Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
Some stuff I'm paying attention to this week:
Drag marks on the seabed were discovered following damage to the Estlink 2 undersea power cable, which connects Finland and Estonia. This provides further evidence of sabotage.
Chinese is facing a human metapneumovirus outbreak, with authorities ramping up detection and response protocols
Palestine: a year in review.
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov shared Moscow's opposition to the deployment of Western peacekeeping forces in Ukraine
The IDF reports 891 casualties since Hamas' October 7 attack. Compare with the upwards of 40K dead Gazans.
Pakistan attacked some positions of the TTP in Afghanistan, leading to the Afghan Taliban hitting several points in Pakistan.
Iran to hold nuclear talks with France, Britain and Germany on January 13
Israel announced increase in propaganda budget by USD 150M to combat Gaza narrative
Israeli Report to UN Exposes Hamas Torture, Sexual Abuse of Hostages, Including Children
Israeli raid shuts last major hospital in north Gaza
Yemen's Houthis claim to have shot down 13th MQ-9 Reaper drone
China calls for withdrawal of U.S. missile system from the Philippines
Himalayan megadam gives China power to turn off taps in India
Leaked documents reveal that Russia has prepared target lists for over 160 sites in Japan and South Korea in the event of a major war, dating back to 2013-2014. The plans, which focus on military engagements in the Asia-Pacific region, highlight Russia's intentions to use non-nuclear cruise missiles to disrupt military operations and include both military and civilian infrastructure targets. Among the military sites are command headquarters and radar installations, while civilian targets include power plants and major transportation infrastructures like tunnels and bridges. The documents indicate that of the 160 targets, 82 are military installations, with the remainder being civilian infrastructure.
Taiwanese fighter who served in Ukraine says island unprepared for Chinese invasion
The US and Japan issued their first guidelines for extended deterrence, which outline the potential use of U.S. nuclear weapons in response to threats from China and North Korea. Final authorization remains with the US president. Seems more like something to calm Japan's nerves than anything else
The Chinese navy and Coast Guard conducted a maritime blockade drill in the Miyako Strait, a strategic waterway near Japanese territory where U.S. forces are stationed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has directed the government and Sberbank to collaborate with China on AI, aiming to bolster Russia's capabilities, particularly military ones, like autonomous combat systems, in the face of Western sanctions.
"The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family. No one can sever our family bonds, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification," Xi said in a speech televised on China's state broadcaster CCTV.
Chinese-Russian air co-operation in the Artic has Norad's 'full attention'
Russia threatens more nuclear tests as World War 3 fears intensify. Russia ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 2000, but has since withdrawn from the agreement
Russia will abandon moratorium on deploying short- and medium range milliles
Russia angry that state media blocked on Telegram in the EU
'We are waging an existential war': M23's Bertrand Bisimwa on DRC conflict
Delaware officials investigate possible bird flu outbreak after dozens of snow geese test positive. Small microcosm of how H5N1 is playing out
Sweden is planning to secure additional land for cemeteries in anticipation of potential war casualties,
Also, Scott Alexander also gave some thanks to me and my group at the end of this post on H5N1, :)-
While doing so, remember that the 40K number is provided by Hamas, which is extremely motivated to inflate the number and is known to lie about pretty much everything. There's absolutely no possibility of independent verification of these numbers, so they can not be compared with verified and documented numbers like IDF casualties. Here: https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/HJS-Questionable-Counting-%E2%80%93-Hamas-Report-web.pdf is some analysis of the Hamas numbers. Again, it is probably impossible to know the real numbers. IDF estimates they killed about 17 thousands Hamas (and whatever smaller fractions there are, like Islamic Jihad or PFLP) operatives. Probably not a very accurate number either as I doubt they bothered to search and identify every single killed combatant. Beyond that, I am not sure how can one make any supportable numbers.
In the Iraq War documents, incident reports of the US army detail the deaths of 100k Iraqis at the hands of their own forces, of which about two thirds are civilian. These deaths, further, go above what other attempts at documenting war deaths reported, and they provide the most conservative estimate as they only include deaths drawn up in incident reports (i.e. if a helicopter launched a missile at a building and killed a bunch of people, this wouldn't find its way into incident reports, which are based on individual soldier reports of their interactions with the Iraqi public, nor would deaths caused by the chaos and privations of occupation), which are also likely to be biased by the soldiers reporting them.
The lessons learned from this I would say apply to the Israeli military operations. There is likely to be a far greater actual number of deaths than what's reported, as well as a huge number of civilian deaths relative to combatant, perhaps in the area of 2:1 at best, in all likelihood far worse.
That would be true if "reported" number were the number that matches the known casualties. Nobody in Hamas is interested in reporting anything like that. Thus, actual numbers bear no relation to what Hamas is reporting - it could be much less, it could be much more, Hamas reported numbers are just propagandist exercises. Sure, they can't report 1 millions people died from an airstrike on a single house, so they have some constraints on their reporting, but if they say 47 people died, nobody is going to contradict them. "Actual" isn't even seen in the vicinity of it.
