Indian Strategic Studies: 09/05/24

5 September 2024

India Needs More Big Businesses

Keun Lee

At a time of growing doubts about China’s economic prospects, India’s rise has been attracting increasing attention, with some predicting that the country will become the developing world’s next economic superstar. Whether you believe India can be the “next China,” however, may depend on whether you subscribe more to “young” or “old” Schumpeterian logic.

The twentieth-century economist Joseph Schumpeter is best known for the concept of “creative destruction,” which describes how new innovations transform the economy partly by making older technologies obsolete. But Schumpeter’s ideas about economic dynamism and development were not static: whereas he initially emphasized the role of entrepreneurship above all, he later recognized the importance of big businesses.

So, in assessing India’s prospects, the “old” Schumpeter might look at the number of big businesses the country has produced (Table 1). India lags well behind China on this front, with just eight Fortune Global 500 companies, compared to its neighbor’s 135. (To put this in perspective, the United States has 136 Fortune Global 500 companies, and South Korea has 18, despite having a much smaller population.) China has achieved this lead over India in just a few decades: in the early 1990s, China had three Fortune Global 500 companies, and India had one.

The Danger of Distrust on the Iran-Pakistan Border

Seamus Duffy

On Monday, August 26, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), a Baloch terrorist organization, launched a series of attacks across Pakistan’s Balochistan province, killing more than 70 citizens and military personnel. Such attacks come on the heels of protests over the last few weeks across the province. The attacks themselves represent a new level of sophistication for the BLA, not only in their coordination, but in their targeting of vital infrastructure, such as railway links leading to the city of Quetta. They also represent a continuing commitment on behalf of the BLA to wage its insurgency campaign in the southwestern province.

Viewed in a vacuum, these attacks may seem to be an internal security challenge for Pakistan, but not a source of instability in its regional security environment. Yet, the attacks are part of a broader insurgency on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border.

The last year has witnessed several attacks by Baloch terrorists operating within Iran. In response to these attacks, the Iranian military launched a series of deadly strikes in January on Pakistan, reportedly targeting insurgents that had slipped through the two nations’ common border. In retaliation, Pakistan launched a series of its own tit-for-tat strikes on suspected BLA militants residing in Iran. Although both powers restored diplomatic relations and agreed to coordinate counterterrorism efforts in the aftermath of the strikes, the incidents highlighted the sensitivity of both nations to the perception that insurgents launching attacks within their respective borders might be operating within their neighbor’s. It also highlighted their willingness to use unilateral force in addressing this issue.

Please, End the Afghanistan Blame Game

Ivan Eland

The specter of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 is now hovering over the 2024 presidential campaign. Donald Trump, with some family members of the service members killed by the ISIS-K attack during the U.S. withdrawal, recently commemorated its third anniversary at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia. In his new book, H.R. McMaster, the former Trump administration national security adviser, asserted that Trump bears some of the blame for the chaotic pull-out. Although that is correct, a blame game over who is culpable for the messy withdrawal distorts clear thinking about the legacy of the war.

McMaster, in an interview with CNN on his new book, criticized Trump for signing an agreement with the Taliban, pledging to withdraw U.S. forces by May 2021. After taking office, President Biden decided that such a rapid withdrawal was not feasible because it might endanger U.S. forces. Withdrawal under fire from any military operation is a risky action since troops are especially vulnerable to attack, and the adversary has an incentive to strike to showcase that its efforts and strength motivated their pull out. Therefore, Biden moved Trump’s agreed date of removal back from May to September 2021.

That doesn’t mean that mistakes weren’t made. However, the creaky Afghan government came crashing down more rapidly than even the Biden administration had anticipated. The Taliban, knowing that the United States was pulling out, negotiated with local governments and arranged in advance for their surrender, unbeknownst to U.S. intelligence. American plans for a more orderly and graceful withdrawal were thus shattered.

"We Will Fight the Taliban Again"

John J. Waters

The 2022 documentary Retrograde explores the final months of America’s war in Afghanistan, capturing footage from January 2021 until the final withdrawal of U.S. troops in August 2021.

