J&K move: The real test begins now | Opinion

Brahma Chellaney 

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A final deal between the United States (US) and the Pakistan-reared Afghan Taliban appears imminent, with the Taliban saying major differences have been resolved. Pakistan’s key role in this process, and in the implementation of the deal that emerges, has emboldened it to downgrade diplomatic relations, and suspend bilateral trade with India — actions that New Delhi itself should have taken long ago against its terrorism-exporting neighbour.

In fact, US President Donald Trump’s looming Faustian bargain with the Taliban was an important factor behind India’s change of the constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). A resurgent Pakistan-Taliban duo controlling Afghanistan would spell greater trouble for J&K, including increased cross-border entry of armed jihadists.

The Reality of Afghanistan

By Daniel Woodward

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The war in Afghanistan is America’s longest. It is time now to face reality. 

For 18 years, the best military leaders of our time have tried to get Afghanistan right. Together with our NATO allies, American forces have served with honor and distinction. We have heard over and over again throughout that time, that the next six months of the war were critical. 

The war in Afghanistan long ago took the form of a conflict cut into six-month increments, punctuated over its 18 years with various increases and decreases in tactical forces that were too small to "win" in Afghanistan, but large enough to push the country out of equilibrium. 

When President Donald Trump ran for office, he criticized the view that U.S. deployments should be linked to arbitrary timelines. Instead, he reasoned, the length of a deployment should be tied to the achievement of tactical, operational and strategic milestones. 

Smart Cities or Surveillance? Huawei in Central Asia

By Yau Tsz Yan

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Since 2014, about 500 cities in China have launched transformative efforts toward becoming cyber-connected “smart” cities, and now Chinese tech giant Huawei is moving to export its systems to Central Asia. In April 2019, Huawei closed a $1 billion dealwith the Uzbek government to further its surveillance operations in the country.

Most governments, including in the United Kingdom and the United States, call such projects “smart cities,” a term for the use of information and communications (ICT) technology to better provide services and security in urban areas. At the 2019 Smart City International Expo in Shanghai, China invited representatives from Japan, Singapore, Portugal, France, and Facebook to share their practices.

The first IBM Smarter Cities project launched in Dublin in 2010, and according to Professor Peng Diyun from Nanchang University, China took IBM’s vision seriously and carefully began to craft a Chinese version.

Why China’s Military Wants to Beat the US to a Next-Gen Cell Network

BY ELSA B. KANIAADJUNCT 
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The race for 5G — the next-generation cell-network technology that promises high speed, low latency, and high throughput — has emerged as a new frontier of rivalry in U.S.-China relations. The technological advances by Huawei, ZTE, and other companies may allow China to become the first country to deploy 5G on a wide scale, giving its economy an edge. But 5G’s dual-use and military potential introduces another dimension of geostrategic significance — one that the Chinese military and defense industry are avidly exploring.

The advancement of 5G in China is linked to its national strategy for military-civil fusion (军民融合). In November 2018, key industry players established the 5G Technology Military-Civil Fusion Applications Industry Alliance (5G技术军民融合应用产业联盟),including ZTE, China Unicom, and the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC). This new partnership aims to foster collaboration and integrated military and civilian development, while promoting both defense and commercial applications. In particular, the CASIC First Research Academy is focusing on the use of 5G in aerospace. There could be some notable synergies in 5G development among these and other notable players. For instance, 5G will require specialized communications equipment, such as certain antennas and microwave equipment, that the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), a state-owned defense conglomerate,has established particular proficiency in developing.

China and the United States: Cooperation, Competition, and/or Conflict

By Anthony H. Cordesman

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Introduction

This report is an experimental net assessment that addresses China's emergence as a global superpower, and its competition with the United States. The report is entitled China and the U.S.: Cooperation, Competition and/or Conflict. The entire report, and the report is available on the CSIS web site in several forms: 

Key sections are available on the CSIS web site in PDF form by clicking on each section title below. The size of some of these PowerPoints may present problems for some IT systems, but quick comparisons of different Chinese and U.S. policy statements and assessments, and of the graphics and data that summarize the trends and issues involved are only possible if PowerPoint is used. The PDF versions are smaller but make it far more difficult to quickly compare a broad range of different trends.

A PDF version of the full report is available here. This document allows the user to skim through comparisons of all the net assessment’s different sections, but the assessment’s length and the PDF format make it difficult to explore given issues in detail.

