Quotes of the Day:
"Any book worth banning is a book worth reading."
– isaac Asimov
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
– Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.”
– Jim Morrison
1. An Open Letter to Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia General Keith Kellogg: The Strategic Realities of the War in Ukraine
2. Chasing Pablo by Keith Nightingale
3. Studies in Intelligence 68, No. 5 (Special Edition, Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act 20 Years On, December 2024)
4. Bring Back the War Department
5. Analysis: America the Arsenal of Democracy? – Not Any More.
6. Inside China’s plan to conquer the Pacific
7. Trump’s Key Foreign Policy Challenges – OpEd
8. Opinion | Here's why Trump's foreign policy is hard to pin down
9. Accusations That Trump Is ‘Transactional’ in Foreign Relations Miss the Point of Diplomacy
10. China Has Limited Firepower to Counter U.S. Tariffs
11. We Looked at 78 Election Deepfakes. Political Misinformation Is Not an AI Problem.
12. Anticipating Trump's foreign policy By Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
13. China firing preemptive trade war shots at Trump
14. Race for Arctic resources in a climate change era
15. Outgoing Raimondo admits China chip war a 'fool's errand'
16. Claims of ‘Ghost Ships’ and ‘External Interference’ in Plane Crash Suggest Russian Involvement in Global Incidents
17. The Most Important Breakthroughs of 2024
18. A 9th telecoms firm has been hit by a massive Chinese espionage campaign, the White House says
19. transparency in China, redux
20. Army halted weapon development and pushed tech to soldiers faster: 2024 in review
21. Democracy in 2024 was noisy and chaotic. It was also resilient.
1. An Open Letter to Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia General Keith Kellogg: The Strategic Realities of the War in Ukraine
An Open Letter to Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia General Keith Kellogg: The Strategic Realities of the War in Ukraine
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2024/12/29/an-open-letter-to-special-envoy-for-ukraine-and-russia-general-keith-kellogg-the-strategic-realities-of-the-war-in-ukraine/
by Keith D. Dickson, by Yurij Holowinsky
|
12.29.2024 at 04:22am
An Open Letter to Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia General Keith Kellogg: The Strategic Realities of the War in Ukraine
By Keith D. Dickson and Yurij Holowinsky
After 1,000 days of war, there seems to be no end in sight. Ukrainian forces have pushed into the Kursk Oblast, occupying the Sudzhansky Rayon and have a tentative grip on the territory, creating a bulge that must be defended, while serving as an occupying force. Russian forces batter relentlessly against entrenched Ukrainian defenders from Kupyarsk to Pokrovsk in the eastern Donbas. Although both sides put their hopes in fielding a new weapons system or missile will change the course of the war, it is a false hope: this is a war of attrition. Despite Russia’s often admired sophisticated concepts of war at the operational level, the Russian armed forces are incapable of applying them. Their leadership has neither the imagination, nor do their combat units have the training, to conduct sophisticated joint operations or combined arms maneuver. Russian forces have naturally, almost unconsciously, reverted to the model of war their grandfathers and great-great grandfathers understood: simple, straightforward, uncomplicated, unsophisticated infantry assaults backed by mass artillery strikes with the belief that enough men and steel thrown against the enemy will eventually break them. It has been the approach from the Masurian Lakes to Grozny. The Russians accept casualties at a rate that has astounded their enemies for over 100 years; the Russian soldier is capable of enduring atrocious conditions that would destroy the morale of any other army. New wrinkles have been introduced, with mostly indiscriminate rocket and missile attacks and the arrival of thousands of mercenaries from around the globe along with North Korean combat troops. Yet, the model of simple attrition is unchanged. The enemy inevitably wears down before the Russian steamroller wears down.
The Ukrainian armed forces have shown remarkable resilience and morale, adapting quickly, and fighting tenaciously, while continuously introducing and integrating new capabilities that are changing the tactical battlefield forever. And yet, like all those who have faced the Russian army for over a century, it is difficult to sustain units in combat as they suffer casualties and fewer and fewer replacements are available as the manpower pool shrinks. This affects front line unit morale and cohesiveness and wears on the national will.
Because neither side can achieve its goals, there must be a new approach to ending this war. Several important strategic realities stand out.
- Ukraine has become the strategic bulwark of the West. Ukraine’s ultimate survival and regeneration is now a priority for the long-term security of Europe.
- Any cease-fire or peace arrangement will only be temporary. There will be another war in three to five years. Putin will use this time to rearm and correct mistakes. The West must understand that this period represents strategic breathing space to prepare Ukraine to fight and win against another Russian assault employing economic, informational, military (land, air, and missile forces), and cyber capabilities. This means significant investment in airpower, ballistic missile defense, a fully equipped, NATO standard heavy division, several light infantry brigades, and a robust special operations capability.
- There is no formal NATO membership in Ukraine’s future. Instead, Ukraine becomes for all intents and purposes, a shadow member without Article V guarantees, but with all the benefits of NATO training and interoperability.
- Zelensky will have to accept territory lost to Russia is permanent, but it allows for a definable zone of separation and allows Putin to declare his pyrrhic victory.
- The West must look carefully at the leaders who will emerge after Zelensky. Ukraine’s shaky political history over the past 20 years is an essential factor to consider in this assessment. The post-war truce will require strong and visionary leadership to prepare the country for the next war, while building close ties with the EU and NATO as a shadow member. How the Western leaders guide this transition will determine the future of peace in Europe.
- Putin must be made to realize that Russia is trapped in a war that requires a demonstratable victory. Yet, this victory ultimately has no benefit. Putin’s goal of defeating the Ukrainian armed forces in open combat and occupying any more Ukrainian territory is a strategic impossibility and will result in disaster.
- The 1994 Trilateral Statement is dead. The nuclear weapons that Ukraine turned over to Russia most likely now threaten its existence. The security assurances agreed upon by Russia, the U.S., and Great Britain became null and void when Russia seized Crimea and the Donbas. Ukraine could assert that because it once was a nuclear power, it can become one again. This possibility should not be ruled out.
- Sanctions must remain in place as a guarantee of good faith in any negotiated outcome. If Russia shows an actual interest in long-term peace, the sanctions can be selectively lifted.
Here are the considerations associated with these realities that can be addressed to Russia, Ukraine, and Western allies in initial talks.
For Russia: Vladimir Putin clearly has miscalculated. He needs time to salvage what he can from this disastrous war. Allowing him to keep the occupied territory can give him the opportunity to claim victory, even at an enormous and debilitating cost. The territory Russia controls now is largely an economic and social wasteland, populated by toadies who serve Putin and a population almost completely ethnic Russian. These people have largely chosen the path of unification with Russia and it has brought nothing but misery. It is true that the region is rich in natural resources, but the ability to extract these resources profitably is nearly impossible and far beyond Russia’s capability. Crimea is a useless piece of territory that is nearly impossible to defend effectively. Putin must deploy significant military forces to occupy and defend these new regions; the Russian people will have to bear the economic recovery in these regions at a staggering cost. Russia’s victory will mire the nation in a vast morass of prohibitively costly economic and strategic requirements that will bring it little or no benefit and may actually help to extend the truce period.
Undoubtedly, as soon as peace is declared, Putin will turn to the General Staff planners with orders to prepare to replay the attack on Ukraine, with the same objective: Russian forces move about 200 miles forward to a line defined by Zaporizhia, Dnipro, Cherkasy, and Kyiv. It is doubtful that Russian military planners are any more capable than their counterparts who devised the amateurish and unrealistic operational plan in 2022. Nonetheless, Russian planners would be required to find a way for Russian forces to defeat any opposing force, capture several major cities, and be able in the aftermath to occupy and control roughly 47,500 square miles of central Ukraine, approximately the size of North Korea. Certainly, any attempt to build a force even remotely capable of accomplishing such an historic feat will take many years. The effort will be a drain on the economy and sources of manpower will be limited. Nevertheless, Russia will pour resources into supporting this plan.
For Ukraine: If Ukraine is to survive, Volodymyr Zelensky must choose the path that his inspiring leadership has attempted to avoid. He must realize that he must safeguard his existing resources for the future, which will include an inevitable second war with Russia. Ukraine can accept the battlefield status quo as the beginning of negotiations and use the truce for economic and military redevelopment. Zelensky must take a strategic long view understanding that the lost territories in reality represent a gangrenous limb that must be cut off to save the healthy body. By letting Russia absorb the costs of territory that will never be productive again, Ukraine gains valuable time for using its resources toward rearming and building a capability that will overwhelm and repel a future Russian attack. He must look ahead and prepare the way for creating a strong strategic bridge to the West.
For the U.S., NATO, and the EU: What the Western democracies must do is accept the fact that any peace between Ukraine and Russia is only temporary. Another war is inevitable as long as Putin remains the autocrat. But there is no guarantee that the next leader will not be more dangerous than Putin. Because NATO has been so reluctant to give Ukraine all the support it has needed out of fear of Russia, it has obtained the worst of all outcomes: Russia is encouraged to continue its war of attrition to its inevitable, disastrous conclusion, while Ukraine is being sacrificed in the vain hope it alone with dribs and drabs of military support, can hold Russia. If the NATO nations lack the will to challenge Russia outright, then the West must use Ukraine to gain strategic breathing space. Just as Russia will attempt to rebuild and retool its armed forces for the next war, Ukraine must also be made capable of fighting on its own and defeating a Russian offensive in the next war. Western economic investment, and military modernization is essential, especially in developing an air force that is second to none in Europe with advanced F-35 aircraft and bombers. Ballistic missiles and a nuclear capability modeled on the French Force de Frappe should not be ruled out. Ukrainian land, air, missile, air defense, and special operations forces must be NATO compatible and trained to NATO standards. Ukrainian forces and command and staff should be integrated into NATO exercises, essentially as a shadow member.
The roadmap ahead: The United States must take the lead, cooperating with Turkish President Erdoğan and other Western leaders in negotiations starting with the initial peace terms Erdoğan offered in November. The goals are strategic breathing space: a ceasefire with a mutual withdrawal along a line of demarcation and a zone of separation with applicable provisions from the 2015 Minsk-2 agreement (including a proposed strong OSCE monitoring force); Ukraine does not join NATO; Russia retains annexed territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Russia is ceded the information domain temporarily to declare victory. In return, Ukraine sets no limits on its future military capabilities. By accepting these terms, Ukraine becomes a shadow NATO member, rearmed and reconstructed to meet the next war. While Ukraine is rebuilt, Russia is ensnared in holding empty ground that only rises in costs that weakens its economy and drains its military forces. It is a bitter tradeoff, born of Western irresolution. War will come again, tragically, but at a far less disadvantage for Ukraine than 2022. The West must accept this reality, gain strategic breathing space, and build Ukraine as a bulwark worthy of its gallant people who have paid so much for their freedom over the past 100 years.
Tags: Open Letter, Putin's War, Trump Administration, Ukraine
About The Authors
- Keith D. Dickson
- Keith D. Dickson is Professor Emeritus, National Defense University and a retired Army officer.
- Yurij Holowinsky
- Yurij Holowinsky is a retired national intelligence officer and holds a Ph.D. in Russian history.
2. Chasing Pablo by Keith Nightingale
Chasing Pablo
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2024/12/29/chasing-pablo/
by Keith Nightingale
|
12.29.2024 at 03:57am
CHASING PABLO
By Keith Nightingale
The Putamayo River drains a significant portion of southern Colombia. For most of the year, it is slow moving and languorous, much like the tribes that live along its dense shores. Most of the river meanders beneath a jungle canopy that conveniently conceals human activities. The air is thick and humid. The jungle floor dissolves beneath anyone’s steps. This is home to the cocaine industry.
It was also the source of life and wealth for Pablo Escobar, one of the illegal drug industry’s most prominent imperialists. His successors now tend to the empire.
An attentive observer of the river surface will see occasional ribbons of rainbow colors on the water’s surface. These are the precursor chemical strands, expended after their use in the manufacture of the insidious white powder. Natives know from experience not to fish under the rainbow; nothing swims beneath its colorful trail, and it kills any vegetation it touches along the shore. But it is the lifeblood of the drug trade, a poison that does not respond to known methods of removal.
In Medellin, Colombia, #45D Carrera 79B is a non-descript middle-class housing area. It has a set-back second floor and a first floor covered in Spanish tile. A little after 1 p.m., on Dec. 2, 1993, one of the edge tiles dripped a slow dark ochre trail of liquid, the lifeblood of Pablo Escobar. He and the Putamayo were flowing into one. Briefly, this is how it happened:
A non-descript black four-door sedan pulled to the curb. The door opened, and a Colombian officer in olive drab combat fatigues emerged. He wore the rank of a brigadier general. Gen. Hugo Martinez was about to reap the benefits from two years of work.
He went through the building door and vaulted up the unlit staircase two steps at a time. The soldiers, surprised by his presence, slammed themselves against the wall – the butts of their MP 5’s echoing against the whitewashed concrete. Gen. Hugo arrived at the second floor and immediately saw two soldiers near a window leading out to the top of the first-floor roof. Wordlessly, he brushed by them, placed his right leg over the transom and vaulted out to the tile roof.
Walking quickly, careful to place his boots on the upturned tile row, he moved less than 20 feet to the three soldiers kneeling by a large, lifeless body, face down on the tiles, less than five feet from the edge. The body was dressed in loose pants, a casual shirt that had been twisted upward exposing a large olive-colored back and portions of a broad, lightly haired stomach. A small red bullet wound in the back slowly drained the man’s blood into the tile channel.
The head was half hidden by hair, but enough was exposed to show a dime-sized hole in the ear cavity and a stream of blood trickling down his neck, onto the tiles, upon which his face rested.
The general motioned to a soldier to lift the head by the hair and expose the full face of Pablo Escobar. The officer grunted and turned back to the window, reaching for his cellphone. Once in the hallway, he dialed a number and said “Es fin” (It’s ended) and hung up. As he moved to the curb, Gen. Hugo glanced back and saw a dozen soldiers standing beside the body. One of the men used several cameras to capture the macabre moment on film. As the general sped off, a dark pool coalesced underneath the corpse and spread on the cracked concrete sidewalk. For the general, and for Colombia, a lot of work went to this moment.
Sometime before, on August 18, 1989, a candidate for the Colombian presidency, Luis Carlos Galan was giving a speech in Medellin, the home of Pablo Escobar and the heart of the burgeoning cocaine industry. The candidate was an avowed believer in the tragedy of his country for its fixation on cocaine. He publicly swore to break the Medellin cartel and bring down Pablo Escobar in particular. This was not a popular position in Medellin, the self-proclaimed “City of Perpetual Spring.” Escobar had seeded much of the very poor population with jobs, new soccer fields and free clinics. He was a Robin Hood in wolf’s clothes. This sort of campaigning was bound to create some ill will among the locals.
Around 8 p.m., candidate Galan mounted his stage – an off-white canvas boxing ring – and began to speak. Shots rang out. The speaker slumped to the floor. The battle to control the destiny of Colombia had begun.
In dozens of buildings, ranging from palm shacks to concrete compounds, the colors of cocaine and its by-products flowed north under Escobar’s increasingly violent management, to the United States to supply approximately 230 metric tons of the white powder America demanded and consumed annually. His product was snow white, but his management style was blood red.
Deep in the southernmost region of Colombia, in the city of Cali, another group of entrepreneurial citizens watched the Medellin drama unfold with great anxiety and expectation. These were cattlemen, ranchers and business owners who sensed a potential opportunity to wrest an industry that might be handed to them by a government flailing to survive. The group had a different business model. Resting in wood-paneled rooms, with the latest technologies at hand, with children away for educations in the best foreign universities, they wore dark suits, drank Scotch and began to build the most efficient international business system in the world. They were a universe apart from the street thugs and poverty-stricken population that Pablo led.
Where Escobar and his forces would shoot and intimidate their way to success, these Cali upper crust would just buy their needs. No muss. No fuss. No bad publicity. But they would have to wait.
Soon after Galan’s alternate candidate, Cesar Giviria, was elected, a great deal of diverse, partially hidden but synthesized units of the U.S. government began to flow into Colombia. U.S. Special Forces teams began widespread training of Colombian military forces, primarily those dedicated to fighting the insurgency in the deep jungle. FBI, DEA and Customs sent beefed up teams into Colombia to train their counterparts throughout the nation. Some specialized police, CIA and military began to focus specific efforts on the newly created counterdrug forces that Gen. Martinez commanded. The more secretive elements of the U.S. counter-terrorist inventory also arrived to impart their highly specialized capabilities.
To assist in this endeavor, the United States assigned as its ambassador a retired Navy commander, “Buzz” Busby. His task was to apply some military-style management to a civil issue and to focus U.S. support into a single thrust. One team. One fight. Target Pablo.
Gen. George Joulwan, now CincSouth (SOUTHCOM), created a special task force within his headquarters, DDN, to manage the Joint Interagency Task Force support to the Andean Ridge Nations. Stocked with members from all services, including Coast Guard as well as Customs, DEA, NSA and CIA, the task force quickly began to conduct numerous raids and perform operations using host-nation forces throughout the Andean Ridge. USAF sent scheduled AWACs aircraft to Panama, and the Navy dedicated certain ships to water and air surveillance. By 1991, the first clear picture of the immense drug industry was becoming visible.
The darkened operations center at Howard Air Force Base, Panama, had an array of radar images. One set reflected the picture from the USAF AWACs operating over the Caribbean. Another showed the Customs P3 screen images flying over the Andes. A third reflected the Navy feed from a picket ship off Central American waters. The largest screen, the one watched by the most senior members present, was an amalgamation. The black screen was filled with the waxing and waning of dozens of small lines, each with a target identifier. These were the light aircraft hauling drugs to Mexico and the southeastern United States to the north and flying baled U.S. dollars to the south. Mexico was the interchange location. This was Escobar’s empire at work.
The primary job of stopping it rested with the government of Colombia and, to a lesser degree, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. None of these governments was capable on its own to effectively battle the dark force. To this point, none, with the exception of Colombia, had demonstrated the political will to expunge the drug industry. This would gradually change.
