Indian Strategic Studies: 08/30/24

30 August 2024

India needs to correctly understand the geopolitical lesson of the Bangladesh coup

Lucas Leiroz

The recent regime change in Bangladesh has started a new focus of tensions in Asia. Since the fall of the country’s legitimate government, Islamic radicals have publicly promoted a massacre against the Hindu minority, killing worshipers and destroying temples. Obviously, this causes concerns for the Indian government, which is seeing its people being massacred in a neighboring country, creating an atmosphere of instability that could lead to conflict in the future.

The situation in Bangladesh cannot be viewed in isolation. What is happening there is due to a series of complex geopolitical factors, not simply a change in local government. The situation of widespread chaos serves the interests of some international actors who seek to destabilize emerging countries and create social polarization to avoid peace and development. In the specific case of Bangladesh, the objectives, however, are far beyond the intentions for the country, having great relevance in the international context.

Bangladesh is under the Indian sphere of influence, despite the different cultural and religious differences between both countries. Peace in Bangladesh directly serves Indian strategic interests, since, without regional conflicts, India now has sufficient resources to invest in economic, technological and social development programs. Unfortunately, however, there appears to be a certain naivety among Indian strategists — especially amid the current global scenario of conflicts and tensions.

How Radicals Unseated Bangladesh PM through Street Power and Violence

Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury

The upheaval in South Asia’s second fastest growing economy—Bangladesh—that led to dramatic incidents forcing a 3 term Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to step down and take refuge in India is not merely a result of economic crisis and lack of space for the Opposition but an attempt by radical and extremists to capture power through street protests and violence. Such instances are rare in South Asia with the exception of Nepal where protests led to abolition of hugely unpopular monarchy. However, the political protests in Nepal were different in character as it did not lead to collapse of law and order as is being currently witnessed in Bangladesh. Rather the movement mainstreamed the once dreaded Maoists.

While the students who hit the streets of Dhaka had genuine grievances and represented voices who were feeling heat from lack of jobs, corruption and inflation, what followed within hours of Sheikh Hasina’s exit from Bangladesh was anything but civil. Murals of founding father of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and symbols representing him were destroyed in what appears to be a well-planned strategy to erase edifice of creation of Bangladesh. It became increasingly clear that the anti-liberation and hardline forces have once again come to forefront to target progressive and secular forces of Bangladesh. Indian cultural centre in Dhaka which had helped to nurture local talent was burnt down in one of the bizarre moves.

Peacemaker vs Peacemaker: India and China’s Diplomatic Duel Over Ukraine

Amey Velangi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Kyiv, following his diplomatic engagement in Moscow last month, marked a significant step in India’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict. This visit, occurring against the backdrop of prolonged hostilities, suggests a deeper strategic intent.

With both India and China increasingly positioning themselves as key players in global diplomacy, the Ukraine war has become an arena for showcasing their peacemaking capabilities. As China’s efforts to mediate the conflict have faced challenges, India’s engagement hints at a new dimension in the quest for global influence. For both India and China, positioning themselves as successful peacemakers is not just about resolving the Ukraine crisis; it’s also about enhancing their global credibility as new emergent powers, capable of resolving realpolitik issues.

For China, asserting itself as a mediator bolsters its image as a responsible global power capable of challenging U.S. dominance and extending its influence beyond Asia. For India, demonstrating diplomatic leadership in such a high-stakes conflict supports its aspirations to be a major player in global governance and a voice of reason in global affairs. The evolving roles of these two Asian giants not only reflect their ambitions on the world stage but also underscore the complex interplay of strategic interests and operational realities in the quest for peace in Ukraine.

