Less than a year after the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan following the US’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal, President Joe Biden vowed the country that once harboured Osama bin Laden would “never again . . . become a terrorist safe haven”.

Yet a surge in international terrorist threats linked to Afghanistan is raising alarm among governments that the country that once sheltered the masterminds of the September 11, 2001 attacks is again becoming a hotspot for jihadi groups with global ambitions.

Western officials blamed Islamic State-Khorasan Province, the Afghan-based affiliate of the Middle Eastern extremist group and bitter enemy of the Taliban, for last week’s attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 137 people.

The Taliban has fought a bloody counterinsurgency campaign against Isis-K since coming to power, but analysts said the jihadist group gained substantial strength following the US withdrawal and more recently has ramped up its international activity. Isis-K was also linked to bombings in Iran in January that killed nearly 100 people, an attack on a church in Turkey the same month, and a foiled plot last week to attack Sweden’s parliament that authorities said may have been directed from Afghanistan.

Read it all.

Recent terrorist attacks by Isis-K are raising alarm that Afghanistan is again becoming a hotspot for jihadi groups with global ambitions.

https://t.co/4J2IqZWKrC

— Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) March 27, 2024

Gunmen in Nigeria opened the New Year 2024 by killing 14 Christians on their way home from a midnight church service. The attack rocked the country’s Christian community, still reeling from a Christmas Eve massacre that claimed the lives of 130 believers. These attacks are just the latest in a disturbing trend of increasing violence against Christians in Nigeria, which some are calling a genocide.

Since the year 2000, 62,000 Christians have been murdered in Nigeria, prompting President Trump to place Nigeria on its list of violators of religious freedom. Biden removed Nigeria from the list, and last year alone, more than 8,000 Christians were killed.

In a report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, between January 2022 and January 2023, 8,400 Christians were abducted, 840 of whom never returned alive from captivity. Many of these abductions have been attributed to the military and the police, some to Islamic Terror Jihadists, while others have been attributed to Fulani militias, who are also accused of having killed 600 captives. Priests and seminarians have been abducted, churches destroyed, Christian communities have been sacked, and millions of Christians and targeted Muslims have been displaced, either becoming internally displaced people (IDPs) or crossing international borders to become refugees.

Read it all.

Violence in Nigeria against Christians by groups like Boko Haram is continuing unabated. @Brooklynmonk https://t.co/hoRvPzBTcg

— Providence (@ProvMagazine) March 21, 2024

To maintain and expand military families as an asset for the sustainment of the All-Volunteer Force, it is critical to address declining likelihood to recommend military service. The proportion of active-duty family respondents who were likely to recommend military service has dropped by nearly half from 2016, when
it was 55% to just 32% in 2023.

Furthermore, the proportion who were unlikely to recommend military service has more than doubled from 15% in 2016 to 31% in 2023.

Read it all.

The results of the 2023 Military Family Lifestyle Survey are here! Join the #BlueStarFamilies researchers in our virtual Data Deep Dive event on March 21st from 1 — 2 PM ET. Our team will break down this year’s findings. https://t.co/9jDWLo0n7e

— craig newmark (@craignewmark) March 14, 2024

Silence. Last September, when I visited a makeshift hospital in Adré, Chad, where young Sudanese refugees were being treated for acute malnutrition, that was all I heard: an eerie silence.

I had tried to prepare myself for the wails of children who were sick and emaciated, but these patients were too weak to even cry. That day, I saw a 6-month-old baby who was the size of a newborn and a child whose ankles were swollen, and whose body was blistered, from severe malnourishment.

It was equal parts newly horrific and tragically familiar.

Twenty years earlier I had visited the same town and met with Sudanese refugees who fled violence in Darfur, where the janjaweed militia, with backing from Omar al-Bashir’s brutal authoritarian regime, carried out a genocidal campaign of mass killing, rape and pillage.

Read it all.

Even after aid groups designated Sudan's humanitarian crisis to be among the world's worst, little attention or help has gone to the Sudanese people.

The world’s silence and inaction need to end, and end now.

