Indian Strategic Studies: June 2018

30 June 2018

** Warming World Why Climate Change Matters More Than Anything Else

By Joshua Busby

The world seems to be in a state of permanent crisis. The liberal international order is besieged from within and without. Democracy is in decline. A lackluster economic recovery has failed to significantly raise incomes for most people in the West. A rising China is threatening U.S. dominance, and resurgent international tensions are increasing the risk of a catastrophic war. Yet there is one threat that is as likely as any of these to define this century: climate change. The disruption to the earth’s climate will ultimately command more attention and resources and have a greater influence on the global economy and international relations than other forces visible in the world today. Climate change will cease to be a faraway threat and become one whose effects require immediate action.

Making No Assumptions: India's Seychelles Conundrum

By Harsh V. Pant

After all the hullabaloo about the state of India-Seychelles ties in the Indian media, no dramatic deceleration was evident if one looks at the outcome of the visit of Seychelles President Danny Faure to India this week. On the much-discussed Assumption Island project, while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested that the two nations “have agreed to work on the Assumption Island project based on each other’s rights,” Faure made it clear that the two nations remain engaged and “will work together bearing each other’s interests [in mind].” It is clear that despite the domestic turbulence in the Seychelles on the issue, both sides recognize the need to maintain a level of engagement which their convergent interests in the Indian Ocean region demand.

Friendly fire: The curious case of US sanctions on India

BY JEFF SMITH AND BHARATH GOPALSWAMY

Determined to punish Russia for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, last August Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). The bipartisan legislation requires the president to sanction foreign and domestic entities doing business with Russia’s defense and intelligence sectors. Congress’s intentions were noble. Russia should pay a price for meddling in America’s democratic process. Unfortunately, the way CAATSA was drafted it threatens to penalize not just Russia, but India and the promising U.S.-India partnership as well. That is, unless lawmakers move quickly to forestall this misguided burst of friendly fire.

New STAR in the East may Herald an India-China Partnership

By Mohan Guruswamy

A new Star is rising over the East, and it may herald a world changing era of partnership between Asia’s two giants and a corridor of prosperity to Europe.

Will the Pause in South Asian Conflicts Last?

Arif Rafiq

On June 14, an American drone appears to have finally taken out Mullah Fazlullah, the Pakistani Taliban leader who ordered the attack on Malala Yousafzai and the massacre of Pakistani students at a school in Peshawar. Fazlullah had been based in Afghanistan for roughly the past nine years. He was sheltered and funded by the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security. The next day, the Afghan Taliban’s ceasefire—made possible in part by Islamabad—came into effect, overlapping with the unilateral ceasefire announced earlier by the Kabul government. The scenes were nothing short of stunning. Tens of thousands of Afghan Taliban fighters who had massed near many of the country’s urban centers entered provincial capitals peacefully to perform the Eid prayer with government officials and security personnel. Beleaguered Afghans thirsting for an end to the war were able to taste but for a moment what an eventual peace between Kabul and the Taliban could look like.

A Way Forward in Afghanistan: Q and A with Laurel Miller

by Dori Walker

Laurel Miller is a senior foreign policy expert at RAND. From 2013 to 2017, she served as the U.S. State Department's deputy and then acting special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, overseeing U.S. diplomatic efforts in the region. She returned to RAND after the Trump administration folded the responsibilities of that office back into the State Department's broader South and Central Asia bureau.

How do you see the war in Afghanistan ending?

What Lies Beneath the Enduring Stalemate in Afghanistan

The stalemate in Afghanistan endures, with the Afghan government continuing to control the country's urban areas while the Taliban command large areas of the countryside. Foreign support, the Afghan government's failures and the Taliban's deep ties within Afghanistan's rural social fabric are central to the persistence of the Afghan insurgency. Negotiations are the only real alternative toward ending the conflict in the short term, but myriad obstacles stand in the way.

