processing of GPS, non-GPS, inertial navigation system, radio frequency identification trackers, or telematic-based data into “traffic tracks that can measure utilization of lines of communication,” according to the announcement.

Experienced Snipers Break Down The Trump Assassination Attempt

HOWARD ALTMAN

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Many questions are being asked in the aftermath of the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump at the fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania. Among them are how the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) counter-sniper (CS) teams reacted before and after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired shots from the roof of a building less than 450 feet from where Trump was speaking. Those shots killed a man, bloodied Trump, and wounded at least two others.

The War Zone asked three experts – two experienced snipers and one former USSS Special Agent in Charge – to give their perspectives, breaking down how these operations work and what they observed about how CS teams handled what would become the first time a USSS sniper ever actually killed anyone.

Jeff Bruggeman

For 18 years, Jeff Bruggeman was a sniper for the Fairfax City SWAT team. He spent many hours working with the U.S. Secret Service (USSS), often staring through high-powered Leupold scopes on his custom-built bolt-action .308 sniper rifle scanning for potential dangers. He did this during visits by presidents and candidates, as well as while providing overwatch during several inaugurations.

“A lot of people think of snipers as just shooters,” said Bruggeman, now a private security officer. “The primary objective of a sniper is to be eyes and intelligence, relaying a lot of information back.”

Counter-sniper teams generally work together, scanning separate as well as overlapping fields of view to ensure a full picture is gathered of what is taking place around them, Bruggeman said.

Videos emerged on social media showing Secret Service CS teams on the roofs of a group of three barns behind Trump looking through scopes during the rally. One team was on the northern-most barn roof and another on the southern-most.

Russia Classifies Mortality Data after Ukraine War Losses Revealed

Isabel van Brugen

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Russia has classified parts of its mortality data, days after an investigation revealed the scale of the nation's war dead—according to a Russian demographer.

Alexey Raksha, a demographer who previously worked at the Federal State Statistics Service of Russia (Rosstat) statistics agency, found on Tuesday that Rosstat deleted two columns of data containing details on the number of deaths and mortality from external causes.

On June 27, the original data was used by independent outlet Important Stories, which estimated that at least 71,000 Russian troops had died since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has resulted in high military fatalities for both Moscow and Kyiv. Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment by email.

Independent Russian news outlets Mediazona and Meduza also published a joint investigation on troop deaths in the war on July 5, which used data from the country's National Probate Registry. The outlets found that by the end of June, approximately 120,000 Russian troops had died since the conflict began, "but the real number could be as high as 140,000."

NATO Needs to Align on Supply of Critical Raw Materials

Daniel Hill and Rebecca Lucas

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Leaders at NATO's 75th anniversary summit have pressing topics to address, prominently including supply chain resilience and economic security. Of particular concern are mounting threats to the critical raw materials (CRM) that NATO members need to sustain their militaries, defense industries, and wider economies in peacetime and crisis.

While the United States and the European Union have taken steps to ensure these supplies, NATO has been less proactive. In part, this reflects the alliance's focus on military rather than economic levers of power. But securing CRM supplies demands cooperation, resources, and global networks—and NATO is a forum where a more forward-leaning policy could enable fruitful collaboration.

Materials such as cobalt, silicon metals, lithium, and rare earth elements are the fundamental building blocks for diverse products, including renewable energy, telecommunications, infrastructure, and defense equipment. The complex global supply chains for these raw materials are fraught with vulnerabilities and dependencies—not only in mining, but also in necessary processing. As CRMs become more important, the global supply chain is beset with chokepoints and bottlenecks, as well as the possibility of coercion.

