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The Hill
10 hours ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Voice of America's foreign language services are vital to global peace
The Trump administration has hopefully just learned an important lesson: the strategic importance of Voice of America's foreign language services for U.S. national security. After Israel launched a full-scale war against Iran — presenting an immediate threat to American troops and vital national interests in the Middle East — Trump officials recalled back to work some VOA Persian Service journalists and broadcasters who had been put on paid administrative leave and threatened with termination. A few months before Israel's attack to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities, Trump issued an executive order, at the suggestion of Elon Musk, to scale down the broadcasting services of the U.S. Agency for Global Media to the statutory minimum. Kari Lake, Trump's advisor at USAGM, may have wanted to save more of VOA's foreign language services and broadcasting jobs, but she faithfully carried out the president's orders by proposing to reduce staffing of some key foreign language services, including the Persian Service, to just a couple of web journalists for just a few countries. I managed the VOA Polish Service when it expanded its audience and contributed to bringing a peaceful end to Communism and Russian colonialism in Poland during the Reagan administration. I sent a message advising Lake that VOA cannot handle international emergencies with only a few journalists fluent in foreign languages. When the Communist regime in Poland declared martial law in 1981, VOA's Polish Service had 15 full-time employees. We increased our broadcasts from two-and-a-half to seven hours daily almost overnight by hiring temporary help and slowly growing our staff to 25 full-time positions. We did not start from nothing or just two broadcasters. At the same time, Radio Free Europe's Polish Service, also funded by U.S. tax dollars, had over 100 employees and many more hours of daily radio broadcasts to Poland. The two outlets helped to eliminate the Warsaw Pact's military threat to America and brought democracy to the region while avoiding war and violence. Few Americans know that one of the main reasons for starting the VOA Russian Service in 1947 (and Radio Liberty soon after that) was to convince the Russians that the U.S. did not want war and would never first use nuclear weapons against Russia. We needed a communication channel in case of an emergency as well as a tool for countering disinformation. Fortunately, when the latest war in the Middle East started, full-time VOA Persian Service employees were still on paid administrative leave. They could return to work immediately after the Israeli strikes in Iran. That would not have been possible, had they already lost their jobs, as they would have soon under the Trump administration's plan — and America would have been left without a critical strategic national security asset. With Musk out of the picture (at least for now), and with the growing crisis in the Middle East, it is time for Trump officials and members of Congress from both parties to work out a reasonable plan to save and reform Voice of America. However, I do not favor returning the Agency for Global Media to its previous state. Under the influence of Obama and Biden officials, it has become one of the most bloated bureaucracies in the federal government. USAGM's former leadership hired journalists who engaged in partisan news reporting, allowed a reporter to accompany Biden as his guest to an official ceremony and recruited a Russian freelancer, ignoring signs he was a Russian spy. They created a work environment in which several VOA journalists felt free to post on their social media accounts 'death to Israel' and 'f*ck Trump' memes. These partisan executives have already resigned or retired. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has launched an investigation into charges that former USAGM officials 'routinely and improperly utilized visa programs to employ poorly vetted foreign nationals, including from nations adverse to' the U.S. and awarded grants to entities 'despite major conflicts of interest.' But those journalists in VOA's foreign language services who did nothing wrong should not be punished for the sins of their former bosses. American citizens and permanent residents are more easily vetted and should always have priority in hiring over individuals residing abroad. Although he was appointed during the Biden administration, VOA Director Michael Abramowitz, who remains on paid leave, had taken steps to curb partisan excesses of some VOA English news service reporters while increasing support for the work of the best and most critical VOA foreign language services. Abramowitz, a former head of Freedom House, is the first VOA director in a long time who understands the crucial role of foreign language broadcasting. I have always believed that it isn't a bad idea to have a competent leader at VOA who is from the opposite party from the one in the White House. This could help prevent partisan bias, although such an arrangement is unlikely in the current political environment. While reducing the Voice of America to a few journalists is a wholly unworkable proposition, shrinking the USAGM bureaucracy to just a few people and combining its media operations to avoid duplication is an excellent idea that would save millions of dollars — which then can be used for broadcasts to Iran, China, Tibet, Russia, Cuba, North Korea and a few other countries. Partisan reporting at Voice of America primarily occurred in the VOA English newsroom rather than in the