Diplomacy & Crisis News

The prospect of an Israeli military incursion into Gaza is worrying because of the massive civilian casualties that will no doubt occur. Israelis have every right to strike Hamas, which has established its headquarters and infrastructure deep inside civilian population centers, often beneath apartment buildings currently bearing the brunt of bombardments. 

This conflict is different from others in the past, not just because of Hamas’ unimaginable brutality but also because the United States is directly involved. Over twenty-seven Americans were murdered, and a dozen or more are feared kidnapped. The Biden administration has sent two aircraft carrier strike groups to the eastern Mediterranean, providing itself with policy options. For one, it is a deterrent to others tempted to join the fight, such as Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies.

Hamas wants Israel to invade Gaza; it is goading it to do so. From its perspective, the greater the number of civilian Palestinian casualties, the better it is for Hamas, as it distracts from its barbaric attacks on Israeli civilians and presents it with the opportunity and justification to kill more Israelis. Hamas perceives this as a win-win situation since it is willing to sacrifice countless residents of Gaza.

The Biden administration can intercede to create an opening that may result in a pause in the conflict that could allow the civilians in Gaza to get a respite. In collaboration with Israel, the President can call for a temporary cessation of the bombardment and demand for all hostages, Americans, Israelis, and other nationalities, to be released unconditionally within 24 hours.  

Such a demand will certainly pit the Hamas leadership against the population of Gaza. This is more the case with Israel demanding the evacuation of northern Gaza, a stipulation that will cause further civilian pain. Before the conflict started last week, polling suggested that most Gazans opposed breaking the ceasefire with Israel. Yet, Hamas is not a democratic body. Though many may be sympathetic to Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 with an iron fist, civilians are not responsible for the organization’s decisions, nor can they hold it to account in any meaningful way. 

At this stage, a U.S. diplomatic intervention that buys time and allows cooler minds to prevail, no doubt complemented by furious behind-the-scenes maneuvering, is the best possibility to prevent a catastrophe. The Israeli war aim is clear: the destruction of Hamas. A respite in the bombardment allows the Gazans to choose: either the leadership of Hamas agrees to leave, probably to Iran, or the war resumes. 

In other words, this may resemble the 1982 departure of the Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO, and its leader, Yasser Arafat, following Israel’s siege of Beirut. Arafat then ended up in Tunis and, years later, negotiated with Israel a peace deal. Hamas and Iran agree entirely: they both want the destruction of the Israeli state. Hence, Tehran is probably the only place in the world where the Hamas leadership can feel safe.

The Israelis may not be completely satisfied with a deal that does not end up punishing the Hamas leadership, but it is a compromise that will avoid many more deaths. The eviction of Hamas may also usher in a new era for Gaza and allow its citizens, aided by the international community, to make new choices.

Similarly, these events are going to transform Israel. The moral bankruptcy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership and its extreme-right allies has been exposed once and for all. The balance of power in Israel is likely to shift away from the right, the settlers, and the religious groups that have usurped the state and its institutions. 

Nothing is starker than the comparison between Netanyahu and his brother Yonatan, who died in the 1976 Entebbe rescue effort. One can argue that his brother sacrificed himself for his country, and “Bibi” sacrificed his country for himself. Netanyahu relentlessly pursued judicial reforms to protect his and his coalition’s interests to the detriment of other pressing concerns, leading to this week’s crisis. 

Israel, as in the past, will work things through. But, it will take time to untie Palestine’s Gordian Knot. This may be an overly optimistic prognosis, but it tops the other potential outcomes. Before one can start dreaming, the Biden administration has to follow through with the smart decisions it has made so far. It has earned Israel’s trust and deployed a formidable force that will deter others from joining. Therefore, it alone in the world can let in a ray of hope over a bleak region. 

Henri J. Barkey is the Cohen professor of international relations at Lehigh University and an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council of Foreign Relations.

Image: Anas-Mohammed / Shutterstock

Much has changed in the U.S.-China relationship over the past three decades as China has increased its global economic and political influence, built modern military forces, and grown to be the world’s second-largest economy. One thing that has not changed, however, is that Taiwan is still the most likely trigger of a U.S.-China war.

There are many irritants in U.S.-China relations, but very few things that would foment a military conflict. China and the United States will not go to war against each other over the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) economic coercion, spy balloons, U.S. restrictions on the sale of advanced technology to China, Chinese cyber-theft, repression in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, China holding U.S. citizens as hostages, China’s rapid economic growth, alleged U.S. attempts to subvert the Chinese government, U.S. security cooperation in the region, a Chinese naval base in one of the Pacific island states, statements by Americans that “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people,” or China’s nuclear weapons buildup.

The South China Sea deserves mention as a “flashpoint.” An incident between U.S. and Chinese ships or aircraft could escalate into hostilities. Generally, however, Beijing is maintaining if not gradually gaining ground, and this trend is unaffected by occasional U.S. “freedom of navigation” sail-bys. 

A war on the Korean Peninsula could result in Chinese and U.S. forces shooting at each other, but only if both sides took a series of wrong turns.

In general, three contingencies would cause Beijing to consider going to war. The first is the emergence of a situation that endangers the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) monopoly over political power in China and that could be neutralized by opting for war. The second is the killing of PRC nationals by operatives of a foreign government. Probably a large number; note that the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 by U.S. aircraft, which killed three Chinese, did not lead to U.S.-China hostilities. A third possible casus belli would be foreign seizure of what Beijing considers to be Chinese territory.

Two of these contingencies would apply to Taiwan. The narrative built by the CCP forces it to resist at all costs the permanent political separation of Taiwan from China, or else the party by its own criteria proves itself unfit to rule China. Faced with a choice between fighting a war it did not think it could win and acquiescing to Taiwan’s independence, the regime would likely see the former as offering the better chance of keeping the CCP in power.

Beijing also defines Taiwan as Chinese territory that would be “lost” if it became the Republic of Taiwan—particularly valuable territory, as Taiwan by itself is the world’s twentieth-largest economy.

For the United States, the most likely path to a war on the western rim of the Pacific Ocean is the need to defend a friend or ally that is under attack. Although not an ally, Taiwan is a U.S. protectorate, and U.S. ally Japan has a vital interest in Taiwan remaining free of PRC control.

There are at least three crucial variables at play. The first is Taipei’s cross-Strait policy—whether it remains cautious or openly drives toward de jure independence. The second variable is Beijing’s assessment of what actions by Taiwan would constitute intolerable movement toward independence. The third variable is China’s perception of U.S. intentions toward Taiwan: whether Washington is pushing for or trying to restrain independence. A final important variable is the cross-Strait military balance. Although the certainty of winning is not the determinative issue for Beijing, it would be easier for China to opt for war if the chances of operational success are high rather than low.

How Washington, Taipei, and Beijing manage the cross-Strait dispute will make the difference between a U.S.-China war probably occurring and probably not occurring in the near future.

Denny Roy is a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

Image: Hung Chung Chih / Shutterstock.com

In the last few days, the conflict between Hamas and Israel has reached a new level of escalation that has killed thousands of people, and the risk of more lives being lost is rising. Hamas’ Operation Al Asqa Flood has enraged and embarrassed the Israeli military and intelligence services. Now, Israel wants to make the point that it will never allow Hamas to take this initial blow as a sign of Israeli weakness. Immediately after Hamas’ offensive, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war. Now a full-scale invasion of Gaza seems imminent. 

Israel’s military command has ordered Palestinians living in the north to evacuate to the other parts of the Gaza Strip within twenty-four hours. It dropped leaflets from the sky to warn people of new air strikes. Once Gaza’s only power station ran out of fuel, people had to use private generators for limited electricity. This has only increased the suffering of the civilians who are now torn between fleeing or remaining in their homes. Israel has imposed a new “complete” blockade from the border crossing and has refused to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza until its abducted civilians are returned. Early in the fighting, Hamas boasted that it captured over 100 people in its attacks, many of whom are foreigners, including Americans. 

Israeli minister of energy and infrastructure Israel Katz stated that no humanitarian aid will be delivered to the besieged territory until Israeli captives are freed. 

“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water pump will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. And no one will preach us morals.”

Hamas has claimed that thirteen of its prisoners have been killed by Israeli jets bombing the densely populated area. It has also informed Israel that if it persists with its attacks that result in Palestinian deaths, it will “execute” civilian hostages. 

The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades had warned this week that “every targeting of our people without warning will be met with the execution of one of the civilian hostages.” In a televised address, U.S. president Joe Biden confirmed that at least over a dozen Americans had been killed and others are currently in the hands of Hamas. The United States is supporting Israel in its war. Hours after Hamas’ multi-strike force hit Israel, the United States delivered munitions for the Israeli army and a naval strike group led by the U.S. Navy’s most formidable supercarrier,  the USS Gerald R. Ford, arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is a message that Washington will defend Israel against its enemies. But will it endorse an Israeli invasion of Gaza that could lead to the Israel Defense Forces re-occupying the enclave? 

No safe passage for Palestinian civilians to leave Gaza

The White House National Security Council coordinator, John Kirby, had recently said that Israel’s call for civilians to leave Gaza so quickly is a “tall order, given how densely populated it is.” The Gaza Strip is home to a little over 2 million people. For many of them to survive the Israeli incursion into Gaza, there needs to be corridors for them to escape to. The only other country that Gaza shares a border with is Egypt, and that border crossing is still functioning despite being bombed by the Israeli Air Force. Washington and Cairo are reportedly in talks to open the Rafah crossing for American nationals and other foreigners. The Egyptian government has said it is willing to create a humanitarian corridor to supply food and medical supplies but has thus far rejected allowing a massive wave of refugees to escape into the Sinai Peninsula. According to U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken, the discussion for establishing a humanitarian corridor is “ongoing” but “understandably complicated.” 

