Military Operations

Aaron Picozzi is the research associate for the military fellows and Lincoln Davidson (@dvdsndvdsn) is a research associate for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. South China Sea claimants are awaiting a decision by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in an arbitration case on the legality of the Chinese government’s claims. But regardless of how the UN tribunal decides, South China Sea disputes won’t go away anytime soon. Military activity in the South China Sea is expanding, increasing the risk of “dangerous brinksmanship” over the islands and reefs scattered throughout the region. While the United States Navy has taken the lead in responding to regional military activity, we believe that coast guard-coast guard exchanges can reduce the risk of conflict, while still assuring regional partners of American dedication in the South China Sea. Over the last year, China has conducted dredging activities at an unprecedented scale, using the newly-built islands to base missile systems and military aircraft. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has conducted substantial drills in the region. India has considered joint patrols with the United States in the South China Sea, and the Philippines and Vietnam have considered similar cooperation. Just last week, the French defense minister called on European countries to have a “regular and visible” presence in the region to maintain freedom of navigation. The United States has also long been active in the South China Sea, conducting known freedom of navigation operations near Chinese-controlled features in October 2015 and in January and May 2016. In April, the U.S. Air Force stationed four A-10 Warthogs—which carry one of the most powerful aircraft guns ever built—in the Philippines, sending a clear signal to China that the United States is prepared to deal with military conflict in the South China Sea. The U.S. military has increased the presence and visibility of aircraft and naval vessels to assure regional partners that the United States remains committed to their security, going tit-for-tat with the Chinese military in force escalation. Recent expansion of the Chinese Coast Guard marks a pivot point for America’s posturing, however. Chinese Coast Guard cutters—although lacking sufficient armament to challenge a U.S. Navy vessel in direct combat—are capable of meaningfully affecting the situation in the South China Sea. Lots of ink has been spilled about how China’s reclamation activities “change facts on the ground,” but Chinese Coast Guard activities do at least as much to alter the reality in the South China Sea. When the Chinese Coast Guard threatens or actually uses force to enforce Chinese law within areas that Zhongnanhai claims are their waters, they are effecting functional control of the region. The islands claimed by the countries surrounding the South China Sea have little intrinsic value—their value hinges upon the effective assertion of sovereignty and subsequent control over surrounding waters. With approximately $5 trillion worth of international trade passing through the region annually, an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas located under the region, and nearly 10 million tons of fish caught in the South China Sea each year, the control of these waters is extremely important to regional economies. Coast guard cutters enable governments to enforce law and assert sovereignty claims without the overt presence of a warship. This ability to maintain control over an area, without fear of an impending attack, offers an entirely different set of tactics compared to the involvement of a naval vessel. Cutters and the embarkable boarding parties they carry can effectively control merchant vessels within their jurisdiction. China is not the only South China Sea claimant expanding its coast guard activities. In March, an Indonesian Coast Guard vessel apprehended a Chinese fishing vessel illegally fishing in Indonesian waters. The Chinese Coast Guard responded by ramming the apprehended vessel, freeing it from Indonesian control. Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia have all expanded their coast guards in recent years, and the United States has committed to selling more cutters to partners in the region. Continuing the United States’ current tactic of mirroring Chinese show of force in the South China Sea by deploying Coast Guard assets to the region would be a mistake. Conducting law enforcement activities in certain parts of the South China Sea on behalf of regional allies and partners would involve a recognition of those countries’ territorial claims, something the United States government has been unwilling to do. And while interactions between the PLAN and the U.S. Navy are tense, they exist within a set of predictable, well-defined rules that govern the way the navies of different countries handle encounters. Interactions between military vessels and civilians, on the other hand, are inherently volatile, as civilian ships are not as well trained and regimented as naval vessels—nor are they governed by the same established procedures or subject to as robust government oversight. As Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, director of operations for U.S. Pacific Command, recently pointed out, it is highly unlikely that an interaction between military vessels sparks a conflict in the South China Sea. Civilian vessels, however, are another story. “My worst maritime experiences have been with fishing boats,” Montgomery said. “The highest risk is associated with non-military vessels.” Compounding this risk, any action taken by the U.S. Coast Guard towards Chinese civilians would be a propaganda victory for the Chinese government, cementing their claims of American aggression. The United States is not left without options. By training and equipping the coast guards of our regional partners, the United States can help them counter control of commerce in the South China Sea by the growing Chinese Coast Guard. The United States has worked alongside Pacific partners in a number of exercises in the past, including coast guard training with the Philippines in 2015, the U.S. Navy training operation Exercise Balikatan in 2016, and the training of the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force for expeditionary warfare. While in Vietnam last month, President Obama acknowledged the importance of the Vietnamese Coast Guard, stating that the United States would continue to train them in maritime law enforcement in order to improve capabilities in the South China Sea. These trainings are designed as responses to specific Chinese actions. For example, during this year’s Exercise Balikatan, the United States, Australia, and the Philippines conducted “a simulated gas and oil platform recovery raid in the South China Sea”—a clear counter to China’s positioning of an oil platform in disputed waters south of the Spratly Islands in 2014. At the same time, by increasing the professionalism of the maritime law enforcement forces of claimants, trainings serve to mitigate the spectre of conflict in the South China Sea. By continuing to train and support the coast guards of regional partners, the United States will contribute to countering Chinese claims,while reassuring partners and allies of our dedication to our regional commitments—in a way that reduces potential conflict between U.S. forces and Chinese sailors and civilians.

