A Bangladeshi Perspective On Restoring Ties With India – OpEd

P. K. Balachandran

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Jatiyo Nagorik Committee member Alauddin Mohammad calls for people to people interactions to end mutual suspicions

Alauddin Mohammad, a member of the Bangladesh National Citizens’ Committee Executive, seeks people-to-people contacts between Bangladesh and India to clear misunderstandings that had vitiated the relationship after the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a violent student-led movement in August this year.

While Bangladeshis saw the ouster of Hasina’s repressive regime as perfectly legitimate, India suspected that it was engineered either by Pakistan or the US or together, to nullify its traditionally close ties with Bangladesh particularly, Sheikh Hasina. New Delhi was particularly irked when the Interim Government led by the pro-US Chief Advisor Dr.Muhammad Yunus sought the extradition of Hasina from India to face criminal charges in a Dhaka court.

Feelings ran really high in India when Islamic radicals attacked Hindu temples and a Hindu monk, Chinmoy Das Bhramachari, was arrested and denied bail for allegedly dishonouring the Bangladesh flag. The Hindus of Chittagong had earlier held mass demonstrations demanding protection.

In Bangladesh, on the contrary, the popular narrative was that India was hatching a plot to use the Hindu minority in Bangladesh to discredit the Interim Government and eventually put protégé Hasina back in power. Relations between New Delhi and Dhaka stay frozen with no sign of an early thaw.

It is against that background that this writer talked to Alauddin Mohammad, a National Citizens (Jatiyo Nagorik) Committee member. The Jatiyo Nagorik Committee came into being in September seeking to unite diverse groups in Bangladesh to establish a new “political settlement for a democratic Bangladesh.” It aims to reform the State in line with the aspirations of the student-led mass uprising. It is run by a 55-member committee led by Nasir Uddin Patwary.

Meet Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel, Trump’s Nomination for FBI Director

Rebecca Schneid

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President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Kashyap “Kash” Patel—a lawyer and former Chief of Staff to the then Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller—to serve as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

“Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and 'America First' fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People,” Trump said in his Truth Social post announcing the nomination on Nov. 30. “He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution.”

If confirmed, Patel, 44, would replace FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was appointed by Trump in 2017. Wray still has three years remaining in his 10-year term, so in order for Patel to take over, Wray would need to resign or be fired. Patel will also need to be confirmed by the now Republican-controlled Senate.

Speaking out via X (formerly Twitter) on Dec. 1, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a Republican, said Wray had “failed at fundamental duties” of being the FBI director and argued it was time to “chart a new course” of “transparency and accountability.” Of Patel’s nomination, he added: “Kash Patel must prove to Congress he will reform and restore public trust in [the] FBI.”

Trump has shown special interest in the FBI and the position of FBI director after he fired former FBI Director James Comey in 2017 during a time when the agency was investigating the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. In Patel, though, Trump has appointed a potential director who has shown extreme loyalty to him.

Here is what to know about Patel in light of his prestigious nomination by Trump to lead America’s principal law enforcement agency.

China Deepens Its Engagement With Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan

Ghulam Ali

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On August 15, 2021, the Taliban took over Kabul and forced the U.S.-installed government of President Ashraf Ghani to escape overseas. From then on, the Taliban have ruled Afghanistan.

On November 23, 2024, a train with 55 carriages carrying tons of cargo arrived in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. The train began its journey in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, China, and passed through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, taking 22 days. This was the first direct train between the two countries after the COVID-19 pandemic, and on its return journey to China, the train will carry Afghan goods.

Afghanistan-China economic relations are expanding. Two-way trade in 2023 reached $1.3 billion, a 125 percent increase from previous years. Under an agreement signed between the two countries, from December 1, 2024, Afghan products have 100 percent duty-free access to the Chinese market. This will provide war-torn, impoverished Afghanistan with the opportunity to expand its exports.

While the train was en route, China dispatched its special envoy for Afghanistan, Yue Xiaoyong, to consult Islamabad, Kabul, and Dushanbe. On November 19, Yue held meetings with Pakistani officials. The meeting came at a time of tense relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan over accusations of cross-border terrorism. As in the past, China tried to ease the tensions between its two neighbors.

In Afghanistan, Yue met with Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s acting foreign minister. Yue also invited Afghanistan to a meeting of foreign ministers from neighboring countries, which Uzbekistan would organize.

China was the first country to send its ambassador to and receive an ambassador from Afghanistan, although it has not yet formally recognized the Taliban regime. Yue Xiaoyong’s interview with Tolo News, an Afghan news agency, implied that China’s recognition of the Taliban government would hinge on regional consensus and the Taliban’s satisfactory elimination of terrorist groups from Afghanistan’s territory.

Bangladesh’s Cyber Radicalization Crisis

Shafi Md Mostofa

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On August 5, 2024, a student-led revolution ended Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year authoritarian rule in Bangladesh. Despite the regime’s “zero tolerance” policy toward extremism, designed to legitimize its rule by positioning itself as the sole force in countering militancy, the approach failed to eliminate the threat. Instead, it seems that a conservative young generation emerged.

