Month: October 2023

Russia invades the sovereign nation of Ukraine, in February 2022.  The world watches, in real-time, levels of destruction not seen since World War II newsreels that would, after the fact, be shown in movie theaters.

Ninety-eight percent of the world’s current population of 8 billion have no personal recollection of the WWII destruction in Europe. Therefore, this ongoing invasion of Ukraine is a game-changer invoking questions like, “How could this possibly happen today?  Why have we not stopped it?  What can we do?  How can they deliberately target women and children?  Who can help?  Should some collective group of countries join forces and counterattack Russian forces?  What should NATO do?  Should the EU put together a counteroffensive force?  Who would/should lead such a force?  Can Ukrainians ever rebuild the tens of thousands of destroyed structures?  If the invasion ended tomorrow, where would the returning refugees live?  Who could/should finance rebuilding Ukraine? Where will they find food and clean water?  Where will they work?   Will there be electricity?” etc. etc. etc.  The questions are almost endless because it is an understatement to say, “This is unprecedented today.” Good questions. We need answers and actions.

The escalation in the conflict between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) reaches its sixth month, 15 October 2023, resulting in the deaths of at least 5,000 civilians, more than 12,000 injured, and over 5.7 million people forcibly displaced. What if this could have been prevented?

October 2023 Hamas militias attacked Israel from Gaza with ground forces and rockets killing and injuring thousands of innocent civilians and taking hundreds of hostages. What if these types of attacks from organization were to never happen again?

The daily media dose of reality from Ukraine, Sudan and Israel has touched nearly everyone’s heart and mind with feelings of disbelief, distrust, disgust, and anger towards the aggressor leaders; empathy, sorrow, and compassion for the millions of in-country displaced citizens, out of country refugees, those mourning killed or missing family members and what the people face in the foreseeable future. What if there was a system in place to prevent this?

The purpose of this essay is to present a concept of operations for implementation of an in-place, continuously operational International Deterrence Force to preemptively prevent conflict and create lasting world peace. 

When Ukraine, Sudan and Hamas/Israel are over, an international after-action review should be initiated.  It must not be a thousand-page bureaucratic “study” published in a couple of years which would be worse than worthless. What it must be is a succinct accounting of three simple, but essential, questions:

First, what, collectively, did we, the world, do well?

Second, what should we, could we, the world, have done better?

Finally, and most importantly, how can we institutionalize a faster, better, more organized, more aggressive, and all-inclusive plan for preemptive actions that would preclude these acts from ever happening again?

THE PROBLEM:  If we cannot define the problem, there is no solution.  The problem is two-fold.  First, is the realization that throughout mankind there have always been and will always be evil men who will kill others for control, power and profit.  The second problem is that we, the innocent, do not have a plan to prevent the evil among us from killing others on a massive scale.  Case in point, Ukraine, Sudan, Israel today.

BACKGROUND leading to a proposed solution:

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: 

With technically-advanced machine guns, tanks, and chemical warfare, World War I was optimistically referred to as “The war to end all wars.”  January 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson outlined an idea for an organization that would be charged with resolving conflicts before they exploded into bloodshed.  In 1919 the structure of The League of Nations was laid out in Paris and the Treaty of Versailles went into effect in January 1920 with 48 member countries. The U.S. Congress failed to ratify our membership in the League.  Between 1920 and World War II there were numerous opportunities to act, but it never did.  The League of Nations was abandoned during World War II.  The League was not necessarily a bad idea, but numerous times, when actions were required, European countries found it too difficult to put together an effective united front against an aggressor to include the rise of Germany.

THE UNITED NATIONS:

In June 1941 representatives from thirteen nations (the U.S. was not included) met in London and signed the Declaration of St. James’s Palace expressing a vision for postwar world order.  The next step was the Atlantic Conference in August 1941, at which President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill laid out a more detailed form of the alliance called The Atlantic Charter. The final step was the Yalta Conference, in February 1945 when Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed on the establishment of the United Nations as well as the structure of the Security Council.   

Despite having endured for 77 years, generally speaking, the UN is a weak-intentioned bureaucratic mass that is involved in everything and accomplishes very little.  Case in point, has the UN responded to the Russian invasion?  Yes, on March 3rd they voted overwhelmingly for a resolution deploring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for the immediate withdrawal of its forces.  Wow, that must have shaken Putin to his core.

The UN is an established international organization perfectly positioned to be a greater force for the greater good of the collective world.  But in its current condition, it is incapable of deterring or bringing to a close a conflict such as that exists in Ukraine, Sudan and Israel today. We need to completely rethink this issue, right now.