Ripples of reform in Dhaka

by Isher Judge Ahluwalia

Dhaka, with a population of 12.5 million, is the sixth-largest megacity in the world. Indians often think we have little to learn from our neighbour Bangladesh, which has a per capita income in PPP terms less than 60 per cent of India’s. But Dhaka has a lot to teach our megacities since it has one of the worst vulnerabilities to water of any urban setting in the world, and is handling it in an inclusive manner which is also financially sustainable. Dhaka’s water challenges are similar to what we experience in our megacities, only worse. Having polluted its rivers with industrial effluents and municipal sewage, the city remains heavily (80 per cent) dependent on groundwater for its drinking water needs. The temptation to source groundwater using deep tube wells is enormous, particularly since the water quality is good and is potable without any treatment. The water-table is at least 600 feet deep and it amounts to water mining from a resource that has accumulated over thousands of years. It has resulted in a rapid decline in Dhaka’s water table at the rate of about two to three metres per year for close to three decades. Moreover, indiscriminate suction pumps installed beneath underground tanks in the city tend to reduce or choke off pressure elsewhere in the system causing backwater and stagnation, and hence contamination of water. Only a little over 10 years ago, the WHO had declared that the entire population of Dhaka was at the risk of cholera.

Here's How China Is Achieving Global Semiconductor Dominance

Greg Levesque

China is adapting to a range of new legislative efforts to curb its acquisition of cutting-edge technologies in the United States and Europe. Last week, the Chinese government launched a price-fixing investigation into Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron—three companies that collectively account for ninety-six percent of global dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) production. It was also announced that the state-funded Hou An Innovation Fund acquired a controlling interest in the China operations of ARM, the world’s leading semiconductor IP provider. Hou An Innovation Fund purchased that controlling stake in ARM from Japan’s Softbank to the tune of $775 million. Furthermore, China’s Ministry of Science & Technology was involved in forming that $800 million Hou An Innovation Fund with funding from the Silk Road Fund, CIC, Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, and the Shenzhen municipal government.

Here's How China Is Achieving Global Semiconductor Dominance

Greg Levesque

China is adapting to a range of new legislative efforts to curb its acquisition of cutting-edge technologies in the United States and Europe. Last week, the Chinese government launched a price-fixing investigation into Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron—three companies that collectively account for ninety-six percent of global dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) production. It was also announced that the state-funded Hou An Innovation Fund acquired a controlling interest in the China operations of ARM, the world’s leading semiconductor IP provider. Hou An Innovation Fund purchased that controlling stake in ARM from Japan’s Softbank to the tune of $775 million. Furthermore, China’s Ministry of Science & Technology was involved in forming that $800 million Hou An Innovation Fund with funding from the Silk Road Fund, CIC, Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, and the Shenzhen municipal government.

China’s Peaceful Modernization Does Not Mean Westernization

By Jin Kai

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis was wrong when he criticized China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by saying that “the Ming Dynasty appears to be their model, albeit in a more muscular manner, demanding that other nations become tribute states kowtowing to Beijing.” Following this logic, the deduction that China’s rise and its ultimate modernization can be and will be peaceful appears to be completely unacceptable. Mattis is implying that the U.S.-anchored rules can never be changed, destinies can never be shared, and political and cultural diversities can never be allowed.

The Quad: Second Verse, Same as the First?

by Ali Wyne

The recently concluded Shangri-La Dialogue focused heavily on China's conduct in the South China Sea, unfolding developments in nuclear diplomacy with North Korea, and the potential strategic contours of “a free and open Indo-Pacific.” Little mentioned, however, was the quadrilateral security dialogue — known as “the Quad” — an informal collaborative arrangement among the United States, Japan, India, and Australia. J. Berkshire Miller, a senior visiting fellow with the Japan Institute of International Affairs, tweeted shortly after the gathering's conclusion that it received “almost no institutional backing [in] high-level speeches.” While a compact of this nature would seem sensible, especially amid growing concern over the postwar order's erosion, it has once again failed to take flight.

