Greetings from somewhere over the Pacific. My distribution will be abnormal this week as I will be writing from Manila.

Quotes of the Day:

"Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion." 

- Rumi

"The computer is only a fast idiot, it has no imagination; it cannot originate action. It is, and will remain, only a tool to man." 

- American Library Association

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." 

- John Cage

1. U.S. Vetoes Israel-Hamas Cease-Fire Resolution at U.N. Security Council

2. US ally's "Christmas Convoy" sets sail to defy China's claims

3. How American Naval Power Enhances Its Diplomacy

4. Why Join the Military to Defend Everyone Except Americans?

5. Japan Is Destined to Have Nuclear Weapons

6. The Office That Henry Kissinger Built

7. Imagining the Future of Landpower

8. Israel-Hamas War: Biden Administration Bypasses Congress to Approve Sale of Tank Shells to Israel

9. 2035: Sino-American Détente

10. Opinion | Kissinger Was Right About China, and He Still Is

11. It’s Time to Reconsider U.S. Military Aid

12. The Climate Envoys Who Could

13. The Universities That Don’t Understand Academic Freedom

1. U.S. Vetoes Israel-Hamas Cease-Fire Resolution at U.N. Security Council

Excerpts:

The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, and most members of the Security Council had backed the measure, saying that the humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal enclave where 2.2 million Palestinians live could threaten world stability.

But the United States, which is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, blocked the resolution, arguing that Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas attacks. The vote was 13 to 1, with Britain abstaining and some U.S. allies like France voting for a cease-fire.

Robert A. Wood, who was representing the United States on the Council, said after the veto that the resolution for an unconditional and immediate cease-fire “was not only unrealistic, but dangerous — it would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7.”

U.S. Vetoes Israel-Hamas Cease-Fire Resolution at U.N. Security Council

By Farnaz Fassihi, Michael Levenson, Aaron Boxerman and Victoria Kim

Dec. 8, 2023

The New York Times · by Victoria Kim · December 9, 2023

The veto came amid a warning that “civil order is breaking down” in Gaza, and a day after the Biden administration warned that Israel’s military had not done enough to reduce harm to civilians.

Displaced Palestinians set up a makeshift camp in the Al-Muwasi area of the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday.Credit...Fatima Shbair/Associated Press

Dec. 8, 2023

The United States on Friday vetoed a United Nations resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has launched hundreds of strikes, relief efforts were faltering and people were growing so desperate for basic necessities that some were stoning and raiding aid convoys.

The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, and most members of the Security Council had backed the measure, saying that the humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal enclave where 2.2 million Palestinians live could threaten world stability.

But the United States, which is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, blocked the resolution, arguing that Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas attacks. The vote was 13 to 1, with Britain abstaining and some U.S. allies like France voting for a cease-fire.

Robert A. Wood, who was representing the United States on the Council, said after the veto that the resolution for an unconditional and immediate cease-fire “was not only unrealistic, but dangerous — it would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7.”

The failed resolution came as the United Nations reported that it was struggling to deliver essential goods like food, medicine and cooking gas to desperate civilians who have packed into shelters and tent cities after two months of war.

“Civil order is breaking down,” Thomas White, the Gaza director of the United Nations relief agency for Palestinians, wrote Friday on social media. He added: “Some aid convoys are being looted and UN vehicles stoned. Society is on the brink of full-blown collapse.”

Mr. White spoke a day after the Biden administration warned that the Israeli military had not done enough to reduce harm to civilians in Gaza.

“It is imperative — it remains imperative — that Israel put a premium on civilian protection,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters in Washington on Thursday. “And there does remain a gap between exactly what I said when I was there, the intent to protect civilians, and the actual results that we’re seeing on the ground.”

Rescuers pulled a wounded person from the rubble of a destroyed house in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Friday.Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

Fighting has been raging in southern Gaza’s largest city, Khan Younis, and in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops have focused on the Shajaiye neighborhood of Gaza City, and Jabaliya, a densely populated neighborhood north of the city, where they say Hamas operatives continue to hide.

An Israeli government spokesman, Eylon Levy, said that Israel had been taking steps to keep civilians safe “despite attempts by their own leaders to deliberately sacrifice them as human shields.”

“That’s why we published a very detailed map to help civilians evacuate; it’s why we surrendered the element of surprise by urging the evacuation of areas before moving in,” Mr. Levy said. He added, “We believe we are setting the highest possible standard for the minimization of civilian casualties in counterterrorism operations in urban areas.”

