India’s Pivot: China Not As A Foe, But As A Potential Partner For Development Of Supply Chain – Analysis

Subrata Majumder

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Burying the hatchet of a security menace, India made a voltae face towards China for economic partnership. India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman supported Economic Adviser’s suggestion to permit Chinese investment in India. Her Chief Economic Adviser V. Ananata Nageswala said in the Economic Survey 2023-24 that New Delhi should focus on Chinese investment in India. Currently, Chinese investment is subject to several restrictions due to security concerns.

This change in policy raised eyebrows, given the fact the China menace has not mitigated. Border tensions continue to engulf the India-China tiff.

There are several reasons behind this new look towards Chinese investment as an economic partner. FDI flow in India plateaued despite the fact that it pitched the highest growth in global GDP. FDI in India dropped consecutively for 2 years. In 2022-23, it fell by 22 percent and dropped further by 3 percent in 2023-24.

India experienced sparkling growth in electronic and automobile industries, but the growth relied more on imports. China has been the biggest supplier of components and parts for the development of these industries. In other words, lest China falter to supply critical components, these industries are unlikely to spur growth.

US Military Warnings of Dire Situation in Afghanistan During Withdrawal Ignored, House GOP Report Finds

Rebecca Kheel

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Warnings from U.S. military officers about the Taliban's swift advances as American troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 went unheeded in Washington, D.C., a disconnect that contributed to a lack of planning for evacuating civilians, House Republicans found in an investigation on the Afghanistan withdrawal being released Monday.

The report, the culmination of a two-year probe into the withdrawal that cites testimony from public hearings, closed-door interviews with witnesses, newly obtained State Department documents, previously released military documents and previous news reports, largely faults the White House National Security Council and State Department for having a rosy outlook on the situation and resisting calls from military officials to plan for an evacuation amid dire warnings from military leaders on the ground about rapidly deteriorating conditions.

That failure to plan, the report argues, led to the chaos during the eventual evacuation that allowed for a terrorist to set off a suicide bomb outside Hamid Karzai International Airport, killing 13 U.S. service members.

Myanmar: UN Investigators Warn Of Widespread Abuses In Conflict

Vibhu Mishra

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Warfare in Myanmar has escalated into systematic atrocities, including attacks targeting civilians, torture and sexual violence, the UN independent rights probe into the country said on Monday.

Addressing the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, Nicholas Koumjian, the head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), said that in many instances, civilians were “not just collateral damage but rather the target of attacks”.

“Just last week, airstrikes near a night market in northern Shan state reportedly killed about a dozen people, including a pregnant woman and two children,” he said, noting also aerial bombings that struck a wedding party, IDP camps, schools and monasteries.

He added that the Mechanism received many reports and testimonies regarding crimes against the thousands in detention, including torture and sexual assault.

“Victims and witnesses have recounted beatings, electric shocks, strangulations and torture by pulling out fingernails with pliers. There is evidence that minors and other victims of all genders have been subjected to gang rape, burns on sexual body parts and other violent sexual and gender-based crimes.”

Dissecting China’s purported carrier strategy against Taiwan

Ben Ho Wan Beng

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Last month, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) published a report that has a section outlining how China would likely use its aircraft carriers as part of Beijing’s much-touted anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy. Citing declassified sources from Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense (MND), the report added that Chinese carrier operations are “geared towards ‘denying’ the United States military access to the Taiwan Strait area of operations.”

While many naval observers — including this author, who previously covered this issue on these pages — believe that carrier strike groups (CSGs) of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) would only have a limited role to play in a Taiwan contingency, the MAC seems to suggest that this would not be the case — and perhaps with some credibility, given that the council drew its conclusion from MND sources.

How then would such a scenario — let’s say in the late 2020s, which brings China’s carrier total to three — possibly play out and what to make of it?

Our Moonshot Moment Is Here

Nadia Schadlow & Craig Mundie

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American policymakers have spent years decrying the loss or impending loss of key competitive sectors to China, including 5G telecommunications networks, solar panels, advanced manufacturing, and quantum computing. Recently, it was reported that China was outspending the United States on fusion energy and that it could surpass U.S. fusion capabilities in three to four years. The United States can’t let this happen.

