Follow us on social

48712938113_ba85d0aefd_k

Fun fact: US special ops are in 33 of 44 countries in Europe today

Commandos have quietly fanned out and are drilling with other militaries from one edge of the continent to the other. But to what end?

Analysis | Reporting | Military Industrial Complex

“For SOF, we’re going to be focused on campaigning, especially in the Grey Zone — below the threshold of conflict,” said Gen. Richard D. Clarke, the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command late last month, using the acronym for Special Operations forces.  “Our SOF have partnered with European allies since before 2014, focused on resistance and building resistance networks... But that is not just in the Baltics — Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia — that’s through the rest of Europe.”

This “focus” has led America’s most elite troops to fan out across Europe, operating from one end of the continent to the other. In 2021, U.S. Special Operations forces — Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and others — were deployed in at least 33 European countries, including Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. 

This accounts for a significant proportion of U.S. Special Operations forces’ global activity. Roughly 11 percent of U.S. commandos deployed overseas this year were sent to Europe, the largest percentage of any region in the world except for the Greater Middle East and Africa.

In May, for example, U.S. Naval Special Warfare operators and Army Green Berets traveled to Hungary to train alongside elite Austrian, Croatian, Hungarian, Slovakian, and Slovenian troops as part of Black Swan 21, a training exercise focused on enhancing “peer-to-peer deterrence and resiliency of alliances and partnerships” in Europe. “I think this is the manifestation of everything that is great about NATO, several NATO allies coming together and even non-NATO partners coming together to share their tactics, techniques, procedures, and lessons learned so that we’re all better,” said U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. David H. Tabor, the commanding general of U.S. Special Operations Command Europe, of Black Swan 21.

The next month, Green Berets from the 10th Special Forces Group took part in a live-fire training exercise alongside U.K. Royal Marines in a forest near Stuttgart, Germany. In June and July, Green Berets trained with Serbian Police from that country’s Special Anti-terrorist Unit. In September, Navy SEALs worked with Cypriot Army Special Forces.  And last month, Green Berets from the 19th Special Forces Group conducted a joint training exercise with elite Latvian and Estonian troops.

Clarke’s mention of the so-called Grey Zone and building “resistance networks” suggests an emphasis on the special operations missions authorized under “Section 1202 Authority,” an obscure provision which first appeared in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act and is “used to provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals” taking part in irregular warfare. Little has ever been revealed about 1202 missions, but they are explicitly focused on near-peer competitors and Grey Zone operations, which could include, for example, support for proxy forces in Ukraine. During a 2019 House Armed Services Committee hearing, in fact, Clarke said that the U.S. capacity “to train foreign forces, irregular forces, with the 1202 authority” would be crucial to supporting conventional troops in a conflict with Russia.

This year, Tabor has repeatedly traveled to Ukraine where a conflict has simmered and flared since 2014, following the Russian annexation of Crimea. “We remain fully committed to Ukrainian sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence,” he said while attending that country’s Independence Day festivities in August. During that trip he met with leadership from Ukrainian Special Forces and, according to an official statement, discussed “continued partnership in order to increase readiness and interoperability within the region.”


A U.S. Soldier assigned to 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) salutes his fellow Soldiers while jumping out of a C-130 Hercules aircraft over a drop zone in Germany. (U.S. Army photo by Visual Information Specialist Jason Johnston/Released)
Analysis | Reporting | Military Industrial Complex
Mark Levin
Top photo credit: Erick Stakelbeck on TBN/Screengrab

The great fade out: Neocon influencers rage as they diminish

Media

Mark Levin appears to be having a meltdown.

The veteran neoconservative talk host is repulsed by reports that President Donald Trump might be inching closer to an Iranian nuclear deal, reducing the likelihood of war. In addition to his rants on how this would hurt Israel, Levin has been howling to anyone who will listen that any deal with Iran needs approval from Congress (funny he doesn’t have the same attitude for waging war, only for making peace).

keep readingShow less
american military missiles
Top photo credit: Fogcatcher/Shutterstock

5 ways the military industrial complex is a killer

Latest

Congress is on track to finish work on the fiscal year 2025 Pentagon budget this week, and odds are that it will add $150 billion to its funding for the next few years beyond what the department even asked for. Meanwhile, President Trump has announced a goal of over $1 trillion for the Pentagon for fiscal year 2026.

With these immense sums flying out the door, it’s a good time to take a critical look at the Pentagon budget, from the rationales given to justify near record levels of spending to the impact of that spending in the real world. Here are five things you should know about the Pentagon budget and the military-industrial complex that keeps the churn going.

keep readingShow less
Sudan
Top image credit: A Sudanese army soldier stands next to a destroyed combat vehicle as Sudan's army retakes ground and some displaced residents return to ravaged capital in the state of Khartoum Sudan March 26, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig

Will Sudan attack the UAE?

Africa

Recent weeks events have dramatically cast the Sudanese civil war back into the international spotlight, drawing renewed scrutiny to the role of external actors, particularly the United Arab Emirates.

This shift has been driven by Sudan's accusations at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the UAE concerning violations of the Genocide Convention, alongside drone strikes on Port Sudan that Khartoum vociferously attributes to direct Emirati participation. Concurrently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly reaffirmed the UAE's deep entanglement in the conflict at a Senate hearing last week.

From Washington, another significant and sudden development also surfaced last week: the imposition of U.S. sanctions on the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for alleged chemical weapons use. This dramatic accusation was met by an immediate denial from Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which vehemently dismissed the claims as "unfounded" and criticized the U.S. for bypassing the proper international mechanisms, specifically the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, despite Sudan's active membership on its Executive Council.

Despite the gravity of such an accusation, corroboration for the use of chemical agents in Sudan’s war remains conspicuously absent from public debate or reporting, save for a January 2025 New York Times article citing unnamed U.S. officials. That report itself contained a curious disclaimer: "Officials briefed on the intelligence said the information did not come from the United Arab Emirates, an American ally that is also a staunch supporter of the R.S.F."

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.