Defeating Deception: Outthinking Chinese Deception in a Taiwan Invasion

Major Thomas L. Haydock, PhD, U.S. Army

Introduction

How could China use deception at the strategic and operational levels of war to support an amphibious invasion of Taiwan, and what are the indicators that the United States should look for to not fall victim to the deception? This paper aims to answer these questions, which requires three things. First, it requires an understanding of the problem of how monstrously hard an invasion would be (chapter 1). Second, it needs insight into how experts believe an invasion would occur, i.e., potential Chinese solutions to the invasion problem (chapter 2). Third, it needs an overview of deception history, theory and doctrine, with an emphasis on Chinese deception (chapter 3). Armed with this three-pronged understanding, we can then develop an operational approach (OA) for how China might employ deception to gain strategic and operational level advantages (chapter 4). Finally, in the Conclusion, we will analyze the indicators to distinguish potential Chinese approaches so that the United States does not fall victim.

Although predictions and wargame results are publicly available, this paper is necessary because those thought experiments do not account for particularly Chinese deception—and so those wargames miss one of the most dangerous elements in virtually every major operation.1 From Normandy’s 1944 D-Day landings to China’s 1950 Korean War intervention, and in Desert Storm in 1991, deception has provided incredible advantages. For example, the masterful Trojan Horse deception overcame what years of war could not. At almost no cost, and with minor risk, the Greeks triumphed by hiding their infiltration force inside a “gifted” wooden horse that the Trojans triumphantly brought into the city. At night, the infiltration force enabled the Greek assault force to enter unopposed and seize Troy. From its antiquity and current doctrine, it is clear that China also views deception as integral and highly valued and will almost certainly use it in any invasion.2

China steps up armed patrols on border as Myanmar conflict deepen

China’s military has stepped up army and police patrols along its western border with Myanmar amid deepening conflict between the military regime and armed groups opposed to its coup.

The patrols, which also involve air surveillance, will focus on the towns of Ruili, Zhenkang and other front-line areas, the military said in a statement on Monday.

Ruili, in China’s southwestern province of Yunnan, is a main route for people and goods heading to and from Myanmar, but China has reported artillery shells injuring residents and damaging structures in its territory amid rising conflict across the border in Myanmar’s Shan State.

Fighting has escalated there since late year when ethnic armed groups formed an alliance to push the military from the area.

A Beijing-brokered truce in January broke down in late June and the armed groups say they have overrun multiple Myanmar military posts and taken control of key towns in a renewed, and expanded, offensive.

US–China Tensions: A Year of Posturing in the Pacific

Jonathan Jordan

Chinese and American forces in the Pacific have had a busy year, with the great power rivalry flaring up again recently in the skies off Alaska. Yet this was only the latest episode in a long-running saga of moves and countermoves playing out in warmer seas to the south. The plodding US–PRC checkers game of the past has become a high-stakes chess match of oceanic geopolitics. Beijing and Washington both favor a strategic ambiguity that obscures their plans, objectives, and outcomes as the military escalation builds.

What follows is a list of notable events in the US-China rivalry over the calendar year. Taken together, they illustrate an overall trend of deteriorating bilateral relations and ever more active posturing for worse conflicts to come:

Hostile Bombers Approach Alaska. In a historical first, two nuclear-capable Chinese Xian H-6K bombers and two Russian Tu-95MS Bear bombers crossed into the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) on July 24. The bombers were rapidly shooed away by American F-16s and F-35s and Canadian CF-18 fighter jets. Yet this single joint flight marked three ominous firsts: all four bombers were nuclear capable, all four took off from the same Russian air base, and together with Russian fighter jets they entered skies a mere 200 miles from the Alaskan coastline. The bold move illustrated Russia and China’s budding new “no limits” friendship declared in 2022, a pact preoccupied with testing US military power in the Pacific. This was the eighth joint Chinese-Russian bomber flight since 2019. Earlier flight paths overflew the Sea of Japan, East China Sea, and Western Pacific, and meandered into both Japanese and South Korean Air Defense Identification Zones. Russian and PRC naval forces have also increased their joint maritime patrols in Indo-Pacific waters.

The Geopolitics Behind a Normal Meeting

George Friedman

Small things can reveal much larger geopolitical truths. Such is the case of a recent meeting of the U.S.-China financial working group. The group, which consists of representatives from each country’s central bank and government agencies, convened last week in China to do what it was designed to do: coordinate changes in their respective banking systems. These meetings happen fairly regularly, so the important thing here is to understand what is being coordinated and to what extent it affects each country’s economy.