Fusion will provide reliable, carbon-free electricity for an expanding global economy. That will have profound geopolitical consequences. If we allow China to dominate fusion technology and to deploy it at scale at home and abroad, Beijing will hold a central position in the geopolitics of energy going forward.

Fusion occurs when two atoms combine into one, releasing astronomical amounts of energy. Some new fusion designs produce superheated plasma that can reach temperatures of up to 100 million degrees Celsius, producing energy with minimal radiation risks.

The Misuse of Sun Tzu and the Cult of Maneuver

Ren Hongpeng

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Introduction

The concept of “maneuver warfare” has returned to the forefront of debate with the Russo-Ukrainian war. As for the development of maneuver warfare, Liddell Hart and John Boyd played an important role, and they paved the way for the acceptance of maneuver warfare doctrine by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps[ii]. Meanwhile, they both misused Sun Tzu’s theories to serve their own.

However, all the theories are misused: Deutsches Heer misused Clausewitz[iii], and Imperial Japanese Navy misused Satō Tetsutarō[iv]. Considering the textual simplicity and ambiguity of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, it is undoubtedly more difficult to translate it to fully reflect its original meaning. What makes it necessary to explain the misuse of an ancient Chinese militarist?

First, the misuse of Sun Tzu is still widespread today. Second, it has played a role in the history of maneuver warfare. Third and most importantly, it represents a false methodology: serving one’s theory through the selective use of text and history. Texts and histories from other times, can serve as motivations, perspectives, and descriptions of the historical evolution, but they are evidence only after rigorous analysis and argumentation. Most references to Sun Tzu are divorced from their original meaning and context, as well as from the time period.

EU battle with China leaves no space for Ukraine

William Nattrass

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The sands are shifting in European perceptions of the need for peace in Ukraine. In a TV interview on Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged intensified effort to end the war through negotiations, saying: “I believe now is the moment when we must discuss how we get out of this war situation faster.”

Significantly, Scholz underlined his belief that Russia must be present at future peace discussions. Having met with Volodymyr Zelensky last Friday in Germany, Scholz asserted that “there will certainly be a further peace conference,” with the Ukrainian President supposedly in agreement that “it must be one with Russia present.”

That a key donor of military aid to Ukraine should call for Russian involvement in peace discussions marks a major shift from the Ukraine Peace Summit held in Switzerland earlier this summer, to which Russia was not invited. It’s a notable — some might say necessary — evolution of the West’s mantra to date: “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

MBZUAI Partners With US Tech, Collaborates With PLA Scientists

Cheryl Yu

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The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), a research university in Abu Dhabi, has ties to the united front system in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It also has access to US technologies that are currently subject to US export controls, such as NVIDIA A100 graphics processing units (GPUs). This raises the possibility that the university could function as a site for entities or individuals from the PRC to acquire or gain access to such technologies, thereby circumventing US export controls. Numerous PRC researchers are based at MBZUAI, many of whom come from People’s Liberation Army (PLA) or PLA-affiliated institutions. Meanwhile, US companies such as IBM and Meta, and academic institutions such as the University of Michigan and University of California, Berkeley, have partnered with MBZUAI (China Brief, August 15). The PRC’s weaponization of international cooperation to bolster its defense capabilities suggests the potential scale of this problem. Ultimately, research done at MBZUAI and using US technology could later be used to enhance the PRC’s military capabilities.

International Collaboration to Boost Defense Modernization

The PRC has long advocated for international technology cooperation. In November 2023, at the inaugural “One Belt One Road” Technology Exchange Conference (“一带一路” 科技交流大会), the PRC proposed an “International Science and Technology Cooperation Initiative (国际科技合作倡议).” This initiative advocates for building “a global community of science and technology (全球科技共同体)” and an “open and free ecosystem of international technology cooperation.” The aspiration is for “scientific and technological innovation personnel and resources to flow freely around the world” (Ministry of Science and Technology [MOST], November 7, 2023).

Kubernetes: A Dilemma in the Geopolitical Tech Race

Sunny Cheung

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To date, open-source technologies have remained an area of cooperation between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This comes despite worsening geopolitical tensions that have impacted or even severed cooperation in other technological domains. Kubernetes, an open-source platform, presents an unusual case of cooperation. It has been widely adopted not just in commercial industries but also in sensitive areas like US military systems. It is even used in F-16 fighter jets and nuclear infrastructure. On the PRC side, tech giants like Huawei that face sanctions from the United States, are major contributors to the platform and beneficiaries of its development.