The United Nations has said that Israel’s order for Palestinians to flee from the north is “impossible” and cannot be done without “devastating humanitarian consequences.” It is calling for the decision to be reversed.

The war has now killed over 1,300 Israelis and 1,800 Palestinians with many thousands more wounded. Reports from Human Rights Watch assert that Israel’s military is using white phosphorus in its operations in Gaza, which increases the risk of serious and long-term injuries. 

The probability of an invasion is rising

If Israel chooses to invade, it may be a partial one. Israeli leaders may not want to take on the responsibility of re-occupying Gaza, as the country had removed all of its military and civilian settlements from inside the territory in 2005. Either way, an Israeli invasion would be catastrophic for the Palestinians trapped inside what has become the Middle East’s most dangerous warzone.

 A spokesperson for Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigade, Abu Obaida, made it clear that Hamas is ready for a new phase of the war. He addressed the Israeli public and government by saying, "Since this morning, we have launched 150 rockets towards Ashkelon and 50 rockets towards Sderot. We also targeted Ben Gurion Airport.” More attacks are expected soon. It is becoming increasingly clear neither side wants to back down first. Yet, it should be understood that the longer the fighting goes on, the more innocent lives will lost. 

Everyone is working around the clock to see an end to the bloodshed before the situation worsens. The first order of business is to get both sides to agree to a general and permanent ceasefire, followed by humanitarian assistance and negotiations to release the hostages.

Adnan Nasser is an independent foreign policy analyst and journalist with a focus on Middle East affairs. Follow him on Twitter @Adnansoutlook29.

Image: Abu Adel - Photo / Shutterstock.com

If one were to imagine a Mount Rushmore of European Union (EU) bureaucrats, it would certainly feature the likeness of former European Council President Donald Tusk. Consequently, seeing Tusk’s face emblazoned across international media this week has been unsurprising. On October 1, he presided over a large pro-abortion rally calculated to kick off two weeks of adulatory media coverage before Poland’s October 15 parliamentary elections. 

The campaign represents a homecoming of sorts. Tusk served as prime minister from 2007–2014, becoming the first post-Communist head of state to win reelection in Poland. He departed for Brussels to assume the European Council presidency, and his Civic Platform (PO — usually now referred to as Civic Coalition or KO, after an alliance with smaller parties) lost power one year later after controversially agreeing to the EU’s migrant resettlement scheme. 

Since that time, Tusk and KO have watched bitter rivals Law & Justice (PiS) govern for two terms, often sparring with Brussels in the process.

Poland has changed dramatically during that time. The country’s spectacular economic growth is well known. Neither the 2008 financial crisis nor the COVID-19 Pandemic has halted this trend. The war in Ukraine has highlighted Poland’s role as a vital military and diplomatic force in Europe. After decades of emigration, Poles are returning home from places like the United Kingdom and Ireland. The Telegraph even called Poland “Europe’s next superpower.”

One can appreciate the country’s economic vitality by simply walking around central Warsaw, but the prosperity isn’t limited to the capital. Żyrardów, a city of 40,000 inhabitants about thirty miles southwest of Warsaw, offers a fascinating snapshot of twenty-first-century Poland. 

Built as a planned factory town, it was a significant player in the nineteenth-century textile and linen markets. Its importance declined by the world wars, and the communist regime artificially shored up its factories. By the 1990s, the town had become decrepit; trash, overgrown weeds, and broken windows characterized the townscape. 

The Żyrardów of 2023 is a decidedly pleasant place. Its center has been painstakingly rebuilt in distressed red brick to evoke the city’s economic heyday. Stara Przędzalnia (The Old Spinning Mill) is a former factory converted into a mixed-use complex of apartments, hotel rooms, cafes, and shops. The stunning neo-Gothic Our Lady of Consolation Catholic Church overlooks the city hall and a pretty town square. A government investment billboard notes the aim of “revitalizing the marginalized area of the City of Żyrardów by giving it new socio-economic functions.” Officials hope a proposed nearby airport will elevate Warsaw to among the major aviation hubs of Europe.

A statue of a pregnant mill worker stands before a restaurant in yet another restored red-brick factory building. She symbolizes the travails of Żyrardów’s workers and the city’s rebirth—and, one might conclude, that of Poland generally. 

Pro-opposition voices would claim Żyrardów owes its fortunes to European Union money, something Brussels has been increasingly willing to withhold. Pro-government figures would counter that the revitalization occurred precisely on the PiS watch. They might add that a similar exurban location near a Western European capital would be unkempt, unsafe, and unrecognizable to its former inhabitants. Ultimately, the two competing visions of Poland hinge on this debate. 

Onlookers could reasonably characterize pro-government campaign rhetoric with the Polish flag and the country’s unofficial motto: Bóg, Honor, Ojczyzna (God, Honor, Fatherland). During Tusk’s most recent made-for-TV march, the contrast in the opposition camp was vivid. The streams of EU, rainbow, and Ukraine flags might just as easily have been photographed in a Western European capital.

Opposition leaders also checked familiar rhetorical boxes. “We are moving…towards a Poland that is tolerant, diverse, European, and smiling,” said Rafał Trzaskowski, Warsaw mayor, KO deputy leader, and LGBT-issue figurehead. 

The campaign has been bitter and full of click-worthy controversies. Migration, abortion, celebrity activism, German neo-imperialism, and Vatican influence are just a few of the topics hotly debated in the Polish political sphere. 

PiS almost certainly will win the highest number of votes, but its ability to form a majority government is uncertain. KO already leads a coalition with the Left party and centrist Third Way in the Senate; polls suggest these three will obtain roughly 50 percent of the vote total. The right-wing Confederation party could combine with PiS to acquire a majority, but such an alliance is not assured; some have even called it unlikely. Warsaw and Brussels will be on edge until October 15, if not longer.

In Żyrardów, residents enjoy something of the good life for the first time in several generations. A Polish television feature on the city noted, “It’s possible to get the impression that time has stopped here.” Until the election result delivers the country from uncertainty, the advertisement is more apt than it knows.

Michael O’Shea is a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute. He is an alumnus of the Budapest Fellowship Program, sponsored by the Hungary Foundation and the Mathias Corvinus Collegium. He is a dual citizen of the United States and Poland.

Image: Shutterstock. 

International aid groups are warning that they cannot deliver food and other basic services to people in the Gaza Strip and that a “dire” humanitarian crisis is set to worsen.

International aid groups provide food and other means of support to about 63% of people in Gaza.

Israel stopped allowing deliveries of food, fuel and other supplies to Gaza’s 2.3 million residents on Oct. 10, 2023, and is reportedly preparing for a ground invasion.

I am a scholar of peace and conflict economics and a former World Bank consultant, including during the 2014 war between Hamas and Israel.

International aid groups now face the same problem in Gaza that local businesses and residents have encountered for about 16 years: a blockade that prevents civilians and items, like medicine from easily moving into or out of the enclosed area, roughly 25 miles long. That 16-year blockade did not apply to the food and fuel that groups brought in to Gaza.

Now, it does.

Gaza’s blockade and economy

Gaza is about the size of Philadelphia and requires trade with different businesses and countries in order to maintain and grow its economy.

But Gaza is heavily dependent on foreign aid.

This is partially the result of Israel setting up permanent air, land and sea blockades around Gaza in 2007, one year after Hamas rose to political power. Egypt, which borders Gaza on its southern end, also oversees one checkpoint that specifically limits people coming and going.

While Israel has granted permits to about 17,000 Gaza residents to enter and work in Israel, the food, fuel and medical supplies that people in Gaza use all first pass through Israel.

Israel controls two physical checkpoints along Gaza, which monitor both the entry and exit of people and trucks. Israel limits the kind and quantity of materials that pass into Gaza. And the blockades generally prohibit Gazans who do not have work permits or special clearance – for medical purposes, for example – from entering Israel.

Israel’s restrictions through the blockade intensified since Hamas’ surprise attack on 20 Israeli towns and several military bases on Oct. 7, with Israel then announcing a broad blockade of imports into Gaza. This stopped all food, fuel and medical supplies from entering the region.

Gaza’s isolation

The Palestinian enclaves of West Bank and Gaza – which are generally lumped together in economic analyses – both have small economies that run a massive deficit of US$6.6 billion in losses each year, as the value of the imports they receive greatly outweighs the value of the items they produce and sell elsewhere.

More than 53% of Gaza residents were considered below the poverty line in 2020, and about 77% of Gazan households receive some form of aid from the United Nations and other groups, mostly in the form of cash or food.

Gaza’s weak economy is caused by a number of complex factors, but the largest is the blockade and the economic and trade isolation it creates.

For the average Gazan, the blockade has several practical effects, including people’s ability to get food. About 64% of people in Gaza are considered food insecure, meaning they do not have reliable access to sufficient amounts of food.

Food as a percentage of Gaza’s total imports has skyrocketed by 50% since 2005, when Israel first imposed a temporary blockade. And the amount of food the West Bank and Gaza actually produce has tumbled by 30% since then.

