Indian Strategic Studies: 10/04/24

4 October 2024

India's measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing

India has achieved a high-level of technical compliance across the FATF Recommendations and has taken significant steps to implement measures to tackle illicit finance. Nevertheless, it is critical that the country continues to improve its system as its economy and financial system continue to grow, in particular ensuring that money laundering and terrorist financing trials are completed and offenders are subject to appropriate sanctions; and taking a risk-based and educative approach with non-profit organisations.

A joint FATF-APG-EAG assessment of the country’s measures to tackle illicit Finance concludes that India has implemented an anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) framework that is achieving good results, including on risk understanding, access to beneficial ownership information and depriving criminals of their assets. Authorities make good use of financial intelligence and co-operate effectively, both domestically and internationally.

India is the largest country in the world by population and has the largest diaspora. It is a lower-middle income country with one of the world’s fastest growing economies that is currently the world’s fifth largest economy. India’s main money laundering risks originate from illegal activities within the country, these risks relate primarily to fraud, including cyber-enabled fraud, corruption and drug trafficking. India pursues money laundering related to fraud and forgery in line with predicate crime risks to a large extent, but less so with some other offences such as human trafficking and drug trafficking. The country needs to address the backlog of money laundering cases pending conclusion of court processes.

Report of the Webinar on China’s Himalayan Hustle – Part IV: EU, India, and US – Framing a Troika to Scuttle China’s Himalayan Strategy?

Marta Chiusi, Lena Fargier, Ana Carolina De Oliveira Assis and Jagannath Panda

This report is an outcome of ‘China’s Himalayan Hustle-IV’ webinar on “EU, India, and US – Framing a Troika to Scuttle China’s Himalayan Strategy?” which was conducted by the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs (SCSA-IPA), Institute for Security and Development Policy, on August 16, 2024. The webinar was moderated by Dr. Jagannath Panda, who welcomed all the panelists and shared that this was the fourth webinar in the series.

The first webinar covered China’s infrastructural planning in the Himalayan region while the second was about China’s economic dominance in the region. The third webinar dealt more with how the Chinese are trying to change the status quo in the Himalayan region. The fourth webinar aimed to visualize the possibilities and potential for the EU, India, and the US to work together to highlight China’s revisionist actions in the Himalayan region, beyond the India-China border scuffles or the potential for limited war. For such a purpose, it looked into the following questions: What are the ways through which the Chinese activities in the Himalayan states could be highlighted in the European Parliament and the US Congress? What is the extent, scope, and impact of the massive military modernization in the Tibetan Plateau for the region?

Germany’s Strategic Adjustments In The Chinese Market – Analysis

Zhou Chao

According to a recent report from Xinhua News Agency, the latest statistics from the German central bank show that in the first half of 2024, Germany’s investment in China reached a record high of EUR 7.3 billion. Coincidentally, Germany’s investment in China also set a year-on-year record high in 2023. As of August this year, Western countries, including Germany, have been implementing a “de-risking strategy” toward China for over two years. However, the continuous rise in German investment in China seems to contradict such a strategy, leading some to see that Germany is still reliant on China, and there will be no substantial change in this dependency.

Among major Western nations, Germany is among the earliest to expand economic and trade relations with China, investing the most and having the most in-depth cooperation. The potential cost of abruptly severing or significantly reducing these ties would be extremely high. Recently, the Mercedes-Benz Group announced it would further increase its investment in China and continue to deepen its presence in the Chinese market, which seems to be at odds with the notion of Germany’s de-risking efforts. However, to conclude that Germany and the entire EU’s de-risking strategy toward China is ineffective based solely on the notable increase in German investment may be overly simplistic.

China's New Nuclear Submarine Sinks Near Wuhan Shipyard, Sparking Concerns Over Its Naval Capabilities

R. Ghosh

China lost its most advanced nuclear-powered submarine earlier this year in a naval yard accident, raising concerns that the country may be overextending itself as it strives to build a navy capable of matching the strength of America's. However, it has so far failed to do so.