My piece in the @nytimes ⬇️https://t.co/ie90VMmIzX

— Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield (@USAmbUN) March 18, 2024

Two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is restructuring and expanding the country’s military in anticipation of a conflict with NATO within the next 10 years, Estonia’s foreign and military intelligence chiefs said in an interview on Wednesday.

Contrary to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expectation of seizing the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in a matter of days, the first months of the invasion revealed profound shortcomings in Russian military planning as poorly equipped troops foundered in the face of fierce resistance by the Ukrainian armed forces. Experts as well as U.S. and foreign officials were quick to declare the Russian army a paper tiger.

“The Kremlin often claimed it had the second-strongest military in the world,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a speech last June. “Today, many see Russia’s military as the second-strongest in Ukraine.”

But as the war enters its third year, Putin is looking increasingly confident. His main political rival, Alexei Navalny, is dead; vital U.S. military aid to Ukraine is stalled in Congress; and Russia has shifted its economy to a war footing, fueling defense production and economic growth in defiance of international sanctions.

Read it all.

Moscow is rebuilding its military in anticipation of a conflict with NATO in the next decade, Estonian officials warn. https://t.co/Xun0nsVFtd

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) March 15, 2024

Ezekiel lays much blame for the Israelites’ deserving punishment on the moral failings of their leaders. More directly, however, it was the political failings of their leaders that sealed the fate of all their people. The Judean kings could have heeded the call of the prophet Jeremiah and surrendered to King Nebuchadnezzar; they decided otherwise, and everyone endured the consequences. The political solidarity of a nation compels them to share the same fate. Even when only soldiers are targeted, noncombatants will die alongside them.

None of this means that one should target enemy noncombatants. The realities and obligations of our shared collective fate, however, dictate that one prioritize one’s own soldiers and citizens while worrying less about those who share another people’s destiny.

These two primary factors—our obligation to protect our own citizens and our filial duties to our brethren—come together when addressing the dilemma of involuntary human shields. If, at the end of the day, an army won’t attack certain legitimate targets because of collateral damage, then the terrorist group will use human shields to prevent their defeat. It’s hard to achieve a decisive victory when you cannot—or will not allow yourself—to destroy the enemy. Yes, guided missiles and other advanced technologies allow for greater precise targeting. Nonetheless, in the fog of war, it is impossible to achieve “immaculate warfare,” especially when the defenders are daring you to kill their human shields.

Ultimately, the defeat of these terrorist groups is the primary ethical imperative. This will benefit not only Israel but also the Gazan civilians who suffer longer under their terrorist leaders and the continuous warfare that they breed. There is a moral cost to not acting decisively, and a strategic cost to forgetting the moral justification for killing in war.

Read it all.

The West Has Forgotten Why Collateral Damage Is Morally Justified https://t.co/wfD6JfYre8

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) March 15, 2024

Russia appears on track to produce nearly three times more artillery munitions than the US and Europe, a key advantage ahead of what is expected to be another Russian offensive in Ukraine later this year.

Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery munitions per month, or about 3 million a year, according to NATO intelligence estimates of Russian defense production shared with CNN, as well as sources familiar with Western efforts to arm Ukraine. Collectively, the US and Europe have the capacity to generate only about 1.2 million munitions annually to send to Kyiv, a senior European intelligence official told CNN.

The US military set a goal to produce 100,000 rounds of artillery a month by the end of 2025 — less than half of the Russian monthly output — and even that number is now out of reach with $60 billion in Ukraine funding stalled in Congress, a senior Army official told reporters last week.

Read it all.

Exclusive: Russia producing three times more artillery shells than US and Europe for Ukraine https://t.co/7Q2OG8b0V3

— Harmine Pak M.D (@PakHarmine) March 12, 2024

War broke out in August and in September 1914 Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy wrote these words in his parish magazine:

“I cannot say too strongly that I believe every able-bodied man ought to volunteer for service anywhere. Here ought to be no shirking of that duty.”