The charismatic figure at the center of the film is Afghan Lieutenant General Sami Sadat.

“The Americans trained me,” Sadat says early in the film. “I just don’t believe that the Americans are going to retrograde.” But U.S. troops began to retrograde on May 1, 2021. On the same day, the Taliban began its final offensive that culminated in the fall of Kabul on August 15. For months, Sadat rallied Afghan soldiers to fight back against the Taliban, first in Helmand Province and later in Kabul.

In his new book The Last Commander, Sadat gives a personal account of combat against the Afghan Taliban. He argues that Afghanistan could have prevailed with continued support from its allies, but believes that his opposition group has the leadership and resolve to win back Afghanistan. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation.

You have an unusual name. Is your family from Afghanistan?

The Afghanistan Withdrawal Three Years Later

Don Ritter

Today marks the third anniversary of the last day of U.S. presence in Afghanistan, August 30, 2021, and no matter how much the White House and the media shy away from the really bad news, the reality is that a radical Islamist Afghanistan as it stands today, poses grave danger to the United States and the West.

The (prideful) post-withdrawal comment of presidential candidate Kamala Harris that she “was the last person in the room” with President Biden and her recent embrace of the Administration’s withdrawal strategy as “courageous and right” will haunt her in the campaign ahead. When the question of which candidate can best protect America as President is raised, she will need to defend a historic failure.

The current anarchic state of the world can be traced back to the failures in Afghanistan.

Both the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations share the blame for the debacle that ensued. Still, the Biden-Harris administration, which reversed much of Trump’s other policies, stuck with his pledge to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan and then proceeded to exacerbate matters by botching the execution.

The complete, precipitous, and incompetent withdrawal of U.S. forces deserted an allied nation of 40 million people. We left millions of women and girls to suffer ISIS-like repression of their humanity. An American administration consigned our friends and allies to unimaginable levels of poverty, repression, and despair.

BLAST OFF US gearing up for all-out SPACE WAR with Russia and China as general warns West ‘must be ready’ for orbit battlefield

Andy Robinson

The specialist organisation dedicated to orbital warfare has spent five years in the “establishment phase” since being signed off by ex-pres Donald Trump in 2019.

But bosses visiting the UK this week warn they now need to be more ready for attacks off Earth than ever before as space is being rapidly weaponised.

Lt Gen David N. Miller said today at the US Embassy in London: “We are moving from establishment into developing the service into a combat credible military service.

“Increasingly the character of warfare that includes space as an operational domain for warfighting is becoming more and more apparent to everyone.

“In order to compete in today’s environment, deter conflict and prevail conflict, we’re going to have to take similar approaches to developing, generating and fielding capability.”

Chief Master Sergeant Caleb M. Lloyd said: “The domain has changed.

"We recognise and talk about space as a warfighting domain.

"The particular focus for us is the development of our people.”

Smokeless War: Europe is Getting “Boursicoted” by Beijing

Theresa Fallon

In 1964, Shi Pei Pu, a Beijing opera singer and spy, started a perplexing liaison with French diplomat Bernard Boursicot. Their trysts always took place in the dark, which Boursicot attributed to Chinese modesty. In fact, Shi was a man posing as a woman. He even presented a child, whom he claimed was their offspring. This ruse was designed to coax Boursicot to continue to pass French embassy documents to officials of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for twenty years. The record does not indicate if this was the first time a Western official should have been less naive about the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but the tradition continues.

Although almost all nation-states spy and seek influence, the scope and intensity of the PRC’s activities, primarily guided by the United Front Work Department, are overwhelming both in the United States and in Europe. Belgium, where I live, hosts both NATO headquarters and most EU institutions, which makes it a prime PRC influence target. A recent case concerned a Chinese aide to Maximilian Krah, a German member of the European Parliament from the far-right AfD party. The aide was arrested on charges that he had been passing information about the European Parliament’s deliberations to China for years. He was also thought to be monitoring the Chinese diaspora community in Dresden.