Organization and Contents of the Report

Cautious Bully: Reputation, Resolve, and Beijing's Use of Coercion in the South China Sea

Ketian Zhang

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In its maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea, China engaged in military coercion in the 1990s. From 2000 to 2006, it refrained from taking coercive action. Since 2007, China has relied largely on nonmilitarized coercion. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, China is a cautious bully. Decisionmakers in Beijing seek to balance between the need to establish resolve and the economic cost of coercion. A new database on China’s coercive behavior and a study of the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident involving China and the Philippines lend support to this finding.

Threat and Opportunity: Chinese Wedging in the Senkaku/Diaoyu Dispute

Andrew D. Taffer
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This paper provides the first systematic analysis of China's conduct in its offshore territorial conflict with Japan to contend that Beijing has adopted a wedging strategy aimed at weakening the U.S.-Japan alliance. Building on previous scholarship, the article demonstrates that over the post–Cold War era China has consistently subordinated its territorial interests in the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute to help advance broader political and strategic goals. Drawing on Chinese writings, I argue that since 2010 Beijing has viewed U.S. and Japanese strategy in the conflict to be intended to contain it and that the empirical record suggests China's conduct has, in turn, sought to counter this perceived threat by weakening the alliance at its core. Beijing, it is argued, has aimed to sow discord in the U.S.-Japan alliance by "making use of contradictions" perceived to afflict U.S. strategy.

Strategic Autonomy In A New Era: A Cold-War Risk Assessment Of China’s Involvement In The EU’s 5G Networks – Analysis

By Mario Esteban and Ugo Armanini*
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China’s sustained rise and worldwide engagement has recently led to a redefinition of EU-China relations. Faced with an emerging Sino-US duopoly –combining top world economic, military and technological investments and capabilities– and with uncertainties related to Huawei’s involvement in 5G networks, the EU would be advised not to overlook the Cold War experience. This paper aims to highlight that asymmetric interdependence in the context of a shifting global economy, combined with the doubtful implications of cross-cultural interdependence in international relations, do not entail changes substantial enough to completely disregard a Cold War framework of analysis. Therefore, strategic caution is advisable, especially if 5G were to affect critical infrastructures. Although positioning between China and the US should not occur at the expense of economic relations or cooperation towards global common goods, it should also be emphasised that contrary to China, the US, forever an economic competitor, remains the EU’s long-term strategic partner.

Analysis

Introduction: the EU seeks its own path in a new era

China’s Two-Headed Energy Policy – OpEd

By Tanmay Kadam
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Until 2017, China was championing the global movement to combat climate change through committed efforts at reducing reliance on coal and highest investments in renewable energy. The US-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) in its January 2018 report identified China as being among the top leaders in outbound clean energy investments in 2017, establishing itself as a world leader in driving a domestic decarbonisation agenda.

Yet China remains one of the leading global supporters of coal plants around the world with commitment or proposals worth about $36 billion in financing for 102 GW of coal-fired capacity in 23 countries, as found in a study published by IEEFA in its January 2019 report. According to the study, this makes China accountable for more than a quarter of all coal fired capacity under development outside of China. Various studies and media reports show that Chinese financial institutes are the world’s largest funders of overseas coal plants. In fact, with more than 100 financial institutions around the world divesting from coal, Chinese state-owned financial agencies have stepped in to fill the gap as lenders of last resort. The IEEFA report further observes that private sources of ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) finance from China are more active in renewables whereas China’s State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) remain heavily concentrated in coal, which suggests market signals are increasingly directing investments to climate-friendly sectors but the central government ignores this and concentrates its SOEs on coal investments.

How China's Rise Has Remade Global Politics

As much as any other single development, China’s rise over the past two decades has remade the landscape of global politics. Beginning with its entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001, China rapidly transformed its economy from a low-cost “factory to the world” to a global leader in advanced technologies. Along the way, it has transformed global supply chains, but also international diplomacy, leveraging its success to become the primary trading and development partner for emerging economies across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang presents the government’s “work report” during the second session of the 13th National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, March 5, 2019 (Imaginechina photo via AP Images).