On Saturday, the Pentagon released a remarkable statement: “Today, the Department of Defense conducted an airstrike that targeted Taliban leader Mullah Mansur.” Soon after, a tweet from the Office of the Chief Executive of Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah, read, “#Taliban leader #AkhtarMansoor was killed in a drone strike in Quetta, #Pakistan at 04:30 pm yesterday. His car was attacked in Dahl Bandin.” An anonymous U.S. official stated, “Mansour was the target and was likely killed,” while the Pentagon press release noted, “We are still assessing the results of the strike.” As of Monday afternoon, the Taliban had yet to release any statement. The attack was significant in that it was acknowledged by the U.S. military (and thus not a covert CIA drone strike), and was conducted in Balochistan (only one other strike—under CIA covert authorities—has occurred outside of either North or South Waziristan). There have been other clandestine U.S. military operations within Pakistan: a March 12, 2008 artillery shelling against a suspected Haqqani network house within the Pakistani border, a September 3, 2008 Navy SEAL raid in the town of Angor Adda in South Waziristan, and Apache helicopter and AC-130 airstrikes—which killed twenty-four Pakistani soldiers—a few hundred meters into Pakistani territory. Defense officials later admitted to the artillery shelling and airstrikes after the fact as being justified under “hot-pursuit” requirements, while the SEAL raid was never acknowledged. What is most consequential about Saturday’s drone strike was its target: the leader of the Taliban, who had succeeded Mullah Omar after his death purportedly in a Karachi hospital in 2013. This is notable because it had been U.S. policy that Taliban leaders should explicitly not be killed, because their participation is essential in the Afghan peace process. American (and of course Pakistani) intelligence and military officials have known the, often, day-to-day location of Taliban leaders for almost a decade, but had largely refrained from attempting to kill them. Mansour’s potential death provides a real-world, real-time ability to test two hypotheses about the policy of killing terrorist leaders. These are based upon the objectives of the strike, according to the Pentagon press release, as well as subsequent statements by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. Hypothesis one: Mansour’s death will reduce Taliban attacks and fatalities against Afghanistan national security forces, U.S. and coalition troops, and Afghan civilians. Hypothesis two: Mansour’s replacement will be more likely to participate in the long-stalled peace and reconciliation negotiations with the Afghan government. There has been a tremendous amount of social science research on these challenging policy puzzles. These policy-evaluative publications have reached somewhat conflicting conclusions, and are often contested by U.S. military and intelligence staffers who I speak with. However, those staffers never publish their research findings for public scrutiny, and are unable—given they would be referring to classified information—to clearly articulate their problems with the existing research. On whether killing terrorists leaders and lower-level militants reduces violence, Max Abrahms and Phillip Potter assessed that when leaders of militant groups are killed or targeted, lower-level members have to assume tactical responsibility, and they increase the proportion of the group’s violence against civilian targets. Patrick Johnston and Anoop Sarbahi determined, “We find no statistically significant evidence of a positive relationship between drone strikes and terrorism.”  Meanwhile, Vincent Bauer, Keven Ruby, and Robert Pape found that “drone strikes are only marginally effective at reducing militant violence in the short term, and that the effect dissipates over time.” On leadership targeting and the strength and durability of terrorist groups: In 2009, Jenna Jordan examined 298 leadership targeting incidents from 1945 through 2004, and concluded that "decapitation is not an effective counterterrorism strategy," and oftentimes prolongs the life of a terrorist group. On the other hand, Bryan C. Price concluded, by analyzing the effect of leadership decapitation on 207 terrorist groups from 1970 to 2008, the killing or capturing leaders significantly increases the mortality rate of the group. In 2014, Jordan reviewed the impact of 109 attacks on al-Qaeda leadership from 2001 to 2011, and did not find a “significant degradation of organizational capacity or a marked disruption in al-Qaida’s activities,” measured in the number of attacks and their lethality. There is also a CIA “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency” report from July 2009 that examined nine cases of high-value targeting and found that five failed outright, two succeeded, and two had mixed results. The report specifically warned, “The Taliban’s military structure blends a top-down command system with an egalitarian Afghan tribal structure that rules by consensus, making the group more able to withstand HVT operations, according to clandestine and U.S. military reporting.” How might someone determine if hypothesis one has been achieved? United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has produced reports on the protection of civilians since 2007. Fortunately, for determining causal effect, UNAMA began releasing its reports bi-annually in 2009, and just last month releasing them quarterly. So when the third quarter UNAMA report is released in November, look for an increase or decrease in attacks by “anti-government elements,” meaning the Taliban. (It is worth noting that Taliban attacks are decreasing relative to other perpetrators: In 2015, the group was responsible for 62 percent of all civilian fatalities, a decrease from 78 percent in 2013.) There is also the Global Terrorism Database, which produces its excellent summary of terrorist attacks for all countries by date, perpetrator group, fatalities or casualties, and target type. The 2016 data for Afghanistan will probably be posted online sometime in mid-2017. There has been no new data for total attacks on U.S. or coalition forces since 2013, but U.S. troop fatalities are constantly updated at the Pentagon’s casualty status website, and military contractors working for the Department of Defense at a Department of Labor website. As for Afghanistan security forces, the Ministries of Defense and Interior apparently prepare an annual total of military fatalities, which has previously been provided to western journalists. How might one determine if hypothesis two has been achieved? This simply requires determining if Mansour’s replacement, or a council of recognized Taliban leaders, decide to negotiate directly and faithfully with the government of Afghanistan. One member of the government-appointed High Peace Council stated, “Mansour’s death doesn’t necessarily mean that peace is closer than it was yesterday.” We will soon find out if this is true, and if targeting Taliban leadership succeeds at achieving the objectives as articulated by the Obama administration.

This blog post was coauthored with my research associate, Amelia M. Wolf. In our latest piece at ForeignPolicy.com, we evaluate the Obama administration’s long-standing claim that drone strikes are more “precise” and cause fewer civilian fatalities than airstrikes by manned aircraft. We approach this challenge recognizing the limits of understanding who is being targeted and killed by all U.S. aerial operations. In addition, we admit that there are no wholly reliable or independently verifiable data sources, either from the U.S. government or research NGOs. Our conclusion, based upon the best available data, is that the White House is deeply misleading about the precision of drone strikes. They are, in fact, roughly thirty times more likely to result in a civilian fatality than an airstrike by a manned aircraft. In air campaign against the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, U.S. Air Force Central Command (AFCENT) has provided monthly data on total coalition airstrikes. Estimates of civilian fatalities, however, are more controversial. We therefore used an average of estimates given by the Pentagon and non-profit research group Airwars, which collects reports from numerous regional monitoring groups. AFCENT also provided airstrike data for Afghanistan, and civilian fatalities estimates were gathered from the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan’s (UNAMA) annual reports on the protection of civilians. UNAMA reports specifically on fatalities from airstrikes by pro-government and international forces. Finally, estimates for drone strikes and resulting civilian deaths are based on an average of three reporting organizations: the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, New America Foundation, and Long War Journal. In the overdue debate about the relative benefits and downsides of drone strikes, these numbers are important to keep in mind. Drones have been used more frequently because of their inherent advantages, but they have turned out to be no more “surgical” than airstrikes by manned platforms. Based upon the best available information, drone strikes result in far more civilian fatalities than airstrikes by manned platforms. This is likely the result of what military doctrine CJCSI 3160.01A refers to as “target misidentification,” where the precision-guided missile accurately impacts upon an inaccurately identified person. We hope that analysts and scholars of drones and air power explore this finding in greater detail. Read our article here.