An Extraordinarily Expensive Way to Fight ISIS

Owen Freeman

Target The B-2 stealth bomber is the world’s most exotic strategic aircraft, a subsonic flying wing meant to be difficult for air defenses to detect—whether by radar or other means—yet capable of carrying nearly the same payload as the massive B-52. It came into service in the late 1990s primarily for use in a potential nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and clearly as a first-strike weapon rather than a retaliatory one. First-strike weapons have destabilizing, not deterrent, effects. It is probably just as well that the stealth bomber was not quite as stealthy as it was meant to be, and was so expensive—at $2.1 billion each—that only 21 were built before Congress refused to pay for more. Nineteen of them are now stationed close to the geographic center of the contiguous United States, in the desolate farmland of central Missouri, at Whiteman Air Force Base.

The United States Cannot Afford to Pick a Side in the Shia-Sunni Fight

Payam Mohseni, Ammar Nakhjavani

The President of the United States has decided that the best approach to Iran is to speak loudly and carry a big stick—in the hopes that relentless pressure on Iran will either lead to regime change or the country abandoning its contentious foreign policies. Such saber-rattling will more likely enfeeble American power within the region and set U.S. policy on track for yet another dangerous conflict in the Middle East. Just as importantly, increasing tensions with Iran also bode poorly for sectarian de-escalation in the Muslim world. This is because the Shia view American policies without a balance between regional Sunni and Shia actors.

Turkey’s Elections: Will It Be More of the Same?

Mohammed Ayoob

Preliminary results show that President Recep Erdogan of Turkey has been re-elected in the first round with 52.6 percent of the votes. His closest rival, Muharrem Ince of the Republican People's Party (CHP), polled 30.6 percent. The opposition’s strategy of setting up several candidates in the first round who could appeal to different constituencies was aimed at forcing Erdogan to contest the second round by denying him a majority in the first. This would have detracted from Erdogan’s image of invincibility; it also would have helped the opposition to improve the morale of its supporters and to consolidate its votes in the second round, thus increasing the possibility of defeating Erdogan. This strategy has obviously failed and Erdogan is now in a position to act for the next four years (and possibly more) with almost unrestrained authority with all executive powers concentrated in his office and with the National Assembly’s oversight reduced drastically under the new constitution.

Trump Administration Trump's Trade War Escalates

By Allison Carnegie

Trade hostilities between the United States and China continue to escalate. Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to place tariffs of ten percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods after China retaliated against his previous threats to put tariffs of 25 percent on $50 billion worth of its products. Washington has warned of additional trade protection if China retaliates again. The latest move comes in addition to the 25 percent tariff on steel and the ten percent tariff on aluminum that the United States has placed on several countries, including China.

Turkey’s Warning

By YASCHA MOUNK

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and wife, Emine Erdogan, wave to supporters outside a voting station after casting their votes in the country’s parliamentary and presidential election on Sunday in Istanbul. A couple of years into Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule, much of the outside world hailed him as a great statesman. America’s major publications argued that he would deepen the country’s democratic institutions and reconcile its observant Muslim residents to the secular republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The picture in Europe was not so different. From Germany to Sweden, everybody who was anybody celebrated the changes Erdogan was ushering in. In October 2004, the European Commission even helped him deliver on one of Turkey’s most long-standing aspirations: In recognition of the country’s democratic progress, it formally invited Turkey to apply for membership of the European Union.

