Quotes of the Day:
"There are but two ways of forming an opinion in science. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. Once can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important and theory is merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they no longer fit the theory laid down by authority."
- Robert A. Heinlein - Life Line
"The fourth wave of disinformation slowly built and crested in the mid-2010s, with disinformation reborn and reshaped by new technologies and internet culture. The old art of slow-moving, highly skilled, close-range, labor intensive psychological influence had turned high-tempo, low-skilled, remote, and disjointed. Active measures were now not only more active than ever before but less measured - so much so that the term itself became contested and unsettled."
- Thomas Rid, Active Measures - The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare
“The most effective strategies do not depend solely on violence—though this can play an instrumental role, by demonstrating superiority as much as expressing aggression—but benefit instead from the ability to forge coalitions. Little in the rest of this book will suggest that this list should be expanded. The elements of strategic behavior have not changed, only the complexity of the situations in which they must be applied.”
- Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History
1. Biden to Approve Austin's Request to Make COVID-19 Vaccine Mandatory for Service Members
2. Austin Seeks Presidential Approval for Mandatory Troop Vaccinations by Mid-September
3. Pentagon chief under fire for withholding information about deadly Kenya attack
4. U.S. Special Forces conduct joint training with once-controversial Japanese Special Ops
5. British special forces in Yemen, hunting for group that struck Mercer Street tanker
6. Joe Biden Should Follow George Washington's Lead and 'Inoculate All the Troops’
7. Pentagon moves to mandate coronavirus vaccination for all troops
8. On Afghanistan’s Front Line, There Are No Good Choices
9. A Climate of Catastrophe
10. A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns. But How Hot Is Up to Us.
11. US deserves to be called world's biggest anti-pandemic failure, report says
12. Statement by President Joe Biden on COVID-19 Vaccines for Service Members
13. ‘Climate change is going to cost us’: How the US military is preparing for harsher environments
14. How will the Pentagon close the homeland missile defense gap?
15. Opinion | Wall Street is failing to protect American investors from the Chinese Communist Party
16. Untying the Gordian Knot: Why the Taliban is Unlikely to Break Ties with Al-Qaeda
17. A Reluctant Embrace: China’s New Relationship with the Taliban
18. As U.S. Leaves Afghanistan, History Suggests It May Struggle to Stay Out
19. Chinese pressure sparks debate on Taiwan’s resilience
20. Strait of Emergency? Debating Beijing’s Threat to Taiwan
21. #Reviewing The 2021 Global Risks Report
1. Biden to Approve Austin's Request to Make COVID-19 Vaccine Mandatory for Service Members
Biden to Approve Austin's Request to Make COVID-19 Vaccine Mandatory for Service Members
By mid-September, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III will request a waiver from President Joe Biden to make the COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for service members, Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby said today.
Austin released a message to the troops saying that after consultations with senior civilian and military officials, making vaccinations mandatory is the best way forward. More than 73 percent of active duty personnel have received at least one shot of the vaccines to date.
Pentagon Briefing
Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby holds a press briefing, at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., Aug. 9, 2021.
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Photo By: Air Force Staff Sgt. Jack Sanders, DOD
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President Biden replied almost immediately.
"I strongly support Secretary Austin's message to the force today on the Department of Defense's plan to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of required vaccinations for our service members not later than mid-September," Biden said in a message released by the White House. "Secretary Austin and I share an unshakable commitment to making sure our troops have every tool they need to do their jobs as safely as possible. These vaccines will save lives. Period. They are safe. They are effective. Over 350 million shots have been given in the United States alone. Being vaccinated will enable our service members to stay healthy, to better protect their families, and to ensure that our force is ready to operate anywhere in the world."
The Food and Drug Administration is expected to give full approval to the vaccines, possibly by the end of the month, Kirby said. If that happens, Austin will immediately add the vaccines to the mandatory military list, Kirby said.
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The services have time to plan how they will implement the program, and they have been working on how they will vaccinate the rest of the active and reserve component. Kirby said there is no shortage of vaccine and the department does not think this will be a limiting factor.
A full third of Austin's message to the force urged service members not to wait: To get the vaccine right away. "You can consider this memo, not just a warning order to the services, but to the troops themselves," Kirby said. "We certainly hope that they will take advantage of the opportunity to get the vaccines now that are available now to them on a voluntary basis. That's obviously the potential effect that we'd like to see achieved as a result of the secretary's message. But if they don't, eventually we're going to get to a mandatory sort of regimen and we'll take care of it then."
Government Resources
2. Austin Seeks Presidential Approval for Mandatory Troop Vaccinations by Mid-September
I wonder what the attrition rate will be and how many service members we lose over this? But doing this is the only way to protect the force and allow the military to "fight through" COVID and not weaken military readiness.
Austin Seeks Presidential Approval for Mandatory Troop Vaccinations by Mid-September
The COVID-19 vaccine will be mandatory for service members by mid-September, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said in a message to the force released today.
President Joe Biden asked Austin to consider how and when the COVID-19 vaccine could be added to the list of required vaccines for all service members when the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus began to cause a spike in cases July 29. Austin, who was in Vietnam when the president made his speech on the subject, promised to "not let grass grow" as he made his decision.
"Our men and women in uniform who protect this country from grave threats should be protected as much as possible from getting COVID-19," Biden said during his July 29 speech.
Austin consulted with Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the service secretaries and the rest of the Joint Chiefs in making his decision.
"Based on these consultations and on additional discussions with leaders of the White House COVID-19 Task Force, I want you to know that I will seek the president's approval to make the vaccines mandatory no later than mid-September, or immediately upon the U.S. Food and Drug Administration licensure, whichever comes first," the secretary said in his memo.
News reports say full FDA licensure for the Pfizer vaccine is expected shortly.
Right now, 73% of active duty personnel have at least one dose of the vaccine, DOD officials said.
All DOD leaders will be involved in expanding the program. "I have every confidence that service leadership and your commanders will implement this new vaccination program with professionalism, skill and compassion," Austin wrote in the memo. "We will have more to say about this as implementation plans are fully developed."
Austin also said the department will comply with the president's direction regarding additional restrictions and requirements for unvaccinated federal personnel. These requirements cover military and civilian personnel.
The Delta variant is hitting hardest in states with large unvaccinated populations, White House officials said. In his July statement, Biden said the only way out of the pandemic is through vaccines. He called it "a life and death" decision.
The DOD will keep a close eye on infection rates "and the impact these rates might have on our readiness," Austin said. "I will not hesitate to act sooner or recommend a different course to the president if I feel the need to do so."
Government Resources
3. Pentagon chief under fire for withholding information about deadly Kenya attack
Excerpts:
The attack was carried out by al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda affiliate. It began before dawn, and spiraled into hours of violence.
Army Spec. Henry J. Mayfield Jr., 23, and defense contractors Bruce Triplett, 64, and Dustin Harrison, 47, were killed, and at least two other American defense contractors were wounded on a base in Manda Bay. Six contractor-operated aircraft also were destroyed or damaged, U.S. military officials said at the time. They were believed to include important surveillance aircraft used over Somalia.
The attack highlighted continued U.S. vulnerabilities in Africa, and marked the deadliest attack on Americans since a 2017 disaster in Niger, where four U.S. soldiers were killed after their unit was overrun by militants on a mission in which they had limited support.
In the aftermath of the Manda Bay attack, senior U.S. military officials launched an investigation to scrutinize what happened and how such a significant attack was allowed to happen. They did so as the Trump administration was openly considering ending the U.S. military’s counterterrorism mission in Somalia.
Pentagon chief under fire for withholding information about deadly Kenya attack
Frustrated lawmakers are pressuring Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for information about an attack last year in Kenya that killed three Americans, saying it is “simply unacceptable” for the Pentagon to stonewall Congress.
The lawmakers said in a letter sent to the Pentagon on Friday that the Defense Department has not responded to numerous requests for information since the Jan. 5, 2020, attack was sprung by militants on a seaside airfield near the Somali border, and that members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform expect more from the Pentagon and U.S. Africa Command.
“On February 5, 2020, the Subcommittee on National Security wrote to DOD requesting a briefing on the attack,” the lawmakers wrote. “Seventeen months later — despite repeated requests to your office and AFRICOM — DOD has not provided any substantive information about the attack or the security lapses that contributed to it, citing ongoing investigations.”
The letter was signed by Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.), the subcommittee’s chairman, and Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), its top Republican.
The attack was carried out by al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda affiliate. It began before dawn, and spiraled into hours of violence.
Army Spec. Henry J. Mayfield Jr., 23, and defense contractors Bruce Triplett, 64, and Dustin Harrison, 47, were killed, and at least two other American defense contractors were wounded on a base in Manda Bay. Six contractor-operated aircraft also were destroyed or damaged, U.S. military officials said at the time. They were believed to include important surveillance aircraft used over Somalia.
The attack highlighted continued U.S. vulnerabilities in Africa, and marked the deadliest attack on Americans since a 2017 disaster in Niger, where four U.S. soldiers were killed after their unit was overrun by militants on a mission in which they had limited support.
In the aftermath of the Manda Bay attack, senior U.S. military officials launched an investigation to scrutinize what happened and how such a significant attack was allowed to happen. They did so as the Trump administration was openly considering ending the U.S. military’s counterterrorism mission in Somalia.
In April, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby announced that the investigation was complete. But rather than accept Africa Command’s assessment of its actions, Austin directed an independent review of the investigation.
Kirby said at the time that the Pentagon would not make any announcements about the investigation’s findings until the independent review — led by Gen. Paul Funk, the commanding general of Army Training and Doctrine Command — was complete.
About a week later, Army Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, who leads Africa Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Austin had given the military “a target date of 90 days to get the report out.” Nothing has been released.
A Defense Department spokesman, Marine Lt. Col. Anton Semelroth, said in an email that the Pentagon is aware of the lawmakers’ request. The review that Austin directed “will provide added insight, perspective and the ability to assess the totality of this tragic event involving multiple Military Services and Department of Defense components,” Semelroth wrote.
Austin wants to ensure there is a full examination and consideration of the contributing factors in the attack, and that appropriate action is taken to reduce the possibility of a similar situation in the future, Semelroth added.
“The families impacted deserve nothing less,” he said.
Semelroth declined to say whether anyone has been fired as a result of the investigation, or if any of its findings already have been acted upon. Funk “will take the time he deems appropriate” to complete the independent review, and updates will be provided to the families of those who died and to Congress before the public is briefed, he added.
Lynch and Grothman said in their letter that it is Congress’s “solemn constitutional duty” to conduct oversight of U.S. military operations, and that they expect the Pentagon will “produce” the initial investigation report to their subcommittee by Friday, as well as the independent review once it is complete.
The lawmakers also requested a briefing about the investigation and subsequent review by Sept. 30.
4. U.S. Special Forces conduct joint training with once-controversial Japanese Special Ops
Excerpts:
That said, their unit challenge coin has written on it, "Bushido is our code," Miani says.
Having regularly conducted training alongside 1st Special Forces Group at Fort Lewis and in Japan itself, the two allied SOF units have built a strong rapport. During the recent training mission in Guam, the ODA involved made sure that bilingual Green Berets were strategically placed within the formation of the joint force to ensure clear lines of communication.
As a new security posture emerges in the Pacific theater, post-World War II norms are increasingly challenged not only by a nuclear North Korea but also by China's aggressive territorial expansion in the South China Sea and belligerence towards neighboring countries such as the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan.
Whether these security dynamics evolve into a new Cold War remains to be seen but Japan has publicly aligned itself with the U.S. to confront whatever the future may hold.
U.S. Special Forces conduct joint training with once-controversial Japanese Special Ops
This summer American Special Operations and Airborne Infantry troops have conducted joint training with the Japanese Self Defense Forces, conducting airborne operations together in Guam for the first time.
This collaboration and public announcement between the United States military and the fairly controversial Japanese Special Operations troops is likely designed to send a message to regional rivals in the Pacific.
As a part of the Defender Pacific 21 exercise, 1st Special Forces Group soldiers partnered with Japanese Self Defense Forces flew in two C-130 aircraft from Tokyo, Japan to Guam, where they conducted a mass tactical simulated combat jump onto an airfield. Hitting the ground, the joint team assembled and hit several training objectives including an anti-aircraft gun and an enemy headquarters building.
“This experience provided valuable insight into JGSDF capabilities and maneuver techniques; giving insight into how we can better support their operations in the future,” a U.S. Special Forces officer is quoted in an Army press release of the event.
More to the point, he added, "The one element Guam adds is that it showcases the ability to project bi-lateral force throughout the first, second island chain and the whole INDOPACOM [Indo-Pacific Command] region."
While the Japanese unit involved in the exercise was not announced, it would have been the 1st Airborne Brigade and/or a smaller unit garrisoned alongside them, Japan's Special Forces Group.
The decision to create Japanese Special Forces in 2003 was a controversial one, with Article 9 of the Japanese constitution preventing their military from operating outside of Japan and Japanese territorial waters.
These restrictions were placed on Japan after the conclusion of hostilities in World War II by the United States, but have since been reinterpreted by Japanese officials and the Diet to allow self-defense forces to support allies engaged in combat operations.
"It was pretty controversial and as a result it was fairly secretive and they were very careful with how they used it," former 1st Special Forces Group officer Lino Miani said of Japanese Special Forces.
As a Green Beret, he had visibility on the unit's early years as U.S. Special Forces helped support its inception. In 2003 while the Japanese were researching how to create a SOF capability, 1st Special Forces Group helped them develop their Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E).
According to Miani, Japanese Special Forces are designed to conduct the full spectrum of Special Operations missions on air, land, and sea.
"They're very cagey about their history," he said. "They don't want their lineage to be painted with the same brush as the Kempeitai and the other 2nd Directorate special operations guys got painted within World War II."
That said, their unit challenge coin has written on it, "Bushido is our code," Miani says.
Having regularly conducted training alongside 1st Special Forces Group at Fort Lewis and in Japan itself, the two allied SOF units have built a strong rapport. During the recent training mission in Guam, the ODA involved made sure that bilingual Green Berets were strategically placed within the formation of the joint force to ensure clear lines of communication.
As a new security posture emerges in the Pacific theater, post-World War II norms are increasingly challenged not only by a nuclear North Korea but also by China's aggressive territorial expansion in the South China Sea and belligerence towards neighboring countries such as the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan.
Whether these security dynamics evolve into a new Cold War remains to be seen but Japan has publicly aligned itself with the U.S. to confront whatever the future may hold.
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5. British special forces in Yemen, hunting for group that struck Mercer Street tanker
British special forces in Yemen, hunting for group that struck Mercer Street tanker
i24NEWSAugust 09, 2021, 08:10 AMlatest revision August 09, 2021, 08:24 AM
SAS operators working alongside US team already in theater
British special operations soldiers are operating in the east of Yemen, hunting for the platform that launched the attack which struck the Mercer Street tanker, British daily the Express reported.
Iranian-backed Houthis are assessed to have launched the drone responsible for the explosion on the Israeli-linked vessel, which killed a British security contractor and Romanian crew member.
The Briton was named as former British Army soldier Adrian Underwood.
The team of around 40 operators from the Special Air Service (SAS) landed in Yemen Sunday and is working with local fixers to facilitate the operation.
Fearing that Tehran has armed the Houthi group with a long-range drone attack capability that threatens shipping in the Gulf of Oman, the ground team is equipped with electronic warfare equipment to detect such activity.
The SAS team is working alongside a US special operations team that was already present in theater to train Saudi Arabian commandoes.
“Everything points to the drone being launched from Yemen. The concern now is that an extended range drone will give them a new capability,” a senior UK military source told the Express Sunday.
6. Joe Biden Should Follow George Washington's Lead and 'Inoculate All the Troops’
There are still leadership lessons to be learned from George Washington. We must protect the force.
Joe Biden Should Follow George Washington's Lead and 'Inoculate All the Troops’
TIME · by American Honor: The Creation of the Nation's Ideals during the Revolutionary Era
With eyes long fixed on external enemies, the military during the American Revolution was forced to grapple with an internal one, “the most dangerous enemy”—a virus. The epidemic continued to ravage those in and out of uniform, causing more “dread from it than from the Sword of the Enemy.” The nation had reached the point where “no precaution can prevent it from running through the whole of our Army.” Though previously resistant to doing so, the commander-in-chief found himself with no alternative but to “inoculate all the troops.”
It was Feb. 5 1777, and General George Washington reported to Congress his unilateral decision to combat a smallpox outbreak that virtually coincided with the first shots of the American Revolution two years earlier. With the mortality rate approaching 16%, nearly 90% of all American Revolution War deaths resulted from smallpox. “Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure,” Washington reflected in a letter to Dr. William Shippen Jr, then-director general of the Hospitals of the Continental Army, on Feb. 6. Washington ordered Shippen to launch the first mass inoculation of any military in history—a move that saved the army and undoubtedly helped ensure the survival of the United States. As the nation and the military today face another “invisible enemy” in COVID-19, President Biden should look to Washington’s precedent to maintain military readiness and national defense.
President Biden in late July instructed the Department of Defense to explore “how and when” to impose mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for active-duty military. The announcement came as a leaked internal presentation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labeled the Delta variant as “more transmissible than” smallpox. Reports indicate that a decision on mandatory vaccinations for the military may be imminent. Washington, as commander-in-chief, mandated inoculations to preserve the army and its combat power. Having been incapacitated for nearly a month by smallpox as a teenager while visiting Barbados in 1751, Washington understood the risks. His decision preserved the nation. Decisiveness from the current President could likewise protect the country today.
Smallpox, like COVID-19, was virally transferred by person-to-person contact—Washington likely caught it dining out for breakfast. Like today, there was fervent skepticism, denial and even outright rejection of inoculation dating back to its introduction in Boston in 1721 (via an enslaved African). There were even anti-inoculation riots and attacks on a doctor in Virginia in 1768–69. Unlike today’s vaccinations (which contain an inactive strain), 18th-century inoculations inserted the live virus (via pus from an active sufferer) into an incision. The person contracted smallpox, but typically a less severe form—leading to a greater likelihood of survival. Still, the patient required quarantining for a roughly four-week infectious period before acquiring lifelong immunity. It was risky and time-consuming but offered better odds than the alternative.
It was nearly impossible to prevent the spread of this pathogen in an army camp before germ theory and where even basic hygiene was lacking—forget about social distancing. Smallpox struck in Boston in 1775 as Washington took command of the Continental Army nearby. Washington was no anti-vaxxer—he encouraged his wife (who traveled with the army) and stepson to get inoculated—but he initially banned military inoculations, fearing that they sacrificed combat effectiveness because it meant taking soldiers from the field during the critical early years of the war.
Anticipating the British invasion of New York in 1776, Washington warned that inoculation “might prove fatal to the army” by removing those who “may soon be called to action.” For Washington, the British military was the immediate threat. Any American officer who dared “suffer himself to be inoculated, will be cashiered and turned out of the army and have his name published in the newspapers throughout the continent, as an Enemy and traitor to his country,” Washington declared.
Washington’s stance was about maintaining the army necessary to defeat the British and gain liberty and independence. While the Continental Army required infected soldiers to quarantine under guard and limited interactions with civilians in an effort to slow the spread of smallpox, the virus still took hold. By the winter of 1777, Washington was forced to regard the virus as a greater threat than British bayonets.