In the aftermath of Hasina’s fall, schoolchildren took to the streets advocating for a caliphate, and Hizb ut-Tahrir, a banned militant group, openly made the same demand. Simultaneously, the Islamic State’s Waliyat Al Hind released a statement titled “O Muslims of Bangladesh: Halfway Done, Now Strive for the Rule of Allah!” The group urged continued efforts to implement Islamic rule in Bangladesh, signaling the persistence of extremist narratives.

The challenge of militant Islam remains in Bangladesh, with many being radicalized online.

“Cyber radicalization” has been a major concern in Bangladesh’s efforts to counter violent extremism. A study of 250 detained militants found that 82 percent of young Bangladeshi militants were radicalized through various social networking sites. Radical content is easily accessible online and online radicalization is an ongoing process, particularly among urban and educated youth.

Extremist groups in Bangladesh have utilized various online tools and platforms to promote their ideologies, recruit new members, and coordinate their activities. Among the most commonly used platforms are social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. These platforms have been utilized by extremist groups to share propaganda, spread hate speech, and recruit new members.

Myanmar Rebel Leader Has Been Detained in China, Report Says

Sebastian Strangio

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Commanders of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), including the group’s commander Peng Daxun (left), take part in a meeting during a visit to territories controlled by the United Wa State Army in Shan State, Myanmar, January 24, 2024.Credit: Facebook/The Kokang

Chinese authorities have reportedly detained the leader of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which has inflicted serious losses on Myanmar’s military junta, in an apparent bid to halt the group’s offensives.

Citing sources in both Myanmar and China’s Yunnan Province, Myanmar Now reported yesterday that the MNDAA’s commander Peng Daxun is being held under house arrest in China. Peng (aka Peng Deren) was summoned to Yunnan for a meeting with a senior Chinese envoy late last month and then placed in custody. The report said that Peng has been allowed to remain in phone contact with his commanders inside Myanmar.

The MNDAA is a key member of the Three Brotherhood Alliance of resistance groups, which has captured a large amount of territory in Shan State since the launch of its Operation 1027 offensive in October 2023. In January, the MNDAA took back the ethnic Chinese-dominated Kokang region, from which the Myanmar military expelled it in 2009, and overran a number of border crossings with China. Then, in early August, it seized Lashio, the de facto capital of northern Shan State and the seat of the Myanmar military’s Northeast Regional Command.

In a subsequent report, RFA Burmese quoted one source as saying that the Chinese government is holding Peng in a bid to force him to “negotiate withdrawal of his troops from Lashio.”

While the first phase of the Operation 1027 offensive proceeded with China’s apparent approval, in large part because the MNDAA promised to shut down the online scam operations that had been set up by a junta proxy force in the Kokang region, China opposed the resumption in June of the offensive, which broke a ceasefire that it helped to negotiate in Kunming in January. Since the fall of Lashio, China has put increasing pressure on the MNDAA and the rest of the Three Brotherhood Alliance to end their offensive operations and open talks with the military junta.

Assessing the J-35A: The Chinese Air Force’s New Stealth Fighter

Rick Joe

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The 2024 Zhuhai Airshow presented a deluge of aircraft, drones, munitions, and systems, including displays of hardware in service with China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and PLA Air Force (PLAAF) or soon to enter service. The new J-35A – a stealthy fifth-generation fighter – was most widely covered.

The revelation of J-35A being intended for service in the PLAAF coincided with the Air Force’s 75th anniversary, and multiple different prototype airframes were flown over multiple days at Zhuhai. Subsequent coverage in official state media and on social networks followed, essentially “declassifying” the J-35A, as PLA norms go. At present, the J-35A has yet to enter frontline service.

The J-35A is an aircraft simultaneously both recent in entering the rumor cycle and long expected. This piece will review the background of the J-35A, and assess its characteristics and the rationale for its procurement.

From FC-31 to J-35A

In past articles, I’ve covered the aircraft types that preceded the J-35A. First, there was the original FC-31 developed by Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) as a technology demonstrator and potential export product, albeit without any PLA commitment at that time. Two flying prototypes and multiple static prototypes were developed, with the two differing prototypes flying in 2012 and 2016. During this time, the FC-31 was sometimes called the “J-31,” but the name was not official given the lack of PLA commitment.

In the mid-to-late 2010s, concrete rumors emerged that the FC-31 had been chosen by the PLA Navy (PLAN) to be developed into a carrierborne fifth generation fighter, with the possible name “J-35.” In October 2021, the first prototype of the J-35 flew, with pictures confirming traits of a carrierborne fighter such as an enlarged folding wing, reinforced landing gear, and a catapult launch bar, as well as other refinements such as an enlarged dorsal fuselage hump and a more complex sensor fitout.

