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1. PLA Logistics and Sustainment: PLA Conference 2022

Author:
George R. Shatzer, Roger D. Cliff, Kenneth Allen, Joshua Arostegui, and Justin Boggess
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
The US Army War College People’s Liberation Army Conference (PLA) Conference was held March 31 to April 2, 2022, at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. The conference focused on PLA logistics and sustainment. As the PLA continues to build and modernize its combat forces, it is important to examine if the capabilities meant to support combat operations are also being developed. Specific topics included: 1) China’s national-level logistics, including how China mobilizes national resources for the military and how it provides joint logistics support to the PLA Theater Commands; 2) the logistics capabilities of the different PLA services, especially the Army, Navy, and Air Forces; 3) PLA logistics in China’s remote regions, such as airpower projection in the Western Theater Command along the Indian border; and, 4) the PLA’s ability to sustain overseas operations at its base in Djibouti. Despite notable potential shortfalls and points of friction, the PLA has successfully sustained counterpiracy maritime operations for many years and conducted noncombatant evacuation operations well-distant from China. It is increasingly able to move forces across the vast distances of China and conduct large training exercises. Far more must be known about PLA sustainment and logistics before the hard questions about PLA operational reach and endurance can be answered.
Topic:
International Relations, Defense Policy, Logistics, Mobilization, Military, People's Liberation Army (PLA), and Power Projection
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2. Pakistan Security Report 2022

Author:
Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS)
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS)
Abstract:
In 2022, the number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan marked an increase of 27 percent from the previous year. The number of terrorist attacks in the country also continued to rise for the second consecutive year. A total of 262 terrorist attacks in Pakistan in the year – including 14 suicide bombings –claimed in all 419 lives and injured another 734 people. A 25 percent increase has been recorded in fatalities in the outgoing year as compared with 2021. Pak Institute for Peace Studies revealed these statistics in its annual “Pakistan Security Report 2022”. The report further noted that the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was becoming a major irritant in Islamabad’s relations with the Taliban government in Kabul as the militant group remained one of the major actors of violence in Pakistan in the year 2022. Other critical actors of violence in 2022 were Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) and Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA). Over 60 percent of total terrorist attacks recorded in Pakistan in the year were perpetrated by these three militant groups. Similarly, about 95 percent of the total recorded terrorist attacks in Pakistan in 2022 concentrated in in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.
Topic:
Security, Terrorism, Military Strategy, Governance, and Counter-terrorism
Political Geography:
Pakistan and Asia

3. The Sino-Russian Partnership Assumptions, Myths and Realities

Author:
Bobo Lo
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
Abstract:
When Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin announced a “no limits friendship” at their February 2022 summit, the message was that Beijing and Moscow had reached a new peak in relations. Yet Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed the limits of Sino-Russian partnership and highlighted their sometimes diverging interests. Far from being an authoritarian alliance, this is a classic great power relationship centered in realpolitik. China and Russia are strategically autonomous actors, with fundamentally different attitudes toward international order. The Sino-Russian partnership remains resilient. Both sides recognize that it is too important to fail, especially given there are no viable alternatives to continuing cooperation. Nevertheless, the balance of power within the relationship is changing rapidly. Russia’s geopolitical and economic dependence on China is greater than ever. Although predictions of a clientelist relationship are premature, this widening inequality represents a major long-term source of weakness. The challenges Beijing and Moscow pose to Western interests are largely separate and should be addressed individually on their merits. Equally, it is naive to imagine that reaching out to either side could help loosen their strategic partnership. Western governments should focus instead on upping their own game—from revitalizing democracy and the rule of law at home to addressing universal threats such as climate change and food insecurity. Bobo Lo is an Associate Research Fellow with the Russia/NIS Center at Ifri. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow with the Lowy Institute, Sydney, Australia; and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) in Washington, D.C. Previously, he was Head of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, and Deputy Head of Mission at the Australian Embassy in Moscow. Dr. Lo has written several books, including A Wary Embrace: What the China-Russia Relationship Means for the World (Penguin Australia, 2017); Russia and the New World Disorder (Brookings and Chatham House, 2015); and Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing and the New Geopolitics (Brookings and Chatham House, 2008).
Topic:
Diplomacy, Bilateral Relations, Partnerships, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, China, and Asia

4. US-China lessons from Ukraine: Fueling more dangerous Taiwan tensions

Author:
John K. Culver and Sarah Kirchberger
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
The lessons that Washington and Beijing appear to be learning from Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and from Ukraine’s resistance and counteroffensive, could set the stage for a crisis over Taiwan in the next few years. This grim prospect is driven by the United States and China arraying themselves for a strategic rivalry since 2017 through the continuing trade war, economic decoupling, and increasing rhetorical and military positioning for confrontation over Taiwan. In light of the Chinese military’s threatening gestures, belligerent rhetoric, and other recent actions that read like they could be preparation for war, there is a danger that the successive warnings by senior US military commanders that Chinese CCP General Secretary and President Xi Jinping has already decided to use military force in the near term could become the proverbial tail wagging the dog — and could impose a logic that makes a US-China war more likely, rather than enhancing deterrence.1 Therefore, the key question for the United States and its allies is how an increasingly truculent and belligerent Chinese leadership can be incentivized to walk back from the brink. This paper examines what lessons China, the United States, and European allies have drawn from the Ukraine conflict and how such lessons have shaped these actors’ strategic assumptions. It concludes with a discussion of policy recommendations for the transatlantic community confronting the possibility of a US-China conflict over Taiwan.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Diplomacy, Politics, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
China, Ukraine, Taiwan, Asia, North America, and United States of America

5. Implementing NATO’s Strategic Concept on China

Author:
Hans Binnendijk and Daniel S. Hamilton
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
Set against the backdrop of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the June 2022 Madrid NATO Summit set the tone for the next decade of the Alliance’s shared future. Allies made it clear that they consider Russia their most immediate and direct threat. Yet they also made headlines by addressing challenges emanating from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Allies laid out actions to be taken across the diplomatic, economic, and military spheres. Now the Alliance must implement those responses. Beijing will be watching closely.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, NATO, Diplomacy, Politics, and Strategic Planning
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Eurasia, Canada, Asia, and United States of America

6. China and the new globalization

Author:
Franklin D. Kramer
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
The unitary globalized economy no longer exists. Driven in significant part by security considerations, a new and more diverse globalization is both required and being built. The transition is ongoing, and its final form is yet to be determined. Many of the causal factors for this very significant change revolve around China and the consequent responses to its actions by the United States, other democracies of the transatlantic alliance, and the advanced democratic economies of the Indo-Pacific. There are other important factors generating this new globalization including the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war both on energy markets and on trade and investment with Russia generally, as well as the global requirements for mitigating and adapting to climate change. However, China has been a critical element in what might be described as the “maximum trade-centered globalization,” which has dominated trade and investment policy in the three decades since the end of the Cold War. This issue brief describes the still-developing new globalization focusing on the issues surrounding China. A fundamental challenge that China presents arises because its actions have generated significant security and economic challenges, yet it nonetheless is a massive trade and investment partner for the “advanced democratic economies” (ADEs),1 which for purposes of this analysis include the Group of Seven (G7) countries,2 plus Australia, Norway, the Republic of Korea, and the European Union. Adapting to a new globalization requires establishing a strategic approach that resolves the inherent contradictions between those conflicting considerations.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Diplomacy, Environment, Politics, Science and Technology, Economy, Business, and Energy
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Eurasia, Canada, Asia, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific

7. General Equilibrium Analysis of Cost-Effectiveness and Distributional Impacts of China’s Nationwide CO2 Emissions Trading System

Author:
Xianling Long, Da Zhang, Lawrence Goulder, and Chenfei Qu
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Asia Society
Abstract:
China introduced the world's largest emissions trading system in 2021 which is intended to help cost-effectively achieve its pledges of reaching a peak in CO2 emissions before 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060. The system is a tradable performance standard (TPS) with a bottom-up intensity-based emissions cap, unlike a top-down absolute cap approach commonly used globally. General Equilibrium Analysis of Cost-Effectiveness and Distributional Impacts of China’s Nationwide CO2 Emissions Trading System developed and applied a multi-sector, multi-period general equilibrium model to assess the emissions, energy mix, and economic impacts of a series of options for the future development of this policy. These included cap-setting, benchmark design, auction design, and sectoral expansion, with valuable insights provided on the potential future evolution of this policy.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economy, Trade, and Carbon Emissions
Political Geography:
China and Asia

8. Countering Economic Coercion: Tools and Strategies for Collective Action

Author:
Wendy Cutler and Haeyoon Kim
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Asia Society
Abstract:
conomic coercion has become one of the most pressing and growing challenges on the international scene today, which has raised concerns about the potential damage to global economic growth, the rules-based trading system, and international security and stability. Compounding this issue is the difficulty faced by governments worldwide, particularly small and mid-sized nations, in effectively responding to such measures. In light of this challenge, Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) hosted an online discussion “Countering Economic Coercion: Tools and Strategies for Collective Action,” on February 28th moderated by Wendy Cutler, ASPI Vice President; and featuring Victor Cha, Senior Vice President for Asia and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Melanie Hart, Senior Advisor for China and the Indo-Pacific in the Office of the Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment; Ryuichi Funatsu, Director for Economic Security Policy Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan; and Mariko Togashi, Research Fellow for Japanese Security and Defense Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Topic:
Economy, Economic Growth, Trade, and Coercion
Political Geography:
Asia

9. Getting Asia to Net Zero

Author:
Asia Society Policy Institute
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Asia Society
Abstract:
In March 2023, the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a key report stating that the Earth has already warmed by 1.1°C and that no additional fossil fuel infrastructure can be built and used while still holding warming to under 1.5°C. In response, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for countries to hit “fast-forward” on their net zero commitments, with developed economies to aim for net zero by 2040, and emerging economies to target 2050. The Getting Asia to Net Zero report from the High-level Policy Commission on Getting Asia to Net Zero presents another compelling reason for the Asia-Pacific region to align behind achieving net zero emissions by mid-century: taking more ambitious climate action and reducing emissions sooner could enhance the region’s economic and social development. The report draws on new modeling commissioned from Cambridge Econometrics that examines the costs, benefits, and trade-offs of the Asia-Pacific’s options to implement its current and more ambitious mitigation targets, as well as how variations in the power sector mix could enhance development while meeting climate goals. According to the analysis, hitting net zero emissions by 2050 could increase the Asia-Pacific's gross domestic product (GDP) by up to 6.3 percent above projected levels and generate as many as 36.5 million additional jobs by the 2030s, as compared to the 5 percent GDP boost and 25.1 million additional jobs that current climate commitments could generate. A net zero 2050 pathway could also lead to energy cost savings of $270 billion for local households and improve the region's trade balance by as much as $827 billion, largely due to a reduction in fossil fuel dependence. Prioritizing low-cost renewable energy sources like solar and wind power could help the Asia-Pacific avoid $2.2 trillion in investment requirements. The report also recognizes potential challenges associated with the transition to net zero and proposes solutions, such as facilitating the flow of international finance to mitigate adverse impacts on household spending and developing comprehensive plans to help displaced fossil fuel workers take advantage of new employment opportunities. In 2023, Asia has another compelling opportunity to globally step up on climate. A confluence of major multilateral processes will take place in the Asian region, including the G7 in Japan, the G20 in India, and the 28th UN Climate Conference (COP28) in the United Arab Emirates on behalf of the Asia-Pacific Group. Moreover, the first Global Stocktake at COP28 in December 2023 will assess the global state of progress and remaining gaps to achieving the Paris Agreement’s goals. The commissioned modeling shows that aligning the Asia-Pacific’s climate ambition with a 1.5°C trajectory is not only possible — it could also be the more beneficial path forward for the region.
Topic:
Climate Change, Carbon Emissions, and Net Zero
Political Geography:
Asia

10. Indian Carbon Market Simulation Training Exercise Report

Author:
Josh Margolis
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Asia Society
Abstract:
The Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) in partnership with Josh Margolis and the Council of Environment, Energy and Water (CEEW), conducted carbon market simulation training exercises in Delhi, Ahmedabad, and Mumbai, India. This training — conducted in February 2023 — was aimed at equipping stakeholders from enterprises, government, and civil society with core knowledge and skills relating to emissions trading systems (ETSs). The workshops significantly improved the ETS literacy of the participants, laid the foundation for future engagements, and increased the number of participants who believe that an ETS would be "very useful" or "indispensable" for India to achieve its Nationally Determined Contribution. This Indian Carbon Market Simulation Training Exercise Report summarizes the details and results of the workshops. The report includes participant demographics, how the training was conducted, ETS knowledge gained as a result of the exercise, as well as the outcomes of the training, lessons learned, and next steps for consideration.
Topic:
Markets, Carbon Emissions, and Simulation
Political Geography:
India and Asia

11. Countering China’s coercive diplomacy: Prioritising economic security, sovereignty and the rules-based order

Author:
Fergus Hunter, Daria Impiombato, Yvonne Lau, Adam Triggs, Albert Zhang, and Urmika Deb
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is increasingly using a range of economic and non-economic tools to punish, influence and deter foreign governments in its foreign relations. Coercive actions have become a key part of the PRC’s toolkit as it takes a more assertive position in international disputes and seeks to reshape the global order in its favour. This research finds that the PRC’s use of coercive tactics is now sitting at levels well above those seen a decade ago, or even five years ago. The year 2020 marked a peak, and the use of trade restrictions and state-issued threats have become favoured methods. The tactics have been used in disputes over governments’ decisions on human rights, national security and diplomatic relations.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Sovereignty, Economic Security, and Coercion
Political Geography:
China and Asia

12. China, climate and conflict in the Indo-Pacific

Author:
Anastasia Kapetas
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
This paper surveys the current reporting and analysis on climate and security to explore the implications that climate change may have for China’s ability to prosecute its security goals in the region’s three major hotspots: the SCS, Taiwan and the India–China border conflict. Those three hotspots all involve longstanding border and territorial disputes between China and other nations and may draw in various levels of US involvement should China continue to escalate tensions.
Topic:
Security, Climate Change, and Conflict
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Indo-Pacific

13. Gaming public opinion: The CCP’s increasingly sophisticated cyber-enabled influence operations

Author:
Albert Zhang, Tilla Hoja, and Jasmine Latimore
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) embrace of large-scale online influence operations and spreading of disinformation on Western social-media platforms has escalated since the first major attribution from Silicon Valley companies in 2019. While Chinese public diplomacy may have shifted to a softer tone in 2023 after many years of wolf-warrior online rhetoric, the Chinese Government continues to conduct global covert cyber-enabled influence operations. Those operations are now more frequent, increasingly sophisticated and increasingly effective in supporting the CCP’s strategic goals. They focus on disrupting the domestic, foreign, security and defence policies of foreign countries, and most of all they target democracies. Currently—in targeted democracies—most political leaders, policymakers, businesses, civil society groups and publics have little understanding of how the CCP currently engages in clandestine activities online in their countries, even though this activity is escalating and evolving quickly. The stakes are high for democracies, given the indispensability of the internet and their reliance on open online spaces, free from interference. Despite years of monitoring covert CCP cyber-enabled influence operations by social-media platforms, governments, and research institutes such as ASPI, definitive public attribution of the actors driving these activities is rare. Covert online operations, by design, are difficult to detect and attribute to state actors. Social-media platforms and governments struggle to devote adequate resources to identifying, preventing and deterring increasing levels of malicious activity, and sometimes they don’t want to name and shame the Chinese Government for political, economic and/or commercial reasons.
Topic:
Public Opinion, Cybersecurity, Social Media, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

14. Chinese foreign policy in 2023: Stepping back from the brink

Author:
Thomas Eder
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP)
Abstract:
When it comes to Chinese foreign policy in 2023, decision-makers in Austria and Europe have to most importantly consider three partly interrelated and highly topical questions that are and should be preoccupying China researchers. Will China escalate its support for Russia during the war in Ukraine? Will China invade Taiwan? How will China’s protest movement and exit from Zero-COVID impact foreign policy? Further trends in China research will address the need to employ digital methods due to a lack of access for fieldwork (COVID or political restrictions) (BCCN 2022), the importance of protests more broadly (labour issues or Hong Kong democracy) (Wei and Chan 2022; Cheng et al 2022), and the fragility of a centralized system around Xi Jinping with no succession plan as Xi enters his third term as president in March 2023 (Tsang and Cheung 2021). Following Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine, Beijing has supported Moscow in the informational and diplomatic domain, but has remained self-interested in the economic domain, and has not shifted from previous policies in the military domain (Chestnut Greitens 2022, 751). China needs Russia as a partner in mounting a (normative) challenge to US power and the liberal international order (Johnston 2022, 1307), gaining influence in multilateral institutions (Wang and Sampson 2022, 374), and preserving the Communist Party regime (Pavel, Kirchberger and Sinjen 2022, 295). The Chinese leadership would like to see a Russian victory, and dreads a defeatinduced regime collapse in Moscow (Lo 2022). Beijing has condemned the West for provoking the war and for imposing sanctions. In the UN, China abstained or voted for Russia. At the same time, since the beginning of the war, bilateral trade has grown significantly. Yet, Chinese companies and banks have partly withdrawn or broken off ties with Russian counterparts to steer clear of secondary sanctions. Moreover, while joint military exercises continue, there is no clear evidence for arms or equipment deliveries.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Economy, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
China and Asia

15. East Asia’s Worsening Security Situation

Author:
Nina C. Krickel-Choi
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP)
Abstract:
2022 was not a good year for security in the Asia Pacific Region, with multiple crucial relationships hitting a new low, and 2023 does not promise to be much better. While all-out military confrontation is not likely, it is also not off the table and care needs to be taken that contingency events and hasty decisions do not trigger a full-blown escalation. The following highlights three of the most critical flashpoints: the Korean peninsula, the Taiwan Strait, and the reemergence of Cold War blocs in East Asia.
Topic:
Security, Military, and Regional Politics
Political Geography:
East Asia and Asia