The submarine, belonging to the new Zhou-class — China's first line of nuclear-powered attack subs — sank at a shipyard near Wuhan in late May or early June, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Chinese military has remained silent about the event while continuing to promote its "maritime superiority" in the South China Sea, with particular focus on the potential for a Taiwan invasion.

Sank Without a Trace

Nuclear-powered submarines can operate for longer periods and at greater speeds than conventional submarines, which are already in China's fleet. Zhou-class attack subs are designed to covertly hunt and engage enemy vessels, such as U.S. aircraft carrier groups, and evade detection afterward.

Has the Third Lebanon War Begun?

Charlotte Lawson

After nearly a year of cross-border fighting in the north, Israel has ushered in what its defense minister calls a “new phase” in the war against Hezbollah with a series of aggressive operations. The goal: to push the Iranian-backed terrorist organization, through diplomacy or force, to abandon its strategy of slowly weakening Israel through a war of attrition.

This week began with the military’s largest wave of airstrikes against Hezbollah infrastructure to date, with Israeli warplanes hitting an estimated 1,600 military targets across Lebanon on Monday. The campaign destroyed tens of thousands of Hezbollah’s estimated 150,000 to 200,000 projectiles in a single day, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that night.

The aerial attacks on Hezbollah’s missile and rocket stockpiles and launchers have persisted in the days since, as have Israel’s efforts to systematically dismantle the group’s top leadership through precision strikes on Beirut. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Tuesday that it had successfully targeted Ibrahim Qubaisi, head of Hezbollah’s missile and rocket force, in a Beirut airstrike. On Thursday, another precision strike on the Lebanese capital killed Hezbollah’s top drone chief.

US-led task force to fight ISIS in Iraq to end by 2026, officials say

Noah Robertson

After 10 years, the military coalition of countries working to defeat ISIS in Iraq is coming to an end.

The American and Iraqi governments announced Friday a phasing down of Combined Joint Task Force — Operation Inherent Resolve, a U.S.-led military operation to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Previewed for months after U.S. President Joe Biden met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani in April, the decision will close the task force by 2026. The U.S., which has 2,500 troops in Iraq, will then negotiate directly with the government in Baghdad on its military presence inside the country.

Since the war started in Gaza last October, American military personnel around the Middle East have been increasingly under threat. Militia groups sponsored by Iran have targeted U.S. ships and bases, including a strike that killed three troops just across the Syrian border in Jordan this January. The attacks, along with America’s support for Israel, have continued to shift America’s military footprint in the region.

The myth of Hezbollah has been shattered

David Ramadan

I was born and raised in Lebanon. Like many of my generation, I lived through the horrors of the Lebanese Civil War. I witnessed firsthand the devastation, displacement and societal fractures that tore through the country.

It was in the 1980s, in the midst of this turmoil, that Hezbollah emerged — a group that promised to resist Israeli occupation and liberate Lebanon. For many, Hezbollah became a symbol of resistance, a beacon of strength for a war-weary and marginalized population, particularly within the Shia community. I saw it rise, slowly gaining power and embedding itself in Lebanon’s political, military and social fabric.

But after nearly four decades of its existence and two decades of its total dominance of the country, it is clear that Hezbollah’s power is built on a foundation of false morality and what can only be described as miserable impotence in the face of Israel.

Is Israel trying to drag America into a war with Iran?

Paul Wood

The American general David Petraeus famously asked of the invasion of Iraq: ‘Tell me how this ends.’ That’s the question as Israeli bombs and missiles fall on Lebanon and the few missiles Hezbollah has sent in response are intercepted. Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ seems paralysed with indecision. Does Benjamin Netanyahu take this as a win, the vindication of the enormous chance he took by opening a new northern front? Or, like a gambler intoxicated by success at the tables, does he press on? More airstrikes, followed by an invasion of Lebanon… and then the bombers fly on to Iran?