If they needed to fend off war with Russia, U.S. military leaders worry they might not get there in time

By Michael Birnbaum

The Post's Michael Birnbaum traveled the route connecting Poland to Lithuania in May to see the challenges NATO troops could face if war with Russia loomed. (Michael Birnbaum, Sarah Parnass, William Neff/The Washington Post) SUWALKI, Poland — U.S. commanders are worried that if they had to head off a conflict with Russia, the most powerful military in the world could get stuck in a traffic jam. Humvees could snarl behind plodding semis on narrow roads as they made their way east across Europe. U.S. tanks could crush rusting bridges too weak to hold their weight. Troops could be held up by officious passport-checkers and stubborn railway companies. Although many barriers would drop away if there were a declaration of war, the hazy period before a military engagement would present a major problem. NATO has just a skeleton force deployed to its member countries that share a border with Russia. Backup forces would need to traverse hundreds of miles. And the delays — a mixture of bureaucracy, bad planning and decaying infrastructure — could enable Russia to seize NATO territory in the Baltics while U.S. Army planners were still filling out the 17 forms needed to cross Germany and into Poland.

US Retakes Supercomputing Crown, But China Has Far More of Them

BY ECHO HUANG

The US has r egained its crown of owning the world’s fastest supercomputer—the machines that can achieve medical and scientific breakthroughs thanks to their enormous processing power—for the first time in six years. But China’s leaving the USin the dust when it comes to their respective shares of the world’s top supercomputers. According to the latest Top 500 list, published Monday (June 25), China has 206 supercomputers and is leading the US by a record margin—82. The US has just 124 machines on the list, “a new low,” according to the statement accompanying the ranking. Just six months ago, China, with 202 of the top computers, was only ahead of the US by 59. Top 500 has been releasing the supercomputer ranking, compiled by prominent computer scientists, every six months since 1993.

Populist Narratives and the Making of National Strategy

By Michael Hatherell

That populism can impact international politics has been clear for some time. As a political style that emphasises a struggle between the people and elites, populism has a long history in societies around the globe. Yet as populist politicians and leaders have increasingly emerged over the last two decades in a globalised world, the security implications of populism have received more attention. Writing in 2005, Steve Ropp noted: Populist politicians have already altered the U.S. military’s operating environment in Europe and Latin America and are likely to alter it much more dramatically. Were bursts of populist turbulence to occur on a large scale, they would have the potential of undermining the democratic core of representative democracies in two regions of the world that are vital to the protection of U.S. global security interests.[1]

The Wiretap Rooms: NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in 8 U.S. Cities

Ryan Gallagher and Henrik Moltke

THE SECRETS ARE hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering, windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.

Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.

What's at Stake as the U.S. Considers Recognizing Israel's Claim to the Golan Heights

Israel is lobbying the United States to recognize the Golan Heights, occupied since 1967, as Israeli territory. If the United States agrees, it will be recognizing territory captured by military means for the first time since World War II. That move would add to a growing trend of America reshaping its relationship with post-World War II norms, possibly prompting more international instability.

Part Two: Wargaming Moscow’s Virtual Battlefield

Response: The U.S. has responded to Russian activity in cyberspace through diplomatic measures, such as the expulsion of intelligence officials from Russian consulates in the country, economic methods, such as targeted sanctions, and legal actions, such as indictments of government personnel, criminal proxies and contracting entities that enable Russian network intrusions and influence operations. But indictments of Russian hackers often do not result in their eventual incarceration, given the protections provided to them by the Kremlin. Therefore, the more realistic intentions of U.S. indictments are to publicly name alleged perpetrators and impose increasing costs on them to travel or continue clandestine work.

AI Solutionism

THE GIST: Although media headlines imply we are already living in a future where AI has infiltrated every aspect of society, this actually sets unrealistic expectations about what AI can really do for humanity. Governments around the world are racing to pledge support to AI initiatives, but they tend to understate the complexity around deploying advanced machine learning systems in the real world. This article reflects on the risks of “AI solutionism”: the increasingly popular belief that, given enough data, machine learning algorithms can solve all of humanity’s problems. There is no AI solution for everything. All solutions come at a cost and not everything that can be automated should be.