16. Toward a Unified NATO Response to the People’s Republic of China

Author:
Rob York, David Camroux, Kelly Grieco, and Bradley Jensen Murg
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Pacific Forum
Abstract:
Following the Cold War’s end there were those who questioned NATO’s continued relevance. Such views may have found little currency among scholars of foreign policy and security, but among the general public it was not unheard of to wonder why, with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 its rival organization did not also become defunct, especially given the Russian Federation’s friendlier tilt in the decade that followed. On the part of the United States, by the 2010’s a fatigue had settled in among much of the populace over US foreign commitments, especially regarding partner countries not perceived as pulling their own weight. By the middle of that decade, that fatigue had begun to manifest itself in US election results. Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and its brazen invasion of Ukraine last year may not have succeeded in bringing Ukraine to heel or establishing Moscow as a great military power again, but it did accomplish two other things. For one, it demonstrated for the world what the countries separated by the Atlantic could achieve—even indirectly—by helping partners (even non-NATO members) acquire the means to defend themselves. For another, and for all Putin’s claims to the contrary, it showed that nations near Russia’s western border have a very good reason for wanting NATO membership. Putin, more so than any mainstream American or continental European security scholar, has demonstrated the alliance’s continued relevance in providing for the security of countries that desire self-determination and alignment with the liberal, rules-based international order. As it approaches its one-year anniversary the outcome of the Ukraine war is still far from clear, as is precisely how the alliance will respond to the challenge that looms beyond it: the People’s Republic of China, with its growing military might, and its economic influence. And there is broad agreement on the appropriateness of the term “challenge”—the US Department of Defense, which calls Russia an “acute threat,” uses the noun “pacing challenge” to describe Beijing. Meanwhile NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept used the verb form, declaring the PRC’s “stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.” The forcefulness of these words should not have come as a surprise: US partners in the European Union have been every bit as outspoken about human rights in China as Washington has, as well as against its “malicious cyber activities.” Differences in priority remain, informed by economics, history, and geography (especially considering how much more imminent a threat Russia represents to Europe than the United States), but opinions on both sides of the Atlantic have shifted regarding the PRC, and for many of the same reasons. That shift, and what policies should follow, is the subject of Pacific Forum’s edited volume “Toward a Unified NATO Response to the People’s Republic of China” and its accompanying webinar. With a grant from the NATO Public Diplomacy Division, Pacific Forum brought together three distinguished scholars—one to discuss the evolution of views toward the PRC in the United States over the past decade, one to chart the same change in Europe, and a third to discuss how the two sides should best work together in meeting this shared challenge. Describing the US position, Bradley Jensen Murg argues that increasing American skepticism of Beijing’s intentions is not, as is frequently argued, a unipolar action driven by the insecurity of one great power being replaced by another. Instead, he argues that it is a multifaceted evolution driven by generational change, increased awareness of the PRC’s human rights record, and the failure of international institutions (such as the World Trade Organization) to contribute to PRC liberalization. He further notes that the United States’ views on Beijing are no international outlier but are broadly shared, especially in Europe. Regarding the European perspective, David Camroux notes that the thinking shifted in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09. Once a destination for European investment the PRC, thanks to its rapid recovery from the crisis and growing domestic capacity, increased its own financial presence on the European continent, arousing increasing concerns. Subsequent revelations about Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and the suppression of Hong Kong’s protest movement further alienated Europe. He stresses, though, that Europe’s views will likely remain distinct from Washington’s to an extent—Europe does not consider Beijing a “hard security challenge” nor does it possess the hard security capabilities to meet them. Instead, it will continue minilateral engagement with regional powers such as Tokyo, Seoul, Delhi, and Canberra, to reduce dependency on the PRC in a non-confrontational way and avoid direct alignment with Washington in the emerging Great Power Competition. Concluding the edited volume, Kelly Grieco notes the increasing comity in US and EU positions regarding the PRC, but states that, as the “North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” NATO faces practical limitations in terms of projecting power in the Indo-Pacific. Rather than working to confront Beijing militarily, European countries’ most beneficial contribution to NATO would be to increase their security commitments in Europe—thus reducing the burden faced by the United States there—and to use their “diplomatic clout and economic, financial, and technological resources to form an effective coalition to balance against [PRC] power and influence.” Pacific Forum hopes that these scholarly insights will find a wide audience in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, and that NATO will remain an effective partnership—not to defend Euro-American hegemony and primacy, but the values that underpin the rules-based order and its promise of a fairer, more prosperous global community. Pacific Forum also hopes that, amid their shared defense of rules and values, NATO and its partners will find avenues for some cooperation with China—at the governmental and people-to-people level—and that people from China continue to feel welcome to work, study, and live in the United States and Europe. No one—American, European, Asian, or otherwise—should mistake our disputes with specific PRC policies and actions for antipathy toward the people of China.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Transatlantic Relations, and Strategic Interests
Political Geography:
China, Europe, Asia, and North America

17. The World After Taiwan’s Fall

Author:
David Santoro, Ralph Cossa, Ian Easton, Malcolm Davis, and Matake Kamiya
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Pacific Forum
Abstract:
Let us start with our bottom line: a failure of the United States to come to Taiwan’s aid—politically, economically, and militarily—would devastate the Unites States’ credibility and defense commitments to its allies and partners, not just in Asia, but globally. If the United States tries but fails to prevent a Chinese takeover of Taiwan, the impact could be equally devastating unless there is a concentrated, coordinated U.S. attempt with likeminded allies and partners to halt further Chinese aggression and eventually roll back Beijing’s ill-gotten gains. This is not a hypothetical assessment. Taiwan has been increasingly under the threat of a military takeover by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and, even today, is under attack politically, economically, psychologically, and through so-called “gray zone” military actions short of actual combat. The U.S. government, U.S. allies, and others have begun to pay attention to this problem, yet to this day, they have not sufficiently appreciated the strategic implications that such a takeover would generate. To address this problem, the Pacific Forum has conducted a multi-authored study to raise awareness in Washington, key allied capitals, and beyond about the consequences of a Chinese victory in a war over Taiwan and, more importantly, to drive them to take appropriate action to prevent it. The study, which provides six national perspectives on this question (a U.S., Australian, Japanese, Korean, Indian, and European perspective) and fed its findings and recommendations into the second round of the DTRA SI-STT-sponsored (and Pacific Forum-run) Track 2 “U.S.-Taiwan Deterrence and Defense Dialogue,”[1] outlines these strategic implications in two alternative scenarios. In the first scenario, China attacks Taiwan and it falls with no outside assistance from the United States or others. In the other scenario, Taiwan falls to China despite outside assistance (i.e., “a too little, too late” scenario).
Topic:
Security, Conflict, Crisis Management, and Regional Politics
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Europe, India, Taiwan, Asia, Korea, and United States of America

18. Military capabilities affected by climate change: An analysis of China, Russia and the United States

Author:
Adaja Stoetman, Dick Zandee, Ties Dams, Niels Drost, and Louise Van Schaik
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Clingendael Netherlands Institute of International Relations
Abstract:
Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of the present and the future. Rising temperatures and sea levels, as well as extreme weather events are manifestations of climate change that also influence military capabilities. Increased attention for the climate change-security nexus is visible both at the national and the international level: nationally through the incorporation of climate change in security strategies and internationally through incorporation in important strategic documents such as the EU’s Strategic Compass and NATO’s Strategic Concept. Given its transnational nature, governments around the world have a shared responsibility to face climate change. A particular role is laid down for the global powers, China, Russia and the United States, given their position in the world. It is, however, questionable whether the global powers’ interests align. They differ in their approaches to address climate change, and even more so in their views on how it affects the armed forces. China and particularly Russia are more reluctant towards depicting climate change as a matter of international security. This is for example visible in international forums, such as the UN Security Council. In contrast, in the US, support for climate action is subject to political preferences, but climate related security risks are widely recognised within the defence establishment. This report reviews various aspects of the relationship between climate and security, with a particular focus on the military. It discusses the role of climate change in a country’s security and defence strategy and, vice versa, the changing tasks and deployment of the armed forces in response to climate change, the effects of climate change on military infrastructure, and measures to realise a greener defence sector.
Topic:
Security, Climate Change, European Union, and Military
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

19. Sustaining Congressional Engagement with Southeast Asia

Author:
Erik Ashida
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
As a representative institution whose members can outlast presidential administrations, Congress plays a vital role in sustaining long-term US foreign policy commitments. The perception of long-term commitment is particularly important in Southeast Asia, where most states seek to maximize their strategic autonomy by balancing relations among great powers. Thus, expectations about the future behavior of great powers can significantly affect foreign policy choices. Congress speaks through the exercise of its formal powers but also in more subtle ways. Congressional actions on foreign relations operate along three channels. The first channel is support for policies initiated by the executive branch, e.g., passing appropriations, making requested statutory changes, or, at the very least, not obstructing what an administration seeks to do. The second channel is symbolic support for a relationship, such as meetings with foreign officials or public statements of support. Though these actions are generally nonbinding, they can be a more meaningful gauge of support than the first channel because legislators must seek them out and can define the terms of their engagement—something not always possible when voting on legislation. The third channel is policy advanced independently from the executive branch, such as standalone bills, conditions placed on funding, or rigorous oversight. Each of these tools is available to individual legislators, groups of legislators such as caucuses or committees, or the entire legislative branch acting collectively.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Politics, and Governance
Political Geography:
Asia, Southeast Asia, and United States of America

20. Korea Matters for America/America Matters for Korea (2023)

Author:
East-West Center
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The 4th edition of Korea Matters for America/America Matters for Korea, part of the Asia Matters for America initiative, maps the trade, investment, employment, business, diplomacy, security, education, tourism, and people-to-people connections between the United States and South Korea at the national, state, and local levels. This publication and the AsiaMattersforAmerica.org website are resources for understanding the robust and dynamic US-Indo-Pacific relationship.
Topic:
International Relations, Climate Change, Economics, Education, Environment, Politics, Science and Technology, Governance, Population, Public Health, and Travel
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North Korea, North America, and United States of America

21. Valuing Longer, Healthier Lives: Assessing the Productivity of Health Spending in South Korea

Author:
Karen Eggleston
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
This research studies the link between medical spending and health outcomes in South Korea, providing evidence on the productivity of medical spending over recent decades. The author advocates for the Korean government to develop a “satellite account for health” to complement national income and product accounts. Current measures do not account for changing quality nor give providers any incentive for cost-effective substitution between forms of treatment for a given condition. By leveraging existing strengths of Korea’s National Health Insurance and health outcome data, Korea can develop an accurate measure of medical productivity and a more accurate measure of overall economic productivity, while becoming a global pioneer of “health satellite accounts” for overall populations. Such a productivity metric built on condition-specific net value can help Korea increase the “bang for the buck” from medical spending, mitigate wasteful spending, and promote high-value innovations for longer, healthier lives.
Topic:
Health, Public Spending, and Productivity
Political Geography:
Asia and South Korea

22. What North Korea Has Been Learning From Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Author:
Tereza Novotná
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
A year ago, in February 2022, Russia invaded its neighbor, Ukraine. Russian aggression has upended the post-war security mechanisms in Europe and made the international multilateral system, including the UN Security Council, more fragile and ineffective than ever. Even though the war in Ukraine has implications for security in Northeast Asia, many Asian nations consider it a distant issue for Europeans to solve. However, this perspective mirrors what Europe’s Asian counterparts, especially the Koreans, have faced for decades. It serves as an apt analogy for explaining the dangers of North Korea to Europe. North Korea is also watching the war closely to discern what lessons or leverage can be extracted from the unfolding conflict. This short article reflects on two lessons and three opportunities that the War in Ukraine presents to Kim Jong Un and concludes with recommendations on what the Europeans could do in the near future.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Conflict, Russia-Ukraine War, and Invasion
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, Asia, and North Korea

23. Two Peripheries: The Ukraine War's Effect on North Korea-Russia Relations

Author:
Anthony V. Rinna
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Spanning the Eurasian landmass, Russia’s actions in adjacent Ukraine invariably affect the geopolitical state of play on the similarly adjacent Korean Peninsula. Although ties between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Russia have been of largely secondary importance for both countries since their veritable rupture in the early- and mid-1990s, Moscow-Pyongyang relations became more mutually beneficial in 2022. Whereas most countries have outright condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or taken up an ambiguous position, the DPRK has been vocal in its support for Russia. From the DPRK perspective, the Kremlin’s post-2022 diplomatic and economic estrangement from much of the world has provided Pyongyang with an opening to leverage ties with Russia to push for an easing of its own diplomatic and economic isolation. Meanwhile, strengthening its DPRK ties allows Russia to undermine US influence on its Asian periphery. In supporting Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, North Korea appears to be aiming toward obtaining economic benefits from closer ties with Russia, a country whose economy has managed to stay afloat despite heavy Western sanctions. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has provided the impetus for Pyongyang’s outreach to Moscow. However, the roots of the current upswing in Moscow-Pyongyang relations go back to the April 2019 summit between Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin. Kim received an invitation to meet with Putin in May 2018 yet waited eleven months to meet with the Russian leader, even as Kim regularly met with the leaders of other major players on the Korean Peninsula. Kim may have decided after the February 2019 Hanoi summit yielded few results that strengthening ties with Russia, which was more reluctant than China to support UN sanctions against Pyongyang in 2017, was a more viable option for sanctions relief. Aside from the fact that Russia has demonstrated a clear unwillingness to impose new sanctions against the DPRK, North Korean citizens are reported to still be working in Russia in contravention of UN Resolution 2397. North Korean workers’ earnings are said to have suffered because of Russia’s reduced access to hard currency. Yet, the ruble’s continued resilience may mean that earning currency in Russia is still worthwhile for laborers dispatched at Pyongyang’s behest.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Ukraine, Asia, and North Korea

24. United Kingdom Engagement with North Korea

Author:
Alastair Morgan
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
As one of the Allied Powers, The United Kingdom was involved in Post-World War II planning for the Korean peninsula, including the November 1943 Cairo Conference declaration that “… in due course, Korea shall become free and independent.” However, US President Roosevelt’s proposal at the February 1945 Yalta Conference did not establish a formal role for the UK in the trusteeship of Korea. Subsequently, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to divide the peninsula at the 38th parallel in August 1945, and direct British involvement in the peninsula was limited prior to the Korean War. The United Kingdom’s Korean War contribution to the United Nations Command was second only to the United States, with significant deployments of maritime and air assets in addition to the provision of ground troops. Almost 60,000 British troops saw action, with nearly 5,000 killed, wounded, missing in action, or taken prisoner. Following the armistice, the United Kingdom has continued to send representation to the United Nations Command. The armistice agreement includes an obligation on so-called “Sending States” to respond to renewed hostility. Although there is no automatic UK commitment to send forces, the armistice agreement remains a consideration in engagement with North Korea.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Economics, Education, Politics, and Strategic Engagement
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, and North Korea

25. North Korea-Germany Relations: An Ambassador's Perspective of Diplomacy with Pyongyang

Author:
Armin Schäfer
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Germany established diplomatic relations with North Korea, also known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), in 2001 at the request of the South Korean government, which hoped that Germany and the European Union (EU) would play a more active role in supporting the “Sunshine Policy.” Since then, Germany, together with the other EU states, has sought to moderate North Korea through a “Policy of Critical Engagement” to convince it of the benefits of international cooperation, respect for the rule of law, and improving the political and economic situation of its people. In doing so, Germany could build on the long relationship between North Korea and the former East Germany. “Critical engagement” means being willing to talk and get involved, but without holding back on criticism—and, if need be, imposing sanctions. It also implies that comprehensive engagement is not (yet) possible because of the circumstances. There is ample cause for a constrained approach from North Korea’s aggressive foreign policy and systematic human rights violations to the absence of suitable economic and fiscal conditions for business and development cooperation. Moreover, the lack of will on the part of considerable segments of the North Korean regime to engage with other countries also hampers broader engagement.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Economics, Education, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, North Korea, and Germany

26. From Coy to Cold Shoulder - The European Union and North Korea

Author:
Glyn Ford
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The European Union (EU)—then 15 member states prior to its 2004 enlargement to 25—formally established diplomatic relations with Pyongyang in 2001 after a high-level visit to Pyongyang by Göran Persson, Swedish Prime Minister and then President in office of the European Council of Ministers. There, accompanied by EU security affairs chief Javier Solana and EU foreign affairs commissioner Chris Patten, he met with Kim Jong Il. Less than five years before, Commission officials were under orders not to even speak to officials from North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). However, at this meeting, the two parties agreed to establish both Political and Human Rights Dialogues; the latter modeled on the EU’s ongoing Human Rights Dialogue with Beijing. This move by the EU followed pressure from President Kim Dae-Jung in Seoul for allies to normalize relations as part of his ‘Sunshine’ policy. Some of the EU’s peripheral member states had long-standing relations with Pyongyang, in some cases dating back to before they had even joined the EU, with Finland, Sweden, and Denmark establishing relations in 1973, Austria in 1974, and Portugal in 1975. However, only Sweden had chosen to establish an Embassy, with the rest represented from Beijing. At the turn of the century, that pressure from Seoul resulted into most of the remaining dominoes falling in place. Italy and the UK jumped the gun in 2000, with Tony Blair and UK Foreign Minister Robin Cook agreeing to extend diplomatic recognition and establish an embassy en route to the Seoul Asia-Europe Summit.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Politics, and European Union
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, and North Korea

27. From Close Allies to Distant Comrades: The Ups and Downs of the Vietnam-North Korea Relationship

Author:
Khang X. Vu
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
In 2019, more than five decades after North Korean President Kim Il-sung’s last official trip to Vietnam in 1964, Kim’s grandson, North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un, visited the country at the invitation of the Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong. In a welcoming speech, Trong described the relationship, “although the road is long, our hearts are close.” Kim responded to Vietnamese hospitality, saying North Korea would “staunchly preserve and forever honor the North Korea-Vietnam friendship from generation to generation.” Vietnam and North Korea are among the world’s last five communist party states, along with China, Laos, and Cuba. As such, it is no surprise that the two leaders emphasized common communist values and a shared history of struggle against US imperialism in their speeches. Still, despite the amicable words extolling the longevity of the traditional friendship, both leaders avoided mention of Vietnam’s conflict with the North Korea-backed Khmer Rouge and subsequent occupation of Cambodia from 1978 to 1989. Vietnam’s war with Cambodia was a facet of intra-communist bloc conflicts that spanned the whole of East Asia. Despite Hanoi and Pyongyang’s shared communist ideology, intra-bloc tensions eroded the friendship between the two nations. What were the reasons behind this dramatic shift in bilateral relations?
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Politics, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
Asia, North Korea, and Vietnam

28. North Korea-Guyana Relations in the Burnham Era

Author:
Moe Taylor
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
During the reign of Forbes Burnham (1923-85), the South American republic of Guyana (formerly British Guiana) became one of North Korea’s greatest foreign policy success stories. Pyongyang not only acquired a new trading partner in the Americas but also gained a vocal advocate for its position on Korean unification on the international stage. These close ties grew in large part from Burnham’s admiration for North Korea, where he saw a highly disciplined citizenry united around the Great Leader, willing to work hard and sacrifice for the collective good. Guyana perhaps did more than any other single actor to help North Korea become viewed as an economic model for developing countries. First elected Premier of the colony of British Guiana in 1964, Burnham became Prime Minister upon independence in 1966 and ruled until his death in 1985. A lawyer and trade unionist from the capital’s Afro-Guyanese middle class, his rise to power was backed by the United States, which viewed him as the only realistic alternative to the communists. While Burnham veered to the Left once in power and frequently irritated Washington, he was more or less tolerated because his pro-Soviet opposition would almost certainly fill his absence.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Politics, and Bilateral Relations
Political Geography:
Asia, North Korea, South America, and Guyana

29. A Monumental Relationship: North Korea and Namibia

Author:
Tycho van der Hoog
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
Visitors to Windhoek, the capital city of Namibia, will quickly learn a remarkable fact that is well-known among the local population—much of the capital’s architectural landscape is designed and constructed by North Korea. In recent years, North Korean nationals have built the official residence of the president of Namibia, the State House; the national cemetery for the fallen heroes of the liberation struggle, the National Heroes’ Acre; the national history museum, the Independence Memorial Museum; the Ministry of Defense headquarters and other buildings. The Namibian government thus uses North Korean aesthetics for some of the most important aspects of its power: the president, the history, and the army. This analysis explores the relationship between Namibia and North Korea by providing historical and political context to the aforementioned buildings. Today, Namibia often has the reputation of a quaint and sometimes sleepy destination, tucked away in the southwestern corner of the African continent. Yet, Namibia was at the center of geopolitical tensions for most of the twentieth century. The complicated decolonization process of Namibia, or “the Namibian question,” as it became known in the corridors of the United Nations (UN), had its roots in the aftermath of three decades of German occupation between 1884 and 1915. German South West Africa, the area that became modern Namibia, was transferred to South Africa as a League of Nations mandate territory and renamed “South West Africa.” South Africa viewed the territory as an unofficial fifth province and introduced brutal apartheid legislation. Internal opposition against the South African regime resulted in the formation of nationalist organizations, of which the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) became the most prominent.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Politics, Arts, and Culture
Political Geography:
Africa, Asia, North Korea, and Namibia

30. Japan Matters for America/America Matters for Japan (2023)

Author:
East-West Center
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
The 4th edition of Japan Matters for America/America Matters for Japan, part of the Asia Matters for America initiative, maps the trade, investment, employment, business, diplomacy, security, education, tourism, and people-to-people connections between the United States and Japan at the national, state, and local levels. This publication and the AsiaMattersforAmerica.org website are resources for understanding the robust and dynamic US-Indo-Pacific relationship.
Topic:
International Relations, Climate Change, Economics, Education, Politics, Science and Technology, Governance, Population, Public Health, and Travel
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, North America, and United States of America