foreign language services. VOA English newsroom reporters and editors were the ones who, at first, did not report that Biden's performance at his pre-election debate with Trump was in any way diminished. Some VOA English reporters refused to call Hamas 'terrorists' after the Oct. 7, 2023 attack. By law, VOA cannot duplicate the work of private media, and there is no major English-speaking foreign country that threatened the U.S. or lacks a free press. Voice of America does not require a large team of journalists to prepare news reports in English that duplicate the work of CNN, The New York Times or Fox News. A small team producing a roundup of American news from multiple sources without ideological censorship is more than sufficient. What VOA needs are foreign language services that use the best technology to deliver uncensored news otherwise unavailable from private outlets to countries that may pose a threat to America's security and to international peace. Congress and the Trump administration should preserve VOA to help prevent the U.S. from becoming entangled in foreign wars. Ted Lipien was Voice of America's Polish service chief during Poland's struggle for democracy and VOA's acting associate director. He served from 2020 to 2021 as the president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Atlantic
4 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Tyrant Test
For as long as I've been alive, American presidents have defined tyrants by their willingness to use military force against their own people in reprisal for political opposition. This was a staple of Cold War presidential rhetoric, and it survived long into the War on Terror era. Ronald Reagan declared in 1981 that 'it is dictatorships, not democracies, that need militarism to control their own people and impose their system on others.' His successor, George H. W. Bush, did the same in 1992, talking about American presidents confronting the Warsaw Pact, which had been 'lashed together by occupation troops and quisling governments and, when all else failed, the use of tanks against its own people.' Bill Clinton, when justifying strikes against the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 1998, emphasized that Hussein had used his arsenal 'against civilians, against a foreign adversary, and even against his own people.' George W. Bush repeated that justification when invading Iraq in 2003, saying that Hussein's government 'practices terror against its own people.' Barack Obama, when intervening in Libya on behalf of rebels fighting Muammar Qaddafi, warned that Qaddafi had said 'he would show 'no mercy' to his own people.' It would be absurd to say that American presidents have always been principled defenders of freedom and democracy, but their long-shared, bipartisan definition of tyrant is one who oppresses his own. So it's striking that these warnings about tyrants in distant lands, who were supposedly the opposite of the kind of legitimate, democratic leaders elected the United States of America, now apply to the sitting U.S. president, Donald Trump. It is a simple but morally powerful formulation: A leader who uses military force to suppress their political opposition forfeits the right to govern. You could call this the 'tyrant test,' and Trump is already failing it. Trump came into office promising to carry out a 'mass deportation' of undocumented immigrants. Because of a degraded information environment riddled with right-wing propaganda, many Trump supporters came to think this meant he would target criminals whom the Biden administration allegedly was allowing to rampage freely throughout America. Instead, driven by Stephen Miller, immigration authorities have targeted workers, families, and asylum seekers— people who show up to their ICE appointments —for deportation. Agents have raided schools, workplaces, and homes— masked and out of uniform —methods more akin to secret police than civilian law enforcement in a democracy. Some deportees have been sent to a Gulag in El Salvador, while others have vanished or been expelled to third-party countries where they face dangerous circumstances. Predictably, these heavy-handed tactics have produced a backlash, most extensively in Los Angeles, where the Trump administration has sent detachments of Marines and the National Guard to discourage American citizens from expressing opposition to these methods. Adam Serwer: The Trump-Trumpist divide Although there are circumstances where an intervention by the National Guard might be justified, such a decision typically involves the judgement of local authorities—and what's happening in Los Angeles now is nothing like Arkansas's school-segregation crisis in 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Guard to protect Black students facing a racist mob trying to prevent them from attending school. Targeting California is no accident. Republican propaganda consistently paints blue states such as California as unlivable hellholes. Some of the protests have been violent and have given way to vandalism, but not at a level that requires a military deployment, regardless of right-wing propaganda outlets' best efforts to depict L.A. as a city on the brink of destruction. American service members have been ordered there not to protect their compatriots but to intimidate them at gunpoint for the sin of opposing the president. On Friday, for the first time, U.S. Marines detained a civilian, in apparent violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. The person in question was an Army veteran headed for the Veterans Affairs building in L.A. The president and many of his prominent supporters seem eager for escalation. Trump has said that Los Angeles has been 'invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals,' and that 'violent, insurrectionist mobs' have been 'swarming and attacking' immigration-enforcement officers. Vice President J. D. Vance posted on X that 'insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers, while one-half of America's political leadership has decided that border enforcement is evil.' Miller accused L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who had pointed out that the city had been more peaceful prior to the administration's response, of 'insurrection.' Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has been urging Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to use the military to detain American citizens, vowed at a press conference to 'liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city'—just moments before federal officers forcibly removed Senator Alex Padilla of California and pushed him to the ground when he tried to ask questions. Right-wing media, aware that the administration's actions and rhetoric resemble those of dictatorships, have been telling their audiences that the protests have all been cooked up by Democrats to trap Trump into acting like a dictator—never mind his obvious fondness for dictatorship. 'Democrats are causing mayhem in their cities, so when Trump restores order, they can label him a dictator and stir up even more hatred and violence against him,' the Fox News host Jesse Watters said on Monday. 'They're burning their own cities just to prove to their bloodthirsty base that they're fighting Trump in the streets, burning their own cities for power.' Someone might be bloodthirsty, but it's not the Democrats. David A. Graham: The Trump believability gap If L.A. had been taken over by insurrectionist mobs, the Trump modus operandi would be to pardon them and give them money—though only insurrectionists who try to overthrow the government on Trump's behalf, of course. Instead, the protests provoked by the administration's authoritarian tactics appear to be mere pretext for using force against Trump's political opposition. The L.A. police chief, Jim McDonnell, said the city's police force could handle the protests without assistance, but such a move would deny Trump his excuse for using the military against Americans who have the temerity to oppose him. This has long been a fantasy of Trump's— he praised China's crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protest movement as having 'put it down with strength.' Last week, he warned that anyone who protested his wasteful, self-worshipping military parade would be met 'with very big force.' How did Republicans go from condemning leaders who threaten their own citizens to becoming sycophants for one? Here, too, we find a holdover of Cold War rhetoric: the use of Third World to describe multicultural communities such as Los Angeles. In the 1950s, the terms First World, Second World, and Third World emerged as a means to describe Western-aligned nations, Soviet-aligned governments, and emerging nations not allied with either faction, respectively. Third World soon came to be used as a pejorative term for poor, nonwhite countries—full of human beings who could be considered disposable. And that's exactly how Trump officials and their allies are referring to communities such as Los Angeles in order to justify using military force. Last night, following the massive 'No Kings' protests across the country, Trump posted on his social network Truth Social that he was directing ICE to 'expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America's largest Cities,' which he called 'the core of the Democrat Power Center'; he further described immigration as turning America into a 'Third World dystopia.' The post echoed similar language from right-wing-media figures who, last week, began repeating the same rote talking points about the need to ban all 'Third World' immigration. The conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk, who spoke at Trump rallies during the 2024 election campaign, displayed on his podcast, as part of an argument for Trump using the military to 'take back the streets of LA. Do it and do it fast,' a chart from a white-nationalist website showing the white population of Los Angeles declining. Kirk also made explicit that he wasn't borrowing just the chart from a white-nationalist website but also its ideological conclusions about the threat that nonwhite people pose. ' This is the Great Replacement Theory,' Kirk explained. 'Remember we talked about how they want to replace white Anglo-Saxon Christian Protestants with Mexican, Nicaraguans, with El Salvadorians.' The term Anglo-Saxon Christian Protestants is wildly archaic, 1930s racism. What's next in the Republican-aligned podcast world? Rants about swarthy Sicilians and perfidious Jews? The increased support Trump received in the 2024 election from nonwhite voters hasn't altered prominent Trump proponents' view that America is the white man's birthright and that all others are merely interlopers. 'The deeper goal is to reshape America demographically. It is to make America less white, less European by descent,' The Daily Wire 's Matt Walsh declared. 'You're not gonna destroy Western civilization just by winning the next midterms or whatever. You destroy it by importing non-Western people.' Adam Serwer: Trump's followers are living in a dark fantasy These ideas weren't coming from just commentators. Attorney General Pam Bondi said L.A. 