The Trump Administration’s China Challenge

Rush Doshi

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Predicting the incoming Trump administration’s China policy—and China’s likely response—is a guessing game. In his first term, President Donald Trump’s transactional approach often differed from his team’s competitive approach. Those contrasting impulses will define his second term. But despite the uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration’s approach, the central challenge it faces is clear: positioning the United States to outcompete China as a critical window in the competition begins to close.

Early in the Biden administration, senior officials gathered together, read the intelligence, and concluded that the 2020s would be the decisive decade in U.S. competition with China. Without corrective action, the United States faced a growing risk of being surpassed by China technologically, dependent on it economically, and defeated militarily in the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait.

The new Trump team will take the United States through the second half of the decisive decade. There is much to be done. Trump’s national security picks, particularly Mike Waltz as national security adviser, Marco Rubio as secretary of state, and Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations, understand the task ahead and have views consistent with a growing bipartisan consensus on the need to outcompete China. Their most significant obstacle in carrying out a competitive approach may be Trump’s own penchant for deal-making, transactionalism, and flattery toward President Xi Jinping, which sometimes undercut his staff’s more hard-line approaches, including the expansion of export controls and a vocal defense of human rights, among other measures, the first time around.

Why Is China Purging Some of Its Most Senior Military Leaders?

Jon Herskovitz and Josh Xiao

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Chinese President Xi Jinping has devoted billions of dollars to his aim of transforming the military into a modern force by 2027. His government has also launched sweeping purges in the upper echelons of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in response to what US intelligence believes to be widespread corruption undermining Xi’s ambitions.

A major concern for Beijing appears to be graft that has eroded the quality of the weapons and capabilities of units such as the Rocket Force, which oversees the country’s missiles and nuclear arsenal, and would be instrumental should Beijing invade Taiwan.

Who has been purged?

Unlike other parts of the Chinese system, the military doesn’t often announce its corruption investigations, so it’s difficult to determine the extent of the purges. But there are clues from the removal of officials that have been revealed to the public.

From about mid-2023 until the start of 2024, the government abruptly unseated at least 16 senior military figures — including then-Defense Minister Li Shangfu, the highest-level military leader to be ousted since 2017. At least five were linked to the secretive Rocket Force that Xi revamped in 2015, and at least two were from the equipment department in charge of arming the military.

In late November, China suspended one of its top officials on the nation’s most-powerful military body led by Xi, ramping up the graft probe that has already led to the removal of several senior security officials.

In June, the Communist Party expelled Li and another former defense minister on corruption charges. Both men took bribes, failed to cooperate with investigations and set a bad example, according to state media outlets that closely guard what China releases to the outside world.

China is also investigating its current defense minister for corruption, the Financial Times reported in late November. Admiral Dong Jun is facing the inquiry as part of a broader probe into graft, the newspaper reported, citing current and former US officials familiar with the situation that it did not name.

America Must Get Its Mind Right to Defeat China

James Holmes

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The War of 1812 is a mindbender among naval wars. Seldom does a society mistake defeat for victory and codify the loser strategy as the playbook for future conflicts. But so it was for the United States for most of the nineteenth century. Americans celebrated a stirring string of single-ship battles early in the war, confusing tactical triumphs with strategic and political results. Forgotten was the fact that the foe, Great Britain and its Royal Navy, had mounted an effective blockade as the conflict went on—confining those U.S. Navy frigates to port and consigning them to tactical and operational irrelevance. U.S. commerce wilted. This was no victory.

If anything the War of 1812 was a guide to how not to wage war at sea. Americans reared on the minuteman tradition believed that the best strategy was to improvise a fleet at the outset of war, take it out to sea, and thrash the preeminent navy of the day. It was safe and economical to neglect the navy in peacetime.

Such a non-strategy amounts to begging for defeat, but it was enshrined in popular lore nonetheless. You still hear echoes of the boosterism. To this day tour guides on board USS Constitution at Charlestown Navy Yard inform visitors that the sail frigate is Boston’s only undefeated sports team. That’s true—but it obscures the fact that a lot of sea battles remained unfought because Constitution and other ships of war couldn’t get out to sea and into action late in the war.

They were strategically inert however impressive their tactical feats of arms.

The Secret Pentagon War Game That ​Offers a Stark​ Warning for Our Times

William Langewiesche

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Nuclear confrontation is fundamentally a form of communication — even after the first blows fall. Some in government see it as a language and revel in its complexity. This has been so ever since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 and the Soviet Union responded by testing its own device four years later. The ensuing dialogues have, with varying degrees of subtlety, involved tests, bans on tests, arms agreements, embargoes, clandestine and nonclandestine technology transfers and the occasional grand speech — a high-stakes conversation in which all sides have understood the fearsome price of miscommunication. These exchanges echo around the edges of a devil’s spiral. At the top of the spiral stand the preparations meant as deterrents. At the bottom stands all-out nuclear war.

