China sees rising India as rival, wants to constrain ties with US: State Dept

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China perceives a “rising India as a rival” and wants to constrain its strategic partnership with the US, its allies and other democracies, the US State Department has said in a report. It has underlined that China intends to displace the US as the world’s foremost power.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the report said, recently provoked skirmishes along its disputed border with India, which killed dozens on both sides, and remains in a tense standoff with India’s military.

The State Department’s report comes under the leadership of Secretary of State Michael R Pompeo who has been critical of Beijing’s aggression in the last few months.

In New Delhi last month, Pompeo said that Indian and US leaders and citizens see with “increasing clarity” that the Communist Party of China (CCP) is “no friend to democracy and rule of law”, and that the US would “stand with the people of India to confront threats to their sovereignty and to their liberty”.

China–Pakistan Economic Corridor: Five Years On

Anne-Marie Schleich

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COMMENTARY

IN 2015, China and Pakistan forged strategic links with the signing of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) agreement. This major tie-up provides Beijing with vital access to the Arabian Sea, while adding an extension to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Pakistan, on its part, benefits economically from the CPEC as it connects to about 58 projects worth about US$62 billion: eight projects to develop Pakistan’s Gwadar port, city and airport in Baluchistan, 21 coal, hydro and solar power plants, power transmission lines, highways, railways and a fibre optic cable project. China saw an economically prosperous and stable Pakistan as politically advantageous and wanted to create a geostrategic connectivity corridor from its resource-rich Muslim Xinjiang province to Pakistan’s Gwadar city and port.

CPEC 2.0

Gwadar is strategically important because of its closeness to the Strait of Hormuz, the junction of vital international sea shipping routes. For China, the construction and administration of coal-fired power plants within CPEC were good alternative business opportunities for its state-owned enterprises abroad at a time when coal-fired power in China plant projects are being scaled down because of President Xi Jinping’s stronger focus on sustainable power supply.

For China, Ending Poverty Is Just the Beginning

By Matthew Chitwood

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Wenfu Zhang has a new home. Located in Bangdong, a remote village in southwest China, it has white concrete walls and a beige tiled floor. On the front door is a paper sign that reads, “Impoverished Household”—evidence that the structure was paid for in part with grants and no-interest loans from the Chinese government. “Three years ago, we didn’t have these nice houses. . . . Now we have good places to live and health care,” says Zhang, a farmer turned construction worker in his early 40s. “Our living standard isn’t so high, but we can eat meat every day.”

Zhang’s house is one tiny part of China’s gargantuan, years-long effort to end poverty. Forty years of economic reforms and growth, and a decade of expanding social welfare programs, have radically improved the living conditions of over 800 million Chinese. But for most of that period, government efforts largely focused on poverty alleviation, not eradication. It wasn’t until 2013 that President Xi Jinping became the country’s first leader to make a specific, measurable, and time-bound goal to end poverty—and by 2020. Since 2015, when the central government adopted that promise as official policy, it has spent over $61 billion on ending poverty, with $20.6 billion more earmarked for 2020. The results are staggering, at least according to the official statistics: the State Council Information Office says China’s poor population decreased from 99 million in 2012 to 5.5 million at the end of 2019.

What we're reading: China charms Pacific Island countries

Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian

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China is using economic and diplomatic incentives to strengthen its sway over Pacific Island nations, a new report finds.

Why it matters: Beijing's charm campaign in the Pacific aims to further isolate Taiwan and expand China's maritime reach.

Details: The report from open source intelligence firm Babel Street finds China is offering generous aid and infrastructure packages to island nations across the Pacific.

Some of these projects, such as a major wharf project in Vanuatu, could potentially have dual military-civilian use, creating the potential of expanded reach of the People's Liberation Army Navy.

Another goal is to squeeze Taiwan. Four of Taiwan's 15 remaining diplomatic allies are Pacific Island nations. Prior to September 2019, there were six, but Beijing poached two of them — Kiribati and the Solomon Islands. That leaves Nauru, Palau, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu.

What they're saying: "While leaders in these countries see strategic benefit and leverage through deepening relations with the PRC, they must also consider what China hopes to gain through their engagement because the actions on these small islands could have outsized effects," write the report's authors.

Read the report.