'looked like a Third World country' on Fox News; Miller posted on X that 'huge swaths of the city where I was born now resemble failed third world nations. A ruptured, balkanized society of strangers.' If Los Angeles is 'balkanized,' that is because it has a long history of being forcibly segregated by race, starting decades before Miller was born. But here, Miller's objection is not a call for integration but an expression of rage that the city is less white than it used to be. On Thursday night, Trump said 'illegal aliens' were turning America into a 'Third World Nation' and declared, 'I am reversing the invasion. It's called remigration,' using a European far-right term for ethnic cleansing of nonwhite immigrants from European countries, regardless of status or citizenship. The math here doesn't take much effort. In the view of these officials and commentators, California (and, by extension, America) has been ruined by immigration from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, which is what makes mass deportation and the use of American military force against their own people necessary. As it happens, this coincides rather neatly with Miller's expressed view that the repeal of racist restrictions on immigration in the 1960s destroyed the country. Both inside and outside the administration, the consensus of prominent Trumpists is that if you are not white, you are a threat to Western civilization. This is how they rationalize Trump failing the tyrant test—the threat of military force is being made against people the administration and its propagandists want you to see as not truly American. This is how a tyrant thinks. Every dictator who has ever cracked down on political opposition has done so by rendering them internal foreigners in rhetoric and deed, invaders of the body politic who can justly be crushed like insects. Those serving in uniform, military or civilian, should ask themselves whether becoming a tyrant's instrument against their own communities is what they had in mind when they signed up.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Defence at 5pc or learn to speak Russian? Spasibo, Mr Rutte
The secretary general of Nato, Mark Rutte, has come to London as the head of the most powerful military alliance on the planet to remind us Brits that unless we re-invest in our military capabilities we had better start learning Russian. Had we not achieved a similar feat after the 'awakening' of 1940, we would now be talking German. The development of Hitler's Nazi Germany in the 1930s is so frighteningly similar to Putin's actions in the 2010s and 2020s as to make you think the same playbook is being followed. Appearing to almost directly address Ms Reeves – ahead of her spending review on Wednesday – Rutte said: 'If you do not go to the 5 per cent, including the 3.5 per cent for defence spending, you could still have the NHS … the pension system, but you better learn to speak Russian. That's the consequence.' Rutte means 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence – as opposed to Keir Starmer's only concrete target of 2.5 per cent – plus another 1.5 per cent on security and infrastructure. In some respects Rutte is wrong. There will be no welfare state and no NHS if Putin takes over. Just look at the fate of ordinary people in Russia who can barely afford to eat, and both inflation and interest rates north of 20 per cent and rising. That shows what life might be like under a modern Warsaw Pact. Mr Rutte realises that we cannot appease tyrants like Putin and the only way to scare them off is to show strength. 'We are deadly serious that if anyone tries to attack us, the consequences of that attack would be devastating – be it Russia or anyone else,' he said. We must not repeat the mistakes of our forebears in the 1930s, who failed to rearm to the level of deterrence. If we had realised that only total domination of Europe would satisfy Hitler, we would have confronted pressing demands at home for more welfare spending and avoided war – not by letting the aggressor have his way, as was famously attempted by Neville Chamberlain, but by being strong enough that Hitler would have avoided a confrontation. As history recalls, when Chamberlain returned from Munich saying he had chosen 'peace in our time', Winston Churchill rebuked him: 'You were given a choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.' If we look realistically at what Putin has been telling us for the last 20 years we will understand that only the re-establishment of the old Soviet Union will satisfy him. The fact that none of those countries want to be part of Putin's Russia, means only one thing, as we are sworn to defend them under Nato Article 5: war. If we abandon them, we will be dishonoured – and we will be next, facing an enlarged empire with even greater resources. The Germans, realising belatedly the threat of another tyrant who wants to subjugate them, have issued a stark warning this week. Herr Bruno Kahl, head of the Federal Intelligence Service, said his agency had clear intelligence indications that Russian officials believed the collective defence obligations enshrined in the Nato treaty no longer had practical force. 'We are quite certain, and we have intelligence showing it, that Ukraine is only a step on the journey westward,' says Kahl. Secretary General Rutte is spot on. This message from a former European liberal politician may get many backs up here, but we cannot ignore it. History tells us he's right. Sadly we do not appear to have a Churchill among our modern day politicians to lead us through the coming confrontation with Putin. I know from comments added to my previous pieces on this subject in this paper that there appear to be some who want us to capitulate and give up without a fight. Most of them are clearly Russian bots, part of the massive Russian propaganda machine who would want us to do exactly that. But if people think life in Britain is bad now, look east and see the misery most Russians live under. Let us heed Rutte's warning, and in the immortal words of Donald Trump 'build baby build' military capability. Quite frankly if we fail to defend ourselves now, everything else vexing people at the moment will become horrifically irrelevant. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Business Post