The Pentagon has similarly labeled COVID-19 a national security threat. Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Jamal Brown has expressed the same sentiments as Washington. The military must counter the Delta variant because it is “vital to protecting our force and the nation we defend,” he said in late July. The Military Health System has declared vaccination to be central to “military public health and deployment readiness.”
Will the U.S. military be called into action to face a vaccinated adversary? (The Continental Army had to do this very thing when it faced the British army which had long been exposed to the smallpox virus and had a higher degree of immunity than the Americans.) Or maybe they’ll be sent into a Delta-spiking hotspot? Or, as Washington fretted over, what if the military inadvertently spreads the virus to a civilian population (foreign or domestic) while engaging in a mission? Misinformation campaigns have already tried to pin the pandemic on the U.S. Army—such a mishap would have global consequences. There are major defense, diplomatic and civil-military implications at stake.
Biden as commander-in-chief, like Washington, has the authority to order mandatory military vaccination. This should not be confused with mandatory civilian vaccination. It will undoubtedly also conform to established religious, medical and administrative exemptions for those on active duty. Currently, active-duty military members are subjected to upwards of 14 mandatory vaccines, depending on where they serve. This includes in some cases vaccines for anthrax and smallpox (which was officially eradicated by vaccinations in 1980). Those who refuse may face discipline, including a court-martial.
Aside from the COVID-19 vaccine’s politicization before and after the 2020 election, the major hurdle is the rule that prevents the military from requiring a treatment that is not fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Reports indicate, however, that approval is likely coming next month. There was no such oversight in Washington’s time, but he justified a more dangerous inoculation based on military necessity. If an army was not immune to smallpox, how could it defend the nation during a pandemic? The inoculations proved extremely effective. The Continental Army gained immunity and won the war.
Despite increased competition with large foreign powers, international deployments, tensions within Congress, widespread political discord and disagreements with state governments, COVID-19 in 2021 (like smallpox in 1777) is the most immediate threat to the military and the country. Biden’s words of “how and when” suggest that a future mandate is inevitable.
Washington reached his decision because he knew keeping the military safe in the midst of great strife, war and uncertainty was pivotal to the survival of the nation. Only about 64% of the active-duty military members are fully vaccinated, but they along with the unvaccinated may be called upon to defend the U.S. or deploy anywhere around the world at a moment’s notice. The military constantly assesses risks during its planning process, historically and today, and Washington was unwilling to take a chance with the lives of his troops or the safety of his country.
The “war has changed,” the CDC proclaimed in late July. Washington knew it in 1777 too. The order required the general’s “most mature deliberation”—but he gave it. More than 244 years later, it is President Biden’s turn to mandate vaccinations for the troops.
TIME · by American Honor: The Creation of the Nation's Ideals during the Revolutionary Era
7. Pentagon moves to mandate coronavirus vaccination for all troops
Excerpts:
In a separate message, the Pentagon’s top uniformed officer, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, said that medical professionals in the Defense Department have recommended vaccination as a “necessary step to sustain our readiness and protect our force, our coworkers, our families, and our communities.”
“Mandating vaccines in the military is not new,” said Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Since the first days of basic training and throughout our service, we’ve received multiple vaccines. We have proven processes with trusted and skilled medical professionals.”
Senior military leaders have wrestled with coronavirus outbreaks throughout the pandemic, including one that crippled the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt while at sea last year. The ship spent weeks in port in Guam, with more than 1,200 sailors of about 4,800 aboard testing positive for the virus and one dying.
Overall, 28 service members have died as a result of the pandemic, according to Pentagon statistics. An additional 254 civilians working for the Defense Department, 16 dependents and 87 defense contractors also have died.
Pentagon moves to mandate coronavirus vaccination for all troops
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will seek to mandate coronavirus vaccination for all U.S. service members by mid-September and could begin requiring inoculation even sooner if a vaccine receives full approval from the Food and Drug Administration, the Pentagon said Monday.
The effort is an acknowledgment that rising infection rates across the country pose a particular threat to military readiness, and it follows a months-long campaign by senior defense officials to cajole the nation’s 1.3 million active duty service members to get vaccinated voluntarily. The Biden administration, alarmed by continued spread of the virus’s delta variant and vaccination rates that remain low in several pockets of the country, has directed agencies throughout the federal government to devise such plans.
About 65 percent of the active-duty military is fully inoculated, according to Pentagon data, but rates vary significantly by service as misinformation about the vaccines’ safety has fueled reluctance among a large segment of the workforce. The Navy, which leads the way, says that about 75 percent of its people are fully inoculated. On the low end, the Marine Corps stands at about 59 percent.
“The intervening few weeks will be spent preparing for this transition,” Austin said in a single-page memo circulated to the Defense Department workforce. “I have every confidence that Service leadership and your commanders will implement this new vaccination program with professionalism, skill, and compassion. We will have more to say about this as implementation plans are fully developed.”
The message stopped short of establishing a deadline by which all personnel must be vaccinated and did not set a time frame for the individual services to provide plans to Austin. It comes about a week after President Biden announced that he will require federal employees to get vaccinated or undergo repeated testing.
Biden, who must approve Austin’s request, quickly praised the decision as millions of Americans remain resistant to vaccines, and governments and employers increasingly turn to mandates. Overall, only about half of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, although rates have begun to rise amid the most recent surge in hospitalizations.
“We cannot let up in the fight against COVID-19, especially with the Delta variant spreading rapidly through unvaccinated populations,” the president said in the statement. “We are still on a wartime footing, and every American who is eligible should take immediate steps to get vaccinated right away.”
In a separate message, the Pentagon’s top uniformed officer, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, said that medical professionals in the Defense Department have recommended vaccination as a “necessary step to sustain our readiness and protect our force, our coworkers, our families, and our communities.”
“Mandating vaccines in the military is not new,” said Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Since the first days of basic training and throughout our service, we’ve received multiple vaccines. We have proven processes with trusted and skilled medical professionals.”
Senior military leaders have wrestled with coronavirus outbreaks throughout the pandemic, including one that crippled the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt while at sea last year. The ship spent weeks in port in Guam, with more than 1,200 sailors of about 4,800 aboard testing positive for the virus and one dying.
Overall, 28 service members have died as a result of the pandemic, according to Pentagon statistics. An additional 254 civilians working for the Defense Department, 16 dependents and 87 defense contractors also have died.
Coronavirus vaccines are presently approved with an emergency-use authorization as the FDA continues to test them. Senior Pentagon officials have stopped short of requiring vaccination in the interim, while participating in public-awareness campaigns urging service members to get vaccinated.
John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said that if the FDA grants full approval for a coronavirus vaccine before September, Austin will have authority to require personnel to get that version of the vaccine immediately, without Biden’s approval. Media reports indicate that Pfizer’s version of the vaccine could receive full approval by late August, he noted.
Once a coronavirus vaccine is required for military personnel, it will likely be tracked as a part of each service member’s medical record along with other compulsory vaccinations. Kirby declined to speculate on what will happen to service members who refuse to take it once it is required, but in the past the military has removed such people from service through administrative separation.
In coming days, officials who lead the individual service branches will be required to prepare a plan for Austin detailing how they will carry out the mandate. Kirby said that the memo released Monday serves as a “warning order” for the services and individual troops to get ready.
In his memo, Austin urged service members not to wait for the mandate, emphasizing that the vaccines approved for emergency use in the United States have proven “safe and highly effective.”
“They will protect you and your family,” Austin wrote. “They will protect your unit, your ship, and your co-workers. And they will ensure we remain the most lethal and ready force in the world.”
8. On Afghanistan’s Front Line, There Are No Good Choices
Thomas Gibbons-Neff continues to write the first draft of the chapter on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. His providing some of the best sustained reporting from Afghanistan.
On Afghanistan’s Front Line, There Are No Good Choices
- Aug. 9, 2021
- Updated 3:38 p.m. ET
A Humvee windshield shattered by a bullet impact in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
For the past month, Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city, has been under siege by Taliban fighters. Families stuck between them and government forces have almost nowhere to go.
A Humvee windshield shattered by a bullet impact in Kandahar, Afghanistan.Credit...
Photographs by Jim Huylebroek
- Aug. 9, 2021Updated 12:16 p.m. ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — As the first chatter of gunfire began, a police unit tested its heavy machine gun. The gunner pointed the barrel in the vicinity of the Taliban front line and fired in an ear-shattering clap clap clap. Where the bullets landed was anyone’s guess.
The sun was just slipping behind the horizon and the call to prayer began to echo through Kandahar city. The police unit, embedded on the edge of a neighborhood made up of mostly tan, mud brick houses and low-slung shops, prepared for another long night.
At midnight, the 29-year-old police commander said, was when “the real game begins.”
Afghan police special forces firing a heavy machine gun toward Taliban-controlled territory.
Since the U.S. withdrawal began in May, the Taliban have captured more than half of Afghanistan’s 400-odd districts. And for the past month, Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanistan, has been under siege by Taliban fighters in what may be the most important fight for the country’s future so far.
Security forces have tried to hold them off as other provincial capitals have fallen elsewhere, including Kunduz, the largest city to be captured by the Taliban. In the last four days alone, insurgents seized six capitals, opening a bloody new chapter in the war and further revealing how little control the government has over the country without the backing of the American military.
The insurgents are desperate to capture Kandahar, as the Taliban first took root in its neighboring districts in the 1990s before seizing the city itself and announcing their emirate. And the government is desperate to defend Kandahar, a symbol of the state’s reach and an economic hub essential for trade to and from Pakistan through its checkpoints, bridges and highways.
On a warm evening earlier this month, both Afghan and Taliban flags flew atop a nearby mountain, a Buddhist-turned-Islamic shrine cut into its side — the clearest marker of Kandahar’s western front line.
To the east of the mountain, a mix of Afghan army, commando and special police units were desperately trying to hold the city, despite being exhausted, underfed and underequipped.
Nearby, the bursts of gunfire and crump of explosions signal Raz Mohammed, 23, to begin his nightly routine of moving his four children to the basement. He turns on an aging floor fan to try and dim the sounds of war long enough for them to get a few hours of sleep.
Sarposa Prison in Kandahar.
The rusty appliance is a tepid defense to the hellaciously loud firefights that have dragged on night after night in Kandahar. The fighting is especially fierce around Sarposa. There, the Taliban have dug in, using people’s homes and whatever terrain they can for cover.
In the beginning, Mr. Mohammed’s sons and daughters screamed out in terror whenever the shooting began, but now the violence has become routine. Many of their neighbors have already fled for more secure parts of the city. But so far Mr. Mohammed has chosen to stay; his home has been in his family for 60 years.
And he has nowhere else to go.
“If I leave, I’ll have to live on the street,” said Mr. Mohammed, his sons around him, loitering in the shade of a shop that he owns.
But as each night ruptures with rocket strikes and gunfire, he knows his family will be forced to leave if the bombardment gets any closer. They will be able to spend a few nights at most at his relatives’ already-cramped house before ending up in one of the half-dozen or so refugee camps that have sprung up around the city, barren, devoid of enough water and food and oppressively hot.
Raz Mohammed and sons in the basement of their house, which is now their bedroom.
This is the stark choice for thousands of families in one of Afghanistan’s most prominent metropolises and also for many spread across large swathes of the country. Though Kandahar is a city whose historical and strategic significance have turned it into a symbolic focal point for both the Taliban and government’s military campaigns.
“I just want this uncertainty to end,” Mr. Mohammed said, the morning after another long battle just a few hundred yards from his home.
The Fight for Kandahar City
Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a Times correspondent based in Kabul, captured a battle between Afghan government forces and Taliban fighters on the frontline in western Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanistan, in early August.
Sulaiman Shah lived just blocks from Mr. Mohammed, in a different neighborhood that was enveloped by the Taliban’s recent advance. Last month, the short and wiry 20-year-old made the decision that Mr. Mohammed has so far resisted.
When the fighting got too close, he fled his home with his wife and months-old son, finding sanctuary in a refugee camp near the airport in the eastern part of Kandahar, far from the front lines. His family now lives inside a tent made of a tarp and tied-together scarves.
Sulaiman Shah now lives between a tarp and tied-together scarves with his family in one of the several refugee camps that are now dotted around the city.
Every day he waits in line for water dispensed from a silver tank that is infrequently refilled and far from enough for the camp’s roughly 5,000 residents who must endure temperatures that regularly break triple digits.
This camp was hastily organized in what was earlier the provincial office for the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs. Government officials said it had ample space after being closed during the coronavirus pandemic, with enough toilets for the influx of displaced people in the city and the surrounding districts. For now, that means one toilet per 60 people.
No international assistance has reached any of the city’s refugee camps yet. Volunteers, backed by a local parliamentarian, peel fly-covered potatoes that they cook and distribute later in the day. The grounds are an unorganized mess of homemade tents, families sprawled out on the ground and an empty government building that reeks of human excrement.
“If they want to help us, they should stop fighting in our neighborhood so we can go back to our homes,” Mr. Shah said in a simple plea to the government, standing beside what few belongings he managed to take with him.
A woman and children gathered their belongings and fled their house in Kandahar.
Back in Sarposa, Atta Mohammed, 63, a staunch and battered father of 12 children who so far has opted to stay in his home, has tried to stop the war on his own terms, at least by negotiating with the Afghan forces arrayed directly behind his home.
Trapped between government and Taliban lines on the edge of the neighborhood, Atta Mohammed, who is of no relation to Raz Mohammed, has made a simple request to those troops: Stop shooting.
“We don’t care who is ruling,” Atta Mohammed said from a shaded alleyway next to his home of 46 years. “I just want to be on one side or the other.”
Atta Mohammed opted to stay as the insurgents closed in.
Atta Mohammed’s shops were destroyed soon after the fighting began last month. And, like many in the neighborhood who have refused to leave, he fears that he or one of his children could become the victim of the fighting, like many of the hundreds of civilians who have already been killed or injured, according to the United Nations.
Just a week or so ago, a blind burst of gunfire in Sarposa had struck a 10-year-old boy in the head.
The child, Hanif, was trying to help fix a pump in his yard when the stray bullet struck his temple. Now he was in intensive care at the nearby Mirwais Regional Hospital, blind and crying out in pain. He was just one in a flood of people, young and old, who had come through its doors in recent weeks because of indiscriminate fire. On average, the war meant each day saw roughly five dead and 15 wounded pass through the hospital’s doors.
Hanif’s older brother, named Mohammed, sat beside him, trying to calm the flailing boy as he explained that his wounded sibling’s condition was not improving.
Hanif was struck in the temple by a stray bullet as he was trying to help fix a pump in his yard.
The doctors, Mohammed said, recommend that his brother go to Pakistan for treatment, an impossibility as they had little money. Their father’s car business had collapsed following the Taliban’s assault on the city, and they could no longer return to their home because it was too dangerous.
Hanif clawed at what he could not see and rolled over in the bed, crying out, his head wrapped in bandages: “I want to go home,” he repeated over and over.
His screams echoed down the hallway.
Taimoor Shah and Baryalai Rahimi contributed reporting.
9. A Climate of Catastrophe
Excerpt:
The IPCC report doesn’t justify putting the U.S. economy into the hands of government. A sensible climate policy will continue to monitor trends, while allowing a free economy to find solutions and build the wealth that will allow for adaptation and amelioration if the worst happens. This lacks the drama of the Apocalypse, but it will better serve the world.
A Climate of Catastrophe
The facts in the new U.N. report aren’t as dire as its advertising.
WSJ · by The Editorial Board
***
The gargantuan report will take time to plow through, but a read of the 41-page “summary for policymakers” and perusal of the rest suggests that there is no good reason to sacrifice your life, or even your standard of living, to the climate gods. Hot rhetoric aside, the report doesn’t tell us much that’s new since its last report in 2013, and some of that is less dire.
“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,” says the report in its lead conclusion. But no one denies that the climate has been warming, and no one serious argues that humans play no role. How could eight billion people not? Adding the adjective “unequivocal” adds emphasis but not context.
The report says the Earth has warmed by 1.1 degree Celsius since the last half of the 19th century, which is 0.1 degree warmer than its last estimate. This is not apocalyptic. The five-alarm headlines arise from the predictions of future temperature increases if greenhouse gas emissions, especially CO2, continue to increase.
Yet the report’s estimate of “climate sensitivity”—its response to a doubling of CO2—has moderated at the top end. The likely sensitivity range, says the report, is 2.5 to 4 degrees Celsius higher than in the late 1800s. The likely range was 1.5 to 4.5 in the 2013 report.
The new report offers five climate scenarios based on estimates of CO2 emissions. The intermediate scenario’s “best estimate” is a 1.5 degree increase by 2040 and a range of 2.1 to 3.5 by 2100. This is a highly speculative estimate on which to bet the U.S. economy.
The biggest difference is the new report’s direct linkage of warming to catastrophic weather events such as hurricanes, severe heat waves or rain events, drought and so on. The summary says this is based on “new methodology” and evidence, which means computer models. We await what independent climate experts say as they dig into these models.
But we know climate models are far from perfect, which explains the varying “confidence” levels attached to the report’s predictions. Steven Koonin, the scientist and former Obama official, devotes an illuminating chapter to “many muddled models” in his recent book about climate science, “Unsettled.”
The report also downplays some of the disaster scenarios you read about. It has “low confidence” that the Antarctic sea ice will melt. It says it is likely that tropical cyclones have increased around the world, but there is “low confidence in long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) trends in the frequency of all-category tropical cyclones.” Keep that in mind when the next hurricane becomes proof in the press of climate catastrophe.
Even the report’s prediction that warming oceans will melt Arctic sea ice doesn’t sound like a scene from “Waterworld.” The “Arctic is likely to be practically sea ice free in September at least once before 2050” under the five scenarios. Only once in 29 years, and not the rest of the fall and winter? Further thawing of the permafrost is said to be likely but how much or to what effect is uncertain.
***
Keep in mind that the IPCC report is a political document. It is intended to scare the public and motivate politicians to reduce CO2 emissions no matter the cost, which by the way the report summary never mentions. No less than Al Gore admitted this on PBS in October 2018 when the IPCC issued an interim report: “The language the IPCC used in presenting it was torqued up a little bit, appropriately. How do they get the attention of policymakers around the world?”
Torqued up is right. The U.N. Secretary-General called the new report a “code red for humanity.” And someone at Reuters actually wrote this sentence: “Further warming could mean that in some places, people could die just from going outside.”
If they really believe this, the policy response has failed miserably. Politicians have spent trillions of dollars subsidizing renewable energy with no effect on climate. Nuclear power, which would sharply reduce CO2, is taboo among the greens. Innovation in developing low-cost natural gas, which substitutes for coal, may have done more than any government policy to reduce U.S. emissions. Yet President Biden wants to crush the gas industry with regulation.
The IPCC report doesn’t justify putting the U.S. economy into the hands of government. A sensible climate policy will continue to monitor trends, while allowing a free economy to find solutions and build the wealth that will allow for adaptation and amelioration if the worst happens. This lacks the drama of the Apocalypse, but it will better serve the world.
