The next steps for the Pentagon's AI Hub
(Defense One) Six ways the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center can accelerate the military’s use of AI.

  Defending forward to confront China’s military aims
(RealClear Defense ) The passage of the fiscal year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) marked the moment the budget finally caught up to a grim geostrategic reality: The capabilities gap between the U.S. and Chinese militaries is shrinking, and fast.

Deciphering Erdogan's seeming pro-West shift in foreign policy
(Al-Monitor) Ankara’s abrupt desire to mend fences with the West appears driven by domestic calculations, but even if its intentions are genuine, it lacks the institutional capacity to pull off such a U-turn.

China may seek to close nuclear gap after US and Russia agree to extend New START treaty
(South China Morning Post) The extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) between the United States and Russia to 2026 may not only prevent an out-of-control arms race but also gives China an additional five-year buffer period.
 
US admiral calls China’s anti-ship ballistic missiles a ‘destabilising effort’ that may not win a war
(South China Morning Post) A senior US military official said China was “pouring a lot of money” into anti-ship ballistic missiles but it may not help the People’s Liberation Army win a conflict between the two nations.

What’s in a Name? Reimagining Irregular Warfare Activities for Competition by Kevin Bilms

JADC2 May Be Built To Fight The Wrong War
​To compete with China, DoD needs to focus on spoiling Chinese military and paramilitary success at lower levels on the escalation ladder. This is more closely aligned with maneuver warfare concepts like DARPA’s Mosaic Warfare.

Congress, It’s Time For Two-Year Budget Deal: Eaglen At AEI
It will take time for the Biden administration to build its national security and defense strategies. In the absence of a new defense strategy, the most logical route for Congress would be to plan a two-year budget deal that buys back readiness and investment lost to the Budget Control Act.

Biden's Approach to the Indo-Pacific
By Emil Avdaliani, January 13, 2021
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: While the new US president is likely to reverse many of Donald Trump’s foreign policy decisions, one area likely to remain untouched is the US approach to the Indo-Pacific region. Joe Biden will push for a reinvigorated set of alliances and building of confidence in US power among China’s neighbors. The nascent Trumpian Indo-Pacific strategy will take final shape under Biden.
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​Sudanese-Ethiopian relations are deteriorating. Sudanese armed forces have clashed with Ethiopian soldiers and armed Ethiopian farmers, known as shifta, along the Sudanese-Ethiopian border since December. Sudanese forces took advantage of the distraction created by the Tigray conflict in northern Ethiopia to seize disputed territory in the Fashqa triangle in early December.
READ THE LATEST EDITION HERE
Civil war is breaking out in Africa’s second largest country 

Claiming to Counter Russia and Iran, Turkey Partners with Both  by Seth Frantzman
The Jerusalem Post
January 3, 2021
https://www.meforum.org/61920/turkey-partners-with-russia-and-iran

The Six Blind Men and the Elephant: Differing Views on the U.S. Defense Budget by Thomas Spoehr

Indian Army Pivots Toward China with Ajai Shukla
Ethiopian-Sudanese Border Flares Up with Alex de Waal

We Need a Goldwater-Nichols Act for Emerging Technology / John Shanahan,Laura Junor: The 1986 law made joint experience a prerequisite for high rank. We must do the same for technological facility.

The World's Most Important Body of Water / Daniel Yergin: More than most, four men shaped the oft-cited "strategic tensions" over the South China Sea.

Taking on China – Breaking Down the FY21 NDAA

China's global power tops the US? New measures say no
Hal Brands | Bloomberg Opinion
Gross domestic product and military spending matter, but so do networks of allies and “resilience.”

The Abraham Accords

The Renewed Western Sahara Conflict and the Abraham Accords
By Col (Res.) Dr. Raphael G. Bouchnik-Chen, December 10, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The timing of the unanticipated provocation by the Polisario Front against Morocco could be related to the ongoing diplomatic initiative sponsored by the US for the establishment of full diplomatic relations between Morocco and Israel. Several foreign powers have an interest in disrupting the next stages of the Abraham Accords.
Continue to full article ->

ETHIOPIAN CIVIL WAR READ THE LATEST EDITION HERE

Sudan Accuses Ethiopian Troops of Ambush Attack.  The Sudanese Army says its troops were ambushed by Ethiopian forces during a patrol of the country’s borderlands.  ABC News Al Jazeera

Meir Litvak on Iran's Use of Armed Proxies by Marilyn Stern
Middle East Forum Webinar
November 20, 2020
https://www.meforum.org/61792/meir-litvak-on-iran-use-of-armed-proxies

Greatest threats to Netanyahu come from right
 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has succeeded in eroding the Israeli political left, but in doing so alienated his own right wing as well.

Netanyahu’s main rival in Likud quits party, views premiership

​To save himself, Netanyahu might agree to keep rotation agreement

Egypt mobilizes Gulf, Arab support to end Syrian crisis

Shared interests in Iran, Caucuses push Turkey and Israel closer

Biden embraces the military-industrial complex over civilian control
Timothy P. Carney | Washington Examiner
Joe Biden’s pick for defense secretary embodies two problems with our governance: the revolving door between industry and government and the subtle erosion of civilian control of the military.