On the surface, the U.S.-China relationship appears strained. Each side places weapons systems in positions that alarm the other. Each has close relations with nations that are hostile to the financial working group’s interest. There are “flare-ups” seemingly all the time. Only a few weeks ago, two Russian bombers joined two Chinese bombers to probe the airspace near Alaska, only to be closed in on by U.S. and Canadian interceptors. Then this week, a Chinese surveillance plane became the first Chinese military aircraft to violate the airspace of America’s ally Japan. The U.S. also has a close relationship with the Philippines, which is regularly challenged by China. And the U.S. continually undermines China’s interests by its stalwart support for Taiwan. The list goes on.

No, the world isn’t heading toward a new Cold War

David Ekbladh

The past decade and a half has seen upheaval across the globe. The 2008 financial crisis and its fallout, the Covid-19 pandemic and major regional conflicts in Sudan, the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere have left residual uncertainty. Added to this is a tense, growing rivalry between the US and its perceived opponents, particularly China.

In response to these jarring times, commentators have often reached for the easy analogy of the post-1945 era to explain geopolitics. The world is, we are told repeatedly, entering a “new Cold War.”

But as a historian of the US’s place in the world, these references to a conflict that pitted the West in a decades-long ideological battle with the Soviet Union and its allies – and the ripples the Cold War had around the globe – are a flawed lens to view today’s events. To a critical eye, the world looks less like the structured competition of that Cold War and more like the grinding collapse of world order that took place during the 1930s.

The ‘low dishonest decade’

In 1939, the poet W H Auden referred to the previous 10 years as the “low dishonest decade” – a time that bred uncertainty and conflict.

From the vantage of almost a century of hindsight, the period from the Wall Street Crash of 1929 to the onset of World War II can be distorted by loaded terms like “isolationism” or “appeasement.” The decade is cast as a morality play about the rise of figures like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and simple tales of aggression appeased.

Talk of peace deals in the Levant, Ukraine is for the birds

Jamie Dettmer

The late American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, broker of the 1995 Dayton Accords ending the Bosnian War, used to say that warring parties will only strike a peace deal when both are exhausted and really want one.

In short, it’s all in the timing. Unfortunately, both of the wars raging now — in Ukraine and in the Levant — run afoul of Holbrooke’s rule.

Let’s take the Middle East first, and spare a thought for the indefatigable U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who’s had the thankless task of trying to broker a cease-fire between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

So far, Blinken’s dashes to Israel and flurry of meetings across the region have been exercises in hope over experience — as well as jet-lag endurance. Except for a brief truce last November, his efforts to silence the guns of war have come to naught, underscoring the complexity and scale of the crisis. And after this weekend’s massive Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon and Hezbollah’s drone and rocket attack on Israel, peace prospects look even dimmer.

The outrageous arrest of Telegram’s Pavel Durov

Fraser Myers

In 2013, the Russian authorities searched the home and offices of social-media magnate Pavel Durov. He was alleged to have caused a traffic accident, although the raid was widely believed to be in retaliation for his platform’s persistent refusal to censor critics of the government. VK, Durov’s Russian-language competitor to Facebook, had consistently rejected the Kremlin’s demands to block the accounts of Putin’s domestic opponents and to hand over data belonging to protesters in Ukraine. In 2014, he sold his stake in VK, resigned as CEO, and fled his home country. Durov, a self-described libertarian, says he was not prepared to do the state’s bidding. Since he left, VK is now more or less controlled by the Kremlin.

More than a decade later and Durov is in trouble with the law again. His newer app, Telegram, is in the firing line this time. He was arrested and detained on Saturday and charged with 12 crimes, seemingly all in connection with Telegram’s failure to comply with the authorities’ requests to remove certain content. But Durov was not arrested in Russia this time. He was apprehended as his private jet touched down in France.