WSJ · by The Editorial Board
10. A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns. But How Hot Is Up to Us.
Excerpts:
Humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, largely by burning coal, oil and gas for energy. And the consequences can be felt across the globe: This summer alone, blistering heat waves have killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada, floods have devastated Germany and China, and wildfires have raged out of control in Siberia, Turkey and Greece.
But that’s only the beginning, according to the report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of scientists convened by the United Nations. Even if nations started sharply cutting emissions today, total global warming is likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades, a hotter future that is now essentially locked in.
At 1.5 degrees of warming, scientists have found, the dangers grow considerably. Nearly 1 billion people worldwide could swelter in more frequent life-threatening heat waves. Hundreds of millions more would struggle for water because of severe droughts. Some animal and plant species alive today will be gone. Coral reefs, which sustain fisheries for large swaths of the globe, will suffer more frequent mass die-offs.
A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns. But How Hot Is Up to Us.
By Brad Plumer and Henry Fountain
Some devastating impacts of global warming are now unavoidable, a major new scientific report finds. But there is still a short window to stop things from getting even worse.
The Dixie Fire, which destroyed one town and forced thousands to flee their homes in Northern California, became the second largest wildfire in state history on Sunday.Credit...David Swanson/Reuters
Aug. 9, 2021, 4:00 a.m. ET
Nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years, though there is still a short window to prevent the most harrowing future, a major new United Nations scientific report has concluded.
Humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, largely by burning coal, oil and gas for energy. And the consequences can be felt across the globe: This summer alone, blistering heat waves have killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada, floods have devastated Germany and China, and wildfires have raged out of control in Siberia, Turkey and Greece.
But that’s only the beginning, according to the report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of scientists convened by the United Nations. Even if nations started sharply cutting emissions today, total global warming is likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades, a hotter future that is now essentially locked in.
At 1.5 degrees of warming, scientists have found, the dangers grow considerably. Nearly 1 billion people worldwide could swelter in more frequent life-threatening heat waves. Hundreds of millions more would struggle for water because of severe droughts. Some animal and plant species alive today will be gone. Coral reefs, which sustain fisheries for large swaths of the globe, will suffer more frequent mass die-offs.
“We can expect a significant jump in extreme weather over the next 20 or 30 years,” said Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds and one of hundreds of international experts who helped write the report. “Things are unfortunately likely to get worse than they are today.”
Not all is lost, however, and humanity can still prevent the planet from getting even hotter. Doing so would require a coordinated effort among countries to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by around 2050, which would entail a rapid shift away from fossil fuels starting immediately, as well as potentially removing vast amounts of carbon from the air. If that happened, global warming would likely halt and level off at around 1.5 degrees Celsius, the report concludes.
But if nations fail in that effort, global average temperatures will keep rising — potentially passing 2 degrees, 3 degrees or even 4 degrees Celsius, compared with the preindustrial era. The report describes how every additional degree of warming brings far greater perils, such as ever more vicious floods and heat waves, worsening droughts and accelerating sea-level rise that could threaten the existence of some island nations. The hotter the planet gets, the greater the risks of crossing dangerous “tipping points,” like the irreversible collapse of the immense ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica.
“There’s no going back from some changes in the climate system,” said Ko Barrett, a vice-chair of the panel and a senior adviser for climate at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But, she added, immediate and sustained emissions cuts “could really make a difference in the climate future we have ahead of us.”
The report, approved by 195 governments and based on more than 14,000 studies, is the most comprehensive summary to date of the physical science of climate change. It will be a focal point when diplomats gather in November at a U.N. summit in Glasgow to discuss how to step up their efforts to reduce emissions.
A growing number of world leaders, including President Biden, have endorsed the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, though current policies in the major polluting countries are still far off-track from achieving that target. The 10 biggest emitters of greenhouse gases are China, the United States, the European Union, India, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran and Canada.
The new report leaves no doubt that humans are responsible for global warming, concluding that essentially all of the rise in global average temperatures since the 19th century has been driven by nations burning fossil fuels, clearing forests and loading the atmosphere with greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that trap heat.
The changes in climate to date have little parallel in human history, the report said. The last decade is quite likely the hottest the planet has been in 125,000 years. The world’s glaciers are melting and receding at a rate “unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years.” Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have not been this high in at least 2 million years.
Ocean levels have risen 8 inches on average over the past century, and the rate of increase has doubled since 2006. Heat waves have become significantly hotter since 1950 and last longer in much of the world. Wildfire weather has worsened across large swaths of the globe. Bursts of extreme heat in the ocean — which can kill fish, seabirds and coral reefs — have doubled in frequency since the 1980s.
In recent years, scientists have also been able to draw clear links between global warming and specific severe weather events. Many of the deadly new temperature extremes the world has seen — like the record-shattering heat wave that scorched the Pacific Northwest in June — “would have been extremely unlikely to occur without human influence on the climate system,” the report says. Greenhouse gas emissions are noticeably making some droughts, downpours and floods worse.
Water levels on Aug. 7 at Lake Oroville in Butte County, Calif. (top); and in 2020, before a megadrought made worse by climate change had reduced water levels at lakes and major reservoirs serving the American West.
Tropical cyclones have likely become more intense over the past 40 years, the report said, a shift that cannot be explained by natural variability alone.
And as global temperatures keep rising, the report notes, so will the hazards. Consider a dangerous heat wave that, in the past, would have occurred just once in a given region every 50 years. Today, a similar heat wave can be expected every 10 years, on average. At 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, those heat waves will strike every 5 years and be significantly hotter. At 4 degrees of warming, they will occur nearly annually.
Or take sea level rise. At 1.5 degrees of warming, ocean levels are projected to rise another 1 to 2 feet this century, regularly inundating many coastal cities with floods that in the past would have occurred just once a century. But if temperatures keep increasing, the report said, there is a risk that the vast ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland could destabilize in unpredictable ways, potentially adding another three feet of sea-level rise this century in the worst case.
Further unpredictable changes may be in store. For example, a crucial ocean circulation system in the Atlantic Ocean, which helps stabilize the climate in Europe, is now starting to slow down. While the panel concluded with “medium confidence” that the system was unlikely to collapse abruptly this century, it warned that if the planet keeps heating up, the odds of such “low likelihood, high impact outcomes” would rise.
“It’s not like we can draw a sharp line where, if we stay at 1.5 degrees, we’re safe, and at 2 degrees or 3 degrees it’s game over,” said Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University who helped write the report. “But every extra bit of warming increases the risks.”
Experts have estimated that current policies being pursued by world governments will put the world on track for roughly 3 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century. That has ramped up pressure on countries to make more ambitious pledges, beyond what they agreed to under an international climate agreement struck in Paris in 2015.
Military personnel inspected by boat the area across the Ahr river in Rech, Rhineland-Palatinate, in western Germany, after devastating floods hit the region last month.
If nations follow through on more recent promises — like Mr. Biden’s April pledge to eliminate America’s net carbon emissions by 2050 or China’s vow to become carbon neutral by 2060 — then something closer to 2 degrees Celsius of warming might be possible. Additional action, such as sharply reducing methane emissions from agriculture and oil and gas drilling, could help limit warming below that level.
“The report leaves me with a deep sense of urgency,” said Jane Lubchenco, deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “Now is the critical decade for keeping the 1.5 target within reach.”
While the broad scientific understanding of climate change has not changed drastically in recent years, scientists have made several key advances. Computer models have become more powerful. And researchers have collected a wealth of new data, deploying satellites and ocean buoys and gaining a clearer picture of the Earth’s past climate by analyzing ice cores and peat bogs.
That has allowed scientists to refine their projections and conclude with greater precision that Earth is likely to warm between 2.5 degrees and 4 degrees Celsius for every doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The new report also explores in greater detail how global warming will affect specific regions of the world. For example, while only one corner of South America to date has had a detectable rise in droughts that can harm agriculture, such damaging dry spells are expected to become much more common across the continent if global average temperatures increase by 2 degrees Celsius.
The focus on regional effects is one of the most important new aspects of this report, said Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a climate scientist at University of Paris-Saclay and a co-chair of the group that produced the report. “We show that climate change is already acting in every region, in multiple ways,” she said.
Past climate reports have focused mainly on large-scale global changes, which has made it hard for countries and businesses to take specific steps to protect people and property. To help with such planning, the panel on Monday released an interactive atlas showing how different countries could be transformed as global temperatures rise.
“It’s very critical to provide society, decision makers and leaders with precise information for every region,” Dr. Masson-Delmotte said.
The new report is part of the sixth major assessment of climate science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was created in 1988. A second report, set to be released in 2022, will detail how climate change might affect aspects of human society, such as coastal cities, farms or health care systems. A third report, also expected next year, will explore more fully strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt global warming.
11. US deserves to be called world's biggest anti-pandemic failure, report says
Quite a critique from a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. I wonder how much this is "mirror-imagining" and a reflection of what may be going on in China!
Excerpts:
The report titled "The Truth about America's Fight against COVID-19" was jointly released by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China (RDCY), Taihe Think Tank and Intellisia Institute on Monday.
It analyzes five major aspects regarding US' failure in response to the pandemic, including its highly politicized partisanship, its anti-science and abnormal measures in the epidemic prevention and control; the growing social inequality exacerbated by the pandemic and its willful destruction of global resistance to the pandemic.
The report says the US is well deserved to be called the world's No one in eight aspects: failure in anti-pandemic response, political blaming, pandemic spreading, political division, currency abuse, pandemic period turmoil and the disinformation country, and the origins-tracing terrorism country.
US deserves to be called world's biggest anti-pandemic failure, report says - Global Times
A pedestrian walks past a memorial installation for those who died of COVID-19 outside Green-Wood Cemetery in New York, the United States, on June 14, 2021. Photo:Xinhua
Chinese think tanks jointly released a report on Monday to reveal the truth about US' fight against the COVID-19 epidemic, the first such kind to comprehensively show how the US ended up being a failed country in the battle against coronavirus and how it continues to prompt virus origins tracing terrorism in the world by evading questions and covering up the truth.
The report titled "The Truth about America's Fight against COVID-19" was jointly released by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China (RDCY), Taihe Think Tank and Intellisia Institute on Monday.
It analyzes five major aspects regarding US' failure in response to the pandemic, including its highly politicized partisanship, its anti-science and abnormal measures in the epidemic prevention and control; the growing social inequality exacerbated by the pandemic and its willful destruction of global resistance to the pandemic.
The report says the US is well deserved to be called the world's No one in eight aspects: failure in anti-pandemic response, political blaming, pandemic spreading, political division, currency abuse, pandemic period turmoil and the disinformation country, and the origins-tracing terrorism country.
Previously, the US jumped to the No.1 spot on Bloomberg's COVID-19 resilience ranking under the title "The best and worst places to be as the world finally reopens."
Wang Wen, executive dean of the RDCY, told the Global Times said it's ridiculous to place the US as the top country in handling the pandemic, and it's also a disregard to history and even human ethics. This report attempts to show the real history to the world as the world history should not be twisted by some individual voices or media.
During the past half year, the US has been shirking responsibility, not one single US official tried to rethink the US' epidemic situation or resign over their failure in combating the epidemic, while this report serves to draw lessons from US' failure and avoid them to happen in the future and calls for solidarity to fight the epidemic, Wang said.
The COVID-19 was probably the greatest test of governance the world has ever seen since the Second World War. The US and the West failed miserably, Martin Jacques, a Former Senior Fellow from Cambridge University, addressed the report-release meeting on Monday.
The geopolitics has usurped science. The COVID-19 is mired in a sort of "Cold War" rhetoric, "Cold War" language, and "Cold War" assault by the US and this is going to continue, Jacques said.
The number of COVID-19 cases in a single day in the US exceeded 100,000 on July 30, which was the first time in six months since February 6, when the number of new cases in a single day first exceeded 100,000. It marks the epidemic in the US entering the fourth wave of upsurge.
"Behind the cold numbers lies the domestic politics of the US - particularly the highly politicized partisanship, which has taken many lives of the Americans "who need not have died," the report said.
The report said US' systemic failure in the fight against COVID-19 is rooted in the profit-seeking nature of capitalism: paying lip service to the "supremacy of human rights" while acting in the interests of capital, and adopting the social Darwinian "law of survival of the fittest" in its response to public health crises.
While exporting the virus to the world, the US has also turned the global public health disaster into a major power model wrestling match by politicizing scientific issues such as the anti-pandemic model, the origins-tracing of the pandemic, and the effectiveness of vaccines, shifting the blame to the outside world and misleading the international community, the report said.
The former US President Donald Trump is probably the biggest promoter of COVID-19 misinformation as by May 26, 2020, Trump was mentioned in about 38 percent of the English-language media's fake reports on COVID-19, it said.
The Biden administration intended to reshape the image of the US as a responsible power under the banner of "America is back," but the Biden administration actually lacks respect for science in many aspects, including tracing virus origins. The administration is not only refusing to conduct multi-point and multi-dimensional tracing around the world but also rekindled the "lab leak theory" hype soon after taking office for political gains.
Failing to assume its international responsibility and bringing positive impact on global cooperation against the pandemic, the US government has been covering up the truth and manipulating global public opinion by practicing "origins-tracing terrorism," the report added.
What was the outbreak of the so-called "respiratory disease" or "white lung disease" of unknown cause in the United States in the second half of 2019 really about? What kind of research is going on at Fort Detrick and other biological laboratories around the country? Is it related to COVID-19? How were the security measures implemented? Is it related to the origins of the global COVID-19 outbreak?
Researchers from those think tanks called for the US to allow an international team of experts organized by the World Health Organization to conduct site visits and investigations of relevant biological laboratories in the US for the sake of effectively advancing scientific tracing efforts and dispelling external questions about the lack of transparency in the US.
"We believe that the truth can only come late, but it will never be absent, ever," the report said.
12. Statement by President Joe Biden on COVID-19 Vaccines for Service Members
Statement by President Joe Biden on COVID-19 Vaccines for Service Members
AUGUST 09, 2021
•
I strongly support Secretary Austin’s message to the Force today on the Department of Defense’s plan to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of required vaccinations for our service members not later than mid-September. Secretary Austin and I share an unshakable commitment to making sure our troops have every tool they need to do their jobs as safely as possible. These vaccines will save lives. Period. They are safe. They are effective. Over 350 million shots have been given in the United States alone. Being vaccinated will enable our service members to stay healthy, to better protect their families, and to ensure that our force is ready to operate anywhere in the world. We cannot let up in the fight against COVID-19, especially with the Delta variant spreading rapidly through unvaccinated populations. We are still on a wartime footing, and every American who is eligible should take immediate steps to get vaccinated right away. I am proud that our military women and men will continue to help lead the charge in the fight against this pandemic, as they so often do, by setting the example of keeping their fellow Americans safe.
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13. ‘Climate change is going to cost us’: How the US military is preparing for harsher environments
‘Climate change is going to cost us’: How the US military is preparing for harsher environments
WASHINGTON — The aftermath of Hurricane Florence dumping 36 inches of rain on North Carolina in 2018 saw three Marine Corps installations flooded, costing taxpayers $3.6 billion in damage. A few weeks later, Hurricane Michael ripped through Tyndall Air Force Base, causing about $4.7 billion in damage at the Florida facility.
Then last year, leaders evacuated Travis Air Force Base in northern California due to nearby raging wildfires.
And today, Arctic Air Force bases hosting radar early warning systems and communication equipment are suffering coastal erosion, which is damaging seawalls, runways and infrastructure. Thawing permafrost and erosion threatens bases in the Arctic, damaging infrastructure. NASA tracks the extent of Arctic sea ice and estimates a declining 13.1 percent rate of change per decade.
“Climate change is going to cost us in resources and readiness,” Joe Bryan, senior climate adviser at the Pentagon, said during a July webinar. “The reality is that it already is.”
Now, after years of the Trump administration sidestepping the issue, the Biden administration has asked for $617 million in fiscal 2022 for climate change preparation, adaptation and mitigation. In addition, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, having already identified climate change as a top priority, launched a Climate Working Group in response to a January executive order signed by President Joe Biden. Climate change is no longer a problem for future defense leaders; it is an immediate challenge.
According to NASA, climate change is driven by increased levels of greenhouse gases causing global temperatures to rise, the ocean to warm, polar ice to melt and sea levels to rise. Since the late 1800s, Earth’s average surface temperature has risen 2.12 degrees Fahrenheit, and the last seven years have been the warmest. The year 2020 is tied with 2016 for the warmest year on record.
Biden warned in his executive order that the world is facing “a profound climate crisis. We have a narrow moment to pursue action at home and abroad in order to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of that crisis and to seize the opportunity that tackling climate change presents.”
The problem is becoming clearer. The Congressional Research Service found that the Department of Defense manages more than 1,700 global military installations on coastlines that could prove vulnerable to rises in sea level. A 2019 departmental survey involving 79 installations warned that about two-thirds are vulnerable to recurrent flooding and that another half are under threat by drought or wildfires.
Clockwise: (1) Rapid erosion caused by flooding threatens a communications system at a U.S. Department of Defense installation in Europe. (2) At a DoD installation in Africa, high tides flood an area used for loading combat aircraft. (3) The U.S. Government Accountability Office visited a DoD location in the Pacific to observe a construction project to repair seawalls protecting ammunition depots. In a 2018 GAO report, DoD personnel said the repairs do not account for a potential increase in average sea levels. (4) Damage is shown after Hurricane Michael ripped through Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. The GAO said that in previous work it found it is not possible to link any individual weather event to climate change, though “the impacts of extreme weather events provide insight into ... potential climate-related vulnerabilities.” (U.S. Government Accountability Office; U.S. Defense Department; GAO; Courtesy of the U.S. Air National Guard)
Melting Arctic ice opens new avenues to potential conflict; sea level rise threatens hundreds of millions of people globally and impacts military installations; and extreme heat can influence training and operations.
With the White House and the Pentagon signaling the prioritization of climate measures, Defense News reached out to the Army, Air Force and Navy about their efforts to adapt.
Innovation at the Air and Space forces
Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton, Virginia — home to Air Combat Command and host to critical fighter aircraft as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities — sits just 8 feet above sea level.
Diego Garcia — an atoll in the Indian Ocean that often hosts deployments of U.S. bombers and is central to operations in Afghanistan, South Asia and East Africa — sits only 6.5 feet above sea level. And the Marshall Islands — where the Space Force is building a $1 billion radar installation to track satellites and space junk, known as the Space Fence — sits just 10 feet higher than the ocean.
“Nearly all of our installations are exposed to some natural or climate-related threat such as hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, and extreme winter weather,” Air Force spokeswoman Sarah Fiocco told Defense News. “These climate considerations have a direct impact on our ability to launch our missions, as our installations are a platform from which we project air power.
“The Department of the Air Force is actively working toward making our installations more resilient to the potential impacts of climate change and extreme weather.”
For example, Fiocco said, construction projects deliberately located in flood plains for mission purposes are built 3 feet above the design flood elevation (or the highest point of a possible flood that a retrofitting method is designed to protect against).
Amid ongoing disaster recovery at Tyndall Air Force Base, the service is constructing new buildings 19 feet above sea level if they are near the Gulf of Mexico. Fiocco said the projects at Tyndall are also built to withstand a minimum of 165 mph.