This from the man who would, before long be writing this, “Waste”:

“Waste of Muscle, waste of Brain,
Waste of Patience, waste of Pain,
Waste of Manhood, waste of Health,
Waste of Beauty, waste of Wealth,
Waste of Blood, and waste of Tears,
Waste of Youth’s most precious years,
Waste of ways the Saints have trod,
Waste of glory, Waste of God–War!”

Read it all.

The Church of England also commemorates Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy, Priest, Poet, 1929

Photo of a memorial to Rev Studdert-Kennedy in the Church of St Edmund-the-King, Lombard Street, City of London via https://t.co/NhBvBSw9Hf pic.twitter.com/OjfwZe4pWI

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) March 8, 2024

Some 170 people including women and children have been “executed” in attacks on three villages in Burkina Faso, a public prosecutor has said.

Aly Benjamin Coulibaly appealed for witnesses to help find those who attacked Komsilga, Nordin and Soro.

Separately, the army warned of the increased risk of attacks by Islamists, “including attacks on urban centres”.

The country’s army seized power in 2022, but more than a third of Burkina Faso is controlled by insurgents.

Read it all.

Burkina Faso says 170 dead in village 'executions' https://t.co/Dl2MTc1Zuk

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 3, 2024

The General Synod has renewed its call for a just peace in Ukraine, after a debate to mark the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion, which fell on Saturday.

The motion, which was carried almost unanimously on Tuesday at the end of a five-day meeting in Westminster, referred to the “ongoing suffering and terror” experienced by Ukrainians two years into the war, and called on churches and politicians to work for an end to the conflict and a restoration of the international order.

During the debate, the motion was amended to include a further call to UK politicians to “affirm their continued support for Ukraine until such time as a just and lasting peace is secured”.

First to speak was the Archbishop of Canterbury, recently returned from his second visit to Ukraine (News, 23 February). He had also spoken, directly but remotely, with Patriarch Kirill. “But I am not neutral on this,” he said. “Ukraine is paying for our security with blood.”

Read it all.

Ukraine is paying for our security in blood, Archbishop Welby tells Synod https://t.co/vz6s408Ovc

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 29, 2024

Ukrainian officials are concerned that Russian advances could gain significant momentum by the summer unless their allies can increase the supply of ammunition, according to a person familiar with their analysis.

Internal assessments of the situation on the battlefield from Kyiv are growing increasingly bleak as Ukrainian forces struggle to hold off Russian attacks while rationing the number of shells they can fire.

Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Thursday that mistakes by frontline commanders had compounded the problems facing Ukraine’s defenses around Avdiivka, which was captured by Russian forces this month. Syrskyi said he’d sent in more troops and ammunition to bolster Ukrainian positions.

Read it all (registration).

Ukrainian officials say there is a risk of Russia breaking through its defenses by summer unless allies can supply more ammunition https://t.co/rw47Nhtngn

— Bloomberg Economics (@economics) February 29, 2024

The US used artificial intelligence to identify targets hit by air strikes in the Middle East this month, a defense official said, revealing growing military use of the technology for combat.

Machine learning algorithms that can teach themselves to identify objects helped to narrow down targets for more than 85 US air strikes on Feb. 2, according to Schuyler Moore, chief technology officer for US Central Command, which runs US military operations in the Middle East. The Pentagon said those strikes were conducted by US bombers and fighter aircraft against seven facilities in Iraq and Syria.

“We’ve been using computer vision to identify where there might be threats,” Moore said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We’ve certainly had more opportunities to target in the last 60 to 90 days,” she said, adding the US is currently looking for “an awful lot” of rocket launchers from hostile forces in the region.

Read it all.

The US used AI to identify targets hit by air strikes in the Middle East this month, a defense official says, revealing growing military use of the technology for combat https://t.co/UmIJrNz5Or via @technology

— Rosalind Mathieson (@RosMathieson) February 26, 2024

The Archbishop of Canterbury, concluding his five-day visit to Ukraine on Friday, said: “We must long for peace — but not peace that increases the likelihood of more war.”

The UK, he said, “needs to show that we are committed as a nation to justice, to peace, to reconciliation on the basis of security, and respect for international law”, but he was “not capable of trotting out an answer that would probably be wrong” about exactly how this could be achieved.

