Blog Archives

THE CHINESE NAVY SEEKS THE PHILIPPINES & CHINESE POLITICAL WAR

2/28/2020

China’s Navy Shipbuilders Are ‘Outbuilding Everybody’
By Dave Makichuk, Asia Times: "Welcome to another headache for the Pentagon — it appears China has grasped accelerated shipbuilding technologies and related aircraft development as its march toward an imposing blue water navy continues unabated."

The PRC’s Cautious Stance on the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy
By Yamazaki Amane, China Brief: "... the United States is not alone. Japanese Prime Minister (PM) Abe Shinzo has advocated Japan’s own “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy,” which he has discussed since 2016. This concept emphasizes economic development assistance and infrastructure construction, promotion of the rule of law, and freedom of trade. It particularly emphasizes maritime security and freedom of navigation—which connect directly to the territorial disputes that are a key point of ongoing contention between Japan and China."

CHINA:
China Unveils Latest Z-10 Attack Helicopter Variant
By Franz-Stefan Gady, The Diplomat: “Chinese state-owned media released images of a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Zhishengji-10 (Z-10) attack helicopter fitted with new engine exhaust outlets."

Five Reasons the U.S. Army Deserves
to Be First in Line for More Modernization Funding
By Loren Thompson, Forbes: “Army leaders saw what was coming and gave up on increasing the size of their force over a year ago. Instead, they opted to spend what discretionary resources they had on modernizing their weapons and networks. Many of the Army’s current weapons first entered the force in the 1980s; the service is long overdue for a technology refresh."

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-philippines-alliance-dying-123841

Insufficient missile defense funding would leave Americans vulnerable
Bradley Bowman — Defense News
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency submitted its report on unfunded priorities to Congress last week, which includes a number of priorities worth more than $1.1 billion. The list demonstrates the tangible consequences of a flat Pentagon budget request and provides a road map for lawmakers to ensure that the U.S. homeland and America’s forward-deployed troops have sufficient missile defense protection. The Trump administration requested $705.4 billion for the Department of Defense for fiscal 2021, a level that fails to keep pace with inflation. Read More

China’s political warfare strategy takes hit from coronavirus
David Maxwell — Washington Examiner
The Wuhan coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2 as the World Health Organization has named it and the Chinese would prefer it to be called, may be on the verge of becoming a pandemic. If it continues to spread, it may take a tragic toll on human life around the world. It is already having economic effects such as bringing down stock market prices and causing capital to evaporate. It is possible geostrategic relations will be altered in ways no one has anticipated. Read More

How The Revolutionary Guards Could Reshape Iran
Jonathan Schanzer – Quoted by Ilan Berman – The National Interest

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HOW TO ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY WITH MOSCOW

2/11/2020

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America's New Defense Budget with Matt Vallone

Top 5 things to watch in Congress’ 2021 defense budget hearings
Mackenzie Eaglen | Defense One
The Pentagon has said that the FY21 budget will make the national defense strategy irreversible, but military top brass has been forced to make challenging program decisions under declining top lines.

How to Respond to Russia’s INF Treaty Violation
By Gary Schmitt, RealClearDefense: “When The New York Times reported that Russia had likely deployed a nuclear-armed cruise missile in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.”

The Imperative of the Offense on the Future Battlefield
By Bill Hix & Robert Simpson, Modern War Institute: “The modern slaughters of World Wars I and II are modern demonstrations that when great powers fight symmetrically, the result is costly, even globally catastrophic. While America avoided catastrophe during the Cold War, the potential for great-power conflict and its consequences have returned."

New U.S. Weapon Strengthens Nuclear Deterrence of Moscow

SDI: A Basis for a Multi-Layered Defense Against Ballistic Missiles

Can Warfighters Remain the Masters of AI? by Harrison Schramm and Jeff Kline

Report Finds U.S. Defense Industrial Base in Decline
By Yasmin Tadjdeh, National Defense Magazine: "The defense industrial base is on a negative trajectory as companies grapple with deteriorating conditions for industrial security and the availability and cost of skilled labor and materials, according to a new report released Feb. 5."

Navy’s Unmanned Growler Is a Look at War’s Future
By Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics: "The Navy converted manned combat jets into unmanned ones. Nobody had any idea they were doing it."