One of the main goals of Chinese influence operations in Europe is authoritarian co-option—persuading European public figures to have a positive regard for the CCP and speak favorably about its domestic and foreign policies. These like-minded surrogates are then invited to speak as proxies to promote the CCP’s positions. Captured elites can openly lobby political bodies, businesses, and decision-making institutions, creating a CCP echo chamber for both domestic and international audiences.

The Challenge of Negotiating With Xi Jinping

Michael Schuman

As China’s leader, Xi Jinping, intensifies his campaign to reshape the U.S.-led global order, the big question hanging over international affairs is: How will he choose to do it? Xi purports to be a man of peace, offering the world fresh ideas on diplomacy and security that could resolve global conflicts. Yet his actions—above all, his moves to deepen a partnership with Russian President Vladimir Putin—suggest that he presents a new threat to global stability, and instead of bringing security, he is facilitating forces that create turmoil.

This was a key issue that U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan faced during his visit to Beijing this week. On the table was China’s support for Putin’s devastating war in Ukraine and American efforts to stop it. Part of Sullivan’s mission was to persuade China’s leaders to cooperate more with the United States.

“I’ve sought to impress upon my Chinese interlocutors that they need to recognize the American history with European security,” Sullivan told me. “There is no more profound issue for us in our foreign policy.”

Whether Sullivan made any progress remains to be seen. For now, China’s leadership may be inclined to wait for the outcome of November’s U.S. presidential election to see if it can get a better deal from someone other than President Joe Biden. Beijing may judge that its prospects of achieving that are distinctly better if the winner is Donald Trump, whose pronouncements are more sympathetic to Putin than to NATO.

How Irregular Warfare Can Find—and Exploit—the Vulnerabilities in China’s Defense Industrial Base

Lumpy Lumbaca

As the United States and China are locked in strategic competition with one another, China’s increasingly dangerous and illegal activities in the gray zone form one of the most potent legs of its approach to that competition. The United States, however, is not without means of leveraging its own effective but legal activities. It can meaningfully affect the strategic balance between the two countries by more aggressively targeting China’s vulnerabilities—efforts that can be specifically aimed at deterring destabilizing behavior. China’s defense industrial base, the policies and essential infrastructure supporting its military industrial complex, is one such area where US activities can have such an effect. Disrupting this base could significantly erode China’s military capacity, giving the United States and its allies a strategic advantage in the global balance of power. The capabilities and methods employed to achieve this effect are already in the US military’s irregular warfare toolbox, and an irregular warfare campaign, if carefully calculated to be both effective and non-escalatory, could have outsized impact on the strategic competition between the United States and China.

China’s rise as a global military power has been underpinned by a rapidly developed defense industrial base, a formidable engine for producing conventional military capacity, space technology, advanced weaponry, and the influence that derives from these advancements. This transformation is the result of substantial investments, technological progress, and a focused strategy on enhancing military capabilities across various sectors, including aerospace, shipbuilding, electronics, and weapons manufacturing. Of course, a full understanding of China’s industrial policy remains elusive, and intelligence capabilities and strategic attention should be deliberately aimed at closing this gap. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to conclude that the defense industrial base is not only vital for China’s military but also plays a crucial role in its overall economic power, generating jobs and driving technological innovation. Despite these advancements, China’s defense industrial base remains vulnerable to various forms of disruption, making it a strategic target for the United States.

NSA’s China specialist: US at a loss to deter Chinese hackers

Carley Welch

Officials from the National Security Agency and the State Department said they’re still struggling to come up with a way to deter a powerful hacking group allegedly backed by the Chinese government and accused of slipping into US critical infrastructure networks.

When asked how the US plans to deter the group dubbed Volt Typhoon from future attacks, David Frederick, assistant deputy director for China at NSA replied, “I don’t have a good answer to that.”

“They are trying to position themselves to have an asymmetric advantage in a crisis or conflict. If you look at the cost-benefit from their point of view and just the breadth of targets in the United States and our allies in terms of global networks, they’re not going to be motivated to stop,” Frederick said at an Intelligence and National Security Summit this week. “So that’s a hard problem — how do we get them, sort of thing.”