Asked whether he thought the trip had been worth the time, expense, and risk, he said that he saw it as a “biblical and theological imperative to stand — as much as one is able — with those who are oppressed” and to say: “You’re not forgotten: we love you.”

Read it all.

Our reporter @PhrancisMartin joined the Archbishop of Canterbury @JustinWelby on his pastoral visit to Ukraine last week https://t.co/eE5vplLG7P

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 14, 2024

The United States has informed Congress and its allies in Europe about Russian advances on a new, space-based nuclear weapon designed to threaten America’s extensive satellite network, according to current and former officials briefed on the matter.

Such a satellite-killing weapon, if deployed, could destroy civilian communications, surveillance from space and military command-and control operations by the United States and its allies. At the moment, the United States does not have the ability to counter such a weapon and defend its satellites, a former official said.

Officials said that the new intelligence, which they did not describe in detail, raised serious questions about whether Russia was preparing to abandon the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which bans all orbital nuclear weapons. But since Russia does not appear close to deploying the weapon, they said, it is not considered an urgent threat.

The intelligence was made public, in part, in a cryptic announcement on Wednesday by Representative Michael R. Turner, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He called on the Biden administration to declassify the information without saying specifically what it was.

Read it all.

Such a satellite-killing weapon could destroy civilian communications, surveillance from space and military command-and control operations by the United States and its allies. At the moment, the USA does not have the ability to defend its satelliteshttps://t.co/y4MKjFV6Kk

— Lucia Alessi (@lucialessi) February 15, 2024

Nextgov/FCW: Talk about how you prepared for the water-systems security hearing today and any major takeaways from it. 

Clancy: We met with the majority and minority staff ahead of the hearing to get a sense of their objectives. Of course, MITRE has a diverse set of sponsors in these areas, so we engaged with them to make sure we were representing a whole-of-government view across the sectors.

My big message is what I said in my opening statement. A lot of these policy fixes on the fringes are not going to deal with the scale of the threat that we face. So if you want to continue to fight against harassment campaigns from nation states…the sorts of solutions people were talking about are probably okay, but I think the big point I want to get across that didn’t get enough air time is that the threat has really changed.

We’ve got maybe three years to figure this out before China does an all-out attack against our critical infrastructure. We’re going to have to train and prepare to disconnect our operational technology systems from our information technology systems ahead of a major attack from China.

Read it all.

Expect China to attack US infrastructure within 3 years, MITRE CTO says https://t.co/zWHBOAn8uH

— Defense One (@DefenseOne) February 11, 2024

The first shot of the next war between the world’s big powers, it is often said, will be fired in space. As conflict spreads on Earth, ill omens are emerging in the firmament. As countries race to develop new capabilities in space, some are also building the forces and weapons to fight beyond the atmosphere. On January 28th Iran said it had launched three satellites; Western countries fear they could be used in its ballistic-missile programme. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has opened a new chapter in space war. But America’s biggest dread is China, which seeks to match if not surpass America’s primacy in the heavens. Admiral Christopher Grady, vice-chairman of America’s joint chiefs of staff, explains it bluntly: “Space has emerged as our most essential warfighting domain.”

American generals scrutinise the cosmos from Space Command’s headquarters in Colorado Springs. “Guardians”, as America’s new breed of space warriors call themselves, monitor about 15 daily missile launches, from Ukraine to Iraq and North Korea, at the Joint Operations Centre (joc). They also watch the fast-growing deployment of satellites, heaps of orbiting junk and the re-entry of objects into the atmosphere. Above all, they look for danger.

Among the most closely observed objects are two recently launched robotic space planes, smaller versions of the space shuttle. America’s x37-b lifted off from Cape Canaveral on December 28th (pictured). China’s Shenlong, or Divine Dragon, was lofted a fortnight earlier. Both missions are largely secret.

Read it all.