An airman walks past the 325th Logistics Readiness Squadron materiel management flight warehouse at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., in 2019. Airmen from various installations traveled there in support of post Hurricane Michael recovery efforts. (Senior Airman Javier Alvarez/U.S. Air Force)
“Due to integrating severe weather and climate change design into our DoD building code, every project accounts for future changes in the climate and possibility of increased severe weather events,” she said.
The changing climate, particularly underway in the Arctic, also creates new mission challenges for the U.S. military. For example, a 2020 report from the think tank Rand said the melting Arctic ice and Russian military activity in the area means the U.S. Air Force must prepare for “an increase in demand for intercept flights” in the region.
“That’s a sensing challenge [because] we need to know what’s coming over the poles, which can be difficult,” said Raphael Cohen, acting director of strategy and doctrine program at Rand’s Project Air Force. “It’s a communications challenge because the way communications work in the high north are somewhat different. And then there’s a military capability question too. How much ... resources you put up there? That is also a thing that we have to consider.”
Fiocco told Defense News that the service recognizes climate change “may drive increased mission demands or contingencies in new regions (e.g., Arctic) in response to resource competition, geopolitical instability, and a growing need for humanitarian assistance and disaster response to recover from climate-related events.”
“The Department of the Air Force is reviewing its current posture to inform necessary pivots in operational planning, locations and activities based on climate change considerations,” she added.
That includes projects with the Air Force Research Laboratory dedicated to improving communication capabilities in the high north. Arron Layns, the lab’s Arctic portfolio manager, said the organization is specifically working on new satellite and laser communications, and on bolstering high-frequency communications in the region.
Space-based communication for the Arctic is particularly challenging, as forecasting capabilities beyond Earth’s atmosphere are still maturing, and the North Pole’s environment is especially “dynamic,” Layns said. That’s in part due to the aurora — or northern lights — and how it interferes with satellite communications.
“The space environment is woefully under-observed, and the models are coming up, but they’re just not quite there for what we need,” Layns said. “The space environment has huge impacts on a variety of things. And if you don’t get that environmental information right, you might not know how your satellite’s going to work, or you might not know how your communications or [if] your navigation is really going to work properly.”
The Air Force, which is itself a major contributor to climate change, is looking at novel ways to improve the combat capability of its fleet while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. According to Fiocco, the service wants to increase the fuel economy of its legacy aircraft, in particular its mobility fleet.
Offutt Air Force Base and surrounding areas in Nebraska were affected by flood waters on March 17, 2019, after massive flooding along the Missouri River. Some blamed the agency that manages the river's dams but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said much of the water that created the flooding came from rain and melting snow that flowed downstream (Tech. Sgt. Rachelle Blake/U.S. Air Force via AP)
In congressional testimony in July, Jennifer Miller, the acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and energy, said the service is funding “small items” that can increase efficiency, such as modifying aircraft with little winglets or adjusting the angle of windshield wipers.
Additionally, the planning tool JIGSAW, developed by the Air Force software factory Kessel Run and the Defense Innovation Unit — the Pentagon’s liaison for nontraditional contractors — now saves the service 180,000 gallons of fuel per week.
The Air Force is also exploring advancements in airframes and engines that would be “significantly more efficient” and increase combat power. According to Fiocco, the service is eyeing third-stream engines, which would be 25 percent more efficient than engines currently in use, as well as blended wing body aircraft, which would be about 30 percent more efficient.
However, she said, the potential for those capabilities is “limited by both technology and budgetary issues.”
Army strategies
The Army is currently writing its own climate change strategy, which is scheduled for release this fall, according to Jack Surash, the senior official performing the duties of assistant secretary of the Army for installations, environment and energy. Following the release, the service will unveil a “very detailed” climate change action plan that outlines a broad, “multiyear effort” for how the Army will tackle climate issues, he told lawmakers in July.
Asked by Defense News how the Army plans to adapt to potentially harsher environmental conditions, the service’s answers largely focused on energy storage.
“The Army is examining improved energy density and reliability of energy supply and storage technologies, [artificial intelligence]-enabled system-level power distribution (microgrids) and the use of renewable energy sources for use in operational contexts, including forward operating bases, tactical vehicles and on the battlefield,” Surash said in a statement.
GM Defense is building the Army's Infantry Squad Vehicle, which is already being fielded to Army units. It has taken an ISV and turned it into an all-electric concept vehicle to show the Army the realm of the possible. (Courtesy of GM Defense)
He added that the Army wants “increased battery capacity, auxiliary power, electrification and alternative fuel sources that will increase operational endurance within the force, while reducing carbon emissions.”
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, also emphasized the military’s need to generate power on the battlefield in challenging environments.
“Coming up with new ways to generate power is going to be essential. Not just because of the ‘feel good, we need to be more clear’ military perspective to combat climate change, [but] because the military is going to operate in places where the host nation may have made those choices already and therefore they don’t have a bunch of electric power available for us to use,” he said.
The service is also exploring hybrid and fully electric vehicles, though top Army leaders said this year that hybrid vehicles are more likely to be a successful option in the near term. In congressional testimony, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said the service is considering hybrid vehicles that reduce fuel consumption by 25 percent. Meanwhile, Bruce Geil, chief of the power integration architecture branch at the Army Research Laboratory, said his portfolio is focused on making hybrid power systems more capable, but also smaller.
The lab also has several ongoing efforts related to climate prediction and planning that help commanders map out operations.
“If you have a climatological sense of what’s going to be in that area, then commanders can plan for those regions and know what weapon systems are going to work,” said Robb Randall, chief of the lab’s Atmospheric Science Center and the Atmospheric Dynamics and Analytics Branch. “How do I outfit my personnel and supply your need? How much water do I need to bring?”
The lab is also working on risk-assessment and decision-aid technology for desertification, in which fertile land becomes desert, to predict areas that are more prone to the change in the long term, Randall said. It’s also developing predictive capabilities for flash droughts — a rapid onset of drought — which can cause regional instability.
In a 2019 report to Congress, the Army listed desertification as the top climate threat to nine of its top 10 most vulnerable stateside bases. The service listed drought as the secondary threat to all 10. The same year, the Army War College released a report naming challenges the service will face due to climate change, including rising temperatures and an increased need for water. The report warned that the service is “precipitously close to mission failure concerning hydration of the force in a contested arid environment.”
In addition, the Army Research Lab and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency each have ongoing projects tackling hydration. The lab is exploring how to decontaminate polluted water using an aluminum panel that concentrates solar energy for purification. DARPA has chosen six partners to find unique ways to extract potable water from the atmosphere.
The Army Corps of Engineers is also contributing to departmentwide efforts, having designed the DoD Climate Assessment Tool, which projects the effects of climate change on almost 1,400 DoD locations. Additionally, the corps is researching unique approaches to developing construction materials to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Navy preps for new missions
A Pentagon report this year on the impact of environmental changes to installations found the Navy had a “greater range of climate exposure” than the other services, with it facing drought, heat and coastal flooding in the United States as well as East Asia and the Middle East.
The Navy did not answer questions from Defense News by press time about how it is adapting to the changing environment.
In congressional testimony in July, Todd Schafer, acting assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment, stated broadly that the service is working to “build climate resiliency” into its installations.
Five days after being the last U.S. Navy ship chased out of Naval Station, Norfolk by Hurricane Florence, the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln returns home on Sept. 16, 2018. (Staff)
Sea level rise particularly threatens naval bases. The Hampton Roads, Virginia, area, home to the largest concentration of military infrastructure in the world, is already under threat of flooding, with the sea level near the area expected to rise 1.5 feet in the next 20-50 years, according to the Congressional Research Service. The worst effects are expected at the end of this century.
John Conger, former acting assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment, told Defense News that in areas like Hampton Roads, the emphasis must be on protecting investments rather than taking the costly step of moving them.
“What the smart play is, in the near term, is to make your infrastructure more resilient,” said Conger, who leads the Center for Climate and Security and serves as a senior U.S. adviser to the International Military Council on Climate and Security.
DARPA is exploring new solutions to mitigate the effects of a rising sea level and the subsequent flooding. The agency’s Reefense program is looking to use reef-mimicking ecosystems to reduce the impact.
Lori Adornato, the Reefense program manager, said the Army Corps of Engineers is interested in the project. “Because we have a number of bases on the coast, one of the ways that we can think about protecting them is taking advantage of how nature has protected coasts over time.”
The Navy will also need to adapt to new missions, as fresh sea routes spring up amid the melting of Arctic ice — pathways for which U.S. adversaries Russia and China might take advantage.
The service will also need to improve its weather forecasting capabilities. That effort is underway with the Office of Naval Research, which is collecting data in the Arctic about waves, sea ice, and atmospheric and water circulation.
But there’s a lack of data.
“We don’t have the pattern of operations in the Arctic to have built the type of expertise that the Navy has, in terms of conducting things like detailed weather forecasting” in other regions, said Joshua Tallis, research scientist at Virginia-based think tank CNA.
To operate more frequently in the Arctic, the Navy may need ice-hardened ships — an expensive capability. In Senate testimony in July, Vice Adm. Jim Kilby, deputy chief of naval operations for war-fighting requirements and capabilities, said the service would make future ship design decisions based on where “we think we are going to operate.”
Tallis noted that the investment in ice-hardened ships is a tough choice for an armed service that operates globally.
“Part of what the Navy has to think about as it is building the force that combatant commanders will use in the future: It is this question of, is that demand for a specialized, ice-hardened capability sufficient in order to warrant the expense for the relatively niche capability that they would purchase? And so far, at least from a Navy standpoint, the cost benefit hasn’t worked in that favor.”
14. How will the Pentagon close the homeland missile defense gap?
Perhaps north Korea will respond to this with a provocation to try to demonstrate its capabilities.
Excerpts:
Yet, Congress is getting impatient over a lack of answers regarding progress toward an architecture that could shore up any gap in capability now and into the future.
During a June 14 hearing with the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subpanel, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., asked for an update on the report on the layered homeland defense system, which was required in the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act. She noted that the deadline of March 1, 2021, had passed.
Hill responded that, while there are no technical barriers to an underlay, “it’s really a policy question” that “we need to come through.”
Without offering a timeline for delivering a report to Congress, Leonor Tomero, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, said at the same hearing: “I can assure you that we are looking at what investments we make for a layered homeland defense, what priorities are the subject of studies again in consultation with the Missile Defense Agency and the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation.”
The Defense Department made an initial investment in FY22, Tomero added, and studies will inform further investments in FY23.
How will the Pentagon close the homeland missile defense gap?
The MDA featured its plan in its fiscal 2021 budget request, but there isn’t much of a strategy laid out in its fiscal 2022 funding picture. And so lawmakers want answers before turning on the funding spigot.
Developing such an architecture, even though it would use mostly proven systems, has many hurdles, as MDA Director Vice Adm. Jon Hill said last year.
The layered approach would buy time while the Pentagon scrambles to field a new interceptor to replace older Ground-Based Interceptors — after canceling its effort to redesign the kill vehicle for the GBIs — in its Ground-based Midcourse Defense system located at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.
The test stressed the system, putting it up against a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile, but the MDA wants to conduct another yet-to-be-scheduled test against a more complex ICBM target with separation debris and countermeasures.
However, the validation of a possible underlay doesn’t stop with a few tests. Upgrades will be required based on threats; combat system certifications will need to be conducted; and work must be performed with the Navy to determine where Aegis ships should deploy, Hill said. The agency will also have to determine how quickly it can ramp up its production line for SM-3 Block IIA missiles.
Hill said last fall that if the agency succeeds with Aegis, it could go down the path with THAAD, then work on engagement coordination between layers.
When the FY22 budget request came out at the end of May, Hill said funding would focus on looking at how the Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications system could incorporate Aegis and THAAD capabilities for the homeland, and how those systems would be linked to give options to combatant commanders.
But, he added, “those decision have not been made to date.”
When asked if the agency was cooling on a layered homeland defense, Hill said: “I wouldn’t say it’s no longer a priority since we do have investment in the budget, but there are some very serious policy implications, and so we want to make sure that we get the policy angles right.”
The agency also wants to make sure it’s still a need for U.S. Northern Command in light of a now-established service life extension program for the GMD’s Ground-Based Interceptors already emplaced, Hill noted. The command did not include layered homeland defense in its list of unfunded requirements sent to Congress in June.
“The big concern, back when layered homeland defense was first discussed, was the concern that the existing fleet would start to lose its reliability over time while we also had this timeline for the Next-Generation Interceptor off to the right,” Hill said.
Yet, Congress is getting impatient over a lack of answers regarding progress toward an architecture that could shore up any gap in capability now and into the future.
During a June 14 hearing with the House Armed Services Committee’s strategic forces subpanel, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., asked for an update on the report on the layered homeland defense system, which was required in the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act. She noted that the deadline of March 1, 2021, had passed.
Hill responded that, while there are no technical barriers to an underlay, “it’s really a policy question” that “we need to come through.”
Without offering a timeline for delivering a report to Congress, Leonor Tomero, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, said at the same hearing: “I can assure you that we are looking at what investments we make for a layered homeland defense, what priorities are the subject of studies again in consultation with the Missile Defense Agency and the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation.”
The Defense Department made an initial investment in FY22, Tomero added, and studies will inform further investments in FY23.
The Strategic Forces Subcommittee followed up in its markup of the FY22 authorization bill with a renewed push for a detailed report. The committee would direct the Pentagon to submit a report by the end of 2021 on development and deployment plans for using Aegis with SM-3 Block IIA interceptors as part of a layered missile defense system.
An analysis of how deploying Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers for homeland defense would affect Navy readiness and global force management would also be required, and the report should contain an applicable manning strategy should land-based Aegis systems be deployed as part of the architecture.
The House Appropriations Committee’s defense subpanel, in its markup of the FY22 spending bill, took hacks at Defense Department funding applied to the layered homeland defense totaling $203.7 million.
The committee zeroed out Aegis BMD layered homeland missile defense development, cutting all $98.96 million for which the MDA had budgeted, and a total of $64.56 million to work on similar development for THAAD.
According to the MDA’s FY22 budget justification documents, the plan for developing Aegis for homeland defense includes refining system-level requirements and development to expand threat and mission space and to increase performance against moderate threats.
The committee noted the funding cut is due to a lack of validated requirements and acquisition strategy.
The Senate Armed Services Committee released a summary of its FY22 authorization bill, but aside from supporting the MDA’s pursuit of the NGI, there is nothing else signaling its intentions.
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subpanel has yet to release its markup of the FY22 spending bill as of press time on Aug. 2.
Software and hardware improvements needed to evolve both THAAD and Aegis systems, “will be important to proceed irrespective of whether or not they end up deployed to support a thick defense of the continental United States,” Tom Karako, senior fellow with the International Security Program and the direct of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Defense News.
“The non-recurring engineering planned for the ‘layered defense’ program elements would be very useful to complete to support regional applications,” he added. “These systems began as regional defenses, and their continued evolution will benefit regional protection, such as for bases in Guam, Japan, and the like.”
15. Opinion | Wall Street is failing to protect American investors from the Chinese Communist Party
Conclusion:
The CCP’s recent actions show clearly that the risks of investing in Chinese companies that have no real accountability and transparency are growing quickly — and steps to protect U.S. capital markets must be hastened accordingly. Wall Street firms and regulators who ignore this now are failing in their responsibility to protect the American people.
Opinion | Wall Street is failing to protect American investors from the Chinese Communist Party
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Josh RoginColumnist Today at 6:00 a.m. EDT · August 10, 2021
In the past month alone, the Chinese Communist Party has destroyed hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. investors’ wealth as a side effect of its widening crackdown on its own corporations. But the top Wall Street firms and regulators still won’t do what’s necessary to protect Americans from getting fleeced by Beijing.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is dragging its feet on implementing a new law to kick opaque Chinese companies off U.S. exchanges, several GOP lawmakers claim. Meanwhile, leading Wall Street firms continue to funnel U.S. investor dollars to untrustworthy Chinese firms through various investment vehicles even as the risks continue to rise. Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges lost $400 billion in July alone, according to the Wall Street Journal, as the CCP expanded its regulatory attacks on various industries.
“That’s life in the fast lane,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told Fox Business last week when asked about the startling losses caused by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regulatory crackdowns. “I’m not breathless over it. … I am not as worried about China as everybody else.”
For Dimon, billions of dollars in losses may be just another day at the office; the investors who entrusted him with their savings likely aren’t so cavalier. He pledged to continue expanding his business inside China and said it was not his job to make foreign policy, just to follow the law.
There are two problems with Dimon’s position. First of all, Wall Street firms have a fiduciary responsibility to protect U.S. investors beyond what’s required by the letter of the law. Also, the SEC, which is supposed to enforce laws passed by Congress to protect U.S. investors, has allowed China’s abuses to fester.
“It’s discouraging to see some Wall Street executives work so hard and be complicit in trying to make sure these Chinese companies have access to American capital,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told me in an interview. “For far too long, these Chinese firms have been able to access American capital markets and investors without having to abide by the laws that Americans companies are required to follow.”
Chinese companies are allowed to list on U.S. exchanges without being subject to the same financial and corporate disclosure rules as U.S. firms. Also, Chinese companies raise money on Wall Street by using complex investment vehicles such as Variable Interest Entities (VIEs), which are essentially shell companies that give U.S. investors no real equity.
Congress passed a new law late last year, signed by President Donald Trump, meant to force Chinese companies to comply with the U.S. rules or be kicked off U.S. exchanges within three years, called the Holding Foreign Companies Accountability Act. But SEC Chairman Gary Gensler isn’t implementing that law fast enough, Sullivan and six other GOP senators wrote in a letter to him July 28.
The SEC hasn’t even started the clock that would determine when the three-year grace period for the Chinese companies begins, the letter stated. The GOP senators also want the SEC to investigate the risks of VIE structures to U.S. investors and investigate the Wall Street firms that are funneling U.S. investor money to Chinese companies through index listings and other methods.
“It’s unconscionable that the SEC has chosen to delay action on implementation of the Kennedy-Van Hollen Act, seemingly in deference to Wall Street and accounting firms,” said Roger W. Robinson Jr., former chairman of the Congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. “Such inaction only exacerbates massive U.S. investor losses at the hands of the CCP.”
In a July 30 response, Gensler wrote that he would require more disclosure from Chinese companies that use VIEs but he did not say when Chinese companies that don’t comply with the new law would be delisted. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who did not sign the letter to Gensler, told me in a statement that Gensler had taken some steps to implement the law, including by issuing two proposed rules.
“Following the Government of China’s highly suspicious actions around Didi, it’s vital that the SEC is taking the necessary steps to protect U.S. investors,” Van Hollen told me in a statement. “I’ve called on the SEC to investigate this incident and determine what more we can do to safeguard American investors.”
Dimon’s statements disavowing responsibility show that Wall Street firms will continue to funnel U.S. money into Chinese companies regardless of the risks, collecting their fees with glee. Gensler’s response, in which he promised to push for more disclosure from Chinese companies, shows that the SEC still doesn’t understand that Xi has no intention of allowing that to happen.