An Israeli military vehicle near the Israel-Gaza border on Friday. The military said it had struck hundreds of targets over the previous 24 hours and had pushed deeper into Gaza. Credit...Amir Cohen/Reuters

Palestinians who fled the Gazan city of Khan Younis set up camp in Rafah.

But Israel has been facing pressure from the United Nations to stop the fighting. On Wednesday, for the first time in his seven-year tenure at the helm of the U.N., Mr. Guterres invoked Article 99, a rarely used rule that allows the secretary general to bring to the Security Council’s attention any matter that “may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”

Mr. Guterres argued that it was necessary because of the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza and because related conflicts were flaring in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

In an earlier address to the Council, he said: “There is a high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza, which would have devastating consequences. I fear the consequences could be devastating for the security of the entire region.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, told the Council that approving the resolution — which was submitted by the United Arab Emirates — would only allow Hamas to regroup and plan more attacks on the Jewish state. He said Israel would “continue with its mission, the elimination of Hamas’s terror capability and the return of all of the hostages.”

Mohamed Abushahab, the U.A.E.’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said after the vote, “Regrettably, and in the face of untold misery, this Council is unable to demand a humanitarian cease-fire.” He added, “Against the backdrop of the secretary general’s grave warnings, the appeals by humanitarian actors, the world’s public opinion — this Council grows isolated. It appears untethered from its own founding document.”

Before the veto, Mr. Wood said the United States had tried to negotiate changes to the agreement, but “nearly all of our recommendations were ignored,” including adding a condemnation of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and an endorsement of Israel’s right to self-defense.

Israel launched its offensive after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel in October, killing 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials. Since then, more than 15,000 people in Gaza have been killed, according to health officials in the territory.

The Israeli military said on Friday that it had struck hundreds of targets over the previous 24 hours and had pushed deeper into Gaza. The military said the air force had attacked “numerous terrorists” in a two-hour round of strikes in Khan Younis, which has become a focus of the fighting over the last week.

In a video statement, Brig. Gen. Dan Goldfus, who is commanding Israeli soldiers in Khan Younis, said that troops were “moving from tunnel to tunnel, house to house.”

“The enemy is jumping out at us from the orchards, from tunnels,” General Goldfus said, as gunfire crackled in the background.

Israel has asked the U.S. State Department to approve an order for 45,000 rounds of ammunition for the types of tanks operating in Gaza, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the request. The value of the order is more than $500 million, they said.

Some U.S. lawmakers are likely to raise sharp questions about the order once the State Department submits it to Congress for review. But one official said the department was considering invoking an emergency provision in an arms export act to bypass congressional review.

An Israeli military roundup of hundreds of Palestinian men in Gaza has set off outrage after photos and video of men tied up outdoors and stripped to their underwear spread widely on social media on Thursday. Israeli officials said the men had been detained in Jabaliya and Shajaiye and stripped to ensure they were not carrying explosives.

“We’re talking about military-age men who were discovered in areas that civilians were supposed to have evacuated weeks ago,” Mr. Levy said. “Those individuals will be questioned, and we will work out who indeed was a Hamas terrorist and who is not.”

Critics said that the mass detentions and humiliating treatment could violate the laws of war.

Brian Finucane, an analyst at the International Crisis Group and a former legal adviser to the State Department, said that international law set “a very high bar” for an occupying power to detain noncombatants and that “the base line is going to be humane treatment.”

“That prohibits outrages on personal dignity and humiliating and degrading treatment,” he said.

A wounded Palestinian arriving at a hospital in Khan Younis on Friday.Credit...Mohammed Dahman/Associated Press

In southern Gaza, where some limited relief supplies have been delivered through a border crossing with Egypt, more than eight out of 10 households have taken extreme measures to cope with food shortages, the World Food Program said this week. In northern Gaza, 97 percent of households were doing the same, the survey found.

Israel said on Thursday it would allow a “minimal” supply of additional fuel into Gaza “to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics,” and would open a second border crossing for aid deliveries.

Reporting was contributed by Sarah Hurtes, Liam Stack, Edward Wong, Yara Bayoumy, Raja Abdulrahim, Arijeta Lajka, Christiaan Triebert and Chevaz Clarke.