War in space is no longer science fiction. My report on the growing danger that earthly conflict will spread to space–and vice versa. Countries are tooling up.🧵 1/6 https://t.co/7xh4gNQMYL

— Anton La Guardia (@AntonLaGuardia) February 1, 2024

For decades, Liliana Segre visited Italian classrooms to recount her expulsion from school under Benito Mussolini’s anti-Semitic racial laws, her doomed attempt to flee Nazi-controlled Italy, her deportation from Milan’s train station to the death camps of Auschwitz. Her plain-spoken testimony about gas chambers, tattooed arms, casual atrocities and the murders of her father, grandparents and thousands of other Italian Jews made her the conscience and living memory of a country that often prefers not to remember.

Now she is wondering if it was all wasted breath.

“Why did I suffer for 30 years to share intimate things of my family, of my pain, of my desperation? For whom? Why?” Ms. Segre, 93, with cotton-white hair, a steel-cage memory and an official status as a Senator for Life said last week in her handsome Milan apartment, where she sat next to a police escort. She wondered, not for the first time these days, if “I’ve lived in vain.”

Even as Ms. Segre accepted another honorary degree on Saturday to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, rising anti-Semitism and what she considers a general climate of hate have put her in a pessimistic mood.

Read it all.

“Why did I suffer for 30 years to share intimate things of my family, of my pain, of my desperation?” Liliana Segre, 93, an Italian Holocaust survivor, says the rise in antisemitism has made her wonder these days if “I’ve lived in vain.” https://t.co/u9hfj0292B

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) January 31, 2024

The post-Cold War era began, in the early 1990s, with soaring visions of global peace. It is ending, three decades later, with surging risks of global war. Today, Europe is experiencing its most devastating military conflict in generations. A brutal fight between Israel and Hamas is sowing violence and instability across the Middle East. East Asia, fortunately, is not at war. But it isn’t exactly peaceful, either, as China coerces its neighbors and amasses military power at a historic rate. If many Americans don’t realize how close the world is to being ravaged by fierce, interlocking conflicts, perhaps that’s because they’ve forgotten how the last global war came about.

When Americans think of global war, they typically think of World War II—or the part of the war that began with Japan’s strike on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After that attack, and Adolf Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war against the United States, the conflict was a single, all-encompassing struggle between rival alliances on a global battlefield. But World War II began as a trio of loosely connected contests for primacy in key regions stretching from Europe to the Asia-Pacific—contests that eventually climaxed and coalesced in globally consuming ways. The history of this period reveals the darker aspects of strategic interdependence in a war-torn world. It also illustrates uncomfortable parallels to the situation Washington currently confronts.

The United States isn’t facing a formalized alliance of adversaries, as it once did during World War II. It probably won’t see a replay of a scenario in which autocratic powers conquer giant swaths of Eurasia and its littoral regions. Yet with wars in eastern Europe and the Middle East already raging, and ties between revisionist states becoming more pronounced, all it would take is a clash in the contested western Pacific to bring about another awful scenario—one in which intense, interrelated regional struggles overwhelm the international system and create a crisis of global security unlike anything since 1945. A world at risk could become a world at war. And the United States isn’t remotely ready for the challenge.

Read it all.

“If many Americans don’t realize how close the world is to being ravaged by fierce, interlocking conflicts, perhaps that’s because they’ve forgotten how the last global war came about.” https://t.co/pRqf2quAes

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) January 27, 2024

Israel’s conflict with Hamas is set to be a long one—with both sides struggling to accomplish their fundamental aims and no clear path to any kind of enduring peace.

Israel has sworn to destroy Hamas as a significant military and political force. Hamas is committed to the long-term goal of erasing the Israeli state.

Read it all.

Israel’s conflict with Hamas is set to be a long one—with both sides struggling to accomplish their fundamental aims and no clear path to any kind of enduring peace https://t.co/M1gfz7mFDw https://t.co/M1gfz7mFDw

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 26, 2024

In an expansion of hostilities rippling out from the Israel-Hamas war, Pakistan said on Thursday that it had carried out strikes inside Iran, a day after Iranian forces attacked what they said were militant camps in Pakistan.

The Pakistani Foreign Affairs Ministry said that the country’s forces had conducted “precision military strikes” against what it called terrorist hide-outs in southeastern Iran. The Iranian state-owned television network Press TV said that seven foreigners were killed in the strike.

