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The report, produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, uses data from sources including TerrorismTracker to study trends relating to terrorist activity across the world. The global death toll caused by terrorist attacks fell by 9% last year and is now 38% lower than its 2015 peak, with a 2022 total of 6,701. The number of attacks worldwide declined by 28% to 3,955, and 121 out of 163 countries surveyed — roughly three-quarters — recorded no deaths from terrorism. That is the highest number of fatality-free nations since 2007.

319 German Soldiers Suspected of Right-Wing Extremism: Ombudsman  (Anadolu Agency)
German authorities identified at least 319 suspected cases of right-wing extremism in the armed forces, parliamentary armed forces ombudsman Eva Hogl said Tuesday. Hogl said right-wing extremism in the military remains a concern despite a decrease in cases in 2022, compared to the previous year. ‘Right-wing extremism is also a problem in the German armed forces. In total, 319 cases were reported last year. While the decrease is a positive development, this is an issue which should be closely monitored,’ she said at a news conference in Berlin. Hogl said the military is taking new measures to address the problem, disciplinary processes will be accelerated and those who commit such offenses will be quickly expelled from military service.

The Bloody Toll of Russia’s War in Ukraine  (Seth G. Jones, Lawfare)
Russia’s war in Ukraine has taken an extraordinary human toll. Russian soldiers have been involved in alleged war crimes, including the rape and summary executions of Ukrainian civilians. The Russian military has also targeted Ukraine’s civilian population with heavy artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, missiles, and air and naval strikes. According to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, “Every day that violations of international human rights and humanitarian law continue, it becomes harder and harder to find a way forward through mounting suffering and destruction, towards peace.”
But the war is also decimating Russian President Vladimir Putin’s own military. Russia has suffered more combat fatalities in Ukraine in the first year of the war than in all of its wars since World War II combined. In addition, the average rate of Russian regular and irregular soldiers killed per month in Ukraine over the first year of the war was at least 25 times the number killed per month in Russia’s war in Chechnya and at least 35 times the number killed per month in the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan. While Putin has managed to limit domestic opposition to the war, the current fatality rates may be difficult to sustain in a protracted war.
The war in Ukraine has become a war of attrition. A war of attrition is one in which the opponents attempt to wear each other down through the gradual destruction of materiel and personnel. The belligerents are mainly concerned with overpowering their adversaries in a series of bloody set-piece battles that are characterized by high casualties, huge expenditures of materiel, and minimal movement of front lines.

Remembering the Iraq War: Has Washington Really Learned the Lessons?  (Christopher S. Chivvis, Just Security
Twenty years ago, the United States invaded Iraq with faulty intelligence, inadequate planning, and the impossibly ambitious aim of constructing a new Iraqi nation to American specifications. The result was over a trillion dollars lost, thousands of U.S. service members killed and wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, a major setback in the war against al-Qaeda, irreparable damage to America’s global reputation, and tears in the fabric of American politics and society. These enduring legacies of the war have served as a cautionary tale for future military interventions in the region.  
But has the United States fully internalized the lessons of the Iraq War? Two decades later it is clear that Washington still has crucial lessons to absorb.

A Year After Germany’s “Sea Change,” Policy Change Remains Elusive (George Bogden, War on the Rocks)
Nine days before Russian President Vladimir Putin began his war of conquest in Ukraine, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Moscow. He summed up his meetings by repeating a phrase made famous by Egon Bahr, West Germany’s emissary to Moscow in the 1970s: “Without Russia, a peace order in Europe is not possible.” This line was conceived when Bahr launched Germany’s plans for Ostpolitik under the direction of then-Chancellor Willy Brandt. Typically translated as “new eastern policy,” Ostpolitik prioritized political accommodation and featured slogans like “change through trade.” It sought to produce good will and collaboration, first with East Germany and the Soviet Union and later with the Russian Federation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this accommodation often came at the direct expense of Germany’s less-powerful neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe. 
Just days after Russia’s invasion, Scholz seemed to repudiate nearly five decades of Social Democratic Party policy. In a special session of the Bundestag, the chancellor declared a “Zeitenwende,” or “sea change.” This shift would reverse a half-century of restraint, he proclaimed, by overhauling a bereft Bundeswehr, sending Ukraine arms, and ending Germany’s energy dependence on Russia. It also implied a pivot toward the concerns of the emerging Eastern European democracies that had long struggled under Moscow’s thumb. Most recently, Scholz touted his belated decision to send tanks as the latest evidence of this revolution. With the Leopard 2 added to a bulging list of materiel authorized for Ukraine’s war effort, U.S. President Joe Biden declared that Germany had “stepped up.” In the space of a year, Berlin has abandoned its insistence on sending helmets alone, becoming the second-largest supplier of weapons and munitions to aid Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy’s defenses. During Scholz’s first visit to the White House since the invasion, which occurred last week, Biden commended Germany’s “profound support on Ukraine.”
Yet certain awkward realities persist. Despite the Chancellor Scholz’s rhetorical commitment to condemning Russia’s actions, Germany still sends less assistance to Ukraine on a per capita basis than countries lacking its economic might. This reality colors its vaunted status as the second-highest contributor to Ukraine’s war effort (if one counts its contributions through the European Union as well as independent contributions). The 100 billion euros Scholz vowed to spend on military modernization remains something of an illusion. Germany’s new defense minister, Boris Pistorius, claimed recently to have inherited an army in worse shape than it was before Scholz’s pledge. A few weeks earlier, Eva Högl, a military commissioner and political ally of Scholz, publicly insisted that “it would take 300 billion euros to make significant changes in the Bundeswehr.”