The 12 charges include ‘complicity’ in alleged crimes as diverse as child exploitation, fraud, drug trafficking, money laundering and terrorism. As despicable as such crimes may be, it is unprecedented for the authorities in a Western liberal democracy to hold a social-media platform and its founder criminally liable for content shared by others. The closest the authorities have come to doing this was in 2016 in Brazil, when a senior Facebook executive was arrested and briefly jailed after the company refused to hand over private WhatsApp data to assist in a drug-trafficking case. Back then, the decision to make the arrest was described by a judge as ‘hurried’, ‘unlawful’ and ‘extreme’, and was quickly overturned.

Ukraine & the West are crossing red lines. Why isn't Russia reacting?

Mark Episkopos

The world of Cold War-era espionage was famously described by former CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton as a wilderness of mirrors, one of those rare coinages that so beautifully captures its subject matter as to require little by way of elaboration.

The wilderness of mirrors is itself a rather brilliant literary appropriation from T.S. Eliot's 1920 poem Gerontion, a hauntingly foreboding portrait of interwar abjection that gripped a generation of Europeans hurtling at breakneck speed toward another, even greater calamity lurking just around the corner.

Angleton plucked this phrase from its original, admittedly vastly different context to capture the grasping in the dark — or, as Eliot put it, braving life’s many “cunning passages” and “contrived corridors” only to arrive at a distant echo of the truth — that is part and parcel of intelligence and counterintelligence work.

But these problems of perception are no less salient in the peripheral world of statecraft, where leaders must deter adversaries and uphold international commitments not, for the most part, by their actions but by the signals they transmit to their counterparts. The structure of the international system is held aloft by these signals and the vast array of policies, institutions, and arrangements underpinning them.

Anticipating War Through 2025, Ukraine Is Standing Up New Mechanized Brigades

David Axe

The Ukrainian army is standing up new mechanized brigades. It’s a sign Ukraine’s leaders don’t expect Russia’s wider war on Ukraine to end anytime soon. It could be months before the first of the new 2,000-person brigades has filled all its billets—and months longer before the brigades are ready for combat.

Militaryland, which closely tracks Ukrainian military force structure, obtained photos purporting to depict trainees belonging to the new 160th Mechanized Brigade. According to Militaryland, the new mechanized brigades—all of them with designations in the 160s—will train in foreign countries and draw many of their recruits from Ukrainians living in those same countries.

The 160th Mechanized Brigade is reportedly training in Poland.

The creation of new brigades is contingent on two things: the successful mobilization of perhaps 10,000 or more new recruits and continuing foreign support for Ukraine’s war effort. The mobilization is the source of the new brigades’ manpower; foreign allies will probably provide the bulk of their heavy weaponry.

Small Aircraft, Sizeable Threats

Dr Carl Rhodes

Introduction

United States Air Force (USAF) Predator operations in the Balkans during the late 1990s demonstrated that uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) have great utility on the modern battlefield. The MQ-1 Predator was a remotely piloted vehicle that was initially used solely in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) operations but was equipped from 2001 with Hellfire missiles which allowed it to fly armed hunter-killer missions. Over the next decade, Predator and its successor, the MQ-9 Reaper, became essential tools in a range of US military operations including counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. Indeed this capability would log a total of 2 million combat flight hours by 2013.[i] The public’s imagination was captured by full-motion videos of successful strikes carried out and recorded by Predators, and this publicity brought uncrewed aircraft into wider social discourse.

While many people were unfamiliar with UAS prior to the Predator’s introduction, the employment of UAS in combat can be traced all the way back to 1849 with Austria’s use of uncrewed balloons to deliver explosives against Venice.[ii] In terms of powered flight, uncrewed target aircraft and cruise missiles were developed during the First World War[iii] and the USAF made significant use of UAS (over 3,500 combat sorties) in reconnaissance missions during the Vietnam War.[iv] One important early purpose served by uncrewed aircraft was to act as a drone target as part of training and technology development. For example, Australia’s series of Jindivik jet-propelled target planes were first employed in 1952 as part of guided missile tests.[v]