Putin is winning Russia’s hybrid war against America
Ivana Stradner and David R. Shedd | NationalReview.com

Remedies for China’s role in the pandemic
John Yoo | Strategika

Hezbollah's Great Diversion  by Khaled Abu Toameh 

China Deliberately Spread The Coronavirus: What Are The Strategic Consequences?
by Gordon G. Chang via Strategika
“It comes from the lab, the lab in Wuhan, and the lab is controlled by the China government,” claimed Dr. Li-Meng Yan, the virologist who fled Hong Kong, in a “Loose Women” interview in September. “This virus is not from nature.”

Managing The Relationship Between The U.S. And Saudi Arabia
by Bernard Haykel via The Caravan
The new Biden administration will encounter a Middle East that is very different from the one President Trump inherited from President Obama in 2017, and nowhere is the change more obvious than in Saudi Arabia.  The kingdom is undergoing a dramatic process of transformation that includes the unprecedented consolidation of power in the hands of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), the adoption of policies of social liberalization focused primarily on youth and women, and the implementation of a plan for economic diversification to lessen dependence on oil revenue.

The Biden Administration Can And Should Rectify America's Failures In Syria
by Mohammed Alaa Ghanem via The Caravan
It has been almost a decade since the Syrian people rose up against the Assad regime, demanding their freedom. While the world was hesitant to support the protestors, malign powers gladly stepped in to help Assad, creating an unmitigated disaster that has devastated Syria and sent shockwaves around the world.

Russia and China team up on the Indian Ocean
Oriana Skylar Mastro | The Lowy Institute
With China and Russia presenting themselves as strong alternative powers, the United States and like-minded countries have to work that much harder to promote sustainable economic development, protect international rules and norms, and ensure peace and security in the region.

The Congressional Budget Office’s menu of defense cuts
Mackenzie Eaglen | AEIdeas

AEI

Reforming the National Security Council to confront the China challenge

Putting Combatant Commanders on a Demand Signal Diet by Mackenzie Eaglen

Strategic Autonomy and U.S.-Indian Relations by Jeff M. Smith 

Army Wants Smaller Brigades, Stronger Divisions & Lots of Robots
By Sydney Freedberg, Breaking Defense: "New technologies and organizations will give soldiers an edge, Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe said, but tanks and foot troops will still face brutal close combat."

Autonomy and Defense in the Twenty-First Century
By Steve Blank, Modern War Institute: “Over the last decade, DoD has adopted robotics and unmanned systems, but almost all are “dumb”—pre-programmed or remotely operated—rather than autonomous.” ​

Assessing the Role of Civil Government Agencies in Irregular Warfare
By Damimola Olawuyi, Divergent Options: "Responses to militant non-state actors will be ineffective without a whole of government effort that emphasizes military and nonmilitary interventions in appropriate measures to defeat violent threats, stabilize territories and restore the lives of affected populations."

The Christian Humanism of J.R.R. Tolkien
An Intellectual Father to the End: Edward E. Ericson, Jr.

Mission Impossible?’ Interoperability Across Arab States
Enhancing interoperability across Arab states’ defense systems remains a holy grail that even alliances such as NATO find hard to achieve.

  Make good choices! National security transitions and the policy and process decisions
(War On The Rocks) What’s the likely “second term Trump foreign policy” or “Biden foreign policy agenda?"

Russia and the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: Genuine Threat or Misconception?
By Jason E. Strakes, November 4, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: While government officials and others have alleged a strategy that involves Russian-sponsored security organizations in recent escalations in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, these claims are largely misconceptions. The conventional wisdom fails to recognize these structures as representing alternative security perceptions held by Russia and other participating states rather than traditional NATO-style military alliances.
Continue to full article ->

After our delay in modernizing the nuclear triad, the projected cost is significant and the timeline unyielding. Simultaneously, policymakers must contend with a myriad of complex factors forcing unprecedented integration between conventional and nuclear weapons, note Mackenzie Eaglen and Elaine McCusker in an AEIdeas blog. Hence, we must enable and equip the Nuclear Weapons Council to recommend and oversee the development of nuclear capabilities and security roles between federal departments and services.  Continue here.

The US military walks a tricky line: preparing for war with other great powers while making peacetime efforts to prevent it. In a Bloomberg op-ed, Hal Brands points out that bracing for conflict with Russia or China is the key to deterrence. However, the Pentagon will not typically be the lead department when it comes to peacetime competition. Success will require contribution to long, indecisive struggles for position and planning for climactic battles if competition gives way to conflict. Read here.

Last week, the Swedish government decided to raise its defense budget by 40 percent over the next five years. Equally important is Sweden’s decision to invest in civil defense, the part of national security focused on ensuring that energy, health care, food provision, and other pillars of daily life function well during a crisis, notes Elisabeth Braw in an AEIdeas blog. Investing in civil defense makes societies stronger to keep themselves safe from subversive attacks on their way of life. Sweden’s decision to double funding civil defense is something that other countries should learn from. Continue here.

In 2021, Washington should take a long, hard look at its military spending and use a bipartisan process to push through the necessary changes. In a National Interest op-ed, John Ferrari argues that a reorientation of US national security priorities can be achieved alongside a modernized military — not at its expense. The solutions however must be the product of a bipartisan consensus that has to emerge quickly after this upcoming election. Learn more here.