31. Economic Sanctions During Humanitarian Emergencies: The Case of North Korea

Author:
Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
East-West Center
Abstract:
North Korea is experiencing yet another cycle of humanitarian distress. While sanctions are not the primary cause, they are a contributing factor. This essay examines the channels through which sanctions affect the North Korean economy and reaches four conclusions: First, sanctions have contributed to a deterioration of economic performance. Second, the UNSC’s 1718 Sanctions Committee should consider a thorough review to identify goods that would warrant blanket humanitarian financial sanctions have raised the risk premium on all financial transactions with North Korea; the sanctioning authorities need to do a better job of clarifying transactions permissible under humanitarian exemptions. Finally, while the global community should reassess its policies, the government of North Korea bears responsibility as well. The benefits of sanctions relief will be diminished if North Korea refuses to engage constructively with the international community on a broader range of issues running from basic humanitarian relief to economic reform.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Politics, Sanctions, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Asia and North Korea

32. Trade Balances and International Competitiveness in Cyber-physical, Digital Task-intensive, ICT Capital-intensive and Traditional Industries

Author:
Alexandra Bykova and Roman Stöllinger
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW)
Abstract:
In this report, we analyse the international competitiveness of the EU in four industry groups over the period 1995-2018. The groups are delineated by specific factor intensities, where these intensities are assessed from digital tasks performed by labour services and ICT capital stocks. The EU’s positions relating to trade balances, revealed comparative advantages and unit value ratios are assessed relative to its main competitors, such as the US, China, Japan and South Korea. The trade specialisation patterns confirm EU advantages in traditional industries, which still represent the largest part of global trade, and in the group of digital task-intensive industries. In the cyber-physical group of industries, which are characterised by both high digital task and ICT capital intensities, the EU records a trade deficit, although this has been receding in recent years. Competitiveness indicators depict heterogeneity among EU countries. The loss of international competitiveness for some technology front-runners is a worrying sign. On the positive side, however, a reduction in trade deficits or an improvement in product quality and market shares is evident for certain EU countries, especially in the Central European region.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, European Union, Trade, Digitalization, and International Competition
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Europe, Asia, South Korea, and United States of America

33. The Value of Reporting: National Reporting Practices under the UN Sanctions Regime on North Korea

Author:
David Atwood, Gian Giezendanner, and Sophie Timmermans
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
The UN Security Council has imposed a broad range of sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, requesting member states to report on how they are implementing these measures. Many factors affect the national reporting practices of states, with some having failed to submit any reports. Reporting serves as an important measure of transparency and trust-building concerning state compliance with international commitments in general. The frequency and depth of reporting on national implementation of the sanctions by UN member states help to discern the regime’s effectiveness. Failure to meet reporting deadlines, the use of vague language, and limited information on national implementation all dampen the usefulness of reporting on the implementation of the DPRK sanctions regime. The Value of Reporting: National Reporting Practices under the UN Sanctions Regime on North Korea—a report from the Survey’s Strengthening Implementation and Enforcement of the Arms Embargo on North Korea (SAENK) project—highlights factors that affect reporting, providing a more nuanced picture of national practices. The report also examines national DPRK sanctions regime reporting in relation to reporting on other international arms control instruments, with the aim of revealing potential mutually beneficial synergies.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, United Nations, and Sanctions
Political Geography:
Asia, North Korea, and Global Focus

34. China Maritime Report No. 25: More Chinese Ferry Tales: China's Use of Civilian Shipping in Military Activities, 2021-2022

Author:
J. Michael Dahm
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College
Abstract:
This report provides a comprehensive assessment of Chinese civilian shipping support to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), examining civil maritime-military activities from October 2021 through September 2022. As of 2022, the PLA and its reserve civilian merchant fleet are still probably unable to provide significant amphibious landing capabilities or the maritime logistics in austere or challenging environments necessary to support a major cross-strait invasion of Taiwan. However, large volume lift exercises conducted in 2022 suggest that the PLA has made significant progress in the use of civilian vessels for the large-scale lift of PLA troops and equipment into undefended ports, a capability that may be leveraged in a military assault on Taiwan. This report also discusses other civil maritime-military activities not previously observed, including the use of civilian vessels and infrastructure to conceal PLA troop movements, operations from austere ports, use of ocean-going vessels to transport PLA forces along inland waterways, and logistics support for China’s South China Sea outposts.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Military Affairs, Shipping, Logistics, and People's Liberation Army (PLA)
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Asia

35. China Maritime Report No. 26: Beyond the First Battle: Overcoming a Protracted Blockade of Taiwan

Author:
Lonnie D. Henley
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College
Abstract:
If there is a war over Taiwan, an extended Chinese blockade is likely to determine the outcome. While a blockade might include intercepting ships at sea, the primary focus would be on sealing airfields and ports, particularly on the west coast of Taiwan. China could sustain that type of blockade indefinitely. Penetrating a prolonged blockade and keeping Taiwan alive would require a serious U.S. investment in systems and operational concepts that we currently do not have. Unless we make that investment, we may win the first battle, defeating an attempted landing. But we cannot win the war.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Military Affairs, Maritime, Port, People's Liberation Army (PLA), and Blockade
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Asia

36. China Maritime Report No. 27: PLA Navy Submarine Leadership - Factors Affecting Operational Performance

Author:
Roderick Lee
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College
Abstract:
The way the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) selects and manages its submarine officers increases the likelihood of human performance errors onboard a PLAN submarine. First, PLAN submarine officers are selected from applicants with among the lowest college entrance examinations of any PLA educational institution, suggesting that PLAN submariners are among the service’s least talented officers. Second, the Party Committee system at the apex of decision-making aboard PLAN submarines may be less agile than other approaches to command, at least in certain circumstances. Lastly, while the policy of embarking flotilla leaders senior to the submarine captain may reduce some of the negative effects associated with the first two conditions, it could lead to reduced performance when senior leaders are not present. If external events during wartime stressed these factors, the likelihood of human-induced error events in the PLAN submarine force could increase substantially.
Topic:
Armed Forces, Leadership, Navy, Maritime, Submarines, and People's Liberation Army (PLA)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

37. China Maritime Report No. 28: Bitterness Ends, Sweetness Begins: Organizational Changes to the PLAN Submarine Force Since 2015

Author:
J. Michael Dahm and Alison Zhao
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College
Abstract:
“Above-the-neck” reforms in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that began in 2015 directed the development of a new joint operational command system that resulted in commensurate changes to PLA Navy submarine force command and control. Additional changes to tactical submarine command and control were driven by the evolution and expansion of PLA Navy surface and airborne capabilities and the introduction of new longer-range submarine weapons. Follow-on “below-theneck” reforms inspired significant organizational change across most of China’s military services. However, the PLA Navy submarine force, for its part, did not reorganize its command structure but instead focused on significant improvements to the composition and quality of its force. Between 2017 and 2023, the PLA Navy submarine force engaged in a notable transformation, shuffling personnel and crews among twenty-six submarines—eleven newly commissioned and fifteen since retired—relocating in-service submarines to ensure an equitable distribution of newer, more capable submarines across the fleet. Observations of infrastructure improvements at PLA Navy submarine bases portend even more changes to submarine force structure in the coming years.
Topic:
Armed Forces, Reform, Maritime, Submarines, and People's Liberation Army (PLA)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

38. China Maritime Report No. 29: PLAN Mine Countermeasures: Platforms, Training, and Civil-Military Integration

Author:
Brian Waidelich and George Pollitt
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College
Abstract:
The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has made incremental progress in its mine countermeasures (MCM) program in recent years. The PLAN’s current inventory of about 60 MCM ships and craft includes classes of minehunters and minesweepers mostly commissioned in the past decade as well as unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and remotely operated vehicles with demonstrated explosive neutralization capability. Despite the addition of these advanced MCM platforms and equipment, experts affiliated with the PLAN and China’s mine warfare development laboratory have serious reservations about the PLAN’s current ability to respond to the full range of likely threats posed by naval mines in future contingencies. The PLAN’s MCM forces are currently organized for operations near China’s coastline, but writings by Chinese military and civilian experts contend that to safeguard Beijing’s expanding overseas interests, the PLAN must develop MCM capabilities for operations far beyond the First Island Chain. PLAN and civilian mine warfare experts have proposed various solutions for offsetting perceived shortcomings in the PLAN’s MCM program, including the development of autonomous USVs and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), deployment of modularized MCM mission packages on ships such as destroyers and frigates, and mobilization of civilian assets such as ships and helicopters in support of MCM operations. Although there appears to have been little to no adoption of these proposed solutions to date, the PLAN recognizes MCM as one of its biggest challenges, and one can expect the PLAN to continue making measured progress in its MCM program in the years ahead.
Topic:
Armed Forces, Integration, Landmines, Civil-Military Relations, and People's Liberation Army (PLA)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

39. China Maritime Report No. 30: A Brief Technical History of PLAN Nuclear Submarines

Author:
Christopher P. Carlson and Howard Wang
Publication Date:
08-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College
Abstract:
After nearly 50 years since the first Type 091 SSN was commissioned, China is finally on the verge of producing world-class nuclear-powered submarines. This report argues that the propulsion, quieting, sensors, and weapons capabilities of the Type 095 SSGN could approach Russia’s Improved Akula I class SSN. The Type 095 will likely be equipped with a pump jet propulsor, a freefloating horizontal raft, a hybrid propulsion system, and 12-18 vertical launch system tubes able to accommodate anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles. China’s newest SSBN, the Type 096, will likewise see significant improvements over its predecessor, with the potential to compare favorably to Russia’s Dolgorukiy class SSBN in the areas of propulsion, sensors, and weapons, but more like the Improved Akula I in terms of quieting. If this analysis is correct, the introduction of the Type 095 and Type 096 would have profound implications for U.S. undersea security.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Armed Forces, Maritime, Submarines, and People's Liberation Army (PLA)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

40. China Maritime Report No. 31: China's Submarine Industrial Base: State-Led Innovation with Chinese Characteristics

Author:
Sarah Kirchberger
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval War College
Abstract:
In recent years, China’s naval industries have made tremendous progress supporting the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) submarine force, both through robust commitment to research and development (R&D) and the upgrading of production infrastructure at the country’s three submarine shipyards: Bohai Shipyard, Huludao; Wuchang Shipyard, Wuhan; and Jiangnan Shipyard, Shanghai. Nevertheless, China’s submarine industrial base continues to suffer from surprising weaknesses in propulsion (from marine diesels to fuel cells) and submarine quieting. Closer ties with Russia could provide opportunities for China to overcome these enduring technological limitations by exploiting political and economic levers to gain access to Russia’s remaining undersea technology secrets.
Topic:
Nuclear Weapons, Navy, Industry, Submarines, and People's Liberation Army (PLA)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

41. Commercial Satellite Use Catalyzes Nuclear-Armed States to Combat: A Wargame After-Action Report (Occasional Paper 2306)

Author:
Henry Sokolski
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Nonproliferation Policy Education Center
Abstract:
Recent reports of Elon Musk’s refusal to allow Ukraine to use his satellites to help it mount strikes against Russian military targets in Crimea pose a basic question: Just how sustainable might military use of commercial satellites be? So far, the United States and other spacefaring nations have deferred or taken a hands-off approach to dealing with this issue. When it comes to space, states are roughly where they were with sea power in the 1600s and air power before World War I: dramatic acts of air war and naval piracy were about to ensue, but instituting national or international regulation hardly seemed urgent… until they were. How prepared are we to deal with such a transition in space? Can we keep non-state and state actors from using space to intensify the pace of military air and ground operations? Or are space Lusitanias, in which the world’s major powers get dragged into wars, more likely? To find out, the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) designed and conducted a wargame this summer tailored to this purpose. SpaceNews published the game’s results (see below). The game’s play begins in 2027 with a Pakistani terrorist group’s hijacking of “commercial” Chinese satellite services to mount an attack against an Indian nuclear base. The terrorists’ aim is to drag Pakistan into a war with India to help decide the status of Kashmir. Through a number of twists and turns, the game ends with intensified ground operations between Pakistan and India and China and the United States engaging in space combat against a set of each others’ commercial space satellites. Are we ready for this future? The short answer is no. The long answer can be teased from the game’s report and its key takeaways below.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, Weapons, Space, War Games, Satellite, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
South Asia and Asia

42. Water diplomacy analysis for Central Asia: Dynamics of insecurity and sources of resilience

Author:
Emma Hakala, Katariina Mustasilta, and Mohammed Hadi
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
Climate change, geopolitical tensions and other global crises emphasise the need for water diplomacy, which refers to the prevention and resolution of political tensions with the help of water expertise and diplomatic tools. Disputes over water can contribute to instability, but fair and well-governed management of water resources can serve as a platform for cooperation and peacebuilding. In Central Asia, water has a crucial role as a precondition for economic and social development, but also for relations between the countries in the region due to the large­ly transboundary and shared character of resources. Questions about water use have been intertwined in disputes about other unresolved issues between the countries in the past. As the impacts of climate change become increasingly visible and are likely to further reduce water access, it is important to better understand the water conflict and resilience dynamics. This analysis traces the potential for water diplomacy in Central Asia. It identifies major conflict factors, peace enablers, regional dynamics and the role of water resources. The analysis takes an anticipatory, forward-looking approach, particularly focusing on sources of resilience and potential points of cooperation.
Topic:
Climate Change, Water, Governance, Crisis Management, and Resilience
Political Geography:
Central Asia and Asia

43. Allies Help Those Who Help Themselves: How Estonia and Japan Approach Deterrence

Author:
Yoko Iwama, Tetsuo Kotani, Sugio Takahashi, Tony Lawrence, and Henrik Praks
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Centre for Defence and Security - ICDS
Abstract:
Up until the blatant act of Russian aggression in Ukraine in 2022, the West had been gradually shifting its attention towards East Asia, with China seen as the primary challenge of the first half of the 21st century. The new context requires a thorough reassessment of international security architecture by all national stakeholders. This, in turn, offers Estonia and Japan the opportunity to enrich their security perspectives on common strategic threats, as well as on broader geopolitical shifts caused by Russia and China. This report introduces several aspects of these revolutionary developments, their background, and their potential implications, some of which have already been reflected in the updated strategic documents unveiled by US and Japanese defence communities. Taken together, these documents make a case for an enhanced partnership between Japan, the US, and Europe that would prepare like-minded allies to respond to any security crisis. In the eventuality of a crisis resulting in an actual military confrontation, the report compares China’s missile supremacy and Japan’s long-range standoff maritime firepower strategies by grounding this analysis in the theory of victory. Charting a more favourable course forward, the report assesses the current state of deterrence in the Baltics by detailing the key developments in regional defence posture and planning, with a clear shift towards forward defence. Centring on emerging cross-border risks posed by hybrid warfare and using Estonia as a case study for vulnerabilities, the report proposes ways to mitigate these risks by advancing the role of deterrence. The report’s recommendations are as follows: To establish a cooperative format between NATO and Indo-Pacific nations along the lines of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership and Cooperation Council and open NATO’s liaison office in Japan. To create the Baltic-Japan security and defence 1.5 Track dialogue forum. To develop ties between the defence intelligence services of Estonia and Japan in order to better understand the threats posed by Russia and China. To facilitate networking in the fields of concept development, capability planning, doctrine, and military education to address the challenges of multi-domain operations. To explore possibilities for closer defence industrial cooperation and technology sharing between Estonia and Japan in cyber security, artificial intelligence, sensorics, robotics, and electronic warfare. To engage Estonia’s knowledge and experience when adopting NATO’s standards and practices in Japan’s future capability development in pursuit of interoperability. To hold joint exercises in integrated air and missile defence, coastal defence, critical undersea infrastructure protection, etc. As Japan seeks to forge closer defence relations with Europe and European nations and enhance their defence ties with the democracies in the Indo-Pacific area, the need to understand better how cooperation between Estonia and Japan contributes to the emerging Euro-Pacific deterrence agenda will persist.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, NATO, European Union, Cybersecurity, Deterrence, and Resilience
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Europe, Ukraine, Taiwan, Asia, and Estonia

44. Europe’s Indo-Pacific Tilt: Estonian and Japanese Interests

Author:
Frank Jüris, Steven Blockmans, Kazuto Suzuki, Sanshiro Hosaka, and Maret Nukke
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Centre for Defence and Security - ICDS
Abstract:
Reshaped by the new great power competition, the international order has been undergoing revolutionary transformations. Revanchist Russia has unleashed a barbarian war against a sovereign European nation, while increasingly militarised and contentious China looms as a not-so-insidious threat in the Indo-Pacific. In response to these shifting dynamics and mounting geopolitical tensions, Europe is now awakening to the new reality and paying greater attention to the far-away region. At first glance, Estonia and Japan may seem like odd partners, yet they share vital commonalities and common interests impossible to ignore. Amidst Russia’s ongoing brutal invasion of Ukraine and China’s territorial claims over Taiwan, Japan’s strong advocacy in the Indo-Pacific region confirms how essential unity, consensus, and solidarity are for tackling global challenges in an environment of limited resources. This report brings together foreign and security policy experts to improve our understanding of each other’s security concerns — be it threats in cyber and information space, ruptures in trade, energy, and food, or authoritarian neighbours — by taking a step closer to a shared threat perception. Acknowledging unprecedented challenges to global security and rules-based order that democracy and democracies are confronted with from East to West, this report critically examines whether the European Union’s regional strategy maximises and realises the union’s full potential in the Indo-Pacific, which will test its actorness and agency and determine the role for the decades — if not centuries — to come. As the long-distance race for technological hegemony between the U.S. and China — of which Japan and Estonia are by far neither neutral nor casual observers — tightens, the report highlights national policies and capabilities needed to stay competitive, as well as to reduce known and potential vulnerabilities, from the perspective of economic security. China’s dramatic rise — as not only an economic but also a military superpower — entails an assertive and oftentimes assailing foreign policy that is felt both in Europe and the Indo-Pacific alike. The authoritarian regime in Beijing cleverly exploits the vacuum of power wherever it finds any. Cautioning against repeating the old mistakes of China-centrism, the report advocates for fostering multifaced cooperation with Japan in the framework of EU-Japan and Estonia-Japan relations. Thus, the report recommends that the EU as a whole and its individual member states should continue building on the positive momentum generated by the Indo-Pacific strategies and modify their approach to incorporate like-minded partners. From freedom of information to information- and cybersecurity, the report reminds us that leadership matters. It explains the changing tides in the Japanese mainstream public opinions that have already washed away the decades of harmful Russia-centrism from media, academia, and corridors of power and thus resulted in a society successfully resisting malign foreign disinformation campaigns. Estonia and Japan should facilitate digital transformation beyond their national borders, promote economic security, and exert geopolitical power through domestically produced sophisticated technology. The report also probes Sino-Russian relations from the perspective of Chinese strategic interests in its own neighbourhood. Able to contain the West by redirecting its focus and resources towards the war in Ukraine, Russia creates additional operation space for China in the Taiwan Strait. With the war raging In Europe, it should be clear that appeasing an aggressor with concessions and seemingly clever compromises only emboldens the latter, making it even more contentious in both territorial claims and bellicose actions. To prevent a conflict from breaking out in the Taiwan Strait, the EU should be building up allied immunity by counterbalancing China in the Indo-Pacific and proactively defending the rules-based world order.
Topic:
Defense Policy, European Union, Cybersecurity, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), ASEAN, and Economic Security
Political Geography:
Russia, Japan, China, Europe, Ukraine, Taiwan, Asia, Estonia, and Indo-Pacific