Army Aviation and Decisiveness in the Air-Ground Littoral

Lieutenant Colonel Amos C. Fox, USA, Ret., PhD

Introduction

The air-ground littoral, or AGL, is a concept in military operations that has improved in value since the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War; operations in the AGL are increasingly becoming the prime currency in warfare. During that war, Azeri unmanned aerial systems (UAS) took the front seat in military operations, while their traditional weapon systems, such as tanks, infantry and other land-based systems, took the back seat. Azeri UAS, flying at relatively low altitudes, were able to slice through Armenian land forces in a matter of weeks and deliver one of the 21st century’s first decisive wars.1

Whereas Nagorno-Karabakh sparked curiosity in the AGL, Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine in February 2022 stoked the flames of interest due to the commanding position that small UAS (sUAS) have taken during the conflict. While larger medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAS played an important role for Ukrainian forces during the opening days of the conflict, they quickly became easy prey for Russian counter-UAS (C-UAS).2 MALE UAS, being larger than sUAS, are easier to identify with conventional air defense systems.3 Military analyst Michael Kofman notes that easier targetability was the primary cause for the disappearance of the Ukrainian Bayraktar, and other high-altitude UAS on both sides of the conflict, after the first few weeks of the Russo-Ukrainian War.4 Moreover, as military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady correctly illustrates, the detectability of larger, higher-flying UAS has caused both Ukraine and Russia to invest in small, cheaper, harder-to-identify UAS, thereby infesting the AGL with a panoply of unmanned rotary-wing weapons and reconnaissance and surveillance systems.5

Ukraine and the Problem of Restoring Maneuver in Contemporary War

Frederick W. Kagan, Kimberly Kagan, Mason Clark, Karolina Hird, Nataliya Bugayova, Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey & George Barros

The war in Ukraine is transforming the character of warfare in ways that will affect all future conflicts. This paper primarily aims to offer a new framework for Ukrainian forces and their Western backers to break the current positional warfare and restore maneuver to the battlefield. It also establishes a basis for discussions within the United States, NATO, and allied Pacific militaries about the implications of the current conflict for contemporary and future warfare.

Ukraine’s Kursk Campaign—a pivotal moment in the war with the potential to change its trajectory—underscores several critical battlefield aspects that the paper discusses. Ukraine has achieved operational surprise against significant odds, exploiting Russia’s lack of readiness in its border areas. This campaign showed that surprise is still possible even on a partially transparent battlefield where the adversary can observe force concentrations but cannot reliably discern the intent behind those concentrations.

The paper also argues that surprise can result from the exploitation of temporary advantages provided by deploying technological innovation at key moments coordinated with ground operations. It argues that Ukraine can take advantage of opportunities that come from its superior innovation cycle. Ukraine can also benefit from the fact that Russian forces have been attacking along nearly the entire front line for months rather than building extensive fortifications in depth. It concludes that Ukraine can restore operational maneuver by planning and conducting a series of smaller successive counteroffensive operations rather than attempting a single decisive blow.

Satellites in the Russia-Ukraine War

Ron Gurantz

Satellites play a major role in US military operations and have significantly enhanced the United States’ military effectiveness. The United States uses satellites for observation, communication, and navigation. Satellites support nuclear operations and are a critical source of intelligence. They have become deeply integrated into conventional warfare, where they enable precision strikes, drone operations, missile warnings, and more. But space-enabled conventional warfare is no longer exclusive to the United States. China, Russia, and others have incorporated satellites into their military operations. States may also disrupt the use of satellites in future conflicts, as they have developed methods for disabling or destroying satellites and their associated systems.

The Russia-Ukraine War provides an opportunity to evaluate these developments and their implications. No war has seen both sides of a conflict use space and counterspace systems to such an extent.1 In this monograph, I examine lessons that can be drawn from the war about the military use of satellites. First, I analyze how satellites and anti-satellite systems have influenced war fighting in Ukraine. Much of this analysis draws on observations and insights that are already being discussed and influencing national security decisions. Second, I analyze the limits that governments and private firms have adhered to when using satellites and anti-satellite systems. These limits have not been widely discussed, but they are arguably just as important for future conflicts.