Farnaz Fassihi is a reporter for The New York Times based in New York. Previously she was a senior writer and war correspondent for the Wall Street Journal for 17 years based in the Middle East. More about Farnaz Fassihi

Michael Levenson joined The Times in December 2019. He was previously a reporter at The Boston Globe, where he covered local, state and national politics and news. More about Michael Levenson

Victoria Kim is a correspondent based in Seoul, focused on international breaking news coverage. More about Victoria Kim

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Blocks Call for Cease-Fire in the Gaza Strip

The New York Times · by Victoria Kim · December 9, 2023

2. US ally's "Christmas Convoy" sets sail to defy China's claims

Excerpts:

The Philippines' National Security Council initially discouraged the volunteers because of recent tensions with Chinese maritime forces. But last week the council reversed course and gave its approval.

The coast guard is providing an escort as a safety precaution, and some navy and coast guard officials will be aboard the civilian vessels, organizers have said.

Though the convoy will sail through "the vicinity" of Second Thomas Shoal, it will keep a safe distance from a hot spot, which the Philippines calls Ayungin Shoal and China calls Rena'i Reef.

US ally's "Christmas Convoy" sets sail to defy China's claims

Newsweek · by Micah McCartney · December 8, 2023

The Philippines' "Christmas convoy" on Friday embarked on its journey to deliver supplies to troops and fishermen in outlying parts of the South China Sea while sending a message to China.

The civilian convoy, organized by the volunteer coalition "Atin Ito"—Tagalog for "It's Ours"— comprises over 40 groups so far, according to Philippine news channel ANC Digital, which was on the scene.

The "Christmas convoy" represents a civilian-led effort to address regional tensions and assert Manila's stance in an ongoing territorial dispute with Beijing over the South China Sea.

In the video, volunteers aboard the mother ship can be seen adorning it with Philippine flags and "Atin Ito" signs. The coalition says the mission extends beyond delivering supplies and is challenging China's maritime claims in the Philippines' exclusive economic zone.

The convoy's route includes Philippine-held islands in a region where tensions between the Philippines and China have intensified this year.

The Philippines' National Security Council initially discouraged the volunteers because of recent tensions with Chinese maritime forces. But last week the council reversed course and gave its approval.

The coast guard is providing an escort as a safety precaution, and some navy and coast guard officials will be aboard the civilian vessels, organizers have said.

Though the convoy will sail through "the vicinity" of Second Thomas Shoal, it will keep a safe distance from a hot spot, which the Philippines calls Ayungin Shoal and China calls Rena'i Reef.

Chinese coast guard personnel take photos on September 22 after their vessel blocked a Philippine ship approaching disputed waters in the South China Sea. The Philippine civilian "Christmas convoy" departed Manila on Friday to bring supplies to troops and fishermen and push back against China's territorial claims. Ted Aljibe/AFP via Getty Images

Second Thomas Shoal is at the center of the territorial struggle between the two neighbors. The Philippines stations a small outfit of troops there aboard the Sierra Madre, a former warship run aground to stake the country's claim. China routinely tries to block Philippine supply runs to the shoal.

The volunteer convoy will first take on additional volunteers and media at the island province of Palawan before heading for more remote waters. The mission is set to end on December 13.

The leaders of the G7, in a joint statement Wednesday, condemned China's "expansive maritime claims" and "militarization activities" in the South China Sea. The leaders affirmed support for a 2016 international tribunal ruling that dismissed these claims, which Beijing seeks to assert through its "dashed line."

Also on Wednesday, the Philippines House of Representatives adopted a resolution calling on the country to "assert and fight for its rights in the [South China Sea] and uphold the 2016 arbitrated decision.

Asked about the resolution during a press conference Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin reiterated China's "indisputable sovereignty" over the sea's disputed waters, citing historical rights. He also said the tribunal's ruling was moot because the court had "violated the principle of state consent."

Newsweek · by Micah McCartney · December 8, 2023

3. How American Naval Power Enhances Its Diplomacy

Excerpts:

With U.S.-China tensions rising, the United States must demonstrate an ironclad commitment to its friends and allies. As we enter a geopolitical era marked by uncertainty, nonviolent deterrence will be a critical component of American foreign policy. The United States must use its military presence to discourage further malign behavior in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. The Biden administration’s deployment of a massive naval presence in the Mediterranean shows that the U.S. possesses the capability and the will to use its military to preserve international order.