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AMERICA'S FUTURE CONFLICT WITH CHINA EMERGES; WHAT THE COLD WAR TAUGHT DEFENSE ABOUT UNITY OF PURPOSE; aei's scholars on putin, war budgets and german political unity

2/6/2020

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CHINA:
NORTHCOM Links Chinese Hypersonic Glider to Nuclear Program
By Steve Trimble, Aviation Week: "All the U.S. military’s previous assessments of China’s nuclear arsenal included a mix of ICBMs, with silo-based DF-4 and DF-5 rockets, along with road-mobile DF-31, DF-31A and the recently unveiled DF-41 missiles. The warheads for each missile are known to include several multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles, with maneuverable reentry vehicles also believed to be in development or already deployed."

CHINA:
China’s Modernizing Military
By Lindsay Maizland, Council on Foreign Relations: "The People’s Liberation Army is aiming to become the dominant force in the Asia-Pacific, strengthening China’s hand toward Taiwan and international disputes in the South China Sea.

China and Nuclear Restraint
By Rod Lyon, The Strategist (ASPI): "China increasingly finds itself depicted as the bête noire of nuclear arms control. The U.S. government has said the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty collapsed because of Chinese actions outside the treaty and not merely Russian violations inside it."

China’s Growing 5G Dominance Is a Disaster for U.S. Security
By Charlie Kirk, The Hill: "China’s influence over the fifth generation of wireless technology, more commonly known as 5G, is a lot more important than some TV commercials might have you believe."

Is the U.S. Public Sleepwalking Into a Sino-Centric World Order?
By Lulio Vargas-Cohen, RealClearDefense: "While the U.S. is at a cros sroads in navigating the most important foreign policy issue of the century, the U.S. public remains unengaged about the importance of getting U.S.-China relations right."

Three Huge Defense Threats for Which U.S. Is Woefully Under-Prepared
By Loren Thompson, Forbes: "The United States outspends every other nation on defense, and as a result has the best trained, best equipped military in the world. The joint force regularly undertakes missions that no other country's military would be capable of executing. However, there are existential defense threats for which the nation is not prepared . . ."

Not Another Peloponnesian War: Great Power Collaboration?
By Jack Bowers, Strategy Bridge: "The narrative of great-power competition relies largely on a realist discourse reflected in the well-known plot of the Thucydides Trap."

Options for a Joint Support Service
By Jason Hughes, Divergent Options: ". . . without dynamic modernization solutions the DoD will be unable to sharpen the American Military’s competitive edge and realize the National Defense Strategy’s vision of a more lethal, resilient, and rapidly innovating Joint Force. While DoD’s strategic guidance has evolved, its force structure has not."

The State Department’s Dysfunction Predates Pompeo
By Kori Schake, Bloomberg Opinion: "Bad as he is, the Secretary of Swagger isn’t entirely to blame for the crisis of American diplomacy."

Why We Need A New Cold War Strategic Approach
If the United States cannot better align its actions, messaging, and strategy and do it in a unified fashion — as it did during the Cold War — it risks reductions to military readiness and our ability to effectively compete with adversaries.

In a new AEI report, Hal Brands discusses how the US can apply lessons from Cold War political warfare to modern competition with China and Russia. An understanding of political warfare is essential to succeed in the intellectual and geopolitical aspects of great-power competition today. Read the full report here.

Mackenzie Eaglen assesses the winners and losers of the Pentagon report. Due to difficult trade-offs by the Pentagon, it now needs a partner in the legislative branch. Finish it here.

Hal Brands in a Bloomberg op-ed. When we argue about Germany in 1990, we’re arguing about what America has done in the world since then — and what it should be doing today. Finish it here.

Leon Aron in an Atlantic op-ed. Putin can’t imagine Russia without himself at the center, especially when the regime he built is on the verge of destabilization. Read it here.

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REVIEW OF US COMMITMENT IN AFRICA

2/6/2020

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Rwanda: How long can a dictator’s malign acts go unpunished by an uncritical media?
Roger Bate | AEIdeas

U.S., AFRICA:
AFRICOM’s Assessment of U.S. Security Challenges in Africa
By Yacqub Ismail, International Policy Digest: “In the 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy, which serves as a guidance for the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. government prioritized addressing security challenges from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as well as violent extremist groups. AFRICOM’s new strategic approach to secure its interests on the continent are guided by the following: partner for success; compete to win; and, maintain pressure on non-state actors."