CTC Sentinel, July-Aug 2024, v. 17, no. 7

In the Shadow of the Caliphate: A Decade of Islamic State Gendered Violence

A View from the CT Foxhole: William Braniff, Director, Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

A ‘Hotbed’ or a Slow, Painful Burn? Explaining Central Asia’s Role in Global Terrorism

The Death of an Islamic State Global Leader in Africa?

The Financial Future of the Islamic State

The History and Future of the Nordic Resistance Movement

China Brief, August 23, 2024, v. 24, no. 16

Kursk Incursion Draws Delayed Response From Beijing

PRC-UAE Collaboration and US Technology Transfer Concerns in Abu Dhabi

Government Cracks Down on SOEs but Runs Risks

Taiwan’s Energy Policy at Odds With Economic Needs

Survey: How Do Elite Chinese Students Feel About the Risks of AI?

Trump’s Foreign-Policy Influencers

If former U.S. President Donald Trump wins the White House again, what might his foreign policy look like? The Republican candidate often shoots from the hip—consider his grand declaration that he can end the Russia-Ukraine war in a single day as just one example. Trump is also quick to distance himself from policy shop documents, such as the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, when they become politically inconvenient.

Perspective: Irregular Warfare in Strategic Competition and Gray Zones, Prosecuting Authoritarian Subversion and Exploitative Use of Corruption and Criminality to Weaken Democracy

David M. Luna

The geo-political challenge of irregular warfare (IW) in gray zones is increasingly more complex. These challenges are related to how our military adversaries such as China, Iran, and Russia are manipulating chaos, instability, and insecurity including, for example through co-option and coercive economics, and by:

Weaponizing corruption including election interference through illicit financial flows to support pro-authoritarian candidates that advance malign influence operations by exploiting governance gaps to secure friendly policies and win new anti-West friends, while harming US national interests;
Leveraging criminal networks, state-sponsored armed and violent proxies, diasporic communities, and professional super-fixers (enablers) to achieve military objectives, including to spread democratic backsliding, and to destabilize the national security interests of the United States and those of our democratic allies; and
Advancing revisionist and revanchist policies to construct their vision for a multi-polar world, exploiting gray zones from small islands in the Asia Pacific region to fragile democracies in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Europe.

I assert, that we remain unprepared for irregular warfare. China, Iran, and Russia continue to seek to undercut US influence, degrade American relationships with key allies and partners, and exploit the global environment to their advantage including by leveraging, and exploiting—as instruments of competition—strategic corruption, illicit vectors, criminal activities, economic coercion, malign influence operations, terrorism, guerrilla warfare, insurgency, sabotage and subversion through asymmetrical and clandestine efforts.

The Kursk Campaign & Strategic Adaptation

Mick Ryan

Throughout the brutal war spawned by Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, adaptation has been one of the critical national and battlefield functions of both the Ukrainians and the Russians. This is a process that has pulses and pauses, and which can be distributed unevenly throughout combat units and the bureaucratic institutions of state.

Nonetheless, the capacity to learn and adapt is crucial to generating advantage in wartime. Given the pace of contemporary military operations, when advantage is generated, it can be quite transitory or rapidly overtaken by enemy counter adaption. Therefore, learning and adaptation must be an ongoing endeavour at multiple levels, from squads on the frontline to civilian and military national security planners working for national leaders. One of the most important levels of learning in war is that which takes place at the strategic level.

Strategic adaptation is the process of learning and adaptation that takes place at the strategic or nation level. It occurs in both peace and war, although war does tend to provide better incentives for thinking about better ways of applying all national means to achieve wartime objectives. At heart, strategic adaptation is about engaging in a battle of learning and adaptation with an adversary, applying lessons better or more quickly than they do, and ensuring this knowledge is used to shape the trajectory of war, and ultimately, winning it.

Putting ‘Asia First’ Could Cost America the World - Opinion

Hal Brands

As America’s presidential campaign nears its climax, domestic politics and geopolitics are combining to stimulate an important strategic debate. Briefly stated, the question is: Should Washington deprioritize, perhaps even disengage from, regions outside East Asia so it can concentrate on the threat posed by China?