Yesterday, President Obama was asked a revealing question at the end of an appearance at the University of Chicago defending the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  A student inquired about the president’s unilateral authority to authorize drone strikes outside of traditional battlefields, asking specifically:  “How are these killings morally and legally justified, and what kind of message does this drone program send about American values to the world, the American people, and to law students like myself who refuse to put trust in an opaque process.”  Naturally, Obama did not respond directly to the student’s question, but this twelve minute video segment (starting at 1:10:42) is worth reviewing in its entirety, as it is Obama’s longest unscripted reflection of the drone strikes that have come to define his approach to counterterrorism. The most remarkable detail that Obama admitted to was the following: “It’s fair to say that, in the first couple of years of my presidency, the architecture—legal architecture, administrative architecture, command structures—around how these were utilized was underdeveloped relative to how fast the technology was moving….The decisionmaking was, was not ad-hoc, but it was embedded in decisions that are made all the time about you know a commander leading a military operation, or an intelligence team trying to take out a terrorist. And there wasn’t enough of an overarching structure.” Recognizing this shortcoming, Obama continued: “We have to create an architecture for this, because the potential for abuse, given the remoteness of these weapons and their lethality. We’ve got to come up with a structure that governs how we’re approaching them. And that’s what we’ve done. So I put forward a presidential directive, that’s basically a set of administrative guidelines whereby these weapons are being used.” An unclassified version of this Presidential Policy Directive was released on May 23, 2013. This means that for four years, four months, and three days, Obama authorized drone strikes based on what he believed were poorly developed structures and decisionmaking processes. That military and intelligence officials were applying to unmanned platforms the doctrine and principles that they applied to all other weapons platforms, which ignores the wholly unique capabilities that drones provide, which makes their use far more likely. This also suggests that the final authority was further down the chain-of-command than the White House was selectively claiming with their “kill-list.” Obama’s acknowledgement yesterday echoes the CIA’s response to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) study on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. The SSCI’s Conclusion 10 found that, “CIA never conducted its own comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.” Writing a response that was dated June 27, 2013, the CIA declared: “We agree with Conclusion 10 in full. It underpins the most important lesson that we have drawn from The Study: CIA needs to develop the structure, expertise, and methodologies required to more objectively and systematically evaluate the effectiveness of our covert actions.” Just as Obama was permitting drone strikes without the structure in place to support them, the CIA was detaining and torturing people without the processes to even understand whether their actions were necessary or effective. But more consequentially, during the time frame between January 20, 2009 and May 23, 2013, the United States conducted 377 drone strikes in non-battlefield setting, which killed 2,741 individuals, 334 of whom are believed to be civilians. How can the White House today stand behind those operations and the deceased victims when Obama admits that there were inadequate processes in place? This is yet another reason why there must be a systematic retroactive assessment of U.S. counterterrorism strikes in non-battlefield settings, resembling the SSCI study that examined only the detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects. If those 119 detainees deserved such a study, why wouldn’t the 2,741 drone strike victims deserve the same? Obama also added: “I don’t want our intelligence agencies being a paramilitary organization, that’s not their function. As much as possible this should be done through our Defense Department so that we can report, ‘here’s what we did, here’s why we did it, here’s our assessment of what happened.’ And so slowly we are pushing in that direction.” It is impossible to believe Obama is unaware of how deeply immersed CIA analysts and operatives have been at finding and killing terror suspects, or of the seamless blending of Title 50 (covert) and Title 10 (national defense) government entities at the operational level. But, if he really wanted the CIA to get out of the drone strike business—which many have proposed for years—he could have assured that it happened five years ago. Moreover, the level of detail that he claims will be reported would be a positive push toward authentic transparency or accountability, but it similarly begs the question of why he chose to wait until just months before leaving office to undertake these drone strike reforms.

Tina Huang is an intern in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. The rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State will be a leading foreign policy issue for the incoming administration. Thus, it is crucial to understand the proposed policies of the candidates. The current results of the primary elections indicate that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and businessman Donald Trump will likely win their party’s nominations. Though both candidates use strikingly similar rhetoric to describe how to counter the Islamic State, a close analysis of the details they each have provided exposes starkly different approaches. First, Clinton and Trump have both stated that they would disrupt the Islamic State’s Internet access and social media presence. During a Republican debate, Trump said, “I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody. I sure as hell don’t want to let people that want to kill us and kill our nation use our Internet.” Similarly, Clinton expressed that her administration would “deny them virtual territory.” The two candidates agree that, to do this, private companies should play a role. Clinton has urged Silicon Valley to “disrupt” the Islamic State by blocking or removing militant websites, videos, and encrypted communication. Trump, more vaguely, has claimed, “we have to get them [Silicon Valley] engaged.” However, other details the candidates have proposed for limiting the group’s online presence differ. Clinton has focused on attacking specific online infrastructure that the Islamic State utilizes to disseminate propaganda and communicate, whereas Trump has suggested he would close undefined “areas” of the Internet where the group is known to operate. He has not expanded on where those “areas” are, which therefore could be interpreted as cutting off specific geographical areas in the Middle East or blocking part of the Internet worldwide. Second, Clinton and Trump both believe that severing funding to the Islamic State is vital to defeating the group. Currently, the Islamic State brings in about $500 million a year from oil revenue, which makes up nearly 38 percent of its annual income. The group’s remaining profits stem from kidnapping ransoms, anonymous donations from governments and individuals, agricultural trade, and taxation. If elected, Trump has claimed he will “take away their wealth…take away the oil…I’d bomb the hell out of that oil field.” Contrastingly, Clinton has argued, “we have to go after nodes that facilitate illicit trade and transaction,” urging the UN Security Council to “update its terrorism sanctions” and “place more obligations on countries to police their own banks.” She directs responsibility toward governments and international organizations to take action that would prevent funds from reaching the Islamic State; whether states will take this initiative is speculative. Lastly, both candidates have expressed support for U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and ground troops to counter the Islamic State, but they differ on the specifics. Trump has advocated employing airstrikes to destroy oil fields, as previously mentioned. During a campaign speech in Iowa, he stated, “I would just bomb those suckers…I’d blow up the pipes…I’d blow up every single inch. There would be nothing left.” Though he suggested he would target the families of terrorists—a statement he later disputed—he did not clarify whether he would use airstrikes for this purpose. Rather, Trump has claimed, “I don’t like talking so specific….I want to be unpredictable.” Clinton, on the other hand, has proposed a three stage counterterrorism campaign that, in addition to targeting the group’s finances and online presence, aims to strip its control over territories in Syria and Iraq by executing a “more effective coalition air campaign, with more allies’ planes, more strikes, and a broader target set.” Looking to their proposals for ground troops, when Trump has been asked if he would send troops to the Middle East, he has provided an ambiguous response such as “I would do whatever you have to do” or “...you’ll need some ground troops.” Trump has said that their purpose would be "to protect the oil," but has not elaborated. Clinton has delineated her plan to take back territory and asserted that “airstrikes will have to be combined with ground forces.” She insisted that Congress should approve the deployment of U.S. special forces, not exceeding one hundred thousand soldiers. Clinton has gone further to explain what these groups should do once they are deployed: “We need to lay the foundation for a second Sunni Awakening” by providing training and support for Sunnis within the region. Clinton and Trump both agree that defeating the Islamic State will require precluding the group’s exploitation of the Internet, hindering its funding, leading an air coalition, and deploying ground troops. However, how they would each go about this and for what purpose differs. Clinton is firm in her position that defeating the Islamic State requires destruction, not containment, and has developed a thorough campaign to reinforce her stance. While Trump has yet to buttress his strategy with details, he should take the opportunity to expand on the specifics of his plan as the primaries continue and, potentially, during the general election debates. If Trump and Clinton compete in the general election, comparing and understanding their strategies for countering the Islamic State is imperative to ensuring the greatest security for the United States during the next administration.