Krulak Revisited:
The Three-Block War, Strategic Corporals, and the Future Battlefield
By Franklin Annis, Modern War Institute: “In the 1990s, Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps Gen Charles C. Krulak advanced the idea of what he called a “three-block war” to explain battlefield realities in an era of failed and failing nation-states. Not only was the Marine Corps operating in complex environments and executing a range of missions—including humanitarian aid and peacekeeping, alongside mid-intensity conflict—it was also operating in an atmosphere of pervasive media coverage."

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THE NEW CHAOS OF WAR: URBAN WAR & HOW WASHINGTON DID IT

2/5/2020

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Mattis and Stavridis on Military-to-Civilian Leadership
By John Waters, Omaha World-Herald: “How did George Washington pull together the revolutionary army? It was very boring. It was listen and learn. (The leader) is actually there to coach them and be with them”: Jim Mattis said this to me over the phone in early January, noting that he applied the “listen and learn” technique to his own transition from four-star general to secretary of defense."

http://www.amazon.com/UnCivilization-Urban-Geopolitics-Time-Chaos/dp/1892998181/ref=sr

Remarks on the book by its author It is impossible to formulate the answers to the complex strategic uncertainties we now face unless we first ask the appropriate questions. This is what I have attempted to do in my new book, UnCivilization: Urban Geopolitics in a Time of Chaos:1 to frame questions. And to postulate paths to the answers.

When, for example, will the modern world abandon its obsessive - and self-destructive - preoccupation with the tactical threat of terrorism, and begin to focus on the greater strategic context? How do we deal with the fragility of our now-profound dependence on energy, and the attendant long logistical lines to supply it, for every function of civilization, progress, and survival?

How and when will the lights of the great urban spread of mankind begin to flicker and falter? Will they shine brightly into the night in new places, or be sustained still in the cities which we have burnished with our familiarity? What follows when the ships and their cargoes of oil and goods come with less frequency? What happens when the surge in population peaks and suddenly goes into rapid decline? What happens to the balanced nation-state when the preponderance of the world's population lives in cities?

Will all or some of this happen soon? Will it happen at all? And what will be the result of all of this?

Is transformational change already upon us? Have we, in the midst of our striving for greater "democracy", emerged into a situation where - in most of our modern societies - the greater populations are subjects to their governments, rather than the intended goal that governments should be subject to the people? Is this part of the sclerosis of accumulated laws and entitlements?

Change for the most part occurs inexorably over the seemingly gentle sea of history; grinding, like the mills of God, slowly, but exceeding fine. What makes change tolerable - and strategic affairs manageable - is that this evolution usually appears to occur imperceptibly and with the calmness of moss growing on old logs. Sudden change causes disorientation and panic, both to individuals and societies.

The period into which we are now embarking will involve much sudden change. The familiarity of old routines, established forms, and familiar hierarchies will, in many respects, disappear. It is, indeed, already happening. And it has happened before. It is how societies, cultures, and civilizations emerge or evaporate. Individuals and societies can, however, adapt to new realities, both good and bad. In the process, they often forget the paths and triggers which led to the dramatic watersheds thrust upon them. Most people, and most societies, do not have a conscious view of their past or their future; they merely react. They are swept in a storm of reaction, and have no control over it, no understanding of it. They are the last leaves of autumn swept by blustering air, whose movement was dictated by the pull of a distant moon, the heat of a distant sun. Like the leaves, they question not the cause of their present situation, even if they bemoan their fate.

I wrote this new book, UnCivilization, to gain a measure of our present shape, as a human society, and to understand whence the gale has its origins, and whither it will dispatch us.

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EXAMINING THE STATE OF US MISSILE DEFENSES & WHY THE NAVY MUST INTEGRATE TO TAKE ON CHINA IN THE INDO-PACIFIC

2/5/2020

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Iranian Missiles and Americans Exposed
By Rebeccah L. Heinrichs, RealClearDefense: “President Trump boasted in military in his State of the Union address Wednesday night. Trump is right that the military has received significant investments during his tenure. But recent events also reveal where there are vulnerabilities."