Returnee Foreign Fighters from Syria and Iraq: The Kosovan Experience

KUJTIM BYTYQI, SAM MULLINS

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Abstract: Drawing upon the first author’s position within the Kosovo Security Council Secretariat and utilizing internal government reports and statistics, this article provides an overview of the Kosovan experience dealing with returnee ‘foreign fighters’ from Syria and Iraq. So far, at least five returnees have been involved in planning domestic attacks, thus reaffirming academic analyses and recent reports suggesting that it is a minority of returnees who present an immediate terrorist threat. Nevertheless, a small number of returnees remain highly radicalized and are both willing and determined to attack at home. The Kosovan approach to managing this risk is discussed, to include challenges and lessons learned.

As of mid-2019, there are still around 2,000 alleged foreign fighters and close to 14,000 foreign women and children being held in overcrowded detention camps in Syria.1 Naturally, there is widespread concern that these individuals may present a significant threat to national security. Consequently, many countries—most notably those in Western Europe—have been reluctant to bring their citizens home and appear to be delaying the repatriation process as long as possible. In contrast to this, others, including Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, and Kosovo, have taken a more proactive approach in facilitating the return of large numbers of mostly women and children.2

Western Balkans Foreign Fighters and Homegrown Jihadis: Trends and Implications

ADRIAN SHTUNI
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Abstract: Over 1,000 adult male foreign fighters, women, and minors from the Western Balkans spent time in Syria and Iraq and around 500 from the region are still there, including children born in theater. After seven years of fighting and at least 260 combat deaths, the last active jihadi unit from the Western Balkans in Syria and Iraq is a modest ethnic Albanian combat unit fighting with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib. The rest of those remaining in Syria and Iraq, mostly minors, are held in Kurdish-controlled IDP camps. Some 460 others have gradually returned home, making the Western Balkans the region with the highest concentration of returning foreign terrorist fighters in Europe and creating a long-term security challenge compounded by inadequate resources and the threat posed by homegrown jihadi militants.

Iran’s Expanding Militia Army in Iraq: The New Special Groups

MICHAEL KNIGHTS

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Abstract: Pro-Iranian militias in Iraq—excluding Badr—have swollen from as few as 4,000 personnel in 2010 to over 60,000 in 2014 when they plugged into government funding through the Popular Mobilization Forces raised to fight the Islamic State. Large, new pro-Iran militias such as Kata’ib Al-Imam Ali deserve more attention from the analyst community, as do new Kata’ib Hezbollah leaders such as Abu Zaynab al-Lami, who are emerging as challengers to the movement’s leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. A pantheon of smaller, newer pro-Iran militias is arguably closer to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps than larger and older pro-Iranian militias such as Badr and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq. Key behaviors for analysts to monitor include corrupt money-making, control of the Iraq-Syrian border, human rights abuses, and development of exclusive bases outside Iraqi state control.

Iran's grand strategy: Gulf crisis keeps US from helping Israel in a two-front war

BY SETH CROPSEY
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If Iran’s Aug. 4 claim to have seized a tanker carrying “smuggled oil” is true, this brings to three the number of merchant vessels that Iran has taken in recent weeks. It is the most recent escalation in a developing crisis between an increasingly assertive United States and an increasingly bellicose Islamic Republic.

The crisis goes back to the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the so-called Iran nuclear deal, in May 2018. The JCPOA gave Tehran elite exactly what it needed: sanctions relief for Iran’s starved economy at the price of moderate restrictions on its nuclear program, with no hard limits on its nuclear ambitions. Loosened financial restrictions also allowed Iran to prosecute its wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen more effectively.

The Trump administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA, and subsequent reapplication of sanctions against Iran, disrupted Tehran’s strategic calculus. Although the sanctions are less robust than before 2015, the U.S. has again hobbled the Iranian economy.

The US Is Unprepared to Mobilize for Great Power Conflict

BY ELSA B. KANIAADJUNCT
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The “fully mobilized Joint Force,” the National Defense Strategy tells us, will be capable of “defeating aggression by a major power; deterring opportunistic aggression elsewhere; and disrupting imminent terrorist and WMD threats.” Yet neither that document, nor U.S. planners in general, are sufficiently grappling with certain mobilization challenges that could prove decisive in a future great power conflict.

There are a few reasons for this shortfall. While U.S. strategists have in the past tended to assume that overmatch will flow from military-technological superiority, this may be no longer feasible, given advances in Chinese military innovation. Tomorrow’s conflicts are also likely to begin far more quickly than wars of the past, allowing little time to shift from a peacetime to a wartime posture and thus necessitating greater concern for competitive mobilization. In addition, efforts to disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure and sow disinformation among the American population to undermine national resolve may be prominent features of future geopolitical competition. 