Threats to Critical Infrastructure A Survey

Bridget R. Kane, Stephen Webber, Katherine H. Tucker, Sam Wallace, Joan Chang, Devin McCarthy, Dennis Murphy, Daniel Egel, Tom Wingfield

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Critical infrastructure in the United States supports the prosperity of the nation and its people. It permeates the daily lives of citizens, underpinning the safety and security of the general public and ensuring the economic of the general public and ensuring the economic well-being of the nation, yet the health of these assets, systems, networks, and facilities is often taken for granted. In 1997, the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection wrote, “life is good in America because things work . . . we are able to assume that things will work because our infrastructures are highly developed and highly effective.”1 But what if things did not work? What points of systems weakness exist, and how do these weaknesses contributeto opportunities for the destruction or disruptionof critical resources and essential services?

In this report, we analyze threats and hazards to critical infrastructure and examine the vectors by which an adversary might conduct attacks against the homeland. We also look at the cascading effects of an attack and other impacts resulting from infrastructure age and maintenance and from weather challenges. These threats are demonstrated across critical infrastructures on a daily basis, but it is easy to become desensitized to such risks and vulnerabilities—particularly when not presented as part of a holistic picture of threats in aggregate. Here, we offer characterizations of various types of threat actors and vectors to raise awareness of systemic vulnerabilities and threat environments that can affect our critical infrastructure.

U.S. Tech Companies and Their Contributions in Ukraine

Christine H. Fox & Emelia Probasco

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Introduction

Since before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, strategists, journalists, and even combatants have noted the ability of U.S. technology companies to influence the course of the crisis there. To explore the relationship between these commercial companies and the U.S. government in light of events in Ukraine, we convened a group of leaders, including from industry and government, to evolve our understanding of what is happening and what that might mean for future conflicts. The group included a roughly even mix of U.S. business and former government leaders, as well as several members of the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), and a representative of the UK Ministry of Defense.

We began our exploration of these issues in our article Big Tech Goes to War, published by Foreign Affairs on Oct 19, 2022.* This workshop explored many of the issues we raised in this article and added more. The conversation was held under the Chatham House Rule but participants agreed to having their names listed. This workshop report captures the key issues that were discussed.

How the Air Force Slashed EW Update Time From Weeks to Hours

Greg Hadley

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The Air Force’s lone spectrum warfare wing is getting faster—much faster—in gathering data and responding to new threats, its leader said last week.

The world of electronic warfare is often compared to a game of cat-and-mouse, with both sides constantly shifting tactics, frequencies, and software to both jam and evade jamming. For the Pentagon’s EW leaders, that means a need to rapidly detect and adapt to changes, they said June 5 at the C4ISRNET conference.

“We’re in an area of perpetual novelty, and our adversaries are going to be able to move and change and be agile on the spectrum just as much as we are,” said Col. Joshua Koslov, commander of the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing.

Last September at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Koslov told reporters he wanted his wing to be able to sort through data to detect any changes in an adversary’s EW approach, develop a software solution, and deploy it in three hours. Such a capability, he said, would be a “moonshot” and a vast improvement over the weeks or months it can often take the Pentagon to update software.

Asian Powers Set Their Strategic Sights on Europe

C. Raja Mohan

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What has often been circumscribed as “the rise of the rest”—the relative ascendancy of the non-Western powers—has been felt particularly acutely in Asia. When the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama reached India’s southwestern Kerala coast in 1498, it marked the start of 500 years of European (and later U.S.) dominance over Asia—colonial, imperial, and geopolitical. Decolonization from the middle of the 20th century onward did not much alter Western dominance, nor did it end Asia’s deference to Europe.

Unable to back down, Israel and Hezbollah move closer to all-out war

Lucy Williamson

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Full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah would be "a catastrophe", the UN Secretary-General says. But to David Kamari, who lives under near-daily fire on the Israeli side of the border, it would be a solution.

Last month, a Hezbollah rocket fired from Lebanon landed in his front garden in the border town of Kiryat Shmona, cracking his house in several places and filling it with rubble.

He points out the gaping holes where shrapnel sliced through the walls, missing him by inches. And then to the hills above us, where Hezbollah-controlled territory begins.

"Every day, every night: bombs. [It’s a] problem," he said. "And I was born here. If you live here one night, you go crazy."