It is hard for Gaza to produce food within its own borders. One factor is that Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza’s only power generation plant and main sewage treatment plant in 2008 and again in 2018. These attacks resulted in the spread of sewage waste on land and in the water, destroying farmlands and food crops and threatening fish stocks in the ocean as well.

The UN’s big role in Gaza

Gaza’s weak economy and isolation because of the blockade mean that it relies heavily on international aid organizations to provide basic services to residents. The biggest of these aid groups in Gaza is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East – also known as UNRWA.

Today, UNRWA is the second-largest employer in Gaza, following Hamas. It provides the bulk of the education, food aid and health care services for people in Gaza, in addition to 3 million other people registered as Palestinian refugees who live in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and other places.

Over time, UNRWA has evolved into a kind of parallel government, alongside Hamas, which Israel, the United States and other countries designate as a terrorist organization.

UNRWA funds and runs a network of 284 schools in Gaza alone, employing over 9,000 local people as staff and educating over 294,000 children each year.

UNRWA runs 22 hospitals in Gaza that employ almost 1,000 health staff and has 3.3 million patient visits per year.

Its schools are converted into humanitarian shelters in times of crisis, such as the current war. People can go there to get clean water, food, mattresses and blankets, showers and more.

The number of people in Gaza who are displaced from their homes has quickly risen over the last few days, totaling over 330,000 on Oct. 12, 2023. Over two-thirds of these people are staying in UNRWA schools.

A complicated US relationship

The U.S. has historically been the single-largest funder of UNRWA, a U.N. agency that relies on governments to support its work. The U.S. gave more than $500 million to Palestinians from April 2021 through March 2022, including more than $417 million that went to UNRWA.

U.S. support to UNRWA has fluctuated throughout different presidential administrations.

Total U.S. aid to the West Bank and Gaza peaked at $1 billion in 2009 – after Israel sealed off the territory. It reached $1 billion in annual contributions again in 2013, when former Secretary of State John Kerry helped restart peace talks between Israel and Hamas.

In 2018, the Trump Administration cut almost all of the money the U.S. typically gives to UNRWA, amounting to roughly 30% of the organization’s total budget.

Defenders of the policy change cited UNRWA-published textbooks that allegedly glorified jihad. UNRWA, for its part, maintained that, as an outside organization, it can only use the educational materials the country it is working in wants.

The Biden administration then restored funding to UNRWA and other organizations helping Palestinians in 2021.

Some Republican politicians have said that UNRWA has “cozied up” to Hamas. And an internal UNRWA ethics committee has accused top staff at the agency of “sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation … and other abuses of authority” that created a toxic work environment.

Meanwhile, since the war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 8, more than 1,500 Gazans have been killed and more than 5,300 injured, while Hamas attacks have killed more than 1,300 people in Israel and injured about 3,200 others.

International aid groups and European Union officials have called for a humanitarian corridor to be set up in Gaza – meaning a protected path specifically for civilians, aid workers and necessary basic items to pass through safely back and forth from Gaza to Israel and Egypt. So far, there are no clear plans for such a protected pathway.

Topher L. McDougal is Professor of Economic Development & Peacebuilding at the University of San Diego.

This article was first published by The Conversation.

Image: Shutterstock.

The shocking terrorist attack by Hamas in southern Israel requires a swift response as well as some introspection from the Israeli government, which now has the opportunity to show the transparent and targeted resolve of an open society in contrast to the indiscriminate barbarism of a terrorist group. A response that methodically cripples the militants and deters future atrocities can still be proportionate and justified.

That military mission will necessarily seek justice. Over the longer term, Israel will need to rebuild its people’s trust in the nation’s intelligence community and foreign policy. Responsibility lies with Hamas and its backers such as Iran, but Israelis are entitled to ask how this atrocity could have happened to a technologically advanced country with a formidable security apparatus and vaunted intelligence agencies.

Contrary to common belief, such breakdowns are actually quite rare. Claims of intelligence failures have in the past been used to cover up policy neglect (as was the case with the Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982) or a confused response (such as to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990). Warnings may go unheeded, reports may remain unread or advice may be too broad to spur action. Rarely do dots simply go unconnected.

Given this, some observers have blamed government distraction for the failure to prevent Hamas’s attack because of the current divisive state of Israeli politics and authorities’ focus on more politically pressing issues of West Bank security. There are also emerging allegations that the government ignored warnings from Egypt.

Of course, intelligence failures do happen. And an Israeli intelligence failure is not unheard of, despite the reputation of its agencies. Witness the surprise outbreak of the five-year-long second intifada at the end of September 2000.

What’s more, these shocking events, with their brazenness and costs, echo 1973’s Yom Kippur War – an example of intelligence failure mentioned in the same breath as Pearl Harbor, Operation Barbarossa and 9/11 (even if the latter three were more accurately strategic warning failures, with intelligence agencies, policymakers and politicians all at fault).

The Yom Kippur War was sparked by surprise Egyptian and Syrian offensives, intended to reverse the Arab losses and Israeli victories of 1967. Caught out during its holiest festival, Israel struggled initially to respond, before prevailing at significant human and materiel cost (and a Soviet–US near confrontation.) The day before the invasion, Israel’s director of military intelligence had assured Prime Minister Golda Meir that observed Egyptian activities were likely defensive in nature and there wouldn’t be an invasion of the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula.

There are still debates about the cause of the Israeli failure. Some point to the ‘crying wolf’ factor. Intelligence warnings earlier in 1973 that initiated Israeli military mobilisation proved unfounded—and costly. Others blame cognitive failings of individuals, bureaucratic monopolies and cultural misunderstandings.

However, one explanation that took hold was the idea of the ‘concept’.

Israeli military intelligence had become fatally wedded to the assessment that, without effective means to counter Israeli air superiority that had prevailed in 1967’s Six-Day War, Egypt would not launch an offensive. That meant the Syrians also wouldn’t attack because they would never act alone. But the assessment failed to consider that Egypt might instead adopt limited but important objectives (such as seizing the right bank of the Suez Canal and forcing a negotiated return of the broader Sinai) combined with an asymmetric advantage (including effective denial of Israeli airspace using missile forces based back inside Egypt).

These assumptions held for a time, but neglected to take account of an abrupt change in Egyptian strategy in 1972 at the command of President Anwar Sadat.

The ‘concept’ was reinforced by hubris. Israel’s highly regarded intelligence sources inside Egypt were quiet until the very eve of the invasion, when Mossad’s best-placed source in Cairo (believed to be former President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s son-in-law, Ashraf Marwan) reported an impending invasion. Israel had also hamstrung itself by having a ‘special collection’ signals intelligence system—speculated to be a tap on Egyptian military communications—that was exquisite but vulnerable, leaving them reluctant to actually turn it on.

So, what had started out as sound intelligence analysis and strategic rationale had calcified into a self-defeating heuristic. The result: terrified surprise when, on 6 October 1973, Israel was invaded on two fronts.

A question now lingers: before last Saturday, was Israeli intelligence in thrall to a new concept, this time about what Hamas and its jihadist allies would not, or could not, do from Gaza?

In the rush for explanations, we shouldn’t forget that intelligence is at its heart a contest in which the enemy gets a vote. Hamas has consistently adapted to changing circumstances, turning to rocket barrages when faced with Israel’s clampdown on moving its forces, then to tunnels under the border and now to hostage-raiding reminiscent of the Dark Ages and intended to prey on Israeli vulnerabilities. And it’s why they strove to deny and deceive Israeli surveillance, as was the case with Egyptian deception efforts in 1973.

In the aftermath of 1973, the Agranat Commission cut a swathe through the intelligence leadership. It would traumatize agencies for decades.

Israel’s current emergency is still in its early days, but when the apparent intelligence failure is dissected, there will likely be lessons for other national intelligence communities—even for Australia’s, which is currently undergoing an independent review.

As different as Australia’s circumstances are, we can learn from Israel’s experience, including the lesson that precedent is a guide only and not to be relied upon: strategic circumstances change and nations must be ready to adapt. It takes leadership to actively promote contestability and a willingness to constantly test existing intelligence, military and policy assumptions. It also takes investment in new tools to better understand, plan for and manage strategic risk, ideally to prevent such crises but also to respond effectively if, and when, they occur.

The good news is that Australia holds an intelligence review every five to seven years to ensure risk is assessed in times of peace, not only in war or after a crisis. Sadly, a major event is too often the ultimate test of any system, but calm and frank evaluations like the current review remain the best ways to anticipate, avert and recover from future crises.

Justin Bassi is the executive director of ASPI.

This article was first published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Image: Shutterstock.

The Hamas slaughter of civilians on October 7 puts the Gulf state of Qatar, which hosts and funds Hamas leadership, under new scrutiny. There is a way out for Qatar, but first, let’s understand how Qatar got to this uncomfortable situation.   

...We in Qatar are a very small country and our survival depends on being open to everyone. We host the largest American military base in the region, and we share the world’s largest offshore gas field with Iran. We have no choice but to coordinate with Iran. We support the Palestinians and we were among the first Arab countries to open an Israeli government office during the Oslo peace process of the 1990s. We are devout Muslims and we are happy to have Christian churches in Doha. Being open to all is both our strategy and our culture as a trading nation.

So Muhammad al-Kawari, Qatar’s ambassador in Washington, explained to me over a series of lunches some years ago when I worked at the State Department. At the time, I oversaw a grab-bag portfolio of Middle East regional issues that included international air flight negotiations; al-Kawari was interested in the prospects for Qatar Air. He also attended the Jerusalem funeral of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 as deputy head of Qatar’s cabinet.