The Return of Doomsday

By Ernest J. Moniz And Sam Nunn 

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The year is 2020. The Russian military is conducting a large exercise in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea that borders the NATO member states Lithuania and Poland. An observer aircraft from the Western alliance accidentally crosses into Russian airspace and is shot down by a surface-to-air missile. NATO rushes air squadrons and combat vessels into the region. Both sides warn that they will consider using nuclear weapons if their vital interests are threatened.

Already on edge after the invasion of Crimea, rising tensions in the Middle East, the collapse of arms control agreements, and the deployment of new nuclear weapons, NATO and Russia are suddenly gearing up for conflict. In Washington, with the presidential campaign well under way, candidates are competing to take the hardest line on Russia. In Moscow, having learned that anti-Americanism pays off, the Russian leadership is escalating its harsh rhetoric against Washington. 

Maduro’s Revolutionary Guards: The Rise of Paramilitarism in Venezuela

ROSS DAYTON

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Abstract: The government of Nicolas Maduro has increased its reliance on armed non-state actors as Venezuela’s political and economic crisis deepens. Paramilitarism developed under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, as a result of the erosion of the military, expansion of corruption and criminal networks in the government, and the devolution of state power to local loyalist groups. Colombian guerrillas have developed ties with the Venezuelan government and armed ‘colectivo’ groups as they expand into Venezuelan territory. As a result, the Colombian guerrillas have taken over state functions in parts of the country and have a vested interest in supporting the Maduro regime. Expansion into Venezuela has enabled the Colombian guerrillas to carry out attacks in Colombia and withstand blows from Colombian security forces, which could undermine future prospects for peace negotiations.

A View from the CT Foxhole: Suzanne Raine, Former Head of the United Kingdom’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre

RAFFAELLO PANTUCCI

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CTC: What role does JTAC play in U.K. counterterrorism efforts?

Raine: JTAC stands for the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. It was established in response to the 2002 Bali bombings, with the aim of having one central place within the U.K.’s system where terrorism threat assessments are made. It is staffed by analysts from about 16 different government departments who are brought together in a single place. These individuals are linked back into their own systems, reading all of the information available from all of their respective departments and feeding it into their assessments. This makes [for] a system which is greater than the sum of its parts and provides a way of pushing information in both directions. This helps support the threat assessment both in immediate tactical terms in the U.K. and abroad, but also the strategic development of the threat picture and trends within it. Its closest equivalent in the American system is NCTC [National Counterterrorism Center]. JTAC is also responsible for operating the U.K.’s national threat level system. It makes independent judgments free of any political influence, which informs the response posture either in advance of or after a terrorist attack.

August 2019 Issue

MICHAEL KNIGHTS, RAFFAELLO PANTUCCI, ADRIAN SHTUNI, KUJTIM BYTYQI, SAM MULLINS, ROSS DAYTON
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In our feature article, Michael Knights draws on six research visits to Iraq in 2018 and 2019 to document the expanding footprint region-by-region of pro-Iranian militias in Iraq that were previously labeled “Special Groups” by the United States and in some cases designated as terrorist organizations. Knights assesses “that the Special Groups (not including 18,000-22,000 Badr troops) currently have 63,000 registered personnel … 15 times the size of the Special Groups in 2010, when there were probably as few as 4,000 Special Group operatives in Iraq (again not including Badr personnel in 2010).” He notes a key driver for their growth in manpower and popularity in Iraq was their role in fighting the Islamic State and liberating Sunni population centers under Islamic State control. He writes that “a pantheon of smaller, newer pro-Iran militias is arguably closer to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps than larger and older pro-Iranian militias such as Badr and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq” and identifies Kata’ib Hezbollah led by U.S.-designated terrorist Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis as the greatest threat to U.S. interests. With pro-Tehran militias expanding their presence across Iraq and U.S. influence in Iraq reduced since its 2011 troop withdrawal, he argues the United States “needs to be parsimonious and pragmatic if it wishes to push back effectively.”

BEYOND WATER WARS

BY LAUREN RISI
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Dire predictions of nations battling over water have not come true. The bitterest conflicts over water are closer to home.