In former CIA and NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden’s new memoir, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, he describes the case of Al Kibar, in which Israeli officials informed the United States in 2007 about a building under construction in Syria that they thought was a nuclear reactor. Hayden writes, “Then we gave the data to a red team, dedicated contrarians, and directed they come up with an alternative explanation. Build an alternative case as to why it’s not a nuclear reactor; why it’s not intended to produce plutonium for a weapon; why North Korea is not involved.” (p. 258) For the full story of the red teaming of Al Kibar, read this excerpt from my book—based upon interviews with senior Bush administration officials—Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy. Red teaming is not only about using a devil’s advocate to scrutinize and challenge day-to-day operations. For institutions facing a significant decision, red teaming may also be a one-time effort. We can see how a properly administrated red team can help ensure that a crucial decision is the right one by studying the following example found in recent national security decision making. In April 2007, Israeli national security officials surprised their American counterparts by informing them about a large building under construction at Al Kibar in a valley in the eastern desert of Syria. In oneon- one briefings, the Israeli officials provided dozens of internal and external color photographs dating back to before 2003. The evidence strongly suggested that the building was a nuclear reactor, remarkably similar to the gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor in Yongbyon, North Korea. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert then delivered his request to President George W. Bush: “George, I’m asking you to bomb the compound.” Senior Bush administration officials were deeply troubled. North Korea had conducted its first nuclear weapons test the previous October using plutonium produced in the Yongbyon reactor. The Israeli briefings reinforced the US intelligence community (IC) assessments of “sustained nuclear cooperation” between North Korea and Syria. Though the IC had been monitoring the construction of a facility that they had described as “enigmatic” since 2005, the new Israeli photographs cast the compound in Al Kibar under a harsh new light. Immediately, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-led task force reevaluated all of the available intelligence related to Al Kibar and North Korea’s nuclear cooperation with Syria. Given the flawed intelligence assessment that resulted in the incorrect conclusion in 2002 about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), nobody wanted to be wrong again. As Bush told his intelligence chiefs: “Gotta be secret, and gotta be sure.” The CIA task force reaffirmed the Israeli officials’ claims, but Bush administration officials took extraordinary measures to increase their confidence level. To ensure that they could be nearly certain in their assessment of Al Kibar, they employed devil’s advocate techniques markedly similar to those invented by the Vatican centuries earlier. National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley told IC officials to assemble some of their best analysts to review the data to see if the facility could be anything other than a reactor. The CIA director, General Michael Hayden, was similarly concerned given that “we had a poor record of assessing the WMD programs of countries bordering the Euphrates River.” He noted, “You increase your certainty by widening the circle, but we still had to keep the circle small to keep it a secret.” To do this, the IC employed two red teams that were totally independent from the task force and had not yet been “read in” on the intelligence regarding Al Kibar. Bush’s intelligence chiefs so thoroughly bought into the concept of red teaming that they issued the two groups opposing goals: one would be commissioned to prove “yes” and the other to prove “no.” The “yes” red team assessment came from a private sector analyst who held a top-secret security clearance and was well known for his proficiency in monitoring nuclear weapons programs. The analyst was not told where the facility was located, but was provided with the Israeli and American internal and overhead imagery of it. The obvious efforts to camouflage the reactor vessel and the spent fuel pools within a building that had nearly an identical footprint to that of the Yongbyon reactor, and the trenches and pipes leading to a nearby water source (the Euphrates) were among several telltale giveaways. Within a few days, the analyst informed the IC officials, “That’s a North Korean reactor.” Hayden’s “no” red team was composed of senior analysts from the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC). This team received the same access to all the available data and intelligence as its counterpart, but was explicitly instructed to reach a hypothesis that the facility in Syria was not a nuclear reactor. “Prove to me that it is something else,” the CIA director told them. Over the course of the following week, the WINPAC group considered whether Al Kibar could contain a chemical weapons production or storage site, or something related to missile or rocket programs. Anything was plausible—they even investigated the possibility that it might be some sort of secretive nonweapons- related vanity project of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They also explored whether al-Assad had directed that a mock-up of a reactor be built, simply because he wanted it to be bombed for some reason. Another senior CIA official recalled that they had particular difficulty finding an alternative explanation for the internal photographs of the facility, which not only closely resembled Yongbyon but also even contained what appeared to be North Korean workers. “The alternative hypothesis that they came up with, for which the most evidence unquestionably and markedly lined up behind, was that it was a fake nuclear reactor,” Hayden recalled. At the weekly Tuesday afternoon meeting in Hadley’s office, a handful of senior officials met to discuss what to do about the purported Syrian reactor. The results of the red-teaming exercises gave officials a high degree of confidence that they had their facts straight. They took comfort in the additional levels of scrutiny that had been applied to the initial intelligence estimates. “It gave us more confidence about the instinct and conclusion of the intelligence community regarding whether it was a reactor. Every other alternative explanation was not plausible,” according to Hadley. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who attended all of these meetings, also recalled, “Everybody agreed that we could not find an alternative to this being a nuclear reactor.” However, even though the Al Kibar compound was all but confirmed to be a nuclear reactor, this did not mean that the United States should accede to Prime Minister Olmert’s request to destroy it. While Hayden could comfortably declare, “That’s a reactor. I have high confidence,” the red teams had notably found no evidence of a facility required to separate spent reactor fuel into bomb-grade plutonium or of weaponization work, which further led him to state, “On [the question whether] it is part of a nuclear weapons program, I have low confidence.” Bush subsequently told Olmert that the United States would not participate in a military attack: “I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it’s a weapons program.” The two independent intelligence assessments provided Bush administration officials with far greater confidence about what was being constructed in the Syrian desert. They informed Bush’s decision-making calculus, even though his primary concern remained the risks to US interests in the Middle East if he authorized another preemptive attack on a Muslim country. With bombing now off the table, the CIA developed options to covertly sabotage the reactor before it went critical; however, CIA Deputy Director Stephen Kappes told the White House that sabotage had a low likelihood of success. Therefore, Bush chose to pursue diplomatic channels by going public with the intelligence to the United Nations Security Council and International Atomic Energy Agency, in order to pressure Syria to verifiably dismantle the reactor. Before this could happen, four Israeli fighter jets destroyed the suspected reactor at Al Kibar on September 6, 2007, without any resistance from Syria’s air defenses or overt support from the United States. In this case, the findings of the two devil’s advocates, based on their independent analysis of available intelligence, greatly enhanced the credibility of the intelligence estimates regarding the existence of a nuclear reactor, and enabled Bush to make up his mind on the basis of more complete and vetted information. Ultimately, the president decided to refrain from launching strikes. This was a classic example of red teaming in action—having outsiders test the validity of the intelligence and consider the possibility of alternate hypotheses.

