Indian Strategic Studies: 10/06/24

6 October 2024

Turkey Seeks To Join BRICS – OpEd

Neville Teller

On September 2, Turkey was reported to be the first and only NATO member asking to join the BRICS economic group of nations. BRICS, headed by Russia, China, Iran and South Africa, is dominated by the Russian and Chinese presidents, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. .

One former Turkish diplomat told the news medium Newsweek that the move by Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been driven by “accumulated frustrations” with the West and the EU. Sinan Ulgen, head of the Istanbul-based think tank EDAM, said: “It’s a strategy to strengthen relations with non-Western powers at a time when the US hegemony is waning.”

The economic grouping originally calling itself BRIC from the initials of its founding members – Brazil, Russia, India and China – was originally concerned with identifying investment opportunities for their fast-growing economies. They held their first meeting in 2006, and soon evolved into a formal geopolitical bloc.

In 2010 South Africa was invited to join, and this led to the change of name to BRICS. The bloc has come to be regarded as a global alternative to the US-led G7 economic grouping – the informal body comprising seven of the world’s advanced economies: the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. The European Union is a “non-enumerated member.”

Hilsa Diplomacy: A Fishy Solution To Indo-Bangladesh Tensions? – OpEd

Debashis Chakrabarti

The rich taste of hilsa, a delicate fish prized across the Indian subcontinent, especially in West Bengal, has long transcended culinary indulgence, becoming an unlikely but effective diplomatic tool in the tense relations between India and Bangladesh.

This “hilsa diplomacy,” initiated during the tenure of Sheikh Hasina, reflects Bangladesh’s strategic use of the fish to ease bilateral frictions, particularly around the festive season of Durga Puja. With the recent decision by Bangladesh’s interim government to allow the export of 3,000 metric tons of hilsa to India despite domestic supply shortages, the question arises: Can hilsa really help thaw the growing diplomatic freeze?

The Cultural Importance of Hilsa

Every year, during Durga Puja, West Bengal’s appetite for hilsa peaks. The fish from Bangladesh’s Padma River, known for its superior quality, commands a special place in the kitchens of Kolkata, where it is cooked in mustard gravy, fried, or steamed. Though hilsa is available in other regions such as Gujarat and Maharashtra, the fish from Bangladesh remains unmatched, making it a highly sought-after delicacy in the Indian market. For Bangladesh, exporting hilsa to India during the festive season is not just about economic gain; it carries significant cultural weight.

Meet the Afghan general who wants to take on the Taliban

Hope Hodge Seck

In rural Mason Neck, Virginia, among homes with Confederate flags hanging out front and towering pickup trucks occupying driveways, a stately brick mansion makes for an unexpected neighbor.

In the home’s front lawn, sitting amid manicured shrubs, rises an even more unusual sight: the flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. It is one that has not flown in its own country since 2021, when U.S. forces departed and top leaders fled, ceding control to the Taliban.

Former Afghan Lt. Gen. Sami Sadat believes he’ll once again see that flag ascend in Afghan skies.

This is his home, and also the hub for the Afghanistan United Front, an organization he founded — and largely self-funds — to “unite Afghans and return Afghanistan to the constitutional order, ensuring that Afghans can enjoy freedom, peace, and prosperity.”

New Chinese Nuclear Submarine Sinks in Setback for Navy Expansion

Malte Humpert

China’s first Zhou-class submarine, a new nuclear-powered attack vessel, sank earlier this summer at the Wuchang shipyard in Wuhan. The sinking represents a major setback for China’s effort to expand and modernize its naval assets in what has been called an arms race with the U.S.

The sinking occurred dock-side in May or June this year, but was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, has since confirmed the incident.

A series of satellite images shows the incident unfolding over the course of several weeks, including a recovery effort. The vessel’s distinct X-shape stern allowed for its visual identification as a Zhou-class submarine. A flotilla of floating cranes descended onto the port in the days that followed, likely engaged in a recovery operation.