Some Israelis commentators are already calling this the Third Lebanon War (after the wars of 1982-2000 and 2006). That’s a fair description, given how many Lebanese have been killed, at least 600 at the time of writing. How long these punishing airstrikes continue depends, in part, on how many of Hezbollah’s rockets have been destroyed, and how many Israel’s war cabinet believe must be destroyed before the campaign can pause. One Israeli journalist, Ben Caspit, tweeted to say a political source was briefing that half of Hezbollah’s long-range rockets were gone – but the military had said otherwise and that ‘most of the work is still ahead of us’.

A convincing win for Netanyahu would be for the intense American mediation efforts under way to produce a new understanding with Hezbollah, one that ends rocket fire into northern Israel. Those efforts are being led by an American-Israeli former businessman, Amos Hochstein, who once served in the Israel Defence Forces. He doesn’t talk directly to Hezbollah because it’s proscribed by the US as a terrorist group. Instead, he goes through Shiite politicians in Lebanon. The message to them – and to Hezbollah – is said to be that the US won’t be able to restrain Israel if it comes to an all-out war.

Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Shadows of a Regional War

Juan José Escobar Stemmann & Gonzalo Arana

Saudi Arabia-Iran: A Long Pattern of Enmity

No bilateral relationship in the Middle East has played such a crucial role for the region as the one between Saudi Arabia and Iran since Ayatollah Khomeini took power after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The emergence of a regional power that challenged Saudi leadership among Muslims opened the door to one of the most important patterns of enmity in the region over recent decades, provoking a long sectarian conflict that has transformed societies and altered cultural and religious references in the Middle East.1

The transformation of Iranian foreign policy after the 1979 revolution, characterized by a mix of Islamic, nationalist, and revolutionary causes, was interpreted by the Gulf monarchies as an existential threat. Tehran’s calls to export the Iranian revolution to other territories and the description of the Gulf leaders as illegitimate increased the insecurity of Saudi Arabia, which feared that the new Iranian regime would seek regional hegemony. This led Riyadh to reorient its identity more toward Sunni Islam and openly oppose Iran. For its part, Iran has long nurtured a sense of civilizational superiority toward the Arab world, but its policies have also been conditioned by threats from its neighbors. The support of the Arab states for the Iranian anti-revolutionary forces and, above all, their assistance to Iraq in its war against Iran (1980-88) had a significant influence on the Iranian sense of insecurity. This explains the birth of the “forward defense strategy,” whose first component was the creation of Hezbollah in 1986 after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.2

U.S. Intelligence Stresses Risks in Allowing Long-Range Strikes by Ukraine

Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes

U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Russia is likely to retaliate with greater force against the United States and its coalition partners, possibly with lethal attacks, if they agree to give the Ukrainians permission to employ U.S., British and French-supplied long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia, U.S. officials said.

The intelligence assessment, which has not been previously reported, also plays down the effect that the long-range missiles will have on the course of the conflict because the Ukrainians currently have limited numbers of the weapons and it is unclear how many more, if any, the Western allies might provide.

The assessment highlights what intelligence analysts see as the potential risk and uncertain rewards of a high-stakes decision that now rests with President Biden, who met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the White House on Thursday.

Ukraine’s Argument For Striking Back – Analysis

Maria Avdeeva

On a sunny Sunday afternoon, August 30, Russia launched five glide bombs toward Kharkiv. One bomb obliterated the entrance of a twelve-story residential building, where a seventy-one-year-old burned alive. Another killed a fourteen-year-old girl sitting on a bench in a park, leaving six people dead in total. In September, Russia began showering Kharkiv with deadly glide bombs almost daily, most targeting densely populated residential areas. These bombs were launched from fighter jets just across the border in Russia’s Belgorod region, leaving Kharkiv residents no chance to take cover because of its close proximity. These brutal assaults have turned Kharkiv into a symbol of daily terror but also a powerful emblem of Ukraine’s resilience, underscoring with brutal clarity that limiting Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied weapons is neither viable nor effective.