Why China prefers to maintain inflamed borders

By BERTIL LINTNER

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CHIANG MAI – Months after Indian and Chinese troops clashed along a disputed border in the western Himalayas, both sides have now dug in for a long cold snowy winter standoff.

New Delhi and Beijing may be working on what at least the Indians have referred to as “mutual troops disengagement” along what’s not actually a border but rather a line of control, but even that non-legal military demarcation is a matter of dispute.

China and India fought a bitter 1962 border war not only in the western but also eastern Himalayas, where overlapping territorial claims involve even larger areas than those that were the scene of this June’s hostilities, which cost the lives of at least 20 Indian and a still unknown number of Chinese soldiers.

But the question is whether China is really looking for a solution to that long-standing and often bitter border dispute, or if maintaining fuzzy borders is a deliberate tool in Beijing’s foreign policy to negotiate better terms on trade, security and other issues with its neighbors.

China has or recently had disputes over borders and border-related issues such as refugees and insurgencies with nearly all of the more than 20 countries with which it shares land or maritime boundaries.

The death of Ayman al-Zawahri and the future of al-Qaida

Daniel L. Byman

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Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri may be dead or at least appears to be “completely off the grid,” according to journalist and veteran jihadi-watcher Hassan Hassan. These reports come at the same time as the killing of another very senior al-Qaida leader, Abu Muhammad al-Masri, in Tehran, reportedly by Israeli agents at the behest of the United States.

If Zawahri is dead, where will al-Qaida go next and what kind of movement will Zawahri’s successor inherit?

Zawahri, the long-time Egyptian terrorist leader and Osama bin Laden’s number two, assumed control of al-Qaida after U.S. Navy Seals killed bin Laden in 2011. Zawahri has been praised as a “mastermind” and criticized as a leader (I was on the latter side of the debate). Terrorism analysts Colin Clarke and Asfandyar Mir note that Zawahri avoided the trap of trying to build a state, like ISIS did, and so avoided destruction at the hands of the U.S. military and its allies. They also point out that he has preserved relationships with many key affiliates around the world and, as ISIS’ flame dimmed, garnered support as the dedicated but less-crazy torch-bearer of global jihad. In addition, Zawahri has preserved ties to its long-standing ally, the Afghan Taliban, despite pressure on the group to disavow al-Qaida as part of peace negotiations.

Pentagon Risks ‘Paralyzing Ourselves’ as Tech Priorities Keep Shifting

BY PATRICK TUCKER

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Mac Thornberry knows what it’s like to have good technical ideas thwarted by the politics of public perception. In 2011, the Republican congressman and some colleagues came up with a list of cybersecurity recommendations at the behest of then-House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. 

“Just as we were releasing our recommendations, we had the Snowden leaks. We had Wikileaks,” said Thornberry, who is departing Congress as the minority leader of the House Armed Services Committee. “Everybody decided that the government was reading your emails to Grandma” and it became “politically impossible to consider any sort of cyber-related legislation in Congress for several years.” 

Now Thornberry fears that a similar failure to anticipate and defuse public backlash will undermine Pentagon efforts to develop various emerging defense technologies.

“Our adversaries do not have ethical concerns, but we can paralyze ourselves by misinformation or lack of understanding when it comes to artificial intelligence, robotics, human performance enhancement, all sorts of issues,” he said. “I believe it's important to have a little inoculation with hearings, think tank seminars, papers, about these technologies and what they mean or don’t mean to help prevent this sort of paralysis in the future.” 

Can Biden End America’s Forever Wars?

 

By Jonathan Tepperman

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Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced plans to bring home half of the 5,000 U.S. troops still stationed in Afghanistan, as well as 500 of the 3,000 servicemembers now based in Iraq. The promise, on which the administration pledged to make good by Jan. 15, was unpopular among military brass and defense experts, but it handed an unexpected gift to President-elect Joe Biden.

The reason? Throughout this year’s campaign, Biden vowed repeatedly to end America’s “forever wars”; now President Donald Trump has suddenly moved the country 3,000 bodies closer to that goal. But Biden will soon face a much larger, and tougher, problem: How will he deliver on the rest of his pledge when he finally takes office? At this point, his odds of succeeding don’t look very good.