“It’s a tough subject,” he later added.

When Liesyl Franz, deputy assistant secretary for international cyberspace security at the State Department’s bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, was asked the same question, she responded similarly.

The Chinese Overcapacity Puzzle

Several developments in recent years, from sustained renminbi appreciation to increasingly aggressive Western tariffs, should have eroded China’s global manufacturing dominance, but have not. Why has China’s share of global manufacturing exports continued to rise, and what might turn the tide?

Top-level meeting shows China - and Xi - still a priority for Biden

Laura Bicker & Tom Bateman

Jake Sullivan has been welcomed to China on his first visit as US national security adviser. He will hold talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi as the two countries try to stabilise relations.

Mr Sullivan and Mr Wang have met four times over 16 months in Vienna, Malta, Washington and Bangkok. Their last meeting in January was shortly after a high-stakes summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden that sought to reset frosty ties.

This week's talks - scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday - signal that China is still a priority for the Biden administration, even as the retiring president enters his final months in office.

Both Mr Sullivan and Mr Wang have already acknowledged a need to find common ground after disagreements between their nations.

Could another presidential summit be on the cards?

The White House is trying not to explicitly link Mr Sullivan's trip to the US presidential election. But it's hard to ignore the timing.

If Mr Sullivan is able to lay the groundwork for a final Biden-Xi summit, his trip would tie up the ends of the US president's most consequential - and fraught - foreign policy relationship.

Iran's Goals Are Even More Nefarious Than You Think | Opinion

Felice Friedson

The countdown is ticking away toward some grand act of revenge for Israel's killing of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Lebanon, and its alleged assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. Much of what comes next hinges not on any desire for revenge but whatever will best serve Iran's strategic goals of destabilizing the region and beyond.

Whatever Iran's ultimate decision will be, armies are being mobilized in Israel and Lebanon, command centers are readied for any scenario, and citizens along the border are evacuating—if they can. Psychological and economic damage is already apparent.

This is not an Israeli problem alone. Many Americans may not grasp the extent of Iran's ambitions. It seeks to destabilize the world, reshape Arab countries with extremism, and hit hard at American assets.

The supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei has been upfront in telling the world that his motives are to destroy Israel and destroy America. These two allies do not stand alone on the Iranian target board.

Iran's is hyper-focused on acquiring nuclear capabilities that will garner them a title of regional superpower. As the world is deterred watching Iran's Middle East chess game, the regime can now produce weapons-grade uranium for at least 13 nuclear weapons in under four months.

The Peril of Ignoring the Legitimacy of Violent Non-State Actors

Santiago Stocker, Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham

Looking around the world today, there is a glaring gap in both national and international approaches to non-state actor violence. There is little engagement with the idea that susceptible populations will come to support, sympathize with, or tolerate insurgency in the absence of credible authorities. Too often, the United States and like-minded democratic countries fixate on the tactics of violent actors and the uncompromising positions of extreme personalities while ignoring what gives violent actors legitimacy among local populations. This approach often makes foreign assistance ineffectual and sometimes counterproductive, creating suitable conditions for authoritarian systems supported by US competitors, such as Russia and China.

To effectively compete for influence in areas experiencing non-state actor violence and to mitigate its destabilizing effects, the United States must emphasize an approach that addresses the grievances of the populations that enable such actors to be effective.

Appeal of the Alternative Authority

Violent non-state actors cannot be effective solely based on the direct support of hardliners. Rather, these groups must build legitimacy among the populations they control. While some groups rely primarily on coercion of local populations to establish such legitimacy, this is by no means the norm. Coercion-centric approaches are most commonly used by state-sponsored militias. In other instances, violent actors work intentionally to build active support, sympathy, or tolerance among the populations they control.

Why the Nuclear Revolution Matters in an Era of Emerging Great Power Competition

Alex Alfirraz Scheers

The increasing polarization of international politics indicates that the future will be characterized by an intensification of conflicts. And, as the tensions intensify between the world’s two largest nuclear weapons states, Russia and the United States, and potential nuclear near peer, China, the underpinning principle of the nuclear revolution theory will only grow in salience: nuclear wars cannot be won, and therefore should not be fought.