As Russia escalates its aggression, the question is no longer whether Ukraine should be allowed to strike deep into Russian territory, but when. The time to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied weapons to target Russia’s military infrastructure is long overdue. During his visit to the United States, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will likely push to secure guarantees before the upcoming US elections, “while all the officials who want the victory of Ukraine are in official positions.” Among Kyiv’s urgent requests is the ability to use British, French, and Italian Storm Shadow missiles, as well as US-made Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) to strike airbases and other critical military targets inside Russia.

Reasons Supporting Netanyahu Is The US’ Big Middle Eastern Mistake – OpEd

Juan Cole

At least one thing is now obvious in the Middle East: The Biden administration has failed abjectly in its objectives there, leaving the region in dangerous disarray. Its primary foreign policy goal has been to rally its regional partners to cooperate with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government. Simultaneously, it would uphold a “rules-based” international order and block Iran and its allies in their policies. Clearly, such goals have had all the coherence of a chimera and have failed for one obvious reason.

US President Joe Biden’s Achilles’ heel has been his “bear hug” of Netanyahu, who allied himself with the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis and launched a ruinous total war on the people of Gaza. He did this in the wake of the horrific October 7 Hamas terrorist attack Israel suffered in 2023.

Biden also signed on to the Abraham Accords, a project initiated in 2020 by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and special Middle East envoy of then-President Donald Trump. Through them the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco all agreed to recognize Israel’s statehood. In return, Israel granted them investment and trade opportunities, as well as access to American weaponry and a US security umbrella.

How Institutional Quality Shapes Our World – OpEd

Sergio Martínez

What is institutional quality, and why is it important for economic progress?

Institutions are the rules of the game that shape human behavior. They include laws, codes of conduct, and both formal and informal customs that structure interactions between people. Our expectations of how others will act in different situations depend on institutions. Stable institutions reduce uncertainty and make economic activity easier.

However, not all institutions promote productive behavior. In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson distinguish between two types: inclusive institutions and extractive institutions. Inclusive institutions encourage broad participation in wealth creation, while extractive institutions benefit a small elite at the expense of the majority. Inclusive institutions protect private property rights and shield individuals from government overreach, whereas extractive institutions are characterized by rent-seeking, coercion, and human rights abuses.

A country’s institutional quality is higher when it fosters inclusive institutions. These institutions are more productive because they support open markets and align the interests of entrepreneurs with those of consumers. Extractive institutions, on the other hand, are unproductive because they reward zero-sum strategies.

The Final Countdown in Ukraine

Nikolas K. Gvosdev

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has met with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in what might prove to be the moment of decision since Russia initiated major combat operations inside Ukraine over 900 days ago.

Numerous clocks are now ticking. Can Ukraine’s military hold its defensive lines in eastern Ukraine? Can the Russian military bring to bear concentrated force to crack Ukrainian defenses before the winter? Will the U.S. and other NATO allies permit Ukraine to use the weapons systems they provide to strike deeper into Russia? Can the Western defense industrial complex get enough equipment into the Ukraine supply pipeline in a timely fashion? Last but not least, who will win the U.S. presidential election and be inaugurated in January 2025?

Aware of these looming deadlines, the Zelensky hopes that the United States and its partners will stop these clocks. The theory of victory is based on two assumptions. First, Russia cannot sustain its efforts for the long term, and sufficient disruption of the Kremlin’s capabilities will bring the Russians to the table to negotiate. Second, if the West commits to a rapid and major resupply effort for the Ukrainian military, accompanied by robust security guarantees, the Russians will be forced to recognize they cannot overwhelm Ukraine in a war of attrition.