The descent — in the language of nuclear war, an escalation — is shaped by grave uncertainties. How well do my enemies understand me, and how well do I understand them? Furthermore, how does my understanding of their understanding affect their understanding of me? These and similar questions stand like the endless images in opposing mirrors, but without diminishing in size. The threat they pose is immediate and real. It leaves us to grapple with the central truth of the nuclear age: The sole way for humanity to survive is to communicate clearly, to sustain that communication indefinitely and to understand how readily communications can be misunderstood. Crucial to handling the attendant distrust are fallback communications integral to the art of de-escalation — an art that has been neglected and is now dangerously foundering.

After the Cold War, the two great powers paid less attention to the matter. Surprise attacks were their main concern, but they assumed that the existing warning systems and retaliatory capabilities were sufficient to ward off such events. At the Pentagon, ambitious officers chose some other track to advance their careers. Terrorism, cyberwarfare, even global warming — that’s where the action lay.

America Is Cursed by a Foreign Policy of Nostalgia

Nancy Okail and Matthew Duss

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U.S. foreign policy is adrift between the old order and one that has yet to be defined. Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election awakened many in Washington to the reality that despite the political elite’s presumption of an unassailable foreign policy consensus, many Americans questioned the assumptions that had guided decades of the U.S. approach to the world—in particular, the idea that an international order backed by American military hegemony was self-evidently worth maintaining, no matter the cost. The 2024 election has confirmed that 2016 was not an anomaly. The old Washington consensus is dead.

But Trump’s “America first” approach is not a viable alternative. Despite often being mislabeled as isolationism, what Trump offers is in fact aggressive unilateralism, or what the political scientist Barry Posen has termed “illiberal hegemony”: a vision of the United States unbound by rules and unashamedly self-interested, no longer getting ripped off by a self-dealing and entrenched Washington political establishment and free-riding international allies and clients. In his speech to the Republican convention, Vice President–elect JD Vance built on this theme, weaving his own personal story of disillusionment with the Iraq war, in which he served, into a broader narrative of elite failure and impunity. Democrats neglected to respond adequately (even bafflingly touting the endorsement of one of the Iraq war’s key architects, former Vice President Dick Cheney), leaving a lane wide open for Trump to present himself, however cynically, as the antiwar candidate.

Americans need an alternative to the choice between “America first” unilateralism or “America is back” nostalgia. Putting a new coat of paint on the old liberal internationalism will not do—neither for Americans nor for most of the world’s countries and peoples, who understandably see U.S. leaders’ appeals to a “rules-based” order as a thin varnish for an order ruled, and often bent or broken, with impunity by the United States and its friends. Progressives and Democrats now have an opportunity—and obligation—to map a better way forward.

Russia’s war in the grey zone is chipping away at Nato

Edward Lucas

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An insidious form of conflict, far subtler than all-out combat, is on the rise. It involves hired thugs, spy drones and seabed sabotage. Such attacks are hard to attribute but they target the very essence of western defence, writes Edward Lucas

Nerves are jangling in Whitehall, and beyond. The security of Britain and its allies feels precarious in a way unknown for decades. A seasoned security source speaks of an “apocalyptic” mood. The news is bad enough from Ukraine. But problems closer to home, in the “grey zone” between peace and war, are sparking worries too.

This week unidentified drones buzzed four US air force bases in Britain. Another one shadowed the HMS Queen Elizabeth as it visited Hamburg. In Lithuania, a DHL cargo plane crashed at Vilnius airport, killing the pilot; the disaster follows three attempts to plant incendiary devices on other DHL flights, including one to Britain. In a naval stand-off in the straits between Denmark and Sweden, Nato warships confront a Chinese freighter suspected of seabed sabotage. A Russian missile corvette lurks nearby.

Proving hostile state activity in the grey zone is hard. Sometimes ordinary criminals, hooligans, pranksters or simple carelessness may be to blame. If these attacks are hard to attribute, they are even harder to stop. Our system is based on trust and openness, easily exploited. But the escalating scope, intensity and frequency of the attacks shows that we are failing to deter them.

Ukraine’s Security Now Depends on Europe

Elie Tenenbaum and Leo Litra

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Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election has set the stage for a massive shock in Europe. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to move quickly toward cease-fire talks in Ukraine and to negotiate a peace deal with Russia, the aggressor in the conflict. Should his administration follow through on those pledges, the outcome will have sweeping ramifications, not just for Ukraine but for European security more broadly. Europeans—including Ukrainians—cannot be left out of the discussions that will determine their future. Resolute European countries must now come together to form a coalition, claim a seat at the table, and make their conditions heard, loud and clear.