On December 5, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) while speaking at the FreedomWorks “Rising Tide” Summit in Des Moines, Iowa, made the alarming pledge, “If I am elected president, we will utterly destroy ISIS…We will carpet bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!” Cruz’s promise to authorize the commitment of war crimes, presumably in an effort to sound “tough,” was met with derision by most other Republican presidential candidates, politicians of both parties, and senior military officials. Cruz subsequently amended his initial promise to say, “you would carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of the troops…you have embedded special forces to direction [sic] the air power. But the object isn’t to level a city. The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists.” Thus, after Cruz first promised to carpet bomb a dispersed militant army of some thirty thousand members, he then watered this down to essentially continuing the current U.S.-led coalition air campaign. To be clear, carpet bombing consists of dropping unguided bombs on a selected geographic grid to destroy or damage as much as possible that is contained therein. One prominent example was the U.S. B-52 attack in June 1965 against buildings forty miles north of Saigon in southern Vietnam that were believed to be used by the Viet Cong. Here is how the attack—the opening phase of Operation Arc Light—was described in the U.S. Air Force’s official history: “The planes crossed the Vietnamese coast at half past six; 15 minutes later, from altitudes ranging from 19,000 to 22,000 feet, began dropping their bombs on the 1-mile by 2-mile target box. The drops were controlled by the portable beacon that had been flown by helicopter the evening before to its location 11 miles from the target. Within 30 minutes, 1,300 bombs fell, slightly more than half of them in the target area… The immediately observable results of the bombing were less than spectacular.” This final point why carpet bombing has not been featured by the U.S. military since the massive bombings of Vietnam and Cambodia: it does not provide a military advantage, nor harm an adversary’s will to fight. Or, as one senior air force official recently put it to me, “it’s just a tremendous waste of weapons, and not how we do things anymore.” As Lt. Gen. Charles Q. Brown, commander of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, told the Air Warfare Symposium last week, 99 percent of all the weapons in his area of operations are precision-guided. It would take a tremendous amount of “dumbing down” both the target development process and the weapons used to become a carpet-bombing air force again. Moreover, this tactic is unnecessarily disproportional and indiscriminate, and therefore a potential war crime, which no military commander should ever authorize, nor pilot should conduct. This does not mean that, as I have written often, U.S. air power does not cause collateral damage and civilian casualties—including catastrophically like the February 13, 1991, F-117 bombing of the Amiriyah air shelter in Baghdad that killed over four hundred civilians—or that civilian and military officials are not misleading about the alleged “surgical” precision and effectiveness of airstrikes. Rather, it is a fact that the saturation bombing of geographic grids simply is not part of U.S. military air campaigns today. This gets to another misstatement that Sen. Cruz has repeated, even while he weakened his initial carpet-bombing pledge. In December 2015, he stated, “we carpet bombed them for 36 days, suturing bombing,” and in January, “You want to know what carpet combing is. It’s what we did in the first Persian Gulf War.” Actually, the United States did not carpet bomb during the first Gulf War. To understand why and how Cruz is wrong, I recommend a new article by Rebecca Grant in Air Force Magazine that coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Gulf War. To quote from Grant’s analysis: “Glosson’s staff first laid a grid over the battlefield dividing it into 30-mile blocks, then subdividing each into kill boxes measuring 15 miles by 15 miles. The bulk of Iraq’s army clustered in nine of the 30-mile boxes spanning Kuwait and the northwestern borders with Iraq...The Republican Guard divisions ringed the northern kill boxes. Most held elements of multiple divisions. Kill Box AE6 held the Tawakalna Republican Guard Division, 52nd Armored, and 12th Armored. Kill Box AF7 perched on Iraq’s border with Kuwait contained parts of four different Republican Guard divisions. At dawn on Feb. 4 the first of eight new Killer Scouts—call sign Pointer —began one-hour orbits over the Republican Guard. The forward air controllers would fly over their assigned box or boxes, spot Iraqi equipment, drop a marker bomb, then call in fresh fighters to follow up with more bombs. F-16s with new Global Positioning System units could pinpoint coordinates. In this concept, the same pilots would fly over familiar kill boxes each day. They’d learn the status and terrain and report back with accurate bomb damage.” Grant then details the “tank plinking” process: “Try 500-pound laser guided bombs against Iraqi tanks, Phillips recommended. This tactic had also been successfully tried out late in the Vietnam War. By placing a laser spot on an enemy tank, a bomb equipped with a laser-homing guidance system could drill in on the laser dot and hit with great precision. The F-111F swing-wing fighter-bomber had just such a system called Pave Tack. A pod projected a laser beam. A guidance kit on the Mk 82 500-pound bomb followed the laser-designated spot on the target…The F-111Fs tried the first laser tank plinking mission on Feb.  5. Their targets were in the Medina Division of the Republican Guard. Col. Tom Lennon, the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing commander, flew the mission himself on Glosson’s orders. ‘Unbelievable,’ Lennon reported back. ‘I got seven out of eight hits.’ By late February, the F-111Fs were achieving up to 150 armor kills per night.” This is not “carpet bombing” by any stretch, but rather the division of battlefield positions into geographic grids in order to more effectively call-in precision strikes upon military targets within those grids. As I noted five years ago in a piece titled, “The Mythology of Intervention,” both opponents and proponents of using military force draw upon historical examples in order to bolster their arguments. They often do so in a way that is highly selective and deeply misleading. Sen. Cruz is merely part of a long and ignoble tradition of political leaders misusing American military history to mislead American citizens.

Former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Gen. Michael Hayden has an op-ed in today’s New York Times: “To Keep America Safe, Embrace Drone Warfare.” The two-thousand-word piece provides some unique insights into the process by which CIA directors authorize—including over the phone—individual drone strikes and even order the specific munition to be used. Moreover, Hayden provides a more plausible and granular defense than those offered by other former CIA chiefs, including George Tenet, Leon Panetta, and Michael Morrell. He even makes some effort to engage directly with certain prominent criticisms of these lethal operations. It should be acknowledged that it is difficult to evaluate Hayden’s op-ed, because he refers to intelligence reports that the American public will never see. Moreover, it is impossible to know whether everything Hayden wanted to reveal is included in the published Times piece, since the content of the op-ed must have been approved by the CIA Publications Review Board, whether as a stand-alone piece or an excerpt from his forthcoming book. Nevertheless, there are a few troubling aspects to the op-ed, which are consistent with all U.S. government officials’ arguments in support of drone strikes: how the program is framed and what complicating bits of information that are left out. First, he writes, “Critics assert that a high percentage of the people killed in drone strikes are civilians—a claim totally at odds with the intelligence I have reviewed.” Without identifying the critics or the numerical percentage, it is difficult to know precisely how many civilians he believes were killed. But, based upon the averages provided by three non-governmental organizations that monitor counterterrorism operations, as director of the CIA Hayden personally authorized an estimated 48 drone strikes, which killed 532 people, 144 of whom were civilians. At 27 percent, this is more than twice the 12 percent of estimated civilian deaths from all of the U.S. drone strikes conducted through January 2016. Sources: New America Foundation (2007-08); Long War Journal (2007-08); The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (2006, 2009); Although there were air strikes in Yemen while Hayden was director of the CIA, they were conducted under Department of Defense authorities. Second, Hayden emphasizes that targeted individuals were “senior,” “operatives,” or “Al Qaeda,” and that their primary motivation was to attack the U.S. homeland. He omits the fact that some of the suspected militants targeted were not involved in plotting attacks against the United States. According to top-secret intelligence reports obtained by Jonathan Landay, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) requested one drone strike in 2006, and five more in 2007. One of these strikes occurred on May 22, 2007 “after a Pakistani army assault on the [militant] compound was repulsed.” Landay continues, “The Pakistani army sought the strike even though it had been told that drones wouldn’t be used to support Pakistani troops in combat, said an individual familiar with the episode.” Despite these side-payment strikes, Hayden does not admit that the CIA provided close air support for the Pakistani Army, presumably because it erodes the narrative that drone strikes are being exclusively used for U.S. counterterrorism missions. Third, he raises the controversial issue of “so-called signature strikes…when the identities of the people present were not known,” which is notable as the U.S. government has never acknowledged this practice. Just three months ago, retired CIA director David Petraeus stated, “I can’t talk about signature strikes...if they are even taken...I don’t know what they are.” Hayden claims they were not indiscriminate, as “Intelligence for signature strikes always had multiple threads and deep history. The data was near encyclopedic.” Since signature strikes were first revealed in February 2008, a great deal of information has emerged that conflicts with Hayden’s confidence.  For example, classified intelligence reports obtained by NBC News showed that, “one of every four of those killed by drones in Pakistan between Sept. 3, 2010, and Oct. 30, 2011 [after Hayden retired], were classified as ‘other militants’.” In addition, of eight U.S. citizens killed in U.S. drone strikes, only one was knowingly targeted: Anwar al-Awlaki. The other seven were not definitively known to have been at the location of the attack. One way that the CIA has attempted to deal with the controversial practice is through better branding. According to Daniel Klaidman, author of Kill or Capture, after Hayden retired, “CIA actually changed the name of signature strikes to something called TADS...terrorist attack disruption strike.” Fourth, the byline in the online version of the op-ed omits Hayden’s current employers. Sixty days after his tenure ended, Hayden was announced as a principle of The Cherthoff Group, and later was named to the boards at Alion Science and Technology, Motorola Solutions, and Mike Baker International. This is completely legal and consistent with many former CIA directors, who leave government service for private sector jobs or rotate back into government, like current CIA Director John Brennan, who stepped down as president and chief executive officer of The Analysis Corporation in January 2009 to become President Obama’s senior counterterrorism advisor. However, any such strong defense of a government program by a former government official should mention the potential conflicts of interest when the author is employed by corporations that provide analytical, technical, and/or logistic support for the U.S. military, intelligence community, and homeland security agencies. Finally, Hayden opens the piece by proclaiming, “The longer they have gone on, however, the more controversial drone strikes have become.” As somebody who has studied U.S. drone strike policies and practices for ten years, I would say that they have never been less controversial. The Obama administration’s appearance of “reforms” presented in 2013 succeeded in permanently institutionalizing and normalizing what was—under Hayden’s early tenure at the CIA—a rarely used tactic. Drone strikes are generally supported by Americans (though opposed outside of the United States), and there is no plan for or interest from Congressional members to fully investigate covert drones strikes, as was the case for the CIA’s far more limited rendition and enhanced interrogation program. Today, drone strikes are a settled policy, but that does not mean Americans should accept everything a former CIA director tells us about them.