A senior Pakistani security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Pakistan had struck at least seven locations used by separatists from the Baluch ethnic group about 30 miles inside the border. The official said that air force fighter jets and drones were used in the Pakistani retaliatory strikes.

Read it all.

Aha – Pakistan und Iran sagen, sie beschießen belutschische Separatisten in jeweils dem anderen Staatsgebiet.

Das scheint das Muster zu sein: Wir greifen nicht dich an, sondern Terroristen auf deinem Staatsgebiet. https://t.co/YFcMWEmeqY

— Marcus Ewald (@maewald) January 18, 2024

International trade is constrained by eight primary maritime chokepoints, hard realities imposed by immutable geography. The United States has long recognized a vital national security interest in ensuring freedom of navigation through each of them. This strike helped protect those interests.

Half of these eight global chokepoints are dispersed widely. Only one each can be found in Europe (the Strait of Gibraltar), in Africa (the Cape of Good Hope), in East Asia (the Straits of Malacca), and in the Americas (the Panama Canal). Unfortunately, the other half of these critical chokepoints are all concentrated in a relatively small region where southwestern Asia meets Europe and Africa: the Bosporus Strait, the Suez Canal, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and the Strait of Hormuz. This area also happens to be the most important single source of the energy required to sustain global economic growth. Those two facts explain why US presidents keep rediscovering the need to focus disproportionately on the Middle East, despite their often-heartfelt desires to do otherwise.

Today, the greatest threat to these chokepoints is Iran and its proxies. The regime in Tehran has long threatened to shut down Hormuz and repeatedly attacked shipping in the area. Most recently, it even threatened to shut down Gibraltar. The Houthis, Iran’s partner and proxy in Yemen, had repeatedly attacked ships transiting the Bab. The Biden administration recognized the threat, laid the diplomatic predicate, assembled the multilateral coalition, deployed the assets, issued clear warnings, and then took action. This is what professional policymaking looks like. One hopes that the right lessons will be learned in both Sanaa and Tehran.

Read it all.

The US can no longer afford to underestimate the threat posed by the Houthis, much less the threat posed by the wider network that supports Iranian malign behavior, writes @ACMideast’s @WillWechsler.

Read more. ⬇️ https://t.co/OX8fyHaik7

— Atlantic Council (@AtlanticCouncil) January 12, 2024

Ukraine this year officially moved its Christmas state holiday from January 7th, in line with the Russian Orthodox Church, to December 25th, when most of the Western world observes it. But there won’t be much to celebrate. A long-awaited and much-needed assistance package from the us Congress will not arrive in time for the new Christmas, and lawmakers appear unlikely to approve legislation in time for the old one either.

Throughout the autumn pro-Ukraine lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who form a strong majority in the House and Senate, predicted that eventually Congress would authorise more military aid. Important issues with broad, bipartisan support eventually get a vote, the thinking went. Many expected passage at the end of the year, when big spending packages are often cobbled together quickly, allowing their contents to evade scrutiny and legislators to get home for Christmas.

But Mike Johnson, the House speaker, ran for his job with a plan, “to ensure the Senate cannot jam the House with a Christmas omnibus”. So far that has meant punting the main legislative debates until early 2024. Mr Johnson has a point that passing weighty bills with no time for serious debate is suboptimal. But House Republicans, mired in perpetual infighting and unable to govern effectively with a thin majority, squandered their workdays.

Read it all.

Most American lawmakers want more military aid for Ukraine. But a domestic political problem is delaying action https://t.co/uqBowPc9dw 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 22, 2023

Pentagon planners worried about the increasing threat from drones have looked at everything from mesh nets and missiles to cannons and lasers, but now a once highly-classified technology is attracting more attention and funding.

High-power microwave devices that can disrupt or even fry the electronics of aerial threats—such as drones and missiles—are moving to the forefront of defense strategies after years of development. In theory, microwave systems offer the ability to keep firing for as long as they have power, which could help take down a swarm of drones.