To start, the European coalition must insist that the inclusion of credible and effective security guarantees to Ukraine is a nonnegotiable precondition to any serious talks. And Europe must be prepared to provide these guarantees itself, deploying troops to Ukrainian territory to serve as a deterrent to a future large-scale Russian offensive. Without an ironclad assurance that Ukraine will remain protected, the cure of a cease-fire may prove much worse than the disease of war—and an inadequate settlement may well doom not just Ukraine but the continent as a whole.

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

The war has not been going well for Ukraine. After its failed offensive in the summer of 2023, Kyiv tried a surprise incursion into the Kursk region of Russia in August 2024, but it has not been able to tip the tactical balance in its favor on the frontlines. Instead, it faces ever-greater problems. Since last summer, Moscow has activated more troops from its national guard and reserves, and just weeks ago, it brought in thousands of North Korean “special forces,” on loan from the regime in Pyongyang. Russian forces have made incremental gains on the war’s main front, especially in the Donetsk region, where they enjoy quantitative advantages in equipment, ammunition, and troop strength. Ukraine’s shortage of air defense systems allows Russian manned and unmanned aircraft to conduct reconnaissance and to take out any high-value Ukrainian targets that are within shooting range, impeding the force concentration necessary for offensive action.

Israel’s New Approach to Tunnels: A Paradigm Shift in Underground Warfare

John Spencer

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Before the war against Hamas in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces were one of the most prepared militaries in the world for underground warfare. The IDF were the only army to have a full brigade-sized unit dedicated to training, manning, equipping, researching, developing new technologies and tactics, learning, and adapting solely for underground warfare. Still, the challenges they faced early in their campaign in Gaza, many of which they struggled initially to overcome, speaks to the incredible complexity of subterranean warfare. Their responses to these challenges signal a paradigm shift in modern approaches to underground warfare.

The Long List of Underground Challenges

One of the main reasons the IDF were unprepared for Gaza’s underground spaces was simply that no military had faced anything like it in the past—not even Israeli ground forces. The IDF faced a Hamas military organization that had spent over fifteen years engineering the infrastructure of an entire region—to include over twenty major cities—for war, with the group’s political-military strategy resting on a vast and expensively constructed subterranean network under Gaza’s population centers. The Hamas underground network, often called the “Gaza metro,” includes between 350 and 450 miles of tunnels and bunkers at depths ranging from just beneath apartment complexes, mosques, schools, hospitals, and other civilian structures to over two hundred feet underground. There are estimates of over five thousand separate shafts leading down into Hamas subsurface spaces. In past wars, where underground environments were used, the tunnel networks were subordinate to the surface and were not built solely under population centers mostly to be used as massive human shields.

IDF investigations and captured Hamas documents produced reports that it took Hamas a year to dig one kilometer of standard tunnel at a per-kilometer cost of $275,000. A number of factors—size, type, and function, for examples—can raise the costs well beyond that of a standard mobility tunnel. The variety of tunnels in Gaza makes it difficult to estimate the underground network’s overall cost, but Hamas reportedly spent $90 million to build just three dozen tunnels in 2014, and some analysts place the network’s total cost at over $1 billion.

Russia’s war in the grey zone is chipping away at Nato

Edward Lucas

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Nerves are jangling in Whitehall, and beyond. The security of Britain and its allies feels precarious in a way unknown for decades. A seasoned security source speaks of an “apocalyptic” mood. The news is bad enough from Ukraine. But problems closer to home, in the “grey zone” between peace and war, are sparking worries too.

This week unidentified drones buzzed four US air force bases in Britain. Another one shadowed the HMS Queen Elizabeth as it visited Hamburg. In Lithuania, a DHL cargo plane crashed at Vilnius airport, killing the pilot; the disaster follows three attempts to plant incendiary devices on other DHL flights, including one to Britain. In a naval stand-off in the straits between Denmark and Sweden, Nato warships confront a Chinese freighter suspected of seabed sabotage. A Russian missile corvette lurks nearby.

Proving hostile state activity in the grey zone is hard. Sometimes ordinary criminals, hooligans, pranksters or simple carelessness may be to blame. If these attacks are hard to attribute, they are even harder to stop. Our system is based on trust and openness, easily exploited. But the escalating scope, intensity and frequency of the attacks shows that we are failing to deter them.

President Vladimir Putin and former Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu after the Victory Day military parade on May 9. Putin’s ambitions go well beyond the obliteration of Ukraine as a sovereign, sustainable state

AP

Take the current stand-off in the Baltic Sea. Its chilly waters are becoming Europe’s geopolitical hotspot. Countries there feel an existential threat from a revanchist, militarised Russia. Attacks on them by land, sea, air and online are escalating.

FPV Drones With Trench Warfare — Ukraine War Heralds New Military Tech But Reminds Of WW Tactics

Sumit Ahlawat

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As the grinding Ukraine war achieves another grim milestone of completing 1000 days, military planners worldwide are taking notes and adopting their battle strategies accordingly.

This war has broken many myths about 21st-century warfare, like the misplaced belief that trench warfare and heavy artillery are things of the past, infantry will play no role in modern war, MIRV Ballistic missiles are only for deterrence, and wars stretching years and fought along hundreds of miles-long frontlines are unthinkable.