Harry Oppenheimer and Aaron Picozzi are research associates at the Council on Foreign Relations. An unparalleled, indiscriminate and growing wave of transparency is exposing the deployment of military assets—once found only through labored searches of technical publications—and high definition, near-real-time images of geographical locations worldwide, are obtainable through the click of a mouse. As tensions rise between the United States and potential state and non-state adversaries, the veil of secrecy that at one time could only be lifted by intelligence agencies is now accessible to virtually anyone via the worldwide web. Many news outlets picked up on the recent expansion of an airstrip in Remeillan, Syria—a Kurdish-controlled area 365 miles from NATO Incirlik air base in Turkey. The strip, that was just 2,300 feet long by 82 feet wide on April 17, 2015, has been expanded to 4,330 feet by 190 feet wide, with an 82 feet by 92 feet apron, as of December 18, 2015. CNN placed a reporter on the ground to give an eyewitness account of the activities taking place near the strip—described as herdsmen with sheep, oil pumps, and mud brick houses. Yet, this leaves many unanswered questions. Why does the expansion of an isolated airstrip warrant attention? It is not only the improvement of the airstrip, but also how it was discovered. The construction was observed by IHS Janes using commercial satellite imagery gathered, in this case, from Airbus Defence and Space, but which could be purchased from a number of sources for a few thousand dollars. What are the deeper implications of this runway? Without taking a trip to Syria or accessing classified sources, can a person answer this question using only open sources? Considering the old dimensions of the airstrip, the most functional American fixed-wing cargo aircraft with the technical capability to land at the strip is the C-27J. With a required runway length of 2,400 feet, it fits close to the specifications. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) took control of these planes in 2014 after they failed to meet air force requirements. Otherwise, only helicopters or V-22s could operate out of the old strip, a fact that has been reported by news sources. With the expanded dimensions of the strip, the most versatile airplane that could be used in this space is the C-130—a multi-role, long-range tactical aircraft. An assault landing, a technique used when faced with a short landing strip or when taking enemy fire it is likely, requires only a 3,000- by 60-foot airstrip. The other aircraft capable of landing on this strip is the C-17—a cargo and transport aircraft larger than the C-130 that requires a 3,000- by 90-foot airstrip for an assault landing. Though landing either of these aircrafts was impossible on the old strip, it is well within the limits of the new field. A C-17 is more efficient at delivering cargo, but less flexible, and the air force prefers to use them for inter-theater transport. As a baseline, the C-27J has a max payload of 25,000 pounds and can carry a Jackal, a versatile ground vehicle. So, what additional capabilities do the C-130 and C-17 provide that are worth the effort of expanding an airstrip in remote Syria? There are several capabilities the United States might want to have with these new platforms. The C-130 can now be parked on the apron and used as a force-multiplier to provide rapid ground refueling for helicopters, fast attack vehicles (FAVs), or Ospreys. This C-130 could also be utilized for aeromedical evacuation, to bring in six FAVs, such as Flyers or Ranger Special Operations Vehicle, at a time, fly as part of a Unified Command Suite to coordinate efforts on the ground and provide a central link to fighters in the area, or drop off a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) to provide a precision strike capability in northern Syria. If the military just wants to drop off supplies, a C-17 can deliver 73,000 pounds of equipment at a time with a 90-minute turnaround. Those pallets could carry in weapons, ammunition, light vehicles, drones, or other supplies. Each set of capabilities is linked to a different mission. The higher payload capacity could provide increased material support for Kurdish Forces, faster refueling capabilities could better enable air operations to support allies on the ground, and FAVs could strengthen snatch and grab capabilities in the area. Individuals can purchase commercial surveillance images of specific areas of concern. They are able to “roll back time,” looking at images from present to inception, to answer the questions of who, what, when, and where. The United States has repeated employed this strategy, both stateside and overseas, with satellites, blimps, and conventional airplanes. Following an improvised explosive device (IED) blast, or the murder of a law enforcement official, U.S. authorities such as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) often utilize imagery to track the parties involved. An interested party can do this analysis from the comfort of their office without access to classified information, contacts on the ground, or even any database subscriptions. This data comes without the burden launching and managing satellites, or gathering primary intelligence. While it’s nothing new that a Russian military intelligence unit could complete a comprehensive study of a Syrian airstrip, it is novel that a supporter of the self-declared Islamic State could use open-source information to perform this type of analysis full time. They could now purchase satellite images to track similar scenarios and to inform grand strategy and prioritize targets. A radical jihadist version of Elliott Higgins, the British citizen journalist who has exposed Russian actions in Ukraine and Syria using open-source intelligence, would be a prized asset for any extremist group.