45. How Russia Brings Its Aggression Against Ukraine to The Global South

Author:
Ivan Ulises Klyszcz
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Centre for Defence and Security - ICDS
Abstract:
2022 was a wake-up call for the West. The response by the Global South to the war in Ukraine highlighted Russia’s enduring strengths in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia. This report explores the evolution of Russia’s relations with the countries in the Global South and the ways Russia cultivates these relationships in pursuit of its foreign policy agenda. Moscow’s current interactions in the Global South are driven by the demands of its war of aggression, as well as by its long-term goal: to challenge the international order. The latter dictate several manoeuvres found throughout such engagements: strategic communications, market substitution and sanctions evasion, and regime sheltering. This report presents three case studies meant to illustrate how Russia’s relations with the Global South have evolved since 2022. First, Tunisia exemplifies a superficial partner, with Moscow’s main tool in the country being strategic communication aimed at shaping public opinion in its favour. Second, India is illustrative of a strategic partner whom Moscow tries to engage in order to substitute for lost energy markets and evade sanctions. Third, Myanmar represents a hierarchical relationship, in which the local regime depends on Moscow for diplomatic support and arms deliveries. Notwithstanding varied perspectives on and responses to Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, countries in the Global South have generally sought to prioritise their economy and security by attempting to strike a balance between Russia and the West. Aware of such desires, Moscow has been exploiting this situation to maintain its influence internationally. Challenging Russia in the Global South will put pressure on the Kremlin and limit its ability to conduct aggressive foreign policy – and wage war against Ukraine. The report concludes with six recommendations on how to counter Russia in the Global South.
Topic:
Cold War, Markets, Science and Technology, Communications, Arms Trade, Defense Industry, and Military
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Ukraine, Middle East, India, Asia, Tunisia, Myanmar, United States of America, and Global South

46. How Russia Went to War: The Kremlin’s Preparations for Its Aggression Against Ukraine

Author:
Kalev Stoicescu, Mykola Nazarov, Keir Giles, and Matthew Johnson
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Centre for Defence and Security - ICDS
Abstract:
This report examines Russia’s preparations for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine: domestically, in Ukraine itself, in the global information domain, and in building its relationship with China. For Russia, crushing Ukraine’s quest for democracy was central to meeting its objectives of reshaping the post-Cold War order in Europe and globally, restoring its own status, and reconstituting the Russian empire and Russian world. Its preparations in the political and informational, military, and economic domains for a full-scale war in Ukraine were too extensive and overt to go unnoticed, but they were not acted upon. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the evidence went against the dominant narrative in the West and was simply brushed aside. In the political and informational domains, Russia’s domestic preparations including cementing the regime’s authority, and taking advantage of the population’s Soviet nostalgia and aspirations for the restoration of the Russian world and the empire. Limited economic preparations were intended to safeguard Russia’s economy against current and future Western sanctions, while Russia’s extensive military preparations involved large-scale defence spending and extensive military modernisation efforts. Russia’s preparations beyond its own territory included: a campaign within Ukraine to divide society and discredit the democratically elected leadership; a campaign directed at the rest of the world about Ukraine, discrediting the country and its people as an object of sympathy and support in their resistance against Russia; and a campaign of intimidation designed to instil in western leaders and populations a fear of obstructing, impeding, or offending Russia. Russia also worked to build a relationship with China. China’s support is essential to Putin’s ambitions. But equally, China’s strategy for confronting the United States – which China cannot do alone – depends on Russia remaining at least a quasi-great power.
Topic:
Security, NATO, Development, Sanctions, Military Affairs, European Union, Resilience, and Information Warfare
Political Geography:
Russia, China, United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, and United States of America

47. On the Horns of a Dilemma: Will Corruption Bring Down the Chinese Communist Party?

Author:
George A. B. Peirce
Publication Date:
01-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
When the People’s Republic of China’s president and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he publicly acknowledged that the Party faced an existential crisis from pervasive corruption at all levels of Chinese government and business activity. Such corruption has put the Party’s leaders on the horns of a dilemma: If they fail to adopt political reforms that could root out corruption independent of Party control, like a free press, competitive elections, and the rule of law administered by an independent judiciary, then the crisis of corruption will continue to fester; but if the Party were to embrace such reforms, then that would inevitably lead to democratization and the Party’s loss of autocratic control of China. As one Chinese scholar aptly sums up this dilemma: “There’s a commonly used phrase: Not reforming means to wait for death. Reforming means to court death.” China’s crisis of corruption should be of immediate interest to American political and business leaders. China is the world’s largest developing nation with the world’s second largest economy, exceeded only by that of the United States. It may justifiably be said that the United States and China are now the two most significant nations on earth, so American interests will be profoundly affected by China’s future economic and political development. A better understanding of the challenges the Communist Party faces in the coming years may prove invaluable for effective U.S. policy formulation. Such insights may also contribute to enduring and mutually beneficial economic and political relationships with China. Accordingly, this report initially examines the historical development of China’s regime of institutionalized corruption and the toll it has already taken on the Chinese people, economy and governmental process. Then it turns to an evaluation of divergent perspectives on the future for China’s now thoroughly corrupted Communist Party and the extraordinary civilization and people it continues to rule. Finally, the article will conclude by addressing the question of whether the Party can overcome corruption and survive in the 21st century.
Topic:
Corruption, Governance, Business, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

48. The Dragon and the Bear in Africa: Stress-Testing Chinese-Russian Relations

Author:
Robert E. Hamilton
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
This report is based on a chapter of my forthcoming book on the relationship between China and Russia. For the US, this is arguably the most important bilateral relationship in the world today. A robust, resilient partnership between Beijing and Moscow has the potential to remake world order. It would usher in an era of international relations based on power and polarity, eroding the role of international law and institutions, and undermining the sovereignty and agency of smaller states. This world order would represent a serious threat to US interests, as currently defined. On the other hand, transactional, “thin” ties between China and Russia allow the US some breathing space. Instead of a revisionist authoritarian alliance, the US would confront two states that represent different types of challenges. In this case, Washington could deal with the acute, militarized threat of Russia in the near term, while remaining postured to confront the “pacing” threat of China—the only potential peer competitor to the US—over the longer term. The academic and policy worlds have been seized with the China-Russia relationship for almost two decades. Policy debates revolve around how to confront the two, with some arguing that the current focus on reversing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine puts the US at risk of being unprepared for the threat China represents. Others argue that Russia is not merely a disruptive power but represents a profound and immediate danger to US interests. Competition for resources often lurks in the background of this debate: US government organizations focused on Europe tend to argue for focusing on Russia first; those with an Indo-Pacific focus tend to argue that China should be the focus. What this debate often fails to consider is the nature of their relationship and its impact on US policy options. The scholarly debate fills this gap by focusing directly on the nature of the relationship: one camp defines it as a strategic partnership and the other defines it as an “axis of convenience.” Often missing from scholarly analysis, though, is an analysis of the implications for US policy. In other words, scholars often argue forcefully for one of these characterizations of the China-Russia relationship but then fail to advise what the US should do in response. Instead, their analysis focuses on the implications of the relationship for theoretical approaches to international relations. The book that will include this report aims to close this gap between the policy and scholarly debates. It aims to provide a better understanding of the nature of the China-Russia relationship and use that understanding to inform US policy options. It will do this through a novel approach. Instead of focusing on Chinese-Russian interaction at the level of the international system, as most approaches do, it focuses on their interaction “on the ground” in regions where both have important interests at stake. This report examines Chinese-Russian interaction in Africa; other chapters of the book focus on Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and East Asia. Africa and Central Asia provide good testing grounds for the China-Russia relationship because both have important but different interests there. How they advance and defend those interests and how they interact in doing so, can yield important insights into the nature of their overall relationship. These regions are also important because the US footprint is light. The US has been called the “binding agent” in ties between Beijing and Moscow. The idea here is that shared resistance to the US is the only major thing they have in common. In this view, removing the US from the equation will make China and Russia more likely to find reasons to compete rather than cooperate.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, and Strategic Interests
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, China, Eurasia, and Asia

49. Rewriting the Future of America’s Maritime Industry to Compete with China

Author:
Michael Roberts
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
For decades, companies outside the United States have dominated the international commercial shipping and shipbuilding industries. At various times since World War II, Japan, Korea, and certain European countries have been able to leverage their export-driven manufacturing economies and government support to become world leaders in commercial shipbuilding and major players in international shipping. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has taken that strategy to a new level and now produces more than half the large commercial ships delivered annually, controls scores of seaports in dozens of foreign countries, and owns almost one-fifth of the global commercial fleet. American commercial shipbuilders and US flag shipping companies have long faced fierce headwinds in international markets and have seen support from the US government dwindle. The US reset its maritime policies in the 1990s when America was the sole superpower and the security benefits of a robust commercial maritime industry were in doubt. By the end of 2022, Americans owned only 3 percent of the 55,000 ships in the global commercial fleet, including just 178 large US flag cargo ships, 85 of which are committed to international trade (see tables 1 and 2 below for a breakdown of US and global commercial fleets). The emergence of the PRC as a challenger to America’s global leadership has forced sweeping changes in US policy and spending priorities to boost America’s economic and military security. This report recommends that the US reform its policies governing America’s commercial maritime industries because shipping and shipbuilding are core components of national power. These industries remain especially crucial in the twenty-first century, as international trade is more important to a healthy American economy today than ever before. Yet Americans have almost no control over the maritime logistics systems that feed the US economy. The pandemic-induced supply chain crisis showed how much damage can be done when those systems break down.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, National Security, Maritime, Industry, Domestic Policy, and Supply Chains
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

50. Success in the Struggle against the People's Republic of China

Author:
John Lee and Lavina Lee
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
In April 2023, the Australian government released the officially commissioned but independently produced Defence Strategic Review. Intended to assist the government of Australia with its strategic and defense policies over the next decade and beyond, the report offered the fundamental assessment that the Indo-Pacific region “faces increasing competition that operates on multiple levels—economic, military, strategic and diplomatic—all interwoven and all framed by an intense contest of values and narratives.”1 The Biden administration’s National Security Strategy, which had been released several months earlier (October 2022), stated the challenge in even starker terms: “The People’s Republic of China harbors the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order in favor of one that tilts the global playing field to its benefit.”2 At the heart of these statements is the perception that China poses a systemic and comprehensive challenge, not just to the vital interests and values of the United States and Australia, but to the entire system and order that was cobbled together after the Second World War. These postwar rules, norms, institutions, conventions, practices, alliances, and security relationships have been underwritten by US material power. They constitute a liberal order that is under intense challenge from China.3 This report explores what success in relation to China looks like for the US, Australia, and allies such as Japan. Several substantial and thoughtful pieces have described what victory would look like for China,4 and there have also been many good efforts to describe what victory would look like for the US and its allies, given China’s goals and objectives. The current report focuses on a US and Australian vision of success in which the geopolitical contest and struggle are enduring and do not end with a victory for any side. Victory generally means defeating an enemy or opponent in a specific context or activity. Unsurprisingly, the term is commonly associated with defeating an enemy during a battle or compelling the unconditional surrender of the enemy when engaging in war. In victory, there is a clear winner and loser. By way of contrast, success or successful struggle means the accomplishment of an aim or purpose in general or specific contexts. It might include subduing an opponent and attaining victory over that opponent. But success can also be achieved without the strict formal requirement of victory, depending on one’s objective. The term success is used here because the scope of this report is broader than victory in a traditional war context (even if the use of force is always an option to achieve success or deny it to the opponent). It will be apparent that the Chinese notion of war is far broader than the Western notion. The West holds that war is fought within and across identified air, sea, land, space, and cyber domains, and that war has a discernible beginning and end. In the Chinese conception, war has no boundaries or restrictive form and does not necessarily involve the kinetic use of force. It is material, but also ideational, psychological, and structural.5 Indeed, for the Chinese, the apogee of conflict is to win without fighting, even if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees the environment as one of perpetual struggle. Hence, war may have no formal beginning or end. For this reason, a US and Australian vision of success cannot simply be about achieving specific key objectives, like maintaining Taiwanese de facto independence or preventing further Chinese militarization of the South China Sea. To be sure, a vision of success is based on certain fundamental end states (such as preventing Chinese material and normative dominance in East Asia). However, it also accepts the likelihood of a constant struggle against a formidable China, just as China assumes the long-term existence of a formidable US with significant allies in the region. In other words, the authors work on the prudent assumption that China will be neither defeated nor terminally weakened, and that its expansionist ambitions and substantial capabilities will remain. Rather than focusing on a final victory or endpoint, a vision of success conceptualizes an advantageous and enduring state of affairs or system of arrangements in the region that supports the fundamental objectives of the US and its allies in the Indo-Pacific. This report is about successful struggle, but not in the context of a major war where one side wins decisively and the next step is to establish a sensible peace. This is not to discount the possibility that the use of force could be decisive in shaping the region. But the report focuses on scenarios of an increasingly tense competition and rivalry occurring over the next decade and explores what success looks like in that context. It does not discount the possibility or necessity of limited military action, but does not assume that any such action would be decisive in producing a permanent winner and loser.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Asia, Australia, and United States of America

51. EU-China relations - Will the current crisis change the relationship between the two great powers?

Author:
Eliška Prostřední
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Europeum Institute for European Policy
Abstract:
As part of the Café Evropa debate cycle, one of the discussions took place on the relationship and approach between the European Union and China. Among those invited were Magdaléna Slezáková, Ondřej Wagner, David Gardáš and Zdeněk Beránek. You can read a summary of the outputs of individual guests in the report written by our intern Eliška Prostřední.
Topic:
Bilateral Relations, European Union, Crisis Management, and Debates
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and Asia

52. Atomic Strait: How China’s Nuclear Buildup Shapes Security Dynamics with Taiwan and the United States

Author:
Jacob Stokes
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
This report examines the intersection of China’s nuclear modernization and cross-Strait tensions, especially how they might play out during a crisis, contingency, or conflict involving China, Taiwan, and the United States. Beijing is rapidly modernizing its nuclear arsenal to make it larger and more sophisticated. Changes include an increase in warhead numbers from more than 400 today to potentially 700 by 2027 and more beyond, consolidating a nuclear triad, developing new delivery systems, and digging at least 300 new missile silos. Some factors still could constrain the growth of China’s arsenal or the policies that shape the way Chinese leaders employ it. They range from fissile material stocks to competing military spending priorities, considerations about China’s international reputation, and upholding Beijing’s claimed No First Use policy. But nearly all those constraining factors either already have weakened or could do so in the near future. China’s expanding nuclear arsenal suggests that the force will be designed to fulfill new missions. Some part of Beijing’s buildup surely is meant to bolster its second-strike retaliatory capability in the face of what China perceives as shifts in U.S. conventional and nuclear capabilities and policies. China’s long-term goal for the expansion, however, could be more ambitious and potentially even include seeking to build an arsenal on par with Washington’s and Moscow’s. Meanwhile, China continues to ramp up pressure on Taiwan using political, economic, and military tools. Beijing’s campaign could provoke more crises in the coming years. The three major roles that nuclear weapons could play for China when dealing with cross-Strait crises or conflicts are: to shield China from U.S. nuclear coercion, to threaten Chinese nuclear use to try to forestall U.S. intervention, and to conduct a limited Chinese nuclear detonation in an attempt to force U.S. and Taiwanese capitulation. The report concludes with recommendations for U.S. policymakers. It calls for carrying out U.S. nuclear modernization plans to deter China but avoiding nuclear arms racing as a strategy in itself. It recommends incorporating nuclear elements into contingency planning and scenario exercises related to Taiwan, both unilaterally and with allies and partners. The report then calls for improving Taiwan’s conventional military capabilities while maintaining a consistent U.S. policy on cross-Strait issues and ensuring Taiwan forgoes pursuing indigenous nuclear weapons. Finally, the report argues in favor of pushing forward tough-minded bilateral engagement with Beijing on strategic stability and security issues while crafting a multilateral arms control strategy that builds coalitions to incentivize China to join and impose costs on Beijing if it opts to stay outside of key agreements.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, and Regional Security
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, North America, and United States of America

53. Avoiding the Brink: Escalation Management in a War to Defend Taiwan

Author:
Stacie L. Pettyjohn and Hannah Dennis
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
The United States is entering an unprecedented multipolar nuclear era that is far more complex and challenging than that of the Cold War. This report examines potential triggers, thresholds, and targets for Chinese nuclear use as well as options for the United States and its allies and partners to avoid and manage escalation. It uses the results of two exploratory tabletop exercises (TTXs) focused on how China’s expanding nuclear arsenal could impact the risk of nuclear escalation in a conventional conflict over Taiwan. From these two TTXs, the authors derived tentative insights into how nuclear escalation in a war over Taiwan might unfold and identified areas where further research is needed. First, the expansions and improvements projected for China’s nuclear forces will provide it with a wider range of coercive options. With a secure second-strike capability and more diverse theater nuclear options, China may be willing to brandish its nuclear weapons to attempt to deter the United States from entering a war. There are few incentives to conduct nuclear strikes early in such a conflict, but a war over Taiwan might well lead to a protracted war between the great powers—another area where more study will be critical. The authors also found that American policymakers today might not find the PRC’s nuclear threats credible because of its smaller arsenal size and historic policy of no first use (NFU). Furthermore, the authors found that attempts to degrade key conventional capabilities might lead either side to cross the other’s red lines, setting off an escalatory spiral and transforming a regional conflict into a great-power war. Both the United States and China will have to weigh the value of eliminating certain targets with the risk of crossing an adversary red line. Last, the authors found an asymmetry between the targets available to the United States and China in a Taiwan contingency. With fewer categories of targets to strike and types of capabilities with which to strike them, the United States may have fewer options to manage escalation. All these findings merit further study. The two TTXs, conducted in summer 2022, pitted a U.S. Blue team against a Chinese Red team in a war over Taiwan. The two wargames were designed as a controlled comparison to focus on the impact of one specific variable—the size and composition of the PLA’s nuclear arsenal—on the Red team’s decision-making and its propensity to deliberately escalate and on the Blue team’s ability to defend its allies and partners while managing escalation. By holding most other factors constant but changing Red’s nuclear force structure, the authors aimed to concentrate on the role that nuclear weapons played. In TTX 1, the players had a notional 2027 order of battle with a nuclear arsenal of about 700 warheads, diverse in yield and delivery system type and range. The second TTX, set in 2030, included a similarly diverse Red arsenal of over 1,000 nuclear warheads. After analyzing the results of both exercises, the authors contextualized and expanded the findings through research on existing literature on nuclear deterrence and escalation.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, and Escalation
Political Geography:
Taiwan, Asia, and United States of America

54. India-China Border Tensions and U.S. Strategy in the Indo-Pacific

Author:
Lisa Curtis and Derek Grossman
Publication Date:
03-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
India-China border intrusions and clashes have become more frequent and threaten to lead to all-out conflict between the two Asian giants. In recent years, China has upped the ante in its border disputes with India through infrastructure development, military deployments, capability enhancements, and periodic efforts to encroach into territory controlled by India. The first deadly border clash between the two countries in 45 years occurred on June 15, 2020, in the Galwan River Valley, where 20 Indian troops and at least four Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops were killed. More recently, on December 9, 2022, Chinese and Indian forces clashed along the disputed border in the mountains near Tawang in the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh after an estimated 300 Chinese PLA soldiers tried to cross the border. While the Chinese and Indian militaries have since pulled back forces from the most contentious standoff sites where the 2020 buildup occurred and established temporary buffer zones, both sides retain high numbers of troops forward deployed along the disputed frontier, and there are several flashpoints that could erupt into another border crisis at any time. The most recent clash that took place near Tawang is a reminder that, even though recent attention has been focused on the Ladakh region, there are multiple trigger points along the 2,100-mile-long Line of Actual Control (LAC) that bear monitoring.1 With both China and India enhancing infrastructure and introducing new and advanced weapons systems on their sides of the disputed border, combined with forward deployments and heightened lack of trust, the chances for continued standoffs that could erupt into local or even full-blown conflict remain high.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Military Strategy, Territorial Disputes, and Borders
Political Geography:
China, India, Asia, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific

55. Russia-China Defense Cooperation

Author:
Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Nicholas Lokker
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
Russia’s war in Ukraine has been a critical test of the depth of Sino-Russian relations. Since Russia’s invasion, China has remained an essential partner for Moscow. Although there have been limits to what Beijing has been willing to do for Russia, China has served as a vital lifeline for the Kremlin including by parroting Russian talking points about the war, increasing purchases of Russian oil and gas, and continuing to export microchips and other component parts to Moscow cut off by the West. Warnings by senior U.S. officials that China is contemplating providing Russia with lethal military aid in support of its war against Ukraine underscore the depth of their partnership.1 Emerging reports that Chinese companies have provided rifles and dual-use equipment such as drone parts and body armor only add credibility to these warnings.2 Although it remains unclear at the time of writing whether China will ultimately decide to send lethal aid to Russia, the last year has provided further evidence that Russia and China are deeply aligned and that the persistence and evolution of their partnership will continue to pose challenges that the United States and its allies must navigate. This working paper will focus on the challenges that Russia-China military cooperation poses to the United States and its allies and partners. This aspect of their relationship has been one of the most consequential dimensions of their deepening partnership. Already, China has obtained key capabilities from Moscow such as Su-27 and Su-35 fighter aircrafts, S-300 and S-400 air defense systems, and anti-ship missiles, which bolster China’s military posture in the Indo-Pacific.3 Russia too has benefited from a large market for its arms sales and access to technological components it can no longer access following the imposition of Western sanctions in 2014—a need that has grown exponentially since Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Meanwhile, more frequent and elaborate joint exercises have signaled to onlooking countries the two partners’ mutual support for each other’s security priorities and willingness to push back against the United States. In the context of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine and increasing U.S.-China tensions in the Indo-Pacific, it has become even more urgent to understand how future military cooperation between Russia and China could evolve and what it would mean for the United States and its partners. This memo examines this aspect of the partnership, including what is driving it, how it has evolved following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the implications for the United States and its allies and partners.
Topic:
Bilateral Relations, Military Affairs, Russia-Ukraine War, and Defense Cooperation
Political Geography:
Russia, China, and Asia

56. U.S.-China Competition and Military AI: How Washington Can Manage Strategic Risks amid Rivalry with Beijing

Author:
Jacob Stokes, Alexander Sullivan, and Noah Greene
Publication Date:
07-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
Two tectonic trends in the international security environment appear to be on a collision course. The first trend is the intensifying geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China). The second trend is the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including for military applications. This report explores how the United States can manage strategic risks—defined as increased risks of armed conflict or the threat of nuclear war—that could be created or exacerbated by military AI in its relationship with China. It begins by providing an overview of China’s views on and policies toward AI. Beijing sees AI playing roles in both its civilian economy and the modernization of its military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). At home, Chinese leaders want to leverage AI to boost growth and innovation, address economic and social challenges, and secure the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) domestic rule. AI also plays a key role in China’s military ambitions, especially its goal to become a “world-class military” by midcentury, in part through the “intelligentization” of its forces. Intelligentization relies on integrating AI and other emerging technologies into the joint force with the goal of gaining an edge on the United States. China argues that its governance model, including its military-civil fusion policy, gives Beijing a competitive advantage over Washington. Realization of that vision, however, remains uncertain and will require China to overcome external and internal obstacles.
Topic:
Security, Military Affairs, Artificial Intelligence, Rivalry, and Competition
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

57. Strengthening the Shield: Japan’s Defense Transformation and the U.S.-Japan Alliance

Author:
Jacob Stokes, Lisa Curtis, Joshua Fitt, Joseph I. Grimm, and Rebecca Wittner
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
In December 2022, Japan’s government released three major strategic documents: the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and the Defense Buildup Program. Although Japan has made incremental changes to its security policies and capabilities over the last decade, the new documents mark a notable shift in Japan’s approach to strengthening its defense. The documents reflect Tokyo’s assessment of the rising threats that could challenge Japan’s security and signal Japan’s commitment to build the military capabilities necessary to meet them. This report examines Tokyo’s defense transformation and assesses its implications for the U.S.-Japan alliance and Washington’s strategy toward the Indo-Pacific. Japan is “fundamentally reinforcing” its national security and defense policies to cope with its increasingly severe security environment. The military threats posed by China, North Korea, and Russia have been growing steadily for years but appear to be peaking simultaneously. Tensions between Japan and China have occasionally flared in the five decades since they normalized diplomatic relations. But those tensions have reached new heights since 2012, when China began to regularly contest Japan’s administration of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. By August 2022, Beijing fired five ballistic missiles into Japan’s exclusive economic zone during China’s live-fire military exercises after then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. The aim of the missile launches was to signal there would be consequences for Japan if Tokyo were to intervene in a Taiwan contingency. Meanwhile, North Korea’s unprecedented rate of missile testing since 2022 and Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine have deepened Japanese concerns about the potential for the use of force in the Indo-Pacific. Japan is taking steps to improve its ability to defend itself and deter an invasion, including through changes to security funding and policy. Tokyo has announced plans to increase its defense spending by 65 percent over the next five years, acquire standoff weapons that could be used for a counterstrike mission, and adopt an “active cyber defense” posture. Japan has clarified the roles of its military, the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), and Coast Guard in the event of an attack; committed to establishing a permanent Joint Headquarters for SDF operations; and created a program for supplying partner militaries with security assistance. Effectively employing counterstrike and active cyber defense, however, will require a clearer delineation of the legal authorities for their use as well as the overall military strategies that they would support. In addition, pressure from the Japanese public over tax hikes required to pay for the defense spending increase amid other fiscal pressures could pose a barrier to implementation. Japan plans to strengthen the SDF through boosting readiness and resilience of current forces, acquiring counterstrike and other advanced capabilities, and improving force posture and mobility. The SDF has been plagued by a chronic lack of munitions and other supplies, and most of its facilities do not meet its own standards for resilience against enemy attack. Addressing these shortfalls is essential, though these types of programs often lose out to more high-profile programs. For its counterstrike mission, Japan has announced it will buy U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles. This initial purchase will provide a stopgap until Japan is able to produce its own longer-range missiles later in the decade. Japan has also announced it will pursue new capabilities in uncrewed systems, space, cyber, and artificial intelligence (AI). But fulfilling these ambitions will be challenging given some short-falls in Japan’s technology base and SDF personnel. Lastly, the SDF is grappling with how to expand its forces in Japan’s southwest islands while maintaining a sufficient presence throughout the country to deter aggression from a range of possible threats. Next, Japan’s strategy emphasizes enhancing security partnerships regionally and across the globe. Japan has recently stepped up its defense cooperation with several Indo-Pacific and European countries. With Australia, Japan is building on a 10-year effort to deepen strategic cooperation, a process that culminated in January 2022 with the completion of a Reciprocal Access Agreement. New bilateral strategic cooperation includes enhancing interoperability between the SDF and the Australian military, increasing rotational SDF training deployments to Australia, and announcing a new joint security declaration that commits to a combined response to military contingencies. Similarly, Japan has long recognized the strategic importance of India and continues to build on the Japan-India relationship through maritime security cooperation, a new joint fighter exercise, and operationalization of their Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement. Japan and the Philippines are also expanding their defense ties through humanitarian assistance and disaster relief training exercises and an important emerging trilateral security relationship with the United States. Over the past year, Japan and South Korea have made significant strides to repair relations since the latest downturn that began in 2018. This will be an incremental process, but there has been progress in the form of leader-level summits and ministerial dialogues, plans to cooperate on sharing data about North Korean missiles, and new trilateral ballistic missile and anti-submarine drills with the United States. Japan also is building defense connections and relationships with European nations. It is pursuing the development of a sixth-generation fighter jet with the U.K. and Italy and, particularly since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, has sought to deepen strategic ties with NATO. These comprehensive changes to Japan’s defense policies will necessarily reshape the military and security pillars of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Tokyo’s acquisition of counterstrike capabilities will position Japan to potentially take on some offensive tasks, even while retaining its primarily defensive orientation. This also has implications for alliance contingency planning related to defending Japan directly as well as around Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and the South China Sea. However, increased joint planning will require updates to alliance command and control (C2) and information-sharing mechanisms. Additionally, given resource constraints, the alliance would be well-served to find additional opportunities for military technology sharing, codevelopment, and coproduction, such as through Japanese involvement in the second pillar of the AUKUS (Australia-United Kingdom-United States) partnership focused on cooperation on advanced capabilities and defense technology innovation. And the alliance must take steps to improve force posture and readiness, including through enhancing base resiliency and increasing munitions stockpiles. Japan’s fundamental transformation of its defense posture will mean significant changes for the U.S.-Japan alliance. The United States must adapt its approach to alliance coordination to maximize new opportunities and manage any new challenges. In this context, U.S. policymakers should: Prepare to update the alliance, while recognizing that Japan’s new defense policies will require significant time, resources, and political will to implement. Stay closely aligned with Tokyo on the threat land- scape as well as engagement with geopolitical competitors, especially China. Integrate U.S.-Japan command and control structures. Create an alliance readiness, resilience, and posture implementation task force. Deepen planning for contingencies and bolster extended deterrence. Create a road map for expanding defense technology cooperation concurrently with Japan’s implementation of specific improvements to its information security practices and infrastructure. Innovate operational concepts for uncrewed systems and counterstrike capabilities. Leverage the U.S.-Japan alliance as a hub for minilateral and multilateral security engagement. Build U.S.-Japan alliance mechanisms that will expand cooperation on cyber security and defense. Stand up an alliance dialogue on military personnel issues.
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Bilateral Relations, and Alliance
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, and United States of America

58. Rolling the Iron Dice: The Increasing Chance of Conflict Protraction

Author:
Andrew Metrick
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
The prospect of a Sino-American war looms on the horizon. No scenario for such a conflict has garnered more interest than the potential invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the United States, discussions have focused on the early days of a conflict, in particular sinking the PRC’s amphibious fleet.1 Both the United States and the PRC place great emphasis on offensive military operations that heavily use the fruits of the precision strike revolution (PSR).2 This focus on early offensive action leads immediately to considerations of forces and weapons. U.S. defense planners are unsurprisingly most comfortable with the dynamics of short, sharp wars, having spent the past decade focused on deterring or defeating adversary faits accomplis, short and often opportunistic campaigns of aggression. Speed, political sophistication, and immediate military overmatch seemed to be the key ingredients for victory. Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 was seen as a template for other future aggressors to follow.3 Prolonged wars of attrition, particularly those involving the United States, were thought no longer possible. Russia’s subsequent invasion of Ukraine in 2022 turned this vision on its head, demonstrating the military and political consequences of trying and failing to obtain a similar fait accompli on a larger scale. The ongoing Russian experiences in Ukraine indicate a need to reevaluate such thinking and consider the potential of protraction in the context of a hypothetical U.S.-PRC conflict. Most work on this topic has considered only the initial days and weeks of hostilities, usually over Taiwan or in the South or East China Seas.4 There has been comparably little discussion of what comes after.5 There are three key concepts that inform the following discussions: exhaustion, sanctuary, and protraction. Exhaustion is the point when large-scale offensive operations are no longer possible as offensive military capabilities have been used up. Afterward, some period of reconstitution and recovery is needed. This requires sanctuary, the relative freedom from attack sufficient for the rebuilding of military forces and capacities. Protraction occurs after at least one cycle of exhaustion and recovery. It is closely tied to pre-conflict leadership beliefs about the length of the looming war. A simplified definition of a protracted war is a conflict that lasts longer than leaders expect; it is a mismatch between political-military expectations and reality. Doctrinal developments in both the PRC and the United States, influenced by improvements in technology, place significant emphasis on the early stages of conflict and rapid, offensive operations. The emphasis by both the PRC and the United States on the early stages of the conflict can be seen in the PRC’s system destruction warfare and United States’ denial-centric concepts that aim for rapid decisive results.6 These approaches focus almost exclusively on the operational level of war, ignoring strategic factors animating the conflict and shaping its termination. Should PRC President Xi Jinping commit the PLA to seizing Taiwan by force, enter a war with the United States, and “roll the iron dice,” protraction appears increasingly likely, contrary to most contemporary military thinking and preparation.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Conflict, and Deterrence
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, North America, and United States of America

59. No Winners in This Game: Assessing the U.S. Playbook for Sanctioning China

Author:
Emily Kilcrease
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
The relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is marked by both geopolitical tensions and deep economic linkages. While policymakers may have once believed that economic integration would inject stability into the overall relationship and provide a deterrent to conflict, that idealistic vision has been shaken by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. No longer can the United States and its partners assume that the PRC’s economic interest in retaining ties to the global economy will override its nationalist impulses. The once unthinkable idea of imposing severe sanctions on China has become a strategic imperative to consider, as one of a range of measures that the United States and its partners may consider if relations with the PRC deteriorate further. Yet, sanctioning China represents a challenge more complex than any other in the modern era of sanctions. The scale and interconnected nature of China’s economy means that the damage from sanctions will not be contained in China; instead, the negative effects will rebound globally through China’s deep economic ties to nearly every country around the world, including the United States. China has substantial capacity in key economic areas, such as manufacturing, that provide it with important means to retaliate against U.S. sanctions or impose its own economic costs on the United States and its partners. This report seeks to advance policy debates on how to sanction China, if geopolitical conditions warranted doing so at scale. It builds on prior Center for a New American Security (CNAS) research, including a 2023 report that outlines how the United States currently uses a variety of sanctions tools to manage the strategic relationship with the PRC.1 A key finding of the earlier work is that the United States imposes sanctions at a relatively limited scale compared to the scope of challenges that exist in the bilateral relationship, with the notable exception of an increasing range of technology-related sanctions. A large divide separates the existing level of sanctions on China and the full range of economic measures that the United States may consider. This report attempts to envision that fuller range of economic measures and consider whether the use of sanctions would meaningfully advance U.S. interests during a potential conflict. The report begins, in chapter 1, with an assessment of the main economic and political characteristics that would determine China’s vulnerability to, and resolve to withstand, sanctions pressure. The concentration of power at the very top of the PRC’s political system, along with a willingness to subordinate economic objectives to political ones, indicate that China may have a high degree of resolve to absorb the costs of sanctions. China’s continued reliance on the U.S.-dominated global financial infrastructure is a key area of vulnerability to sanctions pressure. But, China retains significant economic leverage through its manufacturing relationships, as well as through the importance of its large domestic market to foreign multinational companies. Attempting to impose sanctions that are asymmetrically more painful to China will be a fraught exercise, given the degree to which China is embedded in global supply chains. In chapter 2, the report examines sanctions actions that the United States and its partners may impose during a conflict scenario, drawing from the sanctions playbook used against Russia and projecting adaptations that would be needed in the China context. The main objective of this analysis is to identify points of asymmetric leverage in the U.S.-China economic relationship, where imposition of a sanction would be more economically damaging to China than to the United States and its partners. The sanctions actions are examined through the lens of a ends-ways-and-means framework, loosely borrowing concepts from the defense community and mapping them into the economic domain. The value in such an exercise is to impose discipline in identifying why a particular economic measure may be taken and what the intended impact would be. It can also enhance the ability to integrate economic actions with those being considered in military or other domains. The report examines possible actions under three broad categories, based on the objective of the sanctions: technology denial, embargo of commodities and materials, and macroeconomic pressure. The research includes analysis by the CNAS Energy, Economic & Security team of economic data and research interviews with a wide range of sanctions, export controls, macroeconomics, trade and finance, and China experts in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In addition to examining potential sanctions options on a sectoral basis, the report also includes a company-by-company lens to assess the potential impact of sanctioning specific Chinese companies. The report finds that the U.S. options to impose harsh sanctions on China are severely constrained. U.S. options to deny militarily relevant technology to China are modest, at best. Certain areas, such as maritime capabilities, will be difficult to target due to the nearly entirely domestic supply chains of China’s main military shipbuilders. Other areas, such as semiconductors, cannot be targeted without running the risk of disruption to critical U.S. supply chains. Overall, efforts to deny technology to China require a longer time horizon to be effective and may have less utility in an immediate run-up period to a potential conflict. Attempts to use sanctions tools to deny commodities or materials to China will require innovation and the development of new sanctions tools. Key commodities, such as energy, are inherently substitutable and globally available, including from many countries that will likely not align with the United States in a conflict with the PRC. Building on the example of the oil price cap used in the Russia context, the United States and partners will need to consider novel policy approaches that provide positive economic inducements to align with U.S. policies, in addition to using traditional sanctions tools.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Sanctions, and Geopolitics
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

60. Resisting China’s Gray Zone Military Pressure on Taiwan

Author:
Jacob Stokes
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
The People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) has sharply escalated its pressure campaign targeting the Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan) in recent years. Beijing appears likely to use Taiwan’s upcoming presidential election in January 2024 as a pretext to apply more pressure on the self-governing island, particularly in the “gray zone” using China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), along with other tools of state power. There is no precise and commonly agreed upon definition of what gray zone activities are and are not. In general, though, the concept refers to actions that fall into the space between, on one side, peace and, on the other, full-scale kinetic war.1 Gray zone activities are coercive and aggressive but designed to stay below the threshold of triggering major conflict. China uses gray zone operations as part of a comprehensive strategy to pressure Taiwan that spans the areas of diplomacy, information, economics, and security. This policy brief examines one major component of that campaign: gray zone military and security operations. It starts by detailing the capabilities and tactics China uses to put security pressure on Taiwan. Then, it explains what Beijing seeks to achieve with those actions. The paper concludes with recommendations for how U.S. and Taiwan policymakers can resist and counter China’s gray zone operations.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Diplomacy, Economics, Military Affairs, and Information
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Asia

61. Coercing Fluently: The Grammar of Coercion in the Twenty-first Century

Author:
C. Anthony Pfaff
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
To illustrate the logic and grammar of coercion, this analysis relies on decision-theory methods, such as game theory, that examine the strategic decision-making process in interactions with adversaries and partners. The intent here is not to offer predictive models of rational-actor behavior. Rather, the intent is to use game-theory and similar approaches to understand how coercion works better. This analysis considers competitive interactions between actors that have discrete and qualifiable, if not quantifiable, preferences and who behave rationally, though this analysis acknowledges the behavior that is considered rational is frequently informed by nonrational social, cultural, and psychological factors. Considering these competitive interactions allows one to identify “rules of thumb” that can orient and guide actors as they compete. This analysis emphasizes coercion does not depend simply on imposing costs; rather, it depends on placing adversaries in positions in which they must act and their most rational option is the one most beneficial to one’s own cause. To achieve this result, actors must carefully calibrate their demands to ensure their adversary’s cost of concession is as low as possible. To prevent challenges in the first place, actors should convince the adversary acting on a threat is one’s most rational response. If convincing the adversary is not possible, then one must find ways to decrease the value of the adversary’s challenge. When none of those options are possible, preparing for conflict is likely one’s rational option. This analysis then applies the rules of thumb to US relations with China, Russia, and Iran.
Topic:
Military Strategy, Game Theory, Coercion, and International Competition
Political Geography:
China, Iran, Middle East, and Asia

62. Enabling a More Externally Focused and Operational PLA – 2020 PLA Conference Papers

Author:
Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, David Brewster, Christopher Cairns, Roger Cliff, and R. Evan Ellis
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
Although the People’s Liberation Army is not yet a global expeditionary force on par with the US military, the former has nevertheless significantly expanded its ability to operate abroad. Through enhanced technological capabilities, robust relationships with foreign militaries, increased access to overseas military bases and dual-use facilities, and the implementation of major structural reforms, the People’s Liberation Army has built a more integrated joint force capable of conducting a wider and more complex array of missions. This volume advances the understanding of the People’s Liberation Army’s capability to conduct overseas missions by examining China’s military relations with Europe, Africa, and Latin America; the country’s military activities in the Indian Ocean, polar regions, and Pacific Island countries; and the emerging roles of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force and the Joint Logistic Support Force. This volume finds the People’s Liberation Army is engaged in a wide range of activities throughout the world, including port calls, joint exercises, seminars, and personnel exchanges. China sells weapons to some parts of the world and seeks to acquire military and dual-use technology from others. In addition, the People’s Liberation Army seeks to increase its capability to operate in parts of the world, such as the Indian Ocean, Pacific Island countries, and polar regions, where the organization has only had a minimal presence in the past.
Topic:
Armed Forces, Military, and People's Liberation Army (PLA)
Political Geography:
China, Asia, Asia-Pacific, and United States of America