The third-generation nuclear submarine was first identified in satellite images in May 2021 and subsequently unveiled by the country’s navy in July 2022. The vessel’s design represents a new level in stealth capabilities for a Chinese submarine making it harder to detect it with active or passive sonars. It may be used to escort Chinese carrier groups in the future.

Blow to China’s military plans after new nuclear submarine ‘sinks’

Ben Farmer

China’s newest nuclear attack submarine has sunk in a shipyard accident, in a setback to the country’s attempts to overtake the United States in a naval arms race, according to US officials.

The sinking of the first of a new Zhou-class of nuclear-powered submarines triggered a scramble for Beijing to cover up the incident, officials told The Wall Street Journal.

The newly built vessel, which features a distinctive X-shaped stern, was sighted on satellite images alongside a pier at Wuchang Shipyard as it was being equipped for sea in late May.

It is claimed to have sunk later that month or in early June. Suspicion was said to have been raised when floating cranes were seen at the site soon afterwards.

Brent Sadler, a former submarine officer at Washington’s Heritage Foundation think tank, said: “The sinking of a new nuclear sub that was produced at a new yard will slow China’s plans to grow its nuclear submarine fleet. This is significant.”

China’s Soft Sell of Autocracy Is Working

Daniel Mattingly

For decades, the United States has promoted democracy around the globe. But amid mounting U.S.-Chinese competition, a question has arisen: is Beijing attempting to export its authoritarian political system in a similar way? No, says Chinese leader Xi Jinping. “We do not seek to ‘export’ a China model,” he told an assembly of world leaders in 2017, “nor do we want other countries to ‘copy’ our way of doing things.” It would be a mistake, however, to think that Beijing is not seeking to shape global opinion in favor of China’s political system. The Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to promote autocracy are simply not as explicit as the United States’ hard-sell efforts to export democracy; instead, the CCP is soft-selling autocracy.

To that end, the party has invested heavily in public diplomacy and influence operations intended to make the global public more accepting of its nondemocratic political system. It has developed a far-reaching program of trainings, conferences, and workshops that teach CCP-style management of the press, Internet, military, and civil society to foreign political leaders. And despite a perception among some Western policymakers and academics that these efforts are tone deaf, China’s external influence operations are more sophisticated, effective, and likely to succeed over the long run than many in the West believe. They are aimed primarily at people in the developing world, where many see the so-called China model as effective at delivering what matters most to them: a path out of grinding poverty and into the global middle class.

US targets China’s rare earths dominance with minerals-security finance network

Kawala Xie

The United States announced the establishment of a minerals-security finance network with its allies on Monday, the latest step in its bid to halt China’s global dominance of critical minerals.

The joint finance network will be used to “strengthen cooperation and promote information exchange and co-financing” among participating institutions from Indo-Pacific and European nations, according to the US State Department. It will also “advance diverse, secure and sustainable supply chains for critical minerals”.

The network was the latest initiative out of the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), a framework the US set up with 13 countries and the European Commission in 2022. It aims to diversify the countries’ supply chains for critical minerals amid an intensifying US-China tech rivalry. The US also rolled out a chip ban against China in 2022.

Its unveiling came as leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, pledged during a weekend summit in Delaware to “focus near-term efforts” on boosting mineral production across their countries.

Hearing Wrap Up: House Oversight Committee Warns of CCP’s Infiltration of U.S. Industries and Federal Agencies

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a hearing today titled, “Defending America from the Chinese Communist Party’s Political Warfare, Part III.” During the hearing, experts detailed how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has successfully waged an influence and infiltration campaign targeting critical U.S. industries, while the federal government has failed to develop a comprehensive strategy to protect the American people and combat the CCP’s dangerous tactics. Members emphasized that the Oversight Committee has gathered evidence showing the CCP’s targeting and infiltration of key federal agencies. The Committee remains committed to ensuring the federal government takes every necessary action to protect Americans from the CCP’s political and economic warfare.