THE UN TODAY: 

To understand what must be fixed, here is a short-hand view of what is wrong. The UN consists of Six Principle Organs:

·       General Assembly

·       Security Council

·       Economic and Social Council

·       Secretariat

·       International Court of Justice

·       Trusteeship Council (currently inactive)

THE SECURITY COUNCIL:

The Security Council consists of five permanent members, the U.S., China, Russia, France, and the UK (allies during WW II), and ten elected members.  The presidency of the Council rotates among the fifteen members, each serving for one month.  Is anyone surprised that Russia was president in February 2022 when they attacked Ukraine?

Under the United Nations Charter, the principal function of the Security Council is to “Ensure international peace and security.” Additionally, the subset authority allows the Council to: 

• Investigate any dispute or situation which might lead to international friction.
• Recommend methods of adjusting such disputes or the terms of a settlement.
• Formulate plans for the establishment of a system to regulate armaments. Determine the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression and recommend what action should be taken.
• Call on Members to apply economic sanctions and other measures not involving the use of force to prevent or stop aggression. 
• Take military action against an aggressor.

Given these clearly articulated responsibilities and authority, we can conclude that the UN in general and the Security Council, in particular, have been abject failures for seven decades. First of all, can you imagine a large international company CEO having fifteen Executive Vice Presidents, each allowed to lead for a month every fifteen months; thereby allowing each to bring his or her biases and priorities to the forefront.  It’s insane.

A perfect example of the UN’s ineptitude is that they have never identified either Hamas or Hizballah as terrorist organizations.! They are “legitimate political movements.”

A UN INITIATIVE FOR WORLD PEACE:

How is world peace possible? In a word, deterrence.  That is fear, in the mind of any potential aggressor, of rapid retaliation by a superior force.  It is possible for the United Nations to establish and sustain a world military force to deter and, if necessary, bring to bear on the battlefield the collective military might of the other 194 member nations?  Here is an outline:

Every member nation would agree to contribute to a worldwide deterrent force that can be deployed anywhere in the world within seven days.  Every nation will contribute according to its capabilities.  Some examples

The U.S. has the greatest capability in the world for worldwide force projection.  For example, the world watched in awe in 1990 as the U.S. deployed an overwhelming force to the Gulf War and, in two days of fighting, defeated Iraqi forces which had invaded Kuwait.  One U.S. contribution to the UN force could be our entire air-cargo fleet to fly directly to various countries and transport their force contribution directly to the targeted area.  Another critical U.S. contribution could be our fleet of about 650 aerial refueling tankers; by comparison, the remaining countries have about 250. Another could be our aircraft carriers and submarine fleets.

Countries with few military resources (36 nations do not have a defense budget) could provide field hospitals, portable field surgical units with doctors and nurses, aircraft maintenance capabilities, truck drivers, border patrol personnel, etc. Nations with only small maneuver organizations could provide, for example, man-portable air defense and anti-tank teams and snipers.  There would be a very long list of non-combatant rear-area support requirements.  Countries with established combat forces could provide special operations personnel, armored units, light infantry, artillery, helicopters, tactical aircraft, naval vessels, air defense, combat engineers, all the elements for a military theater of operations. Selected nations in several regions would be responsible for providing an airport that can be quickly transformed into a full-up military operation with multiple runways, an expanded tarmac, maintenance facilities, and housing for the military contingent. 

The force could be called the International Deterrence Force, IDF.  The “D” in IDF does not stand for Defense.  The IDF will not be designed for defense. It will send an undeniable message to any nation that is contemplating an offensive action that within seven days an overwhelming force compiled from over 150 contributing nations can be in place for a counteroffensive.  That is the real-world definition of deterrence.  The UN/IDF could borrow NATO’s Article 5 concept, “An attack on one member is an attack against all members.”

Who pulls this all together?  A 4-star military leader with senior command experience would be nominated by the UN Secretary-General.  After being thoroughly vetted, he/she will be voted on by the General Assembly by secret ballot. A majority vote will secure a two-year assignment which can be extended to four years.  The IDF Commander will select a deputy and the two of them will put together a lean-and-mean, full-time, rapidly deployable international staff.  The commander’s headquarters will be in Europe while the deputy will be in Asia.  For the sake of continuity, upon completion of the IDF Commander’s tour, the deputy will get first consideration as the replacement. The IDF staff will consist of subordinate commanders for ground forces, air, naval, theater logistics, and humanitarian issues. 

Every six months the Commander will personally brief the UN General Assembly on IDF readiness.  For every nation, their IDF contribution will be subject to inspection by the IDF Commander/Deputy Commander and their staffs. Every nation must regularly inform the IDF when their force will be engaged in military exercises so that they can be observed.  The IDF Commander will establish and publish standards for every contributed element.  Every nation will provide a very detailed quarterly readiness report on the trained-to-standard and deployability status of their IDF contribution.