Qatar’s vision of itself—an international entrepôt open to all—is shared to some extent by all six Arab states of the Gulf. In a general way, U.S. policy towards these states has been to encourage such openness both on human rights grounds and as a way of diversifying their economies away from total reliance on raw resource exports.  

There is a dark side to Doha’s policy, however, and that is allowing the political arms of terror organizations to reside and flourish on its own soil. For years, America and the West have not objected to this aspect of Qatar’s policy. Sometimes, it was seen as useful. For instance, Qatar became the channel for American talks with the Taliban throughout the American presence in Afghanistan and continues today. Qatar hosted the Afghan Taliban after they were removed from power in Kabul.   

But Qatar’s hosting of Hamas is now another matter. Hamas’ barbaric murders last weekend will change some things, to put it lightly, in the Middle East. And one of them must be Qatar’s—and the Gulf’s—funding of fundamentalist terror organizations. Specifically, Qatar should get ahead of what is coming by deporting the political leadership of Hamas, stopping all official financing of Hamas, and freezing accounts of terror organizations in its banking system.  

Now, this kind of 180-degree policy shift is easier said than done. The United States and Israel must start by admitting their failures to comprehend and react to the clear and present danger that Hamas poses. American and Israeli officials—not just Qataris—acted on the belief that Hamas was normalizing over time as the government of the Gaza Strip.   

There is plenty of policy failure to go around when it comes to Hamas and the other Muslim Brotherhood spokesmen and affiliates, from Sadiq al-Mahdi in Sudan in the 1960s and 1980s through Tariq Ramadan in Europe in the 1990s, Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Egypt and Qatar until very recently, and, in the United States, Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has called on Muslims to support Hamas in the immediate aftermath of the massacres.

I used to meet regularly with Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Cairo as a U.S. Embassy political officer from 1997–2000. Some of their leaders are sophisticated and educated. They all hide a totalitarian, supremacist, and violent version of Islam that only emerges when they gain power, as they did in Gaza in 2006. In Egypt in 2013, they were just beginning to change the governing system before the military cast them out of power in a coup d’état.

The world has changed after October 7. Qatar’s open society itself could be threatened by the Islamist poison of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Qatari ruling elite apparently believes it can control the Muslim Brotherhood and sees it as a tool for expanding Qatari influence. However, the movement could easily turn on the ruling House of al-Thani after swinging enough Qataris to their worldview. The good news is this: despite all of our collective failures to date, now the world has jolted awake to this danger. Qatar, as a smart and nimble player on the world stage, should act sooner rather than later. 

In every policy discussion of Qatar, the “elephant in the room” is the al-Udeid airbase, the most extensive U.S. military base in the Middle East, which the Qataris built and maintain to American specifications at their cost. It is an essential aspect of U.S. power projection throughout the Middle East and beyond, alongside the U.S. Sixth Fleet headquartered in Bahrain and the U.S. Army base in Kuwait. The Washington consensus posits that there are no readily available alternatives to al-Udeid, and thus, U.S. policy has become hostage to whatever Qatar wants to do. According to many in Washington, this fact would make encouraging Qatar to deport Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and freeze his bank accounts rather difficult.

Yet, the Washington consensus may be wrong about Qatar in the post-10/7 world. 

First, I believe Qatar’s rulers, especially Emir Tamim ibn Hamad al-Thani, are pragmatic realists, not ideologues or Muslim Brotherhood adherents. The emir showed his pragmatism regarding Qatar’s relationship with another terrorist group—Lebanon’s Hezbollah. After the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Qatar helped fund Hezbollah as part of its effort to reconstruct Lebanon. Hezbollah, so the feeling went at the time, could be normalized through engagement. That optimistic view of Hezbollah turned out to be wrong, and the current emir reversed policy and cut funding to Hezbollah. 

Qatar showed its pragmatism again this week, according to news reports, by agreeing informally with the U.S. Treasury not to release any of the $6 billion of Iranian oil revenue held by Qatar. 

Second, in the post-10/7 world, Hamas has just murdered not only hundreds of Israelis but also twenty-seven Americans while holding others hostage. Its political leaders broadcast threats from Qatar, and its former leader now calls for attacks on Americans. 

America is not the only beneficiary of the al-Udeid base. Qatar gets a significant U.S. military presence/effective security blanket from this base. The United States doesn’t have to initiate a withdrawal from al-Udeid right away. But as a planning measure, it should initiate talks with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, both of whom, during their recent embargo of Qatar, offered to host the U.S. Air Force instead of al-Udeid. Those offers may have been idle talk. But basing talks are run out of the State Department, not the Pentagon, which helps ensure good foreign policy and military policy coordination. We should let new airbase talks start and see where they lead while we raise the Hamas requests of Qatar.  

With Secretary of State Antony Blinken visiting Qatar this week to discuss the release of Hamas’ hostages, we should remember that persuading our allies and security partners to do hard things in mutual interest is the essence of good diplomacy. While the war with Hamas is fresh, I believe that we should act now to cut off its foreign sources of support while Israel does the hard work on the ground in Gaza. 

Qatar has been a U.S. security partner in the Gulf for decades. It certainly doesn’t want to become a state sponsor of terrorism. Qatar’s supporters in Washington realize this and are urging it to eliminate the now toxic Hamas presence. Changing policy on Hamas is the right thing for Qatar and the world.    

Robert Silverman, a former senior U.S. diplomat and President of the American Foreign Service Association, is a lecturer at Shalem College, executive editor of The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, and founder of the Inter-Jewish Muslim Alliance.

Image: Shutterstock.

Intellectuals have a deep addiction to terror. From the French revolutionaries of the late 18th century who invoked Jean Jacques Rousseau to the physician ideologues of ISIS like Ayman al-Zawahiri, intellectuals have been at the forefront of justifying and instigating mass violence.

The latest iteration of this intellectual tradition of terror is “decolonization.” The invasion of Israel and the murder of over 1300 Israelis to date have illustrated this mindset at work.

In the wake of the slaughter, Walaa Alqaisiya, a research fellow at Columbia University, wrote “Academics like to decolonize through discourse and land acknowledgments. Time to understand that Decolonization is NOT a metaphor. Decolonization means resistance of the oppressed and that includes armed struggle to LITERALLY get our lands and lives back!”

Likewise, for Uahikea Maile, Assistant Professor of Indigenous Politics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, “From Hawaiʻi to Palestine—occupation is a crime. A lāhui [Nation, race, tribe, people, or nationality] that stands for decolonization and de-occupation should also stand behind freedom for Palestine.”

Leave aside the malleable notion of “settler colonialism,” which is regularly leveled at Israel as well as Western states like the U.S. and Australia but never at Muslim, Arab, or African ones. Many pro-Palestinian intellectuals have long claimed that “resistance” may include any means and may not be criticized. For academics, who dominate wide swaths of academia, the notion of “decolonization” has been cited but with little specificity regarding the term’s meaning, at least in practical terms.

Indeed, in an often cited paper, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” academics Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang expound at length on the “entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave,” and the “the real and symbolic violence of settler colonialism.”

They posit decolonization as “a distinct project from other civil and human rights-based social justice projects, is far too often subsumed into the directives of these projects, with no regard for how decolonization wants something different than those forms of justice.” But they insist that “decolonization specifically requires the repatriation of Indigenous land and life. Decolonization is not a metonym for social justice.” But “decolonization is not obliged to answer” what methods are involved or what the future looks like for anyone.

But now we know. Decolonization in Hamas’ case looks like rape, murder, kidnapping, beheading, torture, and execution of hostages, in this case with a uniquely Islamic bent reminiscent of ISIS. Its future is simply the extermination of Israel.

Decolonization dissolves fundamental categories of combatants and civilians, it legitimizes everything, including the abuse of corpses, and demands our acquiescence in the name of “resistance” and “liberation.” It renders international law meaningless except to bend it over backward as a tool of violence and terror. Decolonization is thus an explicit license for ethnic cleansing and genocide, provided it is done by, and against, the proper people. Not surprisingly, “decolonization” increasingly dominates university courses and academic discourse. 

What explains this intellectual love of violence? One understated feature is the role of philosopher Frantz Fanon, whose book The Wretched of the Earth provided a justification for retributive violence that stands outside of any conventional morality. Ussama Makdisi of UCLA approvingly cites Fanon’s famous quote "But every time Western values are mentioned they produce in the native a sort of stiffening or muscular lockjaw...when the native hears a speech about Western culture he pulls out his knife—or at least he makes sure it is within reach.”

Makdisi goes on to claim that “the Western idea of morality has long had a Palestine-shaped hole in it. The West simply does not count Arab Palestinians as equal human beings. Which is why Palestinians turn to armed struggle in face of massive Western-funded & backed oppression. Then the West condemns them [sic].” This pretzel-shaped morality fails to account for billions of dollars in Western support for Palestinian institutions and billions more from Iran for Islamist ones. Similarly,  for philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who lauded Fanon, the liberation of the “colonized” can only come about by eliminating all aspects of European life. Apparently, this now includes taboos against the rape of captives and the murder of infants.

Yet, at the heart of this matter is an intellectual psychodrama, of passive-aggressive participation by the intelligentsia in something an authentic and exhilarating revolutionary moment. Events of historical importance give otherwise humdrum lives meaning, even if no one in Cambridge or Morningside Heights has to pull the trigger themselves.