The House Oversight Committee’s investigation has found the Biden-Harris Administration has no government-wide strategy to combat CCP warfare. The House Oversight Committee conducted oversight of 25 sectors of the federal government, consulted with experts from government, military, and private sector, and held briefings with 23 federal agencies.

Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.): “The CCP’s ultimate goal is to weaken and destroy its ‘main enemy,’ which the Party has identified as America. The Committee has conducted oversight of 25 sectors of the federal government to understand if a ‘whole-of-government’ approach to the CCP threat is sufficient or even in existence. Consulting with experts from the U.S. government, military, and private sector—and holding briefings with 23 federal agencies—the Committee has found that the CCP is waging a “war without weapons” against America. And the Biden-Harris Administration has no government-wide strategy to combat CCP warfare.”

Israel's Lebanon problem, or, when is a state not a state? - opinion

YOAV KARNY

Must a country be strong in order to exist? Or perhaps its only chance of existing lies in its built-in weakness? This is almost a paradox, just playing with words, is it not? Yet it represents the history of Lebanon in its 80 years of independence, real or imagined.

Lebanon was born out of collapsing French colonialism in 1943, a long time before the French had actually planned to give it independence. But the State of Lebanon was designed even earlier. The French and the Lebanese spent three years writing its constitution at the end of the 1920s. The formula they came up with was so convoluted, so full of contradictions, that its success was completely dependent on the lack of desire on the part of those who compiled it to destroy it, and on the willingness of much stronger neighbors to let it exist.

Syria, for example, which emerged into the light of day at the same time, refused to accept the very idea of a separate Lebanese identity. It thought that what was called Lebanon ought to be part of Greater Syria. Syria refused to establish normal diplomatic relations with Lebanon for decades. If the Lebanese want to talk to it, they should stir themselves and take the high road from Beirut to Damascus.

If Israel has killed Hezbollah leader Nasrallah, Iran retaliation is almost certain

Tom Rogan

The Israeli military has launched a series of massive air strikes targeting Hezbollah’s underground command headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon. The strikes on Friday were reportedly launched after Israel gathered intelligence that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was present at the headquarters.

Hezbollah’s command center was built under residential apartment blocks, so civilian casualties are likely to be high. Yet while European nations and others will protest this strike, Israel knows that key regional partners, such as Saudi Arabia and the Sunni monarchies, will quietly be applauding what it has done. Those governments are concerned by the civilian casualties incurred by Israeli actions against Hamas in Gaza, but they share Israel’s hatred of Hezbollah.

Still, Iran is likely to launch a significant retaliatory attack on Israel if Nasrallah has been killed. If Nasrallah has not been killed, then Hezbollah is highly likely to attempt to launch major missile and drone attacks deep into Israel. This will likely precipitate an Israeli ground offensive into southern Lebanon.

Ex-CIA chief: Pager blasts in Lebanon are ‘terrorism’

Ashleigh Fields

Former CIA director Leon Panetta labeled last week’s deadly pager explosions in Lebanon a form of “terrorism.”

“I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism,” Panetta said on “CBS News Sunday morning.”

“This is going right into the supply chain,” he added. “And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question: ‘What the hell is next?’”

Last week, pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded in Lebanon, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands. Leaders of the Lebanese militant group, which is backed by Iran, blamed the explosions on Israel’s Mossad intelligence organization.

“This is a tactic that has repercussions. And we really don’t know what those repercussions are going to be,” Panetta told anchor Lee Cohan in remarks highlighted by Mediaite. “The forces of war are largely in control right now.”

Hezbollah says Israel is dropping leaflets in Lebanon with ‘dangerous barcodes’Sep 24

Lauren Taylor

Hezbollah has accused Israel of employing new analog methods of cyber warfare after communication devices were banned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps earlier this week. The accusations come as leaflets reportedly dropped by Israel have appeared in the eastern Bekaa Valley, according to Hezbollah’s media office on Tuesday, Sept. 24.

Images of the leaflets were shared on social media, including on X, formerly known as Twitter. The leaflets contain a warning addressed to residents of the Bekaa Valley, stating that Hezbollah activity has forced the Israel Defense Forces to move against military positions in the area.