The IDF headquarters will maintain a robust intel-processing element linked to the intel gathering capabilities of all 195 countries. 

International Deterrence Force Condition, IDFCON: All contributing nations will exist in a state of one of four different readiness IDFCONs.

IDFCON 1:  Normal peacetime condition.  A completed plan will be in place in every member nation.  Readiness standards will be in force for every IDF element.

IDFCON 2:  The Secretary-General and IDF Commander, having identified a potential threat to a member nation, will tailor a force for deployment and place them on 24-hour alert.

IDFCON 3:  All personnel and equipment for the designated units will move to assembly areas.  Deployment aircraft will move to their first pick-up airfield.

IDFCON 4:  Deployment of all designated deterrence elements to the target area and preparing to initiate an overwhelming counteroffensive.

FUNDING: 

The UN will budget for the two IDF headquarters.  The participating nations will budget for and fund their participating units and sustain them at trained-and-ready IDF combat-ready standards. 

The IDF Operations Plan will first and foremost be designed with the intent for every element to rapidly deploy to an area of operation where they can represent an overwhelming deterrent force from all 194-member nations.  But the total force may not, in all cases, be necessary.  Therefore, the next planning step is to have the capability to rapidly tailor a force for scenarios that require a lesser, but still overwhelming (as the saying goes, “always take a gun to a knife fight”), a force sufficient to deter, and if necessary, counter attack.  Two examples:

An attack on small country “A” in Africa appears imminent by a more powerful neighboring country “B”.  The IDF Commander determines that inserting a couple infantry battalions on the ground could sufficiently deter the attack. Using the concept to always have an overwhelming advantage, the commander will deploy a full infantry brigade along with combat supporting forces and tactical air support. Result, Country “B” packs up and goes home. Deterrence is a powerful force for world peace. 

A more serious and far-ranging scenario might look like this:  China continues to threaten Taiwan with aggressive air and naval operations.  It is determined that the demonstrations are a rehearsal for an actual attack.   The Secretary-General and IDF Commander agree to go to IDFCON 3.  China’s Achilles heel is imported gas and oil.  Inform China that a combined naval force from member nations is in route to the South China Sea to create an impenetrable blockade of all incoming gas and oil tankers.  Additionally, missiles and aircraft capable of taking out the gas and oil pipelines from Russia will be immediately forward deployed.  This scenario could shut down China in a few weeks and result in half-a-billion unemployed workers.  The Secretary General will demand that China publicly sign a pledge to acknowledge that forevermore Taiwan will be considered an independent nation free of all ties to China and provocative military actions against Taiwan are forbidden. Deterrence in action in support of world peace. 

BOTTOM LINE ON THE UN:

Having laid out a concept of operations for an International Deterrence Force capable of achieving world peace, it is time to admit that, given today’s reality, it cannot happen inside the existing UN.

The UN has been a failed institution since its inception in 1945 for one reason, “the veto”.  At the Yalta Conference in 1945 President Roosevelt, General Secretary Stalin, and Prime Minister Churchill agreed that each of the permanent members of the Security Council was to be granted veto power over any resolution under consideration.  The UN Secretary-General is a powerless position, the power resides in the Security Council.  More specifically, the power resides with the five permanent members, U.S., UK, France, China, and Russia.

Every significant resolution to be considered by the General Assembly must first be voted out of the Security Council.  Each of the fifteen members (five permanent and ten elected for a temporary term) have one vote.  But here is the problem, the Charter says, “Affirmative decisions shall be made by a vote of nine members, including the concurring votes of all five of the permanent members.”  One veto by a permanent member and the resolution is dead. Most would agree that Communist China and Communist Russia will never agree to changes to the UN Charter that would stand up to the IDF. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hamas invasion of Israel, the Sudan fight, the unprecedented civilian casualties, and the wanton destruction of civilian property have become a wake-up call for the world.  Now is the time, and it may never be more relevant, to strike with a plan that will, to the greatest extent possible, guarantee world peace.  There are two courses of action, one internal to the UN and the second external:

COURSE OF ACTION ONE: INTERNAL UN UPRISING: 

The Secretary-General could work to garner support from, let’s say, about 150 member nations for a change to the UN Charter.  The changes, none of which are currently authorized, could be as follows:

• Do away with the Security Council.
• Move the mission statement, that for seven decades has been the unfulfilled responsibility of the Security Council, to the Secretariat; “Ensure international peace and security.”
• Replace the appointment process for a new Secretary-General with a system whereby anyone from a member nation can campaign for the position.  A new Secretary-General will be elected for a 6-year term by a majority vote of the General Assembly. 
• Proceed to establish the International Deterrence Force.