63. CCP Inc. in West Africa: How Chinese Party-State Actors Secured Critical Minerals in Guinea

Author:
Briana Boland, Lauren Maranto, and Jude Blanchette
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
This CCP Inc. case study explores how Chinese diplomatic, regulatory, financial, and commercial actors work in concert to secure critical minerals in the West African nation of Guinea. Efforts in Guinea to mine bauxite and iron ore, the primary inputs for aluminum and steel, illuminate Beijing’s conduits for influencing and supporting its geo-economic objectives. Examining one key Chinese player in Guinea’s mining sector, this study highlights state actors’ connections with nominally private Chinese companies and the importance of partnerships with state-owned enterprises for building costly infrastructure. Across multiple bauxite and iron ore mining ventures, Chinese diplomatic support and state financing provided conduits to help further favored projects and increase Chinese companies’ access to Guinea’s mining industries.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Natural Resources, Hegemony, Mining, and Superpower
Political Geography:
Africa, China, Asia, and Guinea

64. Aiming for a Quasi-alliance

Author:
Kojiro Tonosaki
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Japan and the United States have introduced strategies to maintain regional stability and prosperity by realizing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific region, and enhancing cooperation with Southeast Asian partners such as the Philippines is critically important to those efforts. Japan has a long history of engagement with the Philippines rooted in economic cooperation, but gradually expanding the agenda to include defense cooperation and capacity building is critical to managing an increasingly complex regional security environment. Japan should further develop its security partnership with the Philippines to reflect its geopolitical importance and address its security vulnerabilities in coordination with the United States and other regional partners. This report details ways to sustain momentum for bilateral security cooperation between Japan and the Philippines as a step toward multilateral security cooperation with the United States and other partners in the future, all aimed at contributing to the stability and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region.
Topic:
Security, International Cooperation, Bilateral Relations, and Alliance
Political Geography:
Japan, Asia, and Philippines

65. Renew SBIR, Just Defend the Recipients against China

Author:
Charles Wessner and Sujai Shivakumar
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
An April 2021 internal report by the Department of Defense (DOD) found that companies funded by the DOD’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program are being targeted by state-sponsored Chinese firms. Based on an examination of a sampling of SBIR award recipients, the Pentagon study concluded that “nearly all cases show that China, not the U.S., is the ultimate beneficiary of DoD and other U.S. government research investments, some of which are significant in size.” The study’s authors cautioned that the study sample was small and that their methodologies warrant review, but their findings are clearly a matter of concern for U.S. policymakers. This justified concern, however, seems to have morphed into quite a different approach. Citing the Pentagon study’s findings, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), the senior Republican on the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, said in June 2022 that he would not support reauthorizing the SBIR program “without reforms to strengthen research security and stop abusive behavior by bad actors lining their pockets with taxpayer dollars.” In a move unrelated to national security, Senator Paul and several other lawmakers are also seeking limits on the number of awards that can be made to individual SBIR companies. (There is no empirical basis for such a restriction, nor could it be effectively implemented, but the proposed measure emerges anew as SBIR comes up for reauthorization.) The risks, however, are real. The Wall Street Journal reported in July that SBIR and the related Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program face “an overhaul or outright extinction” if Congress does not renew their budgets and funding runs out at the end of September. The DOD has already canceled a round of SBIR award solicitations “because of uncertainty over the program’s future.”
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Intellectual Property/Copyright, Business, and Rivalry
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

66. It's Moving Time: Taiwanese Business Responds to Growing U.S.-China Tensions

Author:
Scott Kennedy
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
A new report by the CSIS Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics interprets a formal survey of over 500 Taiwanese business executives, documenting their views about the evolving environment on the island and beyond. The Washington policy community is quite familiar with the views that U.S. and European companies hold toward China, but less clear are the views of Taiwanese companies that are central to the story of the world’s interaction with China. Their opinions have implications for Taiwan’s economic trajectory, cross-strait relations, global supply chains, and the effectiveness of U.S. policy in the region. The report documents that Taiwanese companies are highly concerned about their potential overdependence on the Chinese economy and the possibility of a military conflict. As a result, there is significant support for expanding trade and investment ties via regional arrangements and bilaterally with the United States, as well as for maintaining Taiwan’s technological edge through more spending on research and development and broadening restrictions for technology transfer to China. But perhaps the most noteworthy finding is that Taiwanese companies appear to be moving their businesses at record levels from Mainland China, but also from Taiwan. This report, by Trustee Chair Scott Kennedy, explains how the survey was carried out, then analyzes the sources of Taiwanese companies’ anxieties and the ways they are responding, and concludes by considering the policy implications for all parties involved. The report’s appendix provides a full summary of the original survey results.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Territorial Disputes, Business, Conflict, and Rivalry
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, North America, and United States of America

67. What If . . . Alternatives to a Chinese Military Invasion of Taiwan Image

Author:
Benjamin Jensen, Riley McCabe, and Adrian Bogart
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
With the 20th Party Congress approaching and Xi Jinping seeking an unprecedented third term, it is important to explore the full range of actions Beijing could take to coerce Taiwan over the next 10 years. History provides a range of historical cases that suggest alternatives to a full-scale invasion. As part of its On Future War series, the CSIS International Security Program adapted six historical cases of coercion China could use to target Taiwan short of a costly amphibious invasion. The report looks back to look ahead, using the logic of historical cases ranging from the 1948 Berlin Airlift to the 1980s Tanker War in the Arabian Gulf to identify ways and means Beijing could use to compel Taiwan. The resulting range of scenarios point toward an urgent need to develop new escalation management frameworks supporting the new integrated deterrence strategy.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Military Strategy, and Conflict
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Asia

68. Choking off China’s Access to the Future of AI

Author:
Gregory Allen
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
On October 7, 2022, the Biden administration announced a new export controls policy on artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor technologies to China. These new controls—a genuine landmark in U.S.-China relations—provide the complete picture after a partial disclosure in early September generated confusion. For weeks the Biden administration has been receiving criticism in many quarters for a new round of semiconductor export control restrictions, first disclosed on September 1. The restrictions block leading U.S. AI computer chip designers, such as Nvidia and AMD, from selling their high-end chips for AI and supercomputing to China. The criticism typically goes like this: China’s domestic AI chip design companies could not win customers in China because their chip designs could not compete with Nvidia and AMD on performance. Chinese firms could not catch up to Nvidia and AMD on performance because they did not have enough customers to benefit from economies of scale and network effects. Because of the new export controls, revenues that formerly flowed to U.S. chip companies will now go to Chinese chip companies, offering a viable path to economies of scale and competitive performance. In the short term, this policy will significantly harm Chinese AI data center companies. However, blocking U.S. AI chip designers from selling their world-leading chips is actually good for China in the longer term because it will strengthen China’s domestic chip design ecosystem. While the reasoning in this criticism is sound, it does not imply that the Biden administration’s actions are self-defeating. Rather, it shows how the policy as disclosed in September was incomplete. A policy like this would not make sense if that is the only step the administration planned to take. Clearly something was missing, and industry experts have been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since. On October 7, the other shoe dropped. The Biden administration announced a massive policy shift on semiconductor exports to China as well as revised rules for how the lists of restricted parties are managed. In recent decades, U.S. semiconductor policy has been primarily market driven and laissez faire. With the new policy, which comes on the heels of the CHIPS Act’s passage, the United States is firmly focused on retaining control over so-called “chokepoint” (or as it is sometimes translated from Chinese “stranglehold”) technologies in the global semiconductor technology supply chain. The most important chokepoints in the context of this discussion are AI chip designs, electronic design automation software, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and equipment components. The Biden administration’s latest actions simultaneously exploit U.S. dominance across all four of these chokepoints. In doing so, these actions demonstrate an unprecedented degree of U.S. government intervention to not only preserve chokepoint control but also begin a new U.S. policy of actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry—strangling with an intent to kill.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Hegemony, Artificial Intelligence, Rivalry, and Emerging Technology
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

69. CCP Inc. in Greece: State Grid and China’s Role in the Greek Energy Sector

Author:
Briana Boland, Jude Blanchette, and Cory Combs
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
How did one of China’s core state-owned enterprises gain a foothold in Greece’s electricity sector? This case study examines the “CCP Inc.” ecosystem of Chinese officials, state-owned enterprises, policy banks, and private firms that helped State Grid Corporation of China (State Grid) and other Chinese companies gain a stake in the national electric grid and renewable energy projects in Greece. State Grid is the world’s largest utility company, pursuing an international strategy of expansion that both implements and informs Beijing’s policy goals for global energy infrastructure. By investigating how State Grid acquired a stake in Greece’s national power grid operator, the Chinese financing and energy sector business deals that followed State Grid’s investment, and the constraints that limited State Grid’s later efforts to expand its control over Greece’s electric grid, this case study offers insight to the role of state-owned enterprises in the global reach of China’s state capitalist system.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Finance, Electricity, and State-Owned Enterprises
Political Geography:
China and Asia

70. Colombia’s Relationship with the PRC

Author:
Evan Ellis
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
From October 6 to 16, the author traveled throughout Colombia to speak with businesspeople, academics, and other professionals about the country’s security panorama, its commercial and other relationships with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and prospects for evolving those relationships under the new government of Gustavo Petro. This white paper, the first of two on those interactions, addresses the country’s important and deepening relationship with the PRC and its companies. In recent years, Colombia’s political and security relationship with the PRC has been limited. This arguably reflects Bogotá’s perception that deepening political and security ties with the PRC might damage its close and important relationship with the United States. Nonetheless, despite perceptions that the PRC is more of a threat than an opportunity in the commercial arena, the presence of Chinese companies and their representatives in the country has expanded remarkably. Under the Petro government, all dimensions of Colombia’s relationship with the PRC, from political and security affairs to economic ones, are poised to expand and shift in ways that may cause unease in Washington.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Bilateral Relations, Hegemony, and Rivalry
Political Geography:
China, Asia, Colombia, and South America

71. A Seismic Shift: The New U.S. Semiconductor Export Controls and the Implications for U.S. Firms, Allies, and the Innovation Ecosystem

Author:
Sujai Shivakumar, Charles Wessner, and Thomas Howell
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
On October 7, 2022, the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced sweeping revisions to its export controls, which are aimed at restricting China’s ability to obtain certain high-end semiconductor devices with potential military applications, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductor devices. This announcement, the most expansive export control action in decades, represents a fundamental shift in the traditional strategy underlying the U.S. and allied export control regime. As National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan put it , until now, “we previously maintained a ‘sliding scale’ approach that said we need to stay only a couple of generations ahead. That is not the strategic environment we are in today. Given the foundational nature of certain technologies, such as advanced logic and memory chips, we must maintain as large of a lead as possible.” In effect, the new measures are intended to dramatically slow, if not freeze Chinese developmental capability.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Innovation, Rivalry, and Semiconductors
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

72. CCP Inc. in Portugal: China's Investments in Financial Services and the Reach of the Chinese Communist Party in the Private Sector

Author:
Andrew Polk
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
This “CCP Inc.” case study explores how an ecosystem of Chinese party-state actors enabled a range of state-owned and private Chinese companies to embed themselves in Portugal’s financial system, creating a foothold to widen China’s financial presence within the country and beyond. The report specifically focuses on Fosun International Limited, a subsidiary of the Chinese conglomerate Fosun Group, which became a key source of foreign direct investment in Portugal through strategic acquisitions that opened market access for Chinese firms. Fosun’s investments in Portugal provide insight into the Chinese Communist Party’s activism in shaping the business environment for private sector players, as the company’s international strategy faced the challenge of balancing alignment with state goals against a regulatory crackdown on private sector outbound spending.
Topic:
Finance, Investment, Private Sector, and International Competition
Political Geography:
China and Asia

73. A World in Crisis: The “Winter Wars” of 2022–2023

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman and Paul Cormarie
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
t is obvious that the world now faces a wide range of potential wars and crises. What is far less obvious is the level of confrontation between the U.S. and its strategic partners with both Russia and China, the rising levels of other types of violence that are emerging on a global level, how serious these wars and crises can become, and what kind of future could eventually emerge out of so many different crises, confrontations and conflicts, and trends. These issues are addressed in depth in a new analysis by the Emeritus Chair in Strategy at the CSIS entitled A World in Crisis: The “Winter Wars” of 2022–2023. This analysis explores the risk on the basis that war does not have to mean actual military conflict. Here, it is important to note that avoiding or minimizing combat is scarcely peace. As Sun Tzu pointed out in the Art of War well over 2,000 years ago, “war” does not have to involve the use of military force or any form of actual combat. His statement that “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” applies to every form of major military confrontation and gray area warfare between opposing powers. It recognizes that it is all too easy to predict dire outcomes from the War in Ukraine, the current arms races with Russia and China, and growing levels of violence and confrontation between other states. There is still a case, however, for examining the broader impact of the war, the growing intensity of the arms races with Russia and China, and the current overall patterns of global conflict as the world enters the winter of 2022-2023. It is already clear that this will be a deeply troubled winter in many areas of the globe, that the level of confrontation between major powers has risen sharply, that they do seek to subdue the enemy without fighting, and their rivalry has become the equivalent of political and economic warfare. It is equally clear that the wide range of lower-level conflicts between other powers, their civil wars, and the abuses many governments commit against their own citizens are also intensifying, although many of these conflicts have been going on in some form for years or even decades. In far too many cases, the world is not moving toward peace. It is moving towards repression and war. Accordingly, this analysis argues that the world already faces a series of possible and ongoing “Winter Wars” in 2022-2023 that may not escalate to open military conflict but that are wars at the political and economic level and in competition to build-up more lethal military forces both for deterrence and to exert political leverage. It also shows that these “Wars” already pose serious risks and could escalate sharply and in unpredictable ways for at least the next five to ten years.
Topic:
Security, Military Strategy, Rivalry, and Competition
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, North America, and United States of America

74. A Model Comprehensive MSME Policy for Indian States

Author:
Richard M. Rossow
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Small businesses are the job-creating engines of any healthy economy. Having a supportive policy environment can help high-potential businesses accelerate. Creating such an environment is a shared responsibility of both the central government and India’s 28 states. Many state governments in India have piecemeal policies and programs to support micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). About one-third of India’s states have worked to craft multifaceted and supportive policies and practices to encourage MSME growth. This paper reviews the ideas already enacted in different Indian states, as well as in national and subnational governments around the world. Developing a single comprehensive MSME policy is an effective approach for a state-level government to consider. It allows small firms to find policy incentives and programs in a single place, and perhaps most importantly, it allows a state to directly consider a range of intertwined incentives that can work together. This will maximize the positive impact to small firms that are poised for growth. Facilitating the growth of MSMEs will have a much wider impact on India’s job growth overall. The large multinational manufacturers that India hopes to lure to invest through programs like Make in India require a diverse and efficient network of suppliers. Supporting MSME growth can create a multiplier effect—driving new investment and employment generation by larger firms. The central government has affirmed a 25 percent target of gross domestic product (GDP) for manufacturing, up from around 14 percent today. This white paper provides leading international examples in the promotion of small businesses, while also enumerating best practices from Indian states’ MSME policies. The final section lays out the 30 elements commonly utilized by Indian states to offer targeted assistance to MSMEs as a roadmap for other states that want to provide best-in-class policy interventions.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Business, and Job Creation
Political Geography:
India and Asia

75. Debt Policy of State-Owned Mining Enterprises in Mongolia

Author:
Andrew Bauer and Batpurev Ayushsuren
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Natural Resource Governance Institute
Abstract:
Mongolia relies heavily on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to manage several key mining assets. Baganuur, Shivee Ovoo, Erdenet, Mongolrostsvetmet and Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi are the most important majority state-owned companies operating large-scale mines. From 2019 to 2021, debt held by mining SOEs increased 4.3 times. The total liabilities of these companies reached USD 2.3 billion, representing 15 percent of GDP. The new debt was largely issued to cover social spending and an economically questionable railway project. It is unclear how the government intends to service this debt, particularly since profitability at most mining SOEs has been weak and most face liquidity challenges. Mining SOEs’ poor financial health is due to the combination of quasi-fiscal activity financing, poor project selection and management, and inadequate legislation and control mechanisms for new debt issuance. Legal reforms to new debt issuance and stronger Ministry of Finance oversight of SOEs are needed, in addition to stricter implementation of existing legal requirements such as collecting and disclosing complete data on SOE debt. Mongolia’s government should also review mining SOE quasi-fiscal expenditures, such as price controls on coal, and other reasons for low profitability of mines.
Topic:
Debt, Natural Resources, Mining, and State-Owned Enterprises
Political Geography:
Mongolia and Asia

76. A 'Bright Path' Forward or a Grim Dead End? The Political Impact of the Belt and Road Initiative in Kazakhstan

Author:
Anton Louthan
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
This report assesses the political impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Kazakhstan. Specifically, it examines whether and how the People’s Republic of China can pursue a strategy of economic statecraft to further its foreign policy and political interests in Kazakhstan. Despite Kazakhstan’s importance for the success of the BRI’s overland trade corridors, the report argues that important financial, foreign policy, and political constraints limit Beijing’s potential to influence Nur-Sultan. Beijing’s concerns over upsetting its relationship with the Russian Federation and the fact that the value of bilateral trade, investment, and Kazakhstani indebtedness to China have decreased in recent years suggest that Beijing is less willing to, capable of, or interested in using the BRI to influence Kazakhstan. The perceived closeness in this bilateral relationship has less to do with the influence of the BRI and more to do with the alignment of both countries’ geopolitical interests before the initiative’s creation. The report does not suggest that Chinese influence has decreased, but rather shows how Kazakhstan has been able to maintain a degree of political autonomy. Nur-Sultan has played a proactive role in forming its relationship with Beijing through its pursuit of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s “multi-vector” foreign policy strategy. In diversifying Kazakhstan’s diplomatic, economic, and political ties with Russia, China, the European Union, and the United States, Nur-Sultan has been able to avoid complete dependence on one country. Furthermore, Kazakhstan has been able to shape the size and scope of Chinese economic activity by guiding the initiative’s investments and projects to further the government’s domestic development agenda, Nurly Zhol (translated as “Bright Path”). However, issues related to corruption and deepening ties between Chinese and Kazakhstani elites through the BRI have likely strengthened Kazakhstan’s authoritarian political structure.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Development, Bilateral Relations, Infrastructure, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Autonomy, and Influence
Political Geography:
China, Kazakhstan, and Asia

77. How Will China Respond to the Russia-Ukraine Crisis?

Author:
Chris Miller
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
How will China respond to a potential Russian military escalation against Ukraine? Relations between Russia and China have intensified in recent years, with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping holding regular summits and the two countries’ militaries participating in joint exercises and cooperating in some defense industrial efforts. Ties between Moscow and Beijing are now closer than any time since the days of Stalin and Mao, driven by a shared perception that the United States is each country’s primary foreign policy challenge. One top Russian official told media in December 2021 that the relationship now “exceeds an alliance.”[1] Chinese state media, meanwhile, have vocally backed Russia in arguing that the current crisis stems from the US “using NATO as a tool to cannibalize and squeeze Russia’s strategic space.”[2] The 2014 war in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea was an important factor driving Russia and China closer to each other, as Russia sought to reduce post-Crimea international isolation and as Beijing realized it could drive a hard bargain in its bilateral relationship with Russia on issues like energy. China’s response to the 2014 war, however, was generally to avoid taking sides. China accepted a narrative that placed blame on the West for causing the crisis, with top diplomats citing Western “foreign interference for causing the crisis,” but didn’t approve of Russia’s seizure of Crimea or its military actions in the Donbas.[3] China abstained from voting on the key United Nations resolutions regarding Crimea, for example, and it still declines to recognize Crimea as Russian territory. Similarly, it verbally rejected US and European sanctions on Russia though it let Chinese firms, including the country’s big state-owned banks, abide by these sanctions to avoid being cut off from US financial markets and the international banking system. Compared to 2014, however, China may find it more difficult to avoid involvement in an escalating crisis. Leaders in Beijing and around the world will see the US response to any military escalation against Ukraine as sending signals about whether the US could effectively respond to future crises in the Taiwan Strait or East or South China Seas. The success or failure of US efforts to impose meaningful costs on Russia if it escalates will be seen as a test of whether the US could do something similar in Asia. Moreover, after repeated summits between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, including Xi’s description of Putin as his “best friend,” China’s approach to Russia amid a crisis will also be interpreted as sending signals about China’s own capabilities and influence. Because of this, China will not see a new phase of war between Russia and Ukraine as a peripheral issue in its foreign policy, even though China has no core issues at stake in Ukraine itself. China is most likely to be implicated in the crisis by potential Western sanctions on Russia, which in contrast to 2014 will impose substantially more pressure on Beijing to take sides. China’s decision either to adhere to new Western sanctions or to help Russia avoid them will shape escalation pathways and determine the magnitude of economic and political isolation that sanctions impose.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, Sanctions, Military Affairs, Economy, Crisis Management, and Escalation
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Eurasia, Ukraine, and Asia