The Andes chain, both axes, have a belt of climate ideal for growing cocoa and marijuana. Throughout the region, on the soft under-soil of the rare plateaus and valleys, farmers learned the great value of these plants. Pablo and his subordinates would pay apparent huge sums of money for the new products. Farmers well below the poverty level in destitute nations were receiving the equivalent of $55 a hectare of cocoa production rather than the usual $5 a hectare for corn and related crops. Additionally, most of the products were grown by Indians, a traditionally neglected population by the national governments and therefore lacking much of any controlling or supporting infrastructure. Local loyalty was keyed to survival.
The color of cocaine changes over its processing steps. The farmers dissolve the leaves in various chemicals and precipitate the residue into dark gray soccer-ball sized lumps called paste. Mid-level industry personnel, arriving on planes and vehicles, buy these at market and move them to scattered jungle and village laboratories where the paste becomes a whitish pastel base, usually in the form of a coarse powder. Further chemical refinement converts the base to pure cocaine, shiny and brilliantly white. The finished product is then bagged in generally kilo-sized, vacuum-sealed plastic bags, loaded onto aircraft, boats, ships and other conveyances and sent to market in North America. This is how Pablo’s cottage industry became a huge and sophisticated international industrial conglomerate.
On the SOUTHCOM screens, two legs of the industry could vividly be seen in small green and silver streaks. The AWACs and naval radars showed the northbound cocaine flights into Mexico and the southeast U.S. coast. They also displayed the southbound flights of American dollars, demonstrably smaller numbers but immensely more valuable.
The feed from the Customs P3s showed a maze of flights blanketing the Andes. In this region, light aircraft are the pickup trucks of choice, passing over land where roads don’t go, and feeding isolated interior ranches and villages. What represents drugs and what is legitimate would have to be left to analysis. What is known is that a significant part of the Customs streaks were flights within the Andean Ridge to feed the constantly demanding laboratory requirements. No coke. No cash. Simple economics.
The southern border of Colombia was a favored laboratory location for the industry. The precursor chemicals (the stuff that did the chemical conversions) were easily transported on the myriad waterways and facilities and could be well-hidden in the dense foliage that lined the riverbanks. Near each of these places, there was usually a grass or marginally paved airstrip, suitable for the almost daily light aircraft flights taking the various stages of production to market. Takeoffs and landings were duly noted by radar and only on the rarest instance would a Colombian Air Force aircraft attempt an intercept.
In addition to the Medellin Cartel’s drug subversions, the Colombian Government also had a full-blown insurgency to manage with both FARC and ELN guerillas assuming control of portions of the interior. Their respective leadership noted the commercial potential of a drug alliance and quickly became insurgent entrepreneurs. Establishing their own drug labs and supply chain, they converted cocaine profits into arms and equipment to supply their needs. Even though each guerrilla element was essentially in political competition, they became a commercial brotherhood. The Medellin industry alternately fought them or used their products as the local situation might warrant. Colombia was quickly becoming ungovernable as the insurgency became the best funded guerilla enterprise in history. The President of Colombia was quickly becoming nothing much more than the Mayor of Bogota and that was iffy. Significant parts of the city and its population paid more homage to the Cartel than to its National infrastructure. Police were loath to engage in rightful fear of death. Besides, cooperation came with cash bonuses.
Similar radar pictures and intelligence analysis was playing out at JTF 5 in Key West. JTF 5 was the Joint DOD/LEA drug monitoring and intelligence facility which was part of the larger US Government effort to monitor and interdict the drugs. What both JTF 5 and SOUTHCOM saw was that a lot of white powder was flying North and a lot of money was flying South. Pablo and the narco-guerillas had a highly lucrative industry. By 1990, the scope of this industry became a National Security issue within the Washington Beltway and certain long range decisions began to take shape.
More than simply training, some of these introduced elements and capabilities had a highly specialized intelligence aspect that began to unravel the hidden parts that Pablo and others shrouded in mystery. A very important part of this work were several non-descript vans and a glider. The vans held unique cell phone electronic tracking capabilities and the glider permitted covert overflight of drug areas. These assets were quickly turned over to Colombian elements and were used to initiate quality raids for the first time. The heat was turning up on the cartel.
The greatest fear the narco leadership had was extradition to the US and Gaviria made it clear that was an attractive option. After some period of a tightening noose, Pablo offered himself to the government IF it would imprison him in Medellin and not conduct extradition. The Colombians, anxious to demonstrate progress, agreed. Pablo built himself a palatial prison on the high ground overlooking Medellin and checked in. Ironically, it was dubbed The Cathedral. All the amenities of home. Good food, good drinks, ladies and other visitors as he desired. His management of the cartel continued without interruption. Life was good.
However, the publicity of his conditions of incarceration became notorious and an embarrassment to the government. He began to hear of discussions between the Colombians and the US and that perhaps his lifestyle might be abruptly changed. He decided it was time to leave. In July of 1992, Pablo departed to the hoped for security of his support structure in greater Medellin. General Martinez was asked to fix the problem.
While Pablo was in pleasure prison, General Martinez and his elements had been exercising their new-found competency and intelligence. Labs, money and leadership were being slowly eroded. His forces and their families isolated from general access, became somewhat untouchable. The normal attractions of money and threats couldn’t be applied. This was becoming a new Colombia.
Pablo, now essentially alone in Medellin, began to lose control of his empire and other outliers filled the vacuums. The Cali businessmen began to take over parts of the structure. FARC and ELN filled other spaces. Local vigilantes-probably a pseudo-covert arm of the government titled Los Pepes, began to attrite the secondary leadership. Medellin was quickly becoming a bit player. By early Fall of 1993, Pablo was moving from house to house in his most supportive neighborhoods, a furtive fugitive. One afternoon on the 3d of December, he picked up his cellphone to call his son. It would be his last call.
Inside a large unmarked white shop van, the dark interior was enhanced by a new light. Bright amber and green streaks crossed a video tube. The operator quickly dialed into the frequency and confirmed this was a cell used by Pablo. Another companion began to monitor the call and gave a thumbs up confirming the source. A message went out on a secure net and several other similar vans began to locate the same call. Within a very short time, an intersection of these diverse communication lines was achieved. They coalesced at #45D Carrera 79B. General Martinez saw this and made some quiet but precise orders and then sat down in a darkened van to await the results. Quickly, the color of Pablo was red and dead.
Immediately thereafter, the Colombian government and several US elements made several showy public announcements regarding Pablo and the demise of the Medellin Cartel. This was to be portrayed as a watershed moment in the drug war-A Gettysburg for the good guys. Meanwhile, far to the South, the Cali business people in their suits, boots and single malt scotch assessed Medellin’s losses and initiated actions to fill the void. Deep in the green sweaty jungle interior, FARC and ELN leadership received the news, shrugged their shoulders and moved quickly to assume management of the newly leadership-deprived nodes of infrastructure. The rivers continued to show that rainbow iridescence of disposed precursor chemicals and the radar screens at Panama and Key West displayed no diminution of air traffic. Drugs Central was just under new management.
DEA and ONDCP had dramatic press conferences heralding the end of a major drug empire. Backs were slapped and congratulations exchanged. Self-satisfaction lasted for a brief moment and then both the Good and the Bad got back to real business.
Today, 2015, its High Noon on the Southern border, still transiting North are an accumulated 230 metric tons of Pablo’s and his successors products. The coursing flow continues as the radar screen demonstrates. The flow is not the red of Pablo nor the rainbows of the Putamayo, but the soft white of cocaine. A coursing trail that seems to have no end.
Tags: cartels, counterdrug, counternarcotics, DEA
About The Author
- Keith Nightingale
- COL Nightingale is a retired Army Colonel who served two tours in Vietnam with Airborne and Ranger (American and Vietnamese) units. He commanded airborne battalions in both the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment and the 82nd Airborne Division. He later commanded both the 1/75th Rangers and the 1st Ranger Training Brigade.
3. Studies in Intelligence 68, No. 5 (Special Edition, Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act 20 Years On, December 2024)
From The CIA.
Click on each article in the tablet contents to access the specific essay.
https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/studies-in-intelligence-68-no-5-special-edition-irtpa-20-years-on-december-2024/
Intelligence Studies
Studies in Intelligence 68, No. 5 (Special Edition, IRTPA 20 Years On, December 2024)
Studies in pleased to present this special edition marking the 20th anniversary of the passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA), which created the position of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to oversee the US Intelligence Community.
The edition includes a rich mix of perspectives and reminiscences from people who were instrumental in crafting and implementing IRTPA, particularly during the formative years of ODNI. Their insights and perspectives are valuable additions to the historical literature and should stimulate discussion of the future direction of the IC.
To read the articles listed in the below Contents, readers may download the interactive PDF (124 pages) of the entire issue or select the hyperlinked titles of individual articles listed in the Contents.
Contents
Complete Foreword, Contents, Contributors and List of DNIs and Acronyms and Initialisms Used in this Issue.
Overview
Leadership Reflections on the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 — by Michael Hayden, Michael McConnell, John Negroponte, and Edward Wittenstein
Present at the Beginning: Creating the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act — Susan Collins with Jane Harman
Intelligence Reform: If We Didn’t Do It Then, We’d Have To Do It Now — Stephen J. Hadley and Michael Allen with a contribution from John McLaughlin
Making it Work
From Mandate to Results: Restoring Confidence and Transforming Analysis — Thomas Fingar
From the Defense Department to Liberty Crossing: Perspectives on Standing Up ODNI — Ronald Burgess
Managing IC Resources Before and After IRTPA — Caryn A. Wagner
Intelligence Reform: A Glass Half Full — David Shedd
Reorganizations-Fun for Some, Misery for Most — James Clapper
Integrating the IC’s Cyber Security Mission — Melissa Hathaway
IRTPA and Counterterrorism: More Than Connecting the Dots — Michael Leiter
Driving IT Integration — Patrick Gorman
Legal Perspectives on Creating and Implementing the ODNI — Benjamin A. Powell
Commentary: Creating a True Culture of Collaboration Through Civilian Joint Duty — Michael Hayden, Michael McConnell, Michael Richter, and Ronald Sanders
IRTPA’s Broad Impact: CI, Law Enforcement,
Counternarcotics, and CIA
- Counterintelligence: Changing Landscape, Unprecedented Threat — William Evanina
- IRTPA and the FBI — John S. Pistole and Valerie E. Caproni
- IRTPA and Drug Enforcement — Barry Zulauf
In Their Own Words: Michael Morell and Andrew Makridis Offer Views from CIA — Interviewed by Joseph Gartin
Download PDF of complete IRTPA Special Issue (124 pages)
Contributors
Contributing Guest Editors
Hon. Ronald Sanders served as the IC chief human capital officer.
Michael Richter, Esq., is a partner at Grant Herrmann Schwartz & Klinger, where he leads the firm’s litigation practice. He served as the ODNI civilian joint duty program
manager.
Contributing Authors
Michael Allen is managing director of Beacon Global Strategies. He previously served as the majority staff director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
and on in a variety of positions in the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council under President George W. Bush.
LTG Ronald Burgess retired from the US Army in 2012 after 38 years of service. He served twice as the acting principal deputy director of national intelligence and as the
17th director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Valerie E. Caproni is a judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and former general counsel of the FBI.
Retired Lt Gen James Clapper served as the director of national intelligence (2010–17), under secretary of defense for intelligence, and director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Sen. Susan Collins has represented Maine in the US Senate since 1997. She chaired the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (2003–7) and later served as the committee’s ranking member (2007–13).
William Evanina is founder and CEO of the Evanina Group, advising business leaders on strategic corporate risk. He served as director of the National Counterintelligence and
Security Center (2014–21).
Dr. Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, chair of the National Intelligence Council (2005–8).
Patrick Gorman is the CEO of Cynomiq, an AI-driven cyber security posture-management platform. He served in various executive roles at Booz Allen, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, and Bridgewater Associates, as well as the acting chief information officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Stephen Hadley is a principal at RiceHadleyGates & Manuel, LLC, an international strategic consulting firm. He served as assistant to the president for national security affairs under President George W. Bush (2005–9).
Former Representative Jane Harman represented California’s 36th District (1993–99, 2001–11). She was the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee (2002–6) and chaired the Homeland Security Committee’s Intelligence Subcommittee (2007–11).
Melissa Hathaway is president of Hathaway Global Strategies, which provides strategic advice to companies, NGOs, and countries. She led cyber security initiatives under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Retired Gen Michael Hayden served as the director of CIA and NSA and as the principal deputy director of national intelligence (2005–6).
Michael Leiter is a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where he heads the firm’s CFIUS and national security practice. He served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center (2007–11) and as first deputy chief of staff in the ODNI.
Andrew Makridis served as head of the Weapons and Counterproliferation Center of CIA, CIA associate deputy director for science and technology, and CIA’s chief operating officer.
Retired VADM Michael McConnell served as director of national intelligence (2007–9) and director of NSA (1992–96).
John McLaughlin is a senior fellow and distinguished practitioner-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University. He served as the acting director of central intelligence (July–September 2004) and the deputy director of central intelligence (2000–2004).
Michael J. Morell served as deputy director of CIA (March 2010–August 2013). He was acting director of CIA from July 2011 to September 2011 and November 2012 to March 2013.
Amb. John Negroponte served as director of national intelligence (2005–7).
John S. Pistole is the president of Anderson University. He served as administrator of the US Transportation Security Agency (2010–14) and as a deputy director of the FBI.
Benjamin A. Powell is a partner at WilmerHale specializing in cybersecurity. He served as general counsel in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (2006–9).
David Shedd served as chief of staff and deputy director of national intelligence for policy, plans, and requirements in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He later served as acting director and deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Caryn A. Wagner served as assistant deputy director of national intelligence for management (2005–7) and the first chief financial officer for the National Intelligence Program. She also served as the executive director for Intelligence Community Affairs (2004–5) and the under secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security (2010–12).
Edward Wittenstein served as executive assistant to the director of national intelligence (2005–7) and deputy secretary of state (2007–9).
Dr. Barry Zulauf, is a senior ODNI executive on a joint duty assignment as the defense intelligence officer for counternarcotics and transnational organized crime. He served as the IC analytic ombudsman and chief of Analytic Integrity and Standards.
4. Bring Back the War Department
I missed this earlier this month in the Atlantic.
Bring Back the War Department
If you want a clear strategy for winning wars, don’t play a semantic game with the name of the department that’s charged with the strategy’s execution.
By Elliot Ackerman
The Atlantic · by Elliot Ackerman · December 5, 2024
Donald Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth to lead the Defense Department signals the incoming administration’s intention to enact significant changes at the Pentagon. Some of what the administration aims to pursue seems ill-advised; waging a culture war inside the U.S. military is a specious enterprise, whether prosecuted by the left or the right. However, the Trump administration could swiftly enact one cultural change at the Pentagon that would be for the good, and send a powerful signal aligned with the administration’s priorities: Trump could ask Congress to redesignate the Defense Department as the War Department.
The secretary of defense position came into being after the Second World War, as part of the sweeping 1947 National Security Act. Before then, the nation had a War Department, which oversaw the Army, and a separate Navy Department. With the Cold War on the horizon, the 1947 act greatly expanded the scope of the national-security state to confront the Soviet threat; for example, the U.S. Air Force and CIA are both creations of the act. A 1949 amendment formally brought the armed forces under a single civilian leader, and renamed the new entity the Department of Defense. By changing the department’s name, Congress also endorsed an expansionist view of the new department’s mission. For the U.S. military, the 77 years that followed the act’s passage ushered in an era of unprecedented nation-building and humanitarian missions all over the world.
Kori Schake: What Trump doesn’t understand about the military
The Defense Department’s massive growth since 1947 enabled the type of interventionist foreign policy that Trump ran against. It has also come at the expense of other departments and agencies, such as the State Department and USAID. The agencies whose missions most closely align with the projection of nonmilitary power are perennially underresourced, and reduced to secondary roles. Too often, the face of U.S. diplomacy wears a uniform. During the counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, an underresourced State Department relied on soldiers to perform civic tasks that the military was poorly equipped to handle. The result was two more post-1947 failed wars.
The Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the First and Second World Wars were all fought and won by the War Department. Before 1947, when we had a War Department, Americans were able to boast that they had never lost a war. When the United States fought fewer major wars, its uninterrupted string of victories was a point of national pride. Since the creation of the Defense Department, the U.S. has never won a major war. Muddled outcomes such as those in Korea and Iraq are the closest thing it might claim to success.
A philosophy of defense has proved ineffective (if not disastrous) when compared with the more focused philosophy of war. Perhaps the War Department was less likely to fight wars, because its name made the department’s purpose more difficult to sugarcoat and obfuscate. A war department speaks in terms of victory and defeat. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt never spoke of exit strategies, nor did generals such as Ulysses S. Grant, John Pershing, and Dwight D. Eisenhower wring their hands about “boots on the ground.” If you want a clear strategy for winning wars, don’t play a semantic game with the name of the department that’s charged with the strategy’s execution. Call things what they are. The mandate of a war department is right there in its name.
Today, the power to wage war effectively resides in the executive branch of government. Gone is the era when Congress declared all of America’s wars, as the Constitution requires. This erosion of congressional war-making authority goes back at least 100 years, to World War I. When President Woodrow Wilson wanted the United States to intervene in Europe, one of his great impediments was that he could not prepare the Army to deploy without congressional authority. In 1916, to circumvent this restriction, he created the Marine Corps Reserve, which he could expand under executive authority. To this day, the Marine Corps boasts the motto “First to fight,” and although this motto has a certain martial élan, it primarily exists because the president used the Marines to get around Congress. This trend only accelerated in the second part of the 20th century. Most recently it has culminated with the post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. The congressional abdication of military authority has granted administrations of both parties the ability to wage extra-congressional wars during the first quarter of this century.
Read: Trump’s ‘deep state’ revenge
Nearly all of America’s extra-congressional wars have been wars of choice, when our adversaries haven’t posed any existential threat. The incoming Trump administration has correctly singled out China as our greatest national-security priority. And it’s an existential one. A war with China would in no way be limited. It would require a national mobilization unparalleled by any in our lifetime. It would call upon every resource the United States possessed. Victory would require a war fought with a merciless lethality, akin to the Second World War, a conflict our ancestors hoped to never see repeated, a war so bloody that it created an impulse to change the language we used around war.