Respected former U.S. diplomats Nicholas Burns and James Jeffrey published a Washington Post op-ed today, calling on the U.S. military to lead the creation of a “safe zone” in northern Syria. The authors propose, “to locate it over twenty-five to thirty miles south of the Turkish border….Its central purpose would be to help local forces drive out the Islamic State and to provide a haven for civilians until the war can be brought to a close.” Burns and Jeffrey further acknowledge some of the difficulties involved with their proposal, admitting that, “the United States would have to deploy U.S. soldiers on the ground inside Syria along the Turkish border in order to recruit the majority of the zone’s soldiers from Turkey and other NATO allies, as well as the Sunni Arab states.” This safe haven would be further protected by a no-fly zone operating primarily out of Turkish airbases. This proposal deserves serious analysis and consideration. However, it is based upon a false claim repeated often by those endorsing interventions into the Syrian civil war: “It would restrict the operations of the rampaging Syrian air force—the largest killer of civilians in the conflict.” This is false, according to data compiled by the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), a nongovernmental organization. The VDC determined that through mid-September 2015, there had been 85,404 civilians killed in the civil war: 28,277 by shootings and mass killings, 27,006 by mortar, artillery, and rocket attacks, and 18,866 by “Syrian Government Air Attacks.” As I wrote in 2013, any military intervention that claims to protect civilians from harm must be based upon how civilians are actually being harmed, not based upon the level of military commitment that can be supported by U.S. domestic politics. Actually protecting civilians from shootings and mortar attacks requires a level of cost, commitment, and risk that is presently unacceptable within the United States. Moreover, even if the United States and some coalition of outside powers decided to protect civilians from the Syrian air force, a no-fly zone exclusively over northern Syria would not achieve this. Both Syrian and Russian air power is (indiscriminately) being used, overwhelmingly along a roughly north-south line running from Aleppo to the Damascus suburbs—territory that would be entirely unprotected from this hypothetical no-fly zone. In fact, according to the VDC, since September 2015, over one thousand civilians, including three hundred children, have been killed by Russian air strikes. Though there is no comparable data, Russia assuredly is killing more civilians with air power today than the Syrian regime. Of course, the no-fly-zone could be extended to protect civilians in the areas where they are being killed, and against the actual perpetrators—i.e., Russia. But this would place the patrolling aircraft at far greater risk of being shot down by antiaircraft missiles, would routinely require that those aircraft operate in close proximity with Russian combat jets flying out of the Latakia Airport, and ultimately would mandate shooting down Russian aircraft that violate the expanded no-fly zone. In reality, the most likely outcome of any no-fly zone over northern Syria would be to further deepen the U.S. military commitment in Syria, and gradually expand the initial military objectives, as happened with no-fly zones in Iraq (regime change), Bosnia-Herzegovina (fifteen-day bombing campaign, plus British and French shelling of Bosnian Serbs leading to diplomatic settlement), and Libya (regime change). One other claim that Burns and Jeffrey make is worth evaluating. They write that the safe zone “would also hinder the use of military power by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah against the resistance.” This could certainly be true for rebel groups operating out of the safe zone, assuming that the United States and coalition partners defend the rebels while they are within the safe zone. Of course, the unresolvable dilemma of declaring a safe zone for civilians to receive humanitarian assistance, and for armed rebel groups to operate out of, is that the safe zone would actually be a war zone. As we know from UN-declared safe zones in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in sub-Saharan Africa, combatants will use it to rest, recruit, and recover, thereby placing all civilians residing there at grave risk. Humanitarian interventions that claim their objective is the protection of noncombatants should be based upon the realities on the ground. Moreover, they should not make harm to the noncombatants—who the intervention was intended to save in the first place—more likely. The real concern with Burns and Jeffrey’s ambitious proposal is that it neither reflects what is happening in Syria today, nor would likely reduce the overall level of violence (from all sources). Whether it would significantly increase the likelihood of a brokered diplomatic outcome that ends the brutal five-plus-year civil war is difficult to assess without clarifying information of who would participate, and how the Assad regime, Russia, and Iran would react.

Aaron Picozzi is a research associate for the military fellows at the Council on Foreign Relations. The United States has recently enjoyed the tactical benefit of fighting enemies incapable of matching the technological prowess of the U.S. military. The use of modern weaponry against relatively antiquated forces has led to successful operations on the battlefield, particularly against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The U.S. military’s high-tech upper hand relies upon the leverage of these technological disparities, and in turn, has fostered an inflated level of combat supremacy. This problem resonates from foot soldiers to the highest level commanders and planners. Confidence in the reliability and accuracy of combat technology has not been an issue of concern for the United States during recent or ongoing conflicts. However, in the face of Russian aggression toward Ukraine and Chinese expansion in the contested South and East China Seas, the massive benefit of American technology will be limited during conflict with either competitor. Either country could match what the United States has seen as their unique advantage for the past twenty-five years. There are even certain technologies upon which the United States has relied that could be equally countered, or even rendered useless, by the modernized militaries of China or Russia. By relying upon satellite communication and positioning, the U.S. military has become accustomed to having a decisive advantage in terms of battlefield awareness. The enemy will not need to disrupt U.S. communications or GPS using interference methods, such as jamming, spoofing, or lazing; their loss of credibility and reliability due to a failure to advance the technology will render them obsolete. The U.S. military claims that it is taking steps to galvanize the tenants of basic navigation in its servicemembers, but running a five point “land nav” course within the limits of a few blurry grid squares does nothing more than check a box. Continued attention to these tasks will be necessary to consider them a viable backup. The same can be said for the U.S. Navy’s reintroduction of celestial navigation—navigation based on measurements of the time and position of the sun, moon, and stars. However, a day looking through the sextant doesn’t make someone ready to circle the globe in their schooner. Uncertainty surrounding the accuracy of GPS coordinates will cause, at the very least, the need to verify locations through less advanced means—a tedious process prone to human error. These rudimentary skills are perishable and have not been relied upon for years. “Owning the night”— the U.S. military’s ability to operate in the cover of darkness thanks to night vision and thermal devices—will no longer be a predetermined advantage when the enemy is equally advanced and funded. Confrontations with more sophisticated militaries will also reduce the advantage of the integrative digital webbing that meshes military command and control. Secure communications with soldiers on the ground are only valued when that security is guaranteed, otherwise the weight, complexity, and unreliability would render current communications equipment nearly obsolete. The air domain has seen the greatest disparity in recent U.S. conflicts. Drones are instrumental to U.S. military operations, as they are able to patrol and surveil for longer periods of time than their manned counterparts, without the risk of pilot fatigue. The lifeblood behind these tools lies in their ability to transfer data. There are conflicting claims that states, including Iran, have hacked U.S. drones, but the insurgencies and fractured governments in the U.S. crosshairs have, so far, lacked the ability to significantly disrupt data streams. China and Russia have the capability to, and likely would, target both the physical and intangible assets of the United States during a time of conflict. Both countries have showcased their ability to operate in the cyber domain, either by stealing plans for military aircraft, or accessing the Pentagon’s e-mail system. In order to further protect valuable data streams from cyberattacks, the Pentagon has tasked the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with fortifying the physical and intangible backbones of high-tech systems—a goal that still remains out of reach. Until the security and reliability of these data streams can be assured, the dependability of remotely operated assets will remain uncertain. However, the United States also has the capacity to disrupt data streams of Russia and China, at least putting them at an equal disadvantage. This is not a luddites anthem, but a warning that America’s technological advantage is not absolute. Perhaps it’s time to shed the “technological snivel” and embrace the fundamentals of warfare. Soldiers need to “shoot, move, and communicate” no matter the circumstances. As the tech gap continues to close between combatants—either through globalization or proliferation—militaries will have to increasingly rely upon their “archaic” skills. These skills must therefore remain sharp and be used often, not only as a contingent. If the American military continues to solely rely on the bells and whistles brought about by modernity, all that will be left when facing an equally equipped force is a complicated machine, devoid of advantage.