Ukraine’s Desperate “Victory Plan”

Matthew Blackburn

Will the United States greenlight Ukrainian “deep strikes” into Russia? It is a question that has plagued American policymakers since this summer’s NATO summit. Thus far, Ukraine has largely been limited to drone attacks on Russia. This has had some success, the most recent of which was a spectacular drone strike on a weapons arsenal in Toropets on September 18. But Kyiv says this is not enough. It wants permission to fire long-range missiles (300-400km) into Russia. President Zelensky visited Washington this week to pitch his “victory plan,” which involves deep strikes and new weaponry.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer recently visited U.S. president Joe Biden to approve a green light to Kyiv. Several European countries, including Poland, the Baltic States, Sweden, and Finland support the UK. In contrast, German chancellor Olaf Scholz has ruled out permission for Ukraine to use its Taurus cruise missiles. The Biden administration also appears very cautious while it weighs the costs, risks, and benefits of long-range strike approval.

There is a sense of déjà vu here. We have seen similar “sagas” of Western weapon supplies throughout this war. Recall the hesitancy to send HIMARS, then NATO tanks, ATACMS, and F-16s. Each time, America and Germany demonstrated reluctance only later to agree. In each case, the pantomime tension of “will they or won’t they” is finally resolved; Ukraine gets its weapons, and morale is boosted.

Stanley McChrystal: Why Kamala Harris Has Won Me Ove

Some deeply consequential decisions are starkly simple. That is how I view our upcoming presidential election. And that is why I have already cast my ballot for character — and voted for Vice President Kamala Harris.

As a citizen, veteran and voter, I was not comfortable with many of the policy recommendations that Democrats offered at their convention in Chicago or those Republicans articulated in Milwaukee. My views tend more toward the center of the political spectrum. And although I have opinions on high-profile issues, like abortion, gun safety and immigration, that’s not why I made my decision.

Political narratives and policies matter, but they didn’t govern my choice. I find it easy to be attracted to, or repelled by, proposals on taxes, education and countless other issues. But I believe that events and geopolitical and economic forces will, like strong tides, move policymakers where they ultimately must go. In practice, few administrations travel the course they campaigned on. Circumstances change. Our president, therefore, must be more than a policymaker or a malleable reflection of the public’s passions. She or he must lead — and that takes character.

Pentagon asks lawmakers to kill third-party look at an independent cyber force

Carley Welch and Valerie Insinna

The Pentagon has formally requested that lawmakers shut down a legislative proposal that would mandate an independent assessment of the establishment of a separate cyber service, three sources familiar with the matter told Breaking Defense.

The Record first reported that the DoD’s request was submitted to both the House and Senate Armed Services committees as part of a series of appeals to drafts related to cybersecurity in the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The appeal by the DoD contended that Congress had already called for an assessment of the current cyber landscape within the Pentagon, which included the potential for creating a cyber service in the 2023 NDAA, according to The Record. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to Breaking Defense’s request for comment.

“DoD did express opposition to the provisions. However, it’s not unusual for DoD to express their opinion on provisions in the NDAA. They do so frequently on hundreds of provisions throughout the bill,” one senior committee aid told Breaking Defense.

Why Pilots Are Still More Important Than Technology

Roger Thompson

In his new article, “Inside the U.S. Air Force’s Plan to Make Sure the F-22 Raptor Dominates the Sky” writer Alex Hollings makes several controversial claims about the F-22 Raptor and the role of pilots that I think must be challenged. Firstly, he says that the F-22 is unquestionably the world’s best fighter, and to back that up he quotes a former Raptor pilot who says nothing in the air can touch this aircraft, including USAF F-15 Eagles. “The Raptor was so good that in 2002, three years before reaching operational service, former Eagle driver turned Raptor test pilot Mike ‘Dozer’ Shower and three of his F-22 flying peers wiped out 12 F-15Cs in less than two minutes in one of several air combat exercises that saw Eagles falling time after time to America’s newest bird of prey. The F-15 had never lost an air-to-air engagement to an enemy aircraft, with an unmatched air combat record of 104 wins and zero losses, but even the Eagle was all but defenseless when it came to engaging the Raptor.”