In 1949, in addition to the name change, the Defense Department received a new crest, one derivative of the Great Seal of the United States. On the Great Seal, a bald eagle clutches a batch of arrows in its left talon and an olive branch in its right. The eagle faces the olive branch because the United States is a nation of peace. An oft repeated but erroneous myth is that during times of war, the seal changes so that the eagle faces the arrows. The myth does have its merits, though. When the eagle stares at the arrows, it understands the realities of war more clearly. Maybe we’ve been looking away for too long. Maybe if we were to turn our gaze again to the arrows, our nation would enjoy a little more peace. And maybe this small gesture would better prepare us to fight the next war.
The Atlantic · by Elliot Ackerman · December 5, 2024
5. Analysis: America the Arsenal of Democracy? – Not Any More.
Analysis: America the Arsenal of Democracy? – Not Any More.
kyivpost.com · by Stefan Korshak · December 29, 2024
https://www.kyivpost.com/analysis/43646
2024 was a disastrous year for US arms support to Ukraine. The equation was fairly simple. As Ukrainian firepower went down, Russian ground gains went up.
By Stefan Korshak
December 29, 2024, 4:03 pm
During the year 2024, the most significant American geopolitical move in response to Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine was negative: For five months Washington enforced a near-absolute embargo on sending made-in-USA arms and ammunition to Ukraine’s hard-pressed fighting forces.
That firepower gap gutted veteran Ukrainian fighting units and helped facilitate Russia’s biggest victories of the war since the Kremlin invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
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From Dec. 31, 2023 through April 21, 2024 the United States halted practically all arms deliveries to Ukraine because of Congressional in-fighting.
A bipartisan $60 billion arms and military support bill whose passage had dragged on for months in the US legislature in the latter half of 2023 remained unpassed on Jan. 1, 2024. That left further deliveries of anything from bullets to guided missiles to tanks to HMMWVs to battle-critical 155mm artillery shells unfunded.
For Ukraine’s army, battling a massive Russian offensive in the eastern Donbas sector at the time, the US arms cut-off was a precursor to a slow-moving catastrophe.
The US Senate on Feb. 7 made a final, unsuccessful attempt to approve the Ukraine arms assistance bill. Ten days later, on Feb. 17, the heavily fortified Ukrainian city of Avdiivka – which Ukrainian forces had defended successfully since 2014 – fell to Russian forces. The fighting gutted one of the very best brigades in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), the 79th Air Assault, killing or wounding most of the unit’s veteran officers and sergeants.
Other Topics of Interest
A joint effort by several Ukrainian special forces was reported to have killed three captains gathered for a field meeting. Following a HIMARS strike, attack drones were unleashed.
Prior to the arms embargo, American manufacturers and military stores had been supplying a bit more than half of all military materiel Ukraine was receiving from its allies. Missiles for the powerful Patriot anti-aircraft system and precision-guided artillery rockets for the HIMARS and M270 long-range strike systems are sourced only from the US.
At least as important for Ukrainian defensive firepower was a massive stream of American-made NATO-standard 155mm howitzer ammunition, which would have given powerful range and accuracy advantages over opposing Russian artillery if Kyiv’s gunners had had it in quantity.
Ironically, in US political terms, arms funding for Ukraine (as well that for Israel and Taiwan folded into the now-dead legislation) was secondary. The big debate in Washington DC at the time was possible changes to domestic border and migration law which was the really controversial part of the bill.
With national elections less than a year away, border policy legislation was politically toxic for many lawmakers hoping to be re-elected, no matter their stand on Ukraine.
US political media widely reported the Republican about-face that killed the bill was ordered by then-Republican Party leader and US-Presidential candidate Donald Trump. According to those reports, Trump ordered the bipartisan-approved bill to be shot down so his then-opponent in the race, incumbent President Joe Biden, might not later campaign on a platform of having successfully passed border reform legislation into law.
American support to Ukraine for its defense against the Russian invasion – and now the absence of that support – was collateral damage, a case of US domestic politics dictating US foreign policy, those reports said.
After three months of negotiations between the Biden administration and the House of Representatives majority, a legislation package was passed on April 23 over minority Republican objections. Support to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan was now split into separate bills. There was no vote on the border law at all. The House vote for Ukraine aid was 311 to 112 in favor.
By that time Russian forces had advanced dozens of kilometers on a wide front in the Donbas region, and were pressing on towns formerly deep behind Ukrainian lines like Chasiv Yar, Toretsk, Kurakhove, and Pokrovsk. In breakthrough sectors Russian commanders were preceding attacks with glider bombs launched by strike aircraft dozens of kilometers outside the range of Ukrainian air defenses.
Ukrainian media and battlefield accounts reported that because of heavy casualties suffered in the first half of the year, and now catastrophic shortages of artillery ammunition, frontline units increasingly were unable to field sufficient troops to man new defenses. Russia’s air force, unworried by Ukrainian air defense because of gross shortages of American long-range anti-aircraft missiles, was pounding Ukrainian defense lines with near impunity, those reports said.
On Oct. 1 the fortified Donbas city of Vuhledar, whose fortifications Ukraine’s 72nd Air Assault Brigade had held like a rock since the early days of the war, fell to Russian assaults. The story was the same as before: Plenty of Russian troops to shoot at but not enough ammunition. The 72nd fell back with heavy losses.
By the end of October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had become sufficiently concerned about increasingly frayed and undergunned Ukrainian defenses to point out to reporters at a Reykjavik press conference that of the military hardware and ammunition the US had promised Ukraine for 2024, about 10 percent of it had actually reached frontline troops.
Asked about Zelensky’s criticisms the next day at a Washington DC press conference, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller dodged answering directly and told the Turkish Turan news agency that US arms deliveries to Ukraine were on track and significant, and that Pentagon records proved it.
Kyiv Post research into published Pentagon statements on actual military assistance sent to Ukraine found that of the $60 billion allocated by Congress for arms for Ukraine in late April, six months later, only $14.6 billion had actually been sent to Ukraine in Pentagon arms packages.
Thanks to superior firepower and thinning Ukrainian ranks, the pace of Russian advances in Ukraine accelerated over 2024. In October, Kremlin forces scored their biggest ground gains since summer 2022, capturing about 420 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, mostly in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. In November, Russian attacks set a new record, grabbing about 725 kilometers of Ukrainian sovereign territory.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, in early December, told the major US broadcaster ABC that by the time the new White House administration led by Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20 the US will have sent Ukraine the full value of all arms assistance promised for 2024. Over the next two months Kyiv would see “a massive surge in the military assistance we are delivering to Ukraine so that we have spent every dollar that Congress has appropriated to us,” he said.
The Wall Street Journal, among other US publications, have called that intent into question because of limitations in US physical capacity to move a mass of materiel, including potentially hundreds of armored vehicles and hundreds of thousands of artillery shells and missiles. Pentagon concerns about reducing US weapons stocks to dangerously low levels also will likely prevent the US from meeting its congressionally approved commitments to Ukraine, those reports said.
Asked in a Dec. 8 interview with NBC News whether Ukraine should expect less US aid once he takes office, incoming US President Trump said: “Probably. Sure.”
The Atlantic Ocean separates the US from other NATO states, so commitment of military resources to contain Russian aggression “is a bigger problem for them than it is for us,” he said.
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Stefan Korshak
Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas and is a Yalie. He has worked in journalism in the former Soviet space for more than twenty years, and from 2015-2019 he led patrols in the Mariupol sector for the OSCE monitoring mission in Donbass. He has filed field reports from five wars and enjoys reporting on nature, wildlife and the outdoors. You can read his blog about the Russo-Ukraine war on Facebook, or on Substack at https://stefankorshak.substack.com, or on Medium at https://medium.com/@Stefan.Korshak
6. Inside China’s plan to conquer the Pacific
Excerpts:
Yu dismisses the idea that Xi might be tempted to invade Taiwan if Russia wins the war in Ukraine. The two cases are so deeply different it is meaningless to draw such comparisons.
But he is taking lessons from it, she says.
“Let me put it this way. I think Russia’s Ukraine invasion informs Xi Jinping of one thing: which is that if you would like to have a military escalation, you have to be 200 per cent prepared. You can’t do things half-hearted or half-baked, like what Putin has done.”
Inside China’s plan to conquer the Pacific
Beijing has built up the world’s largest navy and wants to reclaim Taiwan – but the West are also fighting for influence in the region
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/28/china-plan-conquer-pacific-taiwan-beijing-war/?utm
Roland Oliphant
Senior Foreign Correspondent
Related Topics
28 December 2024 6:00am GMT
Rugby League is a fast-moving, sometimes physically brutal game born in the working-class communities of northern England.
Now it is at the centre of an even higher-stakes geopolitical competition on the other side of the world.
Anthony Albanese and James Marape, the prime ministers of Australia and Papua New Guinea, this month announced Australia would spend A$600 million (£298 million) over 10 years to set up a Papua New Guinea team to play in the Australian league.
But it comes hand in hand with another pact that makes clear Australia will remain Papua New Guinea’s main security partner. In other words, China will not be.
The “rugby diplomacy” deal is, after all, about far more than just sport. For Australia and its Western allies, it is part of an ongoing scrum over China’s plans to conquer the Pacific.
Anthony Albanese, (right) and James Marape have signed a deal that means Australia will remain Papua New Guinea’s main security partner Credit: Mark Baker
Competing for influence
For more than a decade, China and the West – particularly Australia and the US – have been in an escalating competition for influence in the region.
From Washington and Canberra, Beijing’s ambitions for ever greater control is an alarming prospect.
Many of these new diplomatic battlegrounds – New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines – loom large in national memories of the Second World War.
The prospect of a potentially hostile power once again building air and naval bases on the islands and atolls of the region fills Australians in particular with unease.
American allies, in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, have equal reason for concern.
The view from Beijing – or from the Yulin naval base on Hainan island, the home of the Chinese navy – is quite different.
“They look out at the Pacific, and they see tens of thousands of US military personnel in South Korea, tens more thousands in Japan. They see Taiwan, and they see America not faithfully living up to its commitment – from their point of view – to respect the status quo there,” says Philip Shetler-Jones, an expert on Indo-Pacific security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK-based think-tank.
That arc of American allies extends down through the Philippines to Singapore and Australia.
It is something that many Chinese experts see as an unwelcome relic of the previous century of American global dominance.
“In a slightly Marxist way, they [the Chinese] see themselves giving a helping hand to history and the sort of natural tendency for America to be in decline. And so they want America out. They want America to be isolated from alliances like Japan and South Korea,” says Shetler Jones.
The Taiwan issue
But beyond pushing back the US, what is China’s big Pacific idea?
“There are three elements here,” says Yu Jie, senior research fellow on China at Chatham House, a British foreign affairs think-tank.
“First, the big idea for Taiwan, of course, is a national reunification project that China is very keen to complete. It’s not only [President] Xi Jinping, but several successive generations of Chinese leaders have talked about the need to complete [this].”
Xi has cast “reunification” with Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy that has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as a central part of his wider push for “rejuvenation” of China. Sometimes referred to as “the Chinese dream”, it is a broad agenda the president has pursued since he took power in 2012 – one which is aimed at boosting development and restoring the country’s place at the top of the global order, harkening back to its historic position as the “Middle Kingdom”.
“Secondly, the Taiwan issue is part of the root cause for China’s military modernisation, and this also includes building its own military capability and competitive capability around the South China Sea,” says Yu.
“The third purpose is a sense of global influence; Beijing wants to show that it is on a par with the United States as being a global military power.”
China’s ambitions extend deep into the Western and Southern Pacific, but talk about the possibility of war is concentrated along an imaginary line called the “first island chain”.
Linking Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo and Vietnam, the string of archipelagos effectively separates the East and South China Seas from the wider Pacific.
In a 2022 paper, Marco J. Lyons, the assistant chief of staff for plans at US Army Pacific in Hawaii, identified four potential flashpoints in the Pacific, all of them in or on that line: Taiwan; Japan, with whom Beijing has a long-running dispute over the Daiyo islands; the South China Sea, where China is confronting the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam for control of disputed islands and shoals; and the Korean peninsula, where a war between North and South could easily draw in China and the US.
Of the four, Taiwan is the most potentially explosive. It is certainly generating the most anxiety.
One recent paper, by Maj Kyle Amonson and Dane Egli for the US Department of Defence, argued that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would be ready for war with Taiwan in 2027, and that Xi would want to act before 2030 because of demographic and political considerations.
The notion of a window of opportunity around 2027 is a driving assumption in American and Western thinking about a near-term Chinese assault on the island.
The idea has been dubbed the “Davidson window”, after Admiral Phil Davidson, the retiring head of US Indo-Pacific Command who when asked at a 2021 congressional hearing about the risk of an invasion of Taiwan remarked that: “The threat is manifest during this decade…in fact, in the next six years.”
The origin of the claim seems to come from a US intelligence assessment that Xi had asked the Chinese army to be ready – or capable – of carrying out such an operation.
Sceptics have pointed out that there is a difference between being capable of doing something, and planning to do it.
Nor does the plan fit with known Chinese doctrine.
A ‘war of necessity’
China’s 2005 anti-secession law outlines three conditions for launching a “war of necessity” on Taiwan: a Taiwanese declaration of independence; unification of Taiwan with another country; or unification being irrevocably impossible by any other means.
We are a long way from any of those conditions being met.
“The closer we get to 2027, the less relevant the date becomes,” Admiral Samuel Paparo, the current commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said at an event at the Brookings Institute in November.
“It was never a sell-by date. It was never a date where the PRC [People’s Republic of China] had declared, ‘we’re going on this date’. And I think maybe they’re somewhat confused when people conflate it with that.”
But if a war did happen, what would it look like?
The most likely scenario is not an overlord-like amphibious invasion, but a blockade.
China has practised that scenario frequently in recent years. This year, it drilled a blockade twice.
In 2024, it held two consecutive exercises, Joint Sword A and Joint Sword B, the second of which was explicitly focused on surrounding, and therefore isolating, the island.
Significantly, it involved more coastguard vessels than PLA warships, raising fears in Taiwan that China’s plan may be to board and “inspect” shipping heading to and from the island rather than fighting a conventional war.
Wellington Koo, Taiwan’s defence minister, has warned that a real Chinese blockade of Taiwan would be an act of war and have far-reaching consequences for international trade.
Taiwan says it has been preparing for being cut off, including by stockpiling food supplies. Koo identified liquefied natural gas as a weak point.
How China could introduce a ‘quarantine’
But some argue that even a “blockade” is too strong a word for what the Chinese have in mind.
A “quarantine” – the selective stopping and searching of incoming and outgoing ships – would be more in keeping with previous Chinese strategy, argues Shetler-Jones.
It would stop short of a formal act of war but would assert Chinese authority over Taiwan’s waters – and demonstrate that there is little Taiwan can do about it.
And it makes it difficult for others to respond.
The Taiwanese coast guard would be reluctant to tangle with their more heavily armed Chinese counterparts.
The Taiwanese Coast Guard, pictured off the coast of the Matsu Islands a day after China’s ‘Joint Sword B’ drill Credit: Daniel Ceng
The US Navy would be similarly cautious about intervening because Beijing could accuse them of crossing a line by using the military against a coast guard.
China has already experimented with stop-and-search tactics around small islands that are under Taiwanese administration but very close to the mainland.
“They’re making the point that at any stage we can start treating you as if you’re already a province of China. No one’s stopping us,” says Shetler-Jones.
South China Sea’s imaginary line
Chinese Coast guards – and armed fishing boats – have also engaged in increasingly violent clashes with Filipino ships over control of an archipelago of shoals, reefs, and tiny atolls in the South China Sea.
In April, Chinese coastguards used water cannon to attack a Filipino vessel carrying a Telegraph reporter to the disputed Scarborough Shoal.
The emerging conflict in the region revolves around another frequently referenced imaginary line.
The nine-dash line (11, until Mao Zedong removed two dashes during a thaw with North Vietnam) was etched on Chinese charts of the South China Sea in the late 1940s as the new Communist government asserted its claim to Taiwan.
It loosely traces Beijing’s claims to the bulk of the sea, (recently a 10th dash appeared east of Taiwan) and cuts across claims by Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
These are not territorial so much as maritime claims to exclusive economic zones of interest, which are in turn based on purported control of tiny islands and rocks – some of them not even visible at high tide.
Hence an increasingly violent confrontation over the Sierra Madre, a Filipino ship grounded on the Second Thomas Shoal, in the Spratly Islands.
As Yu notes, China’s interest in the area is partly to do with Taiwan itself.
But it is also about naval strategy – the South China Sea is also relatively deep compared to China’s other coastal waters, making it especially useful for submarine operations.
There is also a great deal of wealth in mineral deposits and fish stocks at stake.
But once again, the overarching concern is pushing back against American power.
“If you dominate, as they do now by putting anti-aircraft missiles and radars on these islands, you sort of control the sea and airspace, so you stop others coming through it. If you want to, you can hold them at risk,” says Shetler-Jones.
“So if the Americans wanted to send their aircraft carrier up from Singapore, they wouldn’t be able to go through the South China Sea, because China has stacked weapons on these islands. So it’s also part of that strategy, of it excluding or limiting America’s ability to exercise sea control.”
Burgeoning naval power
To pursue all these goals, China has been spending at a furious rate. By some estimates, its shipyards are turning out the equivalent of an entire Royal Navy every year.
By 2024, the PLA navy had 234 warships to the US Navy’s 219, according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies Military Balance.
It has invested in hypersonic missiles that appear designed specifically to target US Carrier strike groups – and the Americans are certainly aware of the challenge.
As the Telegraph reported last month, part of its plan to defend Taiwan from a potential Chinese invasion hinges on the deployment of thousands of AI-powered drones to “turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape”.
Many European nations preoccupied with the war in Ukraine have reluctantly concluded that China and the Pacific will take up most of America’s attention – and money – in the years and decades to come.
A paper published in December for the RUSI urged European governments to prepare for a draw down of American assets in Europe in the case of a “Davidson Window” conflict in the Taiwan strait – especially in air and missile defence suppression of enemy air defences, and the air and sea lift capabilities needed to enable ground operations.
Diplomacy and the south
China is also projecting power well beyond the “first island chain”. In 2022, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi toured the south Pacific as part of an effort to sign 10 island nations up to a sweeping multilateral pact covering everything from security to fisheries.