If Trump is reelected, Washington will find that it faces a world without the institutions, alliances, and goodwill that have long bolstered US interests, notes Kori Schake in a Foreign Affairs article. However, Republicans have the chance to push for an alternative by strengthening US alliances, rethinking relationships with our adversaries, reconsidering our so-called forever wars, and creating a new trade policy. If Republicans do not wrench foreign policy out of the America First course, this country will find itself alone and facing an international order shielding itself from US influence. Learn more here.

The Chinese people want to send money somewhere Xi Jinping isn’t
Derek Scissors | AEIdeas
COVID-19 adds confusion to long-standing credibility problems in China's economic statistics.

The dangerous decline of US diplomacy
Michael Rubin | The National Interest
The dynamics of contemporary American partisanship are corrosive to diplomacy. Gone are the days of broad bipartisan foreign policy consensus and consistency.

China’s aggressive tactics aim to bolster the Communist Party’s legitimacy
Dan Blumenthal and Jakob Urda | The National Interest
China has faced two disasters in 2020 — the coronavirus and historic floods — which exposed its fragilities and created internal unrest. Its response to both was the same: escalating aggression against its neighbors.
 Full Story

 Glimmer of economic light in India
Derek Scissors | AEIdeas

India's Government Is Not Anti-Muslim
By Jagdish N. Singh, September 2, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: A general impression has spread across the international media that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, with which India’s current ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is affiliated, is opposed to minorities, Muslims in particular. This is absolutely false.
Continue to full article ->

Pentagon’s latest salvo against China’s growing might: Cold War bombers
(Reuters) America is combining its decades-old bombers with cutting-edge weapons to counter Beijing’s advantage in the waterways off the Chinese coast. The U.S. wants to send a message that Chinese ships and land targets can be threatened at any time.
 
Russian and Chinese military harassment is increasing. Should the US be worried?
(Military.com) Last week, a Russian armored personnel carrier rammed a U.S. Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle in Syria. China test-fired "carrier killer" missiles into the South China Sea. A massive Russian nuclear submarine surfaced off Alaska, and Russia fighters hit the afterburners to come within 100 feet of a B-52 Stratofortress bomber.

China is ahead in ship, missile & air defense tech: DoD report
(Breaking Defense) The Chinese military has already pushed ahead of the US in areas like shipbuilding, missile defense, ballistic and cruise missile construction, the Pentagon warned today in a blunt new assessment.

Why the Pentagon’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense System needs to be upgraded and expanded
(Forbes) In the midst of a global pandemic and hard-fought election season, it is easy to lose sight of the biggest danger to our democracy. The biggest by far is the threat posed by nuclear weapons.

Navy’s new shipbuilding plan likely to lean toward smaller ships, unmanned platforms  https://govmatters.tv/pentagon-to-review-navy-force-structure/

DHS Cyber Storm exercise  https://govmatters.tv/takeaways-from-the-cyber-storm-exercise/

DHS OIG: Outdated tech, software holding mission back   https://govmatters.tv/outdated-legacy-it-systems-at-dhs/

Now, Navy is thinking small: Need a viable path to a 355-ship fleet, which we didn’t have recently.  SecDef Esper has said to go back to the drawing board in fleet design. We have ten operational carrier groups; expect many smaller ships, manned but eventually unmanned. Littoral combat ship: we have only a dozen; should have far above that number.  Lisa Burro Russo {?}: ran an exercise to see the end of the world, anticipated potential wrinkles.  Whatever conflict happens next may involve civilian sphere, not limited to kinetic but will involve cyber—power grid, food and water supply chains.  Emerged confident that they had a handle on most of the [matters].  Christian Bernard, DHS, Ofc of the Inspector-General: govt deals with outdated software; appropriations on a year-to-year basis, but work can't be finished in one year. 

Esper's plans for an even bigger Navy would subtract aircraft carriers and large surface combatants while adding small surface combatants, unmanned ships and submarines, and logistics vessels, according to documents supporting the study groups. More to all that, here.

Reforming Tokyo’s Ballistic Missile Defense is a Priority for Japan’s New Prime Minister
​Suga could mark his first policy success as Japan’s new leader by implementing a robust and comprehensive missile defense plan.

Why skepticism, not China, may be the greatest threat to US Pacific strategy
Craig Singleton – Washington Examiner

Global Business Brief // Marcus Weisgerber: Biden defense predictions; Boeing, Northrop join forces; US F-35s on British carrier, and more

Great power competition heats up in the thawing Arctic, and the US must respond
Bradley Bowman and Maj. Scott D. Adamson -- Defense News
Russia and China have been busy in a rapidly changing Arctic, and America seems to have barely noticed. Focused elsewhere, the U.S. now finds itself ill-prepared to compete in the thawing, resource-rich arena that also offers adversaries avenues of approach to the American homeland. If America is going to compete effectively against Russia and China, Washington must recognize that the competition is playing out in the Arctic too — and act accordingly. Read more

CHINA:
Pentagon Report: China Now Has World’s Largest Navy
By John Grady, USNI News: “China is bent on creating a world-class military that can conduct joint operations across the globe and already boasts the world’s largest navy, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual assessment of the Chinese military."