COURSE OF ACTION TWO: UPRISING EXTERNAL TO THE UN:

The U.S. could initiate actions to seek support from most of the 195 current UN member nations to join a new organization called United for World Peace. The organization would look like this:

• A small headquarters anywhere in the world.
• An elected president for one six-year term.
• A fully operational International Deterrence Force as described above.
• The United for World Peace mission statement could be pulled directly from the UN Charter: 

“Ensure international peace and security” by executing the following:

• Investigate any dispute or situation which might lead to international friction.
• Recommend methods of adjusting such disputes or the terms of the settlement.

• Formulate plans for the establishment of a system to regulate armaments.

• Determine the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression and recommend what action should be taken.

• Call on Members to apply economic sanctions and other measures not involving the use of force to prevent or stop aggression. 

• Take military action against an aggressor.

The U.S. could lead this initiative and it should be done now while the Ukraine/Sudan/Israeli situations are fresh in everyone’s minds.  The selling points are obvious:

• The UN Charter, with its “one veto” policy cannot be fixed and renders the UN helpless. 

• We must prevent a repeat of a Ukrainian-like disaster.

• We must be proactive with an overwhelming deterrence force continuously in place.

• NATO, in being since 1949, is a perfect example of deterrence in action.

• For all United for World Peace member nations, an attack against one would be an attack against all.

• Every member nation would commit some resource to an International Deterrence Force by their capability.

Why would countries sign up to be a member? Here is a starter list of answers as to why a United for World Peace organization is needed now and why it would be an easy sell at this point. 

• Middle East countries and Israel are fearful of the hegemony intentions of a nuclear-equipped Iran but powerless individually to stop it.
• South Korea and Japan are very nervous about North Korea’s aggressive offensive missile and nuclear programs. 
• Taiwan is fearful of a China invasion. 
• Europe is fearful of Russian aggression. 
• Former Soviet Republics are fearful that they may be next on Putin’s list.
• The Baltic countries and Finland are fearful of Russia, and
•  India is in a constant state of unrest over China’s border incursions.
• Who knows what the next move may be by dictators in Latin America? 
• African border disputes are a recurring concern. 

• Nations’, such as Iran, support for terrorist activities threatens the world.
• Aggressors who would use cyberattacks to inflict humanitarian and economic disaster on another nation are a growing threat. 

It is not difficult to believe the United for World Peace organization could quickly become a 150-nation force for peace.

CONCLUSIONS for both courses of action:

• A successful United for World Peace organization (Course of action 2) could be subsumed by the UN if they can find a way to revise the existing Charter (course of action 1). 
• With an International Deterrence Force in place there is no longer a requirement for NATO. 
•  With the IDF in place, defense funding could probably be reduced around the world by hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars per year. For example, right now NATO members (Germany in particular) are ramping up their defense spending for forces that may be redundant beyond IDF requirements. 
• There will no longer be a need for nations’ bilateral treaties for mutual defense. 
• Since 2016 the European Union has been talking about the need for an EU armed force.  Cancel that.
• With world peace assurances in place, the next step could be a world without nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, or biological weapons.
• The UN “peacekeeping force” budget for 2021 was $6.38 billion.  With active worldwide deterrence and an overwhelming rapidly-deployable counter-offensive force, peace will be the standard day-to-day condition.
• The next step could be for the IDF Commander to visit North Korea to discuss ICBM and nuclear testing.  Then on to Iran to discuss Iran’s role as the world’s leading supporter of terrorist organizations.  Etc. etc. etc.
•  With a proactive International Deterrence Force in place, no nation would ever need to feel alone or stand-alone.
• There is currently a lot of discussion about the New World Order. Well, here is a new twist on The New World Order, call it World Peace.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Mr. President, you are currently, “The leader of the free world” in name only.  Here is an opportunity to lead the world towards sustained world peace.  Make it your number one, non-political priority. 

From Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “There is a tide in the affairs of men when taken at the flood leads one to fortune.” There will never be a more appropriate time than now to pursue a solution for future world peace.

Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, FIX THE SYSTEMS, TRANSFORM AMERICA as well as the author of a blog WeThePeopleSpeaking.com

COMMAND THE PRESENT:

“Present” is a relative term.  In some scenarios “present” could mean immediately or in others it could mean in hours, days, weeks or even months.  For example, on Saturday morning, 7 September, 2023 Israeli President Netanyahu was probably making command decisions within minutes but certainly within hours of the Hamas militant’s invasion.

By close of business on 7 September the barbarity of the invaders had become common knowledge around the world.  Such is the nature of today’s communications capabilities.