The project was shelved after David Panuelo, the then president of the Federated States of Micronesia, objected that the pre-drafted text could spark a new cold war between China and the West.
But the Solomon islands went ahead with a bilateral deal which, according to a draft leaked online, would allow Chinese vessels to “make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands” and give Beijing the right to use its force to “to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in Solomon Islands”.
Manasseh Sogavare, the then Solomon Islands prime minister, later reassured his Australian counterpart that the country would not host any foreign military bases.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, left, with his Chinese counterpart Li Qiang in 2023, signed a security pact with Beijing in 2022 that fuelled fears of China gaining a naval foothold on Australia’s doorstep Credit: Andy Wong
But Canberra, which has its own security pact with the Solomons, found the prospect of a Chinese presence in that part of the Pacific more than a little alarming.
Some analysts described it as a shock to the balance of power in the Pacific equivalent to that of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in Europe.
This month’s rugby deal with PNG is part of the push back.
The US response
The Americans, too, have joined in the competition.
In September 2022, Biden convened a summit of leaders from Fiji, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia and New Caledonia in Washington.
Biden met with leaders from the Pacific Islands region in September 2022 in order to counter China’s influence in the region and discuss potential partnerships Credit: Chip Somodevilla
The following year, the US signed a defence deal with Papua New Guinea giving America access to airbases and ports in the country and pledging $3.5 billion for infrastructure, equipment and training. It was seen as a direct repost to the China-Solomons deal.
Lloyd Austin, president Biden’s outgoing defence secretary, in November visited Fiji for talks on another defence agreement.
Donald Trump has not made clear his own specific policies in the Pacific, although most expect him to continue broadly in the same vein.
Marco Rubio, his nominee for secretary of state, is a noted China hawk who has shown an interest in the Pacific in the past. He has also been sanctioned by Beijing.
In 2020, Rubio publicly warned Micronesia against a cut-price Chinese bid to build an undersea communications network.
For the Pacific island nations, super-power competition is a mixed blessing. The investment is welcome, particularly as they struggle to deal with rising sea levels. There is nervousness about Mr Trump’s attitude to climate finance, however.
But as Mr Panuel of the FSM warned last year, being at the frontline of a new global conflict is far from welcome.
“The main concern is the Pacific doesn’t want to be forced into a position where it has to choose,” Dame Meg Taylor, the Papua New Guinean diplomat who ran the Pacific Islands Forum regional bloc during the first Trump Administration, told Reuters this month.
A looming threat of open conflict
The competition in the South Pacific is not about fighting a war – yet.
No one is talking about Anzacs and US Marines battling Chinese infantry through the jungles of Guadalcanal, on New Guinea’s Kokoda trail, in the next few years.
Closer to the Chinese mainland, there is no pressing need for Xi to order an invasion of Taiwan, and experts who watch the straits closely believe the PLA is a long way from closing the military gap with the US that would make it possible.
And yet, no one is ready to rule out that war is part of Xi’s plans. He certainly wants the world to believe he could start one, if he wanted to.
“I think the thing that could bring it about is what happened in the Korean War, where Stalin and North Korea thought the Americans were signalling that they didn’t include Korea in the area that they were committed to. They launched the war and found out they guessed wrong,” says Shetler-Jones.
Yu dismisses the idea that Xi might be tempted to invade Taiwan if Russia wins the war in Ukraine. The two cases are so deeply different it is meaningless to draw such comparisons.
But he is taking lessons from it, she says.
“Let me put it this way. I think Russia’s Ukraine invasion informs Xi Jinping of one thing: which is that if you would like to have a military escalation, you have to be 200 per cent prepared. You can’t do things half-hearted or half-baked, like what Putin has done.”
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7. Trump’s Key Foreign Policy Challenges – OpEd
Trump’s Key Foreign Policy Challenges – OpEd
eurasiareview.com · December 29, 2024
By Kerry Boyd Anderson
As ever, a new year comes with new challenges and opportunities. For US foreign policy, the new Trump administration, which will take office on Jan. 20, will shape the country’s approach to the world. As with all presidents, Donald Trump will have significant power to determine foreign policy but will also have to determine how to respond to events that are unexpected or outside of US control.
When Trump once again becomes president, he and his senior advisers will face two major wars — in Ukraine and Gaza — that have bedeviled the outgoing administration. Trump has repeatedly said that he could very quickly end the war between Russia and Ukraine and now he will have an opportunity to attempt to do so. Trump and some of his top advisers have expressed skepticism about or opposition to America’s provision of weapons and aid to Ukraine. It is very likely that Ukraine will face a major reduction in US assistance once Trump returns to the White House.
Trump recently appointed Keith Kellogg as his special envoy to address the war. Kellogg has proposed using the threat of cutting off future aid as leverage to force Ukraine to negotiate, while offering incentives such as putting off NATO membership for Ukraine and alleviating sanctions to persuade Moscow to negotiate. Regardless of the policy specifics, Ukraine will find itself in a weaker position vis-a-vis Russia, which indeed might lead to negotiations to end the war, but probably on terms that are more disappointing to Kyiv than to Moscow.
A related challenge will be managing relations with European allies. Trump’s lack of commitment to NATO, as he expressed during his first term in office, will pose a challenge for the organization, which gained strength from new members during Biden’s term but also faces multiple threats from internal tensions and Russia. Advocates for greater European cooperation on security and autonomy from the US on defense matters are hoping that their efforts will gain momentum during the second Trump presidency.
The war in Gaza is likely to still be ongoing when Trump is inaugurated. The Trump administration’s approach will feature enthusiastic support for Israel. Trump’s picks for foreign policy advisers are all extremely pro-Israel. For example, his nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, recently wrote that “Israelis rightfully living in their historic homeland are not the impediment to peace; the Palestinians are.”
Trump’s choice for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has said that “there is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” and that “there is no such thing as an (Israeli) occupation.” Other senior foreign policy officials chosen by Trump express similar sentiments. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have even greater US support under Trump and will face no serious pressure from the new administration to change his approach toward Gaza or the West Bank.
The Trump administration will face the continuing risk that the war in Gaza helps to drive other regional conflicts. Even if the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel holds through Trump’s inauguration, the risk of renewed fighting is high. The outgoing administration has also struggled to respond to evolving risks posed by the Houthis in Yemen and Trump will inherit that challenge.
The new administration’s pro-Israel lens will be applied to the challenge of dealing with Iran, including less pressure on Israel to restrain its potential actions. Many of Trump’s top foreign policy advisers take a hawkish approach toward Iran; however, Trump does not seek another protracted war in the Middle East that might involve US troops. His desire to avoid direct involvement in a war that could be costly in terms of American lives and funds might constrain some of his advisers’ more hawkish tendencies.
One of the few areas of bipartisan agreement in Washington is that China poses the greatest long-term threat to the US. Over the years, Trump has spoken both negatively and positively about China and Chinese President Xi Jinping, but his advisers are mostly hawkish toward Beijing. Furthermore, the US defense establishment sees China as its “pacing threat” and the top potential challenger to American power and interests. Trump’s administration is very likely to view China as a key competitor and threat and to seek to shift resources away from the Middle East toward East Asia — though the same was true for the last several presidents, with limited success.
It will be important to watch how the Trump administration shapes the details of its approach toward China. Trump has promised very high tariffs against Beijing, but he has both official and unofficial advisers who oppose that. Some of his advisers want to back Taiwan, but Trump appears less likely to be willing to risk significant military losses to protect the island. He may prefer to engage in economic rather than military conflict with Beijing. China will loom large in US foreign policy, but the details on how the Trump administration will manage the challenge are not yet fully clear.
Increasing US-China competition, combined with uncertainty regarding Washington’s future policy, creates a challenge for US allies in the Pacific, including South Korea and Japan. South Korea has particular reason to worry about the depth of US commitment to its alliance, given statements from Trump that suggest he wants a more transactional relationship. Recent media reports suggest that Trump would like to renew talks with North Korea. Security in East Asia will depend significantly on how Trump approaches China and North Korea, as well as how Beijing and Pyongyang respond.
The Biden administration placed significant emphasis on cooperation to address global concerns, such as climate change, but Trump and many of his advisers express disdain for international institutions. For example, his nominee for ambassador to the UN, Elise Stefanik, is very critical of the institution. Trump has called climate change “a hoax” and will likely withdraw from the Paris Agreement, as he did during his first term.
As the Trump administration determines how to respond to new challenges that might arise in 2025, it will do so on a unilateral basis or by working with specific countries, rather than through multilateral institutions.
Elsewhere, Trump’s strong opposition to illegal immigration will define Washington’s relations with Central and South America. Trump’s “America First” approach opposes sending US taxpayers’ dollars abroad without clear, concrete returns, so US aid to developing countries is likely to drop, especially where previous aid was based on concepts of soft power and promoting American values. Relations with India will likely see continuity, as Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi get along well and Trump’s advisers do not see India as a major concern.
The world is more prepared for a second Trump term than it was for the first, which came as something of a surprise to many global actors. However, Trump’s second presidency will be different from his first in many ways, as already evidenced by his selection of advisers based more on their strong alignment with him and less on their experience within the political or national security establishments. Washington’s approach to foreign policy challenges in 2025 will diverge significantly from its approach in 2024 — and possibly from Trump’s first term.
- Kerry Boyd Anderson is a writer and political risk consultant with more than 18 years of experience as a professional analyst of international security issues and Middle East political and business risk.
eurasiareview.com · December 29, 2024
8. Opinion | Here's why Trump's foreign policy is hard to pin down
Opinion | Here's why Trump's foreign policy is hard to pin down
In the ideological battle between restrainers and realists, Trump’s worldview exists somewhere in between.
Dec. 28, 2024, 6:00 AM EST
By Jasen Castillo, associate professor of International Affairs, John Schuessler, associate professor of International Affairs and Miranda Priebe, senior political scientist
msnbc.com · December 28, 2024
It is common to hear President-elect Donald Trump described as an isolationist. According to critics, Trump deserves this moniker because he would abandon the long-standing American strategy of deep engagement, which calls for promoting and protecting the liberal global order with U.S. economic and military power.
But this isolationist characterization is off the mark. It overstates the likely influence of those who call for a more restrained U.S. approach to the world within a second Trump administration. Sure, there will be groups calling for a less militarized approach to Europe and the Middle East — including from within the Republican Party — but they face an uphill battle in convincing the administration to adopt such proposals.
Potential nominees for key foreign policy positions in a second Trump administration include hawks who support U.S. military involvement in these regions.
In his first term, Trump was far from an isolationist. While he certainly abandoned some multilateral and liberal elements of previous administrations’ strategies, he did not significantly reduce the U.S. role in security affairs around the world. He embraced competition with China, both in the economic and military spheres. He also pursued a policy of maximum pressure on Iran, abandoning the carefully crafted agreement that had been in place to limit Tehran’s nuclear program. And he increased spending and military activities in Europe through the European Reassurance Initiative to calm nervous allies.
Potential nominees for key foreign policy positions in a second Trump administration include hawks who support U.S. military involvement in these regions, as well. More broadly, many within the Republican Party remain committed to a strategy of deep engagement: They want the United States to remain the dominant security provider in each of the core regions of East Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
Still, Trump faces some countervailing pressures to shift his approach in a second term, including from within his own party. There are some conservatives who support an alternative strategy — restraint — which calls on the United States to be, at most, the security provider of last resort in one or more of those regions. At the core of restraint is the belief that the U.S. cannot realistically sustain deep engagement because, as other great powers in history have experienced, it risks the country’s fiscal health and exposes it to numerous conflicts abroad. These “restrainers” therefore call on the United States to make its foreign policy more sustainable by settling differences with its adversaries, reducing its forward military presence, downgrading some of its alliance commitments, and raising the bar for the use of force.
Trump has sometimes voiced or adopted restrainers’ policy preferences, raising the possibility that such groups would have influence going forward. For example, during his first term, he was more critical of U.S. allies’ burden sharing and negotiated the withdrawal from Afghanistan. More recently, he has echoed restrainers’ skepticism of unconditional aid to Kyiv and calls for the United States to use its influence to bring an end to the war between Ukraine and Russia.
In this context, conservative restrainers are likely to have the greatest influence on policy in Europe and the Middle East, where they would also have support from foreign policy realists as well as some on the left. Restraint, it turns out, is a big tent that crosses the partisan divide. But this is a double-edged sword in terms of its influence on any administration, Trump’s included. On the one hand, there are multiple pathways to restraint, rooted in realist, conservative and progressive principles. In brief, realists argue that deep engagement has been counterproductive as the U.S. overreaches and other states balance against it.
Conservatives oppose deep engagement because they think it cedes American sovereignty or because U.S. militarism threatens civil liberties, raises taxes or makes it too hard to hold the government accountable. Progressives believe that deep engagement perpetuates injustice and uses military tools for problems that require alternative solutions. Seeing the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an extension of deep engagement, realist, conservative and progressive restrainers have all had reasons to advocate for a course correction, starting with less military engagement in the Middle East. Most restrainers also call for gradual U.S. retrenchment from Europe, though some progressives are less committed in the face of recent Russian aggression.
Some restrainers are worried about the growing risk of a great-power war.
On the other hand, exactly because restraint is a big tent, it is animated by competing visions, making it difficult for restrainers to coalesce around common arguments and a shared set of policies on other issues. This has been most evident with U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific. Some restrainers are worried about the growing risk of a great-power war, as well as the way in which increased U.S.-China competition hinders cooperation on global challenges like climate change. But many realists and conservatives who advocate for restraint in other regions do not take this view. They are increasingly wary of the rise of China, which could pose a threat to the balance of power as well as the American way of life if China became a regional hegemon, dominating East Asia like the U.S. dominates the Western Hemisphere. Therefore, even some restrainers support the U.S. strategy of deep engagement in the Indo-Pacific.
Returning to Trump, the president-elect’s grand strategic instincts are mixed. “America First” might mean that Trump will put the United States’ interests ahead of those of others, but that does not also necessarily mean he will consistently embrace restraint.
He will face pressure from deep engagers on both sides of the aisle to get more involved in Israel’s defense, to escalate support to Ukraine so that it can gain an upper hand in negotiations with Russia, and to double down on containing China. Such arguments will likely resonate with Trump’s own instincts toward standing firm and driving a hard bargain. Still, Trump’s countervailing tendencies to demand more from our allies, and his concern about diverting resources away from problems at home, create an opening for those advocating for strategic change. They will likely have the best prospects of influencing U.S. strategy on the Middle East and Europe, where they can speak with a unified voice in favor of restraint.
msnbc.com · December 28, 2024
9. Accusations That Trump Is ‘Transactional’ in Foreign Relations Miss the Point of Diplomacy
Excerpts:
The bottom line is that all presidents are “dealmakers” and “transactional.” A lot of them in recent times just haven’t been good at deal making. It’s about time someone is in the White House who at least will negotiate for America’s interests — not the foreign policy class and business elites’ interests.
Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick called it right. “We should reject utterly any claim that foreign policy is the special province of special people — beyond the control of those who must pay its costs and bear its consequences.”
Accusations That Trump Is ‘Transactional’ in Foreign Relations Miss the Point of Diplomacy
What relationship with a foreign country or any agreement or ‘deal’ between nations isn’t based on mutual self-interest?
GRANT NEWSHAM
Published: Dec. 28, 2024 08:26 AM ETUpdated: Dec. 29, 2024 04:36 AM ET
nysun.com
The terms “transactional,” “dealmaker,” “businessman” and the like are routinely lobbed at President Trump. They accuse him of not understanding the nuances of foreign relations and diplomacy — and even suggest he’s got a certain amorality to him.
Yet what relationship with a foreign country or any agreement or “deal” between nations isn’t “transactional”? They all are. It’s the essence of the thing. Both sides believe and expect they are getting something useful out of it.
A country gets American protection, say, while we get the right to operate from their bases and maybe receive some limited military assistance. The knock-on effects from a “deal” can be considerable. Say, visa-free travel, preferential trade rights, or political support at the United Nations or for border disputes with other countries.
Country to country agreements resemble business agreements. Both sides offer up ‘consideration’ in exchange for something each side values. There are, of course, contract negotiations where one side has a huge advantage over the other, such as when someone is facing bankruptcy.
One side might not like what it’s getting, but
it’s still getting something of value and is otherwise free to walk away. It may be diplomats and officials talking to each other rather than MBA types, but it’s the same basic idea.
Trump can’t be blamed for wanting to get a good deal for America. Like a businessman he’s going to instinctively focus on what the other side is offering, can offer, and should offer in exchange for what we give them. What president isn’t shaped by their background and experience?
Trump, though, doesn’t care about geopolitics per se, or so it’s said, and would sell out his friends to cut deals with dictators? Where’s the evidence? And what about Presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton greasing the skids to allow the People’s Republic of China into the World Trade Organization?
Messrs. Bush and Clinton thought we would get a liberalized Communist China that adapted to “global norms.” Instead they got a People’s Republic and People’s Liberation Army that can defeat us. We also got George W. Bush looking into President Putin’s eyes and seeing his soul — and figuring he was somebody one could do business with? How has that worked out?
What about President Obama handing over billions to the Iranian mullahs? In exchange for what? Not killing Americans too much and not flaunting their nuclear weapons program? As for the “Trump is cozying up to dictators” mantra: Sure, he is sometimes gracious to his global competitors — and even enemies — but why shouldn’t he be? That’s Negotiating 101.
Trump’s good friend Mr. Putin must be wondering about those Javelin missiles Trump provided Ukraine that killed Russian troops and helped stall, in 2022, a Russian offensive that has cost the Kremlin a half million troops and counting.
The president-elect is smart enough to recognize the “deals” his predecessors have cut haven’t been good ones in many cases. A lot of Americans might agree. They pay the price after all. Yet are Americans really “altruists” who can also afford lopsided deals? Some people like to think so. Yet we’re now $36 trillion in the hole.
So we don’t have the money, our economy and our businesses aren’t as dominant as they once were, and we face a rival — China — that aims to destroy us, and is increasingly able to act on its threats. And anyway, we never were altruists. Deep down we expected the recipients of our altruism to appreciate it.
The bottom line is that all presidents are “dealmakers” and “transactional.” A lot of them in recent times just haven’t been good at deal making. It’s about time someone is in the White House who at least will negotiate for America’s interests — not the foreign policy class and business elites’ interests.
Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick called it right. “We should reject utterly any claim that foreign policy is the special province of special people — beyond the control of those who must pay its costs and bear its consequences.”
nysun.com
10. China Has Limited Firepower to Counter U.S. Tariffs
China Has Limited Firepower to Counter U.S. Tariffs
While Beijing has already brandished the ways it could hit back at Trump’s levies, such retaliation risks boomeranging
https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/china-has-limited-firepower-to-counter-u-s-tariffs-108df7e9?mod=latest_headlines
By Jason Douglas
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Updated Dec. 29, 2024 2:40 am ET
China’s need to keep goods flowing to the West from its ports would be a weakness in a trade war with the U.S. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press
SINGAPORE—In the weeks since the election, China has flaunted the ways in which it could hit back at the U.S. in the event of a new trade war with the U.S., including everything from choking off the metals needed for everyday products to punishing American companies that do business in China.
But using such tools too aggressively risks backfiring on Beijing.
The big danger is that taking shots at Western companies and restricting exports of critical minerals and other essentials will only encourage the U.S. and its allies to double down on their efforts to untangle their economies from China’s.
That would spell trouble for Beijing as long as it remains wedded to an economic model that relies so heavily on selling its goods to Western consumers.
While China can inflict pain on the U.S. with the economic tools at its disposal, it is more likely to wield them sparingly, according to analysts. Instead, Beijing could use the measures to force talks to negotiate a truce with Donald Trump should he follow through on his promise to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese imports.
“Just using these tools willy-nilly doesn’t make sense. You have to be driving towards an outcome, which is some sort of negotiation,” said Logan Wright, head of China markets research at Rhodium Group, a New York-based think tank.
Nvidia, which has offices in Chinese cities including Shanghai, is being investigated by Beijing authorities. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
When Trump began hitting Chinese imports with tariffs in 2018, Beijing responded by raising tariffs of its own on imports of U.S. products such as food, chemicals and textiles.
With a more intense trade skirmish looming, Beijing has been showcasing the tools it has refined since the trade war during Trump’s first administration—tools it believes are more effective than a tit-for-tat escalation in tariffs.
In December, Beijing tightened controls on exports of raw materials used in the manufacture of advanced electronics and batteries and in other high-tech fields. That move was in response to the Biden administration’s decision to cut China’s access to certain memory chips used in artificial intelligence. Beijing has also extended controls over parts used in the manufacture of drones, which have proved vital to Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
China also has announced an antitrust investigation of Nvidia, the U.S. chip juggernaut, saying it might have violated the terms of a conditional approval it received from Beijing in 2020 for its acquisition of an Israeli networking company.
Beijing also maintains an “unreliable entity list” of companies that face extra hurdles in doing business in China. In September, it said it was considering placing PVH, the owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, on the list because of reports that the U.S. company had boycotted cotton products from China’s Xinjiang region, where China is accused of using forced labor in its factories. Beijing denies the forced-labor allegations.
Yet analysts said this mix of export restrictions and the targeting of U.S. companies isn’t such a potent set of countermeasures.
Although China dominates the production and refining of critical minerals, it isn’t the sole supplier worldwide. Last year the U.S. imported more raw gallium from Canada than it did from China, and its top supplier of processed germanium was Germany, according to Census Bureau data. Both minerals are critical to the production of semiconductors, missile systems and solar cells.
China’s dominance of critical minerals relies in part on its ability to supply global markets at low prices, making it uneconomic for rivals to invest in alternative production. But export controls risk pushing up the market price, changing that calculus.
“The more of a strain it is to get these things, the more investment goes into processing,” said Matthew Gertken, chief geopolitical strategist at BCA Research.
Moreover, as Russia’s ability to evade Western sanctions has shown, third countries are usually prepared to act as middlemen in global trade, allowing eager buyers to sidestep efforts by sellers to impose restrictions on sales to a particular country. If China got tough on exports of minerals to the U.S., American companies could potentially secure what they need through re-exports by third countries, Gertken said.
Nor is punishing U.S. companies that do business in China the potent threat it once was. China’s sluggish economy and its push to edge out Western brands in favor of domestic rivals mean many U.S. companies are struggling there. As a result, China has become less important to American corporations than it was.
General Motors said in December that it expects to take more than $5 billion in noncash charges in the fourth quarter. Weakness in its China business will force the automaker to close plants and offer fewer models there.
Rows of vehicles stretch across a lot at a General Motors factory in Shanghai. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
If Beijing were to squeeze U.S. companies operating in China, such a move could give the second Trump administration pause, particularly if it spooked the stock market. But it also might persuade U.S. companies to dial back their presence in China and dissuade new ones from investing.
“Every aggressive move by China accelerates U.S. companies’ diversification and decoupling efforts,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “It’s a self-reinforcing cycle, much like China’s own economic spiral—Beijing’s actions ultimately weaken its hand further.”
Beijing has other options. There are many ways that China could retaliate using low-value and low-tech products, said Martin Lynge Rasmussen, senior strategist at Exante Data, a research firm. Such is China’s dominance of everyday manufactured goods—think screws, bolts, charging cables—that it has the potential to be downright annoying for American consumers. That could be politically costly for Trump.
“There are a lot of things that China could just choke off at little domestic cost,” he said.
China could also let its currency weaken against the dollar, giving its exports a leg up in world markets and in the U.S. and helping to offset higher tariffs. But such a move could drive capital flight from China, something Beijing is anxious to avoid. Most economists think Beijing might tolerate a limited and controlled devaluation, but not a steep slide in the yuan.
A cargo vessel on the Huangpu River in Shanghai. Photo: Alex Plavevski/EPA/Shutterstock
Finally, there is the nuclear option for Beijing of a fire sale of its vast holdings of U.S. Treasurys. China is the second-largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasurys after Japan, with $760 billion in holdings as of October, though some experts think the true size of its portfolio of Treasurys and other U.S. assets is much higher, perhaps as much as half of its $3.6 trillion in official reserves. Some said Beijing could consider such an extreme scenario if a trade conflict spiraled dramatically and it sought to cause financial chaos in response.
Yet economists point out that the Federal Reserve could step in to stabilize the bond market with open-ended purchases, just as it did in 2020. It then bought $1 trillion of Treasurys offloaded by foreign central banks and private-sector investors desperate for cash at the start of the pandemic. A fire sale would also leave Beijing with a lot of dollars that it would have to recycle into some other asset. Selling them and buying yuan would drive up the value of its own currency.
Overall, according to analysts, Beijing must be mindful of how its efforts to hit back at the U.S. will be viewed by the rest of the world. Just as some countries voice unease over their dependence on the dollar and the U.S. financial system, others might look askance at their dependence on China for manufactured goods.
“Ultimately, these are your customers. You have to keep them buying from you,” said Rhodium’s Wright. “One way or the other, Beijing has incentives to slow escalation.”
Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com
11. We Looked at 78 Election Deepfakes. Political Misinformation Is Not an AI Problem.
Read the entire report at this link: https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/we-looked-at-78-election-deepfakes-political-misinformation-is-not-an-ai-problem?utm
We Looked at 78 Election Deepfakes. Political Misinformation Is Not an AI Problem.
Technology isn’t the problem—or the solution.
By Sayash Kapoor & Arvind Narayanan
December 13, 2024
AI-generated misinformation was one of the top concerns during the 2024 U.S. presidential election. In January 2024, the World Economic Forum claimed that “misinformation and disinformation is the most severe short-term risk the world faces” and that “AI is amplifying manipulated and distorted information that could destabilize societies.” News headlines about elections in 2024 tell a similar story:
In contrast, in our past writing, we predicted that AI would not lead to a misinformation apocalypse. When Meta released its open-weight large language model (called LLaMA), we argued that it would not lead to a tidal wave of misinformation. And in a follow-up essay, we pointed out that the distributionof misinformation is the key bottleneck for influence operations, and while generative AI reduces the cost of creating misinformation, it does not reduce the cost of distributing it. A few other researchers have made similar arguments.
Which of these two perspectives better fits the facts?
Fortunately, we have the evidence of AI use in elections that took place around the globe in 2024 to help answer this question. Many news outlets and research projects have compiled known instances of AI-generated text and media and their impact. Instead of speculating about AI’s potential, we can look at its real-world impact to date.
We analyzed every instance of AI use in elections collected by the WIRED AI Elections Project (source for our analysis), which tracked known uses of AI for creating political content during elections taking place in 2024 worldwide. In each case, we identified what AI was used for and estimated the cost of creating similar content without AI.
We find that (1) half of AI use isn't deceptive, (2) deceptive content produced using AI is nevertheless cheap to replicate without AI, and (3) focusing on the demand for misinformation rather than the supply is a much more effective way to diagnose problems and identify interventions.
To be clear, AI-generated synthetic content poses many real dangers: the creation of non-consensual images of people and child sexual abuse material and the enabling of the liar’s dividend, which allows those in power to brush away real but embarrassing or controversial media content about them as AI-generated. These are all important challenges. This essay is focused on a different problem: political misinformation.1
1. The terms mis- and disinformation lack agreed-upon definitions. In this piece, we use the term misinformation to refer to outright false information, as opposed to issues of misleading interpretive framing. Despite many people’s perception of outgroup narratives as “misinformation,” we don't think the misinformation lens is a useful way to think about differences in framing and narratives; we're more narrowly concerned about using outright false information to support those narratives.
Improving the information environment is a difficult and ongoing challenge. It’s understandable why people might think AI is making the problem worse: AI does make it possible to fabricate false content. But that has not fundamentally changed the landscape of political misinformation.
Paradoxically, the alarm about AI might be comforting because it positions concerns about the information environment as a discrete problem with a discrete solution. But fixes to the information environment depend on structural and institutional changes rather than on curbing AI-generated content.
Half of the Deepfakes in 2024 Elections Weren’t Deceptive
We analyzed all 78 instances of AI use in the WIRED AI Elections Project (source for our analysis).2
2. The low number of total deepfakes found in elections worldwide is surprising on its own terms. The small number could either indicate that AI deepfakes are a much smaller problem so far than anticipated or that the database has many missing entries. Still, other databases that tracked election deepfakes have a similar count for the total number of deepfakes; for example, the German Marshall Fund’s list of deepfakes related to 2024 elections worldwide has 133 entries, though it started collecting entries in September 2023. As we note further along in the essay, the News Literacy Project documented known misinformation about the 2024 elections and found that cheap fakes that didn't use AI were used seven times more often than AI-generated content.
We categorized each instance based on whether there was deceptive intent. For example, if AI was used to generate false media depicting a political candidate saying something they didn't, we classified it as deceptive. On the other hand, if a chatbot gave an incorrect response to a genuine user query, a deepfake was created for parody or satire, or a candidate transparently used AI to improve their campaigning materials (such as by translating a speech into a language they don't speak), we classify it as non-deceptive.
To our surprise, there was no deceptive intent in 39 of the 78 cases in the database.
The most common non-deceptive use of AI was for campaigning. When candidates or supporters used AI for campaigning, in most cases (19 out of 22), the apparent intent was to improve campaigning materials rather than mislead voters with false information.
We even found examples of deepfakes that we think helped improve the information environment. In Venezuela, journalists used AI avatars to avoid government retribution when covering news adversarial to the government. In the U.S., a local news organization from Arizona, Arizona Agenda, used deepfakes to educate viewers about how easy it is to manipulate videos. In California, a candidate with laryngitis lost his voice, so he transparently used AI voice cloning to read out typed messages in his voice during meet-and-greets with voters.
Reasonable people can disagree on whether using AI in campaigning materials is legitimate or what the appropriate guardrails need to be. But using AI for campaign materials in non-deceptive ways (for example, when AI is used as a tool to improve voter outreach) is much less problematic than deploying AI-generated fake news to sway voters.
Of course, not all non-deceptive AI-generated political content is benign.3
3. The dataset also included four instances of AI-generated deepfake videos of politicians used to perpetrate financial scams. Compared to political misinformation, scams have very different dynamics (more sophisticated videos could be more convincing) and stakes (they involve individual financial harm rather than threats to democracy). Similarly, addressing scams requires different interventions—for instance, monitoring and removing networks of scammers is something major online platforms have been doing for a long time. In other words, scams are a different problem that we have other tools for addressing (regardless of the fact that some platforms arguably underinvest in doing so) and are outside the scope of this essay.
Chatbots often incorrectly answer election-related questions. Rather than deceptive intent, this results from the limitations of chatbots, such as hallucinations and lack of factuality. Unfortunately, these limitations are not made clear to users, leading to an overreliance on flawed large language models (LLMs).4
4. In the last legs of the 2024 U.S. election, Google and OpenAI restricted their chatbots from answering election-related queries—though competitors like Perplexity didn't, claiming that their product was highly accurate. Evaluating chatbots’ tendency to answer questions factually or abstain from answering questions, improving the factuality of responses, and ensuring chatbots work across different languages and contexts are important areas of work as more people turn to chatbots for answering questions.
Continued at this link: https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/we-looked-at-78-election-deepfakes-political-misinformation-is-not-an-ai-problem?utm
12. Anticipating Trump's foreign policy By Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
Excerpts:
Even if predictions based on campaign statements and personnel leave us uncertain, we can at least locate Trump in the historical traditions of US foreign policy. Recall his first inaugural address, when he proclaimed that “from this moment on, it’s going to be America first … we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example.” This view accords with the “city-on-the-hill” approach to U.S. foreign policy, which has a long pedigree. It is not isolationism, but it eschews activism.
By contrast, in the twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson sought a foreign policy that would make democracy safe in the world, and John F. Kennedy urged Americans to consider what they could do for the rest of the world, establishing the Peace Corps in 1961. Jimmy Carter made human rights a core concern of US foreign policy, and George W. Bush’s international strategy rested on the twin pillars of leading a growing global community of democracies and promoting freedom, justice, and human dignity.
The one prediction that seems safe is that Trump’s approach to the world will be more in keeping with the first of these traditions than the second.
Anticipating Trump's foreign policy
The Korea Times · December 29, 2024
By Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
Joseph S. Nye
CAMBRIDGE – Prediction is always difficult, but doubly so in the case of the U.S. president-elect. Donald Trump not only speaks loosely and changes his positions often; he also considers unpredictability to be a useful bargaining tool. Still, one can try to get a sense of what his foreign policy will look like from his campaign statements, his high-level appointments, and his first term.
In Washington, it is often said that “personnel is policy.” But while we already know whom Trump wants for key positions, the problem is that their stated views sometimes conflict with each other. With Trump making every effort to avoid the traditional Republicans who hemmed him in during his first term, the common denominator among his choices this time is personal loyalty. But even this quality does not help us predict policy.
Consider the question of China. Trump’s choices for Secretary of State and national security adviser – Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Michael Waltz, respectively – are well-known “hawks” who see China as a dominant threat that demands a strong response. We also know from his campaign that Trump is eager to introduce new tariffs on imports from allies, with even higher tariffs on goods from China.
With Trump already announcing plans to slap tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada, and China, we should certainly expect some new levies to be imposed. But the tariffs’ rates, duration, and exemptions remain uncertain and subject both to domestic political pressures and Trump’s personal whims. As his designee for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, recently said, “I think a lot of what he’s doing is to escalate to de-escalate, and my goal for his administration would be to save international trade.”
Equally uncertain is how Trump might respond to retaliation by America’s trade partners. If tit-for-tat trade wars drive tariffs and prices higher, the return of inflation may trigger a domestic political backlash. Since Trump prides himself on his dealmaking prowess, he may seek compromises. Would he offer his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, weaker U.S. support for Taiwan in exchange for a trade deal that he could hold up as a victory? Some of America’s Asian allies worry about precisely this scenario.
Judging by Trump’s campaign statements and previous term in the White House, we should also expect him to devalue multilateralism and alliances. He has promised to withdraw again from the Paris climate agreement, and to increase domestic production and exports of oil and gas. While the price of renewable energy has been declining in the U.S., it remains to be seen whether his policies will cancel out that beneficial market effect by reducing these industries’ relative cost competitiveness.
In the Middle East, Trump’s campaign statements were unconditionally supportive of Israel, and he still takes pride in having negotiated the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and four Arab countries. When the Biden administration tried to build on this breakthrough by enticing Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel, the Saudis set a precondition: Israel must take steps toward creating a Palestinian state. But Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition staunchly opposes a two-state solution, and since Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, Israeli public support for such an outcome, already low, has fallen further. Trump undoubtedly wants to extend his prior success in the region; but it is anyone’s guess how he will go about it.
Turning to Europe and NATO, Trump said during the campaign that he would end the war in Ukraine “in one day.” We know that will not happen; but there is deep uncertainty about how he will try to negotiate an armistice. One possibility is to reduce assistance to Ukraine and weaken its bargaining position so that it must accept Russian terms. Or Trump could temporarily extend support for Ukraine while moving toward a “Korean solution.”
In the latter scenario, the current front line would become a demilitarized zone staffed by United Nations or European peacekeepers whom Russia would have to force out if it wants to restart the war. Ukraine could continue to assert sovereignty over areas like the Donbas, but it most likely would be unable to join NATO; instead, perhaps some subset of countries (“friends of Ukraine”) could offer to come to its aid if Russia violated the demilitarized zone. It is unclear whether Trump will use his bargaining power vis-à-vis Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to produce such a compromise. But securing a deal will certainly be attractive if he is thinking about his legacy.
Even if predictions based on campaign statements and personnel leave us uncertain, we can at least locate Trump in the historical traditions of US foreign policy. Recall his first inaugural address, when he proclaimed that “from this moment on, it’s going to be America first … we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example.” This view accords with the “city-on-the-hill” approach to U.S. foreign policy, which has a long pedigree. It is not isolationism, but it eschews activism.
By contrast, in the twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson sought a foreign policy that would make democracy safe in the world, and John F. Kennedy urged Americans to consider what they could do for the rest of the world, establishing the Peace Corps in 1961. Jimmy Carter made human rights a core concern of US foreign policy, and George W. Bush’s international strategy rested on the twin pillars of leading a growing global community of democracies and promoting freedom, justice, and human dignity.