Deciphering China’s ‘World-class’ Naval Ambitions
By Ryan D. Martinson, Proceedings: "The PLAN’s newest aspiration is to transform itself into a “world-class navy.” The idea of becoming “world class” was not a PLAN invention. Sometime in 2016, China’s head of state Xi Jinping told the PLA to transform itself into a world-class military. This injunction later appeared in Xi’s report at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, making it the official policy of the Chinese party-state."

Why the Pentagon’s GMD System Needs to Be Upgraded and Expanded
By Loren Thompson, Forbes: "In the midst of a global pandemic and hard-fought election season, it is easy to lose sight of the biggest danger to our democracy. The biggest by far is the threat posed by nuclear weapons."

China Rapidly Increasing Nuclear, Naval, and Next-Gen Tech, Pentagon Warns
By Patrick Tucker
The PLA is preparing for modern, networked warfare with more artificial intelligence, warships, and even a space station.

Soldier-Scholar (Pick One): Anti-Intellectualism in the American Military
By James Joyner, War on the Rocks: "Crossing the Great Plains on an expedition to Utah in the 1850s, Maj. Charles A. May searched the wagons in an effort to reduce unnecessary baggage. When he reached the wagons of the light artillery battery, Capt. Henry J. Hunt proudly pointed out the box containing the battery library. “Books,” May exclaimed. “You say books? Whoever heard of books being hauled over the Plains?"

Guam Needs Aegis Ashore
By Shane Praiswater, Defense News: “Mohammed Morsi has been sentenced to 20 years in prison, a former general is head of state, and charges against Hosni Mubarak have been dismissed—it's like 2011 all over again.” ​

How Do You Actually Measure Military Capability?
By Collin Meisel, Jonathan D. Moyer & Sarah Gutberlet, Modern War Institute: ““The ultimate yardstick of national power is military capability.” So declared RAND analysts in a monograph on measuring national power twenty years ago. Yet, no go-to measure of military assets currently exists beyond one-off net assessments of fighting forces, simple comparisons of military spending, or point estimates of firepower that conflate capabilities with combat power."

Civil-Military Lessons from Latin America by David Pion-Berlin and Andrew Ivey   

Report to Congress on Russian Military Doctrine and Strategy
From USNI News: “These documents offer insight into how Russian leaders perceive threats and how Russian military and security policymakers envision the future of conflict."

U.S. Policy Toward Africa: Eight Decades of Realpolitik
By Caleb Slayton, Strategy Bridge: "When Africa might have given the U.S. a clean bill in terms of colonialism, Cohen contends that had early America not been engaged in expanding westward under the Louisiana Purchase or engaged in colonial-type activities in the Philippines, America’s history in Africa could have looked differently."

It is possible, with sustained emphasis, to disentangle from China the supply chains essential to US national security, writes Kori Schake. It isn’t simple, and it isn’t cheap. But America can afford to defend itself, and deepening cooperation with allies will provide the ability to do so.  
READ MORE

https://www.amazon.com/Asias-New-Geopolitics-Reshaping-Indo-Pacific/dp/0817923241

​"Iranian Power Is Not Inevitable, " 1of2: or The Lessons of Mackinder. Ian Morris, Stratfor.com

"...In the last 10,000 years, the world's most developed societies have almost always been in the band of latitudes that Mackinder called Eurasia's "inner rim," running from the Mediterranean to China. Farming was invented in this area, with the Middle East leading the way around 9500 B.C. and the rest of the inner rim following its example over the next several thousand years. Along with farming came cities and governments, which most parts of the inner rim had developed by 500 B.C. Two hundred and fifty years later, the world's first multiethnic empires comprising tens of millions of subjects controlled most of the inner rim.

Because ancient empires could not project their power very far, at any one time the inner rim tended to have four or five regional hegemons, jostling with each other but rarely extending their power into what Mackinder called Eurasia's "outer rim," facing toward the oceans, or its "heartland," far from the seas. However, because Eurasia's inner rim held 75 percent of the world's population and 90 percent of its wealth, its imperial rivalries became the most significant issues in global geopolitics.

The planet's balance of power began to change around 1000 B.C., when pastoral nomads on the steppes — the arid, treeless grasslands running from Manchuria to Hungary — first bred horses able to carry riders for long distances. These horsemen in the Eurasian heartland, far more mobile than the armies of the inner rim empires, were able to plunder almost at will and then gallop away before the imperial infantry could respond.

For the next 2,500 years, Eurasian history was dominated by a struggle between predators from the heartland — Scythians, Huns, Turks and Mongols, to name just a few — and the empires of the inner rim. China and Iran, which had relatively open frontiers along the steppes, were the regions most exposed to devastation, and their ruling dynasties were regularly overthrown by invaders. India and Europe, shielded by mountains and forests, generally suffered less.

The contest between the inner rim and the heartland was eventually overtaken by a new strategic struggle, which pitted the inner rim against the outer, after A.D. 1500. Mackinder labeled this new situation, which still prevailed in his own day, "the Columbian epoch." The great shift was driven by two inventions, both of them pioneered in China but quickly adopted and adapted all along the inner rim. When the new inventions reached Europe, they merged to form a world-conquering package.

The first invention was the gun, which military men gradually improved upon until muskets could be fired fast enough to counter nomadic archers on horseback. In 1500, steppe cavalry could still normally defeat volleying infantry; in 1600, they could sometimes win the same victories. But by 1700, they hardly ever could. After that, riders from the heartland no longer seriously threatened the inner rim.