This is a completely baseless assumption. IDF takes a lot of precautions to allow civilians to evacuate before engaging in certain areas. These efforts are well documented. They do not avoid casualties completely, and sometimes there's just no possibility of it - like having an active fight with Hamas striking from the midst of civilian population (there are numerous instances of rocket launches from "humanitarian zones" - it makes sense, if IDF says they won't strike certain area, that's exactly where you want to deploy your most precious resources, doing otherwise would be stupid) or high-value target is located in the presence of their family, etc. So yes, of course there are civilian casualties, and a lot of casualties (since Hamas is an irregular military) for which their status is impossible to determine, but numbers like "far worse than 2:1" are completely baseless. US army btw is much less sensitive to civilian casualties in overseas conflicts than the IDF - for the simple reason they can pretty much always get away with it.
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Is the premise behind that estimate that we are supposed to believe that approximately everyone they killed was a "Hamas operative", or that there is an unknown number of dead even Israel does not consider "Hamas operatives" that they didn't bother to count or report?
Please explain which word in the description "Hamas operatives" that I used is giving you the trouble?
The poster you were responding to was talking about 40k dead Gazans. You suggested that this number is untrustworthy, and countered by citing Israeli statements that it killed 17k Hamas operatives. The assumption that Hamas operatives are more or less a subset of Gazans seems fairly safe, but on the face of it this is not a refutation of the 40k figure. Since you seem to have structured your post as if it were one, this suggests one of two options: either you (and the Israelis?) are thinking it is in fact one (i.e. think that Hamas operatives ~= the set of Gazans they killed), or this represents the best effort at a refutation that can be made with Israeli numbers (because they don't keep count of anyone other than Hamas operatives).
In the latter case, a total figure of 40k seems very plausible - I tried to look for casualty figures for a random Israeli attack I saw on the news (Jabalya market) and found a UN one saying that "OHCHR verified that at least 42 people were killed, including 14 children and one woman". We don't have any stats on the adults, but I'd figure that the children are probably not what the modal Westerner would count as Hamas operatives (I assume they were not 17 year old children-on-paper but phenotypically obvious younger children?) and there probably would have been at least a similar number of uninvolved adults around unless one is positing Hamas was holding bring-your-kids-to-work day. (Low number of women doesn't have to be as indicative of anything in an Islamic setting as it would at first seem.) This suggests at least a something like 2:1 uninvolved:Hamas casualty ratio, which intuitively seems about right given the pictures and the apparent "if one of the floors is occupied by Hamas, blow up the whole thing" targeting approach in an area with lots of buildings of around 4 floors or so.
It is. Its only source is a terrorist organization known for lying about casualties many, many times.
I didn't "counter" anything, I just provided a source of information. Whether or not you believe these numbers (about 10k of which are validated with names and identification, but the rest is an estimate) does not change the fact that presenting unverifiable numbers from extremely untrustworthy source as a fact is misleading and wrong.
It was not intended as "refutation" of anything. I do not have the exact numbers, but there is a lot of research - including one that I quoted - that indicates Hamas numbers are bullshit. I do not have better numbers, and I think nobody does, but it is not the reason to treat numbers which are bullshit as if they were factual.
It is neither "refutation" nor "best effort" - again, for best effort see the actual research (some of which I quoted, but more available) on the actual numbers. Simply parroting Hamas is not research. Even with this research, probably nobody has any figures that aren't an extremely rough estimate - and people who could improve it are very, very invested in keeping the numbers as dirty as possible, because it serves them much better to inflate the numbers.
"UN" here likely means Hamas again - the only UN organization on the ground is UNRWA, and UNRWA is a) using data provided by Hamas sources (the report quotes "Gaza ministry of Health", which is Hamas structure) and b) is thoroughly structurally infiltrated by Hamas by itself - by which I mean, very many UNRWA workers are themselves, personally, Hamas operatives, and enough of them directly participated in October 7 atrocities that UN requested US courts to provide immunity to them for those crimes. That is going beyond the obvious fact that UN and especially "human rights" branches of UN vehemently hate Israel and regularly single it out for false accusations of atrocities, while ignoring much worse events happening anywhere else.
And why exactly do you assume that? UN traditionally counts everybody under the age of majority, even if killed on the battlefield with weapons in hand, as "children". And Hamas gets them very young - by 17, they can operate a Kalashnikov, an RPG and an IED quite well. There's no indication in the paper that "children" means anything but "anybody under 18". I do not make any specific claim on the age distribution of those you are mentioning, but just "assuming" out of the blue that it means what you want to mean is completely unfounded.