The question of whether, if given the chance, Hamas supporters including “decolonial” intellectuals, would pull the trigger, or behead fellow human beings, is pressing, especially as thousands of supporters march through the streets of Western cities cheering the bloodshed. Of course, the fact that the victims were Jews—now redefined by too many intellectuals and progressives in the Soviet-style as Nazis or fascists themselves—helps to suppress whatever tinges of compassion might remain.

How should normal people with normal morality respond to academics who advocate terror? One is to identify, repudiate, and isolate intellectuals who espouse these views, and who use the shield of academic freedom to defend their hateful views. Publicize them widely and condemn them, challenge their ideas and their immorality, and question their fitness to be accepted into society, much less their role as teachers and thinkers.

What can be done institutionally? Condemning universities and think tanks that employ bigots who salivate over murder may cause embarrassment but no change. Refusing to engage with these institutions is key. They rely on their social reputations for their very existence—reputations that should already be in tatters for countless other reasons, from exorbitant costs to nonsensical course offerings. Moral obscenities like cheering mass murder in the name of decolonization should be the final straw.

Shattering their reputations and repudiating their influence and roles in society, is key. Without it, murder will find high-sounding advocates who sway students, like those thirty student groups at Harvard who “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Those students, too, should be isolated and shunned. But without addressing the intellectual foundations that support, in this case, Islamic antisemitic terrorism, academia will become irredeemable. The moral foundations of global society stand in the balance.

Alex Joffe is the Director of Strategic Initiatives of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa.

Asaf Romirowsky is the Executive Director of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) and Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME).

Image: Shutterstock.

Eight years ago, Pedro Domingos envisioned an artificial intelligence breakthrough he called “the master algorithm” – a single, universal machine learning model that would be able to derive all past, present, and future knowledge from data. By this definition, the master algorithm would generalize to almost any task that humans can do, revolutionizing the global economy and automating our daily lives in countless ways.

Today, the spectacular rise of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT has a lot of observers speculating that the master algorithm, or at least its primordial form, has been found. ChatGPT and its siblings show great promise in generalizing to a vast range of use cases – any domain where data exists and where knowledge can be represented by tokenized language is fair game.

The power and apparent simplicity of this vision is seductive, especially in the public sector. Leading tech companies in the federal space are already probing the potential for LLMs to transform government bureaucracies, processes, and data management. The funding lavished on OpenAI and other research and development teams for LLMs is based on business cases for digital assistants, customer service chatbots, internet or database search, content generation, content monitoring, etc. The possibilities are vast.

Some of these are common to the public and private sectors, and LLMs will be exquisitely useful in addressing them. But not every problem or solution can or should be dual use. Governments face wicked problems that the private sector does not. Right now, LLMs are only half of the answer for the most difficult problems in government – disaster response, counter drug trafficking, and military operations, to name a few. These are tasks where data is scarce, dirty, and intermittent in ways that are hard to fathom by commercial expectations. They demand decisions, actions, and human judgment in high-stakes scenarios where false positive or false negative hallucinations from an LLM could be deadly, or catastrophic. In a sensor-saturated future, where every relevant aspect of our existence can be captured as data, sophisticated LLMs may finally, truly, completely eat the world. That future, and the manifestation of a genuine master algorithm, is still a long way off.

What we need now is a salt to the LLM’s pepper – a complement that relies less on mountains of human-generated or human-curated data, is still highly generalizable, and can give humans predictive insight that is immediately relevant to the problem sets faced by the public sector in the physical world. To find it, we can look back at the previous machine learning hype cycle starting in 2015, when AlphaGo, AlphaStar, and OpenAI Five helped create a fresh wave of excitement about the potential of reinforcement learning (RL).

In each of these cases, an RL algorithm mastered a complex strategy game and defeated human world champions in that game. OpenAI Five’s achievements in the globally popular videogame Dota II are particularly interesting because its research team used an approach called “self-play” to train the model. Unlike AlphaGo and AlphaStar, which benefited from training on historical gameplay data from humans, OpenAI Five learned entirely by playing against itself. By scaling and parallelizing self-play instances, the OpenAI Five team was able to train the model on 45,000 years of Dota gameplay over the course of 10 real-time months.

In later projects involving multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) in a virtual environment, OpenAI researchers found that individual reinforcement learning “agents” playing against each other in teams were able to cooperate to achieve objectives and discover novel and unforeseen actions entirely through self-play, with no outside direction from humans. In other words, these MARL agents quickly mastered a complex game, and then learned new ways of interacting with their environment to win the game – alien tactics that humans did not or could not discover by themselves.

This is inductive reasoning on steroids. With MARL, it becomes possible to rapidly simulate thousands of alternate versions of a given scenario, and then analyze and learn from those scenario iterations. By identifying patterns in these iterations and understanding how variables like agent decision making and environmental features change outcomes, MARL can help us plan and understand future actions. Dr. Strange’s character in the movie Infinity War provides an analogy for this: he “goes forward in time” to examine over 14 million possible futures of the war between the Avengers and Thanos. Ultimately, he finds just one in which the Avengers are able to defeat their nemesis, and this foresight helps the good guys win in the end.

What if we created a relevant abstraction of the real world – a virtual environment with representative physics and a focus on the behaviors, interactions, and decisions between intelligent agents? If we get this balance between physics and intelligence right, this MARL environment would allow us to peer into the future and optimize our decision making in new and powerful ways.

Consider the specific problem of counter drug trafficking operations. Every year, thousands of drug-carrying vessels transit the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, delivering vast quantities of illegal drugs to ports in the north. The United States’ Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-S) uses every resource at its disposal – Navy and Coast Guard ships, maritime patrol aircraft, and more – to detect and interdict as many of these shipments as possible. This is an exceptionally difficult wide area search problem, and JIATF-S simply cannot cover the entire ocean all of the time. On average, JIATF-S only detects about 10% of estimated maritime smuggling events. Even when these vessels are detected, approximately one in five get away.

MARL could help address this problem by simulating JIATF-S operations thousands of times over, revealing through agent behavior and decisions the optimal placement and employment of scarce patrol ships, aircraft, and other resources to detect and interdict more illicit vessels. MARL could also help JIATF-S planners experiment with tactics and long-term strategies, simulating scenarios where new technologies or methods are used to help with search, or new overseas bases become available for operations. These simulations could also be used to understand how changes in the environment or drug cartels’ trafficking operations affect the JIATF-S mission.

This type of experimentation with MARL could greatly benefit other national security use cases such as military wargaming, systems engineering, mission planning, and command and control. It could also enable similar use cases across each of these areas, creating a common tool and a common thread between the acquisitions and procurement community and the warfighting community. For example, if a MARL simulation platform helps a wargamer quickly create an experiment to test a novel idea or a hypothetical capability, the same tool could just as easily be used by an operational commander’s staff to compare and contrast differing friendly courses of action. MARL could also help mission planners develop and refine adversary courses of action and enhance red cell efforts.

If we evolve this idea from Charmander to Charizard, we can envision a capability that approaches clairvoyance. In the future, the MARL tool could automatically run simulations based on critical real-world data injects: a new adversary troop movement is detected, a new weapon system is deployed, critical infrastructure is suddenly damaged, or a new weather pattern emerges in the operational environment. It is not unrealistic to think that MARL could rapidly provide decision makers with a window into the future for these types of events, in conjunction with the automation and alerting delivered by other machine learning capabilities like LLMs and computer vision. If MARL could become a crystal ball, perhaps the time has come for a deeper look.

Jaim Coddington is a member of Spear AI and the Marine Corps Reserve. His graduate studies at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government focused on the role of technology in public policy. All views expressed in this article are privately held and do not represent the official positions of any public or private organization.

This article was first published by RealClearDefense.

Image: Shutterstock.

Although American special operators may play a role in recovering hostages taken by Hamas militants, the United States currently has no plans to put conventional “boots on the ground” to support Israeli combat operations, a State Department official explained during a press conference on Tuesday.

The presence of an American aircraft carrier strike group led by the world’s largest warship, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is meant to send a strong message of deterrence, but does not signal America’s intent to join the fray, President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.

“The United States has also enhanced our military force posture in the region to strengthen our deterrence,” Biden said. “Let me say again to any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation. I have one word: Don’t.”

This announcement came after Hamas launched a surprise offensive against Israel on Saturday, with militant extremists targeting Israeli civilians with a brutality American Defense officials described as “unprecedented.” These attacks include the killing of hundreds at a music festival and the systemic murder of children as Hamas militants poured over the border into Israel.

“I saw hundreds of terrorists in full armor, full gear, with all the equipment and all the ability to make a massacre, go from apartment to apartment, from room to room, and kill babies, mothers, fathers in their bedrooms,” Israeli Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv told CNN. CNN was not able to confirm the general’s claims, but stories about these deaths have permeated both social and news media since the fighting began.

The United States has already begun providing military assistance to Israel, with interceptors for the nation’s various air defense systems – including the widely touted Iron Dome – chief among the list of munitions.

“My team has been in near constant communication with our Israeli partners and partners all across the region and the world from the moment this crisis began,” President Biden said. “We’re surging additional military assistance, including ammunition, and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome. We are going to make sure that Israel does not run out of these critical assets to defend its cities and its citizens.”

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran.

This article was first published by Sanboxx News.

Image: U.S. Navy. 

When it comes to gauging the Italian economic outlook, we would do well to remember Herb Stein’s famous aphorism: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. If ever that aphorism was true, it has to be in regard to the Italian government’s continued ability to issue ever larger amounts of debt to cover its budget deficits. This is especially the case when there is little prospect that Italy will ever reduce the size of its public debt mountain.