The stakes for developing such technologies are high: The relatively low cost of small drones has increasingly made them the weapon of choice for less sophisticated armies, terrorists and militant groups trying to overwhelm or slip through defense systems. Hamas has used suicide drones to attack Israel, and the Houthis have been launching drones from Yemen over the Red Sea.

Last week, a U.S. Navy destroyer shot down 14 Houthi drones. The Houthi attacks prompted the U.S. on Monday to unveil a multinational naval force to protect merchant vessels in the Red Sea.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

High-power microwave devices that can disrupt or even fry the electronics of aerial threats are moving to the forefront of defense strategies after years of development https://t.co/tKVbFDTYG2

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 19, 2023

The impasse over aid from the US and Europe has Ukraine’s allies contemplating something they’ve refused to imagine since the earliest days of Russia’s invasion: that Vladimir Putin may win.

With more than $110 billion in assistance mired in political disputes in Washington and Brussels, how long Kyiv will be able to hold back Russian forces and defend Ukraine’s cities, power plants and ports against missile attacks is increasingly in question.

Beyond the potentially catastrophic consequences for Ukraine, some European allies have begun to quietly consider the impact of a failure for North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. They’re reassessing the risks an emboldened Russia would pose to alliance members in the east, according to people familiar with the internal conversations who asked for anonymity to discuss matters that aren’t public.

Read it all.

The impasse over aid from the US and Europe has Ukraine’s allies contemplating something they’ve refused to imagine since the earliest days of Russia’s invasion: that Vladimir Putin may win.

What then?https://t.co/WxAAQb6yd0

— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) December 19, 2023

Artillery boomed, shaking the ground, as a couple scurried through the streets of Saké, their possessions balanced on their heads, in the embattled east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At a crossroads, they passed a giant poster of Congo’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, who is standing for re-election on Wednesday. “Unity, Security, Prosperity,” read the slogan. They hurried along.

“Our children were born in war. We live in war,” Jean Bahati, his face beaded with sweat, said as he paused for breath. It was the fifth time that he and his wife had been forced to flee, he said. “We’re so sick of it.”

They joined 6.5 million people displaced by war in eastern Congo, where a conflict that has dragged on for nearly three decades, stoking a vast humanitarian crisis that by some estimates has claimed over six million lives, is now lurching into a volatile new phase.

Read it all.

Six million have died, and more than six million are displaced after decades of fighting and the ensuing humanitarian crisis in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. “We live in war,” one man said as he fled. “We’re so sick of it.” https://t.co/Y3Q7peUqe2

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 18, 2023

Great Britain, a principal ally of the U.S. military and the largest defense spender in Europe, has limited military resources with only about 150 operational tanks and around a dozen long-range artillery pieces.

Last year, the scarcity of equipment was so acute that the British military contemplated refurbishing rocket launchers from museums for Ukraine, but this plan was abandoned.

France, another major defense spender in Europe, possesses less than 90 heavy artillery units, roughly the amount Russia reportedly loses each month in Ukraine.

Denmark lacks heavy artillery, submarines, or air defense systems. The German army is reported to have sufficient ammunition for only two days of combat

Read it all.

European militaries increasingly reporting seriously depleted resources. The EU has been freeriding on US defense spending for decades [they have none of the major defense contractors & Lockheed, RTX & Northrup stand to be big winners in their rearmament] https://t.co/IR1hhuFMv4 pic.twitter.com/2L9tUwjLfK

— Cate Long (@cate_long) December 15, 2023

Just south of Baghdad, the urban sprawl gives way to glimpses of green, with lush date palm groves bordering the Euphrates River. But few risk spending much time there. Not even the Iraqi military or government officials venture without permission.

A farmer, Ali Hussein, who once lived on that land, said, “We do not dare to even ask if we can go there.”

That’s because this stretch of Iraq — more than twice the size of San Francisco — is controlled by an Iraqi militia linked to Iran and designated a terrorist group by the United States. Militia members man checkpoints around the borders. And though sovereign Iraqi territory, the area, known as Jurf al-Nasr, functions as a “forward operating base for Iran,” according to one of the dozens of Western and Iraqi intelligence and military officers, diplomats and others interviewed for this article.