The second invention was the oceangoing ship, which could fairly reliably sail for thousands of miles. These ships transformed the balance between the inner and outer rims just as decisively as the gun had altered the dynamic between the inner rim and the heartland. Armed with the new ships and guns, outer rim states could now project power farther and strike harder than any civilization before. The Columbian epoch had arrived.

Thanks to their long coastlines, India and the western parts of the Ottoman Empire were the most exposed to outer rim sailors and their guns, while distance and difficulty of access made China and Iran less vulnerable. By 1600, Western Europeans had overrun much of the Americas, built dozens of fortresses around the shores..."

 For more information on Halford Mackinder visit: 
​www.lse.ac.uk/collections/mackinderProgramme/pdf/mackinde... 

China's 'Debt-Trap' Diplomacy with Third-World Nations  by Lawrence A. Franklin  

"Now, PRC Pres. Xi Jinping was being forced by a range of circumstances — a declining economy, the socio-economic impact of the coronavirus epidemic, and a range of natu-ral and demographic disasters and trends — to take precipitate military action before the final window on the path toward global dominance closed for the PRC. "

Five reasons it’s smart to ban Chinese apps
Cleo Paskal — Washington Examiner
Both President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are openly talking about emulating India’s ban on some Chinese mobile phone apps. While this may seem trivial, it is actually a surprisingly effective way to hit back at, and protect from, Chinese economic and strategic aggression. India banned 59 Chinese apps after repeated Chinese aggression, including a border clash that left 20 Indian soldiers dead. What India realized was that apps play an important role in China’s espionage and development of weaponized advanced artificial intelligence technology. Read More

​

The World’s Most Dangerous Alliance
Thomas Joscelyn — The Dispatch
On July 8, Xi Jinping spoke with his comrade, Vladimir Putin, by phone. Putin has been one of Xi’s staunchest allies throughout the coronavirus pandemic. And Xi wanted to thank him. The Chinese leader “commended the mutual support and assistance the two countries gave each other at the most trying time of the COVID-19 challenge, an endeavor which added strategic substance to China-Russia relations in the new era,” according to a readout of the call prepared by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Read More

Japan’s rising military
 John Yoo, Michael Auslin, and Taro Kono | "The Pacific Century"
 Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono talks about how the Japanese military has modernized over the past decade and discusses the worsening threats from China and North Korea.

DoD War Games Predict ‘Extremely Destabilizing’ Chinese Military Parity
By Paul McLeary, Breaking Defense: “Worried about America’s eroding dominance at sea, the Pentagon has been running through a series of war games to shake out a plan to stay ahead of the rapid-fire Chinese military modernization effort."

U.S., CHINA:
Can AI Solve the Rare Earths Problem? Chinese and U.S. Researchers Think So
By Patrick Tucker, Defense One: “A research effort funded by China and the U.S. could speed up the discovery of new materials to use in electronics."

https://navaldiplomat.com/

Putin's military has an aging problem. "Moscow has increased its spending on national defense to the highest level since Soviet times," Paul Goble of the Jamestown Foundation wrote

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-j20-stealth-fighter-jet-into-mass-production-after-upgrade-2020-7

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34404/big-airfield-expansion-on-wake-island-seen-by-satellite-as-u-s-preps-for-pacific-fight

Proliferant States Continue to Rely on China for Nuclear-Related Equipment
Andrea Stricker | Research Fellow

Asia's New Geopolitics: A Conversation With Michael R. Auslin And Robert D. Kaplan
interview with Michael R. Auslin via Foreign Policy Research Institute
Hoover Institution fellow Michael Auslin discusses his new book, Asia’s New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific, which examines key issues transforming the Indo-Pacific and the broader world, including the history of American strategy in Asia, from the eighteenth century through today.

AMAZON

Xi Jinping's Internal Great Wall
quoting Elizabeth Economy via National Interest
Like the Great Wall of generations past, Xi’s Internal Great Wall will continue to keep China behind the rest of the world because a nation that suppresses its own people is not a nation the world can trust to do business fairly.

Winter Is Coming
By James A. Winnefeld Jr., Proceedings: "Extended geopolitical cycles usually end in war. A major test of U.S. power, which may already be under way, could signal the end of the current cycle. Winter is coming, and there is much to do to prepare."

Convoys As Echoes of the Past Part II:
Revisiting the Chessboard Model
By Harrison Schramm, RealClearDefense: “Thinking about objects moving in continuous ‘free space’ is hard; a key innovation of the Chessboard model is to impose a grid structure on the North Atlantic.”

Rushing to Defeat: The Strategic Flaw in Contemporary U.S. Army Thinking
By Christopher Parker, Strategy Bridge: "The United States Army has a problem. As it extricates itself from protracted counterinsurgency and stability operations in Afghanistan and reorients towards large-scale combat operations, the Army has realized its adversaries, namely China and Russia, have adopted a security posture bent on undermining its preferred way of war."

Who Is to Blame for the U.S. Military’s Technology Problem?
By Justin Lynch, Modern War Institute: "If monarchy and oligarchy are rule by the few, and aristocracy and democracy are rule by the best and the many, then bureaucracy, Hannah Arendt tells us, is rule by Nobody."