The CCP’s recent actions show clearly that the risks of investing in Chinese companies that have no real accountability and transparency are growing quickly — and steps to protect U.S. capital markets must be hastened accordingly. Wall Street firms and regulators who ignore this now are failing in their responsibility to protect the American people.
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Josh RoginColumnist Today at 6:00 a.m. EDT · August 10, 2021
16. Untying the Gordian Knot: Why the Taliban is Unlikely to Break Ties with Al-Qaeda
Excerpts:
As the United States pulls out from Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban remains sympathetic to al-Qaeda. Some US interlocutors who have engaged with the Taliban’s senior leadership in recent years, especially during the negotiations that led to the February 2020 Doha agreement, note that the Taliban consistently resisted moving against al-Qaeda. At one point during the negotiations, the discussion broke down with the Afghan Taliban insisting that there was no proof that al-Qaeda had carried out the 9/11 attacks.
To be sure, some parts of the Taliban oppose al-Qaeda. Some have actively lobbied against the relationship. Others argue that the group should distance itself from al-Qaeda due to American pressure and to gain international legitimacy. These voices within the Taliban are not insignificant, but their political influence on the group’s elite decision making does not appear to be substantial. Despite the Doha agreement, there are no signs that the Taliban is planning any major crackdown on al-Qaeda, nor on any other group with foreign fighters with whom it has collaborated inside Afghanistan.
For now, even if some version of the Doha agreement guides US-Taliban ties, the Taliban is unlikely to expel al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. The US government needs to be clear-eyed about the challenge at hand; policymakers should brace themselves for more cooperation between the two groups.
Untying the Gordian Knot: Why the Taliban is Unlikely to Break Ties with Al-Qaeda - Modern War Institute
When the political officer of the US embassy in Islamabad met with top Taliban official Jalaluddin Haqqani in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi in May 1999, neither the US government nor Haqqani knew that it would be the last major exchange between the two parties before war between them would break out—a long, ongoing war in which Haqqani would emerge as one of America’s most significant nemeses. As per the US State Department’s declassified cable, the meeting opened with the American diplomat and Haqqani exchanging small talk under the watchful eyes of the Taliban leader’s armed guards. Stroking his long beard and adjusting his white turban, Haqqani engaged his American interlocutor pleasantly. He was willing, he said, to meet with US officials regularly but discreetly. And he fondly recalled the US assistance to Haqqani, among others, during the “jihad against the Soviets and the communists” in the 1980s.
Then the meeting turned to the main issue of interest to the US government: the status of the growing army of Arab militants in Afghanistan. Several months before the meeting, the United States had carried out cruise missile strikes on Haqqani’s compounds in eastern Afghanistan to target Arab militants who had plotted the near-simultaneous bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The political officer told Haqqani that the US government wanted Osama bin Laden, the Saudi leader of the Arab militants, and his associates expelled from Afghanistan as they were behind the twin bombings in East Africa.
Haqqani—“taking it all in,” according to the cable—acknowledged that bin Laden’s status was a problem but insisted that it was not an easy issue. At first, he lamented that the United States had not provided proof of bin Laden’s wrongdoing, before claiming that the Taliban had nonetheless placed tight controls on him. He went on to claim that the Taliban had considered expelling him but that the leadership remained uncertain on where to send him; the best solution for all parties, he said, was that bin Laden should stay in Afghanistan.
In response, the political officer delivered a clear warning to Haqqani: if bin Laden carried out another attack, America would act in self-defense and the Taliban leaders facilitating bin Laden—perhaps a veiled reference to Haqqani himself—would be targeted. Haqqani was unsettled, at least according to the cable, and responded that the Taliban wanted to solve the bin Laden problem through talks and that the United States should engage. As paraphrased by the embassy, Haqqani stated: “Do not turn away from us any more, but deal with us.”
Much in Common
Nearly twenty-two years since that meeting, the nature of the relationship between al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Afghan Taliban remains one of the most important unanswered questions about the country’s future. Of course, much has changed since then. Today, bin Laden is dead, al-Qaeda lacks the mini-army of thousands of foreign fighters that it had in Afghanistan back then, and the group has been weakened by two decades of American targeting in South Asia. In its heyday, al-Qaeda reportedly paid the Taliban up to $20 million a year for its haven in Afghanistan—no longer the case at the moment. Most significantly, the Taliban has reached an agreement with the US government—signed in Doha, Qatar, in February 2020—in which it committed to restraining jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda, from organizing international terrorism from Afghanistan.
Yet questions remain about the future of al-Qaeda. Many analysts and policymakers worry that the Taliban leadership will fail to uphold their minimal guarantees not to let al-Qaeda plot against the United States after an American withdrawal.
American concerns stem in part from the reality that despite intense US targeting pressure in the years after 9/11—and an available off-ramp of disassociating from al-Qaeda—the Afghan Taliban chose not to renounce the group and instead maintained a robust alliance with it. Following the US invasion, for example, the Afghan Taliban worked with al-Qaeda in organizing the insurgency against US and Afghan forces, especially in the east of the country. And in the early years of the insurgency, some Taliban leaders embraced and publicized their alliance with foreign jihadists.
One such Taliban leader was Mullah Dadullah. In a 2006 interview with al-Qaeda’s main media organization as-Sahab, he noted: “The Islamic Emirate did well in its treatment of the emigrant Mujahideen [before 9/11]. It expended every effort and sacrificed for their sake, wealth, and lives and if the Islamic Emirate rises again, we shall house them in our bodies if the earth isn’t wide enough, and we shall cooperate with them with our persons and wealth and ransom them with our blood.” Other Taliban senior leaders, such as Sirajuddin Haqqani, openly sought the support of jihadist constituencies in the Middle East.
In the late 2000s, amid mounting US pressure and international condemnation, the Afghan Taliban took steps to conceal and downplay its relationship with groups of foreign fighters in Afghanistan, including al-Qaeda. But there are some indicators that the Taliban consulted al-Qaeda’s top leadership on its strategy of denying its association with foreign jihadists. For one, al-Qaeda did not alter its practice of publicly pledging the Bay’ah, a religious oath of loyalty, to the Taliban’s top leader, initially Mullah Omar and after him Mullah Akhtar Mansoor and Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada. If al-Qaeda disagreed with the Taliban’s approach, one might have expected some shift in this highly observable practice on the part of al-Qaeda’s leadership.
Second, al-Qaeda ideologue Atiyyat Allah al-Libi is reported to have informed al-Qaeda members that the Taliban’s public stance toward the group was to deny association to manage international pressures, and that al-Qaeda’s top leadership was comfortable with this position. Al-Libi wrote: “Of course, the Taliban’s policy is to avoid being seen with us or revealing any cooperation or agreement between us and them. That is for the purpose of averting international and regional pressure and out of consideration for regional dynamics. We defer to them in this regard.”
American negotiations with the Afghan Taliban offered an opportunity for the group to distance itself from al-Qaeda—and on a politically palatable timetable. In an important 2018 piece, the international relations scholar and former US government counterterrorism analyst Tricia Bacon noted that “officials working on Afghanistan tend to be more optimistic about the prospects of persuading the Taliban to sever ties with al-Qaeda than those working on counter-terrorism.” The bureaucratic lobby Bacon refers to remained in the driving seat of US policy toward Afghanistan during the Trump administration, showing remarkable flexibility in the final end-state on the al-Qaeda question—to an extent unimaginable a decade ago when US policy on Afghanistan was dominated by senior generals. Still, major US government and United Nations assessments indicate that the Taliban did not respond meaningfully to US entreaties, and that its ties with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan remain intact. There are continuing signs of political alignment, as well as some collaboration on the battlefield, between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But when pressed publicly, the Taliban insists that al-Qaeda is not in Afghanistan and that the last al-Qaeda fighters left the country around the time of the Arab Spring. In off-the-record conversations, however, some Taliban leaders open up and portray foreign jihadist fighters as Muslim dissidents who deserve their support.
Given the immense costs for the Taliban of their association with al-Qaeda, the enduring relationship is puzzling—especially given the tensions that have emerged in al-Qaeda’s relationships with some of its other partners and affiliates, such as al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jabhat-al-Nusra in Syria. Scholars and analysts of the al-Qaeda–Taliban relationship offer several different explanations. Some point to the history between Afghans and Arab militants during the Afghan resistance against the Soviet Union. Others argue that al-Qaeda and the group within the Taliban once led by Haqqani are bound by marital ties among the families of key leaders. There is a strong suggestion that al-Qaeda remains popular among the rank-and-file of the Taliban. Finally, analysts also argue that the experience of fighting together against a common foe has brought the two groups closer.
There is merit to each of these explanations. But there is also a political logic to the relationship that is grounded in the groups’ ideological projects. Al-Qaeda’s messaging and overall political direction indicates that it sees the Afghan Taliban as an important partner in its stewardship of global jihad—it sees in the Taliban a group whose religious virtues and political achievements al-Qaeda is able to extol before the Muslim world. According to Jihadi Salafism scholar Cole Bunzel, al-Qaeda has emphasized Afghanistan as the “seat of the anticipated caliphate” and the Afghan Taliban chief as “the caliph-in-waiting.” Al-Qaeda chief Aimen al-Zawahiri’s allegiance to the leader of the Taliban is in line with that. On the other hand, the Afghan Taliban’s political project is built around the centrality of jihad and its own status as guardians of Islam in Afghan society—which is where al-Qaeda’s jihadist project aligns with the Taliban’s foundational politics. Al-Qaeda also subordinates itself to the Taliban, giving its top leader the status of final arbiter. Significantly, al-Qaeda’s approach contrasts sharply with that of ISIS, especially ISIS’s Afghanistan branch. That group, like al-Qaeda, espouses Salafist precepts. Unlike al-Qaeda, however, it is dismissive of the Taliban’s ideological standing and political status in Afghanistan.
Painful Truths
As the United States pulls out from Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban remains sympathetic to al-Qaeda. Some US interlocutors who have engaged with the Taliban’s senior leadership in recent years, especially during the negotiations that led to the February 2020 Doha agreement, note that the Taliban consistently resisted moving against al-Qaeda. At one point during the negotiations, the discussion broke down with the Afghan Taliban insisting that there was no proof that al-Qaeda had carried out the 9/11 attacks.
To be sure, some parts of the Taliban oppose al-Qaeda. Some have actively lobbied against the relationship. Others argue that the group should distance itself from al-Qaeda due to American pressure and to gain international legitimacy. These voices within the Taliban are not insignificant, but their political influence on the group’s elite decision making does not appear to be substantial. Despite the Doha agreement, there are no signs that the Taliban is planning any major crackdown on al-Qaeda, nor on any other group with foreign fighters with whom it has collaborated inside Afghanistan.
For now, even if some version of the Doha agreement guides US-Taliban ties, the Taliban is unlikely to expel al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. The US government needs to be clear-eyed about the challenge at hand; policymakers should brace themselves for more cooperation between the two groups.
Asfandyar Mir (@asfandyarmir) is a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace and lecturer at Stanford University.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Lt. j. g. Joe Painter, DoD
17. A Reluctant Embrace: China’s New Relationship with the Taliban
Excerpts:
In anticipation of prolonged conflict in Afghanistan, Beijing is trying to strike a balance in its diplomacy toward the Afghan government and the Taliban. Chinese officials’ recent recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political force is significant. However, the prospects for that relationship remain uncertain as the Taliban’s future policies are unclear. China has the capacity to play a bigger role in the country economically, but a willingness to do so will only emerge when there are signs of sustainable stability. China has been weaving a net of bilateral, trilateral (China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), and multilateral engagements to encourage that stability. If stability does not emerge in the foreseeable future, China most likely will avoid deep economic involvement in Afghanistan and will work with both the Afghan government and the Taliban to protect its interests on the ground.
A Reluctant Embrace: China’s New Relationship with the Taliban - War on the Rocks
As the United States withdraws from Afghanistan and leaves a security vacuum there, is China moving in by cozying up to the Taliban? On July 28, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a high-profile official meeting with a delegation of nine Afghan Taliban representatives, including the group’s co-founder and deputy leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. This was not the first visit by Taliban members to China, but the meeting was unprecedented in its publicity, the seniority of the Chinese attendees, and the political messages conveyed. Most notably, Wang used the meeting to publicly recognize the Taliban as a legitimate political force in Afghanistan, a step that has major significance for the country’s future development.
Even so, close examination of the meeting’s details and the Chinese government’s record of engagement with the Taliban reveals that the future path of the relationship is far from certain. Not only is the endgame of the armed conflict in Afghanistan undetermined. There are also questions about how moderate the Taliban will ever be, which has a tremendous impact on Chinese officials’ perception of, and policy toward, the organization. Additionally, despite the narrative that Afghanistan could play an important role in the Belt and Road Initiative as well as in regional economic integration, economics is not yet an incentive for China to lunge into the war-plagued country. China has been burned badly in its previous investments in Afghanistan and will tread carefully in the future. In an effort to further its political and economic interests, the Chinese government has reluctantly embraced the Taliban, but it has also hedged by continuing to engage diplomatically with the Afghan government.
China’s Public Recognition of the Taliban as a Legitimate Political Force
In 1993, four years after the Soviet Union had withdrawn its last troops from Afghanistan and one year after the Afghan communist regime had collapsed, China evacuated its embassy there amid the violent struggle then taking place. After the Taliban seized power in 1996, the Chinese government never established an official relationship with that regime. The Taliban’s fundamentalist nature, their association with and harboring of al-Qaeda, and their questionable relationship with Uighur militants all led Chinese officials to view them negatively.
Even as China has maintained its official recognition of the Afghan government, in recent years, Chinese officials have developed a relationship with the Taliban in response to the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan and shifts in the balance of power on the ground. In 2015, China hosted secret talks between representatives of the Taliban and Afghan government in Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. In July 2016, a Taliban delegation — led by Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, then the group’s senior representative in Qatar — visited Beijing. During the trip, the Taliban representatives reportedly sought China’s understanding and support for their positions in Afghan domestic politics. China’s engagement efforts intensified in 2019, as peace talks between the United States and the Taliban gained speed. In June of that year, Baradar, who had become head of the Taliban’s political office in Qatar and is viewed as a moderate figure by Chinese officials, visited China for official meetings on the Afghan peace process and counter-terrorism issues. After the negotiations between the Taliban and the United States in Doha faltered in September 2019, China tried to fill the void by inviting Baradar again to participate in a two-day, intra-Afghan conference in Beijing. It was originally scheduled for Oct. 29 and 30 of that year. It was postponed at least twice, in October and November, before China and ultimately the world plunged into the COVID-19 crisis. The meeting never took place.
China’s keen and active engagement with the Taliban reveals Beijing’s deepening perception of the group’s critical role in Afghanistan after the U.S. troop withdrawal. During his meeting with Baradar last month, Wang publicly described the Taliban as “a crucial military and political force in Afghanistan that is expected to play an important role in the peace, reconciliation, and reconstruction process of the country.” This was the first time that any Chinese official publicly recognized the Taliban as a legitimate political force in Afghanistan, a significant gesture that will boost the group’s domestic and international standing. As Chinese officials battle a reputation for cozying up to the Afghan Taliban — designated a terrorist organization by Canada, Russia, and others — it is important for them to justify the rationale for their engagement.
Wang did not forget to diss Washington in the meeting with the Taliban: He emphasized “the failed U.S. policy on Afghanistan” and encouraged the Afghan people to stabilize and develop their country without foreign interference. Although the United States was not the focus of the meeting, Chinese officials did draw a contrast between what they consider America’s selective approach to Afghan politics and China’s “benevolent” role by virtue of its self-proclaimed noninterference principle and amical approach to all political forces in Afghanistan.
The third aspect of Wang’s message focused on the demand that the Taliban “sever all ties with all terrorist organizations, including the East Turkestan Islamic Movement,” a Muslim separatist group founded by militant Uighurs. Although many have questioned the existence of the organization, and the Trump administration removed it from the U.S. Terrorist Exclusion List last November, the presence of Uighur militants in Afghanistan and their political aspirations are real. This issue has been a priority for Chinese officials in their dealings with all political forces in Afghanistan. In fact, without the Taliban’s public promise in July not to harbor any group hostile to China, it is questionable whether Chinese officials would have issued such a high-profile recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political force at all.
China’s Balancing Diplomacy
While the Taliban delegation’s recent visit to Beijing has garnered much publicity, less attention was paid to what happened just prior to it. Twelve days before, General Secretary Xi Jinping had a phone conversation with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Xi emphasized “China’s firm support of the Afghan government to maintain the nation’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.” The call highlighted that not only does China still recognize Ghani’s government as the legitimate representative of Afghanistan, but that Beijing also has pledged its support to Ghani in relation to the peace process and much-needed COVID-19 relief, at least for the time being.
There are different views in China over the likely outcome of the conflict between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Although many analysts assess that the Taliban will eventually prevail, some prominent Chinese experts have argued that the group’s victory is “only one of the possibilities” and that its territorial advances have been exaggerated. Even if many signs point to potential victory by the Taliban, the nature and timing of that event remain to be seen. For the Chinese government, uncertainty about the future of Afghan politics underscores the need for a balanced approach that maintains ties with both sides, as perfectly illustrated by Xi’s phone call with Ghani and Wang’s meeting with the Taliban.
As long as the civil war in Afghanistan persists, the Chinese government will continue to pursue this diplomatic balancing act as the best way to promote its interests. Indeed, China needs both the Afghan government and the Taliban to help protect the security of Chinese assets and nationals on the ground, as well as to combat organizations such as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. In the event the Taliban and Afghan government end up in a prolonged stalemate, China also desires to play the role of a mediator — even if outsiders see it more as a facilitator — which requires China not to pick a side.
A China-Taliban Romance?
The meeting between Wang and the Taliban delegation was not all cozy. And China’s budding relationship with the group comes with conditions. Wang told his visitors — in a style reminiscent of a lecture — that they need to “build a positive image and pursue an inclusive policy.” The implied message is that if the Taliban enact draconian measures again, this will inevitably affect China’s stance toward them. Indeed, some Chinese experts have called for the Taliban to make more changes in their policies in order to modernize and pursue a moderate direction. The Taliban’s ability and willingness to do so will determine the depth and breadth of China’s future engagement with them.
Chinese officials have felt a growing need to curry favor with the Taliban as the security situation in Afghanistan and the surrounding region has deteriorated. On June 19, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a rare warning calling for all Chinese nationals and entities in Afghanistan to “evacuate as soon as possible” in anticipation of intensified fighting in the country. Two days after the Wang-Taliban meeting, the Foreign Ministry issued the same warning once again. In neighboring Pakistan, three high-profile attacks against Chinese nationals have been launched in the last four months: the April 22 bombing of a hotel in Quetta where the Chinese ambassador was staying, a bus explosion in Kohistan that killed nine Chinese engineers in mid-July, and the shooting in Karachi of a car carrying Chinese engineers on the same day the Taliban delegation met with Wang. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the Quetta attack and analysts also suspected that it is culpable in the other attacks. Some Chinese experts have warned that the security vacuum created by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan could lead to an intensification of violence against Chinese nationals in the region. Hence, Chinese officials will likely see a need to rely on the Afghan Taliban not to target China, as well as to help influence or rein in those who might.