The militia that controls the land, Khataib Hezbollah, uses it to assemble drones and retrofit rockets, with parts largely obtained from Iran, senior military and intelligence officials say. Those weapons have then been distributed for use in attacks by Iranian-linked groups across the Middle East — putting this former farmland at the center of fears that the war in Gaza could grow into a wider conflict.

Read it all (my emphasis).

Thick palm groves near Baghdad hide a base where an Iranian-backed militia assembles drones, retrofits missiles and stores them for use regionally against U.S. targets. https://t.co/I3RahEWkQ1

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) December 9, 2023

This week, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London published the latest edition of its authoritative annual Armed Conflict Survey, and it’s not predicting much peace for the holidays. It paints a grim picture of rising violence in in many regions, of wars chronically resistant to broking of peace. The survey — which addresses regional conflicts rather than the superpower confrontation between China, Russia, the US and its allies — documents 183 conflicts for 2023, the highest number in three decades.

It highlights “intractability as the defining feature of the contemporary global conflict landscape.” Nonstate armed groups, of which Hamas in Gaza is only the most immediately conspicuous, play a baleful role. In many places these forces are supported by disruptive major powers, notably Russia and Iran.

Although the world is not immediately threatened by a great war, such as those of 1914-18 and 1939-45, tensions are rising, especially between the US and China. I would identify an issue that seems to me, as a historian, especially important and dangerous. One of the primary reasons Europe went to war in 1914 is that none of the big players were as frightened as they should have been, of conflict as a supreme human catastrophe. After a century in which the continent had experienced only limited wars, from which Prussia had been an especially conspicuous profiteer, too many statesmen viewed war as a usable instrument of policy, which proved a catastrophic misjudgment.

Read it all.

An authoritative new study from the International Institute for Strategic Studies finds there are 183 regional and local conflicts underway in 2023, the highest number in three decades, Sir Max Hastings writes https://t.co/CeckeihcVY via @opinion

— Bloomberg (@business) December 10, 2023

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was blunt when he addressed G7 leaders this week.

“Russia hopes only for one thing: that next year the free world’s consolidation will collapse. Russia believes that America and Europe will show weakness, and will not maintain support for Ukraine,” he said in a video call on Wednesday evening with his most important political allies.

“The free world vitally needs to . . . maintain support for those whose freedom is being attacked,” he said. “Ukraine has strength. And I ask you to be as strong as you can be.”

Zelenskyy’s plea is not mere rhetoric. Hours after he spoke, the US Senate rejected the White House’s latest bid to pass legislation authorising $60bn in financial support for Ukraine. Across the Atlantic, a European Commission proposal that would provide €50bn to prop up Kyiv’s budget for the next four years hangs in the balance ahead of a summit of EU leaders next week, following months of bickering between member states over how to fund it. 

Read it all.

“We know from intelligence community assessments that Putin believes Ukraine will fall within just months without renewed US support,” Mark Warner, the chair of the Senate intelligence committeehttps://t.co/6XQyEOSHdF

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) December 9, 2023

Starved of ammunition, the gunners of Ukraine’s 47th Brigade were not able to hit the Russian convoy before it was upon their infantry on Avdiivka’s northern flank.

Five armoured vehicles rolled into the village of Stepove, guns firing, allowing about 40 Russian soldiers to run for cover in the houses around Ukrainian positions. A Bradley fighting vehicle was deployed towards the Russians. American armour was to be put to the test against Russian.

This fierce battle was part of a desperate action to save Avdiivka, in the east of the country, from imminent collapse and prevent a victory for President Putin in time for the launch of his election campaign and New Year festivities.

Read it all.

Surrounded and low on ammo, the elite troops out to spoil Putin’s New Year

One of Ukraine’s finest brigades has been sent to defend the key city of Avdiivka. Without more gear their chances are dwindling, they tell Maxim Tuckerhttps://t.co/0nBvh4I5FV

— Antti Rautiainen (@ARautiainen) December 8, 2023