Strengthening Maritime Capability for a Stronger and More Resilient America
By Mike Stevens, RealClearDefense: “Now is the time to enhance and improve America’s maritime industrial base to meet the challenges today ..."
 
China’s Rise as a Global Power Reaches Its Riskiest Point Yet
By Rodger Baker, Stratfor Worldview: "China has reached a risky point in its international development where its economic and strategic power is perceived as great enough to require a reply, but are not yet strong enough to withstand a concerted counter-challenge."

Huawei is under a lot of pressure. Fresh US sanctions have cut off the Chinese tech company’s access to vital American technology to a greater extent than ever before. Countries and mobile network operators around the world are now questioning whether Huawei will be able to deliver on its 5G promises. And rising anti-China sentiment in India and elsewhere is not helping matters. – CNN
​
The Chinese government took steps to boost political policing as a slew of international spats risk sowing domestic unrest, potentially undermining support for the Communist Party. – Bloomberg

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/protests-urban-chaos-americans-will-seek-to-avoid-big-cities/

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

Countering China Is for the BIRDs

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."

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 ->

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."

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."

East Asia decouples from the United States: Trade war, COVID-19, and East Asia's new trade blocs

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Is The Wall Street Journal Now Getting Woke on China Trade?

Defending America’s defenders
​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."

Bolton still hasn’t grasped that the regime fed him enough disinformation to sustain an empty strategy. The former national security adviser echoes Trump’s gripe that the Obama administration left many messes behind: “The growing Russian, Chinese, Iranian and Cuban influence across the hemisphere had not been a priority” for eight years. Read more here.

Latin America’s criminal groups have leveraged the pandemic to win local support by delivering humanitarian assistance in underserved communities. Such levels of “criminal charity” could complicate the future efforts of Latin America’s weakest states to dismantle and defeat organized crime groups, notes Ryan Berg in an article for the SAIS Review of International Affairs. The pandemic has opened possibilities for criminal groups in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil to curry favor and employ violence to coerce populations. So far, criminal groups are far outpacing Latin American states in the crucial competition for millions of hearts and minds. Continue here.

IRAN:
German Intel Report Lays Bare Iran’s Attempts to Obtain Nuclear Proliferation Technology
By Benjamin Weinthal, FOX News: “In a section titled “Proliferation,” the 181-page Baden-Württemberg state intelligence agency document reviewed by Fox News states that Iran, Pakistan, North Korea and Syria are “still pursuing” such efforts."

For Peace, America Must Negotiate From Strength
By John D. Maurer, RealClearDefense: “In an era of global pandemic, economic downturn, and social unrest, 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."

The surge of attacks by Islamic State militants in Iraq displays a quiet return of a group that six years ago threatened Baghdad. In an article for The Islamists, Katherine Zimmerman notes that the Islamic State’s threat to the West remains real. Stamping out the Islamic State and its ability to inspire terror attacks requires more than pressure on ISIS or individual branches, a lesson the US should have learned from its approach to fighting al Qaeda. Read here.

China: What We Must Do, What We Must Not Do
by Gordon G. Chang  

Staring Into the Abyss of US-China Decoupling
By Dr. James M. Dorsey, June 5, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israel resides at the cusp of the widening US-Chinese divide, as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent visit to Israel attests. Pompeo’s visit was for the express purpose of reminding Jerusalem that its dealings with Beijing jeopardize its relationship with Washington.
Continue to full article ->

Trump’s New China strategy Must Focus on International Organizations
Richard Goldberg | Senior Advisor

The Marine Corps is starting to form and experiment with the littoral regiment at the heart of its modern-day island-hopping strategy, the head of Marine Corps combat development told USNI News. – USNI News ​

HOOVER STRATEGIKA:  CHINA 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Great New Developments on the U.S.-China Decoupling Front  by Alan Tonelson

Faced with the erosion of civil-military relations, it is time to reexamine the personnel policy of "veterans' preference," argue Mackenzie Eaglen and Frances Burke for War on the Rocks. As an increasing number of recently retired military personnel fill the civil service roles that are designed to keep civilians involved in US national security structures, this disrupts the US national security ecosystem and the tenuous balance of civil-military relations. Protecting the role of civilians in the Department of Defense should be paramount for the Pentagon and lawmakers alike. 
​Learn more here.

Benjamin Jensen and Matthew Van Echo write: The idea was not to go to war with China, America’s third-largest trading partner. The idea was to explore coercion and setting conditions in a theater of operation in a manner that provided multiple credible and flexible deterrence and military response options to national decision-makers. As a result, students gained a better understanding of new concepts like the competition continuum and were able to evaluate them in relation to a larger body of literature on coercion, military power, and crisis management. – War on the Rocks

Oriana Skylar Mastro took to the Strength Through Peace blog to argue that the world’s focus is rightly on managing the COVID-19 pandemic and reducing the loss of life. But the challenges of addressing China’s rise have not dissipated — instead, they are increasing — and the United States should focus on potential contingencies in the South China Sea if it is to avoid them. 
Continue here.

Net Assessment: Big Trouble in a Little China Strategy? with Zack Cooper, Melanie Marlowe, and Christopher Preble

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russia-and-chinas-missiles-are-become-bigger-threat-heres-how-improve-us-missile-defenses

China’s Ambiguous Missile Strategy Is Risky
By P.W. Singer & Ma Xiu, Popular Science: "The risk with this strategy is that such ambiguity substantially increases the danger of an accidental nuclear exchange due to mistaken assumptions."