However, the return of great power competition has also galvanized skeptics of the nuclear revolution theory, who reject the logic and tenability of nuclear deterrence and advocate instead for nuclear superiority and a shift toward war-winning nuclear postures.

An understanding of nuclear deterrence, as engendered by the nuclear revolution theory, is critical in preserving peace and strategic stability. States may choose to pursue superiority, but this article argues that the nuclear revolution theory can more adeptly provide the requisite insights for policymakers and scholars alike to better navigate the challenges inherent in the return of great power competition between China, Russia, and the United States.

Army Increases Largest Javelin Anti-Tank Order in History

Kris Osborn

Ukraine keeps needing more anti-tank missiles, the Army has massively revved up production and Russian tanks continue to get decimated … all because of the performance of Javelin Anti-Armor weapons. Demand for the weapons continues to soar as the weapons have proven their value in Ukraine far beyond what may have been initial expectations.

Now, the US Army has placed the largest single-year Javelin order in history, awarding Lockheed and Raytheon a deal to build upon and add to a deal from last year calling for the production of thousands of new Javelin All Up Round ammunition per year into 2026.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion several years ago, Ukrainians have been using shoulder-fired anti-armor weapons to cripple Russia’s armored assault. The weapons are extremely effective in a kinetic sense and have proven valuable in combat for years, yet they have also been employed by Ukrainians in tactically innovative ways. Ukrainians used hit-and-run-style ambushes, elevated terrain and urban structures to target and destroy advancing Russian tanks and armored vehicles. Dismounted groups of Javelin-armed Ukrainian fighters would assemble and then disperse quickly to surprise advancing Russian armor when formations were traveling over bridges, through narrowly configured passageways or otherwise vulnerable positions. The result has been crippling for Russia, and a recent Army intelligence report analyzing current wars found that Russia’s entire active duty tank force of more than 3,000 tanks have been destroyed. The Army’s Research Analysis, called “The Operational Environment 2024-2034 Large-Scale Combat Operations.” (US Army Training and Doctrine Command, G2), found that as of July 2024, 3,197 tanks have been destroyed.

European Allies Are Doing America’s Dirty Jobs

Sumantra Maitra

One of my pet peeves is to observe and chronicle how the 200-year idea of “liberal democracy” is disappearing before our very eyes due to the various new social conditions arising from technological innovations. I have written about it several times, but we have added one more data point to the idea that “free speech” as a concept is functionally dead or dying in the Euro-Atlantic. The founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France on trumped-up charges that his platform “facilitated” human trafficking and pedophilic activity.

I say “trumped-up” because we have seen previous instances of actual sexual grooming and other such criminal deviance on social media platforms before (and even currently), but none of their founders have been arrested. No, the real reason is that Telegram, like X, or previously RarBG, or Pirate Bay, is committed to an old-school, mid-’90s throwback idea of zero censorship and total freedom of speech—a callback to a time when the internet was imagined to be the ultimate high-tech frontier of Utopia. That dream is dead: Durov refused the Europeans’ demands to crack his app, and is now facing the consequences.

Tucker Carlson conducted an interview with Durov a while back, and tweeted it out again following the arrest.

Carlson would know. His own life is now on the line: consider that the Department of Justice has begun a broad criminal investigation into Americans who have worked with Russia’s state television networks. This is an easy way to tamp down on any dissenting voices, such as those of Carlson or Elon Musk; if carried out, the effect would be chilling. That’s the aim. The same goes for the anti-X crusade in Brazil and Europe. X is ostensibly the only platform to provide zero censorship, and thus alternative viewpoints. The Telegram arrest is just a practice run.