The relationship is born of necessity rather than preference. Many Chinese officials and analysts have doubts about how modernized the Afghan Taliban will ever be. Although some in China assess that the Taliban have become more pragmatic, there is no guarantee for what their policy will look like, especially regarding relations with radical Islamic organizations in the region. In addition, even if the core of the Taliban adopts a neutral, or even friendly, policy toward China, whether it could rein in all of the group’s radical factions remains a major question. Chinese officials don’t see many choices other than working with the Afghan Taliban, but the relationship will be complex, and its course will be determined by numerous factors in the months and years ahead.
Economics Not Yet an Incentive
The Taliban have openly welcomed Chinese investment in the reconstruction of Afghanistan and have indicated they would guarantee the safety of investors and workers from China. However, China is unlikely to lunge into Afghanistan with major investment in the foreseeable future. There has consistently been a disconnect between Chinese rhetoric regarding Afghanistan’s economic potential and the actual scale of Chinese commercial projects in the country. In 2019, the Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan emphasized the important role Afghanistan could play in China’s Belt and Road Initiative as well as in Chinese-Pakistani-Afghan regional economic integration. Nevertheless, that rosy picture is not supported by the actual data. For the first six months of 2021, total Chinese foreign direct investment in Afghanistan was only $2.4 million, and the value of new service contracts signed was merely $130,000. That suggests that the number of Chinese companies and workers in Afghanistan is declining significantly. For the whole of 2020, total Chinese foreign direct investment in Afghanistan was $4.4 million, less than 3 percent of that type of Chinese investment in Pakistan, which was $110 million for the same year.
China has been burned badly in its investments in Afghanistan. Its two major projects to date — the Amu Darya basin oil project by China’s largest state-owned oil company, China National Petroleum Corporation, and the Aynak copper mine by state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corporation and the Jiangxi Copper Company Limited — have both been ill fated. The challenges have included archeological excavation that halted the progress of the Aynak copper mine, security threats, and renegotiation of terms as well as the challenges of resettling local residents. Among these, political instability and security threats have been the top concerns. As long as the security environment remains unstable, China is unlikely to launch major economic projects in Afghanistan. The American troop presence there was not the factor hindering Chinese economic activities. In fact, Chinese companies had benefited from the stability that U.S. troops provided. Therefore, the U.S. withdrawal is unlikely to encourage major Chinese investment.
Walking a Tightrope
In anticipation of prolonged conflict in Afghanistan, Beijing is trying to strike a balance in its diplomacy toward the Afghan government and the Taliban. Chinese officials’ recent recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political force is significant. However, the prospects for that relationship remain uncertain as the Taliban’s future policies are unclear. China has the capacity to play a bigger role in the country economically, but a willingness to do so will only emerge when there are signs of sustainable stability. China has been weaving a net of bilateral, trilateral (China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), and multilateral engagements to encourage that stability. If stability does not emerge in the foreseeable future, China most likely will avoid deep economic involvement in Afghanistan and will work with both the Afghan government and the Taliban to protect its interests on the ground.
Yun Sun is the director of the China program at the Stimson Center.
18. As U.S. Leaves Afghanistan, History Suggests It May Struggle to Stay Out
Excerpt:
“The entire process of state building was based not on local needs and circumstances but on a model that was brought here from outside,” he said. “Now, we are seeing the rapid collapse of the state order.”
Orzala Nemat, an Afghan scholar and researcher, said that she had opposed the invasion, but that in the years since, the United States had become too enmeshed in Afghan life to pull out so suddenly.
“You made this country extensively dependent in every aspect for 20 years, and then one day you decide this is the time, and you leave without securing it to be able to make any progress,” she said.
She acknowledged that many parties had contributed to Afghanistan’s current troubles, but said that did not absolve the United States of its role.
“Because of the size, the speed and the scale of their involvement in Afghanistan, they have a larger share of responsibility,” she said.
As U.S. Leaves Afghanistan, History Suggests It May Struggle to Stay Out
By Ben Hubbard
Aug. 10, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
A decade ago, a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq opened the door for the Islamic State. Will the withdrawal from Afghanistan do the same for the Taliban?
Islamic State fighters advancing through the desert in Iraq near Tikrit in 2014.
By
Aug. 10, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
BEIRUT, Lebanon — After grueling years of watching United States forces fight and die in a faraway land, the president appealed to growing war weariness among voters and brought the troops home.
Not long after, an extremist group stormed through areas the Americans had left, killing civilians, seizing power and sweeping away billions of dollars’ worth of American efforts to leave behind a stable nation.
That’s what happened after President Barack Obama withdrew American forces from Iraq in 2011: the jihadists of the Islamic State established an extremist emirate, prompting the United States to dispatch its military, yet again, to flush them out.
It is also now a possible scenario in Afghanistan, where President Biden’s order to shut down America’s longest war has led to swift advances by the Taliban, the same extremist group the United States invaded Afghanistan to topple after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The challenge of achieving American interests in complex and distant societies like Afghanistan and Iraq has bedeviled policymakers from both parties since President George W. Bush declared the “war on terror” nearly two decades ago.
American soldiers at an outpost near Kamu, Afghanistan, in October 2008.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
In the years since, even how those interests are defined has swung wildly, driven at some times by a desire to spread democracy and human rights and at others by exasperation that costly efforts by the United States have borne so little fruit.
The result, according to some analysts and former United States officials, is a perception among both friends and enemies that you can never guarantee how long the United States will stick around.
“In my experience, we just have a lack of strategic patience as a nation and as a government,” said Ryan Crocker, a retired United States diplomat who served as ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan. “Sadly, in the region, our adversaries have come to count on us not staying the course.”
Mr. Biden has decided the time has come to leave Afghanistan, despite the risk that future developments could suck the United States back in.
In a speech last month defending his policy, Mr. Biden argued that it was not the United States’ job to fix the country.
“We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build,” Mr. Biden said. “It’s the right and the responsibility of Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.”
After two decades, he argued, keeping the troops deployed just a little longer was “not a solution, but a recipe for being there indefinitely.”
An American helicopter over Kabul in May.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
That policy has come under pressure in recent days, as Taliban forces seized six provincial capitals and exposed the weakness of the Afghan forces meant to take over after the United States completes its withdrawal at the end of the month.
During their advance, the Taliban have been accused of using assassinations and bombings to subvert talks aimed at creating a power-sharing government. Rights activists fear they will reimpose restrictions on women, barring them for working and moving around independently. And security experts warn that terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State could use Afghanistan to plot new attacks abroad.
So far, Mr. Biden has given no indication that he might change course, his position backed by polls suggesting that most Americans support the withdrawal.
But casting a shadow over the pullout is the ominous precedent of Mr. Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, when Mr. Biden was vice president.
On a trip to Camp LeJeune, N.C., in 2009, President Barack Obama announced U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
At the time, Al Qaeda in Iraq had been largely routed by the United States and Iraqi forces. But the Iraqi government was rife with corruption, its military was ill-prepared to ensure security, and its society was divided by sectarianism that was exacerbated by U.S.-backed politicians.
Shocked by the group’s violence and worried that it would inspire terrorist attacks around the world, the United States military returned, at the head of an international coalition that worked with local forces to rout the jihadists.
“You cannot but compare the two cases,” said Harith Hasan, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, of Iraq in 2011 and Afghanistan today.
Many factors that contributed to the Islamic State’s rise are present in Afghanistan, he said, adding that policymakers would be naïve to think that such problems would not eventually spill over borders.
“Even if the U.S. wants to disengage, the rise of forces such as ISIS, such as the Taliban, forces that are radical and able to destabilize the whole region, they will eventually affect U.S. interests,” Mr. Hasan said.
The United States has been involved in Afghanistan since President Bush ordered an invasion in 2001 aimed at disrupting terrorist groups and toppling the Taliban government.
But Qaeda and Taliban leaders escaped to neighboring Pakistan, and in 2003 the United States announced the end of major combat operations and shifted, with international partners, to helping Afghanistan emerge as a pro-Western democracy.
An American B-52 bomber circled above Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in December 2001.Credit...Joao Silva for The New York Times
Despite some successes, corruption in the Afghan government sapped development, neighboring powers backed proxy forces inside the country, and the Taliban reconstituted as an insurgency. President Obama increased and decreased troop numbers, and President Donald J. Trump started negotiations with the Taliban, bypassing the Afghan government.
After entering the White House, Mr. Biden announced the withdrawal, arguing essentially that if all the United States had done so far had not fixed Afghanistan, nothing would.
Many Americans share that view. Others worry it sets a dangerous precedent.
The United States withdrawal after negotiating with the Taliban amounted to “an effective American surrender,” said Mr. Crocker, the former ambassador.
“The Taliban can now present themselves as the Islamic movement that defeated the great Satan, and that is going to resonate internationally,” he said.
The speed of the withdrawal has left many Afghans feeling that they are being left alone to deal alone with messes created, in part, by American policies.
Bullet casings, humvees and a mortar position at the frontline between Afghan government forces and the Taliban this month in Kandahar.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Omar Sadr, a professor of political science in the Afghan capital, Kabul, attributed problems like the weakness of the Afghan security forces to the United States’ failure to work inside the country’s political and cultural dynamics.
“The entire process of state building was based not on local needs and circumstances but on a model that was brought here from outside,” he said. “Now, we are seeing the rapid collapse of the state order.”
Orzala Nemat, an Afghan scholar and researcher, said that she had opposed the invasion, but that in the years since, the United States had become too enmeshed in Afghan life to pull out so suddenly.
“You made this country extensively dependent in every aspect for 20 years, and then one day you decide this is the time, and you leave without securing it to be able to make any progress,” she said.
She acknowledged that many parties had contributed to Afghanistan’s current troubles, but said that did not absolve the United States of its role.
“Because of the size, the speed and the scale of their involvement in Afghanistan, they have a larger share of responsibility,” she said.
19. Chinese pressure sparks debate on Taiwan’s resilience
Excerpts:
“Australia, Japan, South Korea, [the Group of Seven] and [the] EU have all identified Taiwan security as increasingly important, as Beijing stepped up efforts to isolate Taiwan in the international arena,” Ms. Leung said. “Japan has signaled it may be forced to intervene in a cross-strait crisis. These developments were unprecedented.”
Ms. Leung and Cameron Waltz, a junior fellow with the Bush Foundation, pushed their argument in a recent commentary published by Foreign Policy under the headline “Beijing’s Attempts to Intimidate Taiwan Have Backfired; Chinese coercion has strengthened democratic resolve.”
“The United States is now at its closest with Taiwan since it de-recognized the Republic of China in 1979,” the authors said. The Biden administration has responded to China’s increased military activity in the Taiwan Strait by “normalizing U.S. warship transits near Taiwan, coupled with sales of advanced weapons to Taipei to boost its ability to asymmetrically deny a Chinese invasion.”
Not everyone agrees. Some say China‘s increasingly overt threats to Taiwan‘s independence are deeply worrying.
“This idea that Beijing’s tactics have helped Taiwan gain more support than it has seen in decades — that’s just false,” said Michael Pillsbury, a longtime adviser on China to successive White House administrations and currently the head of Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute in Washington.
“There’s certainly increased concern for Taiwan, but the main concern is that China’s going to invade Taiwan,” Mr. Pillsbury said. “Still, I don’t think China’s aggressiveness is having any effect on tangible steps to defend Taiwan or increase deterrence, even if international concern over the prospect of China possibly using force against Taiwan is at the highest level it’s been in decades.
Chinese pressure sparks debate on Taiwan’s resilience
China’s expanding military provocations toward Taiwan have elevated concern among the United States and its allies that Beijing could be on the verge of using force against the island democracy, which China considers to be an integral part of its sovereign territory.
The pressure on Taiwan and other aggressive actions by the authoritarian communist government in China have also triggered debate over the extent to which the aggression might backfire by boosting Taiwan‘s strong pro-independence forces and prompting the U.S. and others to deliver more robust support for Taipei.
The Biden administration has made rhetorical overtures of support for Taiwan, but analysts say the U.S. is as wedded as ever to “One China.” Under the policy, Washington refuses to formally recognize Taiwanese independence but helps the island defend itself and leaves ambiguous what the U.S. military would do in a shooting war.
Some say Beijing‘s actions over the past year, most notably stepped-up drills and missile testing by the People’s Liberation Army in the Taiwan Strait, have backfired, producing unprecedented support for Taiwan by the United States and its Indo-Pacific allies.
“Beijing‘s pressure against Taiwan has triggered counteractions by Washington and the international community, perhaps more than China has anticipated,” said Zoe Leung, the director of Track 2 Diplomacy Programs at the Houston-based George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations.
“Since the beginning of 2021, U.S. Navy [ships] transited the Taiwan Strait seven times in response to PLA show of force,” Ms. Leung told The Washington Times. The increase in visits to Taiwan by current and former U.S. officials over the past two years should also is a sign of expanding American support, driven by Washington’s desire to counter China’s aggressive moves.
She said the Biden administration has been working behind the scenes to expand diplomatic support for Taiwan on the international stage.
“Australia, Japan, South Korea, [the Group of Seven] and [the] EU have all identified Taiwan security as increasingly important, as Beijing stepped up efforts to isolate Taiwan in the international arena,” Ms. Leung said. “Japan has signaled it may be forced to intervene in a cross-strait crisis. These developments were unprecedented.”
Ms. Leung and Cameron Waltz, a junior fellow with the Bush Foundation, pushed their argument in a recent commentary published by Foreign Policy under the headline “Beijing’s Attempts to Intimidate Taiwan Have Backfired; Chinese coercion has strengthened democratic resolve.”
“The United States is now at its closest with Taiwan since it de-recognized the Republic of China in 1979,” the authors said. The Biden administration has responded to China’s increased military activity in the Taiwan Strait by “normalizing U.S. warship transits near Taiwan, coupled with sales of advanced weapons to Taipei to boost its ability to asymmetrically deny a Chinese invasion.”
Not everyone agrees. Some say China‘s increasingly overt threats to Taiwan‘s independence are deeply worrying.
“This idea that Beijing’s tactics have helped Taiwan gain more support than it has seen in decades — that’s just false,” said Michael Pillsbury, a longtime adviser on China to successive White House administrations and currently the head of Chinese strategy at the Hudson Institute in Washington.
“There’s certainly increased concern for Taiwan, but the main concern is that China’s going to invade Taiwan,” Mr. Pillsbury said. “Still, I don’t think China’s aggressiveness is having any effect on tangible steps to defend Taiwan or increase deterrence, even if international concern over the prospect of China possibly using force against Taiwan is at the highest level it’s been in decades.
“Have any other countries started selling arms to Taiwan? No. We’re the only country since 1980 that dares to sell arms to Taiwan. Let’s see Australia try to sell arms to Taiwan. They won’t do it,” Mr. Pillsbury said. Many key U.S. allies, including Australia and Japan, are far more dependent on China as an import and export market than is the United States.”
On the weapons front, the United States has long been the lone exception in selling arms to Taipei. The State Department last week formally approved the first Taiwan arms sale of the Biden era. The $750 million deal includes some 40 self-propelled howitzer armored field artillery vehicles. China‘s nationalist, state-controlled Global Times denounced the sale as a “vicious provocation.”
Mr. Pillsbury said delivery on such deals often gets delayed indefinitely, and he called it a gross overstatement to say the U.S. sells Taiwan “advanced weaponry.” He said Washington often does not meet specific Taiwanese weapons requests.
He stressed that the U.S. maintains its adherence to the 1979 One China policy.
Formal international support for Taiwan remains low, he said. Just 15 countries, mainly tiny nations that trade more with Taipei than Beijing, recognize Taiwanese independence. The list does not include the U.S., Japan, Australia, India, South Korea or any other major democracy in Asia.
“The meat here is that nothing has changed on specific steps for Taiwan‘s defense. Nothing has changed,” Mr. Pillsbury said. “I’m tired of virtue signaling and false hope and wishful thinking on this issue. [The Taiwanese] can’t even fly their flag inside the United States. Taiwanese air force pilots have the Taiwan insignia ripped off their uniforms when they start training [in the U.S.]. Do you have any idea of the level of humiliation the Taiwanese go through?”
Increasingly wary
Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, a former CIA official who also has decades of experience analyzing China, said the international community, in general, has grown increasingly wary of Beijing’s actions on a range of fronts, including Taiwan, trade, the South China Sea and the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. DeTrani pointed to frustration over the Chinese government’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong by imposing an aggressive “national security law.” He noted regional unease from aggressive moves in disputed areas of the South China Sea where Beijing has been constructing military bases on artificial islands.
Other areas of concern, he said, are Beijing’s human rights abuses of Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in China’s Xinjiang region and its “wolf warrior” international diplomacy. Inspired by the Rambo-style Chinese-action movie “Wolf Warrior,” officials sharply denounce officials and institutions in Australia, India and Japan that criticize China.
“There’s a multitude of issues out there where China’s behavior is turning a lot of countries and people off,” Mr. DeTrani said. “I believe China’s actions — whether it’s the national security law in Hong Kong, the wolf warrior diplomacy mentality, the assertiveness in the South China Sea, the actions in Xinjiang — have backfired and are affecting not only the international view of China and [President Xi Jinping], but also the situation with Taiwan and engendering more concern for the well-being of the people of Taiwan.”
Concern about the fate of Taiwan has also been coursing through the halls of the Pentagon.
The Associated Press reported in April that the U.S. military assessed that China was accelerating its timetable for capturing control of Taiwan. Such a move could trigger a direct U.S.-Chinese war. Gen. John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. had “failed miserably” in a war game simulation of a Chinese attempt to overrun Taiwan.
“An aggressive Red Team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us,” Gen. Hyten told an audience at a defense industry event on July 26. “They knew exactly what we’re going to do before we did it.”
The Defense Department has revealed few details about that war game, but officials said it delivered a jolt to the U.S. military’s assessment of the balance of power in the Pacific.
Adm. John C. Aquilino, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, downplayed the war game exercise in remarks to the Aspen Security Forum last week but acknowledged that Beijing’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea and elsewhere sparked a “sense of urgency” inside the Pentagon.
“Those games have helped us to identify where we have gaps and seams, how we make requests for capabilities and requirements to ensure our competitive advantage is maintained,” Adm. Aquilino said. “I’m confident we still have the finest and strongest military on the earth and that the U.S. is ready for any contingency, should it occur.”
• Ben Wolfgang contributed to this report.
20. Strait of Emergency? Debating Beijing’s Threat to Taiwan
Five against one but Dr Oriana Skylar Mastro holds her own. She actually puts them in their place here. They violate a fundamental Sun Tzu precept: "never assume the enemy will not attack, make yourself invincible."
Rachel Esplin Odell and Eric Heginbotham, Bonny Lin and David Sacks, and Kharis Templeman all argue that China is unlikely to attempt armed unification with Taiwan. Although I appreciate their perspectives, they do not present any new evidence that would make me reconsider my assessment that the risk of Chinese aggression across the Taiwan Strait is real and growing. To the contrary, they repeat many of the increasingly dangerous misperceptions that I sought to dispel in my original article—namely, that China does not have the military capabilities to pull off an amphibious invasion, that the economic costs of an invasion would be sufficient to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping, and that China can afford to wait indefinitely to achieve its most important national goal of unification. My critics assume that insofar as there are risks, they can be dealt with through relatively limited adjustments in U.S. policy and military posture—a position with which I still strongly disagree.