04-06-2025
- Business
- Business Post
Paul Johnston: A step change in defence readiness for UK as stark threat of Russia emerges
I joined the Ministry of Defence in September 1990, shortly after the publication of 'Options for Change', the UK government's response to the end of the Cold War, with the collapse of the Warsaw Pact the previous year and the imminent unification of Germany. Fast forward a third of a century and it's clear we are in a post-post-Cold War world. The assumptions we made then about a new era of rules-based cooperation and indeed of NATO partnership with Russia have been brutally shattered. China is a sophisticated and enduring challenge to many of the West's interests. Extremism is a scourge in many parts of the world. The world is a bleaker, less stable, more complicated place than at any time in my professional life. It was against that this backdrop that soon after the UK election last year Keir Starmer invited three external experts – former NATO Secretary General George Robertson, a retired General Richard Barrons and Fiona Hill, distinguished academic and former US NSA official - to work with our Ministry of Defence on a radical assessment of what UK Defence requires in the decade ahead. Their review was published last week. Its conclusions are stark. The threat we now face is more serious and less predictable than at any time since the Cold War, with the reality of war in Europe, growing Russian aggression, not just against Ukraine, nuclear risks, and daily cyber attacks. Technology is exploited by our adversaries as fast as we seek to adopt it. Hostile nations and non-state actors cooperate more closely together. The Review pulls no punches. It identifies Russia as an 'immediate and pressing' threat to Britain and our Allies. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine made clear its malign, neo-imperialist ambitions, its intent to re-establish its sphere of influence and to disrupt the international order. The modernisation and expansion of Russia's armed forces pose an enduring threat to the West, despite its capabilities being seriously degraded through the war in Ukraine, by the bravery and resilience of Ukraine's armed forces and people. The conclusion is inescapable. As the international security environment deteriorates, the UK will redouble its efforts within NATO and step up its contribution to Euro-Atlantic security more broadly. Deterrence in, and defence of, the Euro-Atlantic region is a core role for UK Defence. Our forces contribute daily – and silently - to deterrence and we will strengthen them to create an integrated force optimised for warfighting to protect and defend NATO territory. No-one in Britain's government relishes having to contemplate conflict, but it was long ago said 'if you want peace prepare for war'. We will do so with a comprehensive all-of-government response, accepting all the Review's recommendations, focussing on readiness, resources and reform. The review marks a significant shift in our deterrence and defence posture: moving to 'warfighting' readiness, to deter threats and strengthen security in the Euro Atlantic area. We will have a 'NATO first' defence policy and strengthen our leadership within the Alliance. Defence, like charity, begins at home and we will establish a more lethal 'integrated force' equipped for the future and for strengthened homeland defence. We will invest in new submarines, drones, armoured vehicles, but also in cyber, AI and the cutting-edge innovation technologies that will keep us ahead of our enemies. Options for Change's 'peace dividend' released billions of pounds for wider public spending in the 1990s. That's not an option today. Rather, we are investing in a defence and deterrence dividend, the largest sustained increase to UK defence spending since the end of the Cold War. We will increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027, and aim to reach 3 per cent in the next Parliament, ie by 2034. This is also an investment in UK industry, skills, research and innovation. Our Defence Investment Plan will seize new technology opportunities and maximise the benefits of defence spending to grow the UK economy, creating jobs and prosperity through a new partnership with industry, and through radical procurement reforms. For too long, defence investment, particularly defence procurement, has led to sub-optimal results. Projects come in behind time and over budget. This is not unique to the UK or to the defence sector. But it is indefensible, and our Ministers are committed to tackling it. Overlong and complex processes will be streamlined, with innovation and procurement measured in weeks not years. We will make UK Defence a more attractive market for private capital, by supporting and investing in start-ups and new technology companies in areas such as AI, quantum, and Space, and we'll remove the bureaucracy and red tape that are barriers to collaboration with Defence suppliers. We will establish a new £400m (€475m) UK Defence Innovation fund to support and help grow companies throughout the whole of the UK. 'NATO First' does not mean 'NATO only'. The agreement of the UK/EU Security and Defence Partnership on 19 May was an important moment. As our leadership of the coalition of the willing on Ukraine has shown, we intend working cooperatively on European Security with the EU and bilaterally with European partners. This includes, of course, with Ireland. We committed to developing our defence relationship at the UK/Ireland Summit in March, and we're ready to do so, respecting Ireland's long-established military neutrality, but also the shared understanding that the world has changed and we are all, in our different ways, obliged to react. Paul Johnston is the current British Ambassador to Ireland