The Power of Stigma How Georgia’s “Foreign Agent” Law—and Others Like It—Can Damage Democracy

Maxim Krupskiy

In May, the Georgian parliament passed a “transparency of foreign influence” law amid large-scale protests. The new legislation requires Georgian media and nongovernmental organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their annual funding from abroad to register with the state as entities “pursuing the interest of a foreign power.” The law has met with intense criticism, spurring tens of thousands of Georgians to take to the streets. Opponents of the law—including Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who had attempted to veto it—have called it the “Russia law” for its similarity to the Kremlin’s legislation targeting so-called foreign agents.

A Cease-Fire Deal Now Would Be a Victory for Israel

Graham Allison and Amos Yadlin

As U.S. negotiators press for an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would exchange hostages for a cease-fire before events ignite a wider war, will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accept what could be a historic strategic victory for Israel?

Had any of Israel’s 13 previous prime ministers been in office today, there is no doubt that she or he would have accepted the deal that Israel designed and the United States proposed at the end of May.

America is a beached superpower — Europe should not rely on it for security

Peter Harris,

Thirty years ago this week, on Aug. 31, 1994, the last Russian soldiers departed Estonia and Latvia — a long overdue end to Moscow’s military domination of the Baltics, which had begun ignominiously in 1940 per the sordid terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Stalin and Hitler. That same day, a ceremony was held at Treptow Park in Berlin to commemorate Russia’s exit from East Germany after nearly 50 years of occupation.

The events of 1994 were more symbolic than pivotal in the sense that Moscow had already lost political control over Central and Eastern Europe years earlier. The Berlin Wall had fallen in 1989, Germany reunified in 1990, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. But symbolism counts for a lot in international relations: The sight of Russian forces withdrawing from the Baltics was a powerful illustration that Moscow’s hegemonic ambitions in Europe were over.

In Washington, officials cheered on Russia’s military exit from Eastern Europe, but they brooked no suggestion that the U.S. should match Russia’s withdrawals with pullbacks of its own. From their point of view, the Cold War had ended in a total victory, not a draw. Having won outright, U.S. leaders laid plans to fill the post-communist space with a U.S.-led security architecture for the whole of Europe.

Ukraine’s First F-16 Lost in Combat: What Went Wrong?

Sébastien Roblin

What You Need to Know: Ukraine’s newly acquired F-16s faced their first significant challenge as one of the jets was lost during an engagement against a massive Russian missile barrage on August 26.

-The aircraft, piloted by the experienced Colonel Oleksiy Mes, was one of the first six F-16AMs delivered to Ukraine. The loss highlights both the strategic value and the inherent risks of deploying these jets, particularly as Ukraine continues to train pilots under accelerated programs.

-While the incident raises concerns, it also demonstrates the F-16’s capability to intercept cruise missiles, a crucial role for Ukraine’s defense.

First Ukrainian F-16s Lost While Battling Russian Missile Onslaught: Ukraine’s General staff revealed on Thursday that it had lost one of its first six F-16AM jet fighter earlier that Monday (August 26) when it was scrambled to defend against a massive wave of 236 Russian drones and cruise and ballistic missiles. The loss comes less than one month after Ukrainian Prime Minister Zelensky unveiled the first F-16s finally deployed to Ukrainian soil after more than two years of lobbying.

The destruction of the recently acquired, hand-me-down jets surely stings, though falls well short of disaster as Ukraine is slated to acquire at least 70-90 more F-16s in the next few years. These afterall are first-generation F-16A and F-16B aircraft license-built in Europe by the 1980s, then upgraded in the 1990s—vitally the first new combat aircraft received by Ukraine’s Air Force since it was created in 1991, but not expensive, cutting-edge aircraft by 2020 standards.

‘Who blinks first?’ Why Putin still hasn’t driven Ukraine's invaders out of Russia

Erin McLaughlin, Matthew Bodner, Yuliya Talmazan and Dan De Luce

It’s been more than three weeks since foreign troops swept into Russia for the first time since World War II, yet there is little sign that Ukrainian forces are about to be driven back across the border.

The Ukrainian advance may have stalled since the daring Aug. 6 assault, but Kyiv claims it controls nearly 500 square miles of Russian territory and has taken hundreds of prisoners of war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to “squeeze” the Ukrainians out, but his military’s recent successes have been much farther afield in Ukraine’s east. Now both armies seem focused on the fight in enemy territory where they are gaining ground, even if that means leaving the door open in their own backyard.