President Biden, supposedly and also questionably the “leader of the free world” would, it was assumed, at some point speak for the United States and, again questionably, for our allies around the free world about the Hamas invasion.  Prepared remarks by close of business Saturday would have been appropriate.  A speech on Sunday was surely expected. But wait, we must consider that first of all Biden does not work on the weekends and secondly the schedule was already full.  Late Sunday afternoon and on into the early evening he was busy hosting a picnic barbecue in the White House Rose Garden with a live band while Hamas was hosting Israeli and American hostages in Gaza City. No kidding, you can’t make this stuff up.

So, Monday, everyone said we should be hearing from the President.  There was no new news; Monday was pretty much a continuation of what took place beginning on Saturday.  Where is he, everyone was asking?

Finally on Tuesday afternoon after a 1-hour 15-minute delay Biden spoke.  His words were graphic, on-target and appropriate as he described what Hamas was doing on the ground.

But, OMG, after a few minutes of what was sounding like “setting the stage” comments, he abruptly shut his notebook and exited stage right. 

If you are either an American citizen or one of our allies, you wanted more, expected more and should have been given more.  As is the Biden routine, I’m sure the media representatives seated in the room had submitted their questions in advance and the White House staff had carefully crafted note-card responses for each question for the President just in case he decided at the last moment to actually take questions.  The fact that he could not conduct a Q and A on the single topic of the day speaks volumes.

Mr. President, what about the $6 billion you just gave to Iran; what was Iran’s roll in the invasion; will you send U.S. forces to help Israel; they shouted as he literally and figuratively turned his back on the world. 

So much for “commanding the present.”  Not even an “E” for effort, that was an “F”.

“ADVANCE IDEAS:”

In the usual course of events, one advances ideas to solve a problem.  So, first things first, we have to define the problem.  We are in a global war on terrorism and have been, actively, since the 9/11 attack on the U.S.

The U.S. State Department listing of terrorists includes 60+ organizations around the world; most of them are nothing more than small hate groups with few if any military resources. But over the last about 40 years, the Iranian regime has built a network of armed groups on Israel’s borders to create instability and foment terrorism.  Potentially ready to join Hamas and Hezbollah, are 17 more Islamic Jihad groups who receive funding, training, and weapons from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.  That is not classified information, why didn’t our President tell us that as part of his leader responsibility to “advance ideas?

The Monday, October 9^th edition of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, writing about the attack on Israel, reported, “Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursion. Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut Lebanon attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups.” The WSJ went on to report, “The IRGC’s wider plan is to create a multifront threat that can strangle Israel from all sides.  We know that there were meetings in Syria and in Lebanon with other leaders of the terror armies that surround Israel. We are now free to focus on the Zionist entity, the Iranian official said, they are now very isolated.”  

The U.S. intelligence budget exceeds $70 billion per year for 17 agencies and we have to find this out from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL?  And our president wouldn’t tell us?

Back to defining the problem.  On a day-to-day basis around the world the terrorists are not THE problem.  THE problem is Iran.  Iran was first designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1984 so they have a long history of how to provide the necessary support for a terrorist group to become an actual threat.  

SHAPE THE FUTURE:

The future is now.  Get on with it Congress.  Get on with it Biden. For years, Iran Ayatollahs have been publicly calling for “death to America and destruction of Israel.” When the hell is Biden going to get his back up and say it, “Iran is our enemy and we need to do something about it now.”

Consider this scenario.  Iran has been training and equipping terrorist organizations to fight as their military proxy for years.  According to the Institute for Science and International Security, 11 September, 2023, “Iran now has the capacity to fuel 6 nuclear warheads in one month’s time, and 10 within four months.”

So, the next Iran-sponsored terrorist attack could be from a van legally parked in Manhattan loaded with a dirty nuclear bomb. Experts warn that it would be relatively easy for terrorists to build an “improvised nuclear bomb” and smuggle it into America. Building a ten-kiloton bomb nearly as destructive as the one dropped on Hiroshima would require little more than some technical expertise and 46 kilograms of highly enriched uranium; a quantity about the size of a bowling ball.

Should we just sit around sucking our collective thumbs waiting for Iran to strike?  We should take their “destruction of America” seriously and begin to SHAPE THE FUTURE.

As retribution for its role in the attack on Israel, Congress and Biden should move immediately to place every possible sanction on Iran. Convince our allies to sign on to the same sanctions menu. Pull back the $6 billion check to Iran, now.

Convince the UN or NATO or just some number of allies to participate in an embargo on oil exports.  Keep in mind that Iran is currently exporting about 3.5 million barrels per day which is filling their coffers to support, for example, the current attack on Israel.  There is an addition side to the oil issue.  China, who has been courting Iran as their Middle East “partner” imports over 11 million barrels of oil per day to survive. In August 2023 China imported 1.5 million barrels per day from Iran. An oil embargo puts the squeeze on Iran and also gets China’s attention. The embargo could be enforced by a naval force from UN members, from NATO or perhaps even from some Middle East countries who see Iran’s long-range plan to bully other Middle East countries into submission. 