The message reads:

“Urgent warning to the residents of Bekaa. Hezbollah activity forces the IDF to move against military positions in the village, and the IDF does not want to harm you. If you are in a building where Hezbollah weapons are located, you must leave the village within 2 hours and move 1,000 meters away or to the nearest central school. Do not return until you receive a new message. Anyone near Hezbollah facilities or weapons is putting their life and the lives of their family at risk.”

Flammable Lithium Batteries Will Slow The Aggressive Expansion Of Electric Vehicles – Analysis

Xia Ri

Recently, a series of walkie-talkie explosion incidents in Lebanon has drawn global attention, particularly regarding the issue of lithium batteries overheating and exploding due to hacking software. This is expected to have a significant impact on China. According to the latest data from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China’s total lithium battery production exceeded 940 GWh in 2023, marking a 25% year-on-year increase. Research from the China Business Industry Research Institute indicates that in 2023, China’s lithium battery production accounted for 73.8% of the global total, and it is projected that shipments will surpass 1,000 GWh in 2024.

In the electric bicycle market, the current Chinese ownership of electric bicycles has exceeded 350 million, with over 50 million of those equipped with lithium batteries. In the electric vehicle (EV) sector, as of the end of June 2024, the number of new energy vehicles (NEVs) reached 24.72 million, accounting for over half of the global total. If domestic policies continue to support EVs, the application scale of lithium batteries is expected to keep increasing.

Winning the war, the Ukraine way

Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth

You are only as strong as your weakest link, and for Ukraine, that link is fast becoming the United States.

The Biden administration continues to balk at Ukraine’s request to strike, at will, military targets within Russia that pose a “clear and imminent threat” to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and civilian population centers.

Red lines have become a Washington and Brussels problem, not one for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals. Determined to drive the Russian invader from Ukraine and win the war, Ukraine has taken the fight to Russian soil.

To achieve his aims, Zelensky has increasingly turned to his own country’s resources with remarkable success. He has also boldly taken the initiative by invading the Kursk Oblast in southwestern Russia, to the chagrin of many.

A Home-Grown Alternative: The African Development Bank Comes of Age - Opinion

Alec Soltes

September 10, 2024, marked the 60th anniversary of the creation of the African Development Bank (AfDB). The occasion was described as a “day of joy” in the words of bank president Akinwunmi Adesina speaking at the Bank’s headquarters in Abidjan. The event was hosted by Ivorian president Alassane Outtara, who also delivered remarks.

In the past ten years, the AfDB has provided around $77 billion in direct investment in African projects. Over the past eight years, the proportion of Africans with access to electricity has doubled to just over 50%, a statistic highlighted by Adesina. Over 3,000 total projects have been funded within the same time frame.

A premier financial institution, and arguably Africa’s “most trusted development partner” in providing needed capital, the African Development Bank serves as an alternative to the largest sources of funds such as from the United States, China, and other multilateral institutions like the World Bank.

Zelensky’s pleas for help drowned out by the Middle East

Stefan Wolff

While Russia continues its nuclear saber rattling, with renewed threats to use its arsenal if attacked, fighting on the frontlines in Ukraine and in Russia’s Kursk region remains intense. But the diplomatic center of gravity of the war recently shifted to New York and Washington.

Discussions at the UN and meetings scheduled between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are by no means unimportant for the outcomes of the conflict. But it is unlikely that they will constitute the pivotal moment in accelerating the pace towards a Ukrainian victory that Zelensky might envisage.

At meetings at the UN General Assembly and Security Council, Zelensky appealed to world leaders to support his country and force Russia to make peace with Ukraine. His vision to achieve this is via a second global peace summit. This time he wants Russia to participate after the first effort in Switzerland in June achieved very little.

Imagining the Russian empire's collapse

Mariana Lastovyria and Oleh Tymoshenko

Russia has long been a prison of nations, using force to suppress unique nationalities and cultures.