Global events are making that debate more pressing. The US is struggling to manage wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, even as the Chinese military buildup nears an ominous crescendo. Washington is finding it ever harder to contain an axis of autocracies that is pressing on several fronts at once. And if Donald Trump regains the presidency this November, US foreign policy could be steered by people who believe that it is truly time to put Asia First.

This Asia First movement features think-tankers, prominent Republican senators, and — more ambiguously — the former president himself.

They argue that China, not Russia or Iran, is America’s primary rival, and that every dollar, missile or minute spent dealing with secondary problems raises the risk of crushing defeat in the region that matters most. Whether they know it or not, they are echoing an Asia First movement from an earlier great-power struggle.

Gen. McMaster’s blistering account of the Trump White House

Peter Bergen

Until now, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster has held his fire about his stint in the Trump White House. McMaster served with distinction in key American conflicts of the past decades: the Gulf War, the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan, but as McMaster recounts in his new book, “At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House,” in some ways, his most challenging tour as a soldier was his last one: serving as the national security adviser to a notoriously mercurial president.

In his blistering, insightful account of his time in the Trump White House, McMaster describes meetings in the Oval Office as “exercises in competitive sycophancy” during which Trump’s advisers would flatter the president by saying stuff like, “Your instincts are always right” or, “No one has ever been treated so badly by the press.” Meanwhile, Trump would say “outlandish” things like, “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs?” in Mexico or, “Why don’t we take out the whole North Korean Army during one of their parades?”

McMaster’s book, which focuses on Trump’s tenure as commander in chief, comes at a particularly timely moment, just as many Americans start to really consider whether Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris would make a better commander in chief.

The Drone Wars: How Ukraine Beat Russia in the Battle of the Black Sea

Simon Shuster

“Here she comes,” said the drone operator. “Get ready to grab it.” From the shore we could see the vessel coming, its nose bobbing in the waves as it approached the naval base. A few soldiers stood beside me on the beach, squinting and sweating in the midday sun. One of them, a technician from Ukraine’s military intelligence service, waded into the water with a pair of rubber boots and let the machine float into his arms. Then he stroked it gently, like a doting father, and looked back to gauge my reaction.

Up close, the weapon looked small and strange, about as threatening as a research vessel meant to measure the movement of tides. No gun barrels stuck out of it. No shark-teeth decals to match its deadly reputation. No sign of the explosives such boats are designed to carry. Yet here it was, the Magura, scourge of the Russian navy, the seaborne drone that has helped change the course of the war in Ukraine, pierce Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea, and revolutionize maritime warfare.

Though it has no large warships in its navy, Ukraine has used these drones to outmaneuver one of the greatest naval powers in the world. Produced at a cost of around $200,000 apiece, the weapons have damaged or destroyed about two dozen Russian warships—as much as a third of the Black Sea fleet, including large landing ships and missile carriers worth billions of dollars. These strikes have forced the rest of the Russian navy to pull back from Ukrainian shores, all but conceding defeat in the greatest sea battle Europe has seen since World War II.

Reliant on Starlink, Army eager for more SATCOM constellation options

Courtney Albon

The Army is leaning heavily on SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network for advanced command and control, but service officials say they want to keep their options open as new commercial megaconstellations materialize.

Mark Kitz, the Army’s program executive officer for tactical command, control and communications, said Wednesday that the importance of proliferated low Earth orbit satellite networks was on display at the service’s most recent Project Convergence Capstone event, where the Army experiments with multi-domain connectivity concepts.

“I don’t think you could take 10 steps without tripping over a Starshield terminal,” Kitz said at AFCEA’s TechNet conference in Augusta, Georgia. “I would say the Army is very committed to pLEO and Starshield.”

Starshield is SpaceX’s military business unit, which provides access to the company’s Starlink constellation, a fleet of more than 6,000 satellites in LEO, about 1,200 miles above Earth’s surface. The growing network of spacecraft provides internet service for private consumers as well as militaries around the world.

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