Is China in Breach of Its Nuclear-Testing Commitments?
By Rod Lyon, The Strategist (ASPI): "In last month’s executive summary of the 2020 edition of the U.S. State Department’s annual report on global arms-control compliance, a ‘concern’ is raised about possible low-level Chinese nuclear testing at the Lop Nur test site in Xinjiang province."

Daniel Tobin writes: The ambitions articulated by Xi Jinping at the 19th Party Congress underscore that Washington and its allies face a global, strategic rivalry driven as much by ideology and values embodied in competing domestic governance systems as by perceptions of changing power dynamics. While this rivalry differs in many respects from the Cold War, one of the most important differences is that it is a competition to define the rules and norms that will govern an integrated, deeply connected world rather than a world divided into competing camps. – Center for Strategic and International Studies

Caution: China’s Nuclear Strategy May Be ‘Nuclear Thoughtlessness’
By Paul Bracken, The Hill: “China’s nuclear strategy is more complex than most public discussions or academic studies suggest."

Deterrence in the Pacific: The Chinese Nuclear Dimension
By Robbin Laird, SLD.info: "“Rocking the boat” in Asia will look much different in a “heavy” nuclear world than it did when China was barely a nuclear weapon state.”"

China’s strategic interest in the Arctic goes beyond economics
(Defense News) In its Arctic policy published in 2018, China proclaimed itself as a “near-Arctic state,” a label that has since invited controversy.

Securing America From China’s Predatory Economic Tactics
Begins With Protecting Our Businesses
By Mark Green, RealClearDefense: “China’s actions to cover up their handling of the outbreak have shed new light on China’s hegemonic intentions."

Can a broke America fight a Cold War with China?
Hal Brands | Bloomberg Opinion
The coronavirus has united Americans against Beijing’s aggressions, but it will also devastate the Pentagon budget.

CHINA:
Chinese Navy Submarines Protected By Underground Tunnels
By H I Sutton, Forbes: "China is a maritime nation with over 9,000 miles of coastline, dotted with ports. Compared to most other countries, it has a large number of naval bases."

​Special Report: U.S. rearms to nullify China's missile supremacy
(Reuters) As Washington and Beijing trade barbs over the coronavirus pandemic, a longer-term struggle between the two Pacific powers is at a turning point, as the United States rolls out new weapons and strategy in a bid to close a wide missile gap with China.

Pandemic Sets the Stage for a Western-Asian Ideological Contest
By Emil Avdaliani, May 3, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: As the shock from the coronavirus pandemic decreases over the coming months, both China and the West are likely to record successes in the economic and political realms. The crisis has set the stage for an ideological struggle between the West and China that will play a crucial role in determining the destiny of Eurasia throughout this decade and the next.
Continue to full article ->

Trump’s nuclear policy has failed
(Defense One) Recognizing that blunders and bad ideas have undermined stability and security is the first step toward recovery.

Is Xi Jinping weaker than we think?
Gary J. Schmitt and Minxin Pei | The American Interest

What if military recruiting could screen for wash-outs?
(Military Times) It takes tens of thousands of dollars to get a new service member through recruiting and initial training, and costs the services hundreds of millions a year when new troops are discharged from the military before the end of their first contracts.

Rep. Gallagher: The ‘bad day for The PLA Navy’
(Breaking Defense) The Navy’s decision to tap Wisconsin’s Fincantieri Marinette Marine to build the first 10 of a new class of guided missile frigates last month could be the first real step toward a faster, more numerous and more lethal fleet.

Chinese Navy expanding base in Africa, satellite images confirm
(War Is Boring) The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has stepped up its operations at a base in Africa, as evidenced by satellite imagery.

China ‘won’t win more respect’ if it expands nuclear arsenal following calls from national media, analyst says
(South China Morning Post) Calls for Beijing to expand its nuclear arsenal reflect its rocky relations with Washington, and any reckless moves could damage the nation’s credibility, according to an analyst.

Build a fleet, not a constituency
(Defense News) The U.S. Navy’s long-awaited award of a contract to design and build a new class of frigates has brought with it calls to dramatically expand the planned class of 20 ships to a fleet of 70 or more hulls.

Does a US presidential military experience gap really matter?
(The Diplomat) What are the strategic consequences of leadership that lacks direct military experience?

James Jay Carafano and Riley Walters write: Unless the Quad economies can focus on structural reforms focused on economic freedom as they strive to get their economies back to work, they can expect a struggle to get back to just average economic growth—and even that will not be enough to truly recover. Working together, however, they can better find the strength to do what’s necessary to get their economies moving again. – The Daily Signal

Michael O’Hanlon writes: If we do not listen to that message, the entire domestic basis for a strong United States and an engaged foreign policy leadership role could evaporate. Domestic policy has turned to foreign policy. Both the Pentagon and the candidates should take heed. As we emerge from the emergency response to coronavirus in the months to come, this more than any other is the debate we need to have as a country.- The Hill
​
Bryan Clark and Dan Patt write: The U.S. military needs new approaches to warfighting if it is going to deter aggression and counter gray-zone tactics from great power and regional competitors. Technology proliferation and post-pandemic budget and experimentation constraints will prevent staying ahead through superior equipment and tactics alone. DoD will need to start enabling what American military leaders have always said is their greatest resource: the creativity and adaptability of their warfighters. – Defense One

How to Decouple Key Supply Chains from China

Keep Expectations Modest for Iraq’s New Government by Douglas A. Ollivant

Pulling Troops Out of Africa Could Mean Another Endless War by Herman J. Cohen

Win Without Fighting
By Hunter Stires, Proceedings: “The United States is devoting significant energy to preparing for great power war, but China is waging a maritime insurgency—and could win without firing a shot."