While open source offers advantages over closed source systems, its use in critical systems and by US competitors are not without risks. The presence of state-affiliated companies from the PRC in the management and built environment of Kubernetes compounds those potential problems. Given the platform’s centrality and widespread use, however, it is unlikely to be replaced by an alternative any time soon. This suggests that risks surrounding Kubernetes’s use will need to be managed carefully.

Hezbollah relies on 'sophisticated' tunnel system backed by Iran, North Korea in fight against Israel

Caitlin McFall

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Despite Israel’s nearly one-year-long war with Hamas in Gaza after the Oct. 7 attacks, security experts continue to sound the alarm that Jerusalem’s greatest threat actually lies to the north in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has developed a sophisticated tunnel system.

Hezbollah, an Islamic terrorist organization that has long had the backing of Iran, has over the last two decades developed a network of tunnels that stretch more than 100 miles in cumulative length throughout southern Lebanon.

Though the existence of the tunnels has been known for decades, the significant role they play in arming Hezbollah has once again come to light during the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza, where terrorists have not only relied on tunnels for operational rearmament and maneuvering capabilities but also to house hostages taken by Hamas nearly a year ago.

While it is estimated that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have eradicated roughly 80% of Hamas’ tunnels, Hezbollah’s tunnels, which have largely remained untouched since the war in Gaza began, are believed to be far more sophisticated and "significantly larger," according to a report by the Alma Research and Education Center, a nonprofit organization that researches Israeli security challenges along its northern border.

Time to retire ‘Arab-Israeli conflict’?

NADER HABIBI

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The current phase of fighting in the Middle East began almost a year ago, with the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the subsequent pummeling of Gaza by Israel. But to many academics, foreign policy experts and international observers, what is taking place is also the latest episode in the decadeslong conflict commonly referred to as the “Arab-Israeli conflict.”

The experience of the past 11 months has led many experts on the region like myself to reassess that term. Is “Arab-Israeli conflict” an accurate reflection, given that the active participants are no longer just Arabs and Israelis? Should we retire that term for good now that the conflict has widened, drawing in the United States and Iran–and potentially Turkey and others in the coming years?

The Arab-Israeli conflict began after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922. In what is now Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, but was then the Palestine mandate under British rule, sporadic disputes over land ownership led to violence between the Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities.

America’s Weakness Is a Provocation

H.R. McMaster

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On August 21, Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin went to the Democratic National Convention to beg for their son Hersh’s life. A week later, Hamas terrorists shot and killed him in an underground tunnel in Gaza, where he had been held hostage for 11 months. President Joe Biden’s response was a letter of condolence.

That’s as strong an example as any of why rivals, adversaries, and enemies perceive Washington as weak, feckless, and unwilling to respond to grave and increasing threats facing America and our allies. It is likely that the president’s diminished capacity, no longer hidden by his White House staff, combined with the pattern of tepid responses to egregious acts of aggression, will lead to more aggression and greater danger to America’s security.

I do not carry water for any candidate for president. I served as an officer in the United States Army for 34 years and was studiously nonpartisan: I chose to follow General George C. Marshall’s example and never voted while I was on active duty.

Tactical Solutions Will Not Fix a Strategic Defect

Matt Armstrong

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I wouldn’t answer the question, however, because the report presents a flawed understanding of the historical and contemporary context of our international information operations’ organizational structure and practices. Moreover, the authors mistakenly suggest that policy and information are independent, emphasize reactive responses rather than proactive integration, and undervalue the impact of presidents and cabinet secretaries on our current capabilities and potential reforms. Through this glaring omission, the authors absolve the offices most responsible for the current condition—the Oval Office and the President’s direct reports, from the cabinet to the national security staff—and hope a tactical effort will fix a strategic defect.

The report implies that we “got it right” with the US Information Agency (USIA), an organization created to segregate the informational element from policy, a separation that was premised on authorities it was never granted, and, within four years, began calls for major reforms or reintegrating the operation into the State Department.1 The Active Measuring Working Group (AMWG) was created because USIA did not, institionally, do what the report’s authors think it did. As a history on AMWG notes, the “inclination to challenge Soviet disinformation declined over the 1960s until, by 1975, there was no organized, overt effort to expose Soviet disinformation at all.” And then there is the Global Engagement Center (GEC), created to both compensate for years of absent leadership at the State Department and to make something new rather than fix what is there.