The one prediction that seems safe is that Trump’s approach to the world will be more in keeping with the first of these traditions than the second.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Professor Emeritus at Harvard University, is a former US assistant secretary of defense and author of the memoir “A Life in the American Century” (Polity Press, 2024). This article was distributed by Project Syndicate.
The Korea Times · December 29, 2024
13. China firing preemptive trade war shots at Trump
Excerpts:
China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), controlled by the Ministry of Commerce, said in a media briefing on December 27 morning local time that the US-initiated 301 investigation into China’s semiconductor industry is a clear example of trade protectionism.
Sun Xiao, a spokesperson for CCPIT, called on the US to comply with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and immediately halt unilateral restrictions, and to promote industrial cooperation with China through dialogue and consultation.
He criticized the US for undermining fair competition principles by providing subsidies to its own semiconductor sector.
CCPIT did not elaborate on what actions it will take but it is apparently telling the US that China can stop buying US chips if needed. Earlier this month, several Chinese industry groups called on their members not to buy American-made legacy semiconductors due to “safety” concerns after the US unveiled new chip export controls against China.
China firing preemptive trade war shots at Trump - Asia Times
China extends tariffs on key chemical solvent while sanctioning and freezing assets of US companies selling arms to Taiwan
asiatimes.com · by Yong Jian · December 28, 2024
China has heightened trade war tensions with the United States by extending existing tariffs imposed on a crucial chemical solvent, sanctioning seven American firms on security grounds and threatening to stop buying US semiconductors within a single day.
China’s Ministry of Commerce (MoC) announced on December 27 that it will continue to impose anti-dumping duties on n-butanol imports from the US, Taiwan and Malaysia for another five years, effective from December 29, 2024.
The MoC said removing the anti-dumping duties would likely lead to a resumption or continuation of dumping practices and subsequent harm to China’s domestic n-butanol industry.
N-butanol is a key organic chemical used in the production of various products including paints, adhesives and plasticizers.
On December 29, 2018, China imposed 52.2-139.3% tariffs on n-butanol imports from the US and 12.7-26.7% tariffs on those from Malaysia. A 56.1% duty was imposed on all Taiwanese firms, except Formosa Plastics Corp, which only paid 6%.
In 2022, China imported 105,400 tons (66% of total) of n-butanol from Taiwan and 37,300 tons (23.4% of total) from Saudi Arabia, according to a report published by the Beijing-based Huajing Industry Research Institute. The remaining came from Russia, South Africa and Malaysia.
The report said China’s N-butanol suppliers are lagging behind foreign competitors in product quality.
Arms sales to Taiwan
On Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry also sanctioned seven American companies and their relevant senior executives to retaliate against US arms sales to Taiwan.
Beijing said its sanctions, based on China’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, are also a response to the United States’ National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025, which includes multiple negative sections on China.
It said the sanctioned companies will now have their assets in China frozen and are now barred from doing business with Chinese companies and people.
The seven firms include Insitu Inc, Hudson Technologies, Saronic Technologies, Raytheon Canada, Raytheon Australia, Aerkomm Inc and Oceaneering International Inc.
These firms are engaged in a wide range of industries. Insitu is a maker of unmanned aerial systems and a wholly-owned subsidiary of defense contractor Boeing. Aerkomm is a satellite communication technology company. Oceaneering offers products and robotic solutions to the offshore energy, defense, aerospace and manufacturing industries.
The latest round of Chinese curbs came after the Biden administration approved its 19th arms sales to Taiwan on December 20. The US$295 million deal included upgraded tactical data link systems and gun mounts for Taiwanese ships.
On November 29, the Biden administration approved new weapons sales worth $385 million to Taiwan, including spare parts for its US-made F-16 fighter jets and radar systems to be delivered in 2025.
On December 5, China sanctioned 13 US firms engaged in the manufacturing of drones, artificial intelligence and military communications, as well as six senior company executives.
“A series of actions shows that the US has not stopped trying to contain China’s development through the Taiwan issue,” a Shanxi-based military columnist using the pseudonym “Dianwutang” wrote in an article. “The promises of American politicians are of no value to us anymore.”
“China is becoming more and more mature in handling its conflicts with the US. If the US doesn’t move, China won’t take action, and if the US moves, China will strike with precision.”
He said the sanctioned US firms are now in limbo as they can’t obtain high-quality raw mineral materials such as gallium, germanium and antimony, from China. He said even if they can buy these materials via third countries, they will have to pay an extremely high price.
Stephen Tan, managing director of the International Policy Advisory Group, said in an online panel discussion on December 19 that China will definitely urge Trump to stop selling arms to Taiwan but he won’t compromise easily as a big fan of “you pay your own fees for your protection,” which will translate into a rise in US arms sales to Taiwan.
Fair competition?
On December 23, the US Trade Representative Office said it would launch a Section 301 investigation into China’s targeting of foundational semiconductors, or legacy chips, for dominance and the impact on the US economy.
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China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), controlled by the Ministry of Commerce, said in a media briefing on December 27 morning local time that the US-initiated 301 investigation into China’s semiconductor industry is a clear example of trade protectionism.
Sun Xiao, a spokesperson for CCPIT, called on the US to comply with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and immediately halt unilateral restrictions, and to promote industrial cooperation with China through dialogue and consultation.
He criticized the US for undermining fair competition principles by providing subsidies to its own semiconductor sector.
CCPIT did not elaborate on what actions it will take but it is apparently telling the US that China can stop buying US chips if needed. Earlier this month, several Chinese industry groups called on their members not to buy American-made legacy semiconductors due to “safety” concerns after the US unveiled new chip export controls against China.
Yong Jian is a contributor to Asia Times. He is a Chinese journalist who specializes in Chinese technology, economy and politics.
Read: China sharpens trade war tools ahead of Trump’s arrival
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asiatimes.com · by Yong Jian · December 28, 2024
14. Race for Arctic resources in a climate change era
Excerpts:
Many Arctic-related matters are addressed by international agreements, such as those on the prevention of unregulated high seas fisheries and marine oil pollution response cooperation, the International Code for Ships Operating in Polar Waters and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
Three decades ago, a special structure called the Arctic Council was created to bring together the representatives of the eight Arctic states as well as indigenous peoples residing in the region. This international forum has been successfully dealing with issues like oil spills, the loss of sea ice, tundra thawing and rescue operations.
The Arctic Council has survived multiple challenges, but the most impactful one was the recent breakdown of relations between Russia and other Arctic states over the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine.
Politics aside, the problem with the pause in full-fledged cooperation is that it does not help in dealing with climate change implications. Nor does it serve the interests of indigenous peoples. Now that the Arctic is facing climate change risks that threaten the whole world, any limitations in collaboration are unhelpful, if not harmful.
Race for Arctic resources in a climate change era - Asia Times
Global warming is opening resource-rich polar region to greater exploration, exploitation and geopolitical contestation
asiatimes.com · by Tatiana Kanunnikova · December 28, 2024
In November, a student-led project made a disturbing discovery: Mesyatsev Island, a floating slab of ice previously observed in the Arctic, had almost disappeared. It took around a decade and a half for the 11.8-million-square-foot island to shrink by 99.7% and vanish from the Arctic’s map.
Indeed, the Arctic is changing fast, impacting ecosystems and economies all over the world. Over the last 50 years, the polar region has been warming up four times faster than other parts of the globe, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Temperatures have risen considerably; in 2023, the region experienced its warmest summer.
“A melting Arctic presents new challenges and exacerbates existing ones for Arctic states and communities,” said Samuel Jardine, head of research at London Politica. “Degrading permafrost has already seen infrastructure damage as foundations collapse and pipelines deform.”
“It is estimated that 34% of the population in the Arctic’s permafrost regions will be at risk by the end of 2100, with it costing between US$205-$572 billion depending on who you ask to just maintain the operation of engineering and service infrastructure in the 2080s,” Jardine said.
“Depending on whether this investment happens and on the political will in the relevant states, this could see significant risk to human security and increased migratory pressure,” the expert told this author.
Race for Arctic resources
The Arctic is home to around 13% (90 billion barrels) of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil resources and 30% of its undiscovered natural gas ones, according to an assessment conducted by the US Geological Survey (USGS)
As Arctic ice melts, the cost of extracting its raw materials declines. In 2023, a Swedish mining company discovered a rare earth element deposit, which is believed to be the largest in Europe.
Meanwhile, the exploration and development of natural resources in the Arctic pose new environmental risks. Oil spills threaten fish, birds, and other organisms that serve as food for other species, while mines can produce toxic waste and destroy a crucial habitat for salmon.
No less importantly, the Arctic’s increasing accessibility is spurring geopolitical competition over natural resources.
“Changing temperatures also impact fisheries, which for the Arctic has always been one of the key trigger points for political tensions,” Jardine noted. “Over the last few years, there have been extensive political disputes, even between states who are broadly geopolitical partners like the UK, EU, and Norway, over fishing quotas and adherence to them in the High North as fish species migrate and politics spills over. Such incidents, of course, are comparatively minor, but tensions are likely to increase as fish stocks continue to change.”
Jardine notes that it is these new opportunities that are ironically creating most of the security issues.
“Melting ice and warming temperatures make resources easier to access (not least of all those on the seabed), which is already driving increased activity, such as Norway seeking to exploit its EEZ for seabed mining as it aims to move away from offshore oil. This not only drives securitization, as geopolitical tensions spill over, much as they are doing with fisheries, but also makes the various clashing claims to the Arctic seabed, specifically between Russia, Denmark, and Canada, an increasingly pertinent issue.
“For now, these states are utilizing the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, which can give binding recommendations but not enforce or determine maritime boundaries.
Given current geopolitical conditions, it is unlikely these states will be able to settle the issue among themselves, particularly with concerns that rights to the seabed can allow for “dual-use” infrastructure or utilization of national seabed regulations that might restrict maritime traffic,” the expert explained.
Geopolitics of shipping
Another security risk trigger is the rise in shipping traffic in the polar region. The shrinking sea ice has opened up for navigation a growing number of previously hard-to-reach regions. And as the frontier of natural resource extraction expands, Arctic shipping increases, too.
Among the largest regional projects are Canada’s iron ore mine in the Mary River area of Baffin Island and Russia’s Yamal Gas project. Both projects have contributed heavily to the increase in the number of bulk carriers and gas tankers in the Arctic.
“The melting Arctic is expected to unveil three new shipping routes over this century that are all on paper significantly faster than traditional routes to traverse East-West,” Jardine said. “Some estimates have the Arctic becoming ice-free in summer by 2030, which would facilitate non-ice-class vessels being able to safely travel the routes.
“All three routes have geopolitical problems to varying degrees already, but the big ‘flashpoint’ is most likely to be over the Northern Sea Route (NSR),” the expert added.
This raises concerns about unresolved disagreements over new sea route sovereignty. Russia claims that the NSR lies within its territorial waters, while the US and a number of other countries reject this claim.
Another sea lane, the Northwest Passage or NWP, is claimed by Canada to be within its internal waters, but the US insists that the NWP is an international strait.
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Governing the Arctic
Some four million people live in the Arctic region, distributed across Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Russia, Canada and the US. Around 10% of them are indigenous peoples.
National governments control their own territories, including territorial waters and coastlines, while the remainder of the Arctic Ocean falls under the jurisdiction of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Many Arctic-related matters are addressed by international agreements, such as those on the prevention of unregulated high seas fisheries and marine oil pollution response cooperation, the International Code for Ships Operating in Polar Waters and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
Three decades ago, a special structure called the Arctic Council was created to bring together the representatives of the eight Arctic states as well as indigenous peoples residing in the region. This international forum has been successfully dealing with issues like oil spills, the loss of sea ice, tundra thawing and rescue operations.
The Arctic Council has survived multiple challenges, but the most impactful one was the recent breakdown of relations between Russia and other Arctic states over the ongoing military conflict in Ukraine.
Politics aside, the problem with the pause in full-fledged cooperation is that it does not help in dealing with climate change implications. Nor does it serve the interests of indigenous peoples. Now that the Arctic is facing climate change risks that threaten the whole world, any limitations in collaboration are unhelpful, if not harmful.
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asiatimes.com · by Tatiana Kanunnikova · December 28, 2024
15. Outgoing Raimondo admits China chip war a 'fool's errand'
Excerpts:
The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) will also look into the incorporation of these semiconductors into electronic equipment used in “critical industries like defense, automotive, medical devices, aerospace, telecommunications, and power generation and the electrical grid,” as well as “materials critical to chip manufacturing such as silicon carbide and wafers.”
Silicon carbide is used to make power semiconductors used in electric vehicles.
As noted by Asia Times journalist Yong Jian, Chinese commentators point out the hypocrisy of the creator of the CHIPS Act accusing China of “non-market practices,” that China’s semiconductor production is intended primarily for domestic consumption, and that as the US continues to tighten its sanctions, China keeps increasing its investments.
By now it should be clear that the US wants to contain the entire Chinese semiconductor industry, not just the advanced chips it says are key to national security. For its part, China is trying to reduce its large semiconductor trade deficit, which not only costs it financially but also makes it vulnerable to sanctions.
But those sanctions continue to incentivize the Chinese innovation Biden’s outgoing administration had hoped to suppress, the “fool’s errand” Raimondo has belatedly acknowledged on her way out the door.
Outgoing Raimondo admits China chip war a 'fool's errand' - Asia Times
US Commerce Secretary acknowledges sanctions on China’s chip industry are mere ‘speed bumps’ and US needs to move faster
asiatimes.com · by Scott Foster · December 27, 2024
US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, the Biden administration’s leading light behind efforts to limit China’s access to advanced chips and related technologies, now says that export controls are merely “speed bumps” and that “trying to hold China back is a fool’s errand.”
In Raimondo’s view, the CHIPS and Science Act – a US$52.7 billion industrial policy aimed at reviving US semiconductor production and high-tech R&D and signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022 – is more important than sanctions against China.
“The only way to beat China is to stay ahead of them,” Raimondo told The Wall Street Journal in an article published on December 22. “We have to run faster, out innovate them. That’s the way to win,” she said.
President Biden, speaking at the Brookings Institution earlier in December, said that the CHIPS and Science Act, together with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, “mark the most significant investment in America since the New Deal.”
This assessment is not wrong, but it is incomplete in leaving out the success of the biggest speed bump, problems with the CHIPS Act and the unintended consequences of sanctions.
Trying to hold back China may be a fool’s errand in the long run but it has had one notable success: In 2019, the US government persuaded the Netherlands to ban the export of ASML’s EUV lithography machines to China.
This limited China’s ability to make chips beyond 7nm, and, at an expensive stretch, 5nm design rules, while Taiwan’s TSMC is now in commercial production at 3nm and is planning to introduce 2nm in 2025.
As a result, Nvidia, AMD, Apple and other non-Chinese integrated circuit design companies have access to mass production at 5nm, 4nm and 3nm, while Huawei and other Chinese tech companies do not.
Samsung is close behind TSMC, although at a smaller scale; Intel is outsourcing to TSMC while working on its 3nm yields; and Samsung, Intel and Japan’s Rapidus are all aiming at 2nm.
ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet recently said that without EUV lithography, Chinese semiconductor makers would lag the global industry by 10 to 15 years. At the leading edge of miniaturization, that may be true.
His predecessor, Peter Wennick, said, “If they cannot get those machines, they will develop them themselves. That will take time but ultimately they will get there.” But how much time? Five years have already passed.
At present, Chinese engineers seem to be having enough trouble developing their own ArF immersion DUV lithography, the chip-making technology just behind EUV, although they have imported a lot of the former equipment.
They have also turned to open-source RISC-V architecture, chiplets and creative thinking to circumvent export controls on EUV lithography, other sophisticated equipment and advanced ICs such as Nvidia’s A100 and Blackwell AI processors, which are produced by TSMC.
According to Jack Clark, former policy director at OpenAI and co-founder of California AI developer Anthropic, “One way China will get around export controls [is] building extremely good software and hardware training stacks using the hardware it can access.”
He also wrote that “Made in China will be a thing for AI models, same as electric cars, drones, and other technologies.”
The US Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reports that, as of December 17, the CHIPS Program Office had announced $42.4 billion in grants and loans to 27 companies, catalyzing 40 semiconductor-related projects in 21 American states.
“These projects include total investment of more than $386 billion over two decades,” the SIA wrote, “with the vast majority invested by 2030.”
Then, on December 20, the Department of Commerce announced $4.7 billion in funding for Samsung Electronics, bringing the total to more than $47 billion and perhaps alleviating concerns that the incoming Trump administration might move to stop CHIPS Act funding, which the president-elect has called a “bad deal.”
The biggest CHIPS Act subsidies have gone to Intel, TSMC and Micron Technology. So far, only one company, Microchip, has abandoned its application for CHIPS funding – because it is closing factories, not building new ones.
But Intel, having dropped into the red and seen its share price collapse, is cutting its capital spending by more than 20% and laying off more than 15% of its workforce. CEO Pat Gelsinger, who lobbied hard for CHIPS Act funding, has also been forced out.
On balance, the CHIPS Act is a success but the crisis at Intel was an unpleasant surprise and the Act itself undermines US criticism of semiconductor subsidies in other countries, which have grown by leaps and bounds in China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, India and Europe. As a result, the US share of the global semiconductor industry might not rise by as much as some had hoped.
A study conducted by the SIA and Boston Consulting Group, released in May 2024, concluded that “The US share of the world’s chip manufacturing capacity will increase from 10% in 2022 – when the CHIPS and Science Act was enacted – to 14% by 2032, marking the first time in decades the US has grown its domestic chip manufacturing footprint relative to the rest of the world. In the absence of CHIPS enactment, the US share would have slipped further to 8% by 2032.”
Commerce Secretary Raimondo expects the US to account for about 20% of advanced logic IC production by 2030. Part of that will be made by TSMC, which currently accounts for 64% of advanced logic production, according to SemiWiki. TSMC is also building fabs in Japan, but at the end of the decade, most of its production will probably still be in Taiwan.
Sources: Data from semi, chart by Asia Times
Getting to even 14% won’t be easy. Industry association semi expects North America to account for only 9% of worldwide semiconductor production capacity in 2025. That would put the US in fifth place after China (30%), Taiwan (17%), South Korea (16%) and Japan (14%).