Towards a Concept of Good Civilian Guidance by Alice Hunt Friend and Mara Karlin
The Nonsense of “Neo-Ottomanism” by Nicholas Danforth

Adi Schwartz: Western Indulgence of Palestinian 'Refugee' Claims Obstructs Peace
by Gary C. Gambill
May 31, 2020
https://www.meforum.org/60812/adi-schwartz-how-western-indulgence-of-palestine

Russian Influence Grows in Central Asia
By Kseniya Kirillova, Eurasia Daily Monitor: "Russian influence in Central Asia is not limited to increasing economic integration. As early as October 2015, experts at the Minsk Center for Strategic and Foreign Political Research insisted that Russia was preparing a destabilization scenario intended to encourage conflict among the key governments and forces of the region."

Nuclear Fuel Working Group Recommends Key Steps to Safeguard U.S. Uranium Supply

STRATEGIKA:  CHINA

Aligning America’s ends and means in the Indo-Pacific

Cutting Carriers, Undermining the Most Useful U.S. Warfighting System
By Loren Thompson, Forbes: "Defense News reported this week that a Pentagon office has proposed reducing the number of aircraft carriers in the U.S. fleet from eleven to nine. That may not sound like much, but in operational terms it means that on a typical day the Navy would only be able to have two or three carriers forward deployed near global hot spots."

Strategy And The Continental Commitment
by Williamson Murray via Military History in the News
In the 1930s, the British military pundit B. H. Liddell Hart argued that Britain’s participation in the First World War with a massive commitment to France to fight the Germans had been a terrible mistake. Instead, he argued, Britain, as it had supposedly done in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, should have committed minimal forces to the continent and used its army and navy to attack Germany on the periphery. Liddell Hart’s arguments represented a rephrasing of the “blue water” school in British strategic thinking which had argued that Britain should focus almost entirely on the Royal Navy to the exclusion of spending any resources or committing any troops on the European Continent.

Measuring Power, Power Cycles, and the Risk of Great-Power War
Growing concern that U.S. power has been declining relative to that of Russia and China renews long-standing questions about how we should measure national power. Which nations have the most? Which are gaining and losing power, and when might these shifts portend conflict? Read more »

It's Time to Make a Full and Enduring Commitment to Iraq
American interests will suffer if strategic competition in Iraq is abandoned. U.S. policymakers should pursue a commitment to Iraq before opportunities are lost. The best way to establish that commitment is through robust, long-term, small-footprint assistance to the Iraqi Army. Read more »

'Quad Plus' Meetings Won't Cover China
The “Quad” countries met with several non-Quad countries to help each other amid the coronavirus pandemic. For all the good that can come of these countries working together, the Quad Plus, if sustained, may eventually jeopardize the Quad's primary mission: to counter China's assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific. Read more »

U.S. Views Of China Plunge During Corona Crisis
by Michael R. Auslin via Real Clear Politics
A new poll by the Pew Research Center provides the clearest snapshot yet of the collapse in American views of China thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Taken March 3-29, the big takeaway from the survey of 1,000 adults is that 66% now have a negative view of China, compared with 26% favorable. That is a 20% jump in unfavorable ratings since 2017 and a 6% rise since last year. 

The Rhymes of History: Beijing’s Nightmare Strategic Scenarios
By Michael Colebrook, Strategy Bridge: "History does not repeat itself. With the exception of general platitudes about the permanence of international tension and the sporadic recurrence of violent conflict, statements about historical patterns and cycles of warfare can at best lead to historiographical confirmation bias and, at worst, can prejudice policymakers into taking counterproductive and unnecessary escalatory measures."

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Why Rare Earths Independence is At Least as Important as Energy Independence

Lebanon, Hezbollah, and COVID-19

The Rise of the Liberal World Order
By Samantha A. Taylor, War Room: "Many foreign policy and international relations experts are expressing concern about the future of the liberal world order."

Undersea Deterrence and Strategic Competition in the Indo-Pacific
By Rory Medcalf, The Strategist (ASPI): "Amid rapid geopolitical change at the start of the 2020s, unfolding now in the Covid-19 crisis, nuclear weapons manifest grim continuity with the previous century. Especially persistent is a capability that has existed since the 1960s: the deployment of nuclear weapons on submarines."

Getting the Pacific Deterrence Initiative Right
By Benjamin Rimland & Patrick Buchan, The Diplomat: “The PDI will undoubtedly set the groundwork for U.S. defense posture in Asia for the foreseeable future. Getting it right matters."

What We Can Learn Today From the Victory of the Osama bin Laden Raid
By William H. McRaven & Michael Leiter, The Washington Post: "For those of us who played a small part in the mission that led to bin Laden’s death, this anniversary reminds us of something else: how to best protect our country."