Make the world understand that Iran is an international threat and must be promptly taken down economically.

BOTTOM LINE:

Real leaders command the present, advance ideas and shape the future. We are in deep trouble.

Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of two books, Vision to Execution and Fix the Systems, Transform America as well as the author of a blog, WeThePeopleSpeaking.com

First Associated Press release 7 October:  Hamas militants fired thousands of rockets and sent dozens of fighters into Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip in an unprecedented surprise early morning attack during a major Jewish holiday killing dozens and stunning the country. Israel said it was now at war with Hamas and launched airstrikes in Gaza, vowing to inflict an “unprecedented price.”

It’ Saturday morning, first thoughts on what should happen this weekend.

FACTS BEARING ON THE ISSUE:

Israel cannot utilize all of the Israeli Defense Force, IDF against the invading Hamas militants because of the potential for Hizballah terrorists in Lebanon on the Israeli northern border to join the invasion and/or attacks from Syria bordering the Israeli Golon Heights.

This invasion is Iran’s doing.  Hamas militants are Iran’s proxy fighters today. They are fighting with Iran-supplied arms and ammunition.  They are destroying Israeli facilities and killing Israeli civilians with thousands of Iran-supplied rockets.

IDF TACTICS:  Hamas forces reportedly occupy small towns near the Gaza/Israel border and have taken Israeli hostages. I would, in this order:

First, use all available IDF ground forces to stop the advancement of Hamas further into Israeli territory and collect as many POWs as possible.

Second, then attempt to get behind Hamas and reestablish control of the Gaza/Israel border.  And send a message to the Hamas leadership that for every Israeli hostage released, Israel will return ten captured Hamas militants across the border into Gaza.  Then, using “Israeli math”, inform Hamas that for every dead Israeli captive, Israel will send back a truck load of 100 Hamas militants killed in action.

President Netanyahu should immediately inform Hizballah in Lebanon that for every militant who crosses the northern border, Israeli air forces will send 10 air strikes against all suspect Hizballah forces and/or facilities. Also send the same message to Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad.

AS SUPPOSED LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD, President Biden should spend the weekend in the Situation Room and immediately contact the leaders of the other four permanent UN Security Council members (China, Russia, France and the UK) and insist that the Council meet immediately to condemn the invasion.  Russia and China will object and this will tell the world where they stand on the invasion.  The remaining ten temporary Security Council members, (Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates) should be contacted and encouraged to vote for an immediate condemnation.

Also President Biden should call the President of the UN General Assembly, Dennis Frances, and insist on a General Assembly meeting over the weekend to do several things:

• Condemnation of the invasion.
• Approve a long list of immediate sanctions against Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. For years Iran Ayatollahs have been publicly calling for “death to America and destruction of Israel.” It’s time for the UN to put on its big-boy pants and shut them down.

• Immediately impose a UN sanctioned embargo of oil exports from Iran. Iran exports of oil per day averages about 3.5 million barrels.  Oil exports is what holds up their economy and allows them to move forward with support for world-wide terrorism as well as all the necessary ingredients to soon have a nuclear weapon.  China imports over 11 million barrels per day to survive. In August 2023 China imported 1.5 million barrels per day from Iran. The oil embargo puts the squeeze on Iran and also gets China’s attention. The embargo could be enforced by a naval force from UN members.

The problem with the above is that it won’t happen for two reasons.

First of all, Biden is incapable of creating that kind of global influence.

Secondly, the UN as a functioning organization is essentially powerless.  Nothing happens in the General Assemble unless it is passed in the Security Council.  The rules in the security council provide that 9 of the 15 members must vote yes. But here is the kicker; if only one of the permanent members votes “no” the issue is dead.  Bottom line, China and Russia are in almost total control. Interesting that under the UN Charter the function of the Security Council is to, “Ensure international peace and security.”

CONCLUSIONS: 

This type of limited invasion always holds the potential for Middle East nations to pile on with potential devastating results. The U.S. could lose our longest and most loyal ally in the region.

Without UN action, Iran is on point to perpetuate havoc around the world.

The UN will probably do nothing.

BOTTOM LINE:

There is another path to world peace; no more Ukraine-like invasions.  No more Israelis living in fear every day. No more bullies with nuclear weapons like North Korea and soon-to-be Iran.  But it cannot happen under a Biden Administration; they are incapable.  The Concept of Operations for a world peace plan is contained in a book, FIX THE SYSTEMS, TRANSFORM AMERICA.

Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of two books, Vision to Execution and Fix the Systems, Transform America as well as the author of a blog, WeThePeopleSpeaking.com.

In 2016 Hillary said, “the election was stolen.”  In 2020 Trump said, “the election was rigged.”