Needless to add another round of the Italian sovereign debt crisis is the last thing that the world economy needs at this time of synchronized world economic slowing. The Italian economy is some ten times the size of that of Greece and it has a $3 trillion government bond market. If the 2010 Greek debt crisis shook world financial markets, how much more so would an Italian debt crisis do so today?

A principal reason to brace ourselves for another round of the Italian debt crisis is that all of the factors that might allow that country to reduce its debt burden are now moving in the wrong direction. This has to be of particular concern when today’s Italian public debt to GDP ratio is 145 percent or some 20 percentage points higher than it was at the time of the 2012 Italian debt crisis.

Purely as a matter of arithmetic, the three factors that might improve a country’s public debt burden are a healthy primary budget surplus (the budget balance after excluding interest payments), lower interest rates at which the government can borrow, and a faster pace of economic growth. Unfortunately, in Italy’s current case, all three of these factors are going in the opposite direction.

Far from producing a primary budget surplus, the disappointing Italian budget presented this week by the Meloni government implies a meaningful primary budget deficit. At the same time, in the context of European Central Bank (ECB) monetary policy tightening and investor questions about the direction of the current government’s economic policy, Italian 10-year government bond yields have risen sharply to close to 5 percent. That is their highest level since the 2012 Italian debt crisis.

Meanwhile, far from experiencing rapid economic growth, the Italian economy seems to be on the cusp of another economic recession: The fall-out from ECB monetary tightening to regain inflation control. Such a recession would hardly inspire confidence in Italy’s ability to grow its way from under its debt mountain given its sclerotic growth record. Since joining the Euro in 1999, the level of Italy’s per capita income has barely changed.

Until recently, the Italian government has had little difficulty in financing itself on relatively favorable terms despite its public debt mountain. That was largely due to the fact that under its aggressive quantitative program, the ECB covered almost the totality of the Italian government’s net borrowing needs. However, since July 2023, the ECB has completely terminated its bond buying programs. This makes the Italian government very much more reliant on the financial markets to meet its borrowing needs.

With Italy’s highly compromised public finances, it is especially important that its government instill investor confidence so that it is capable of managing a very difficult economic situation. For this reason, it has to be regretted that the far-right Meloni government has failed to deliver on its economic promises. Among its more disappointing missteps have been its botched windfall tax on bank profits and the introduction of a budget that envisages a 5.3 percent budget deficit that puts it on a collision course with the European Commission.

In recent days, the markets have refocused attention on Italy’s shaky public finances and sent the Italian-German government bond spread to its highest level since the start of the year. The Italian government should take note of the market’s shot across its boughs and change economic course soon if it wants to avoid a full-blown Italian debt crisis next year.

Desmond Lachman joined AEI after serving as a managing director and chief emerging market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney. He previously served as deputy director in the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Policy Development and Review Department and was active in staff formulation of IMF policies. Mr. Lachman has written extensively on the global economic crisis, the U.S. housing market bust, the U.S. dollar, and the strains in the euro area. At AEI, Mr. Lachman is focused on the global macroeconomy, global currency issues, and the multilateral lending agencies.

This article was first published by the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Shutterstock.

After a strong start to 2023, Chinese economic activity has sharply fallen short of expectations. Exports have collapsed. Consumption, production and investment have slowed, while inflation levelled out and the unemployment rate edged up. The Chinese renminbi hit new lows in August and September 2023, driven by worries about the domestic economy.

Former US treasury secretary Larry Summers has made ominous comparisons between China, Russia and Japan, saying that ‘people are going to look back at some of the economic forecasts about China in 2020 in the same way they looked back at economic forecasts for Russia that were made in 1960 or for Japan in 1990’.

As always, there are cyclical and structural factors at play in the unfolding economic outlook. Among the cyclical factors are scars from the COVID-19 pandemic — deteriorating balance sheets, an ailing property sector and a limited macroeconomic policy response. Meanwhile, structural pressures are weighing on confidence as regulatory, security and political stability concerns continue to mount.

After three years of pandemic pressure, the balance sheets of households, enterprises and local governments are stretched. Unlike the United States, China’s government did not hand out large subsidies to households and enterprises during the COVID-19 pandemic. Without that demand-side stimulus, Chinese consumption has been sluggish.

Financially, China’s biggest worries revolve around the property sector. If this sector were to collapse, the consequences would be very damaging.

But one difference between China’s situation and that of, for example, the 2007–08 US subprime crisis, is the lack of visible negative equity in Chinese property. This is due to the substantial down payments required in China, especially for second or third property purchases, which range from 60 to 90 per cent. If property prices were to drop — and they haven’t yet substantially in most areas — the property sector’s contribution to financial crisis risk would be smaller than that of the United States in the global financial crisis, although the resultant losses in terms of household wealth and economic growth could still be large.

Fiscal and monetary responses to China’s current woes have been modest, both during and after the worst phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is despite China’s facing deflation rather than inflation risk, in contrast to the United States and Europe. Since late 2020, real interest rates have been relatively flat, even increasing over several quarters when the consumer price index fell faster than the policy rate.

The lack of aggregate easing reflects current policy objectives. Supply-side reforms have dominated demand-side considerations in policy thinking.

There are also structural pressures on Chinese growth. Not least among them are regulatory actions that severely dampened business confidence, especially among technology companies and foreign-invested enterprises.

Some of these policies were implemented to address national security concerns, while others were attempts to deal with legitimate regulatory problems, such as consumer protection and fair competition. They reflect the increasing weight the government assigns to security issues and the costs it is willing to bear as a result.

The government has moved to offset some of these negative policy impacts. As a part of its broader policy mix, it has announced new policies aimed to shore up confidence and support private enterprise, foreign-invested firms and consumption. The government’s 31-point plan released in July 2023 highlights the importance of the private sector and fair competition, eliminating barriers to entry, protecting property rights and drawing private enterprises into national projects.

But the changing geopolitical environment weighs down on the economy. Both China and the United States are attaching growing importance to concerns about national security that impact trade and investment.

Given that both countries share similar concerns, though not necessarily identical definitions of political stability and national security, cooperation to address the challenges posed by globalisation is possible. Such cooperation first requires more dialogue. Conversation is valuable even — or especially — when the political terrain is rough.

Third parties can also play an important role in stabilising relations. The European Union’s ‘de-risking’ approach, even if just partial decoupling by another name, is a helpful example. In Asia, particularly with ASEAN, regional relations can play a stabilising role.

Has China’s economic miracle ended? The answer is probably yes, as no miracle lasts forever. Higher incomes and the higher labour costs they create, deteriorating external conditions and an ageing population all present serious long-term headwinds against high growth.

But China is neither the Soviet Union in the 1960s nor Japan in the 1990s. For China, sectors like technology platforms, electric vehicles, green energy and electronics are now vibrant sources of innovation and growth. A major financial crisis, like a blow-up of the property sector, is still unlikely. The economic impact of demographic shifts will be partially countered by artificial intelligence and the digital economy.

Regulatory changes have dampened some sectors, but China’s ability to average above 9 per cent growth for 40 years suggests some flexibility remains. The recent announcement of the new policy package also demonstrates that policymakers do respond to economic challenges.

Economic activity probably suffered its last major drop, in July 2023. August data suggests that the economy is bottoming out, albeit very gradually. Casual observation confirms that economic recovery was under way in September.

But the fog of geopolitics is unlikely to recede any time soon. Many of the challenges China faces, like sustaining growth while security uncertainties are on the rise, are global. Finding ways to address these concerns within global frameworks that promote open trade and investment will be crucial to navigating the uncertainties ahead.

Yiping Huang is Professor and Deputy Dean at the National School of Development and Director of the Institute of Digital Finance, Peking University.

This article was first published by the East Asia Forum.

Image: Shutterstock.

Hamas’ savage assault on Israel is only the latest nightmare for President Joe Biden. The breakout by the Islamist proxy of Iran marks a new low point of this increasingly Jimmy Carter-esque presidency. 

Yet, Democrats and the media have been shocked by recent polls showing Biden neck-and-neck with his contenders. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump could both beat Biden in notional matchups. Some Democrats have yet to panic, but they should: Biden’s position will deteriorate further this winter. 

First, there is “Bidenomics.” A White House insulated from the public by a sympathetic media sent the president out to tout his economic record this summer and fall—a big mistake. Since Biden took office, cumulative inflation of nearly 20 percent means that the government has effectively vaporized one-fifth of voters’ savings and purchasing power. Unlike a stock market decline, this is lost money and buying power that cannot be recovered in the future. 

Unfortunately for Biden, matters are getting worse, not better. When the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports third-quarter GDP growth on October 26, it will likely show a healthy-sounding two-to-three percent. But the real economy is getting worse, and voters know it, judging from Biden’s meager 37 percent approval for handling the economy according to the RealClearPolitics average. 

The manufacturing sector has been in a slump for a year. Housing is unaffordable. Consumers have blown through savings from the pandemic and racked up a record amount of high-interest credit card debt. Student loan payments have just resumed. Gasoline prices will likely increase until a recession arrives. High-interest rates will put many companies that need new capital under stress or into bankruptcy. Commercial real estate is headed for a more profound crisis, which in turn will put financial organizations that carry those real estate companies’ loans into distress. The economy will likely contract this quarter, leading to a stock market decline. A second quarter of economic contraction in the new year would lead to a technical recession being declared just as the election campaign heats up next summer. 