Don’t Hype the Terror Threat

John Mueller

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Testifying in Congress a few months ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the terrorism “threat environment,” already quite intense, had been further “heightened” when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. “We’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole nother level,” he argued. Citing Wray’s warning and those of other U.S. officials, Graham Allison and Michael Morell (“The Terrorism Warning Lights Are Blinking Red Again,” June 10, 2024) contend that “the United States faces a serious threat of a terrorist attack in the months ahead.”

But the country has heard such alarms many times before, and they have proved unjustified. This was particularly true, of course, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In those years, Morrell and Allison sometimes joined the chorus of concern. Morell, who was the CIA official in charge of briefing the U.S. president at the time of the 9/11 attacks, recalled the atmosphere vividly in a book he wrote in 2015. “We were certain we were going to be attacked again,” he wrote, a conclusion supported by “thousands of intelligence reports.” In a 2004 book, Allison concluded that “on the current path, a nuclear terrorist attack on America in the decade ahead is more likely than not.”

Europe Takes a Trumpian Turn

Hans Kundnani

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In the European parliamentary elections in June, far-right political parties did better than ever before. Two far-right alliances are now the third- and fourth-largest groupings in the parliament, ahead of the centrist Renew Europe group. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) emerged as the largest party by far in the European polls, which prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve his country’s National Assembly and call snap elections. The RN did not win an absolute majority in those votes, but it became the biggest single party in the domestic legislative body for the first time.

These recent electoral gains of the far right in France—as well as successes in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and elsewhere in Europe—have caused no small amount of consternation. The far right’s successes in the last couple of years have forced many centrist proponents of the European Union to wake up to the possibility of a far-right takeover of the EU, something that was long thought of as a conceptual and practical impossibility. From the perspective of these alarmed centrists, the nationalism of the far right poses a fundamental threat to the project of European integration. They see the far right as a kind of alien force inherently antithetical to the EU—it is “anti-European.”

The US Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW): Dark Eagle – Analysis

Andrew Feicker

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What Is the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon?

The Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), also known as Dark Eagle, with a reported range of 1,725 miles, consists of a ground-launched missile equipped with a hypersonic glide body and associated transport, support, and fire control equipment. According to the Army,

“This land-based, truck-launched system is armed with hypersonic missiles that can travel well over 3,800 miles per hour. They can reach the top of the Earth’s atmosphere and remain just beyond the range of air and missile defense systems until they are ready to strike, and by then it’s too late to react.”

The Army further notes,

“The LRHW system provides the Army a strategic attack weapon system to defeat Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities, suppress adversary long-range fires, and engage other high payoff/time critical targets. The Army is working closely with the Navy in the development of the LRHW. LRHW is comprised of the Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB), and the Navy 34.5-inch booster.”

Cold War Lessons for Revitalizing Deterrence

Christopher J. Griffin

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In the three years since Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin first described the Biden Administration’s commitment to “integrated deterrence,”[1] America’s authoritarian adversaries have seized the initiative. The hallmarks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Iran’s proxy war against Israel have been both the atrocities committed by the aggressors and the emergence of an entente of revisionist powers, including China and North Korea, that has enabled their aggression.[2] Combined, these powers are on track to deploy a nuclear force that more than doubles that of the United States by this decade’s end.[3] A recent joint patrol by Russian and Chinese strategic bombers underscored the dangers that lie beyond that threshold.[4] In the meantime, both Russia[5] and Iran[6] carry out terror campaigns against the West while China dials up its threats against Taiwan and the Philippines.[7] From the gray zone to the strategic nuclear balance, the U.S. deterrence posture is eroding.

Winning the Competition for Space Leadership

Marc Berkowitz

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The United States is the world’s leader in the exploration and use of outer space. America became the preeminent spacefaring nation by winning the first space race with the Soviet Union. That contest was driven by the U.S.-Soviet geopolitical rivalry and run for the competitive advantages enabled by rocket and satellite technology. America’s prowess in space operations contributes to all elements (diplomatic, informational, military, and economic) of our national power. Space power is the total strength of a nation’s capabilities to conduct and influence activities to, in, through, and from space to achieve its objectives.