Souda Bay is a shining example of the American military’s ability to facilitate conflict de-escalation through partnerships with allies. In the future, the United States’ presence in the eastern Mediterranean will be a factor that any anti-Israel actor in the Middle East will have to consider if they plan on joining the conflict. Between America’s first-class naval fleet and strategic partnerships with its allies, the United States’ involvement at Souda Bay showcases its unique ability to save lives without firing a single round.

How American Naval Power Enhances Its Diplomacy

U.S. Naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean has proved a valuable asset in de-escalating the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The National Interest · by Ethan Shapiro · December 8, 2023

In the wake of the deadly attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas, the USS Eisenhower, and its strike group departed to join a growing cluster of American forces that had concentrated in the eastern Mediterranean. They will not be the last U.S. forces moving eastward to bolster security following the attack on October 7.

While the global war on terror rages on, the future of the Middle East rests on a razor’s edge. The United States and its allies have redirected their intelligence and resources to help Israel stamp out Hamas-backed terrorist cells in the Levant. In the weeks following the attack, the threat level in the region has risen as Israel retaliates in Gaza. Consequently, the United States’ military readiness will be tested. It cannot afford to fail.

After the dust from Israeli airstrikes settled in Gaza, demonstrations outside of U.S. embassies in Amman and Beirut turned violent as protestors clashed with state security forces, signaling that anti-American sentiment is alive and well. With regional volatility on the rise, it is paramount that the U.S. leverages its assets in close proximity to the Middle East to deter future conflicts and mitigate ongoing ones.

One such resource is the military installation at Crete’s Souda Bay. With the rise in jihadist violence in the Middle East and Africa, this base has served as a critical anchor for the United States and its NATO allies. Since its first use for American naval operations in the late 1960s, Souda Bay has granted U.S. forces unique strategic access to Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf.

As the extent of the Arab world’s involvement in Gaza is yet to be determined, America has boosted its military presence at Souda Bay. In October, the U.S. Air Force planned to send more C-130s and C-17s to Greece. The move came less than a week after the USS Carney, an American Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, shot down four cruise missiles and fifteen drones bound for Israel off the coast of Yemen. Some 2,200 U.S. Marines have also recently arrived in Greece, demonstrating the American commitment to using a “forward presence” to deter Hamas supporters from engaging in the developing conflict in the Middle East.

As the threat to Israel is continuously changing, the United States has shown that it is willing to be responsive and flexible to meet a growing list of needs. With Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iranian proxy forces in Syria lying in wait, Congressional lawmakers signaled that the United States must continue to expand the support it has recently provided. On November 9, several members of Congress wrote a joint letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin urging him to expedite the delivery of KC-46A Pegasus refueling tankers to Israel. In the letter, Representatives Rob Wittman (R-VA), August Pfluger (R-TX), Jake Ellzey (R-TX), Mike Garcia (R-FL), and Scott Franklin (R-FL) asserted that accelerating the transfer of KC-46As “would dramatically increase our ability to help deter further aggression, project power, and improve our posture in the region.”

As America continues to transport soldiers and technology to the Mediterranean, they are sending a clear message to adversaries like Iran—“provoke us at your peril.” Even without direct involvement in the war, the mere act of putting American boots on the ground a stone’s throw away is likely to convince Israel’s rivals to think twice about launching an attack.

The United States’ support of Israel has put its military might on full display, showing the world why it is second to none as an ally and partner. Not even China or Russia could provide such staggering assistance so far from its shores in so little time. With two carrier strike groups setting up shop in the eastern Mediterranean, carrier air wings can establish total dominance in the sky.

In these dangerous times, the importance of military readiness could literally prove to be a matter of life and death. Without the help of allies like Greece, Israel might be facing an existential threat from its neighbors. Instead, thanks in part to Souda Bay, it is difficult to imagine how the United States could be better positioned to respond to the impending threat of regional instability in the Middle East.

With U.S.-China tensions rising, the United States must demonstrate an ironclad commitment to its friends and allies. As we enter a geopolitical era marked by uncertainty, nonviolent deterrence will be a critical component of American foreign policy. The United States must use its military presence to discourage further malign behavior in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. The Biden administration’s deployment of a massive naval presence in the Mediterranean shows that the U.S. possesses the capability and the will to use its military to preserve international order.

Souda Bay is a shining example of the American military’s ability to facilitate conflict de-escalation through partnerships with allies. In the future, the United States’ presence in the eastern Mediterranean will be a factor that any anti-Israel actor in the Middle East will have to consider if they plan on joining the conflict. Between America’s first-class naval fleet and strategic partnerships with its allies, the United States’ involvement at Souda Bay showcases its unique ability to save lives without firing a single round.