I think this claim has been overstated. It may surprise Lieutenant Colonel Shower to know that Canadian CF-104 Starfighters had little difficulty taking down F-15s in simulated combat back in the 1970s and 1980s, and I have already documented this in a recently published article. The CF-104 was small and fast, but certainly not a “stealth” aircraft and was nowhere near as expensive as the F-22, but it achieved tremendous success in simulated combat by virtue of the high-quality pilots that flew it. The same goes for Royal Navy Sea Harrier pilots who achieved simulated kill ratios of 7:1 against USAF F-15s, according to Commander Sharkey Ward. I mentioned this statistic in my book as well and I hope this puts the claims by F-22 advocates in perspective. (p. 131)

Russia, Ukraine, and the two Koreas: How east Asian powers are influencing Europe’s security

James Crabtree & Alexander Lipke

Which nation is Russia’s most significant military partner in its war with Ukraine? Speaking at a conference in Kyiv in September, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov gave a clear, if perhaps unexpected, answer: North Korea. Or, as Budanov put it: “North Korea would be first. Then there is no one for a long time, and then everyone else.”

The scale of North Korean aid to Russia remains striking. Since the war began, supreme leader Kim Jong Un has dispatched an estimated 6m artillery shells, providing Vladimir Putin with a clear battlefield advantage. Yet Budanov’s claim highlights a broader development in which both North and South Korea are playing an ever-more strategically significant role in European security affairs. Pyongyang’s importance was underlined in June when Putin visited to seek further weapons. Meanwhile, Seoul has sent aid to Ukraine and joined economic sanctions against Moscow. To respond to the Koreas’ growing role in the war, Europeans need a new approach. Firstly, this means focusing more energy on tracking and responding to new threats emanating from the intensifying North Korea-Russia partnership. Secondly, it requires the construction of a deeper, counterbalancing security partnership with South Korea.

Putin Is Already Escalating His War on the West

Hal Brands

Since the war in Ukraine started, avoiding escalation — a leap into a larger, more globally consuming conflict — has been US President Joe Biden’s abiding preoccupation. But nearly three years in, the reality is that the war has already sprawled and escalated, just not quite in the ways many observers might expect.

Concerns about escalation have flared in recent weeks, as Biden has considered whether to allow Ukraine to use US weapons, notably ATACMS missiles, to conduct long-range strikes into Russia. (Kyiv has already been using those missiles against Russian targets within occupied Ukraine, while employing its own drones and munitions to strike within Russia.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, says that a more lethal, comprehensive strike campaign is crucial to ravaging Russian rear areas, command centers and arms depots, as Ukraine managed to do in spectacular attacks over the last week. US officials and some outside analysts are reportedly skeptical that Washington and its allies can provide enough of the relevant missiles, which are among the scarcest, highest-value tools in their arsenals, to make a major difference.

IDF kills Hassan Nasrallah: Five ways the strike changes Israel's war - analysis

SETH J. FRANTZMAN

The airstrike on Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on September 27 is a major game-changer in more than 11 months of war. It has the potential to upset Iran’s plans and weaken Hezbollah. Here are five ways the strike may affect the war and the region.

Iran’s most experienced ally targeted

Hassan Nasrallah was Iran’s most experienced ally in the region. The Hezbollah leader had been key to Iran’s plans in the region for decades. In the last several years, he had grown even more powerful. Iran sought to create a multi-front war against Israel in the wake of the October 7 attack, and Nasrallah helped lead that war.

Nasrallah had grown to become the senior leader of Iran’s numerous proxies. He would often host Iranian officials and would also invite representatives from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to Lebanon to coordinate their attacks on Israel. He also sought to muster the Houthis in Yemen to threaten Israel, and he coordinated with Iraqi militias.

Killing Nasrallah

Lee Smith

Friday evening in the Levant, Israel targeted buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut killing Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah. This operation represents a dramatic shift in Israeli strategy. Not only have they finally liquidated an adversary they’ve long been capable of killing, they’ve also turned a deaf ear to their superpower patron of more than half a century. But at this stage, heeding Washington’s advice in war is like taking counsel from the angel of death. Just as the U.S. is no longer willing or able to win the wars it commits Americans to fight, the Joe Biden administration won’t let U.S. allies win wars either.