The 2024 election has the potential to be an existential threat to America.  Mail-in ballots, drop boxes, ballot harvesting and out of date error-ridden voter registration rolls will be in-play and threaten, as a minimum, to further divide the nation and as a worse-case scenario take it into an uncontrollable downward spiral. 

Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the U.S. had a 2022 population of 9,861,224 residents. So far so good, it’s just a big number.  Of those 9.9 million folks, about 4.3 million of them are supposedly registered voters. OK so far, what could possibly go wrong? During the 2022 election cycle L.A. County election officials mailed out about 5.7 million vote-by-mail ballots to those 4.3 million registered voters. This could be taking the old Chicago adage, “vote early, vote often” to a new level.

The states are in charge of their voting rules which is a good news/bad news situation. States’ rights is a good thing.  When taken to an extreme it can be bad, harmful and out of control.  There are two distinct voting processes in play going into the 2024 election cycle:

One, though all states offer some form of voting by mail, nine states, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washinton state and Washington, D.C., now mandate that every registered voter be mailed a ballot ahead of an election by default; it’s called all-mail voting.  All of the listed states but Utah are controlled by Democrats.

This all-mail voting system claims to increase voter turnout by expanding voting accessibility, especially among disabled people, rural residents, older people and members of the military.

The second system in play is request-required mail-in ballot systems, traditionally known as absentee voting. It requires eligible voters to initiate the process of receiving a mail-in ballot. Dozens of states allow voters to mail in their ballots without specifying why they are doing so, but several states, mostly in the South, require voters to provide an “excuse” for mailing in their ballots, forcing more people to vote in person at polling places.

All of the above could be OK if, and this is the big IF, the voter registration rolls were up to date (no dead people), correct (actually living at the recorded address) and are in fact eligible to vote (U.S. citizens). 

Fact: across the nation, voter registration rolls need to be correct if mail-in voting is going to be free of potential massive voter fraud.

This data is a few years old but there is every reason to believe it is still a huge problem.

In 2017 the Public Interest Legal Foundation found 17 counties in Illinois that have more registered voters than residents who are eligible to vote which is a violation of the National Voter Registration Act.  Franklin County, Illinois, for example, had an overcount of 190%. There were 21 states with over-registered counties. Michigan had the most with 24,

 In September 2020 just prior to the last presidential election, a Judicial watch Study revealed that 353 U.S. counties in 8 states had 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens.

An actual case of fraud associated with mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting is well documented for a U.S. Congressional race in North Carolina. The North Carolina State Board of Elections refused to certify the results after evidence of what it called “concerted fraudulent activities related to absentee by-mail ballots.” The fraudulent activities included “collection of absentee request forms, collection of absentee ballots, and falsifying absentee ballot witness certifications.”  Corrupt incentives were built into the scam in that those participating in the activities were compensated based on how many absentee ballots they corrupted.

The Election Board ordered a new special election after determining that the scheme was “enabled by a well-funded and highly organized criminal operation.”

The board further determined the election “was corrupted by fraud, improprieties, and irregularities so pervasive that its results are tainted as the fruit of an operation manifestly unfair to the voters and corrosive to our system of representative government.”

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT:

Right now, 13 months from the election, we seem to be in a state of expecting the worst and hoping for the best.  Considering the potential downside of contested election results throughout the country, doing nothing is distasteful, ignorant, irresponsible and cowardly.

The first element of solving a problem is to define it. Here is the problem.  The basis of election fraud is the pathetic state of voter registration rolls throughout the country.  While not interfering with states’ rights to define their election processes, the federal government should pass a law right now that mandates two things.  First, as of 1 January, 2024 every voter registration role in every state will become null and void.  Secondly every eligible voter who wishes to vote in 2024 must reregister between 1 January and 5 November, 2024; election day. Simply stated, we desperately need a one-time, 100% reboot of the voter registration system.  

The law will then go on to specify how the voter will go about proving in person that they are in fact, an eligible voter.

BACKGROUND:

In 2005, Congress passed THE REAL ID ACT 2005:

In accordance with that law (finally) on May 7, 2025, U.S. travelers must be REAL ID compliant to board domestic flights in the U.S. 

Secure driver’s licenses and personal ID cards are a vital component of our national security framework. The REAL ID Act enacted the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that the Federal Government “set standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as driver’s licenses.” 

Every state is required by this federal law to provide the facilities capable of providing REAL ID drivers licenses or personal ID cards.  The applicable parts of that law are:

TITLE II, THE REAL ID ACT 2005, IMPROVED SECURITY FOR DRIVERS’ LICENSES AND PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION CARDS

SEC. 202. MINIMUM DOCUMENT REQUIREMENTS AND ISSUANCE STANDARDS FOR FEDERAL RECOGNITION.