78. Correlates of Politics and Economics: How Chinese Investment in Africa Changes Political Influence

Author:
Carla D. Jones, Mengge Li, and Hermann A. Ndofor
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
This study investigates the impact of Chinese economic engagement in Africa (FDI and loans from China to African countries) on African countries’ international political alignment as evidenced by voting patterns in the UN General Assembly. We find three seasons of Chinese policy in Africa. Pre 2008, Chinese economic engagement in Africa was driven primarily by economic considerations, market seeking for FDI and likely resource seeking for loans. During the Great Recession, China came to terms with its rise as an economic power and thus started leveraging its economic power in international relationships. During this season, both Chinese FDI and loans were no longer driven by economic considerations but rather by international relations which led to increased political alignment with recipient African countries. The final season captured the Xi Jinping era beginning 2013. During this season, Chinese FDI had no effect on African countries’ foreign policy alignment with China, but Chinese loans still had a significant positive effect. This likely reflects a movement away from FDI to less transparent bilateral loans as a means of utilizing Chinese economic power to influence foreign policy. During the entire period of the study, Chinese FDI to Africa resulted in reduced political alignment between African countries and the United States.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, Politics, Investment, and Influence
Political Geography:
Africa, China, and Asia

79. China's Security Management Towards Central Asia

Author:
Niva Yau Tsz Yan
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
In the early years of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and Central Asian countries (roughly 1992-1999), bilateral security discussions strictly focused on the then-looming influence of a Uyghur-led independence movement in Xinjiang. Chinese officials directly asked Central Asian states to not support the East Turkestan Movement, orienting the issue as a regional mutual security interest. While concerns for stability in Xinjiang continue as the foundational drive towards deepening security relations with Central Asian states, new security interests have entered discussions since the late 2010s as expanded bilateral trade brought new issues, such as investment security and corruption-fuelled anti-China sentiment. Also, domestic issues in Central Asia, concerning leadership transition, economic decline, and nationalism, expanded the Chinese discussion of the role of Islam in politics and implications on Xinjiang’s stability. To address these interests, Chinese security engagement in Central Asia has steadily expanded. Within and beyond the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), multilateral dialogue on security issues have been regularized among all ranks of Central Asian security officers. The SCO has conducted annual security exercises since 2010, though the size of deployment, focus, and scope have changed. Between 2010 and 2019, the SCO created five expert groups to coordinate regional law enforcement agencies in order to address specific security issues. However, in comparison, bilateral security engagement remains more diverse. The number of meetings is increasing, and their formats are becoming more efficient. There are joint patrols and operation, regular military exercises pre-pandemic, short-term training and long-term military degree programs in China, transfer of security equipment, construction of security infrastructure, and the presence of Chinese private security companies. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are the two most responsive countries towards welcoming these initiatives. In addition to multilateral and bilateral security engagement, the PRC has increased its military capacity in its western region. More emphasis has been placed on increased combat readiness, as well on the condition and human capacity on the border. While some areas of existing security cooperation are productive in meeting security goals, such as consensus over non-tolerance of Uyghur independence supporters and tightening illegal cross-border activities, two problems persist. First, while the PRC to an extend desires a regional approach to security, deliverables are more visible as the outcome of bilateral cooperation in Central Asia. These regional efforts are meant to deter any Central Asian governments from making independent assessments and forming their own foreign policy on Xinjiang without PRC participation. Second, language remains the most difficult operational obstacle to overcome. The dominance of the Russian language cements a substantial cultural and operational gap between the armies. So far, Central Asia-PRC cooperation has been a pragmatic, opportunistic choice—a choice that Central Asian leaders made due to the absence of comparable committed engagement from other major powers. Moving forward, in order to balance PRC security engagement, Central Asia’s strategic significance must be independently considered outside of its role in securing Xinjiang for the PRC.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, International Cooperation, and Engagement
Political Geography:
China, Central Asia, and Asia

80. The Rise of Sino-Russian Biotech Cooperation

Author:
Svitlana Lebedenko
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
The People’s Republic of China’s rise as a global innovation power is rooted in the development of a sovereign innovation infrastructure, one that allows China to compete in high-technology races with the United States. This process is complemented by an intensifying science and technology partnership with the Russian Federation. By decoupling from China and Russia, the United States and its allies are pushing China and Russia closer to each other. The paper discusses recent examples of Sino-Russian biotechnology cooperation projects, offering an early account of the emerging integration of two distinct but complementary innovation infrastructures.
Topic:
Development, Science and Technology, Infrastructure, Innovation, and Biotechnology
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Eurasia, and Asia

81. Immaterial Competition: Rethinking the Roles of Economics and Technology in the US-China Rivalry

Author:
Arthur Tellis
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The US-China rivalry is likely to be the fulcrum around which international affairs are structured in the twenty-first century, akin to the Cold War from 1947 to 1991. This rivalry, like its predecessor, emerges from divergent geopolitical interests and imperatives. While the Chinese Communist Party’s aims are many, various, and subject to change, they include its continued control of the Chinese State; economic and technological modernization and leadership; internal order; complete union with Taiwan on Beijing’s terms; certain territorial concessions from its neighbors; and the disestablishment of security arrangements across the Indo-Pacific that it views as threatening and trammeling. The latter three are in direct conflict with US interests and imperatives in the Indo-Pacific: prohibiting China’s unilateral modification of the status quo vis-à-vis Taiwan; preserving the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its allies and partners; and maintaining its military partnerships and presence in the region. These antithetical interests animate a larger struggle for hegemony in the Indo-Pacific and serve as the terms on which this contest will be decided. Explanations of the rivalry as an ideological contest or a competition born from competing economic interests are less compelling by comparison. The United States and China are motivated to an extent by ideological imperatives, but these do not appear to propel or serve as the central stakes for the rivalry as much as they affect each’s disposition toward the other. Long-standing trade, investment, and commercial disputes and competition, meanwhile, are not so substantial that they motivate the rivalry. While these issues are impactful to niche communities and conspicuous to national policymakers, they are not particularly consequential for national prosperity. The logic of competition, trade, and globalization, in fact, suggests that the US-China commercial relationship is mutually beneficial, notwithstanding each’s concerns with the other’s economic statecraft and market-leading firms. In their geopolitical rivalry, there are a few key forces or contests of interest: path dependence, regime continuity, prudent strategy, third-party alignments, and the balance of military forces in the Indo-Pacific. Each affects the United States’ and China’s ability to achieve their ends and shapes their rivalry. Economic and technological statecraft, by contrast, is largely peripheral to these ends as it does not effectively advance political objectives relevant to territory, borders, security architectures, and national defense. That is not to suggest that economic and technological factors are irrelevant, however; they shape, constrain, and advantage the United States and China across their rivalry’s key forces and contests of interests. Particularly noteworthy are economic and technological factors’ impact on the military balance. Tradition and intuition hold that nations with bigger and more advanced economies are better postured to resource, procure, and manufacture military equipment and can therefore generate greater military power. In the case of the US-China military competition, however, total military power is less relevant than the specific military balance in the Indo-Pacific, in which the distribution and strength of forces in the theater, the capability and reliability of key materiel inputs of outsized importance, and the operational concepts and tactics with which each’s military fights are more important. Total military power—and in particular greater military equipment—matters on the margin, of course, if only because the party with the greater mass and quality of materiel will be able to retain more forces in the Indo-Pacific, maintain more of these key materiel inputs, and develop novel operational concepts and tactics tailored to their superior materiel. Neither the United States’ nor China’s total economic production, public balance sheet, high-technology commercial firms, and scientific production are likely to provide a decisive or lasting advantage on this count. Each country’s economy can support substantially greater military spending, limiting the extent to which one can derive an advantage from the other’s more binding constraints. The capacity and maturity of each country’s defense industrial base is of greater relevance, but these are flexible quotients that investment can improve. This elasticity of defense production suggests that microeconomic endowments may be binding in the short run but variable in the longer run, meaning that policy choices—rather than existing economic endowments—constrain military production. Technological endowments, informing each country’s capacity for broad innovation, are of similarly bounded importance because military technology is somewhat narrow and other factors, such as military procurement processes and inflexibility in concepts of operation, limit the extent to which superior technology translates into military advantage. The fundamental result of this argument is that the concerns that propel the emerging US-China economic and technological competition are ultimately not all that relevant to the matters at the core to their rivalry and to the instruments of national power most relevant to these issues. The US should therefore be wary of policies ostensibly demanded by economic and technological competition and may find its interests better served by limiting its rivalry with China to military competition driven by its core geopolitical interests.
Topic:
Economics, Science and Technology, Strategic Competition, and Rivalry
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

82. 'Win Without Fighting': The Chinese Communist Party's Political and Institutional Warfare Against the West

Author:
John Lee and Lavina Lee
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
When compared to Western forms of diplomatic conversation and strategic discussion, phrases emanating from Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can appear peculiar, platitudinous, and so ambiguous as to be devoid of practical content. China’s paramount leader Xi Jinping speaks frequently about a ‘community of shared future,’ a ‘common destiny for mankind’ as part of his ‘China dream,’ or of his country’s ‘rejuvenation.’ He promises to pursue and achieve a ‘new type of great-power relations’ with the United States that will ‘expand the converging interests of all and build a big global family of harmony and cooperation.’ Yielding to the temptation to dismiss these phrases as glib and meaningless or as empty promises to the world would be a serious mistake. Emerging as the victorious side after the world was reshaped in the aftermath of the Second World War, and, more recently, the formal end of the Cold War, the United States and its allies have generally enjoyed dominance in all forms of power. The challenge and threat of China is largely understood in the context of its increase in material power, which is relatively easy to understand and quantify. In contrast, far less attention is being paid to non-material power, which is, admittedly, more nebulous and difficult to assess. However, China’s focus has been on relentlessly building its ‘comprehensive national power’ (CNP), that is, the sum-total of its powers and strengths—economic, military affair, science and technology, education, and resource—and influence. Thus, CNP encompasses both material and non-material power, and China’s buildup of both of these forms of power best explains its strategic and diplomatic successes. Chinese ‘rejuvenation’ is also not just about building GDP or having the world’s largest naval fleet. Rather, the CCP’s vision of a ‘community of shared future for mankind’ is very much about displacing the dominance enjoyed by the US and other advanced democracies in shaping global discourse and conversations, norms and standards, and influence within and through institutions. The advanced democracies have taken these less obvious forms of power for granted, a complacency that Beijing has exploited. As the CCP recognizes, “In the final analysis, the rise of a great power is a cultural phenomenon. It (that power) must be accepted by the international community. Be accommodated by the international system, rely on the international system, and be recognised by international norms.” To be sure, there is a rich and growing literature on the CCP’s various information, influence, and institutional resources and activities, and this report does not seek to reproduce the excellent work already in the public domain. Rather, it begins from the uncomfortable but growing realization that the CCP believes it has long been at war with the US and its allies, even though kinetic force has been used in only a few instances. It looks at why this war is being waged, what the hallmarks of success for Beijing look like, and how the use of non-material strategies in the form of political and institutional warfare complements and augments China’s better known material approaches in the CCP’s determined attempts to win this ongoing war or struggle. The report seeks to emphasize that, in understanding the challenge and threat of China, political and institutional warfare should not be treated as optional or interesting adjuncts to traditional notions of warfare or that their effects are peripheral to core strategic and even military objectives. On the contrary, non-material approaches are essential to the Chinese strategy and have real-world outcomes that are often the same ones that the use of force or economic coercion is intended to achieve. Just as the CCP views comprehensive power as encompassing material and non-material elements, its notion of waging and winning a war may or may not include a military element. We need to do the same when countering, deterring, and, if necessary, defeating Chinese strategies and actions. Moreover, the CCP’s approach is not just about putting its views forward in overt or veiled ways in the hope that it will change our minds about various issues. Instead, Beijing’s strategy is much more proactive and profound than that. The CCP’s political and institutional approaches are about fundamentally changing and shaping even the way we begin to think about or analyze an issue or what we perceive to be its ‘first principles.’ It is designed to shape the way we talk (or do not talk) about an issue, the presumptive and analytical frameworks we employ to do so, and the discourse regarding it that is accepted and deemed acceptable. At first glance, such a deeply cognitive approach might seem fanciful and impossible to implement. However, this report offers two recent case studies of instances where the CCP enjoyed considerable success in melding the material and the cognitive—with tangible and real-world results. This report then offers a summary of the real-world strategic effects and their impacts on the tactical decision-making of countries and their elites that should concern those in charge of our political, economic, military, and diplomatic policies and activities. In conclusion, it suggests some general responses to the CCP’s strategy, approach, and actions in these contexts.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, Economy, Institutions, Strategic Competition, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

83. Regaining the High Ground Against China: A Plan to Achieve US Naval Aviation Superiority This Decade

Author:
Bryan Clark and Timothy A. Walton
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps face growing challenges ranging from China and Russia to regional threats such as Iran and North Korea, all of whom seek to undermine their neighbors’ stability and revise geopolitical relationships in their favor. Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic downturn, each of these potential adversaries continued to improve its military capabilities, especially the number and reach of precision missiles able to strike U.S. allies and slow or prevent intervention by U.S. naval forces. Supported by commercial and military surveillance networks in every domain, weapons located on adversary territory are capable of threatening U.S. and allied ships, troop formations, and aircraft hundreds of miles away. U.S. naval aviation risks sliding into irrelevance unless Navy and Marine Corps leaders embrace organizational and investment changes that would enable more effective operational concepts against peer adversaries. To support the approaches, naval air forces will need greater reach, adaptability, and capacity, which this study proposes to address by changing the composition of carrier air wings and repurposing aircraft based ashore or on surface combatants and amphibious ships. Rebalancing naval aviation primarily involves force management, supported by additional procurement or modification of existing aircraft and payloads. This contrasts with prevailing Navy and Marine Corps plans, which sustain the existing force with minimal improvements while prioritizing development of next-generation capabilities. Not only does this approach fail to address the urgent nature of Russian and Chinese threats, but it also perpetuates the Navy’s expectation that revolutionary new capabilities will fix problems that demand tactical, organizational, or adaptive technical solutions. That strategy failed to deliver in the cases of the Littoral Combat Ship, Zumwalt-class destroyer, and Ford-class carrier. The F/A-XX program for a sixth-generation air superiority fighter-even if successful-is unlikely to transform naval aviation but could consume resources needed to address peer adversaries during the next decade. The shortfalls facing naval airpower against the People’s Republic of China are significant, but not insurmountable. Analysts have pronounced the death of the aircraft carrier several times since the end of World War II, but by exploiting its adaptability and mobility U.S. naval forces could remain relevant against peer opponents despite the emergence of long-range sensor and precision weapon networks. However, achieving the reach and capacity necessary to counter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific will depend on carriers focusing on the mission only they can do sustainably and at scalelong-range counter-air and strike warfare. Navy and Marine Corps leaders have an opportunity to substantially improve the ability of maritime airpower to influence events in the Indo-Pacific. However, rebalancing naval aviation will require overcoming cultural, organizational, and programmatic hurdles. As described in this report, the necessary changes are possible and affordable, but only if naval leaders embrace the urgency of their challenges and do not continue to hope they can continue to push their problems-and solutions-out into the future.
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Armed Forces, Military Affairs, Navy, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

84. Chinese Political Warfare: The PLA’s Information and Influence Operations

Author:
John Lee
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Material power is relatively easy to understand and quantify. Much less attention is given to nonmaterial power, which is admittedly more nebulous and difficult to assess. Even so, if power is broadly defined as the capacity to exercise or impose one’s will over another, then nonmaterial forms of power need to be taken seriously. This means understanding them, increasing one’s capacity to operationalize and exercise them, and institutionalizing their use to achieve national and security interests. The issue of nonmaterial power (especially information and influence operations, which will fall under the term political warfare) is arising because these forms of power have been taken for granted or have been largely ignored by the advanced democracies. Beijing is exploiting our complacency. There is already a rich and growing body of literature on the various information, influence, and institutional resources and activities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This brief does not seek to reproduce the excellent work already out there
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, Armed Forces, and Information Warfare
Political Geography:
China and Asia

85. Learning to Win: Using Operational Innovation to Regain the Advantage at Sea against China

Author:
Bryan Clark, Timothy A. Walton, and Trent Hone
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The US Navy has spent the last decade attempting to pivot from efficiently maintaining the post–Cold War peace to effectively preventing and fighting a war against China or Russia. The circa-2000 Navy faced pervasive low-end threats from terrorists, insurgents, and regional opponents; today it is up against great power adversaries who used the past twenty years of relative stability to modernize and expand their fleets. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is now larger than its American counterpart and is narrowing the US Navy’s capability advantages.1 Russia’s Navy, while smaller than that of the United States or China, boasts some of the most capable submarines in the world and hypersonic missile-equipped frigates.2 Proliferation of computing, sensing, material, and countermeasure technologies has leveled the playing field for military capability development. Building faster, more precise, stealthier, or smarter ships, aircraft, and weapons than opponents⎯the US Navy’s playbook since the Cold War⎯will no longer yield substantial or persistent advantages. The Navy will need to continue pursuing improved capabilities, but regaining and maintaining an edge against Chinese and Russian forces will depend as much or more on the US fleet establishing new operational concepts and tactics that exploit its strengths and its enemies’ vulnerabilities.3
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Navy, Maritime, and Innovation
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

86. Understanding and Countering China's Approach to Economic Decoupling from the United States

Author:
John Lee
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Many experts have highlighted American efforts to partially decouple from China. Yet China began pursuing a far more ambitious and comprehensive decoupling strategy vis-à-vis the United States long before Donald Trump entered the White House. This monograph examines China’s evolving approach to economic decoupling from the US. It makes the following arguments and conclusions. First, on the back of a preexisting mercantilist political economic structure, China has been explicitly pursuing economic decoupling from US and allied economies on Chinese terms for at least a decade. Second, while the US seeks to decouple some aspects of its economic activity from China, the latter seeks to dominate vast segments of the Asian economy and to decouple these segments from the US. This is the Chinese strategy and threat that the US vastly underappreciates. Third, the most important segments are the high-tech and high-value sectors. These sectors are where competition is the most consequential and where decoupling on US terms needs to occur. Fourth, China faces increasingly serious problems and obstacles regarding its decoupling strategy. Many of these arise out of structural weaknesses inherent in its political economy. The monograph is written to assist the Biden administration and those who follow it to possess a deeper understanding of: China’s actions and the motives behind them; China’s strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities; and How the US and its allies can craft an evolving approach that better plays to their individual and collective strengths and advantages. China hopes the US and its allies will adopt a cautious, gradualist, and ineffective approach to countering Beijing’s strategy and objectives. The Chinese Communist Party knows the US and other advanced economies still have immense advantages despite clever Chinese messaging to the contrary. The US and its allies continue to enjoy considerable leverage and remain well placed to partially decouple from China on their preferred terms, but they need to act quickly, collectively, and decisively.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Economics, and National Security
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