“This seems to be a game of who blinks first,” a Western intelligence official, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the situation, told NBC News. “Ukrainians are taking and holding Russian land. Russians are pushing in the east. It could be a question of who withdraws their forces first.”A key goal of Ukraine’s surprise attack on the southern Kursk border region seemed to be easing the pressure on its industrial heartland, where Russian troops have been advancing against outgunned and outmanned defenders.

Every War Must End (Ukraine Edition)

Chase Metcalf and John Nagl

The Russo-Ukraine war rages on, thirty months after Russia expanded its invasion of Ukraine. The largest land war in Europe since World War II continues to consume personnel and materiel at a disturbing rate. While the costs of this war continue to mount, neither side is eager to compromise, and both seek to exhaust the other’s political will and capacity to continue.

Even the recent Kursk offensive by Ukraine, while demonstrating an ability to “win” and thus sustaining Western support, does not fundamentally change the strategic correlation of forces or the trajectory of the conflict: Russian President Vladimir Putin appears convinced he can outlast the West. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy likely believes his ability to compromise is limited, given Russian brutality and the enormous sacrifices Ukraine has made to date. Further, Ukrainians fear that any pause in the fighting will only allow Russia time to rebuild its military and renew the war in the future.

Russia’s war on Ukraine is a blatant war of aggression and violation of international norms that is reshaping the geopolitical landscape. This war is leading to increased collaboration between an Axis of Upheaval consisting of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, who seek to create an alternative to the existing international order. The recent Commission on the National Defense Strategy has characterized the world we face as “the most challenging and most dangerous international security environment since World War II,” and Phillip Zelikow, respected historian and diplomat, argues we face a period of enormous risk, putting the chance of broader global war at 20–30 percent. The threats are real, and the war in Ukraine continues to consume much-needed resources while creating a risk of escalation.

Neither Narrow nor Nice: Economic Warfare, Disinformation, and Civil Society

James Sullivan

A country’s economy is core to its national security, driving significant discourse regarding economic warfare. Current strategies, however, are driven more by political expediency than tactical efficacy. These strategies are based on the hope that “narrow” approaches targeting specific industry sectors or “nice” approaches avoiding harm to large population segments will drive impact. Hope, however, is not a strategy.

Narrow and nice economic warfare strategies are rarely effective. The “small yard, high fence” approach targeting specific industry segments fails in an increasingly interconnected global supply chain with rapidly changing industry linkages. Sanctions targeting elites have not splintered them from leadership; indeed, recent examples have shown the ability to further cement elite loyalty through windfall profits.

Effective economic warfare strategies target the foundation of a nation’s power: its economy and people. This paper suggests that such a strategy can leverage or create broad economic dislocations within a society and then allow those dislocations to be weaponized through disinformation campaigns that aim to manipulate the political beliefs of broader civil society. The integration of economic warfare and disinformation builds on Nye and Wilson’s idea that any separation of hard and soft power creates “an imperfect, dichotomous debate” given that state power increasingly combines hard power and a “nation’s capacity to create and manipulate knowledge and information.”

This exercise is shaping the long-term future of Army brigades

Todd South

A series of experiments with available technology and new unit configurations being tested in Louisiana will shape the future of brigade combat teams and how they deploy to tomorrow’s fights.

In early August, the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, conducted a 500-mile air assault from their home station to the Joint Readiness Training Center. On Aug. 22, the brigade launched a large-scale combat maneuver using novel approaches, homegrown technology and smaller headquarters.

The brigade is one of three currently experimenting with various tech, from electromagnetic spectrum tools and hide, decoy or detect signatures to counter-drone capabilities and nimble, small-footprint command posts running operations — which once took 60 troops — with only eight soldiers.

The two additional brigades, the Hawaii-stationed 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division and the Fort Drum, New York-based 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division are in earlier stages of developing such tech, with combat training center rotations planned for later this year and early 2025.