Mattis declares vigilance to be the best cyber defense

By: Justin Lynch

Scrawled in ink at the bottom of the memo, Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ warning could not be clearer: “Be alert!” In the lineage of warnings like “loose lips sink ships,” Mattis warned Department of Defense employees in a memo to “remain vigilant” in a world where secrets can fall into the hands of digital intruders, coming after a series of high-profile data breaches that has embarrassed America’s top defense officials. For the estimated 2 million Defense Department employees, the secretary’s warning served as more of a pep-talk than a crash course in digital security. “There can be no complacency,” the memo warned. “Vigilance is our best defense” against losing sensitive data, it added.

Additive Manufacturing in 2040

by Trevor Johnston, Troy D. Smith, J. Luke Irwin

Additive manufacturing (AM) — colloquially known as three-dimensional, or 3D, printing — is an emerging technology with potential local and international security implications in the near and long terms. This Perspective — part of a series examining critical security challenges in 2040 — offers a new framework for exploring the disruptive dimensions of AM technology, helping to inform which sectors and industries might be the most affected in the future. To better understand the security implications, a RAND research team briefly reviewed the existing literature, conducted interviews with stakeholders and subject-matter experts, and convened a workshop with technology and security experts. Two overarching security threats emerged: the proliferation of weapons and economic insecurity. This Perspective explores each of these security threats and offers a series of mitigation strategies and policy recommendations to help manage and regulate the negative impacts of this technology.

Four Ways 3D Printing May Threaten Security

by Chrissy Sovak

3D printers already produce everything from prosthetic hands and engine parts to basketball shoes and fancy chocolates. But as with any technological advance, new possibilities come with new perils. A new RAND paper, Additive Manufacturing in 2040: Powerful Enabler, Disruptive Threat, explores how 3D printers will affect personal, national, and international security. The paper is part of RAND's Security 2040initiative, which looks over the horizon to anticipate future threats.

Sharpening Our Military Edge: The NDS and the Full Continuum of Conflict

Frank Hoffman

The new National Defense Strategy (NDS) identifies China and Russia as our primary competitors.[1] Some members of the defense community misread the NDS as embracing great power wars and perceive these as purely conventional wars. Some even suggest that the Pentagon reflexively yearns for a large conventional threat, so it can get back to what it wants to, fighting peers and justifying its technologically oriented hardware programs. This oversimplifies the underlying assessment of the future environment in the strategy and misreads the strategy’s explicit appreciation of the various dimensions of great power competition. Concerns about the future of small wars should not be dismissed, but proponents of the study of irregular wars should also accept the need to prioritize threats and risk in any strategy. The NDS does reflect a mindset shift and shift in modernization given the scale of the two major competitors.

The Army is most excited about these 3 capabilities

By: Mark Pomerleau

A current Army exercise seeks to inform operational concepts and capability needs based on putting emerging technologies into the hands of soldiers for their direct feedback. The Army is staging its third annual Cyber Quest, which started June 11 and runs through June 27, and top officials spoke to the media about the capabilities that most excited them. Situational understanding Multiple officials discussed the importance of situational understanding tools that provide a view inside the unseeable cyber domain, allowing commanders to see enemy cyberspace, friendly cyberspace and even gray cyberspace.

How industry helps shape the Army’s emerging tech

By: Mark Pomerleau

The Army continues to shape and evolve its concepts for cyber and electronic warfare operations, and it is using exercises such as Cyber Quest to identify what might be possible soon and what can be improved upon now. Cyber Quest, which runs June 11 to June 27, seeks to inform operational concepts as the Army continues to build cyber capacity and reestablish electronic warfare capacity and serves to inform operational requirements of new systems to counter threats, Maj. Gen. John Morrison, commander of the Cyber Center of Excellence and Fort Gordon, which hosted the exercise, said during a media call.