Which is exactly that they are doing, only it's not only a "day", it's everywhere and all the time. We're talking about irregular military, with no identification, using blending into the population and hiding in (and under) high-resonance civilian structures (schools, hospitals, mosques) as the primary military tactics. This is not just "bring your kids to work", this is "being surrounded by your - and others - kids at work is your work, because they are the reason you're still alive". Given the relative power balance, Hamas quickly loses any direct soldier-to-soldier engagement with the IDF. They can only do two things - hide and ambush - which becomes harder and harder as IDF controls more territory, since you have to get out periodically to eat and bring supplies, and territorial control means you get caught eventually, just ask Sinwar - or blend into the civilian population and attack from the midst of "bring-your-kids-to-work". That's the only way they can fight, so no wonder this is exactly the way they are fighting.
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It's a judgment call. I'm actually kind of surprised that the IDF estimates are in the same order of magnitude. I could say that you could split the difference, but that's a ratchet.
One way to get numbers would be to look at population before and after. Another would be to try to work back from satellite imagery (just checked and google earth doesn't have images from the last year yet, and commercial providers crashed my tab). Another would be to notice that by the time you get vaccine-derived polio, the population has to be pretty weakened. Another hint is the recent declaration of a famine by FEWS (since withdrawn because of USAID pressure, which funds FEWS). Israel destroying one of the last Northern Gaza hospitals also seems pretty concerning.
Idk man, take the 17K estimated by the IDF, say they only catch 75% direct deaths, and that direct deaths are 65% of total deaths, that's already 34.87K.
Then on top of this you could say, well, are these deaths justified. I have some sympathy for that, and I can see the argument where if your enemy is taking refuge in a hospital, then destroy the hospital—I wouldn't make the argument, but maybe that's just, like, me being weak, man. But I think this is separate from the magnitude of the death and destruction, where 40K is just not very far off.
Gaza gets more than enough aid to feed the people there. Of course, the distribution is challenging, with Hamas still being on the ground, still being very interested in presenting the picture of mass starvation, and also of course the whole process is grotesquely corrupt, with the aid which is supposed to be free being sold, etc. But even given that, there's no mass starvation is Gaza. There might be some nutritional imbalances and food quality issues, I mean living for an extended time on basic foods probably not a lot of fun, but that's a different picture.
But that's not what happens. I mean, "if" here is redundant - every single hospital in Gaza is used by Hamas as a base, it is a fact. There's absolutely no question about it, and the same of course is true for every school, mosque and other building with lower probability of IDF just blowing it out from the sky. But hospitals are not just destroyed with everybody in it. What is done about it is the hospital is surrounded, and then evacuated, and then it is searched (with multiple Hamas tunnels, weapons caches and often explosive traps inevitable discovered). Of course, this does not always goes smoothly - Hamas operatives sitting inside the hospital sometimes get ideas that shooting at IDF may be fun, and get the return fire, and so on. That stage is usually when civilians get hurt, but it doesn't usually take long to eliminate all active resistance. During the evacuation, of course Hamas operatives will pretend to be the sickest patients in urgent need to be in another hospital - e.g., in Kamal Adwan the first evacuating ambulance had 21 people inside, out of which 13 were completely healthy Hamas operatives (IDF has pretty good face recognition and by now very extensive lists of Hamas members, so it's not as easy as saying "I'm a sick civilian, please let me go"). The civilians that aren't identified as Hamas are provided with tents, generators, food and field medical facilities. Do civilians get hurt in the process? Yes, they do, but it's not like the whole thing is destroyed and everybody inside is instantly dead (though this is exactly the story that was told when Islamic Jihad hit another hospital with it's rocket and they tried to sell it as IDF attack - they counted 500 or so casualties within minutes, they're good like that, and nobody in the press cared to doubt it). Does replacing proper hospital facilities with whatever field medicine can be provided lead to some additional casualties? It probably does, but I don't think anyone has any accurate count of it.
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I suppose there should be a link somewhere for it? Right now it doesn't link to anything.
Added, thanks
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I am pretty sure power plants, tunnels and bridges are not described as "civilian targets" when America or its allies bomb such structures, which I'm pretty sure we have in many, many previous conflicts.
Good point, thanks
De nada, and sorry if the above came across as snippy. I really enjoy these posts.
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Bridges and tunnels are definitely legit military targets and always have been, same for railways, depots, ports, etc. Power plants are trickier since many of them serve predominantly civilian population, but e.g. in Yemen they were attacked (of course, Yemen has targeted Israel civilian targets many times, so they do not have much standing to complain). In general, since the advent of the total war concept, the industry - power, manufacturing, warehouses, supply routes, etc. - has been consistently targeted as part of the war. Russia's war in Ukraine is a bit unique as they are trying to pretend they are not waging a real war but just "special operation" to "liberate" their Ukrainian brothers from the clutches of the Nazis who they elected, but if we don't take this bullshit seriously, targeting manufacturing and energy infrastructure seem to be a pretty common thing in war. And certainly in the event of "real" war there's no surprise they have plans for that, any serious army would.
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