Former World Bank Vice-President Ismail Serageldin predicted in 1995 that “the wars of the next century will be about water.”

It was a bold assertion, anchored in human behaviors that have led to a growing scarcity of clean water in some of the most contentious political zones in the world.

Predictions of wars between nations over water have not come to pass. But there is no shortage of battles over this essential resource. Bitter conflicts over water at the subnational level already take a fierce toll on human life and welfare—and could grow into something more deadly.

Concern over “water wars” writ large has gained renewed traction as climate change, continued population growth, and increasingly polluted waterways pose growing risks to the world’s water. It remains a go-to concept, no matter what the facts are.

Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion

Abraham L. Newman
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Increasingly, states are employing global economic networks to fulfill their strategic objectives. A structural explanation of this phenomenon argues that network topography produces enduring power imbalances among states. As asymmetric network structures centralize power in key nodes, some states are able to “weaponize interdependence” to gather valuable information or to deny network access to adversaries. The United States has leveraged its network advantage in the realms of counterterrorism and nonproliferation.

The Russia-Ukraine Tanker Incident and Signs of a Looming Black Sea Crisis

By: Ihor Kabanenko

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A Russian commercial tanker named Nika Spirit entered the Ukrainian port of Izmail on July 24. However, using the EQUASIS international information system, Ukraine identified the cargo ship as the vessel (at that point named the Neyma) that had blocked the Kerch Strait on November 25, 2018. During that incident, three Ukrainian Navy ships with 24 crew members on board were engaged and captured by Russian security forces off the coast of occupied Crimea; three Ukrainian sailors were injured during the Russian attack (see EDM, November 26, 28, 2018). Following its arrival in Izmail, the Nika Spirit/Neyma was detained, on July 25, by the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) and the Military Prosecutor’s Office. The SSU allowed the cargo ship’s crew to return home after conducting investigative actions. The tanker itself has been admitted as evidence; and on July 29, it was arrested by verdict of the Prymorsky District Court of Odesa (Ukrinform, July 30, 2019).

The Russia-Ukraine tanker incident immediately became a leading story in Russian pro-government media, which has tended to emphasize three main narrative threads:

First, pro-Kremlin media has sought to sow doubts about whether the tanker’s crew could really be said to have actively provided “assistance” to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) border guards on November 25, since the vessel would not have had a choice about fulfilling the FSB’s orders. Consequently, the argument goes, Ukraine was not “justified” in detaining the ship and its purportedly innocent crew (Moskovsky Komsomolets, July 25).

Russia Rehearses Multi-Platform Warfare in the Baltic Sea

By: Roger McDermott

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Russia’s Armed Forces have commenced Okeanskiy Shchit (“Ocean Shield”) 2019 naval exercises in the Baltic Sea, under the direction of the commander-in-chief of the Russian Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot—VMF), Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov. The exercises, running from August 1 to 9, also involve platforms from the Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno Kosmicheskikh Sil—VKS). Okeanskiy Shchit 2019 is bringing together 49 warships and combat vessels, 20 support vessels, 58 VMF and VKS aircraft, and 10,634 military personnel. Important elements in the exercise suggest it is by no means a standard Russian naval exercise. Moreover, it most likely involves some degree of refining lessons drawn from Russia’s military operations in Syria (Tvzvezda.ru, August 1).

DARPA Is Taking On the Deepfake Problem

BY JACK CORRIGAN
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The agency wants to teach computers to detect errors in manipulated media using logic and common sense.

The Defense Department is looking to build tools that can quickly detect deepfakes and other manipulated media amid the growing threat of “large-scale, automated disinformation attacks.”

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on Tuesday announced it would host a proposers day for an upcoming initiative focused on curbing the spread of malicious deepfakes, shockingly realistic but forged images, audio and videos generated by artificial intelligence. Under the Semantic Forensics program, or SemaFor, researchers aim to help computers use common sense and logical reasoning to detect manipulated media.

As global adversaries enhance their technological capabilities, deepfakes and other advanced disinformation tactics are becoming a top concern for the national security community. Russia already showed the potential of fake media to sway public opinion during the 2016 election, and as deepfake tools become more advanced and readily available, experts worry bad actors will use the tech to fuel increasingly powerful influence campaigns.

Milley: War with Iran Would Draw Forces from Great-Power Focus

BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS
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The four-star Army general received questions but few challenges at his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing.