29 June 2018

DIAGNOSING ISLAM'S DISQUIET

Priyadarshi Dutta

Bernard Lewis, who passed away recently, was a doyen of Ottoman and Arab history. In his work, he explained why Muslims have shared an uneasy relationship with modernity and the West Bernard Lewis (1916-2018), the renowned American scholar of Islamic and Middle Eastern history, passed away recently at 102. He will be remembered for his penetrating insight into the Ottoman Turkish and Arab history. He coined the term “clash of civilisations”, which later became famous in an essay for The Atlantic magazine in 1990. Lewis was one of the illustrious alumni of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Born in a Jewish family in London in 1916, he grew up through times when Islam had ceased to be a factor in global discourse.

In Search of the Real Indo-Pacific

By Donald K Emmerson

Global powers show renewed interest in the Indo-Pacific region, but should resist piling on with geopolitical intentions The 2018 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore might as well have been renamed the “Indo-Pacific Dialogue.” In the plenaries and the panels, in the Q&As, corridors, and coffee breaks, not even the imminent Trump-Kim summit hosted by Singapore could compete with the “Indo-Pacific” among the attendees. Although the toponym itself is old, its sudden popularity is new, reflecting new geopolitical aspirations for the region.

Time for America to Leave Afghanistan

Richard A. Carrick

As the United States enters its eighteenth year in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the U.S. military remains no closer to ending this conflict. In April the Taliban rejected the latest peace proposals by the Afghan government, and now it appears the war is moving steadily against the U.S. supported Afghan government. President Trump has given the U.S. military one last chance to implement a new strategy to end the conflict. For him, the American people, the Afghans, and the U.S. military the decisive point in this long conflict is rapidly approaching.

How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port

By Maria Abi-habib

HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — Every time Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, turned to his Chinese allies for loans and assistance with an ambitious port project, the answer was yes. Yes, though feasibility studies said the port wouldn’t work. Yes, though other frequent lenders like India had refused. Yes, though Sri Lanka’s debt was ballooning rapidly under Mr. Rajapaksa. Over years of construction and renegotiation with China Harbor Engineering Company, one of Beijing’s largest state-owned enterprises, the Hambantota Port Development Project distinguished itself mostly by failing, as predicted. With tens of thousands of ships passing by along one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, the port drew only 34 ships in 2012.

China's Belt and Road Initiative, Five Years In

Despite its success in the developing world, Beijing's approach to the Belt and Road Initiative has raised concerns over corrupt practices and financial sustainability in several recipient countries. Beijing's ambitious outreach, and its hidden agenda for strategic expansion riding on the initiative, ill continue to fuel skepticism, suspicions and resistance among core powers. Ultimately, given the sheer scale of the Belt and Road Initiative, snags, delays and cancellations are to be expected.

Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power

By Paul Mozur

With a dragnet closing in, engineers at a Taiwanese chip maker holding American secrets did their best to conceal a daring case of corporate espionage. As the police raided their offices, human resources workers gave the engineers a warning to scramble and get rid of the evidence. USB drives, laptops and documents were handed to a lower-level employee, who hid them in her locker. Then she walked one engineer’s phone out the front door. What those devices contained was more valuable than gold or jewels: designs from an American company, Micron Technology, for microchips that have helped power the global digital revolution. According to the Taiwanese authorities, the designs were bound for China, where they would help a new, $5.7 billion microchip factory the size of several airplane hangars rumble into production.

Beijing’s Drive Towards Global Technological Supremacy

National security experts agree that the long-term threat China poses to U.S. national security is significant. It may be hard to see that often as the world focuses on North Korea and Iran and the immigration issue in the U.S., but last week on Capitol Hill, Senator Marco Rubio addressed the Chinese threat head on. ‘They have made very clear that their central ambition is to displace the United States as the world’s most powerful nation. And essential to that ambition is a plan that’s called Made in China 2025. The plan is to displace American manufacturing and dominate key sectors that will define the 21stcentury,’ Senator Rubio told attendees at the Capitol Hill National Security Forum, hosted by himself and his colleagues, Chairman Michael McCaul, Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger and Senator Chris Coons.