To see why, you first have to define what the term “forever” or “endless” war actually means. The answer turns out to be surprisingly hard to pin down. That slipperiness explains why virtually every Democratic presidential candidate in this year’s race, and Republican candidate Trump before them, were able to embrace the idea. You know that if Elizabeth Warren and Trump can agree on a policy, it’s got to be pretty vague.

Team Biden Urged to Keep Trump’s Afghan Envoy

By Colum Lynch, Robbie Gramer, Jack Detsch

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Afghan policy experts are quietly urging the Biden transition team to consider asking President Donald Trump’s Afghan peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, to remain on the job as a transitional negotiator after President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

The effort reflects a belief that the ultimate end game sought by Trump and Biden—the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan—is largely the same and that a move to immediately replace Khalilzad at a sensitive stage in U.S. peace negotiations with the Taliban could complicate that effort.

Khalilzad, a veteran diplomat from the George W. Bush administration who grew up in Kabul, has a deep relationship with Afghan leaders such as President Ashraf Ghani dating back decades and command of the major languages of the region. But his contacts with the Taliban, with whom he negotiated decades ago on behalf of a California oil company looking to build a pipeline through Afghanistan, has badly dented his popularity in Kabul. Afghan government officials resented being largely cut out of Washington’s secretive deal-making with the group that once harbored Osama bin Laden.

Should America Still Police the World?

By Daniel Immerwahr

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In 1939, shortly before the German invasion of Poland, a British emissary, Lord Lothian, visited the White House with an unusual request. The United Kingdom was unable to protect the world from the Nazis, Lothian told President 

But F.D.R. was not interested. Indeed, he was offended. “I got mad clear through,” he wrote. Who were the British to dump their burdens onto his lap? Saving civilization was their job. The United States’ army at the time was only slightly larger than Bulgaria’s, with little ability to hold back illiberal forces in Central Europe. “What the British need,” F.D.R. concluded, was to buck up with “a good stiff grog.”

Engaged Restraint: A Framework for U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump

Judah Grunstein

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.

Now that world leaders and the D.C. foreign policy establishment have breathed a collective sigh of relief over Joe Biden’s election as U.S. president, things can get back to normal when it comes to preparing for a new administration in Washington. For world leaders, that means scrambling for access and favor, while readying offer sheets of how their governments can be of help to Biden’s team. For the D.C. establishment, that means angling to be part of that team, or else writing lengthy policy proposals that, unlike in 2016, might actually be read by the people who do end up on it.

Before long, of course, foreign governments will go from complaining about an absent America under Donald Trump to once again complaining about an overbearing America under the more conventional Biden. And that Washington establishment will go from proposing policy agendas to criticizing the ones Biden’s team has decided to pursue, while swapping rumors about clashing egos and internal tensions.

Amid Sino-U.S. new cold war, American scholars decouple from China

Dr Christina Lin
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Abstract 

After years of disillusionment and distrust between U.S. and China, Washington’s policy towards China has now changed from one of “engagement” to an all-encompassing “decoupling” including cultural and educational exchanges. In this new Cold War, Washington is clamping down on people-to-people exchanges, preventing Chinese students from entering science fields in the U.S., while FBI’s “China Initiative” on economic espionage is casting a wide net across universities to prosecute researchers for their China ties. As many innocent ChineseAmerican scholars are caught in the net, they are removing themselves from the crosshairs and cutting ties to China.

Analysis

On 14 October, Brookings Institution scholars Cheng Li and Ryan McElveen penned an article highlighting the decoupling of people-to-people exchange as the latest casualty in the new cold war between U.S. and China.1 

After years of disputes, disillusionment, disappointment and distrust between the two countries, US policy towards China has now changed from one of “engagement” to an all-encompassing “decoupling” including cultural and educational exchanges.

Crises in Nagorno-Karabakh and Kyrgyzstan: Russia’s Interests

Chris Cheang

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COMMENTARY

THE OUTBREAK of hostilities on 27 September 2020 over Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the political upheaval in Kyrgyzstan over disputed parliamentary elections on 5 October, do not mean Russian influence in the region is on the wane. Rather, they manifest underlying instability in parts of the former Soviet space, due to unresolved political and territorial differences.