Strait of Emergency?
Debating Beijing’s Threat to Taiwan
September/October 2021
Don’t Fall for the Invasion Panic
Rachel Esplin Odell and Eric Heginbotham
Oriana Skylar Mastro’s article “The Taiwan Temptation” (July/August 2021) is one of many recent articles that warns of the growing risk of Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait. Such articles have become so common that they have created something of an invasion panic in Washington—one that is damaging to both the United States’ and Taiwan’s interests. Anxiety about impending Chinese aggression was part of what drove Washington in recent years to weaken its long-standing “one China” policy by lifting some restrictions on official interactions between it and Taiwan. It also undergirds recent calls for Washington to abandon its policy of “strategic ambiguity” about whether it would defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.
Although Mastro does not explicitly endorse these policy changes, she does suggest that the United States has no good options for preventing a Chinese assault on Taiwan, implying a false equivalence among the various approaches available to Washington. In reality, the risks are less imminent and more manageable than she suggests. The United States can maintain stability in the Taiwan Strait by bolstering Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities and adopting a lighter and more distributed—and thus less vulnerable—force posture in the Asia-Pacific. At the same time, Washington should strengthen its “one China” policy, reinforce strategic ambiguity, and refrain from making unconditional commitments to Taiwan.
Mastro rightly observes that if China were to take military action against Taiwan, it would have several options, ranging from an invasion to a blockade to the occupation of small offshore islands or strikes on selected economic or political targets. Although some of these options are more realistic than others, all would carry immense risk. Contrary to what Mastro suggests, Beijing is unlikely to attempt any of them unless it feels backed into a corner.
China’s most decisive option would be a cross-strait invasion. But its chances of succeeding today—and for the next decade at least—are poor. Moreover, failure would produce a wrecked fleet and an army of prisoners of war in Taiwan, an outcome that even Beijing would be unable to spin as a victory. If, as most China analysts believe, regime security is the top priority for Chinese leaders, an invasion would risk everything on dim prospects for glory.
To be sure, recent Chinese military modernization efforts have yielded potent new capabilities, and the People’s Liberation Army could visit havoc on Taiwan and U.S. forces deployed in the region at the outset of a conflict. But the PLA still lacks the naval and air assets necessary to pull off a successful cross-strait attack. Just as important, it suffers from weaknesses in training, in the willingness or ability of junior officers to take initiative, and in the ability to coordinate ground, sea, and air forces in large, complex operations.
To put China’s naval capabilities in perspective, consider that the United States captured Okinawa in 1945 from a Japanese garrison that was roughly the size of Taiwan’s current active army with a fleet weighing 2.4 million tons and supported by 22 carriers, 18 battleships, and 29 cruisers. China’s amphibious fleet totals just 0.4 million tons today and would be supported by a much smaller fleet of combat ships that, unlike the battleships and cruisers of World War II, are not equipped with large guns capable of supporting troops ashore. China could supplement its naval transport vessels with civilian ships, but such ships unload slowly, as the British rediscovered in the Falklands in 1982, and these would share with the military fleet a limited number of landing craft for getting supplies from ship to shore. Chinese paratroopers or heliborne forces could also attempt to cross the strait, but they face even greater limitations and would be highly vulnerable to Taiwan’s surface-to-air missiles.
Even if China could triple the size of its amphibious transport fleet, its ships would remain vulnerable to counterattacks by the United States and Taiwan. To seize control of the island, China would need to keep its fleet off Taiwan’s coast for weeks, creating easy targets for antiship cruise missiles launched from Taiwan or from U.S. bombers, fighter aircraft, and submarines. And even if the PLA managed to capture ports or airports, U.S. bombers or submarines could put those facilities out of commission, assuming Taiwan’s forces did not sabotage them first. To be sure, China could strike U.S. bases in Japan and threaten the U.S. fleet operating east of Taiwan. But unless Taiwan were to collapse without a fight—a scenario on which leaders in Beijing are unlikely to gamble their own survival—China could not sustain a fleet off Taiwan’s beaches long enough to prevail.
Instead of an all-out invasion, China could opt for an air or sea blockade, seeking to starve Taiwan of trade until it capitulated to Beijing’s demands. But the potential upside would be smaller and less certain, and the potential downside almost as calamitous. A blockade would require China to operate aircraft and ships for extended periods of time to the east of Taiwan, once again creating targets for U.S. bombers, aircraft, and submarines. As Mastro notes, China could respond by striking U.S. bases in Japan, but doing so would ignite a broader war, with all the attendant risks China would have sought to avoid by stopping short of an invasion.
Mastro acknowledges that “China is unlikely to attack Taiwan unless it is confident that it can achieve a quick victory.” But blockades, by their nature, take months and sometimes years to yield results. Even a few months would give the United States sufficient time to mobilize its immense military might to break the blockade. And a blockade could be met not just with an attack on Chinese forces but also with a counterblockade of China. As a result, this option is also unlikely to deliver Taiwan into Chinese hands and, like an invasion, would succeed only if Taiwan essentially collapsed without a fight.
Less risky than an invasion or a full blockade would be more limited coercive actions. China could seize a small Taiwan-controlled island immediately off its mainland coast, for instance, or strike economic or political targets in Taiwan. Taiwan’s Kinmen Island is just five miles off the coast of the mainland, well within artillery range. Occupying the island is within China’s current military capability and would signal resolve but would not embroil Beijing in a larger conflict. If China seized Kinmen quickly and then ceased military operations, the onus would be on Taiwan—and the world—to respond or accept the fait accompli.
But Beijing is unlikely to undertake even limited military action merely because it can, as Mastro suggests it might. China has had the ability to take Taiwan’s closest offshore islands for decades, but it has refrained from doing so. Should it decide to seize one of these islands in the future, the assault would be not “part of a phased invasion,” as Mastro argues, but a statement of frustration with a perceived shift in the U.S. or Taiwanese status quo. Beijing would likewise have to think long and hard before striking targets in Taiwan. Historically, coercive bombing campaigns have achieved limited success, and such attacks would expose China to considerable economic and political risk. Beijing cares about its international reputation, and although it may never forswear the use of force to achieve unification, it is not eager to attack Taiwan without a clear pretext and an endgame that serves its political purposes.
A cross-strait invasion of Taiwan would risk everything on dim prospects for glory.
Instead of overreacting to Beijing’s growing power, Washington and Taipei should foster peace and stability through a more balanced set of military and political measures. On the military front, they should continue to deter Chinese aggression by implementing their own respective denial strategies, neither of which would require a major military buildup or the integration of U.S. and Taiwanese forces. To that end, the United States should adopt a lighter military footprint in the western Pacific, one that is better able to withstand a Chinese attack and wear down Chinese naval and air forces should they attack Taiwan. It should invest in a distributed air and naval presence rather than in ground forces, more long-range antiship missiles and fewer weapons designed to strike deep into China, and light aircraft carriers to supplement a reduced force of large-deck carriers. Such adjustments would highlight the enormous risks to China of offensive military action and provide the United States with a more usable set of tools, ones that would not risk escalation in the event of a crisis.
Taiwan should also improve its own defenses. Under President Tsai Ing-wen, Taipei has adopted a more rational defense strategy that emphasizes resilience and sustainability. Washington should incentivize further movement in this direction by selling Taipei defensive weapons capable of surviving a Chinese assault, including antiship cruise missiles, smart mines, drones, and air defense systems, rather than the vulnerable aircraft and warships Taipei has preferred in the past. It should also condition such sales on Taiwan’s willingness to enhance the readiness and training of its troops, especially its reserve forces.
Washington needs the right political strategy to accompany these military efforts. As the pioneering game theorist Thomas Schelling observed, reassurance is an essential corollary to deterrence, because it presents potential adversaries with a real alternative to aggression. Washington should therefore refrain from further blurring the line between cultural and economic engagement with Taiwan and official political recognition, a distinction that lies at the heart of the agreements that accompanied the normalization of U.S.-Chinese diplomatic relations. It should also make clear that it remains committed to the “one China” policy by explicitly reaffirming that it does not favor a unilateral assertion of Taiwanese independence and that it supports the peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences.
At the same time, the United States should pursue bilateral cooperation with China on issues such as climate change and pandemic management. It should also open an official nuclear dialogue with China and invest in improving military and civilian crisis communication channels, including negotiating procedures for coast guard vessel encounters. In private, U.S. President Joe Biden should emphasize to Chinese President Xi Jinping that the main obstacle to unification is not the U.S. military or the relationship between the United States and Taiwan but China’s own failure to develop a viable peaceful unification strategy that appeals to the people of Taiwan.
Because Beijing refuses to engage the moderate Tsai administration, these measures are unlikely to improve cross-strait relations anytime soon. But by playing a long game of balanced deterrence and reassurance, the United States can discourage Chinese adventurism even as it leaves the door open to positive change.
RACHEL ESPLIN ODELL is a Research Fellow in the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
ERIC HEGINBOTHAM is Principal Research Scientist at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Force Is Still a Last Resort
Bonny Lin and David Sacks
Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that under President Xi Jinping, China has discarded its decades-old strategy of pursuing “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan and is now moving toward a military takeover of the island. But no such seismic policy shift has occurred in Beijing. Preparation for a conflict over Taiwan has always driven China’s military modernization efforts. Using force to achieve unification, however, remains an option of last resort. Instead, China is focused on chipping away at the will of the Taiwanese people. Eventually, Beijing thinks, they will conclude that their only viable future is to join the mainland.
For decades, China’s approach to Taiwan has involved a combination of carrots designed to demonstrate the appeal of unification and sticks aimed at dissuading the island from moving toward independence. Beijing offers preferential treatment to citizens of Taiwan who do business on the mainland, for instance, while also conducting military exercises in the vicinity of the island to remind Taiwan’s citizens not to flirt with independence.
Chinese leaders have embraced this approach because they do not see Taiwan as destined for independence and do not believe that the window for unification has closed. Successive Chinese leaders have advanced their policy agendas and burnished their legacies without delivering unification. Xi will be able to do the same, which perhaps explains why he has yet to set an explicit timeline for unification with the island. Xi is also aware that even though Taiwanese identity continues to harden, most on the island still support the status quo; only a small percentage of Taiwanese people advocate immediate independence.
Chinese leaders believe that the people of Taiwan will eventually conclude that their future prosperity is inextricably tied to closer relations with the mainland. Despite the island’s recent efforts to reduce its economic dependence on China, 45 percent of Taiwan’s exports went to the mainland and Hong Kong in 2020, a record high. Beijing is betting that Taipei will not risk Taiwan’s economic livelihood for the sake of independence.
Under Xi, China has adopted a more assertive foreign policy, including vis-à-vis Taiwan. It has flown increasingly large formations of aircraft through Taiwan’s airspace, expanded maritime patrols in and around the Taiwan Strait, and stepped up military exercises aimed at the island. It has peeled away Taipei’s diplomatic allies and used its influence in international organizations to exclude Taiwan. And it has sought to marginalize the island economically, pressing other countries not to sign free-trade agreements with Taipei. With these and other coercive measures, China has sought to underscore the costs of resisting unification.
China’s growing power and its success in isolating Taiwan have convinced Chinese leaders that the trend lines are moving in the right direction. Mastro cites as evidence that Beijing is growing impatient an April interview in which Le Yucheng, China’s vice foreign minister, refused to rule out the possibility of military action against Taiwan. But in the same interview, Le took a longer view, stressing that Beijing sees unification as a “historical process and the tide of history.”
Beijing still sees an invasion of Taiwan as a last resort, one that would be incredibly difficult, risky, and costly for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Although Mastro concedes that a Chinese amphibious assault on Taiwan “is far from guaranteed to succeed,” she argues that Chinese perceptions of China’s capabilities matter more than its actual capabilities and that Chinese leaders are increasingly confident in China’s ability to win a fight over Taiwan. It is true that China possesses a more advanced military than it did five or ten years ago, but China also intentionally exaggerates its capabilities and confidence as part of its campaign of psychological warfare against Taiwan and the United States. Analysts should not accept at face value China’s claim that it could easily win a fight against Taiwan.
As evidence of China’s ability to take the island, Mastro points to U.S. war games in which China prevailed over the United States. But such war games are generally designed to challenge U.S. warfighting capabilities, not to predict the outcome of conflicts. They also purposely tilt the fight in favor of China—for instance, by assuming that the PLA, which has not experienced serious combat in over four decades, has nonetheless mastered the incredibly difficult tactical, logistical, and command aspects of what would be one of the largest and most complicated military operations since World War II. By imagining a much more capable China, these war games help identify steps that the United States and Taiwan could take to ensure that even a large-scale and determined Chinese invasion of Taiwan would fail. Their goal is not to model a realistic scenario.
Instead of using force, China is chipping away at the will of the Taiwanese people.
In other words, it is far from clear that China could defeat Taiwan’s military, subdue its population, and occupy and control its territory. Nor is it clear that the PLA could hold off any U.S. forces that came to Taiwan’s aid, or that Beijing would be willing to undertake a campaign that could spark a larger and far more costly war with the United States. A Chinese invasion would invite significant international political, economic, and diplomatic backlash that could undermine China’s political, social, and economic development goals. It would also spur the formation of powerful anti-China coalitions, bringing to fruition Beijing’s long-standing fear of “strategic encirclement” by powers aligned against it.
Mastro implies that China would be able to devote all its military and security resources to an attack on Taiwan. In reality, however, Chinese leaders are likely to worry that the PLA does not have the capacity to seize and hold Taiwan while still maintaining tight control over Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the rest of mainland China, not to mention defending its claims in the many territorial disputes it has with neighbors. Invading Taiwan would be perhaps the riskiest decision Beijing has made since 1950, when it intervened in the Korean War on behalf of North Korea. In making that choice, Chinese leaders would certainly weigh factors beyond cross-strait dynamics and the PLA’s capabilities; they would also have to consider whether China could politically and economically sustain a protracted conflict and whether attacking Taiwan would undermine Beijing’s broader global ambitions.
Mastro argues that once China possesses the military capabilities necessary to invade Taiwan, “Xi could find it politically untenable not to do so” because of the heightened nationalism in China. But Xi has consolidated political and military power to an extent not seen since Mao Zedong, and he has revised China’s constitution to allow himself to stay in power indefinitely. Xi’s control over the PLA and his emphasis on personal loyalty mean that his hand will not be forced on such a consequential decision. Moreover, he has a range of coercive options at his disposal. Rather than invading Taiwan, for instance, he could respond to rising nationalist pressure by escalating the PLA’s harassment of the island while censoring additional nationalist criticism.
Instead of launching a risky assault on Taiwan, China could try to achieve its objectives in a piecemeal way that would make it difficult for Taiwan or the United States to respond. For instance, China may attempt to seize or blockade an island under Taiwanese control, such as Itu Aba (also known as Taiping), Kinmen, Matsu, or Pratas. Alternatively, China could launch a cyberattack against Taiwan’s critical infrastructure, shutting down the island’s Internet or power supply. And these are just a few of the political, economic, and military options short of an invasion that Chinese leaders could use against Taiwan.
Although Mastro overstates China’s eagerness to invade Taiwan, she is right that the United States needs to redouble its efforts to ensure that Xi is not tempted to do so. Washington, Taipei, and like-minded allies are capable of fielding the military capabilities needed to prevent China from forcibly seizing control of Taiwan. But the United States will need to invest in military capabilities that are either long range or difficult for PLA missiles to target—and signal its willingness to use them should China use force against Taiwan. Washington should also continue to press Taiwan to increase its defense spending and invest in asymmetric capabilities—in particular, sea mines and antiship missiles.
To prevent China’s coercion of Taiwan from sparking a crisis or a conflict, the United States will need to work with Taiwan to improve its overall defense capabilities, so that it does not feel backed into a corner and forced to respond to Chinese provocations by escalating the dispute. Washington should use senior-level dialogues and war games to help Taiwan’s leadership think through the consequences of various responses to Chinese military aggression. It should also help Taiwan secure its critical infrastructure, harden its cyberdefenses, and improve its maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities.
This is a demanding agenda, but one that is necessary to preserve cross-strait stability. Although Mastro exaggerates the threat of a Chinese invasion, peace in the Indo-Pacific nonetheless hinges in no small part on Washington’s ability to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan.
BONNY LIN is Senior Fellow for Asian Security and Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
DAVID SACKS is a Research Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
A military drill simulating a Chinese invasion in Pingtung, Taiwan, May 2019
Tyrone Siu / Reuters
Xi Doesn’t Need Taiwan
Kharis Templeman
Oriana Skylar Mastro warns that Chinese President Xi Jinping could soon order an attack on Taiwan. She asserts that Xi has staked his legitimacy on progress toward unification and that recent developments in Taiwan, especially the reelection in 2020 of President Tsai Ing-wen, whose party is skeptical of China, have “reinforced Beijing’s fears that the people of Taiwan will never willingly come back to the motherland.” Amid rising Chinese nationalist sentiment, she argues, Xi may soon feel compelled to forcibly impose Chinese Communist Party rule on Taiwan.
This argument exaggerates the importance of Taiwanese public opinion to Beijing’s calculus, as well as the significance and urgency of the Taiwan issue for Xi. As Chinese strategists understand very well, Taiwan’s security rests today, as it has for the last 70 years, on an implicit U.S. commitment to defend the island, not on the will of the Taiwanese people or their leaders. Although the majority of Taiwanese would resist a Chinese invasion if they had U.S. backing, most are also fatalistic about their ability to hold out alone against Beijing—and would probably accede to unification without a fight if abandoned. Trends in the United States, not in Taiwan, will ultimately determine Taiwan’s future.
Mastro also overstates what is known about Xi’s commitment to achieving unification in the near term. Xi has tied his legitimacy to achieving China’s “national rejuvenation,” which requires a favorable international economic environment—one that a war over Taiwan would jeopardize. Although the military balance of power in the western Pacific has been shifting in China’s favor, the United States still retains both the ability and the will to impose extremely high economic and political costs on China should it attack Taiwan. Even if Xi thinks he could succeed—which is by no means a given—attempting an invasion of the island now simply does not make sense unless the United States signals that it will not get involved.
Nor is there much evidence that Beijing views Taiwan as an urgent issue to resolve. Most Chinese analysts believe that long-term trends in the U.S.-Chinese relationship favor Beijing, as the scholars Rush Doshi and Julian Gewirtz have both argued persuasively. With President Joe Biden in office, Xi has to assume that the United States would respond forcefully to an attack on Taiwan today. But wait another 20 years, and the picture could look quite different. The American public has already elected one president who saw Taiwan and U.S. alliances in Asia Beijing’s way: as optional and worth bargaining away for the right price. What is to stop Americans from electing another? Taiwan’s future is thus likely to be decided by a Sino-American contest not of capabilities but of wills, and the Chinese Communist Party has reason to believe that it is slowly but surely gaining the upper hand in this long-term struggle—and thereby improving its prospects of taking Taiwan without a fight.
The shifting U.S.-China contest in Taiwan is really about both sides’ perceived willingness to fight.