These are just some of the doctrines that were touted as gospel truths about the Art of Modern Warfare but now appear outdated. This war has pushed into oblivion weapon systems believed to be crucial for a swift victory and heralded the arrival of new low-cost technologies that will dominate warfare in this century.

The Russia-Ukraine war, variously described as a ‘War of Attrition’ and ‘A Meat-Grinder,’ is also unique in many ways, qualitatively different from the wars we have gotten used to in the twenty-first century.

Most of the wars fought in this century, indeed during the last more than three decades, were essentially asymmetric wars fought between two supremely unequal adversaries. The superior power was able to establish air superiority and capture most of the territory within days of the first strike. The other side had no option but to relent and retreat so that it could survive to fight another day.

Be it the twenty-year-long Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, the many wars of Israel in the Middle East, or even the last Soviet war in Afghanistan, one side simply dispersed and disappeared, only to regroup and come back stronger for guerilla warfare. There was no active frontline, no pitched battles for control of every inch of land, no recurring waves of infantry charges against unremitting machine fire, tactics we have now come to associate with the two great World Wars fought in the first half of last century.

Syrian Rebels’ Surprise Offensive Highlights Assad Regime’s Weakness

Natasha Hall

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On November 27, Syrian opposition-armed groups launched a surprise offensive. With Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in the lead, rebels in northwest Syria quickly swept through the western Aleppo countryside. With little to no resistance from the Syrian regime and their allies, rebels were able to capture Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, within a day. By the evening of November 30, the rebels had taken over 100 kilometers of the strategic M5 highway linking Aleppo and Damascus. This is the first rebel offensive and a major shift in frontlines in years. The last significant change was in early 2020 when the regime displaced nearly a million people into Idlib from other parts of the province and Hama province.

Q1: What led to the surprise rebel offensive?

A1: Prior to this offensive, the frontlines in Syria’s long-running war had been relatively frozen for four years. To maintain those frontlines, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah protected the Assad regime, while Turkey preserved the opposition-held northern parts of the country, and the United States maintained forces in northeastern and eastern Syria.

That fragile stasis collapsed as Assad’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, have been significantly weakened. In recent months, Israel decimated Hezbollah leadership and rank and file and penetrated highly secure locations in Iran. Hours before the offensive in Syria, Hezbollah struck a ceasefire deal with Israel, in which Israeli forces vowed to prevent weapon transfers to Hezbollah, and they have continued to strike arms shipments in Syria and Lebanon.

Number of Ukrainian Soldiers Accused of Abandoning Positions Soars

Ellie Cook

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The number of Ukrainian soldiers deserting their positions has soared in 2024, according to a new report, as Kyiv contends with persistent Russian advances and uncertainty over what the new year will hold for its war effort.

More Ukrainian soldiers deserted between January and the end of October this year than in the previous two years of full-scale war with Russia, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

Kyiv prosecutors opened 60,000 cases against soldiers for leaving their positions between the start of the year and October, according to the report, totaling nearly twice the number in 2022 and 2023 combined.

Over 100,000 soldiers have been charged for desertion since February 2022, The Associated Press reported late last month, citing Ukraine's prosecutor general's office. Newsweek has reached out to the Ukrainian military for comment via email.

Ukrainian soldiers on November 11, 2024, in Toretsk, Ukraine. The number of Ukrainian soldiers deserting their positions has soared in 2024, according to a new report. Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images

Throughout 2024, Moscow has made significant gains in Ukraine's east, advancing at its fastest pace since the early weeks of the war and claiming key settlements like Avdiivka, a former Ukrainian stronghold in the eastern Donetsk region, in February. The Kremlin is now threatened Pokrovsk, a strategic hub for Ukrainian troops not far from the Donetsk border with the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region.

Ruble 'panic attack'—Putin faces gloomy Russian headlines

Russia and Ukraine, nearly three years into the all-out war effort, have both struggled to add new recruits to their armed forces.

The Sovereignty Code

J.B. Books

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The United States needs a national security strategy reset. WWII ended 79 years ago, and the U.S. has engaged in some form of conflict for roughly 61 of those 79 years. The post-WWII era has been one of almost continual conflict and to what end? Republican and Democrat Administrations alike have made a practice of rushing into conflict absent decisive strategy and without achieving decisive outcomes.

The post-WWII rules-based order (RBO), centered around the United Nations and other international institutions, is often credited with having provided greater stability and peace in the world since WWII. But this is not true. It is an illusion. The world avoided large scale violent global conflict, but small-scale conflicts in the form of civil wars, border conflicts, regional wars, and terrorism have raged since 1945.

False hopes regarding the rules-based order and its effectiveness have warped the West’s view of war and its understanding of why the Allies were able to achieve a durable victory in WWII.