The Russian-brokered Armenian-Azeri ceasefire agreement on 10 October has since broken down. In Kyrgystan, Moscow is cautious in approaching the dramatic power play where President Sooronbai Jeenbekov had resigned and his political rival, Sadyr Japarov, is now acting president after becoming appointed prime minister. President Vladimir Putin has avoided getting directly involved in the turmoil in the Kyrgyz republic.

Russia’s Balancing Strategy

Russia has had good reasons not to portray itself as an overbearing factor in these countries’ affairs though it is clear that only Moscow has the resources, political will and motivation to play the crucial role in any solution. President Putin’s attention has been focussed on domestic socio-economic issues arising from the negative impact of COVID-19 on the economy and nearer home, the political trouble in Belarus.

A Top Priority for Joe Biden: Stop Information Warfare

Zarina Zabrisky

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Anumber one foreign policy goal for President-elect Joe Biden must be the protection of US democracy from information warfare. To heal the nation, the new Government must urgently create a task force to identify adversaries, create a comprehensive defense plan, and build a safe information space.

For five years, the US public has been a target of the Kremlin’s information warfare attacks. General disinformation has sown discord and created a polarised political climate that threatens the basis of democracy. Make no mistake: this was a military operation that successfully weakened and demoralised American society and democracy.

During the 2020 Presidential Election, the Kremlin continued its attack. Voters were bombarded with Facebook posts, memes and cartoons that projected conspiracy theories, hoaxes about the Coronavirus, and wild slurs about the Black Lives Matter movement.

Competencies for the 21st century: Jurisdictional progress

Robert Taylor, Charles Fadel, Helyn Kim, and Esther Care

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Education systems around the world are increasingly recognizing the need to teach their students a new set of competencies beyond traditional disciplines such as mathematics, science, and reading. In order to be successful in learning, life, and work, students must master 21st century skills like creativity and critical thinking, social-emotional learning characteristics like curiosity and resilience, and meta-learning abilities often described as “learning to learn.”

While the importance of this broadened set of competencies is widely acknowledged by education policies, implementation into educational curricula varies significantly. This brief and the interactive below document how 22 jurisdictions—countries, provinces, and states—in North America, Europe, and Asia and the Pacific have incorporated 21st century competencies into their education systems.[1]

3 ways to see where and how educators are teaching 21st century competencies

The World’s Wild and Crazy Vaccine Ride Is Just Starting

By Laurie Garrett

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Wall Street investors, local health departments, and political leaders can all be excused if Monday’s Moderna coronavirus vaccine announcement has them feeling a bit whipsawed. Buyer’s remorse has heads spinning from Pfizer’s SARS-CoV-2 vaccine to Moderna’s. Get used to it. With more than 200 vaccines in development, there will be months of confusion and tougher choices ahead.

Based on press releases—which is all the world has at this point to work with—the COVID-19 vaccine announced last week by Pfizer and BioNTech, which uses mRNA as genetic code for the spike proteins that protrude from the surface of spherical viruses, offers more than 90 percent protection after recipients had two doses administered. But the product is highly unstable, requiring storage and transport in freezers that can hold temperatures below minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Moderna vaccine, which is also an mRNA-based American-made products, was 94.5 percent protective for volunteers who received two doses but were tested for infection after two weeks. And it is a more stable product that can be safely stored in standard commercial deep freezers, at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. It can even safely sit for up to 12 hours at room temperature, according to a Moderna press release.

International Strategy to Better Protect the Financial System Against Cyber Threats

TIM MAURER, ARTHUR NELSON

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PREFACE

In February 2016, a few months after Carnegie began its work on this project, a cyber attack shook the finance world.1 Hackers had targeted SWIFT, the global financial system’s main information network, trying to steal 1 billion U.S. dollars, nearly 0.50 percent of Bangladesh’s GDP,2 from the Bangladeshi central bank over the course of a weekend.3 It was a wake-up call revealing that cyber threats targeting the financial sector were no longer limited to low-level theft but could now pose systemic risk.