87. Chinese Information and Influence Warfare in Asia and the Pacific

Author:
John Lee
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The People’s Liberation Army’s increasingly provocative and reckless activities in and around disputed zones such as Taiwan, the Senkaku Islands, and the South China Sea constitute only one means through which Beijing seeks to change key aspects of the regional order and compel others to “accept its interests.” However, the Chinese Communist Party and PLA are already decades into China’s information and influence war, which is designed to either weaken the will and capabilities of the United States and its allies should military conflict break out or, even better, eliminate the need for China to use military force to achieve its primary objectives (i.e., to “win without fighting”). In this context, the PLA is several steps ahead of the West; whereas Western analysts observe that the PLA is operating in the “grey zone,” the PLA is instead redefining and expanding this grey zone by manipulating how other countries think about it. With respect to this so-called grey zone, a cost-benefit analysis encompassing both objective and subjective elements typically determines an entity’s decision to respond with military force. For example, crafting narratives about the PLA’s military superiority, elite capture, ability to foment disunity within a target country, or normalization of coercion raises the West’s threshold of what provocations demand a military response—thereby expanding the grey zone within which the PLA and CCP are allowed to operate. Thus, Beijing is well ahead of the US and its allies in conceptualizing and operationalizing the use of military actions other than (kinetic) war to achieve political or strategic objectives. Finally, Asia and the Pacific constitute both the primary and most suitable region within which the Chinese can conduct information and influence warfare. These sub-regions’ unique material, geographical, ideational, and cultural characteristics render them especially suitable for Beijing to successfully wage political warfare. This policy memo describes the key objectives, strategies, and tactics of Chinese information and influence warfare developed and refined for use in the Asia-Pacific region. It focuses on maritime Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the areas of highest interest for the US, Australia, and their allies. Offering Singapore, Thailand, and the Solomon Islands as three pertinent case studies, the memo also lays the groundwork for an examination of effective US and allied counters to Beijing’s activities in these contexts, which follow-up reports in this series will present.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, National Security, Territorial Disputes, and Information Warfare
Political Geography:
China and Asia

88. An Assessment of US and Allied Information and Influence Warfare

Author:
John Lee
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The first two policy memos in this series on Chinese information and influence warfare pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) believes it is engaged in a perpetual “struggle” against the West and makes no fundamental distinction between wartime and peacetime. These reports also explained that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) plays a central and often dominant role in leading doctrine and operations when it comes to informational and influence warfare. Additionally, the previous memos argued that Asia and the Pacific are both the primary and most suitable subregions for the conduct of such Chinese activities. For the CCP and PLA, the region has unique material, geographical, ideational, and cultural characteristics that render it especially suitable for Beijing to successfully wage political warfare. Previous memos focused on the PLA’s Three Warfares framework, which consists of public opinion, psychological, and legal warfare. The Chinese intent is not merely to disrupt, confuse, or create mischief but to craft and control grand narratives. Doing so is extremely effective because these narratives determine how we reflexively interpret information and situations, what seems possible or not, what seems prudent rather than reckless, and what appears to be rational and in one’s long-term interest. Grand narratives determine how we think about a problem, issue, or development. In doing so, they predetermine the range of “reasonable” options and solutions that we believe are available. The previous memos also offered analysis and examples of how the CCP and PLA are using political warfare to achieve strategic objectives and to undermine the interests of the United States and its allies. Ominously, and in important respects, Beijing is not just “winning without fighting” but taking the more insidious approach of achieving strategic goals without victory.1 This third memo in the series examines US and allied information and influence doctrine and operations, especially by the defense establishments. In these democracies, the government has largely allowed the defense establishments to lead doctrine and capability for the information and influence elements of political warfare. The paper looks at the strengths and shortcomings of how the US and others conceive of information and influence warfare as it relates to responding to Chinese efforts in the region, as detailed in the first two memos. In doing so, it prepares the way for the fourth and final memo, which will look at specific policies and activities that the US and its allies could engage in to advance its interests and values and to counter some of the more damaging and insidious elements of Chinese political warfare in the region. The memo focuses on the US and, to a lesser extent, Australia because these Five Eyes countries are the most active and invested in understanding and countering Chinese information and influencing warfare efforts in the region. It is important to remember that such warfare is different in nature, purpose, and implementation from the usual diplomatic and soft-power efforts undertaken by democracies. The first memo argues as follows: Engaging in information and influence operations (or countering those by other countries) is a whole-of-government enterprise. [But it is] very different from the usual public messaging and soft power efforts led by diplomats and embassies. Engagement in this kind of political warfare is far more akin to missions undertaken by defense forces in that there must be specific objectives, tactics designed based on the objectives and resources available, and quick implementation by ready and well-resourced teams formed specifically for these tasks—even if this type of warfare is relentless and a protracted struggle.2
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, National Security, and Information Warfare
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

89. The Mixed Record of China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Author:
Thomas J. Duesterberg
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a signature program of Xi Jinping, has had undoubted success in supporting Xi’s ambitions to reestablish China as a global leader while strengthening its mercantilist economy. Nonetheless, developed and developing countries are reconsidering the program because of its success—largely for China itself—and because of the global economic and political crises since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. BRI also has increasingly visible problems caused by its operating structure, prompting participants and developed countries whose geoeconomic and geopolitical interests are undermined by the program’s expansion to reassess it. Continued BRI growth is at best questionable and probably unlikely in the wake of growing pushback to the program as well as growing problems inside China itself.`
Topic:
Economics, Infrastructure, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Xi Jinping
Political Geography:
China and Asia

90. Brazilian Perspectives for BRICS

Author:
Marcos Caramuru, José Mário Antunes, and Tatiana Rosito
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI)
Abstract:
The project “Brazilian Perspectives for BRICS - 2022”, developed by CEBRI at the invitation of the Chinese Embassy in Brazil, aimed at mapping trends and defining concrete strategies and proposals to, from a Brazilian perspective, inform the agenda and improve the joint action and international projection of the group, whose rotating presidency is held by China in 2022. The development, coordination, and results of the project were the responsibility of CEBRI and, beyond the original objective, constitute a contribution to the debate on BRICS in Brazil. The project brought together about 30 high-level Brazilian specialists from various areas (academia, civil society, private sector, and public sector) in three closed meetings. This Executive Summary presents a synthesis of the discussions.
Topic:
Development, Geopolitics, Trade, and BRICS
Political Geography:
China, Asia, Brazil, and South America

91. U.S.-ROK Strategy for Enhancing Cooperation on Combating and Deterring Cyber-Enabled Financial Crime

Author:
Jason Bartlett
Publication Date:
11-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
The May 2022 U.S.-ROK Summit between President Joe Biden and President Yoon Suk-yeol revitalized previous bilateral commitments to establish a joint cyber working group to address the growing issue of cyber-enabled financial crime with specific emphasis on cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and illicit North Korean cyber activity.1 This report provides specific policy recommendations for Washington and Seoul to incorporate within the cyber working group to enhance cooperation on combating and deterring cyber-enabled financial crime, especially from state-sponsored actors. North Korea has become the greatest state-sponsored threat to the global financial services sector. From 2021 to June 2022 alone, North Korean cyber operatives and their facilitators stole more than $1 billion (in U.S. currency, as throughout this report unless otherwise indicated) in digital assets through hacking cryptocurrency exchanges and laundering the stolen funds using various financial technologies and obfuscation techniques, including cryptocurrency mixers and foreign over-the-counter brokers. Pyongyang will likely maintain this position as long as the potential gains of cyber operations against financial services are greater than the potential risks and resources needed to conduct these operations. Washington and Seoul must work together to change this reality. This report compiles the findings of a year-long research project to generate actionable policy recommendations for Washington and Seoul to incorporate within their joint cyber working group to strengthen joint deterrence against state-sponsored cyber-enabled financial crime that continues to target both U.S. and South Korean social, financial, and cyber infrastructure. Based on intensive field research and interviews with U.S. and ROK stakeholders, this report outlines current challenges to enhancing U.S.-ROK cyber coordination, details the evolution of North Korea’s cyber program and modern-day threats, provides policy recommendations for the joint cyber working group, and includes an appendix with all relevant U.S. and ROK agencies that can contribute valuable expertise to the group.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Bilateral Relations, Cybersecurity, and Financial Crimes
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North Korea, North America, and United States of America

92. Global Island: Sustaining Taiwan’s International Participation Amid Mounting Pressure from China

Author:
Jacob Stokes, Alexander Sullivan, and Zachary Durkee
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
China under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping has ramped up political, economic, and military pressure on Taiwan. The roots of Beijing’s pressure campaign, including Xi’s personal interactions with Taiwan policy, go back decades. But recent events have deepened and intensified China’s efforts, which include seeking to block Taiwan from engaging the rest of the world as part of a comprehensive strategy to force Taipei to move toward unification with the mainland on Beijing’s terms. China’s comprehensive isolation campaign against Taiwan has three main lines of effort. First, since the election of the Tsai Ing-wen government in 2016, Beijing has revived a campaign to break the few official diplomatic relationships Taiwan enjoys by inducing or coercing the states that recognize Taiwan to shift their recognition to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Second, China seeks to cajole and bully states that have unofficial relations with Taiwan—including advanced liberal democracies—into curtailing those ties. Third, China uses its growing heft in international institutions to prevent Taiwan from playing any role whatsoever in global governance of transnational issues. Taken together, these prongs make up a multi-layered strategy to sever Taiwan’s links with global society. Washington, Taipei, and like-minded partners will have to develop sophisticated strategies to counter China’s moves in order to effectively maintain and advance Taiwan’s international participation while also aligning with the larger objective of sustaining cross-Strait peace and stability. Resources and political will are limited, so choices to focus on particular initiatives should be based on the substantive value they provide more than the symbolism they might hold. In general, Washington and Taipei should roughly prioritize deepening unofficial relations with major and like-minded countries first, expanding multilateral participation second, and protecting Taiwan’s group of official diplomatic relations last. Finally, the authors make three general recommendations for policymakers from the United States, Taiwan, and like-minded partners for sustaining Taiwan’s international participation and detail specific steps to advance them: First, keep U.S. and Taiwan policies aligned on common strategies that maximize substance over symbolism and foster deep, politically sustainable ties across their governments, legislatures, and societies. Second, facilitate the expansion of unofficial links between Taiwan and like-minded allies and partners that can help sustain the political status quo and blunt China’s isolation campaign. Third, defend and advance Taiwan’s ability to contribute to multilateral international organizations in ways that are consistent with long-standing U.S. policy.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, and Participation
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, and United States of America

93. Digital Allies: Deepening U.S.–South Korea Cooperation on Technology and Innovation

Author:
Jacob Stokes, Alexander Sullivan, and Joshua Fitt
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
Rapid advances in digital and other emerging technologies have become a defining feature of international geopolitics and geoeconomics in the 21st century. This report explores how the United States and South Korea can broaden and deepen their alliance through expanded cooperation on issues related to technology and innovation. Despite the continued centrality of traditional security threats—especially those emanating from North Korea—both the United States and South Korea are seeking to deepen and broaden alliance cooperation to address a larger set of shared challenges and opportunities. To that end, both capitals have noted the increasing importance of key technologies for economic growth as well as for security and governance. The two countries are at the very beginning of defining how an augmented alliance will approach technology coordination, but they have decades of economic and trade ties on which to build. Technology issues are central to the policy platforms of both U.S. President Joe Biden’s and South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s administrations and will continue to be important under future administrations in both countries. In addition to examining general consultative frameworks, enhancing U.S.-South Korea technology cooperation requires assessing the state of bilateral interactions sector by sector and issue by issue. The two countries occupy leading roles in many foundational technology ecosystems within the evolving global economy, such as semiconductors, telecommunications, and advanced batteries. In emerging fields such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) collaboration harbors the potential not only to raise living standards through technological breakthroughs but also to promote governance norms in accordance with liberal democratic principles. Potential opportunities for Washington and Seoul to deepen cooperation extend beyond the bilateral context to regional and global affairs, through coordination of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy and South Korea’s New Southern Policy or its successor under the new president-elect, Yoon Suk-yeol. Rapid technological growth and digitization in Indo-Pacific countries, particularly those of Southeast Asia, present both immense economic opportunity and a range of governance challenges. The United States and South Korea have an important opportunity to ensure that technological development promotes a free, open, secure, and prosperous region. Taken together, the strategic rationales for enhancing U.S.-South Korea cooperation on technology issues are strong. Meaningful efforts to that end are already underway, but more can and should be done to deepen alliance coordination. Policymakers in Washington and Seoul should consider recommendations spanning the areas of foreign policy and international organizations, coordination on key technologies, trade and investment, and digital governance and domestic policy. Doing so will enable the alliance to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities presented by the current regional and global landscape.
Topic:
International Cooperation, Science and Technology, Bilateral Relations, Alliance, and Innovation
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North America, and United States of America

94. Following the Crypto: Using Blockchain Analysis to Assess the Strengths and Vulnerabilities of North Korean Hackers

Author:
Jason Bartlett
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
Under heavy and sustained pressure from decades of economic sanctions, North Korea has rapidly expanded its illicit activity within the cyber domain. In particular, Pyongyang has demonstrated an increasing interest in using evolving financial platforms, such as cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, to compensate for the fiscal losses related to economic sanctions on more traditional forms of commercial activity. Since 2014, the Pyongyang-led cybercrime organization known as the Lazarus Group has transformed from a rogue team of hackers to a masterful army of cybercriminals and foreign affiliates, capable of compromising major national financial networks and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of virtual assets. The international community and national governments often incorrectly correlate North Korea’s lack of access to modern computer hardware within its borders to its ability to successfully execute software-reliant cyberattacks. While Beijing and Moscow captivate the attention of most democratic governments concerned about pending cyber intrusions, Pyongyang continues to defy miscalculated expectations by successfully employing myriad sophisticated cyberattacks that target new and developing financial technology. North Korea will likely continue to adapt its cybercrime tactics targeting cryptocurrency to circumvent obstacles presented by economic sanctions on more traditional forms of financial activity and commerce. This report provides in-depth analysis of North Korea’s demonstrated ability to exploit financial technologies, in particular cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, to procure funds for its illicit nuclear and ballistic weapons development programs. This research was supported through blockchain analysis conducted in partnership with TRM Labs, a leading blockchain intelligence firm that seeks to monitor, investigate, and mitigate crypto fraud and financial crime. Through analyzing three case studies of major North Korean hacks, this report outlines key strengths and vulnerabilities in the Lazarus Group’s campaigns to infiltrate cryptocurrency exchanges and steal, launder, and liquidate funds. The report also provides a snapshot of key policy oversights within the regulatory environment in the crypto space of central stakeholders and countries, such as China, the United States, and South Korea. Lastly, this study offers a prospective look into the future of North Korea–led crypto hacks and provides a series of policy recommendations to strengthen cyber resilience against these efforts.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Sanctions, Cybersecurity, and Blockchain
Political Geography:
Asia and North Korea

95. When the Chips Are Down: Gaming the Global Semiconductor Competition

Author:
Becca Wasser, Martijn Rasser, and Hannah Kelley
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Abstract:
The United States is in a strategic competition with a well-resourced and capable opponent. China seeks a global role that is broadly at odds with the strategic interests and values of America and fellow democracies. Technology, a key enabler of political, economic, and military power, is at the center of this competition. Within this competition, semiconductors loom large. Chips are a driving force for breakthroughs in a range of critical technology areas, from AI to synthetic biology to quantum computing. Semiconductors are essential to the military systems used by the United States and its allies and partners to defend themselves and their interests. At a fundamental level, the day-to-day functioning of modern society hinges on dependable access to chips; critical infrastructure, transportation networks, and digital communication cannot function without them. Semiconductor supply chains form an intricate global web, with several countries and companies serving as important nodes. Some of these nodes have such outsized importance that any disruption would have significant and detrimental cascading effects for U.S. national and economic security. Taiwan is the central node in the semiconductor supply chain. Home to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chip foundry, more than half of the world’s outsourced semiconductor manufacturing and nearly all leading-edge manufacturing capacity is in Taiwan. Secure access to the output of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is therefore a strategic necessity. Yet, while policymakers understand the critical importance of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, the myriad of factors and nuances essential to developing policies and plans that protect its integrity, mitigate risk, and reduce second-order consequences are insufficiently studied.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Strategic Competition, Industry, and Semiconductors
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, North America, and United States of America

96. Finding Firmer Ground: The Role of Higher Education in U.S.-China Relations

Author:
Yawei Liu and Michael Cerny
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
This annual report is the third issue of the Carter Center’s Finding Firmer Ground series on U.S.-China Relations. This series is published by the Carter Center’s China Focus with generous support from the Ford Foundation and other organizations.
Topic:
Education, Bilateral Relations, Higher Education, and Rivalry
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

97. Civil Society-Led Truth-Seeking Initiatives: Expanding Opportunities for Acknowledgment and Redress

Author:
Eduardo González Cueva, Jill Williams, and Félix Reátegui Carrillo
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
Abstract:
This study reviews civil society-led truth-seeking initiatives in different regions of the world drawing on their experiences, methodologies, and contributions. It identifies lessons learned and best practices and presents practical options for activists considering similar endeavors. The report is inspired by and builds on the work of transitional justice practitioners, including at ICTJ, who deploy wide-ranging modalities to advance truth seeking, including oral history, artwork, theatrical productions, reenactments, museum exhibits, memorials, films, and documentation projects. The right to the truth is a fundamental component of redress for victims of massive human rights violations. Institutional silence, suppression of complaints, and refusal to acknowledge such violations further perpetuates them by protecting and enabling those responsible. In many contexts, government-supported truth commissions are not possible. Moreover, total reliance on state-sanctioned formats can result in one-size-fits-all approaches to truth seeking, devoid of creativity or potential. In the absence of political will, civil society actors have responded to demands for truth by devising and carrying out truth-seeking efforts independently, using a wide array of tools and methods. Civil society-led truth-seeking initiatives provide a practical channel by which communities can respond to demands for redress when the state fails to deliver on its obligations to protect victims’ rights. While truth-seeking initiatives can take many forms, they generally share three main objectives: (1) establish the facts about human rights violations that remain disputed or denied and validate different interpretations and analyses of those facts; (2) protect, acknowledge, and empower victims and survivors; and (3) inform public policy, promote institutional reform, and contribute to social and political transformation. Through an examination of case studies from the United States, Colombia, Scotland, and West Papua, the report highlights common considerations and procedural questions that civil society groups should consider when designing and implementing a truth-seeking mechanism. These considerations can help inspire and guide civil society actors as they lead truth-seeking efforts in the United States and around the world.
Topic:
Reform, Transitional Justice, Youth, Criminal Justice, Memory, Engagement, Reparations, Gender, Atrocity Prevention, and Truth and Reconciliation
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, Colombia, South America, North America, and United States of America

98. A New Era of Sectarian Violence in Pakistan

Author:
International Crisis Group
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
A local jihadist group and a violent protest movement are driving renewed sectarian strife in Pakistan. To prevent a slide back into violence, Islamabad should ensure those inciting or perpetrating violent acts are prosecuted while denying hardliners the civic space to propagate their hatred.
Topic:
Religion, Protests, Violence, and Jihad
Political Geography:
Pakistan and Asia

99. Avoiding a Return to War in Myanmar’s Rakhine State

Author:
International Crisis Group
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
An unofficial ceasefire has kept Rakhine State quiet compared to much of Myanmar following the 2021 coup. But friction is building between the military and ethnic Rakhine fighters. The parties should strike a formal deal to avert a return to war.
Topic:
War, Military Strategy, Conflict, and Peace
Political Geography:
Asia and Myanmar

100. Risky Competition: Strengthening U.S.-China Crisis Management

Author:
International Crisis Group
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
As their strategic rivalry grows, China and the U.S. are increasingly operating in close proximity in the Asia Pacific. An accident or misinterpreted signal could set off a wider confrontation. The danger level is low, but dialogue is needed to dial it down further.
Topic:
Conflict, Crisis Management, Rivalry, and Competition
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America