By ordering the strike on Nasrallah while attending the U.N. General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underscored the Jewish state’s independence from the global consensus that has resolved not to confront terrorists but rather to appease them, whether they’re plotting in the Middle East or living among the local populations of Western nations, including the United States. Israel’s attack also shows that almost everything U.S. and other Western civilian and military leaders have believed about the Middle East for the last 20 years was simply a collection of excuses for losing wars. The questions that senior policymakers and Pentagon officials, think-tank experts and journalists have deliberated over since the invasion of Iraq—questions about the nature of modern warfare and the proper conduct of international relations in a multipolar world, etc.—can now be set aside for good because they have been resolved definitively.

How the US could have prevented the Yemen War

Allison Minor

Introduction

The Yemen conflict is widely seen as a case where the United States could and should have done more to prevent the outbreak of war. Such admonitions come not only from analysts, but also from precisely those senior officials overseeing U.S. policy in the region in the lead-up to the war. In 2018, thirty former senior officials wrote an open letter with that argument, including President Obama’s national security advisor and CIA director. 1 In an interview shortly after leaving office, former Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco also cited U.S. actions in relation to the Yemen conflict as one of her primary regrets during her time in office.2 Ten years after the war began, it is clear the conflict has eroded U.S. and partner security in the region, creating one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises and entrenching an actor now capable of disrupting freedom of navigation in a critical global waterway.3

The first objective of this paper is to rigorously explore this argument and assess whether there were credible pathways for the United States to mitigate or prevent the outbreak of the Yemen war in 2015, given U.S. political realities, dynamics inside Yemen, and a nuanced understanding of the nature of U.S. influence. But I also seek to understand what we can learn from the U.S. experience in Yemen. Therefore, the second objective of this paper is to use the Yemen case to help delineate the kinds of levers the United States has to prevent violent conflict abroad, to identify obstacles to the U.S. ability to use those levers, and to assess existing U.S. conflict prevention initiatives. In particular, I will look at the 2019 Global Fragility Act (GFA) and the degree to which it has enabled reforms that could have helped the United States prevent or mitigate the Yemen war.

Army University PressMilitary Review, September-October 2024, v. 104, no. 5

Continuous Transformation

How I Corps Fights: Movement and Maneuver

The Agile U.S. Army Division in a Multidomain Environment

On Attrition: An Ontology for Warfare

Reinvesting in Techniques

The True Test of Mission Command

First World War Doctrine and the Modern War of Positions

Arctic Munition Operations: Munitions Safety and Suitability for Service

Artificial Intelligence in Modern Warfare: Strategic Innovation and Emerging Risks

Information Sharing and the Effectiveness of Peacekeeping Operations in Mali

The One-Hundred-Year War for Talent

The Musculoskeletal Imperative: Enhancing Combat Capability through Effective Injury Management

A Different Kind of War: The Unknown Story of the U.S. Navy’s Guerrilla Forces in World War II China

Medals of Honor: Master Sgt. Gary Gordon and Sgt. 1st Class Randall

Shughart

Escaping the New Gilded Age

DARON ACEMOGLU

Tech billionaires such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk are not just among the richest people in human history. They also are exceptionally powerful – socially, culturally, and politically. While this is partly a reflection of the social status that our society attaches to wealth in general, that is not the whole story.

What matters even more than simple wealth is that these particular billionaires are viewed as entrepreneurial geniuses who exhibit unique levels of creativity, daring, foresight, and expertise on a wide range of topics. Add the fact that many of them control major means of communication – namely, the key social-media platforms – and you have something almost unparalleled in recent history.

The image of the rich, brave businessman who transforms the world can be traced back at least to the robber barons of the Gilded Age. But one of the main sources of its contemporary popular appeal is Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, whose protagonist, John Galt, strives to re-create capitalism through the sheer force of his idealism and will.

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