The Allies won WWII because they broke the will of the Axis powers through the sheer magnitude of death and destruction dealt to their civilian populations, not just to their armies. But ever since then, the United States has so feared conflicts escalating into vicious interstate wars that—perversely—it has tried over and over to fight limited wars for limited objectives, believing that such wars can either achieve our objectives or bring diplomacy into focus.

Counterintuitively, however, limited wars fail to result in long-lasting diplomatic solutions because they are limited. The U.S. fails to make war costly enough to collapse the will of our enemies and, because the U.S. is unwilling to wage war that is sufficiently violent and destructive, war doesn’t deliver decisive outcomes.

It is time for the United States to try a different tack and, by doing so, to also put itself in the position of having to use military power less frequently. With an actual framework to help guide the application of force, the U.S. would also be able to bring greater coherence to how and when it wages war and supports allies and partners.

How Elon Musk Became a Kingmaker

Simon Shuster

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Hang on a minute. Whom did we just elect? The Republican ticket had two names at the top: Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. But parts of this delirious November created the impression that someone else has taken hold of our collective destiny.

We already knew him in various roles—the guy who bought Twitter and fired more than half its staff, the inventor who brought the space program back to life, the carmaker whose new trucks make kids stop and stare on the sidewalk. All of a sudden, Elon Musk had moved into the realm of politics, headlining rallies, steering government appointments, shaping the agenda for the next President of the United States.

For more than three years he’s been one of the world’s richest and most powerful men. Markets soar and tumble on his tweets. Astronauts fly in his spaceships. Armies advance with the signals from his satellites. Conspiracy theories go mainstream through his embrace. But it was only in the spotlight of these elections that the full extent of his influence came into view.

Not since the age of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate who greased FDR’s ascent nearly a century ago, has a private citizen loomed so large over so many facets of American life at once, pulling the nation’s culture, its media, its economy, and now its politics into the force field of his will. Standing beside him, even Trump can seem almost in awe, less of a boss than a companion to the man for whom this planet and its challenges are not big enough.

Syrian Military Launches Counterattacks in Attempt to Halt Insurgents’ Surprise Advance

KAREEM CHEHAYEB

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BEIRUT — The Syrian military rushed reinforcements to the northwest and launched airstrikes Sunday in an attempt to push back insurgents who seized the country’s largest city of Aleppo, as Iran pledged to help the government counter the surprise offensive.

Iran has been a key political and military ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the country's long-running civil war, but it was unclear how Tehran would support Damascus in this latest flareup that began Wednesday. Insurgents led by jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham launched a two-pronged attack on Aleppo and the countryside around Idlib, before moving toward neighboring Hama province.

On Sunday, government troops created a “strong defensive line” in northern Hama, according to Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as they attempted to stall the insurgents' momentum. Meanwhile, jets pounded the cities of Idlib and Aleppo, killing at least 15 people, according to a group that operates in opposition-held areas.

The surge in fighting has raised the prospect of another violent, destabilizing front reopening in the Middle East at a time when Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, conflicts that have repeatedly threatened to ignite an even wider regional war. It also risks drawing Russia and Turkey — each with its own interests to protect in Syria — into direct heavy fighting against each other.

The insurgents announced their offensive Wednesday, just as a ceasefire between the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group and Israel began, raising some hope that tensions in the region might be calming.

Bowen: Syria's rebel offensive is astonishing - but don't write off Assad

Jeremy Bowen

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Rebel groups launched an offensive against Syria's government on 27 November, and have since taken control of large parts of Aleppo

The reignited war in Syria is the latest fallout from the turmoil that has gripped the Middle East since the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October last year.

The attacks, and Israel’s response, upended the status quo. Events in Syria in the last few days are more proof that the war gripping the Middle East is escalating, not subsiding.

During a decade of war after 2011, Bashar al-Assad’s rule survived because he was prepared to break Syria to save the regime he had inherited from his father.

To do that he relied on powerful allies, Russia, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah. They intervened on his side against rebel groups that ranged from the jihadist extremists of Islamic State to militias supported by the US and the rich Gulf monarchies.

Now Iran is reeling from severe blows inflicted by Israel, with US support, on its security in the Middle East. Its ally Hezbollah, which used to send its best men to fight for the Assad regime in Syria, has been crippled by Israel’s attacks. Russia has launched air strikes in the last few days against the rebel offensive in Syria – but its military power is almost entirely earmarked to fight the war in Ukraine.

The war in Syria did not end. It dropped out of the place it used to occupy in headline news, partly because of turbulence across the Middle East and beyond, and because it is almost impossible for journalists to get into the country.

In places the war was suspended, or frozen, but Syria is full of unfinished business.

Defeating Hezbollah Inside Lebanon Is Only Half the Battle

Michael Rubin

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Israel continues to battle Hezbollah, with diplomatic efforts for a ceasefire scuttled by the travel freeze that International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan imposed on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tries to uproot Hezbollah infrastructure and eradicate missiles acquired or tunnels dug under the watchful eyes of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), it has made significant progress. With the deaths of much of Hezbollah’s leadership, many in spectacular ways, the group’s bluster is gone or empty.