Coasting through his confirmation hearing on Thursday, President Trump’s pick for chairman of the Joint Chiefs drew questions from lawmakers on Iran, his independence, and his views on military leadership, but few challenges. 

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle did repeatedly ask Army Gen. Mark Milley about the Trump administration’s dearth of confirmed leaders at the Pentagon and how it has affected civilian control of the military. 

“Having a confirmed person in place, I think, clearly helps out us in uniform and it also clearly delineates—you mentioned civilian control of the military—I think it reinforces that because the civilian oversight is of critical importance and they interface with Congress and other inter-agencies,” Millley responded to one such question. “I think filling those positions is critically important.”

A Secure Network Is Not Enough, Cyber Wargames Show

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR

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WASHINGTON: Imagine a fighter squadron feverishly preparing to deploy to an overseas crisis — when all the lights on the airbase go out. Imagine a tank battalion stuck on flatcars because someone hacked the railroad switches between their base and the nearest port, or a destroyer stuck at the pier because a supplier with a scrambled inventory database sent the wrong parts for a critical repair.

Unlike Matthew Broderick in Wargames, it turns out hostile hackers don’t need to log in directly to some Pentagon supercomputer to wreak havoc on military operations. In a series of wargames with operational Combatant Commands, the Defense Department has discovered unexpected ways that otherwise well-protected weapons systems and military networks ultimately depend on much more vulnerable private contractors and civilian infrastructure.

M1 tanks arriving at Fort Benning, GA.

What’s Great Power Competition? No One Really Knows

BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS

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More than a year since the new National Defense Strategyrefocused the U.S. military away from counterinsurgency and back towards the country’s greatest strategic competitors, some policy and strategy experts say the Pentagon hasn’t yet figured out how to “compete” with Russia and China.

In fact, it hasn’t even settled on a definition for the “competition” in “great power competition.”

The uncertainty has left former officials scratching their heads about how, specifically, the Defense Department plans to counter China and Russia beneath the threshold of armed conflict. It also appears to be pulling the Pentagon’s policy planners beyond their traditional purview of fighting and winning wars.

Great Power Rivalry Is Also a War For Talent

BY ELSA B. KANIAADJUNCT
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China’s technological prowess suggests that United States cannot indefinitely assume a military advantage based on weapons and equipment. Yet Pentagon leaders tempted to find comfort in the superiority of the American servicemember — “people are our greatest asset,” as they are wont to say — should note that the People’s Liberation Army is prioritizing efforts to catch up in its ability to find, attract, and retain talented people. If the U.S. military is to keep this edge, it needs to improve its own efforts, and quickly.

Traditionally, human capital has been a relative weakness for the PLA, which has been more generally known for its quantity, not the quality, of its personnel. However, ongoing reforms have shrunk and reshaped that a force that once relied heavily on conscription, including the demobilization of several hundred thousand personnel. Increasingly, the PLA is trying to recruitmore educated and “high-quality” officers and enlisted personnel. In the process, the Chinese military has also changed its system for recruiting civilian personnel, including to concentrate on those with technical proficiency. China is also explorating of new options to apply a national strategy of military-civil fusion to talent development.

Counterterrorism in the Era of Great-Power Competition

BY CHRISTOPHER P. COSTA

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Debate is bubbling about whether the United States remains too focused on counterterrorism when the Trump administration has set priority on “global power competition” with China and Russia, not to mention other threats we expect to face. But like it or not, counterterrorism continues to function as a post-9/11 policy currency of sorts. It was exceedingly relevant to every foreign visitor and overseas partner I met while serving in the Trump White House. And still, while some critics have suggested that a heavy priority on counterterrorism “warps U.S. foreign policy,” I remain concerned instead about the opposite: an overcorrection, in which short-term haste to pivot U.S. attention and resources may lead to long-term setbacks for our counterterrorism goals.

The End of War: How a Robust Marketplace and Liberal Hegemony Are Leading to Perpetual World Peace

Michael Mousseau
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A powerful liberal global hierarchy is unwittingly, but systematically, buttressing states’ embrace of market norms and values, moving the world toward perpetual peace. States with developed market-oriented economies have foremost interests in the principle of self-determination of all states as the foundation for a robust global marketplace. War among these states is not possible because they are in a natural alliance to preserve and protect the global order. Among other states, weaker powers, fearing those that are stronger, tend to bandwagon with the relatively benign market-oriented powers.