America has leveraged its dominant position in space for political prestige, international influence, scientific knowledge, technological advancement, and economic prosperity, as well as U.S. and international security. Space capabilities are woven into the socioeconomic fabric of the nation, embedded in critical infrastructures, enable national essential functions, and contribute to America’s way of life. Successive administrations of both political parties thus have declared for decades that access to and use of space are vital national interests of overriding importance to the nation’s safety, integrity, and survival.

The European Union’s Cyber War Challeng

Musa Khan Jalalzai

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Hostile states actors are knocking on every closed door in Europe in an effort to disrupt normal management of societies and their governments. State institutions, including intelligence agencies, cybersecurity organizations, and policing agencies are exhausted in their efforts at pushing back against non-native and unknown forces.

Those European intelligence agencies tasked with countering malicious cyber actors are simply unprepared for the fight they face. Disinformation campaigns waged by the Chinese, North Koreans, and Russians are also plaguing Europe. When Russia first began such efforts to shape election outcomes about a decade ago, their rather low-cost efforts were successful enough to encourage further disinformation efforts.

French efforts to sound the alarm about disinformation in Europe and Africa were largely unheeded and is now bearing fruit for China and Russia as several African nations are turning against the West and toward these autocracies. The cyber four of China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, through their security institutions, targeted the UK and French institutions, financial markets, and security infrastructure at home and their prestige abroad.

Distilling the Complex: An Approach to Enabling Senior Leader Decision-making

David K. Spencer

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“How can we make this slide more understandable to our audience?” I sat in the back of the crowded briefing room as a senior leader asked this question about a complicated, information dense slide that his staff had presented for an external audience. I smiled, given my history of advocating for effective communications. But things soon became uncomfortable as the senior leader remained on the slide, trying to solve the issue on the spot. He was doing what a staff officer should have done before presenting it.

I have reviewed countless products prepared for a senior leader with the same problem—too much information with little focus. This can stem from an officer’s good-faith desire to show their work, a lack of understanding of what is useful for a senior leader, or difficulty in synthesizing a body of work. Staffs are expected to deeply understand problems and their environments. But senior leaders normally do not have time to review staff work. Leaders need to understand the key aspects of a problem and its context clearly and rapidly. Thus, staff officers must not only determine the best method to communicate the problem to their leader, but also what to omit. MG Charles Miller, the US Army’s senior Army Strategist, notes that this theme aligns with advice from various leaders to “keep the main thing the main thing” or “get the big ideas right.”[i]

What is ‘Strategic’? The Who, What, When, Where, and Why of Strategy

Emily Meierding, James J. Wirtz & Jeffrey A. Larsen

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What is “Strategic?”

In the realm of strategy, the word “strategic,” carries many meanings. It suggests that events, actions, or ideas are potentially life-changing, risky, critical, dangerous, or significantly more important than everyday matters. It is a word that evokes an emotional response, setting a context for what follows. It is used in relation to more than just the “ends, ways, and means” of strategy, or the “strategy bridge” that links the people, the government, and the military together when it comes to using force to achieve political objectives.[i] Indeed, Colin Gray himself mused about the way people employed the word “strategic,” that is, as “a heavyweight term implying relatively high importance, relating to something allegedly Big!” He also observed that, “When thus used without linguistic discipline the concept loses all value and hinders intelligent debate.”[ii]

Although assessing the psychological and emotional impact of the word “strategic” is valuable, here we are more concerned about the use of the word to convey meaning in discussions of military operations, weaponry, international competition, and war. This is no pedantic endeavor; techno-political developments now seem to demand the broader use of the word “strategic” in military affairs. The rise of new domains of warfare (space, cyberspace, artificial intelligence) and new weapons (hypersonic vehicles, autonomous systems and weapons, nanotechnology) all promise to produce “strategic” effects. In the future, more weapons and operations will be considered as game-changing, creating an even greater need for clarity in determining which issues or capabilities merit the label “strategic.”[iii] This article is written from an American perspective; yet the issue applies to all countries. Defining the word “strategic” is a universal task that strategists must address when developing their approach to national security.