Certainly, Israeli leaders can celebrate Hezbollah’s demise in Lebanon and the United States, France, and United Nations can seek to negotiate Hezbollah’s disarmament inside Lebanon to put Lebanon into compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, but that alone addresses only half the Hezbollah problem.

Lebanon’s greatest export has always been its people. Historically, the country’s Shi’ite community was largely feudal. Shi’ites were subsistence farmers with little hope for political power or advancement. In The Innocents Abroad, American writer Mark Twain described his 1867 travels through Lebanon to Palestine; the Shi’ites whom he surely saw did not merit his inclusion. With little prospect for upward mobility, many Shi’ites emigrated to engage in business and trade, especially elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Today, the Lebanese diaspora population just in Brazil and Argentina is equal to Lebanon’s population. Not all Lebanese emigrants were Shi’ite, of course, but they were disproportionately so.

Defining the Indefinable: A Critical Analysis of Current Irregular Warfare Doctrine

Duc Duclos 

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This article originally appeared on Strategy Central on November 19, 2024. The article is reprinted here with the permission of Strategy Central.

“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” — Socrates

“Precision of language leads to precision in thought.” — Anonymous

Introduction

On November 1st, 2024, the Army University Press YouTube channel released a comprehensive examination of irregular warfare doctrine. This professionally produced video, part of the Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate’s ongoing doctrinal review, weaves together combat footage, historical imagery, and dynamic graphics with insights from academic scholars, military practitioners, and senior leaders. While presenting an authoritative view of irregular warfare’s doctrinal evolution, the video inadvertently demonstrates the SOF community’s broader challenges in conceptualizing this complex form of conflict. Through its attempt to capture every aspect of irregular warfare, the video reflects the current definitional challenges facing military doctrine writers and practitioners.

The video’s examination begins with Clausewitz’s enduring principle that “the character and form of war are constantly changing, yet its fundamental nature remains the same.” This observation proves particularly relevant as the U.S. military adapts irregular warfare capabilities—honed through two decades of counterterrorism operations—to address Great Power Competition. However, the video’s subsequent attempts to define irregular warfare reveal definitional challenges shared by current joint doctrine, suggesting systemic issues in how the military conceptualizes irregular warfare. These challenges extend beyond mere terminology to fundamental questions about the nature of irregular warfare itself.

The term “irregular warfare” has undergone a significant transformation, evolving from a straightforward descriptor of warfare conducted by irregular forces to an increasingly complex doctrinal concept. This evolution mirrors broader changes in military thinking, where simple descriptive terms often evolve into technical concepts laden with specific requirements and restrictions. The video demonstrates how this transformation, while attempting to add precision, often achieves the opposite effect—creating confusion rather than clarity.

Military Applications of Autonomy and AI

Mick Ryan

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For my regular readers, this is a slight variation on my normal topics. And this wasn’t the article I had intended to write this week. But, while watching the third chapter in the Star War prequel trilogy over the weekend, I could not help myself. Fiction, and science fiction, can help us think about contemporary challenges.

Next year, the third prequel film in the Star Wars saga, Chapter III: Revenge of the Sith, celebrates 20 years since its release. The movie, which provides the closing chapter in the prequel trilogy that explored the life of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of Darth Vader, was a commercial success, taking over $840 million world-wide.

Most rankings of the Star Wars films place Revenge of the Sith somewhere in the bottom half of all Star Wars movies released to date. A 2024 Buzzfeed ranking had it at eighth of 11 movies (Solo takes last place), Entertainment Weekly in 2023 ranked it in 6th place, Space.com put it in 10th (ouch) and the Rotten Tomatoes ‘Tomatometer’ has it in 7th. So, it is fair to say that the film has its lovers and haters, as do the prequel and sequel trilogies more generally.

There have been hundreds of articles written about this subject in the past two decades. To get a sense of this debate, I have included some of these pieces below:

I am sure I could write pages and pages to justify which Star Wars films I love (generally the original trilogy, Rogue One and the prequels) and the ones I don’t love as much (the rest). But that is not the aim of this piece.

Let me go back a step. Last night, I sat down to watch Revenge of the Sith As always, the movie provides outstanding visuals and a good conclusion to the Anakin Skywalker trilogy, even if the dialog is shaky at times (“no, it’s because I love YOU so much”).

Anyway, as I watched the opening sequence with Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi conducting their approach to the Separatist ship on which Count Dooku and General Grievous are holding the abducted Chancellor Palpatine, it occurred to me that the scene contained a plethora of issues with autonomous systems, as well as human-machine and human-AI teaming. Key themes in this opening sequence might be useful for current military leaders and those involved in developing new tactics, strategies and force constructs for the 21st century.