CAN TRUMP BUILD A TECH WALL AROUND CHINA?

MAYA KOSOFF

To hear one Silicon Valley investor tell it, China’s authoritarian tech culture—wherein employees work for 14 hours a day, six or seven days a week, and sometimes see their children for only minutes each day—represents the pinnacle of achievement. “If a Chinese company schedules tasks for the weekend, nobody complains about missing a Little League game or skipping a basketball outing with friends,” Michael Moritz wrote in a column in the Financial Times in January. “Little wonder it is a common sight at a Chinese company to see many people with their heads resting on their desks taking a nap.”

Trump, Kissinger and the Search for a New World Order

By Reva Goujon

The United States' return to aloofness, China's rise, Europe's fragmentation and the growing strategic alignment between Moscow and Beijing are all destabilizing the international system. Basing the world order on Westphalian principles is necessary to reinject enough flexibility and pragmatism into the global system amid a new, competitive era of great power politics, according to veteran diplomat Henry Kissinger. The potential for a U.S.-China understanding on the fate of the Korean Peninsula will serve as a critical testing ground for this emerging world order.

An Extraordinarily Expensive Way to Fight ISIS

BY WILLIAM LANGEWIESCHE
Source Link

The tale of a 2017 bombing raid in the Libyan desert that pitted stealth bombers and 500-pound bombs against 70 ragtag fighters.

I. Target

The B-2 stealth bomber is the world’s most exotic strategic aircraft, a subsonic flying wing meant to be difficult for air defenses to detect—whether by radar or other means—yet capable of carrying nearly the same payload as the massive B-52. It came into service in the late 1990s primarily for use in a potential nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and clearly as a first-strike weapon rather than a retaliatory one. First-strike weapons have destabilizing, not deterrent, effects. It is probably just as well that the stealth bomber was not quite as stealthy as it was meant to be, and was so expensive—at $2.1 billion each—that only 21 were built before Congress refused to pay for more. Nineteen of them are now stationed close to the geographic center of the contiguous United States, in the desolate farmland of central Missouri, at Whiteman Air Force Base. They are part of the 509th Bomb Wing, and until recently were commanded by Brigadier General Paul W. Tibbets IV, whose grandfather dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. B-2 bombers are still primarily regarded as a nuclear-delivery system, meaning that their crews are by selection the sort of men and women capable of defining success as a precisely flown sortie at the outset of mass annihilation. No one should doubt that, if given the order to launch a nuclear attack, these crews would carry it out. In the meantime, they have occasionally flown missions of a different sort—make-work projects such as saber rattling over the Korean peninsula, and the opening salvos in Serbia, Afghanistan, and Iraq—to tactical advantage without American discomfort.

Merkel's Toughest Adversary in Europe

By Walter Mayr

With his top shirt buttons undone, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini faces the crowd in the small town of Ivrea, where he is -- officially, at least -- stumping for a mayoral candidate from his party. In fact, though, he speaks almost exclusively about himself and his role in global politics. He is "as tired as a mule" but ready for a fight, Salvini calls out to his supporters gathered on the piazza. "The time has come to an end when Italy allows itself to be enslaved." It pays, he says, to be confident, adding that heads of state and government from other countries constantly tell him: "You just have to say: 'Stop, we are Italy. We are tired of being treated like garbage.' And people will be forced to listen to you; things will change."

In southern Syria, the US faces a Russia-Israel challenge

by Joe Macaron

Dynamics in the southern front in Syria have reached a tipping point. Russian-Israeli coordination is taking precedence over the ceasefire agreement that US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin reached on the sidelines of the G20 summit last year. Iran and the United States are both facing increasing pressure in the area, while both the Syrian regime and the Syrian armed opposition are on alert over a potential clash to settle the question of who controls the southwest border areas.