The foreign policy outlook is just as poor. Biden’s popularity went negative after the humiliating 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden’s aides have hoped that success in Ukraine would wipe away that shame. However, the much-touted spring and summer Ukrainian counteroffensive failed. Both parties in Congress support continued funding of Ukraine’s military and government, but the public has soured. Polls now show a majority of voters want an end to the U.S. largesse. Voters see China and Iran as serious threats that require attention and aren’t buying the Beltway expert argument that the United States needs to wage a draining proxy war with Russia to scare Beijing and Tehran. 

Voters will only become more displeased that Washington appears to care more about Ukraine’s borders than our own. Biden’s summer charm offensive on China—he sent several cabinet officials to Beijing, one of whom literally bowed to China’s vice premier—has yielded nothing of value. His Europe-first foreign policy also seems to have breathed new life into terrorism sponsored by Iranian and its proxies, including Hamas.

Back at home, Biden faces the real prospect of third-party challengers who will sap votes from the Democrats in key states. Liberal activist Cornel West will run as an independent. Robert Kennedy Jr. also just decided to do so, given his treatment by the Democrat establishment and progressive media, who refused even to countenance discussion of his points of view. 

Democrats comfort themselves that Republicans are in disarray, having ousted the latest lackluster Republican Speaker of the House. But all Republicans need a  Speaker who can do a decent job of communicating the crises at the border and on the budget. Even though they must eventually compromise with Democrats, given the balance of power in Washington, all Republicans have to do is put up a fight and stay generally on message until all attention turns to the presidential race. That could happen beginning in January when Trump could stumble in the Iowa Caucuses, likely at the hands of DeSantis.  

Finally, there is Biden’s visibly deteriorating health. The Constitution created a strong presidency because it is necessary to manage a giant executive branch, act decisively in a crisis, and cut deals in the shared powerlessness that marks much of bureaucratic and legislative Washington. Paradoxically, it is the presidency, not the Congress, that is the most democratic institution in town. The president alone is elected by the whole country, and he alone has the power to advocate decisively for the people’s interests. Does anyone think Biden is getting better at performing this role? Instead of Biden, the highly ideological White House staff operates the executive branch. Voters grasp this dangerous situation, with large majorities saying Biden is too old to govern. 

Therefore, Biden will likely lose altitude on the real economy, the stock market, foreign affairs, and his health. His opponents on the Left and Right will gain strength. Growing numbers of Democrats perceive this, as indicated by more and more Left-leaning pundits calling for him to step aside. Come winter, they will have even stronger arguments to dump Biden.  

Christian Whiton is a senior fellow for strategy and trade at the Center for the National Interest.  He was a senior advisor in the George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump administrations.

Image: Shutterstock.

The Ukraine Foreign Legion (also known as the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine) is made up of fighters from many countries, including the U.S., U.K., Poland, Israel, Afghanistan, and others looking to resist Russian aggression. These fighters have primarily law enforcement and military backgrounds and use a variety of small arms.

The Ukraine Foreign Legion seems to be getting some of the odder variants of the equipment being donated by countries around the world. Today we are going to take a peek at those small arms.

Definitive sources about front-line equipment can be tough to find. We’ve turned mostly to social media sources including Ukraine Weapon’s Tracker, War Noir, and several more across Twitter and Instagram. These types of accounts source social media posts displaying numerous scenes and weapons in use by the Ukraine military. From those photos, we’ve gathered a small list of the current small arms of the Ukraine Foreign Legion.

FN FNC

As Sandboxx News covered early in the war, the FN FNC became one of the more common rifles of the Ukraine Foreign Legion. These Belgium-donated rifles armed the Belgian military for decades and were only been recently replaced. These piston-operated guns are a bit on the heavy side and lack modularity, but they are well-made rifles. They fire the 5.56 NATO round, which is quickly becoming more and more common amongst Ukraine’s fighters as the war progresses.

FN SCAR-L

The Ukraine Foreign Legion also uses Belgium’s latest assault rifle, the FN SCAR-L, which also fires the 5.56 round. This is a short-stroke gas-piston gun that is much more modern than the FNC. It features rails for optics and accessories and is a bit lighter (which is what the L in its name indicates). The FN SCAR-L is a very accurate gun and is well-known for its reliability.

CZ BREN

The Bren is another short-stroke gas-piston gun that’s very similar to the SCAR, so much so it’s often joked that the Bren is the Czech SCAR. The Czech Republic donated the weapons to Ukraine and they’ve been popular with the Foreign Legion. The Bren is a modern, modular rifle that’s accessory-ready, fairly light, and quite reliable. The gun comes in either 5.56 or 7.62, but we’ve only seen a 5.56 variation in use in Ukraine.

CZ VZ 58

The VZ 58 is AK-like in appearance but a very different weapon than the AK. This rifle came into service in 1959 and used a rather novel operating system in the form of a gas-operated, hinged-locking, piece-assisted breechblock. It’s quite reliable and fires the classic 7.62x39mm round of which Ukraine likely has plenty. Although the gun is somewhat outdated it is not obsolete.

M4 RIFLES

The United States has donated a number of small arms to Ukraine, including modern M4 carbines, which have been seen in service with the Foreign Legion. These direct-impingement rifles provide a very reliable and lightweight carbine for troops. They are very modular and easy to outfit with modern accessories. In the past, we’ve seen these rifles have issues in freezing environments, so hopefully, the soldiers issued M4s know to take precautions.

NUMEROUS AK VARIANTS

Unsurprisingly there are a ton of AK-types in Ukraine, including the Russian-made AKM and AK 74 series alongside the RPK light machine gun. These rifles either fire the 7.62×39 or the 5.45×39 and can be either fixed- and or folding-stock types. Countries like Serbia have donated their AK variants to Ukraine, and we’ve even seen Chinese Type 56 rifles used by the Ukrainian forces. It’s somewhat difficult to tell which AKs have gone to the Ukraine Foreign Legion, but they most certainly have been seen wielding them.

PKM

Another unsurprising sight is the PKM belt-fed machine gun. This medium machine gun fires the 7.62x54R and has been seen in the hands of American volunteers fighting in Ukraine. This belt-fed support weapon is one of the better medium machine guns out there. It operates on the same principle as the Kalashnikov and is perfectly suited for the Ukrainian winter. It’s also light for its design and quite effective.

M249 SAW/ FN MINIME

The Belgian FN Minime became the American M249 SAW. The two weapons are largely the same and with both Belgium and the United States donating weapons to Ukraine, it’s tough to say which is which by looking at photos. This 5.56 caliber, belt-fed, light machine gun provides a squad with a designated support weapon and is much easier to use in urban areas and tight quarters than a medium machine gun. These guns offer portability for a machine gun with a reliable open-bolt design.

M240/FN MAG MACHINE GUNS

Like the M249 and Minime, the FN MAG and M240 are largely the same gun but with different designations. The M240 is my favorite medium machine gun. It’s insanely reliable and quite accurate and capable. It’s admittedly heavy but easy to use and quite effective. This 7.62 NATO machine gun offers a general-purpose machine gun for infantry and vehicle use and is at home in both defense and offense. It’s tough to find a more reliable machine gun out there.

CZ SCORPION

According to an interview hosted by Czech news agency Seznam Zpravy, a Czech member of the Ukraine Foreign Legion carried the CZ Scorpion and P10C at his air defense position.

With his primary weapon being an anti-air weapon, the use of a smaller, lighter SMG, in the form of the Scorpion, makes sense as it’s easier to carry along the heavy anti-air weapon. The Scorpion is a direct blowback, 9mm submachine gun designed for the Czech military and police forces. It’s a modular weapon with plenty of rails for accessories. The SMG features a folding stock making it even more compact for an easy-carrying design.

CZ P10C

The same Czech fighter carried a CZ P10C which is a modern 9mm handgun. This polymer frame, striker-fired design, has become quite popular. The handgun is fairly standard in design but quite accurate with a nice trigger and that famed Czech reliability.

AND BEYOND

Dozens of different types of weapons have been donated to Ukraine and everything from Steyr AUGS to Mossberg 500s has made its way to the country. As such, it’s likely impossible to catalog all the firearms used by the Ukraine Foreign Legion. However, the above is a good start. If you know of any we should add to the list, please list them below.

Travis Pike is a former Marine Machine gunner who served with 2nd Bn 2nd Marines for 5 years. He deployed in 2009 to Afghanistan and again in 2011 with the 22nd MEU(SOC) during a record-setting 11 months at sea. He’s trained with the Romanian Army, the Spanish Marines, the Emirate Marines, and the Afghan National Army. He serves as an NRA certified pistol instructor and teaches concealed carry classes.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: U.S. Military/U.S. Government/Creative Commons. 

After this weekend’s horrific Hamas assault on Israel, the ball is now in Jerusalem’s court, and the most important question is how the Netanyahu government will respond. Inevitably, that’s a complicated issue.

Israel’s immediate goals are obvious. It needs to rescue the Israelis who have been taken hostage, cripple Hamas militarily to prevent or deter another Hamas attack, and simultaneously prevent a wider war with Hamas’s allies, Iran and Hizballah, which could cause more Israeli casualties and complicate the IDF’s operations against Hamas in the near term.

These goals translate into four obvious military objectives for the IDF. Israel wants to rescue its hostages, kill or capture as much of the Hamas leadership as possible, destroy as much of Hamas’s military capabilities as possible, and defend or deter attacks on Israel by Hizballah, Iran, or other members of Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance.”