Nowadays, Russia consists of 21 national republics and almost 200 ethnic groups, each with its own distinct cultures. The majority of these populations have been subject to attempts to systematically assimilate them. Independent movements are suppressed before they can gain momentum.

Many Ukrainians – and independence activists fighting for freedom – believe that the Russian empire will continue its violent expansionism unless it breaks up into its component national parts, when all its cultures and peoples are given self-determination.

The Chechens became the first victims of Russia’s imperial violence in the history of modern Russia. Few understand this better than Aset Sabb, whose people have struggled for freedom from Russia for generations.

We face unprecedented peril. The Pentagon and Congress must change their ways- Opinion

Robert M. Gates

Despite the boasts of both presidential candidates as well as congressional Republicans and Democrats that they will ensure American military superiority, the Defense Department begins the 14th fiscal year of the past 15 without an appropriated budget. The dire consequences of yet another year beginning with a continuing resolution funding the Pentagon were communicated to Congress by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin this month. This is just the most recent demonstration of the yawning gap between the political rhetoric in Washington about sustaining American military strength and the stark realities on the ground.

As secretary of defense for both Republican and Democratic presidents, I strongly supported allocating more resources for nonmilitary instruments of power — diplomacy, strategic communications, development assistance, geoeconomic tools and more. But it is a fact of life that these instruments are effective only against the backdrop of American military power so compelling that adversaries are deterred from taking up arms against us or our allies.

New report details stunning Secret Service leadership failures around first Trump assassination attempt

Holmes Lybrand, Annie Grayer and Zachary Cohen

Secret Service agents failed to take charge of decision-making for security at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally where former President Donald Trump was shot in July, a bipartisan Senate committee revealed in a new report Wednesday, leading to key lapses in preparation and communication that day.

The report, citing interviews with top Secret Service officials and local law enforcement who oversaw the security for the rally, said the failures were “foreseeable, preventable” and found that many of the problems identified by the committee “remain unaddressed” by the Secret Service.

Some of the problems highlighted include the Secret Service failing to set up visual barriers around the rally that may have blocked shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks’ view of Trump, the lack of a plan on how to secure the building the shooter took aim from and the general chaos of communication around the shooter’s movement leading up to the attempt on the former president’s life.

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Sen. Gary Peters told CNN Wednesday morning that his panel heard “a lot of finger-pointing” when they pressed Secret Service agents about who was in charge the day of the rally.

Is a Responsible Strategic Threat Assessment Too Much to Ask For?

Al Dhobaba

Well, my last article failed to generate a cacophony of calls from recruiters eager to get me back into a uniform, so I suppose I’ll step on a few more toes.

As early as 2008, Army Colonel and West Point history professor Gian Gentile led a chorus of voices that characterized counterinsurgency operations as a dangerous distraction from what might be characterized as “real soldiering”: combined arms maneuver, force-on-force combat, and engagements against what are popularly referred to as “near-peer threats.” By 2015, most of the American defense establishment was onboard! Counterinsurgency was over! Land wars in developing countries were passé! China was a rising power, and America would pivot its attention to the Pacific to contain it! Russia was resurgent, threatening the interests of America and American allies the world over! It was time to reconfigure the service branches to deter or defeat these strategic competitors!

Don't get me wrong, I'm also concerned about strategic competition from Russia and China. However, I offer a modest proposal: shall we take a deep breath and conduct a sober threat assessment before we all go overboard on “managing the risks” from these supposed “near-peer threats”?

Populism’s Broken Economic Promises

Manuel Funke, Christoph Trebesch, and Moritz Schularick

Over the last few decades, populists have come to power in a long list of countries. Italy elected Silvio Berlusconi, and Turkey empowered Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Venezuela had Hugo Chávez and now Nicolás Maduro; its neighbor, Brazil, was governed by Jair Bolsonaro until 2023. Argentina’s current president, the anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei, is clearly a populist. And the United States voted Donald Trump into power in 2016. It may do so again.