Today, I have a short piece in the New York Times’ “Room for Debate,” accurately summarized by its title, “Obama’s Embrace of Drone Strikes Will Be a Lasting Legacy.” The piece shows how President Barack Obama institutionalized and normalized the use of drones to target various militant and terrorist suspects. It also includes the most updated data of post-9/11 non-battlefield drone strikes, updating our estimates from the five-hundredth such operation conducted in November 2014. As of today, there have been approximately 550 strikes—50 under George W. Bush, 500 under Obama, which have cumulatively killed an estimated 3,405 militants and 470 civilians. This information is fully presented in the chart below with the sources used. Sources: New America Foundation (NAF); Long War Journal (LWJ); The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ)** Based on averages within the ranges provided by the organizations monitoring each country as of January 11, 2016.

The “artificial earthquake” in North Korea caused by its fourth nuclear test has set off geopolitical tremors in U.S.-China relations, exposing the underlying gap between the two countries that has long been papered over by their common rhetorical commitment to Korean denuclearization. At their Sunnylands summit in June of 2013, Presidents Xi Jinping and Barack Obama vowed to work together on North Korea. Last September in Washington, the two leaders underscored the unacceptability of a North Korean nuclear test. But Secretary of State John Kerry stated in his January 7 conversation with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that previous approaches to the North Korean problem have not worked and that “we cannot continue business as usual.” The Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, responded by stating that “[t]here is no hope to put an end to the North Korean nuclear conundrum if the U.S., South Korea, and Japan do not change their policies toward Pyongyang. Solely depending on Beijing’s pressure to force the North to give up its nuclear plan is an illusion.” The now exposed Sino-U.S. gap over North Korea runs deep and extends to at least four critical dimensions:           Influence: Since China controls the food and fuel lifelines to North Korea, Western analysts see Beijing holding Pyongyang’s fate in its hands. Yet, North Korea snubbed China and exposed its lack of influence by going ahead with a nuclear test that Xi Jinping had opposed publicly and privately. North Korea has taken Chinese support for granted by assuming that Beijing’s geopolitical interests in stability will not permit China to pull the plug. Washington is now pressing Beijing to move in that direction.             Ideology: It is particularly hard for China to turn on its last ally despite the clear economic and strategic divergences that have weakened the Sino-North Korean relationship for decades. It appears even harder for China to give up the idea that, despite four North Korean nuclear tests, U.S. enmity toward Pyongyang is the root cause of peninsular hostility. This view persists despite U.S.-North Korea negotiations leading to agreements such as the Agreed Framework, forbearance despite continued North Korean double-dealing and renewed negotiation efforts through Six Party Talks even despite North Korea’s first nuclear test, and even seeming indifference to Pyongyang’s provocations under the moniker of “strategic patience” during the Obama administration.             Instruments: The record of diplomacy with North Korea shows that neither incentives nor efforts at coercion have been successful in inducing North Korean cooperation. Neither has U.S. signaling (in the form of nuclear-capable B-2 and B-52 overflights of the Korean peninsula) worked to draw a line designed to contain North Korean provocations. But China fears that additional pressure will lead to peninsular instability and has moved too slowly to ratchet up pressure on Pyongyang.             End state: Underlying surface agreement on the necessity of denuclearization is a yawning gap over the type of Korean peninsula that would be acceptable if, as more and more Americans have concluded, the only way to get rid of North Korea’s nuclear weapons is to get rid of the Kim Jong-un regime. China opposes a unified Korea allied with the United States, preferring to maintain a security buffer on the Korean peninsula against U.S. forces. The broader impact of rising competition from the U.S. rebalance and Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea has begun to inhibit prospects for Sino-U.S. cooperation on North Korea. North Korea to date has counted on Sino-U.S. geopolitical mistrust to secure space for its survival.   North Korea’s underlying assumption behind its nuclear gambit is that it can survive and perhaps even benefit from an open geopolitical rift between the United States and China. Sino-U.S. cooperation is costly to North Korea, while a failure to cooperate on Pyongyang would severely exacerbate Sino-U.S. friction and competition. However, if North Korea cannot exploit geostrategic mistrust between China and the United States for its own gain, the assumption behind Pyongyang’s man-made tremors may lead to fatal consequences for the Kim regime.

The primary focus—meaning the commitment of personnel, resources, and senior leaders’ attention—of U.S. counterterrorism policies is the capture or killing (though, overwhelmingly killing) of existing terrorists. Far less money and programmatic attention is dedicated to preventing the emergence of new terrorists. As an anecdotal example of this, I often ask U.S. government officials and mid-level staffers, “what are you doing to prevent a neutral person from becoming a terrorist?” They always claim this this is not their responsibility, and point toward other agencies, usually the Department of State (DOS) or Department of Homeland Security (DHS), where this is purportedly their obligation internationally or domestically, respectively. DOS and DHS officials then refer generally to “countering violent extremism” policies, while acknowledging that U.S. government efforts on this front have been wholly ineffective. The primary method for killing suspected terrorists is with stand-off precision airstrikes. With regard to the self-declared Islamic State, U.S. officials have repeatedly stated that the pathway to “destroying” the terrorist organization is by killing every one of its current members. Last February, Marie Harf, DOS spokesperson, said, “We are killing them and will continue killing ISIS terrorists that pose a threat to us.” Then in June, Lt. Gen. John Hesterman, Combined Forces Air Component commander, stated, “We kill them wherever we find them,” and just this week, Col. Steve Warren, Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman, claimed, “If you’re part of ISIL, we will kill you. That’s our rule.” The problem with this "kill-em’-all with airstrikes" rule, is that it is not working. Pentagon officials claim that at least 25,000 Islamic State fighters have been killed (an anonymous official said 23,000 in November, while on Wednesday, Warren added “about 2,500” more were killed in December.) Remarkably, they also claim that alongside the 25,000 fighters killed, only 6 civilians have “likely” been killed in the seventeen-month air campaign. At the same time, officials admit that the size of the group has remained wholly unchanged. In 2014, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimated the size of the Islamic State to be between 20,000 and 31,000 fighters, while on Wednesday, Warren again repeated the 30,000 estimate. To summarize the anti-Islamic State bombing calculus: 30,000 – 25,000 = 30,000. Given there is no publicly articulated interest by Obama administration officials in revisiting this approach, let’s review U.S. counterterrorism bombing for 2015. Last year, the United States dropped an estimated total of 23,144 bombs in six countries. Of these, 22,110 were dropped in Iraq and Syria. This estimate is based on the fact that the United States has conducted 77 percent of all airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, while there were 28,714 U.S.-led coalition munitions dropped in 2015. This overall estimate is probably slightly low, because it also assumes one bomb dropped in each drone strike in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, which is not always the case. Sources: Estimate based upon Combined Forces Air Component Commander 2010-2015 Airpower Statistics; Information requested from CJTF-Operation Inherent Resolve Public Affairs Office, January 7, 2016; New America Foundation (NAF); Long War Journal (LWJ); The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).