Gulf Today
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
How can Europe deter Putin? Revive the ‘Reforger'
When I was a junior officer during the Cold War, the biggest North Atlantic Treaty Organization military training exercises — perhaps the largest in history — were annual drills called Exercise Reforger. The goal was to ensure NATO's ability to deploy troops rapidly to West Germany if war broke out between the alliance and the Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact nations. 'Reforger' was a loose acronym of 'Return of Forces to Germany.' The first Reforger was held in 1969, and they ran annually through 1993, just after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Forces from every country in the alliance participated, although the bulk of them were American — drawn from the 400,000 US troops stationed in Europe at the height of the Cold War. At the time, only 16 countries were in NATO (today there are 32). The event was not just an exercise — it was an actual planning and execution demonstration of NATO's defensive war plans. It required the forces to 'marry up' with their huge stockpiles of equipment on NATO's eastern flank, called Prepositioning of Materiel Configured in Unit Sets (POMCUS) sites. US Marines were also part of the flow of troops toward the potential combat lines, and the Navy's Sixth Fleet (focused on the Mediterranean) and Second Fleet (covering the North Atlantic) participated from sea. As a lieutenant junior grade onboard the US aircraft carrier Forrestal in the fall of 1980, I remember our participation in air sorties in support of ground operations. Even though we knew it was a drill, we took it with deadly seriousness; the intent was to be prepared to 'fight tonight,' as the saying went in those days. With the demise of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany, Reforger exercises were deemed unnecessary. But given Russian President Vladimir Putin's willingness to invade his neighbors, we should ask whether it is time to bring Reforger back. If so, what might the exercises look like in today's world? And are the NATO allies up to taking a larger role? The reason for the original Reforger exercises was simple: to create deterrence in the minds of the Soviets. The sight of 150,000-plus allied troops, hundreds of combat aircraft and dozens of warships helped keep Moscow from getting any ideas about further conquests in Central and Western Europe. Today, three things argue strongly for a new Reforger series. First is Moscow's two decades of territorial aggression — particularly the invasions of Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014 and 2022). Putin has also sought to undermine free elections in various European countries and used hybrid warfare tactics to intimidate nations from Moldova to Armenia. Russia has threatened NATO's Baltic states and is building up offensive capabilities on the border of new alliance member Finland. A second reason for a new Reforger series is that Putin has turned his country into a war economy, devoting more than 7% of GDP to military spending (double the US level) and pouring 35% of his annual budget into financing the war in Ukraine. He is also recruiting mercenaries from around the world and has inveigled Kim Jong Un of North Korea to send him some 10,000 troops. Based on the rope-a-dope he is playing in negotiations with President Donald Trump over Ukraine, Putin seems unlikely to cease and desist anytime soon. Third, Europe is finally waking from a long period of denial about the threat Moscow presents on its doorstep. The US allies are boosting military spending and seem ready to put together a major annual exercise to show Putin that they have the capacity and the will to fight if attacked. Ursula von der Leyen, the leader of the European Union, and the new secretary general of NATO, former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, recognise that the moment is critical. A new Reforger series could take some lessons from its illustrious predecessors. It should include forces from each of the 32 allies, including contingents from even the smallest nations like Iceland and Luxembourg. This time, the bulk of the troops, aircraft and warships should come not from the U.S. but from Europe, particularly France, Germany and Poland. Overall command and control should be vested in NATO's supreme allied commander and run from the nuclear-proofed command bunker in Mons, Belgium — a place I know well. Like the previous iterations, it should not be simply practice or a tabletop drill, but a real-time manifestation of current war plans giving commanders at all levels real authority over their troops. A potential breakdown of responsibilities in command and control: Turkey for land forces; Britain for maritime; Germany for air and missile defense; Belgium for special forces; Italy to protect the southern flank and the Netherlands on the northern flank. The US should focus not on manpower but on what it does better than any other country: providing intelligence, cybersecurity overwatch, satellite and space connectivity, artificial intelligence, and advanced drones and other unmanned vehicles. The US Sixth and Second Fleets should be involved, but as support for carrier strike groups from the UK, France and Italy. Above all, like its ancestor Reforger, the new exercise should focus on the swift flow of logistics.