Dazzling, entertaining, sometimes downright grotesque, populist leaders span the political spectrum. Chavez and Maduro are socialists, whereas Milei and Trump are conservatives. Sometimes, the leaders defy simple left-right

Advancing to the Litani and Restoring Deterrence

Mick Ryan

Israel might again conduct a ground operation into southern Lebanon.

As a possible prelude to such an operation, the Israelis this week conducted an air strike that appears to have decapitated the Hezbollah Radwan force leadership, a special force designed to infiltrate into northern Israel. Israel also targeted and destroyed many of Hezbollah’s missiles in their storage locations (particularly in fake houses) in southern Lebanon. Around 1600 strikes were conducted by the IDF, which is a very significant level of effort for their Air Force.

There were many casualties on the ground, and the balance of civilians and Hezbollah in the casualty numbers remains unknown. While these strikes have been destructive, Hezbollah is estimated to possess somewhere between 100 and 200 thousand missiles of varying range and precision. Therefore, just how much of an impact these strikes will have on Hezbollah’s capacity to attack Israel remains to be seen.

In the past day, Hezbollah also launched a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv. The alleged target was the headquarters of Mossad. The missile was intercepted by the IDF, but was an indication of Hezbollah capacity, and the potential for further escalation in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

Ransomware incidents hit 117 countries in 2023, task force says

Jonathan Greig

More than 6,500 ransomware attacks were recorded in 2023, touching a record number of 117 countries across the globe after a brief dip in 2022.

There was a 73% year-over-year increase in attacks to 6,670 ransomware incidents, with notable spikes in June and July due to the exploitation of a popular file transfer tool.

The numbers were compiled by the Ransomware Task Force, which was organized in 2021 by the nonprofit Institute for Security and Technology and is a public/private consortium made up of cybersecurity experts, government officials and more.

In its annual report covering 2023, the organization used data from eCrime.ch, which aggregates messages posted on data leak sites as its primary source of information.

The task force found at least 117 countries experienced ransomware incidents launched by 66 different groups. For 2022, the numbers were slightly lower at 105 countries and 58 ransomware gangs.

Popping the chatbot hype balloon

Sara Goudarzi

In 2015, Krystal Kauffman experienced health problems and could no longer work an on-site job. To pay her bills, she looked on the internet for work-from-home openings and came across MTurk. Short for Mechanical Turk, the Amazon online marketplace allows businesses to hire gig workers all over the world to perform tasks that computers cannot. Kauffman signed up and was soon tagging images and labeling and annotating data for tech companies.

MTurk and platforms like it hire hundreds of thousands of workers worldwide to perform quick tasks, typically for small sums, and they have become an important component of machine learning. In this application of artificial intelligence, machines examine given data to find patterns and use those patterns to learn. But machines don’t always perform as intended, and to aid them, throngs of people take on broken bits of large volumes of work, a phenomenon Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has described as “artificial artificial intelligence (Pontin 2007).”

Kauffman is a research fellow at the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR) and the lead organizer of Turkopticon, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting for the rights of gig-workers. She knows artificial artificiality firsthand: “You have all of these smart devices that people think are just magically smart; you have AI that people think magically appeared, and it is people like me [who make them work], and we’re spread out all over the world,” she says.

G7 cyber group warns financial sector to prep for quantum computing risks

Adam Janofsky

A major intergovernmental group on Wednesday called on the financial sector to prepare for “impending threats” brought by developments in quantum computing.

The G7 Cyber Expert Group, which is chaired by the U.S. Department of Treasury and the Bank of England and advises G7 finance ministers and central bank governors on cyber issues, broadly recommended that financial authorities and institutions assess quantum computing risks and develop plans to mitigate them.

It also highlighted recent efforts by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) to roll out post-quantum cryptography algorithms that will likely form the basis of new encryption standards.

Computer science and cybersecurity experts say that quantum computers — which theoretically can quickly solve complex problems that would be impossible for conventional computers — are being developed by governments and companies, and could become a reality in the next decade.