Smoke on the horizon - Israel and Hezbollah edge closer to all-out war

Orla Guerin

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Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah (backed by Iran) have been trading fire across their shared border for the past nine months. If this conflict escalates to all-out war, it could dwarf the destruction in Gaza, draw in Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, spread embers around the Middle East and embroil the US. Iran itself could intervene directly.

The United Nations has warned of a “catastrophe beyond imagination”.

For now, a low-level war simmers in the summer heat, along a 120km (75 mile) stretch of border. One spark here could set the Middle East alight.

Over the lapping of the waves, and the thwack thwack of paddle games on the beach, a sound cuts through - a sudden deep boom.

Soon smoke billows from a hillside in the distance after an Israeli strike.

Around the pool in a resort hotel, a few sunbathers stand briefly to scan the horizon.

The US Supreme Court Kneecapped US Cyber Strategy

ERIC GELLER

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To protect America’s vital infrastructure from hackers without relying on a moribund Congress, the Biden administration bet big on creative uses of existing laws. But the Supreme Court probably blew up that approach.

President Joe Biden’s strategy relied on agencies interpreting the laws that give them regulatory powers to include cybersecurity, with the expectation that courts would defer to their interpretations of those laws under a decades-old legal doctrine known as Chevron deference.

But in a landmark case decided in late June, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the United States Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority eliminated Chevron deference and ordered courts to determine for themselves what ambiguous laws say—without assigning nearly as much weight to agencies’ interpretations.

IDF Has Rebuffed 3B Cyberattacks Since Oct. 7, Colonel Claims

Nate Nelson

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The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have nixed somewhere in the range of 3 billion cyberattack attempts since last fall, an army chief said this week.

The claim, circulated across Israeli news outlets, was made by Colonel Racheli Dembinsky, commander of the IDF's Center of Computing and Information Systems, also known as Mamram. Mamram, essentially, is the IT organization for Israel's military, providing, maintaining, and defending its intranet, cloud systems, data processing, public-facing websites, and more.

As Dembinsky recalled at the IT for IDF conference in the city of Rishon LeTsiyon, an uptick in threats to Israel's military systems dates back to the terror attack on Oct. 7. "I received a phone call that morning and thought there was a malfunction in the alert system," she said. "I quickly understood there wasn’t a malfunction, but a broader attack. Also, we immediately understood this wasn’t fake. I put on my uniform and drove to the base. We began transitioning to emergency mode."

The strain on the IDF's systems continued in the weeks thereafter, as hundreds of thousands of reservists were quickly recruited into the war effort, and Mamram began allocating computing resources at 120% capacity.

Europe’s rushed attempt to set the rules for AI

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Andreas Cleve has lots on his mind as chief executive of Danish healthcare start-up Corti — wooing new investors, convincing clinicians to use his company’s “AI co-pilot” and keeping up with the latest breakthroughs in generative artificial intelligence. But he fears that efforts like these will be made harder by a new concern: the EU’s new Artificial Intelligence Act, a first-of-its-kind law aimed at ensuring ethical use of the technology. Many tech start-ups are concerned that the well-intentioned legislation might end up smothering the emerging industry in red tape. The costs of compliance — which European officials admit could run into six-figure sums for a company with 50 employees — amount to an extra “tax” on the bloc’s small enterprises, Cleve says. “I worry about legislation that becomes hard to bear for a small company that can’t afford it,” he says. “It’s a daunting task to raise cash and now you’ve had this tax imposed. You also need to spend time to understand it.” Cleve still welcomes regulation of AI, because he thinks that safeguards around products that may cause harm is very important. “The AI Act is a good idea but I worry that it will make it very hard for deep tech entrepreneurs to find success in Europe.” The act, which formally comes into force in August and will be implemented in stages over the next two years, is the first piece of legislation of its kind, emerging from the EU’s desire to become the “global hub for trustworthy AI”.

The war in cyberspace

Clifford D. May

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Last week, I received a message from America’s top spy. You did too, but if you missed it, no worries. I’ll fill you in.

