The Trump administration is focusing its efforts on engaging in trilateral arms control agreements with Russia and China. This week, the United States and Russia began negotiations over extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, though China has no intentions of joining. However, the administration's effort to bring China into the negotiations distracts from the dynamic of what makes for successful arms control: modernization and deployment of nuclear systems that allow negotiation from a position of strength. AEI’s John Maurer argues that "to maximize our chances of success in arms control negotiations with Russia and China, the United States must embrace a long-term strategy of nuclear modernization, including new ballistic missiles, missile submarines, and nuclear-capable bombers. Only a robust and modernized American nuclear deterrent will provide the leverage necessary to bring adversaries to the table for serious negotiations."
A growing chorus of voices is advising Congress to reduce spending on nuclear modernization in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021. This advice is misguided, argues John Maurer in a RealClear Defense op-ed. To build a new arms control framework, the United States must negotiate from a position of strength. Slowing nuclear modernization would end any hope for arms control, even as the United States pursues new negotiations aimed at curbing competition among the United States, Russia, and China. Read here.
Peter Suciu writes: For China to gain naval dominance would require that it could launch and maintain more than the 11 aircraft carriers the United States Navy now operates, but would also need to keep pace with the carriers in service with the Royal Navy, France and Australia. As long as NATO exists it isn’t just the 11 U.S. carriers and potentially nine LHAs in the U.S. fleet, but all of those other carriers. – The National Interest
“Beyond the Beltway” — What’s the Civil-Military Crisis? by Paula Thornhill
Russia’s New Strategy for Nuclear War
By Paul Dibb, The Strategist (ASPI): "The relatively short, six-page document sets out a series of blunt messages designed to impress on its potential enemies just where Russia stands. While it considers nuclear weapons ‘exclusively as a means of deterrence’ and characterises their use as ‘an extreme and compelled measure’, this official declaration sets out in some detail the conditions that could trigger nuclear conflict."
By Paul Dibb, The Strategist (ASPI): "The relatively short, six-page document sets out a series of blunt messages designed to impress on its potential enemies just where Russia stands. While it considers nuclear weapons ‘exclusively as a means of deterrence’ and characterises their use as ‘an extreme and compelled measure’, this official declaration sets out in some detail the conditions that could trigger nuclear conflict."
Religious and Cultural Obstacles to China's BRI in the Middle East
By Dr. Mordechai Chaziza, June 12, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The successful implementation of China’s BRI strategy will largely depend on its ability to overcome the Middle East’s weighty political, economic, religious, cultural, and security problems.
Continue to full article ->
By Dr. Mordechai Chaziza, June 12, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The successful implementation of China’s BRI strategy will largely depend on its ability to overcome the Middle East’s weighty political, economic, religious, cultural, and security problems.
Continue to full article ->
The United States, China and ‘The Geography of the Peace’
By Francis P. Sempa, RealClearDefense: ““The United States must recognize once again, and permanently, that the power constellation in Europe and Asia is of everlasting concern to her, both in time of war and in time of peace.” So wrote Nicholas J. Spykman in The Geography of the Peace, which was published in 1944, when the Second World War was still raging in Europe and Asia, and on the oceans of the world."
By Francis P. Sempa, RealClearDefense: ““The United States must recognize once again, and permanently, that the power constellation in Europe and Asia is of everlasting concern to her, both in time of war and in time of peace.” So wrote Nicholas J. Spykman in The Geography of the Peace, which was published in 1944, when the Second World War was still raging in Europe and Asia, and on the oceans of the world."
American Exceptionalism in the Age of Trump
By Joseph S. Nye, The Strategist (ASPI): "With World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt, his successor, Harry Truman, and others drew the lesson that the U.S. could not afford to turn inward again. They realised that America’s very size had become a second source of exceptionalism."
By Joseph S. Nye, The Strategist (ASPI): "With World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt, his successor, Harry Truman, and others drew the lesson that the U.S. could not afford to turn inward again. They realised that America’s very size had become a second source of exceptionalism."
Defending America’s defenders
Beginning to stand up to a hostile international organizatio
Beginning to stand up to a hostile international organizatio
The Aircraft Carrier We Need
By Jerry Hendrix, National Review: "A strategic design update is due."
Distributable Platforms and Determined Marines:
The Necessity of Operational Art in a 21st Century Marine Corps
By Matthew Schultz, Michael Manning, Jeremy Smith, Brian Meade, Matthew Newman & Paul Kozick, Strategy Bridge: "In the coming era of distributable platforms, stand-in forces, and globally-integrated joint combined arms operations, the time has come for the Corps to join the rest of the U.S. military services in embracing the concept of operational art in its foundational, service-level doctrine."
Options for the U.S. to Wage Conflict in the Cognitive Domain
By Todd Schmidt, DefenseTech: "Current operational environments witness adversaries increasingly avoiding conventional conflict and achieving their objectives through other means of influence. The consequence is a future of persistent, unending great power competition that resides in a gray zone between war and peace."
By Jerry Hendrix, National Review: "A strategic design update is due."
Distributable Platforms and Determined Marines:
The Necessity of Operational Art in a 21st Century Marine Corps
By Matthew Schultz, Michael Manning, Jeremy Smith, Brian Meade, Matthew Newman & Paul Kozick, Strategy Bridge: "In the coming era of distributable platforms, stand-in forces, and globally-integrated joint combined arms operations, the time has come for the Corps to join the rest of the U.S. military services in embracing the concept of operational art in its foundational, service-level doctrine."
Options for the U.S. to Wage Conflict in the Cognitive Domain
By Todd Schmidt, DefenseTech: "Current operational environments witness adversaries increasingly avoiding conventional conflict and achieving their objectives through other means of influence. The consequence is a future of persistent, unending great power competition that resides in a gray zone between war and peace."
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