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It has become somewhat fashionable to predict that Chinese semiconductor investment will slow down, but with the Biden administration now launching a Section 301 investigation into China’s alleged “targeting of foundational semiconductors (also known as legacy or mature node chips) for dominance,” this seems unlikely.
The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) will also look into the incorporation of these semiconductors into electronic equipment used in “critical industries like defense, automotive, medical devices, aerospace, telecommunications, and power generation and the electrical grid,” as well as “materials critical to chip manufacturing such as silicon carbide and wafers.”
Silicon carbide is used to make power semiconductors used in electric vehicles.
As noted by Asia Times journalist Yong Jian, Chinese commentators point out the hypocrisy of the creator of the CHIPS Act accusing China of “non-market practices,” that China’s semiconductor production is intended primarily for domestic consumption, and that as the US continues to tighten its sanctions, China keeps increasing its investments.
By now it should be clear that the US wants to contain the entire Chinese semiconductor industry, not just the advanced chips it says are key to national security. For its part, China is trying to reduce its large semiconductor trade deficit, which not only costs it financially but also makes it vulnerable to sanctions.
But those sanctions continue to incentivize the Chinese innovation Biden’s outgoing administration had hoped to suppress, the “fool’s errand” Raimondo has belatedly acknowledged on her way out the door.
Follow this writer on X: @ScottFo83517667
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asiatimes.com · by Scott Foster · December 27, 2024
16. Claims of ‘Ghost Ships’ and ‘External Interference’ in Plane Crash Suggest Russian Involvement in Global Incidents
Claims of ‘Ghost Ships’ and ‘External Interference’ in Plane Crash Suggest Russian Involvement in Global Incidents - The Debrief
thedebrief.org · by Micah Hanks · December 27, 2024
The Eagle 2 vessel seen in the Baltic (Credit: Finnish Police/Fair Use).
Welcome to this week’s yuletide edition of The Intelligence Brief… over the Christmas holiday, a pair of concerning incidents occurred that have sparked new worries over Russian involvement among international officials. In our analysis, we’ll be looking at 1) the unusual circumstances involving a plane crash in Kazakhstan that has caused some experts to point the finger at Moscow, 2) the seizure of a vessel by Finnish officials amid investigations into a damaged power cable in the Baltic Sea, and 3) why many experts point to the potential operation of alleged “ghost ships” by Russia as part of a new modern effort involving “hybrid warfare.”
Quote of the Week
“While individually all these acts seem not to be important, when you bring them all together, they’re part of Russia’s hybrid war against the West.”
– Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Center for a New American Security
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New Concerns Arise Over Holiday Incidents Potentially Linked to Moscow
A concerning pair of incidents that occurred over the Christmas holiday have raised fresh concerns about potential Russian involvement in destabilizing global infrastructure and security.
The alarming events, including a passenger plane crash crashed near Aktau International Airport, Kazakhstan, and the severing of a critical undersea cable in the Baltic Sea, both occurred on Christmas Day.
Each of the incidents potentially point to shadowy tactics used by Moscow, which some experts attribute to “hybrid warfare” amid allegations of sabotage and covert operations that highlight the growing unease about Russia’s potential role in these disruptions, while international bodies like NATO call for accountability and readiness.
Airline Crash Sparks Allegations of ‘External Interference’
On Christmas Day, Azerbaijan Airlines reported that a passenger jet on its way to Kazakhstan had crashed, killing at least 38 of the 67 people aboard.
Kazakhstan’s transport ministry has confirmed that preliminary data on the crash indicates that among those on board were people from nations that include Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. Survivors who spoke with the media following the incident said the plane began to fly erratically after a loud bang emanating from somewhere on the aircraft.
According to officials involved in the investigation of the incident, alleged “physical and technical external interference” the aircraft began to experience prior to landing has now sparked questions about Russia’s possible involvement, with eyewitness accounts and other data obtained from preliminary findings fueling such speculation.
One day after the incident, CNN reported that it was told of the likely involvement of a Russian anti-aircraft system which may have been used to bring down the plane. Additional reports cited shrapnel-like perforations found on portions of the wreckage, although no officials say no conclusions have been reached in the investigation.
Russia Responds
Responding to the allegations, on Friday Russian officials attributed the crash to Ukrainian drone activity which, paired with foggy conditions, forced the plane to divert from its original destination.
Dmitry Yadrov, chief of Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency, claimed that the crash resulted from “Ukrainian combat drones” that he said were “carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure in the cities of Grozny and Vladikavkaz.” Moscow’s claims of drone involvement come amid a recent wave of drone sightings in various parts of the world, which since November have been observed in controlled airspace over several U.S. military facilities.
Pushing back on the claims, Ukrainian officials, including Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, charged that Russia took actions which forced the damaged plane to cross the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan. Sybiha characterized this, along with Russian media outlet who he says have “lied about the cause of the crash,” as possible evidence of a coverup.
Similar claims of Russian involvement were leveled this week by intelligence expert Justin Crump, who told the BBC that the theory of Russian air defense involvement “fits the facts,” though he deemed any such action unintentional.
“I don’t think this is deliberate at all,” Crump said, pointing out Russian air defense operations being undertaken around Grozny at the time as being possibly related to the incident. Imagery of the crash appear to show holes in the aircraft’s body that are suggestive of an impact made from possible debris or shrapnel, although the investigation remains underway and no conclusive determinations have been made.
Was a “Ghost Ship” Involved in Recent Baltic Cable Damage?
As investigations into the crash in Kazakhstan remained underway, on Thursday, Finnish authorities detained a sailing vessel suspected of being involved in damagin the undersea Estlink-2 power cable connecting Finland and Estonia.
The break, which disrupted four additional telecom cables, has been characterized as being part of a potential hybrid attack targeting Baltic infrastructure that occurred on Christmas day.
The ship, which has been named as ‘Eagle S’, is owned by Caravella, a United Arab Emirates-based sailing vessel company. However, Finland has now officially launched an investigation into whether the ship, which has known links to Russia, was involved in breaking the cable earlier this week.
Several organizations, including NATO, have characterized the incident as one of several incidents associated with “suspected attacks on critical infrastructure,” some of which have been carried out by part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet,” which involves ships which reportedly operate with obscure ownership, and often carries Russian fuel to escape sanctions.
Speaking with reporters this week, Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal said these shadow vessels are conducting operations aimed at “helping Russia to earn funds that will aid Russian hybrid attacks.”
With NATO’s backing, Finnish and Estonian officials have launched investigations into the damage to the cable, which will likely take up to seven months to repair.
The Broader Picture of Hybrid Warfare
Such incidents—particularly the events involving the damaged Baltic cable—are part of what many experts refer to as “hybrid warfare,” which denotes a blend of conventional and unconventional tactics that extend beyond Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine, which are designed to destabilize, but without provoking full-scale conflict.
Other examples include cyberattacks, election interference, and the sabotage of critical systems like pipelines and communication networks.
In recent months, the Baltic region has seen repeated instances of undersea cable disruptions, including incidents last month where cables between Finland, Germany, Lithuania, and Sweden were damaged. Many officials have increasingly suspected sabotage in the incidents, with Moscow frequently at the center of such allegations, although evidence remains inconclusive in many cases.
Amid a growing number of similar incidents, NATO has underscored the importance of protecting member nations under Article 5, which treats an attack on one member as an attack on all.
Although Estonia has been a member of NATO now for two decades, Finland also joined last year as the Russia-Ukraine war continues.
As investigations into such incidents continue, international bodies like NATO and the EU have condemned Moscow’s actions, highlighting the need for increased vigilance and protection of global security systems.
That concludes this week’s installment of The Intelligence Brief. You can read past editions of our newsletter at our website, or if you found this installment online, don’t forget to subscribe and get future email editions from us here. Also, if you have a tip or other information you’d like to send along directly to me, you can email me at micah [@] thedebrief [dot] org, or Tweet at me @MicahHanks.
17. The Most Important Breakthroughs of 2024
The Most Important Breakthroughs of 2024
This year saw several advancements across medicine, space technology, and AI that extend our knowledge in consequential ways.
By Derek Thompson
The Atlantic · by Derek Thompson · December 29, 2024
This is my third time honoring what I see as the year’s most important scientific and technological advances.
In 2022, my theme was the principle of “twin ideas,” when similar inventions emerge around the same time. Just as Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray both arguably conceived of the modern telephone in 1876 (and, by some accounts, on the same day!), the U.S. saw a cluster of achievements in generative AI, cancer treatment, and vaccinology.
In 2023, my theme was the long road of progress. My top breakthrough was Casgevy, a gene-editing therapy for patients with sickle-cell anemia. The therapy built on decades of research on CRISPR, an immune defense system borrowed from the world of bacteria.
View: 2024 in photos: Wrapping up the year
This year, my theme is the subtler power of incremental improvement, which has also been a motif of technological progress. Although nothing invented in 2024 rivals the gosh-wow debut of ChatGPT or the discovery of GLP-1 drugs, such as Ozempic, this year witnessed several advancements across medicine, space technology, and AI that extend our knowledge in consequential ways.
An Ingenious Defense Against HIV
Around the world, 40 million people live with HIV, and an estimated 630,000 people die of AIDS-related illness every year. The disease has no cure. But whereas patients in rich developed countries have access to medicine that keeps the virus at bay, many people in poor countries, where the disease is more widespread, do not.
This year, scientists at the pharmaceutical company Gilead announced that a new injectable drug seems to provide exceptional protection from HIV for six months. In one clinical trial of South African and Ugandan girls and young women, the shot, which is called lenacapavir, reduced HIV infections by 100 percent in the intervention group. Another trial of people across several continents reported an efficacy rate of 96 percent. Clinical-trial results don’t get much more successful than that.
This fall, Gilead agreed to let other companies sell cheap generic versions of the shot in poor countries. More controversially, the deal left out middle-income countries, such as Brazil and Mexico, which will have to pay more for access to the therapy.
Lenacapavir works by targeting key “capsid proteins” that act as both sword and shield for HIV’s genetic material—protecting the virus’s RNA and allowing it to invade our cells. Lenacapavir stuns the proteins and disarms their sword-and-shield functions, which makes the HIV viral particles harmless. In naming lenacapavir its breakthrough of the year, the journal Science reported that the same technique could disrupt the proteins that protect countless other deadly viruses, including those that cause common colds or even once-in-a-generation pandemics. The ability to break down the structure and function of these viruses by targeting capsid proteins could help us cure even more diseases in the long run.
The U.S. Enters the Age of Rocket-Catching
For six decades, the U.S. has been pretty good at using propulsion technology to toss heavy objects into space. But catching them when they fall back to Earth? Not so much.
Until this October, when a SpaceX booster plummeted from the sky at 22 times the speed of sound, hit the brakes, slowed down over the same tower that had launched it, and settled into its two giant mechanical arms for a high-tech hug. Sixty-six years after America blasted into the age of rocket-launching, it has finally entered the age of rocket-catching.
Read: The most powerful rocket in history had a good morning
So what is this rocket-pincer technology—nicknamed “chopsticks”—actually good for? SpaceX, founded and run by Elon Musk, has already cut the price of getting stuff into space by an order of magnitude. Making rockets fully reusable could cut that price “by another order of magnitude,” writes Eric Hand, a journalist with Science. Just about every aspect of a space-bound economy—running scientific experiments in our solar system, mining asteroids, manufacturing fiber optics and pharmaceuticals in microgravity conditions—runs up against the same basic economic bottleneck: Ejecting things out of our atmosphere is still very expensive. But cheap, large, and reusable rockets are the prerequisite for building any kind of world outside our own, whether it’s a small fleet of automated factories humming in low-orbit or, well, a multiplanetary civilization.
A Quantum Breakthrough
In December, Google announced that its new quantum computer, based on a chip called Willow, solved a math problem in five minutes that would take one of the fastest supercomputers roughly “10 septillion years” to crack. For context, 10 septillion years is the entire history of the universe—about 14 billion years—repeated several trillion times over. The achievement was so audacious that some people speculated that Google’s computer worked by borrowing computing power from parallel universes.
If that paragraph caused a nauseous combination of wonder and bafflement, that feels about right. Quantum computers don’t make sense to most people, in part because they’ve been hyped up as the ultimate supercomputer. But as the science journalist Cleo Abram has explained, that’s a misnomer. You shouldn’t think of quantum computers as being bigger, faster, or smarter than the computers that run our day-to-day life. You should think of them as being fundamentally different.
Traditional computers, such as your smartphone and laptop, process information as a parade of binary switches that flip between 1 and 0. Quantum computers use qubits, which harness quantum mechanics, the weird physics that governs particles smaller than atoms. A qubit can represent both a 1 and a 0 simultaneously, thanks to a property called superposition. As you add more qubits, the computational power grows exponentially, which theoretically allows quantum computers to solve problems of dizzying complexity.
Qubits are finicky and prone to error. That’s one reason quantum computers are held in special containers refrigerated to almost 0 kelvin, a temperature colder than deep space. But Google’s chip, which connects 105 qubits, is among the first to show that the number of errors can decline as more qubits are added—a discovery that future quantum-computing teams can surely build on.
Optimistically, quantum computers could help us understand the rules of subatomic activity, which undergird all physical reality. That could mean designing better electric batteries by allowing researchers to simulate the behavior of electrons in metals, or revolutionizing drug discovery by predicting interactions between our immune system and viruses at the tiniest level.
But the possibilities aren’t all pretty. The U.S., China, and other countries are locked in a multibillion-dollar race toward quantum supremacy, in part because it’s broadly understood that a fully functioning quantum computer could also solve the sort of complex mathematical problems that form the basis of public-key cryptography. In other words, a working quantum computer could render null and void most internet encryption. Here again, the technological power to do more good tends to rise commensurately with the power to cause more chaos.
Another Year of Generative-AI Wizardry
This might just be the era when any plausible list of the year’s most important technological advances ends with the sentence Oh, and also, artificial-intelligence researchers did a bunch of crazy stuff.
In just the past three months, a small study found that ChatGPT outperformed human physicians at solving medical case histories; several AI companies released a torrent of impressive video generators, including Google DeepMind’s Veo 2 and OpenAI’s Sora; Google announced an AI agent whose weather forecasts outperformed the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts—the “world leader in atmospheric prediction,” according to The New York Times; and OpenAI released a new “reasoning” system that blew away industry standards in coding and complex math problems.
Read: The generative-AI revolution may be a bubble
I continue to be interested in how the transformer technology behind large language models handles the most complex logic systems. With ChatGPT, researchers showed that an AI could master the grammar of language well enough to produce plausible sentences, code, and poetry. But the cosmos is filled with other languages—that is, other logical systems that obey a finite number of rules to produce predictable results. One example is DNA. After all, what is DNA if not a language? With a vocabulary based on just four letters, or nucleotides, our genetic code spells out how our proteins, cells, organs, and bodies should function, replicate, and evolve. If one LLM can master the logic of English and computer programming, perhaps another could master the grammar of DNA—allowing scientists to synthesize biology in laboratories the same way you or I could produce synthetic paragraphs on our personal computers.
To that end, this year researchers at the Arc Institute, Stanford University, and UC Berkeley created Evo, a new AI model trained on 2.7 million genomes from microbes and viruses. Evo acts as a master linguist, learning the rules of DNA across billions of years of evolution to predict functions, analyze mutations, and even design new genetic sequences.
What could scientists do with generative AI for biology? Think about CRISPR technology. Scientists use a special protein to cut a cell’s DNA, like a pair of molecular scissors, allowing researchers to make basic edits to the snipped genome. This year, Evo scientists designed a wholly original protein, unknown in nature, that could perform a similar gene-editing task. As Patrick Hsu, the core investigator at Arc Institute and an assistant professor of bioengineering at UC Berkeley, said, just as tools like ChatGPT have “revolutionized how we work with text, audio, and video, these same creative capabilities can now be applied to life’s fundamental codes.”
The Atlantic · by Derek Thompson · December 29, 2024
18. A 9th telecoms firm has been hit by a massive Chinese espionage campaign, the White House says
A 9th telecoms firm has been hit by a massive Chinese espionage campaign, the White House says
AP · December 27, 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — A ninth U.S. telecoms firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said Friday.
Biden administration officials said this month that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon.
But Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, told reporters Friday that a ninth victim had been identified after the administration released guidance to companies about how to hunt for Chinese culprits in their networks.
The update from Neuberger is the latest development in a massive hacking operation that has alarmed national security officials, exposed cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the private sector and laid bare China’s hacking sophistication.
The hackers compromised the networks of telecommunications companies to obtain customer call records and gain access to the private communications of “a limited number of individuals.” Though the FBI has not publicly identified any of the victims, officials believe senior U.S. government officials and prominent political figures are among those whose whose communications were accessed.
Neuberger said officials did not yet have a precise sense how many Americans overall were affected by Salt Typhoon, in part because the Chinese were careful about their techniques, but a “large number” were in the Washington-Virginia area.
Officials believe the goal of the hackers was to identify who owned the phones and, if they were “government targets of interest,” spy on their texts and phone calls, she said.
The FBI said most of the people targeted by the hackers are “primarily involved in government or political activity.”
Neuberger said the episode highlighted the need for required cybersecurity practices in the telecommunications industry, something the Federal Communications Commission is to take up at a meeting next month.
“We know that voluntary cyber security practices are inadequate to protect against China, Russia and Iran hacking of our critical infrastructure,” she said.
The Chinese government has denied responsibility for the hacking.
ERIC TUCKER
Tucker covers national security in Washington for The Associated Press, with a focus on the FBI and Justice Department and the special counsel cases against former President Donald Trump.
twittermailto
AP · December 27, 2024
19. transparency in China, redux
transparency in China, redux
https://cynthiawatson.substack.com/p/transparency-in-china-redux?utm
transparency or threat?
Cynthia Watson
Dec 28, 2024
Send the gift of Actions create consequences this holiday season
Xi Jinping is notably thin-skinned. This is the guy who leads a CCP with a hair under a hundred million members out of a population of 1.4 billion. He is, like so many around the globe, carrying broader girth than he was when visiting Iowa in the 1980s following the Cultural Revolution food insecurity. As a result, Xi’s current profile looks remarkably like that of Winnie the Pooh.
Since actions create consequences, Winnie is hence banned in Beijing. American China hawks may be thrilled to point out the ludicrous, authoritarian nature of this act but the insecurity Xi manifests most definitely signals an anxious bunch in charge, men especially uncomfortable about transparency.