In turn, these objectives shape themselves into three obvious military options for Israel at this point.

The first would be to maintain the “siege” of Gaza that Jerusalem has already declared both to prevent Hamas leaders and fighters from fleeing and to try to convince the Palestinian population to turn on Hamas—either to provide Israel with better information on Hamas or even move them to take up arms against Hamas. This would be coupled with continued air strikes and special operations forces (SOF) attacks to kill or grab Hamas leaders, destroy Hamas military forces, and free Israeli hostages as Israeli intelligence identifies them.

The second would be a larger version of the first. It would maintain the siege, but rather than limiting the Israeli strikes to just air and SOF, it would include much larger Israeli ground incursions, with infantry and armor punching into Gaza whenever possible to smash Hamas militarily, kill or capture its leaders, and find and free the Israeli hostages similar to other operations into Gaza Israel has conducted in years past. While some such Israeli ground operations might last for days, the goal would be to limit them to just hours and avoid re-occupying any parts of Gaza for any length of time.

The last option would be a major ground invasion of Gaza. In this case, the IDF would re-occupy all of Gaza and then systematically search out and kill or capture the Hamas leadership and its military forces, and likewise find and free the Israeli hostages.

Again, obviously, the first option would minimize Israeli costs and risks—at least in the short term—but would be least likely to succeed in achieving Israel’s goals and objectives. Moreover, a prolonged siege of Gaza could still prove politically and militarily onerous as Palestinian suffering continues while little is accomplished and the damage to Israel fades into memory.

Nor is the middle option necessarily Goldilocks’s “just right” solution. While it incurs fewer costs and risks and entails a greater likelihood of success, it doesn’t guarantee that Israel gets what it wants or at an acceptable price.

The last, most extensive option seems most consistent with Israel’s mood and public statements so far. Moreover, it is exactly what Egypt has encouraged Israel to do in the past as the only way to remove the festering sore of Hamas’s control over Gaza, a major problem for both Cairo and Jerusalem. But it too has its own costs and risks.

Firstly, because the Egyptians are right. If Israel is determined to smash Hamas and potentially even remove them Gaza, re-occupying Gaza for a matter of weeks or months and methodically rooting it out is the only way to do so, but that would mean Israeli forces engaging in protracted guerilla warfare in a dangerous urban environment. It would risk heavy Israeli military casualties, heavy Palestinian civilian casualties, and possibly the death of many hostages as well.

Moreover, if Israel succeeds in extirpating Hamas from Gaza but then pulls out quickly to avoid another permanent occupation, as seems likely, it would leave the huge unknown of who would rule in Gaza in place of Hamas? Jerusalem could see an even worse leadership seize power—zealous Salafi Jihadists like ISIS—or no leadership at all leading to civil war.

Because of the potential for high casualties, a major assault on Gaza would also be the most problematic for Israel’s rapprochement with the Arab states—which was undoubtedly one of the principal targets of the Hamas offensive, and of Iran’s support for that offensive. And finally, a major offensive that threatened Hamas’s military viability and its control of Gaza is also the most likely to provoke intervention by Iran and its other allies.

Finally, Prime Minister Netanyahu will doubtless add his own personal political and legal calculations as well. This is his war. It happened on his watch. If he is seen as “winning” it, he can probably hold on to power which he seems to calculate is the only way to avoid prison. If he is seen as losing the war, he probably loses everything: power, his reputation, even his freedom. And in the end, none of us knows what Bibi believes “victory” over Hamas would look like.

Kenneth M. Pollack is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on Middle Eastern political-military affairs, focusing in particular on Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries.

This article was first published by the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Shutterstock.

The September 2021 announcement of Australia’s transition to nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) under the AUKUS program indicated that ‘at least eight’ would be acquired. More recently, the rhetoric has firmed up to eight, with the program director telling a Senate committee in May that there would be three Virginia-class SSNs and five AUKUS SSNs. Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead implied that this was the full extent of the program and that decisions for what followed would be left for a future government.

A decision to stop at eight overlooks critical strategic, industrial and personnel considerations that determine the number of submarines Australia acquires.

Since the 2009 defence white paper, successive reviews have affirmed the need for 12 submarines supported by a base on each coast providing specialised infrastructure, workshops and a submarine squadron staff. While nuclear propulsion provides much greater mobility, a submarine can only be in one place at a time. Once its position is revealed by counter-detection or its own offensive actions, uncertainty over its location is removed and with that, its deterrent value diminishes for a period. Added to the reality of our geography, a force able to deploy at least two submarines on each coast would require at least 12 SSNs to provide ongoing uncertainty (for an adversary) and, if needed, operational impact.

It takes three to four submarines to guarantee having one available for deployment. The ‘rule of three’ was validated by the Coles review, but that doesn’t include any spare capacity to cope with unexpected defects. The UK and French experiences confirm that four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) are required to sustain one at sea—noting that SSBNs operate in a much lower mechanical and operationally stressed environment than SSNs.

Industrial issues are significant factors in the cost of ownership and effectiveness of the force. Australia intends to build the AUKUS SSNs in Adelaide. That is thoroughly commendable, but we should expect delays and difficulties as we learn how to do it. In all shipbuilding programs, the time and cost of successive vessels reduces as the workforce and processes are optimised. Typically, based on Australian (and global) experience, the third submarine will cost some 40% less than the first, with much smaller reductions anticipated as later submarines are built.

This only works if the building program is continuous. Stop–start shipbuilding is a well-known recipe for prolonged delays and grossly inflated costs, as demonstrated by Britain’s Astute class, which, according to a House of Commons Defence Committee report in early 2010, was already by then 57 months late and 53% over budget.

Once we have mastered the complexities of building SSNs, as I am sure we will, we shouldn’t stop building.

Australia is planning on a three-year interval between delivery of submarines, driven by the time it will take to generate a crew from our small submarine personnel base and limited sea training capacity in operational Collins-class and US and UK submarines.

Construction of the first submarine will take longer and reduce to a steady state after three or four are built and the workforce has made its way up the learning curve and processes have been optimised. The building process is a production line—at any time, submarines will be in different states of completeness. Construction time doesn’t determine the drumbeat for delivery; rather, construction starts in sufficient time to achieve the delivery drumbeat.

Three years is a slow drumbeat industrially. Shorter would be more efficient but is currently not feasible because of personnel limitations. The personnel training limitation should ease once Australia has at least six SSNs at sea. The drumbeat could then be shortened. A slow drumbeat is more expensive due to idle production but is also likely to contribute to a loss of skilled workers; witness the UK’s experience at Barrow in Furness because of the slow Astute drumbeat.

A construction program building eight submarines at a three-year drumbeat would take 21 years. Submarines typically have a hull life of 25–30 years. Thus, this production line would have nothing to build for four to nine years, and would then be then back into stop–start shipbuilding.

A force of 10 SSNs at a three-year drumbeat with a planned 27-year life is the minimum to provide a continuous-build program, avoiding the stop–start situation. A force of 12 could achieve a shorter drumbeat in the later stages when the personnel restrictions are not so severe.

Decisions on the final size of the force must be made now, at the program’s inception. They drive industrial issues such as the size of facilities, production-line technology, the supply chains supporting the force and the ordering of long lead items such as the reactor. The decision cannot responsibly be left for a future government.

My study of British, French and US submarine-crewing policies, summarised in my 2018 ASPI report, concluded that a force of 10 SSNs with 10 crews was essential to generate the minimum critical mass of experienced personnel. A smaller force will not generate sufficient highly experienced personnel to oversee the safe technical and operational aspects of the program. That calculation assumed one base and one submarine squadron. Two-ocean basing with an additional 200 highly experienced squadron staff, a key link in the operational and safety chain, would require at least 12 SSNs.

Britain’s Royal Navy has six or seven SSNs and four SSBNs operating from one base in a single squadron. Its personnel situation is dire. High wastage rates and shortfalls in many critical categories have reportedly necessitated drafting non-volunteers to submarine training and cannibalising parts and crew to get even one submarine to sea. At times, the RN is unable to achieve even one. Is that where Australia is heading?

The issues are undoubtedly more complex than simply the size of the force, but it reinforces the point that a force of eight SSNs requiring six to seven crews is below critical mass, vulnerable to personnel shortfalls, will struggle to sustain two SSNs deployed, and won’t be able to sustain two-ocean basing.

Even more problematic is whether Australia can achieve an operational, sustainable and deployable SSN capability from eight boats made up of a mix of Virginia and AUKUS designs. The mix of classes adds to the complexity, cost and risk because it entails two supply chains and differing major onboard equipment, spares, and training systems and simulators.

Australia requires at least 12 SSNs to sustain two-ocean basing with two deployable on each coast in the good times. A force of 18—nine on each coast—would be more resilient, reliably providing two deployable SSNs, with three available in the good times.

Eight is plainly insufficient on all counts.

Leaving the decision for a later government will mean greater expense and increase the risk that the program doesn’t produce the needed strategic capability, while stripping funds from other key defence capabilities. A lack of decision, along with Australia’s failure to join the AUKUS SSN initial design effort, indicates inadequate commitment.

A ‘damn the torpedoes’ transition to SSNs could leave us with no submarine capability.

If Australia is not prepared to, or cannot, invest the resources to achieve a viable SSN force, we are better off not continuing down this path.

Peter Briggs is a retired submarine specialist and a past president of the Submarine Institute of Australia.

This article was first published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Image: The Mariner 4291 / Shutterstock.com