Massive Attack on Russia Sees Over 140 Ukrainian Drones Strike Nine Regions

Isabel van Brugen

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Ukrainian forces struck nine regions inside Russia with over 140 drones overnight, marking one of Kyiv's largest attacks of the war so far, Moscow said.

The Russian defense ministry said on Tuesday that its air defenses destroyed and intercepted 144 Ukrainian drones—72 over the Bryansk region; 20 over the Moscow region; 14 over the Kursk region; 13 over the Tula region; eight over the Belgorod region; seven over the Kaluga region; five over the Voronezh region; four over the Lipetsk region; and one over the Oryol region.

Newsweek has been unable to verify these figures and contacted Russia's defense ministry for additional comment by email.

Russian media outlets, including RBC, described the attack as "one of the most massive of all time."

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said at least 14 drones targeting the capital were shot down in the districts of Ramenskoye, Podolsk, Domodedovo, Lyubertsy and Kolomna. According to state-run news agency Tass, a 46-year-old woman was killed in Ramenskoye, and several others were wounded.

Moscow's Zhukovsky, Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Vnukovo airports were closed amid the drone attack, local media reported.

A ‘rules-based’ or ‘principle-driven’ new global order? - Opinion

Eric Alter

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With the revival of great power competition on an unprecedented scale, there seems to be little appetite for main actors to meet in the middle. This combustible environment makes global cooperation increasingly elusive and challenging.

Among the most striking signs of these turbulent times is the assault on the rules-based international order, a long-time staple of Western foreign policy.

While the term was coined only after the Cold War, states’ commitments to such an order, mainly for reasons of peace and security, can be traced back to the significant efforts to establish order after the Second World War.

While the concept is used to mean many different things, most often, it is understood as a shared commitment among states to conduct their activities in accordance with a set of established principles, rules and institutions that govern global affairs.

But which specific rules does this order refer to? And who has the authority to set and enforce them?

Uprooting the Enemy: A New Paradigm for Irregular Warfare Analysis

Nicholas Krohley

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Introduction

The human environment is fundamental to any military campaign. It is the interconnected set of social, economic, political, and cultural systems that comprise our lived reality. Our enemies are integral features of the human environment, as are our allies, and likewise the people amongst whom we fight. The human environment is the living, breathing context in which military operations of all types occur, and within which the consequences of those operations reverberate.

Land Forces must develop a granular understanding of the human environment, in order to maneuver astutely therein. This begets a critical challenge: the human environment is incomprehensibly vast and perpetually dynamic. Detailed understanding is essential, but comprehensive understanding is impossible.

A traditional reconnaissance element can be straightforwardly tasked to map the physical environment within a given area. Every bridge, hill, and hospital can be meticulously and objectively plotted. Similarly, intelligence assets can be tasked to provide a comprehensive view of the disposition of enemy forces or the composition of an enemy network. Constraints of time and access may prevent a complete understanding, but the tasking itself (to identify and assess a finite number of discrete things) is reasonable. We know what we are looking for, and we know where and how to look.

Is Counterinsurgency Politically Possible?

John P. Connor

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It is extremely difficult, though not entirely impossible, for counterinsurgency (COIN) to achieve political success within the contemporary Western model. It is more possible, though still difficult, for alternative approaches to succeed politically – specifically through combining an enemy-centric strategy with the effective use of local allies. However, even the most sophisticated counterinsurgent will not necessarily be able to overcome barriers such as those posed by difficult terrain and cross-border support.

What does it mean for counterinsurgency to be “politically possible”? War, as Clausewitz observed, is the continuation of politics by other means.[i] In COIN, the goal is not merely to militarily defeat the insurgent, but to prevent the emergence of another insurgency – as demonstrated by modern COIN’s roots in the 19th century concept of “pacification” (discussed by theorists from the French Marshalls Bugot and Lyotet to British writers such as C.E. Callwell). For COIN to be politically possible, it must achieve a permanent political resolution to the conflict.

However, Western and Non-Western conceptions of COIN differ considerably in their approaches to both the military and political aspects of COIN. While Western COIN typically adopts a minimalist use of force while prioritizing a political solution through “hearts and minds”, non-Western COIN often uses a force-maximalist approach, believing that physical security must first be achieved for a political solution to occur.