US' ambivalent role on the southern front

Wargaming Moscow’s Virtual Battlefield

The U.S. – Russia relationship is a complicated one, to say the least. While investigations into potential collusion carry the headlines in Washington, there is a fragile balancing act going on behind the scenes. Take the gas and energy market as one small example. U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is due to meet today with Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak at the World Gas Conference in Washington. Despite the fact that tensions between the two nations are incredibly strained, the U.S. may need Russia’s support in it’s efforts to isolate Iran from the world oil market.

State of the Trade Wars

BY AMY CHENG, HUMZA JILANI, KEITH JOHNSON, AMY MACKINNON
Source Link

The Trump administration’s protectionist measures on trade are piling up — and so are the retaliatory moves from a spate of other countries. What began with small-scale U.S. tariffs on washing machines and solar panels has now broadened to include steel and aluminum from all over the world, plus hundreds of products from China. Those tariffs have prompted a tit for tat response from affected countries, which target key U.S. exports such as bourbon, motorcycles, and orange juice. And there could be more to come, with the Trump administration studying further tariffs on imported cars and threatening much more action against China.

Russia’s Allies Do Not Want to Take Part in Syrian Operation

By: Aleksandr Golts

Moscow suffered a major military-diplomatic defeat recently in Kyzyl, the capital of the Siberian Russian Republic of Tuva. During the opening session of the Commonwealth of Independent States’ (CIS) Defense Ministers Council, the chief of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, urged the CIS countries to participate in “the restoration of peaceful life” in Syria: “Today, it is possible to provide assistance in many spheres in Syria. There is mine clearance of the territory, joint patrolling of de-escalation zones, humanitarian assistance, restoration of infrastructure. We count on your support, which would demonstrate our unity in the fight against international terrorism and ensuring common security” (RIA Novosti, June 6).

Bending the Internet: Russia Catches Up on Internet Control

After taking a hands-off approach to cyberspace in his first decade in office, Russian President Vladimir Putin has cracked down on internet use over the past few years. His administration has made it easier for authorities to suppress opposition movements online and to filter undesirable content by steadily empowering the Federal Service for the Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media. It has also proposed the development of an alternative internet, demonstrating Russia's broader ambition to break from the traditional network model Western countries have long championed and dominated.

The end of the rules-based global order

Narayan Ramachandran

The rules-based order that had guided much of the world since World War II has broken down. It has most definitely fractured on global trade, and, after a tumultuous G-7 meeting this month, followed by an unprecedented summit meeting in Singapore, appears to be changing for global diplomacy as well. Another major fault line in the West has been immigration policy and recent political developments in Germany suggest that this may be an area that soon sees drastic change in Europe. Sceptics have long argued that the rules that have prevailed for seven decades were established by the US and its allies, and have, in a clever way, been “imposed” on all other countries through a framework of post-war institutions, and have generally been framed to benefit the educated elite. The argument goes that this imposition has alienated many countries that have been left out of the development process and many segments of society within their own countries. What we are now seeing is a “reaction” from those excluded segments. At the same time, it is open season for countries that have always nurtured nationalistic pride—such as Russia and China—to join the party.

Turkey’s Warning

By YASCHA MOUNK

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and wife, Emine Erdogan, wave to supporters outside a voting station after casting their votes in the country’s parliamentary and presidential election on Sunday in Istanbul. A couple of years into Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule, much of the outside world hailed him as a great statesman. America’s major publications argued that he would deepen the country’s democratic institutions and reconcile its observant Muslim residents to the secular republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The picture in Europe was not so different. From Germany to Sweden, everybody who was anybody celebrated the changes Erdogan was ushering in. In October 2004, the European Commission even helped him deliver on one of Turkey’s most long-standing aspirations: In recognition of the country’s democratic progress, it formally invited Turkey to apply for membership of the European Union.

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