Noting that “the Intelligence Community recognizes the importance of informing the public of foreign efforts to influence our democratic processes,” Avril Haines, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, sent us “the first of what will be regular updates regarding such threats.”

Of particular and immediate concern, she said, are Iran’s rulers who are becoming “increasingly aggressive in their foreign influence efforts,” adapting their “cyber and influence activities, using social media platforms and issuing threats.”

These efforts, she said, are supported by the “intelligence services” of the Islamic Republic which are eager “to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.”

Over recent weeks, she added, “We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters” here in the U.S.

What exactly is an AI agent?

Ron Miller

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AI agents are supposed to be the next big thing in AI, but there isn’t an exact definition of what they are. To this point, people can’t agree on what exactly constitutes an AI agent.

At its simplest, an AI agent is best described as AI-fueled software that does a series of jobs for you that a human customer service agent, HR person or IT help desk employee might have done in the past, although it could ultimately involve any task. You ask it to do things, and it does them for you, sometimes crossing multiple systems and going well beyond simply answering questions.

Seems simple enough, right? Yet it is complicated by a lack of clarity. Even among the tech giants, there isn’t a consensus. Google sees them as task-based assistants depending on the job: coding help for developers; helping marketers create a color scheme; assisting an IT pro in tracking down an issue by querying log data.

For Asana, an agent may act like an extra employee, taking care of assigned tasks like any good co-worker. Sierra, a startup founded by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and Google vet Clay Bavor, sees agents as customer experience tools, helping people achieve actions that go well beyond the chatbots of yesteryear to help solve more complex sets of problems.

'Pivotal' quantum computing chip unveiled

Ethan Gudge

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A chip that experts have said could be "pivotal" to creating effective quantum computers has been unveiled.

Oxford Ionics has said its chip can be mass-produced and means the world's first useful quantum computer could be built in three years time.

The new technology makes it possible to do very complex calculations extremely quickly and solve problems too difficult for regular computers.

University of Oxford Associate Professor of Quantum Computing Aleks Kissinger said the new chip was "very promising".

Oxford Ionics said only one technology - trapped ions - has demonstrated the performance needed to build a useful quantum computer.

The new chip created by the Kidlington-based company, is designed to be capable of controlling these trapped ions - providing over twice the performance of previous attempts.

Arms Control: Past Practices Threaten Extended Deterrence Today

Keith B. Payne

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Introduction

The U.S. alliance system is critical to American security. It is a unique U.S. advantage; neither Russia nor China has anything remotely comparable. Allies provide political, operational and material support for American security goals. This has been true since then Lieutenant Colonel George Washington was a 22-year old soldier in the French and Indian Wars.

While there always is friction with allies, and some “entrapment” risks,[1] allies are a critical element of U.S. power vis-a-vis contemporary foes, including Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Yet, U.S. alliances are under great pressure to adapt to unprecedented structural problems that could otherwise lead to their dissolution. One of these structural problems is the weakening of American military power in the context of hostile Russian and Chinese goals, a growing Sino-Russian entente, and their buildup of conventional and nuclear force capabilities.

One source of this particular structural problem is the U.S. arms control approach and norms. There are few, if any, open discussions of the manifest fact that Washington’s arms control agenda and norms have produced results that have fallen far short of their expressed goals,[2] and that the U.S. practice of arms control to advance that agenda and those norms has contributed to a weakening of American military power that now undermines the U.S. alliance system. This is an unintended consequence of U.S. arms control enthusiasms, but it is no less real. It is unfashionable to discuss this inconvenient truth because many in Washington deem arms control to be a good unto itself.

Nevertheless, Washington should care about this inconvenient truth because U.S. alliances are increasingly unsettled, and one of the sources of this development is the U.S. agenda for, and practice of, arms control. Allied governments often have endorsed U.S. arms control endeavors at the time. That point, however, is irrelevant to this discussion. Regardless of that support, the pernicious consequences of American arms control practice for extended deterrence, assurance, and alliances are increasingly apparent in a dramatically worsening threat context.