China’s growing advantage stems not from the changing balance of power between it and the United States—most Chinese forecasts of American decline are overstated, if not flat-out wrong—but from shifting perceptions of both sides’ will to fight. The Chinese Communist Party has already scored an important victory by framing the terms of the debate. For the last 70 years, Beijing has relentlessly asserted that Taiwan is the last piece of “Chinese territory” it needs to achieve “national unification” and a “core interest” that it must use force against, if necessary, to place under its control. For such a transparently self-serving claim, it has been remarkably persuasive: most American observers now accept the threat of invasion as credible and the goal of unification—if not the means—as legitimate.
By comparison, the case that Taiwan is essential to the United States is weak, as much as friends of Taiwan try to argue otherwise. As the former diplomat Robert Blackwill and the historian Philip Zelikow have noted, Taiwan is a vital U.S. interest only insofar as it enables the projection of U.S. power and the security of U.S. allies in the region. Future U.S. presidents could be tempted to drop the implicit security guarantee for the island, either to avoid a devastating war or in exchange for other concessions from China. The critical question is thus not whether Beijing is willing to invade but how long Washington will continue to accept the risk of war with China.
Many U.S. analysts already believe that risk to be unacceptably high. Ted Galen Carpenter, Charles Glaser, and John Mearsheimer, among others, have argued that to preserve peace with China, the United States should disavow any commitment to defend Taiwan. It is ironic, then, that in attempting to sound the alarm about the urgent threat facing Taiwan, Mastro has reinforced Beijing’s preferred narrative: that China will soon be able to launch a successful invasion and that defending Taiwan will only grow harder and more costly for the United States. Her assumption that Beijing will spare no expense and bear any burden to conquer Taiwan is shared both by those who call for urgently strengthening U.S. military capabilities in the western Pacific and by those who would abandon Taiwan to avoid war.
But that assumption is a dubious one. Xi has many other priorities, and moving against Taiwan would set back most of them. The United States should not uncritically accept China’s narrative about its rise in the world, its need to avenge “the century of humiliation,” and the centrality of Taiwan to this “sacred mission.” In reality, China has survived and prospered for 70 years without exercising political control over Taiwan, and there is no reason why Beijing must seek to conquer it today. Mastro may have the best of intentions, but her argument ultimately bolsters those who would concede Taiwan to China without a fight.
KHARIS TEMPLEMAN is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and part of the Hoover Institution Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region.
Mastro Replies
Rachel Esplin Odell and Eric Heginbotham, Bonny Lin and David Sacks, and Kharis Templeman all argue that China is unlikely to attempt armed unification with Taiwan. Although I appreciate their perspectives, they do not present any new evidence that would make me reconsider my assessment that the risk of Chinese aggression across the Taiwan Strait is real and growing. To the contrary, they repeat many of the increasingly dangerous misperceptions that I sought to dispel in my original article—namely, that China does not have the military capabilities to pull off an amphibious invasion, that the economic costs of an invasion would be sufficient to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping, and that China can afford to wait indefinitely to achieve its most important national goal of unification. My critics assume that insofar as there are risks, they can be dealt with through relatively limited adjustments in U.S. policy and military posture—a position with which I still strongly disagree.
Let’s take these arguments in order. My critics say that I have exaggerated China’s military capabilities and understated the difficulties of an invasion. But their assessments rely on outdated or largely irrelevant comparisons. Odell and Heginbotham, for instance, note that the United States needed more naval tonnage to capture Okinawa from Japan in 1945 than China has today. But this example is inapposite. Japan’s military was more than six million strong in 1945 and had been fighting for over a decade; Taiwan’s military consists of 88,000 personnel and two million reservists, of whom only 300,000 are required to complete even a five-week refresher training course. Tonnage, moreover, is not a useful metric. Modern navies have moved to lighter, more flexible fleets. Odell and Heginbotham point out that civilian ships were of only limited use in the Falklands War, but the United Kingdom used just 62 of them in that campaign. The People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia has many thousands of ships and is closer to a naval force than a civilian one. If China were to mobilize all its naval vessels, including its new large amphibious transport ships and civilian ships, it could hypothetically carry hundreds of thousands of troops across the 80-mile-wide Taiwan Strait in a short period of time. Even if the United States had enough warning to optimally position its submarines, it does not have enough munitions to target such a large force.
For their part, Lin and Sacks argue that to believe China can take Taiwan by force is to fall for a Chinese misinformation campaign. They warn that “analysts should not accept at face value China’s claim that it could easily win a fight against Taiwan.” But no one, not even the cockiest of People’s Liberation Army analysts, argues that a full-scale attack on Taiwan would be easy, only that the PLA could prevail at an acceptable cost. Moreover, my assessment of Chinese military capabilities is not based on Chinese discourse or the results of war games alone. Reams of unbiased and rigorous analysis—from the U.S. Department of Defense’s annual report to Congress on China’s military modernization to Congressional Research Service reports on Chinese naval modernization to hundreds of studies by think tanks and defense-affiliated organizations, such as the RAND Corporation—suggest that the PLA has made unparalleled advances in the past two decades and could take on the United States in certain scenarios. Indeed, Heginbotham himself argued in 2017 that “the balance of power between the United States and China may be approaching a series of tipping points, first in contingencies close to the Chinese coast (e.g., Taiwan).”
I do not mean to suggest that a Chinese invasion would be a cakewalk. Taiwan could get some shots in, but it does not have the ability to defend itself. Luckily, the United States would, I believe, come to Taiwan’s aid and could still prevail in many scenarios. Taiwan is far from a lost cause. But ten years ago, the United States would have prevailed in any scenario. Because there are now some scenarios in which U.S. strategists think the United States could lose, it is not unfathomable to think that Chinese strategists have come to a similar conclusion.
My critics also argue that economic considerations will deter Beijing. Should China attempt to use force to assert control over Taiwan, the international response would be severe enough to imperil Xi’s ambitious development goals. But as I argued in my original article, Chinese analysts have good reason to think the international response would be weak enough to tolerate. China could even reap economic benefits from controlling Taiwan, whose manufacturers accounted for more than 60 percent of global revenue from semiconductors last year. The United States is heavily reliant on Taiwanese semiconductors. Should China take Taiwan, it could conceivably deprive the United States of this technology and gain an economic and military advantage.
But economic costs or benefits, while part of Beijing’s calculus, are unlikely to be the determining factor. Xi’s top priority is protecting China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity—as Beijing defines it. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its militarization of the South China Sea, and its sanctions against countries that offend it, such as Australia or South Korea, all demonstrate that Chinese leaders are willing to subordinate economic considerations to considerations of power and prestige. In a speech marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party in July, Xi warned against foreign attempts to bully or oppress China, declaring that “anyone who dares try to do that will have their heads bashed bloody against the great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.” Those words should be taken seriously.
Finally, my critics argue that China has no need to attempt to forcibly unify with Taiwan. Lin and Sacks think peaceful unification is working; Templeman believes China can wait indefinitely to resolve the issue. I disagree because I think unification is a top priority for the Chinese Communist Party and Taiwan will not give up its autonomy without a fight.
A Chinese invasion is by no means imminent or inevitable, but Beijing is now seriously considering initiating a conflict to gain political control over Taiwan, whereas in the past the only scenario in which it would have used force was to prevent Taipei from declaring independence. I agree with Templeman that China is unlikely to invade in the next four years (although I think this is largely because China could benefit from more time to prepare, not because it fears U.S. President Joe Biden’s resolve), but his argument that China can wait indefinitely is logically and empirically flawed. As I argued in my original article, Xi has made numerous statements that suggest he wants to achieve unification during his reign. It would be unwise to dismiss these as mere rhetoric, since he has repeatedly voiced his intention to assert control over other territorial claims before doing exactly that—in the South China Sea, by building military infrastructure and conducting naval drills, and in Hong Kong, by imposing a harsh national security law last year.
Beijing still needs to put boots on the ground to gain full political control of Taiwan.
Templeman argues that if China believes the United States is in decline, then it has every reason to wait on Taiwan. But in the eyes of Chinese strategists, American decline actually hastens the need for action. Power transition theory, which holds that war becomes more likely as the gap between a rising power and an established great power diminishes, is also studied in Beijing. And although U.S. strategists fret that a rising China, dissatisfied with the U.S.-led international order, will become aggressive and start a conflagration, Chinese strategists fear a different pathway to war. They worry that the United States, unable to accept its inevitable decline, will make a dangerous last-ditch effort to hold on to its unrivaled great-power status. By this logic, a declining United States is more dangerous than a stable, ascendant one.
Lin and Sacks make a different argument for why Beijing does not need to attempt armed unification. They believe that Chinese leaders remain committed to their long-standing approach of limited coercion coupled with economic incentives showcasing the benefits of unification because that strategy is working. As evidence of Beijing’s progress, Lin and Sacks point to polling that shows the majority of people in Taiwan support the status quo, not independence. But it is an enormous leap from not supporting independence to desiring or conceding to unification. As Lin and Sacks themselves acknowledge, China has employed this strategy of limited coercion and economic inducements for decades, but Taiwan is no closer to being a part of mainland China. In a September 2020 poll conducted by National Chengchi University, only six percent of Taiwanese citizens preferred eventual or immediate unification. So although Lin and Sacks are correct that Beijing will likely continue with its carrot-and-stick approach, it will still need to put boots on the ground to gain full political control of Taiwan.
My critics also raise concerns about some of the policy implications of my argument. Odell and Heginbotham warn against focusing too much on the credibility of the U.S. military threat when it comes to deterrence, rightly highlighting the equal importance of reassurance. They warn that changes in U.S. policy toward Taiwan could convince Beijing that the United States now supports Taiwanese independence—a misperception that could lead to war. But my argument is for a change in posture, not in policy: the United States should develop the force posture and operational plans to deny China its objective in Taiwan and then credibly reveal these new capabilities. It should not make dangerous policy changes that would risk provoking a Chinese military response. Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that even if a war breaks out over Taiwan and the United States wins, Washington should not demand Taiwan’s independence as one of the terms of peace.
Templeman raises a separate concern: that highlighting the potential costs of defending Taiwan could bolster the case of those advocating that Washington abandon Taipei. If this were a serious worry, I would be the first to shift my work to more private channels. But those calling for the United States to reconsider its commitment to defend Taiwan are still in the minority, and the Biden administration has been clear that it would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of an invasion.
Moreover, the reaction of the U.S. Department of Defense to the threat posed by China’s growing military power has been not to back down but to ramp up efforts to counter it. From new doctrines that enhance joint capabilities between the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy to base-resilience initiatives to efforts to improve U.S. early warning systems in the region, the Pentagon is firing on all cylinders to ensure it can deter and, if necessary, defeat China in a wide range of conflict scenarios. U.S. Cyber Command, the U.S. Space Force, and the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center were all established partly to counter Chinese advantages in those organizations’ respective domains. If Lin and Sacks are correct that China exaggerates its capabilities to try to convince the United States to give up, Beijing has achieved the opposite.
In the end, all my critics highlight an important truth: the situation across the Taiwan Strait has been relatively stable for 70 years because of the United States. Washington has managed to convince Beijing that armed unification would fail and that China would pay a hefty price for trying. But China is not the same country it was 70 years ago. Its rapid military modernization, spectacular economic ascent, and growing global influence have changed Beijing’s calculus on many issues. It has taken a more assertive approach to international institutions; built one of the world’s largest, most capable militaries; and extended its economic influence deep and far throughout the world. It would be wishful thinking to assume that China has not also changed its thinking on Taiwan.
Indeed, although my critics argue that China is unlikely to invade, they still recommend that Taiwan improve its defenses and that the United States enhance its military posture in the region—not exactly a vote of confidence in Beijing’s restraint. I had hoped to convince skeptics that China is now seriously considering armed unification, but at least our debate has yielded a consensus that more must be done in Taipei and Washington to enhance deterrence across the Taiwan Strait.
ORIANA SKYLAR MASTRO is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and a Senior Nonresident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
21. #Reviewing The 2021 Global Risks Report
#Reviewing The 2021 Global Risks Report
The Global Risks Report 2021 released by the World Economic Forum, is a collective effort by Marsh McLennan, SK Group, Zurich Insurance Group, National University of Singapore, Oxford Martin School, and the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processing Center.[1] A global risk is defined as “an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, can cause significant negative impact for several countries or industries within the next 10 years.”[2] The report is timely and covers a broad range of risks that pose a threat to international security and stability. This article reviews the relevance of the Global Risks Report to corporate and public sectors delving into the risks identified in the report, the methodology used to collect the data, and demographic profiling.
Report Findings
The Global Risks Report 2021
The report has three main parts: global risks, global risk response, and Covid-19 response. The report identifies 35 global risks which include: short-term threats most likely to occur within the time frame of the next 0-2 years which are most imminent, medium-term threats likely to occur within a 3-5 years’ time frame, and long-term threats likely to occur within a 5-10 years’ time frame. Short-term risks include, risks to employment and livelihood, youth disillusionment, digital inequality, economic stagnation, human induced environmental damage, erosion of social cohesion, and terrorist attacks.[3] Out of these, the respondents of the survey voted risks to employment and livelihood, youth disillusionment, and digital inequality as the three most imminent threats facing the globe today. Medium-term risks include economic risks, macroeconomic instability, geopolitical risks, conflicts, and resource geopoliticisation. Long-term risks are found in two main domains–climate change and cyber security.
…the Covid-19 crisis is labelled a black swan event by many, but others counter-argue that pandemics are not surprising and have been around for centuries. Therefore, under-preparedness for pandemics is simply a failure in governance.
The second and third parts of the report delve into the global risk response and the Covid -19 response in which the main problems conceived when mitigating the risks include gaps in public health, educational and digital disparities. There is emphasis on the issue of unemployment and ruptures in social cohesion as effects of the pandemic. In the report, these risks are identified and analyzed in advance to avoid the Black Swan effect; a concept introduced by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.[4] According to Taleb, a black swan event is one which is an outlier that is entirely unexpected, carrying an extreme impact and it is only after the event transpires that humans begin to explain it. For example: the Covid-19 crisis is labelled a black swan event by many, but others counter-argue that pandemics are not surprising and have been around for centuries. Therefore, under-preparedness for pandemics is simply a failure in governance.
What is also noticeable in this report is the identification of 12 new risks that were generated due to the dynamism of the geopolitical, societal, and technological trends, especially the vulnerabilities and knock-on effects of the Covid-19 crisis.[5] These include: declining multilateralism, collapse of important industries, social security systems, digital inequality and digital power concentration, failure of technology governance, poor inter-state relations, backlash against science, prolonged economic stagnation, and mental health deterioration.
Risk analysis is therefore similar to gathering intelligence where information is processed, assessed, analyzed and organized to generate the big picture or the proximate reality. Such a picture is useful to avoid strategic surprise or a black swan event, or more realistically how to manage crises when they occur.
Methodology and Demographic Profiling
The methodology of the report is a simple one which is based on opinions gathered from across a spectrum of sectors. The main findings of the report are generated through the results of a survey. On a scale of 1-5, respondents were asked to score on the likelihood of each global risk occurring over the course of the three different time frames and on the severity of its impact at the global level. The respondents were asked to rank the first, second, and third most concerning risks to the world. From among the 35 risks, the respondents were asked to rank the three risks that they thought were ‘blind spots’ or what the current global response falls short to address and also to rank which three risks could have potentially been prevented or mitigated had there been a global response.[6] With regard to Covid-19, respondents had to rate the effectiveness of the pandemic response globally or within their region on a scale of 1- 5.
If an environmental activist is asked to rank the 35 risks, there will be a bias attached to his/her opinion and may rank geopolitical risks in a lower tier if such knowledge falls outside their expertise.
However, there is a disclaimer on the report regarding the information, statements and assumptions made. It says, the information is not independently verified and the readers are cautioned regarding their validity or verifiability. The disclaimer also states that assumptions are made of both known and unknown risks and also uncertainties which are not necessarily based on historical or current facts. This means when assumptions are made about risks and their impacts, opinions have been given more weight. There are both advantages and disadvantages in gathering opinions because they tend to be biased or made without adequate prior knowledge. If an environmental activist is asked to rank the 35 risks, there will be a bias attached to his/her opinion and may rank geopolitical risks in a lower tier if such knowledge falls outside their expertise.
A problem with the methodology is therefore its demographic profiling. 73% of the respondents were male and only 23% were female. There is no adequate gender representation which is a serious flaw, especially when it comes to developing an accurate picture of the Covid-19 crisis. According to UN Women statistics, 70% of global health and social care workers are women, who are at the frontlines of the pandemic crisis management.[7] Also, 30% of leaders in the global healthcare sector are women and it is doubtful whether efforts have been made to make the respondent pool more inclusive.
Moreover, the age distribution is also flawed as there is no adequate youth representation. Those less than 30 years of age amount to only 2.2% of the respondents. Since the report identifies youth disillusionments as a serious global risk, assumptions could have been made with more depth if there were more youth respondents. The UN has classified youth between the ages of 15-24, as composing 16% of the global population.[8] Another issue with the demographic profiling is that, the majority of the respondents are European but Europe is only the 3rd most populous of regions in the world amounting to only 9.6% of the world share. The first and second most populated regions are Asia and Africa. The world share of population by region for Asia and Africa are 59.5 % and 17.2 percent respectively.[9]
How useful is it?
The applicability and usefulness of the findings in the report are both wide and constrained at the same time. Unlike actionable threat intelligence in the field of security studies, the findings of the report could only function as a guideline for organizations to make certain decisions regarding business or governance. For example: how to innovate businesses and what technological products could strengthen IT infrastructure. Additionally, governments could use the findings to address healthcare policies. For example: the pressing need to integrate gender into healthcare governance so that the Covid-19 crisis response is inclusive and female healthcare workers are given an adequate voice.
A closer look at the report would also make a researcher think about what is more important for decision-making: facts or opinions?
The report could also be useful to a more academic audience in their research on the impacts of global risks. A closer look at the report would also make a researcher think about what is more important for decision-making: facts or opinions? This is mainly because the findings of the report are based on opinions gathered from a variety of people and not necessarily facts which can be proven true or false. Opinions could be based on facts or based on emotions which cannot be externally verified. When making business or policy decisions, emotions matter to a lesser extent. Facts on the other hand are useful, and opinions too if they are based on a valid set of logical reasons.
While the problem of bias will always be present in opinions, the identification of an exhaustive list of 35 risks especially in times as uncertain as the Covid-19 crisis has demonstrated that challenges in the security environment could be overcome. This is why the report also expands to the so-called blind spots-another set of anticipated events which could potentially be mitigated if they weren’t ignored or given adequate attention. In conclusion, the mitigation of these risks in the short, medium and long-term requires effective decision making, innovations and partnerships at global, regional and local levels.
Natasha Fernando is a graduate of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is a bilingual columnist at OBOREurope.
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Header Image: Untitled, June 28, 2021 (Edwin Chin).
Notes:
[2] The Global Risks Report (2021), page 90
[3] The Global Risks Report (2021), page 11, page 40.
[5] The Global Risks Report (2021), page 90.
[6] The Global Risks Report (2021), Page 23.
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V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