Features on each driver’s license and identification card issued to a person by the States:

(1) The person’s full legal name.

(2) The person’s date of birth.

(3) The person’s gender.

(4) The person’s driver’s license or identification card number.

(5) A digital photograph of the person.

(6) The person’s address of principle residence.

(7) The person’s signature.

(8) Physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes.

(9) A common machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements.

(10) An expiration date.

As millions of Americans already know, when you appear to get the REAL ID, you must have in your possession proof of all the above information; birth certificate, U.S. passport, social security card, a current bill addressed to you at your legal address, etc.

Here is how the existing REAL ID law can be used for the voter registration reboot. At some point after 1 January 2024, every eligible voter will appear at a voting office in their area or download their REAL ID data onto an online application form that can be mailed to their local election office. The name, address, expiration date and most importantly the number on the driver’s license or personal ID will be entered into the new state voter registration data base. 

It is the number on the ID that will make voter fraud very difficult.  As part of this new voter fraud law, every single ballot, either mail-in or in-person voting will have that number on it. Every single ballot will have a number on it that directly links it to one eligible voter.  Period.

This new law, let’s call it SECURE THE 2024 ELECTION ACT, will also specify that every voting machine in the nation will be updated to reject any ballot that does not contain a voter ID number, that the number corresponds to a particular individual whose name and address is on the ballot and that the number has not been previously used in that election cycle.  

Under this system, part of the on-going process with the voter registration roll is that upon reaching an expiration date, that person will be dropped from the rolls.  Also, each time a license or ID is renewed, that data will be automatically forwarded to the state voter registration to put that individual back on the voter rolls. On a continuous basis, this cleans out the dead voters.

THE PERSON WHO DOES NOT WANT TO GET A REAL ID BUT DOES WANT TO VOTE.

The SECURE THE 2024 ELECTION ACT will provide for in-person election day voter registration (to include early in-person voting dates).  That voter must present the same documentation required for a REAL ID and present it at the voting venue.  The documentation must include a Social Security card and the social security number will become the voter number used on the ballot.

CONCLUSIONS:

What this all boils down to is this question; are you, an eligible voter, at least patriotic enough that you will make the same effort for the right to vote that you would make for eligibility to get on a U.S. airliner?

If this program gets some traction in Congress, stand by to be called a racist by democrats beginning with Biden and Kamala even though by saying it they are implying that minorities are not capable of executing the REAL ID process; which in and of itself is a racist statement.

This is going to be a difficult sell in Congress in that they do not think in terms of doing something quickly or for a longer-range impact.  And also, because they are currently overwhelmed with the fact that there is no FY 2024 budget in place. There are reasons for not having a budget passed on time. It’s called laziness, unaccountability, lack of attention to details, lack of prioritization, ignored deadlines by most committees and generally sloppy, ineffective leadership. In any other organization, leaders acting like this would have been long ago fired.   

Next to amnesty-for-all, open voting is what the democrats want across America. For example, December 2021 in New York City, the Democrat-controlled city council passed a measure known as “Our City, Our Vote.” Noncitizen green card holders and individuals with workers permits who have lived in the city for at least 30 days will be allowed to vote in city elections.  They were describing themselves as a, “model for the nation.”

BOTTOM LINE:

This law, SECURE THE 2024 ELECTION ACT, can/should be an easy, quick fix to offset what could/might end up being an election that completely crumbles one of the most sacred foundational elements of this country; free and honest elections.

The basis for this new law is already on the books, THE REAL ID ACT.  The states are already performing the functions to produce IDs for eligible voters. Tens of millions of Americans already have a Real ID. All that is needed is a requirement to reboot the voter registration rolls during 2024. 

One more time; during the 2022 election cycle L.A. County election officials mailed out about 5.7 million vote-by-mail ballots to 4.3 million registered voters. Wake the hell up America and take off your rose-colored glasses; voter fraud is out there just waiting to be activated.  

I know what many of you are thinking; this might be a good idea but it will never become law.  While you are probably correct, the Republican party needs to be on record and talking to the we-the-people about this problem.  The House of Representatives can and should pass this proposal right now and thereby show the nation what the Democrat party is all about as they argue against it in the Senate.  Or, if by some miracle it did go to Biden for signature, we could watch him put another disgraceful paragraph in his legacy.  A final thought is that the Republicans currently controls 54.86% of all state legislative seats nationally and this dialogue could convince them to pass and implement this program in their states.

Note to subscribers:  If everyone who believes this will be a positive move sends a copy to their Congressperson, perhaps one of them will take the concept and run with it. Thank you.

Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, FIX THE SYSTEMS, TRANSFORM AMERICA as well as the author of a blog WeThePeopleSpeaking.com.