A Wall Street Journal report earlier this month reminded us of the prickliness and sensitivity, thus less-than-fully confident, this supposed omnipotent ruling elite and leader actually are. In particular, Rebecca Feng’s report yet again signals that transparency is not only neglected, but feared by Chinese officials.
The particular she referenced concerns China’s economic growth rates. Xi’s unceasing actions over fully twelve years to reestablish the CCP as the beating heart of Chinese life ensures that the Economic Small Leading Groups, CCP structures to compartmentalize decision-making, and their spokesmen across the business community, will avoid public policy interactions. Many of the thousands of professional economists China actually educated over the past forty-five years recognize the unmet need for reforms to free sustained growth. Instead, the Xi has repeatedly ordered, explicitly or more subtly, that policies will endorse his political vision of an economy under Party control, regardless of evidence of that condition’s decline.
Xi’s fear of anyone challenging his personal will invariably attempts to subjugate increasing tension between a population seeking a better standard of living (even if through temporary pain of reform) and one willing to tolerate Party-centric economic dislocation and stagnation. Don’t get me wrong: China is not in free fall as too many people are saying blithely but the PRC economy most definitely is no longer growing at the purported double digit rates it did when urbanization provided cheap labor. Those days are hard to imagine again as the population decline continues.
But Xi simply does not brook criticism of his policies nor, as the article notes, even reaction from those asked to execute it. In fact, I would argue we are seeing China increasingly pull back from any sort of genuine policy loop at all, though within the opaque Party such mechanisms may still function; without transparency, we simply do not know. The bulk of China’s population, however, is definitely not privy to intra-CCP conversations, merely to the outputs that will shape their lives.
Why does this matter? Xi’s dicta undermine the essential condition of interaction (actions between and among people) by which any regime most effectively governs. Vlad the Impaler does it but through harsher methods such as eradicating journalists or critics who miraculously are the most prone to fall off high level balconies than people in the world.
Transparency provides a pulse for a society by maintaining a feedback loop to policy-makers. Without it, any and all societies run the deep risk of 1. overestimating support, 2. depreciating national discontent and pain (or overly fearing the population on the other hand), and 3. providing evidence the governing elite actually makes the effort to solicit “bottom up” responses. While China is culturally prone to the Confucian norm of a top-down, compartmentalized “need to know” relationship-based order, a concept that the ruler must respond to the needs of the governed still exists. China is not, never has been, and likely never will be a system where the voices of the many decide on the specific individual ruler. But China most definitely retains the “Mandate of Heaven”, an enduring obligation of accountability, albeit weakly at times, to the people under that Mandate.
Xi’s determination to prevent transparency undermines his power, even if he keeps trying to pretend it’s not true. The on-going corruption issues of the PLA, for example, exemplify this. Xi’s twelve year opportunity to remake the PLA leadership, following dozens of senior officer trials and an overall purge against corruption, seems relatively ineffectual if the removal of the Defense Minister only four weeks ago is an indication. After a decade in power, the guys who are flag or general officers are, after all, Xi Jinping’s boys who ought be clean as can be. Instead, he does not want to spend too much time reminding anyone of that link.
The bubbas now facing Party (remember, this is a Party rather than a national army) disciplinary tribunals and lengthy incarcerations obviously were never going to volunteer they were corrupt. But how does a non transparent structure discuss why they become suspected? Power within China relies on relationships so the lack of transparency also prevents understanding whether the whole of the offender’s network of affiliates is gone or to answer whether the offender simply lost patronage within his network. Why should we assume this is any nearer the end of corruption than at any other time? This strikes me as fifty-fifty proposition as this basic element of cleaning up the officer corp will occur without genuine accountability through transparency.
Instead, aborted transparency leads to the type of messaging the Journal highlighted last week: less than subtle advice to tell the best side of the story—invariably Xi’s narrative. But, as has been true for the past twenty-five years at least, does the frustrated segment of the population believe anything the Party says? When Xi took power in 2012, some analysts argued he launched the anti-corruption efforts because of the mounting danger from popular cynicism regarding Party corruption and inability to carry out the societal commitments the CCP promised since its founding in 1921. By the end of Hu Jintao’s two terms in office in 2012, China was confronting expanding socio-economic gaps between the interior and the coastal regions as well as between Party elites and everyone else. Xi, it was said, well understood this risky condition for the PRC.
Instead of remedying the problems, Xi “fighting corruption” simultaneously silenced other mechanisms investigating how well the society is working. Xi has shut down journalists, nascent non-governmental organizations, and foreigners who might provide an alternate view from his. The General Secretary obviously fears anyone who challenging his views of “reality” and the threats to the Middle Kingdom. He wants an environment conducive to CCP governance unchallenged in perpetuity. Economic data, a prime measure of whether the society is offering hopes for various sectors, is always more optimistic when the CCP issues it than statistics merit yet anyone considering correcting data downward faces intimidation least going off the official script might occur.
Reports of the PRC building more detention facilities to support Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption efforts further illustrates the point. While the Party announces the investigations of accused officials, trials are not public explorations before a jury of peers—in a courtroom or broadcast across a nation. Instead, the quick efforts to go through the motions of a court case rarely reveal anything other than the most general parameters of one’s sins. In a society where much relies on relationships as noted, carefully developing, then presenting legal cases publicly would advance popular perception of the integrity of the process. But, Xi and the CCP obviously fear these trials could raise further questions they prefer not to confront.
The Party runs the risk of becoming ever more an echo chamber, discounting serious doubts while harassing those who peddle alternate perspectives. The late reformer Hu Yaobang’s death, even within the party four decades ago, led to student demands for some rudimentary recognition of his efforts on behalf of the people. This set off internal Party fears of losing control, ultimately fueling the Tian’anmen Massacre of June 1989. As the “conscience of the CCP”, Hu’s appeals for some integrity for processes within the Party sanctum was too threatening for many cadres to embrace. When the students and workers tried to commemorate his actions, the angst of more traditional authoritarian voices skyrocketed.
It’s quite possible internal CCP intrigue could be even worse in this increasingly divided China, despite its declining population. Luan or societal chaos is a constant anxiety at all levels so fear begins to appear in unexpected places. The internet is easy to monitor but the Party is hyper-vigilant about how the people are reactioning to any and everything. Perhaps the Party does realize poor transparency has already underplayed adequate realization of social frustration. The difference for Party members versus the average Haiyang or Jin on the street would seem substantial. Holding the Party accountable for its actions may be on the horizon, though who knows quite what would trigger the population to set that accountability into action.
China is not there yet but Xi obviously fears his own population because he does not want to hear from anyone with a view other than his. Not a good idea.
Authoritarians in any country recoil from transparency, of course. No one likes criticism but it represents one of most vital aspects of a functioning, sustainable government. Without it, temptations to manipulate facts, create fictions, and to penalize those most vulnerable explode—as does public frustration. This means Xi’s actions are a cautionary tale for any who rule without fully appreciating the voice of the governed. China doesn’t have a monopoly on non-transparent governance or behavior.
None of this means Xi will fall from power tomorrow, though he could. It means that the task of maintaining CCP power becomes ever more precarious. The lack of transparency may be good for undermining the Party long term but it will also breed greater cynicism of government and its role. Whenever the CCP opens the door for greater discussion, billions of voices will demand to be heard so we should not expect it to be a quick or easy process.
I welcome your thoughts on the role of transparency in governing. Perhaps you see it quite differently so let’s have a discussion. I hope you will offer your thoughts on the phenomenon in China or elsewhere.
Thank you for reading Actions today or any other day. I thank the subscribers who support is vital to all the sources I read.
It’s a dreary, rainy day on Spa Creek. We are woefully low on rain so the drops are welcome but it’s still a less than cheery day outside. It leads me to share Harry’s photos as he stores up energy for the next action packed day.
Be well and be safe. FIN
Rebecca Feng, “China Tells Chief Economists: Be Positive, or Else”, WallStreetJournal.com, 20 December 2024, retrieved at https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-tells-chief-economists-be-positive-or-else-fbb4dcce?mod=Searchresults_pos5&page=1
robert L. Suettinger, The Conscience of the Party: Hu Yaobang , China’s Communist Reformer. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2024.
Yong Xiong, “China is building new detention center all over the country as Xi Jinping widens corruption purge“, CNN, 28 December 2024.
20. Army halted weapon development and pushed tech to soldiers faster: 2024 in review
Army halted weapon development and pushed tech to soldiers faster: 2024 in review - Breaking Defense
The Army spent 2024 pushing its new “transformation in contact” initiative while also pivoting away from several key weapon development initiatives.
breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · December 27, 2024
An antenna farm is set up away from soldiers inside the command post. (Breaking Defense/ Ashley Roque)
WASHINGTON — In what has turned out as Army Secretary Christine Wormuth’s fourth and final year as the service’s top civilian leader and Gen. Randy George’s first full year as chief of staff, the duo shed high-profile modernization programs, revamped others and pushed tech down to soldiers at a faster clip.
Wormuth, slated to wave goodbye to her post as the 25th secretary of the Army in January 2025, largely spent her tenure keeping the service’s high-profile modernization portfolio intact. This year, though, the axe fell on several initiatives starting with the early February aviation shakeup that ended development on the next generation Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), kept General Electric’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP) in the development phase longer, and shelved legacy Shadow and Raven unmanned aerial systems.
“We are learning from the battlefield — especially Ukraine — that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed,” Army Chief Gen. Randy George said in a press release at the time. “Sensors and weapons mounted on a variety of unmanned systems and in space are more ubiquitous, further reaching and more inexpensive than ever before.”
In turn, the service is planning to spend dollars freed up by those decisions to ink a multi-year procurement deal with Lockheed-Sikorsky for the UH-60M Blackhawk line, give Boeing the greenlight to formally begin production on the CH-47F Block II Chinook, buy new drones and more.
[This article is one of many in a series in which Breaking Defense reporters look back on the most significant (and entertaining) news stories of 2024 and look forward to what 2025 may hold.]
The axe officially dropped on another big-ticket development effort just a few weeks later when the Army unfurled its fiscal 2025 budget request: It was halting development on its Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) platform. The goal was to use the modified artillery platform to launch 155-mm rounds out to 70km, an increase from the current max range of up to 30km. But after spending several years integrating and testing out the addition of a 30-foot, 58-caliber gun tube to BAE Systems’ Paladin M109A7 self-propelled howitzer, it was not working out as planned.
However, the requirement for such a weapon remains and the service subsequently announced it has selected five companies — Rheinmetall, BAE Systems, Hanwha, General Dynamics and Elbit Systems — to demo their existing platforms on a roadshow of sorts. In early December, the director of the Long-Range Precision Fires Cross Functional Team, Brig. Gen. Rory Crooks, said those early evaluations should be completed by month’s end. And, he added, so far so good, with early findings indicating that the vendors are “absolutely ready for competitive evaluation,” which means the service may decide not to delve into another lengthy development phase.
“We’re very pleased with what we’re seeing so far, and even some on the autonomy side,” the one-star general told an audience Dec. 3.
Eyeing soldiers’ kit, the service also spent part of the year preparing industry for a possible shake up to its portfolio of night vision devices including the mixed-reality goggles dubbed the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS). Army Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment, for example, were tasked with running Microsoft’s most advanced mixed-reality system, IVAS version 1.2, through the ringer alongside dedicated night vision systems like the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular (ENGV-B) and another system dubbed PVS-14.
“They’re going to provide the best feedback in terms of, here’s what the ENGV-B can provide versus a PVS-14 versus the capability inside of IVAS,” an Army official told Breaking Defense. The goal is for those Rangers to provide a “more mature look” at how they use night vision while also answering questions about the ideal IVAS form factor, battery needs and more.
Those answers are expected to help Army leaders decide the best pair up specific night vision devices with units and define IVAS Next requirements for an upcoming competition.
And when it comes to tying everything together, Army leaders also unveiled plans for command and control (C2) Next, or Next Generation C2. Still in the early days of development, this new prototyping umbrella is slated to include: a single array; a line-of-sight and beyond line-of-sight terminal; modular RF communications software; and edge computing capabilities. Service leaders are planning to test it out next year at the fifth Project Convergence capstone event to make sure they’re on the right track.
Individual programs aside, George rolled out his “transformation in contact” push this year — an initiative designed to get developmental weapons into soldiers’ hands sooner and tweak how formations are organized.
George announced plans to expand his keystone inactive beyond infantry under a 2.0 push. The plan, he said, expands the bottom-up approach to two divisions, two Armored brigade combat teams, two Stryker brigade combat teams, and reserve and guard formations. The service started with the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, 2nd Light Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division and 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division. Next year, it will be expanded beyond infantry under a 2.0 push and will include two divisions, two Armored brigade combat teams, two Stryker brigade combat teams, and reserve and guard formations.
breakingdefense.com · by Ashley Roque · December 27, 2024
21. Democracy in 2024 was noisy and chaotic. It was also resilient.
The subtitle identifies the paradox of American desires. We want democracy but we want efficiency. But our federal democratic republic, with separation of powers and checks and balances, was by design to make the government inefficient so that individual rights could be protected and that tyranny could never exist in America. While surely we can improve the bureaucratic functions if we want representative government (congress) controlling the funds and enacting laws to regulate commerce and provide for the national defense we must be willing to accept inefficiencies in return for protection of our individual freedom. Again, we should strive for efficiency everywhere possible and root out fraud, waste, and abuse but we must understand that the nature of our government structure is designed to create friction to prevent the usurpation of power by any entity or individual.
But we should celebrate our democratic resilience, our national defense, our national prosperity, and our individual freedoms.
Democracy in 2024 was noisy and chaotic. It was also resilient.
Voters want government to work better, but they prefer democratic systems to the alternatives.
Yesterday at 7:00 a.m. EST
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/28/democracy-elections-year-of-democracy-results/
An election watch party is held a Love City Brewing in Philadelphia on Nov. 5. (Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post)
In Japan, the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party suffered its worst defeat in over a decade, and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba became leader of a minority government. In South Korea, the autocratic-leaning president declared martial law in an attempt to sideline the opposition-led parliament but was forced to retreat six hours later, impeached and temporarily removed. France is in political paralysis with its fourth prime minister this year and no party with a majority in Parliament. Germany faces a period of political uncertainty after Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote, and with new elections next year, the far right is expected to make gains.
In the United States, voters chose Donald Trump for a second term with popular-vote and electoral-vote victories, despite dire warnings from his critics that his return to the White House would threaten America’s democratic norms and institutions.
Autocrats are no doubt watching the political upheaval in the world’s most prominent democracies with a mix of triumphalism and glee. The recent apparent chaos seems to confirm the autocrats’ view that the U.S.-led Western international order is in inexorable decline. Even democracy’s proponents might be forgiven for feeling dismayed by the past year and disillusioned about what next year might bring.
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Buck up, America. Help is on the way.
But angst and despair are not warranted.
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Democracy overall faced a major test this year, or a series of tests, with about half the world’s population in more than 50 countries going to the polls in national elections for presidents and parliaments (including votes for the European Parliament in all 27 European Union countries). Many of this year’s contests brought surprises and upheavals. But by and large, the institutional guardrails have held. In most places where the voting was free and fair — and there are obvious exceptions — incumbents who lost accepted their defeats. Post-election violence was largely kept to a minimum.
Election workers assist voters at Salina Elementary School in Dearborn, Michigan, on Nov. 5. (Nic Antaya for The Washington Post)
A voter casts his ballot in the fishing village of Ndayane during Senegal's parliamentary elections on Nov. 17. (John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images)
Democracy, when it was allowed to function, worked exactly as it always has: It was messy and noisy and sometimes produced muddled outcomes with power divided and no clear winners and losers — in other words, a reflection of the polarized state of many modern societies.
To be sure, voters were in a foul mood this year and punished incumbents across the board. But the discontent was not ideological, as ruling parties of the left, right and center were pummeled at the polls.
Voters in Britain turfed out the Conservative Party after 14 years and a revolving door’s list of prime ministers in favor of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists lost to parties of the far left and the far right, leaving Parliament hamstrung with no working majority. American voters rejected President Joe Biden’s chosen successor, Vice President Kamala Harris. And voters in Canada appear to have tired of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after nine years in power and multiple scandals; he has lost support even within his ruling Liberal Party.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is applauded as he steps out of 10 Downing Street in London on July 9. (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images)
Voters in Africa turned against ruling parties and voted for opposition parties and candidates in Senegal, Ghana, Mauritius and Botswana. In all of those cases, the humbled incumbents accepted the will of the voters, demonstrating that a peaceful transfer of power after an election is not just a European or North American concept.
In South Africa, the African National Congress, the continent’s most storied liberation movement, lost its parliamentary majority and was forced to enter into a coalition with the moderate, reform-minded Democratic Party. Similarly, in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party suffered a surprise loss of its majority and was forced into a coalition to retain power.
Voters, when given a real choice, opted for greater freedom and closer ties with the West and rejected attempts at intimidation, manipulation and disinformation. In Taiwan, they brushed aside China’s attempts to sow fear and instead elected President Lai Ching-te, also known as William Lai, whom Beijing excoriated as an independence advocate. In Georgia, the ruling pro-Russian, anti-E.U. Georgian Dream party held on to power in a disputed contest that opponents say was rigged. And results in Romania, in which a pro-Russian presidential candidate won the first round, were canceled by the courts amid allegations of Russian interference.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te (center left) and Taiwanese Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim, center right, outside the headquarters of the Democratic Progressive Party in Taipei on Jan. 13. (Alastair Pike/AFP/Getty Images)
Demonstrators hold Romanian flags during a pro-European rally and in support of democracy at Piata Universitatii square in Bucharest on Dec. 5. (Daniel Mihailescu/AFP/Getty Images)
It’s difficult to draw firm conclusions across countries and continents with differing histories and political traditions. But one is that democracy is proving more resilient than its critics — and even many of its advocates — had thought.
Democracy can be chaotic and cumbersome. Across the world, people want their democratic governments to work better at solving problems, and they are willing to turn out incumbents who don’t deliver. But as brave South Koreans showed when they defied soldiers in the middle of the night and stood up against the short-lived martial law decree, people prefer democratic systems above all the alternatives — and rightly so.
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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