About the Author

Ethan Shapiro is the Program Manager at the Lexington Institute, a nonprofit public-policy research organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

Image: U.S. Navy Flickr.

The National Interest · by Ethan Shapiro · December 8, 2023

4. Why Join the Military to Defend Everyone Except Americans?

From the always provocative Doug Bandow.

Excerpts:

Uncle Sam’s determination to be forever entangled in foreign wars is a very good reason not to join the armed services. The best way to solve the recruitment problem is to end frivolous interventions on behalf of peripheral interests. The armed services’ essential task is defending Americans—not sanctimonious Euroweenies, kleptocratic Saudi royals, well-heeled South Koreans, indifferent Taiwanese, and endless others.

If the infamous Blob, as the foreign policy establishment has been called, refuses to abandon its determination to dominate the globe, it almost certainly will have to impose conscription. However, a return to the hated practice would foster resistance, intensify partisan polarization, and spur social conflict. Moreover, coercing service would reduce the quality of the U.S. military, hiking indiscipline, reducing retention, and draining morale. Doing so might put more people in uniform, but far fewer would want to be there and prepared to give their all in combat, especially in the frivolous interventions of late.

The Washington War Party continues to spend wildly to dominate the globe, threat of national insolvency be damned. However, the challenge of finding young men and women willing to act as sentinels for a conflict-filled global empire is proving more daunting. If Americans increasingly refuse to serve, the Pentagon will have to do more than the policy equivalent of adjusting the deck chairs of the Titanic. Republicans and Democrats alike might have to again put America’s defense first.

Why Join the Military to Defend Everyone Except Americans?

The American Conservative · by Doug Bandow · December 7, 2023

The American empire lives. Leading Republicans and Democrats alike support a proxy war in Europe, back murderous conflict in the Middle East, and threaten catastrophic war in Asia. Fervent critics of “isolationism,” like Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, seem determined to defend everyone except Americans. The bulk of military outlays go either to protect prosperous and populous allies that can’t be bothered to defend themselves or to punish states not inclined to follow Washington’s dictates.

There’s always more money for arms, even though the United States is racing toward insolvency. Federal debt owed to the public is roughly 100 percent of GDP, near the record set at the close of World War II. Without dramatic change, the debt ratio will be twice as high by mid-century. Yet the bloated military budget continues to jump skyward.

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The bipartisan congressional War Party risks running out of an even more important resource, manpower. Wrote Newsweek’s Alex Phillips: “A majority of American adults would not be willing to serve in the military were the U.S. to enter into a major war, recent polling has found, while public confidence in the armed forces appears to be waning.”

Phillips responded to a Daily Mail poll on whether Americans would volunteer to fight and die if America was invaded. Only 51 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds said they would do so, triggering complaints about America’s feckless youth.

The Pentagon’s real problem is that Americans increasingly don’t want to serve even without a major war. The armed services are having trouble filling their ranks. Explained Phillips, “In 2023, the Army and Air Force fell short of their respective goals by around 10,000 recruits, while the Navy was under by 6,000.” At least 2023 wasn’t quite as bad as the year before, which the military called “arguably the most challenging recruiting year” since creation of the All-Volunteer Force 50 years ago.

The armed services can cope with modest personnel shortfalls for a time, but soon will be unable to perform as expected. Last year, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said he would have preferred to add 70,000 to the previous year’s force, rather than cut it by 12,000, as he was forced to do. Indeed, active-duty levels have fallen 39 percent since 1987. In a desperate attempt to increase the human pool, the Army decided to suspend the requirement for a high school diploma, before retreating under fire.

Recruiting difficulties are many. For instance, the labor market has become more competitive. Moreover, only a quarter of young people meet academic and fitness standards. Public confidence in the military is down. Why has become a matter of partisan controversy. The politicization of the military may play a role. Conservatives also cite the leftist zeitgeist, claiming that “pop culture, social media, and college professors have brainwashed our youngest minds into thinking America was built on racism, colonialism, and sexism.”

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Naturally, Republicans also blame President Joe Biden. The Patriot Post’s Brian Mark Weber cited “persecution of warriors who refused to get the Covid vaccine” and “the shameful retreat in Afghanistan.” Yet the administration has effectively reversed its Covid policy, and if the young were already bewitched by woke thoughts, they probably wouldn’t have been dissuaded from taking up arms because of vaccine requirements.