Only a few months earlier, in 2015, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace had launched an initiative to better protect the global financial system against cyber threats.4 Our first step was to develop a proposal for the G20 to launch a work stream dedicated to cybersecurity in the financial sector.5 In March 2017, the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors outlined an initial road map to increase the cyber resilience of the international financial system. In the wake of the Bangladesh incident, Carnegie expanded its work, complementing the G20 project with the development of an action-oriented, technically detailed cyber resilience capacity-building tool box for financial institutions. Launched in 2019 in partnership with the IMF, SWIFT, FS-ISAC, Standard Chartered, the Global Cyber Alliance, and the Cyber Readiness Institute, this tool box is now available in seven languages.6 And we are continuing to track the evolution of the cyber threat landscape and incidents involving financial institutions through a collaboration with BAE Systems.7

Research in the Intelligence Community in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Shmuel Even, David Siman-Tov

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Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a major evolutionary step in the broad field of information technologies. The elements enabling AI technology applications are the augmentation of computerization capabilities, growth in the volume of information, better algorithms, and growth in investments (Grimland, 2018). AI-based applications are increasingly integrated in daily life, and their impact can be expected to expand and intensify in many spheres (“How to Ensure Artificial Intelligence Benefits Society,” 2020). The same is true with regard to AI-based applications in the security and intelligence systems. By their very nature, intelligence communities are ideal candidates for employing artificial intelligence, since the majority of their activities involve collecting enormous amounts of information from a variety of sources, processing data, conducting research, and formulating scenario-based assessments and predictions.

This article discusses information technologies in the age of artificial intelligence, in the context of intelligence research in intelligence communities, particularly strategic research. It will attempt to clarify how IT capabilities (“the technology” or “the machine”) can contribute to intelligence research activity and to the formulation of intelligence assessments, and what challenges are posed by the assimilation of artificial intelligence in intelligence research.

CHARTING COMPLEX, DYNAMIC AND EXTRA-ORBITAL SPACE OPERATIONS

Andy Anderegg, Erica B. Lindy, Sean D. ONeil

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Historically, space operations, and consequently the catalogs of space objects, have been largely focused on satellite activity around the earth. The picture was only dynamic to the extent that new objects would be added, and occasionally updated, and retired objects would disappear. The picture of debris would expand with each new discovery and better capabilities to spot smaller debris objects.

Even the dynamics of that level of space activity is a complex endeavor. With the addition of extra-orbital activity, constellations with autonomous formation management, maneuvers and rendezvous, short-lived cube satellites, and daily space tourist flights the things to be tracked in space will be unimaginably dynamic.

This paper addresses what must be known and how decision science and knowledge management can be leveraged to create the catalog of the future that addresses the increasing dynamic space environment. It begins by reviewing the types of interactions and behaviors that will require monitoring and decisions. Using the decisions, we shape what must be known by others and the information exchanges to represent more complex space operations.

A CYBER ATTACK-CENTRIC VIEW OF COMMERCIAL SPACE VEHICLES AND THE STEPS NEEDED TO MITIGATE

Theresa Suloway,  Samuel Visner, Scott C. Kordella

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This paper is provided to inform commercial satellite operators on the workflow of a cyber attacker against their unique ecosystems; it provides techniques and best practices to mitigate steps of an attack. The paper’s principal recommendation is the need for robust monitoring of: the ground network, the RF and optical apertures, spacecraft bus, and command and telemetry. The Space ISAC can help members share findings from monitoring activities and provide indications and or signatures of attackers on their systems to the community.

Other members of the ISAC can hunt for these signatures on their network to defend and mitigate attacks, thus increasing the security of all commercial space. Progress toward sharing signatures and other threat intel has progressed greatly as membership in the ISAC has increased. Further participation and sharing information among members will increase greatly cyber protection for commercial space.

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Coping with Climate Change in the Sundarbans : Lessons from Multidisciplinary Studies

Dasgupta, Susmita, Wheeler, David, Sobhan, Md. Istiak, Bandyopadhyay, Sunando

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Climate change poses serious threats to inclusive economic progress and poverty reduction. Strong countermeasures are required to increase the capacity of low-income people to mitigate their risk exposure to the impacts of climate change. Central pillars in planning for sustainable development and poverty alleviation must include vulnerability assessments, appropriate adaptation measures, and resilience-smart investments. This means placing climate change adaptation and resilience at the center of overall development policy. Coping with Climate Change in the Sundarbans contributes to this effort by synthesizing multiyear, multidisciplinary climate change studies on the Sundarbans—the world’s largest remaining contiguous mangrove forest and wetland of international importance, as well as home to some of South Asia’s poorest and most vulnerable communities. The studies’ findings indicate that, in a changing climate, sea-level rise, storm-surge intensification, and water salinization will alter the Sundarbans ecosystem significantly. The ripple effect of these changes will have multifaceted adverse impacts on the nature-dependent livelihoods, health, and nutrition of nearby communities. Elevated health risks, reduced land and labor productivity, and increased exposure to storms, floods, droughts, and other extreme events will make escape from poverty more difficult. Families in the Sundarbans are on the front line of these changes.

Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: The Role of Airpower

Ben Ho

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COMMENTARY

ON 27 SEPTEMBER 2020, the second Nagorno-Karabakh conflict broke out when Azerbaijan launched a ground offensive against the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, supported by Armenia, in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave. A month into the fighting, one can glean from it various trappings of 21st century warfare, including the extensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and information operations waged on social media.

While definitive figures for combat losses for both sides are currently unavailable, it is believed that Armenia’s losses, especially in its armoured units, exceed that of Azerbaijan. This is due to no small part to the exploits of Azerbaijan’s much-vaunted UAVs. What do we make of what has transpired in the airpower realm of the conflict?

Where are the Manned Aircraft?

One of the integral features of the second Nagorno-Karabakh war is the limited role manned airpower has played so far. Baku has an overwhelming advantage over Yerevan in this regard, and yet the former has chosen not to capitalise on this advantage. According to The Military Balance 2020, Azerbaijan has 36 tactical jets comprising mainly SU-25 attack aircraft and fourth-generation MIG-29 fighters.

The Need to Compete on Multiple Battlegrounds: An Interview with Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster

By Octavian Manea

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In Battlegrounds, you emphasize the need to regain strategic competence, display strategic empathy and the need to defend the Free World. How would you characterize your NSA legacy from the perspective of US grand strategy?

I hope what I was able to do as National Security Adviser and in the book was to make the case for improving our strategic competence, but first try to understand challenges to our security, prosperity, to our influence in the world on their own terms. Pay particular attention to the ideology, aspirations and emotions that drive and constrain the other, particularly rivals, adversaries and enemies. In short, display strategic empathy. It is a step we often skip and as a result we proceed without a fundamental understanding of the nature of the challenge, what is at stake, and we don’t make explicit assumptions about the degree of agency and influence we have over that particular challenge.

What I hope I did in the job was to deepen our understanding of the crucial challenges, to understand how the recent past produced the present as the first way of projecting into the future, understand what the true stakes are and therefore what our goals and objectives ought to be and make recommendations about how to work together with likeminded partners to take advantage of opportunities and build a better future for generations to come.

Transforming The U.S. Military For The 21st Century

Daniel Araya

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We stand at the threshold of a technological revolution. As Elon Musk recently explained to an audience of military personnel, “the fighter jet era has passed”. Speaking with Lieutenant General John Thompson at the Air Warfare Symposium, the technology executive praised the US military but stressed the fact that autonomous drone warfare had arrived. The truth is that Musk did not go far enough. Not only are we witnessing the end of fighter jets. We are witnessing the end of the Industrial-era military itself.

Like the creaking decline of Detroit automakers, so the world’s industrial-era institutions are now poised to be displaced or transformed by a rising era of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). This is not a minor shift. Indeed, what we are now facing is a complete redesign of a fading industrial order. As Ray Dalio observes, we are entering a new global era.

This transition portends a dramatic shift away from rudimentary machines and toward precision electronics. More to the point, it signals a structural transformation in the nature of global security with implications for America’s military predominance.

How "Mercenaries at Sea" Could Help the U.S. Navy Defeat Russia and China

by Peter Suciu

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Here's What You Need to Know: The role of privateers in great power competition remains up for debate.

As the United States military shifts its focus away from counter-terror operations around the world, and back to a great power competition—which is primarily directed against China and Russia—the U.S. Navy could find itself at a significant disadvantage in terms of numbers.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) surpassed the U.S. Navy as the largest in the world and is continuing an ambitious building campaign that will widen the gap. Additionally, many of the Navy’s warships may be ill-suited to future roles.

While the Department of Defense (DoD) has been exploring options that include smaller autonomous vessels to close the gap, this month, writing for Sandboxx, military analyst Alex Hollings offered a more novel solution. He suggested looking not just towards future technology, but to past military practices to make up the numbers.