U.S. Missile Defense Woefully Prepared for 21st Century Threats
By Jared Whitley, RealClearDefense: “Whereas mutually assured destruction kept the world relatively safe during the Cold War, the proliferation of nuclear capabilities has turned Planet Earth into a ticking, radioactive timebomb."

To Deter China, the Naval Services Must Integrate
By Mike Gallagher, War on the Rocks: “Change on the scale envisioned by the National Defense Strategy isn't always easy, or pretty. Observers of American strategy often wonder how the United States will focus on great power competition when it cannot escape the gravitational pull of the Middle East. This is a worthy topic of debate and causes me no small amount of consternation as well. But even as Washington might look for ways to bring its commitments in the Middle East to a more sustainable level, let's not ignore the lessons simmering conflicts there and elsewhere have for facing down great powers in the Indo-Pacific and Europe."

U.S.-China Competition in Asia: Who Risks Wins
By Sam Roggeveen, the interpreter: “The two key questions for America’s allies in Asia are how long do they want to maintain a U.S.-centered strategic posture, and when do they start preparing for a post-American future?"

China in the Levant
By John Toolan Jr., John Bird & Harry Hoshovsky, RealClearDefense: “Over the past decade, we’ve seen great power jockeying return to the Eastern Mediterranean with China using its deep pockets to secure influence with key U.S. allies as a means to further its global ambitions and adversely impact the United States’ national security interests."

Richard Matlock writes: Over the past five years, missile threats have evolved far more rapidly than conventional wisdom had predicted. […]The 2019 Missile Defense Review called for a comprehensive approach to countering regional missiles of all kinds and from whatever source, as well as the increasingly complex intercontinental ballistic missiles from rogue states. But programs and budgets have not yet aligned with the policy. The upcoming defense budget submission presents an important opportunity to address these new and complex challenges. – Defense News

The First Element–Leadership and Combat Power
By Jeff Barta & Patrick O'Keefe, The Company Leader: "What does it take to bring the full power of the U.S. Army to bear upon enemies of America?"

Thinking Before Shooting: Intelligence and Special Operations
By Steve Balestrieri, SOFREP: “The last 16 years have seen our forces fighting a different kind of war, with a different set of parameters. But we shouldn’t forget the hard lessons learned through the decades of the Cold War. Because we’re going to need them."

Whose National Interest? Which Foreign Policy?
By Michael Colebrook, Strategy Bridge: "Foreign policy consensus is rare in America, just as moral consensus is the stuff of fairy tales. However, difficulty in reaching agreement is no excuse to succumb to relativism or blind fatalism."

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geography & strategy
global strike media

THE CHINESE NAVY SEEKS THE PHILIPPINES & CHINESE POLITICAL WAR

HOW TO ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY WITH MOSCOW

AMERICA'S FUTURE CONFLICT WITH CHINA EMERGES; WHAT THE COLD WAR TAUGHT DEFENSE ABOUT UNITY OF PURPOSE; aei's scholars on putin, war budgets and german political unity

REVIEW OF US COMMITMENT IN AFRICA

THE NEW CHAOS OF WAR: URBAN WAR & HOW WASHINGTON DID IT

EXAMINING THE STATE OF US MISSILE DEFENSES & WHY THE NAVY MUST INTEGRATE TO TAKE ON CHINA IN THE INDO-PACIFIC

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THE CHINESE NAVY SEEKS THE PHILIPPINES & CHINESE POLITICAL WAR

HOW TO ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY WITH MOSCOW

AMERICA'S FUTURE CONFLICT WITH CHINA EMERGES; WHAT THE COLD WAR TAUGHT DEFENSE ABOUT UNITY OF PURPOSE; aei's scholars on putin, war budgets and german political unity

REVIEW OF US COMMITMENT IN AFRICA

THE NEW CHAOS OF WAR: URBAN WAR & HOW WASHINGTON DID IT

EXAMINING THE STATE OF US MISSILE DEFENSES & WHY THE NAVY MUST INTEGRATE TO TAKE ON CHINA IN THE INDO-PACIFIC

Archives

Categories

What Our Clients Are Saying

Contact Us

Subscribe Today!

geography & strategy
global strike media