Afghanistan offers a better explanation, but not because the U.S. left. Americans recognize that the withdrawal was incompetent. Nevertheless, they still wanted out, having been consistently lied to by political officials and military officers alike about the prospects of success. Even worse was the dishonesty of the George W. Bush administration in Iraq, and the needless sacrifice of so many good lives for bad lies. Both conflicts have greatly diminished the military’s reputation over the last decade.

The foreign policy elite has sacrificed so many lives for so little justification. More than 7,000 service members and nearly 8,000 contractors died in combat after 9/11. An incredible 30,000 have committed suicide over the same period. Officially, some 52,000 were wounded in combat, many grievously. However, Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs reports that the real number “is exponentially larger,” given other injuries in theater and conditions diagnosed after returning home. Finally, hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians died in the misguided conflicts, innocent casualties of U.S. hubris and folly.

It is one thing to risk your life and health for America. But to instead die in such foolish wars? And to have your sacrifice so shamefully wasted? Patriots should preserve their lives for something better.

So far, the military has no answer to the dearth in recruits. The services are simply muddling along, considering small fixes to significant shortfalls. Adding recruiters and hiking pay are obvious steps. Reaching younger Americans and adjusting military routine to modern youth culture are others. Decreasing disqualifications and increasing physical fitness would increase the recruit pool. Retaining more existing personnel would reduce the need for new recruits. So would hiring laterally for specialty roles and introducing robots. Such efforts should help at the margin. Even so, however, they are unlikely to fill personnel gaps in the thousands.

The most important problem is that nothing has changed with U.S. foreign policy. Indeed, today’s potential wars are becoming more deadly. “We have strike groups, aircraft carriers with a Marine Expeditionary Unit outside Israel now,” observed Justin Henderson, a Marine Corps recruiter. He added, “We’re funding two wars, but we’re actually boots on the ground, drones above Gaza. So we’re already involved in there—and we're not sure what's happening in Taiwan. So this is a very tumultuous time for us, because we don’t know what's going to happen.”

No, we don’t. Yet nothing good is likely to come from being involved in so many of the world’s incendiary confrontations and conflicts. Washington continues to ask young Americans to risk their lives here, there, and everywhere for no good reason.

In Europe, the U.S. provides defense welfare for comfortable, self-satisfied Europeans almost eight decades after World War II ended. They prefer to focus on funding generous social programs than seeing to their security, since they can leave the latter to Americans. Now the U.S. is promoting an expansive proxy war via Ukraine against a major conventional power with nuclear weapons, indirectly killing thousands of Russians. The main reason escalation remains unlikely is that Moscow appears to retain the upper hand, so it prefers to avoid confronting America and Europe. Why would any recruit want to risk being thrust into a catastrophic European war?

Then there’s the Middle East. The administration’s recent military escalation and threats of war are beyond reckless. Washington’s policy is deformed by partisans of both Israel and Saudi Arabia, neither of which constitutes a vital American interest justifying war. The former is a nuclear-armed regional superpower and can manage its own affairs. It should bear responsibility for its mistreatment of millions of Palestinians. Going to war with Iran over Israel would be supremely stupid.

The Kingdom is a grotesque dictatorship whose Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, infamous for murdering and dismembering his critics, has increased political repression even as he has relaxed social controls. His regime has ravaged its neighbor Yemen, killing tens of thousands of civilians with American aircraft, munitions, and intelligence. Yet the Biden administration continues to press an agreement with Riyadh which would turn US soldiers into bodyguards for the Saudi royals. Why would any American patriot join to become a modern Janissary?

American soldiers should not die for either country. Nor should they be in Iraq and Syria, where they are under frequent attack. Saddam Hussein has been gone from Iraq for 20 years; today, Americans are doing little other than acting as targets for hostile Iran-related militias. Worse, the U.S. is illegally occupying Syrian territory and stealing Syrian oil. Along the way, Washington is confronting military forces from Syria, Iran, and Russia. These postings have nothing to do with defending America.

Finally, there’s Asia, where the US has long treated wealthy allies like Japan and South Korea as helpless defense dependents. Even more dangerous may be Washington’s informal promise to defend Taiwan, a democratic state stuck in a very bad neighborhood, as close to China as Cuba is to America. Taipei deserves the world’s moral support, but is not worth a war with Beijing, which considers the island state’s return to be essential. The odds are against the U.S. Even if Washington prevailed in a shoot-out, that would be only the first round, as World War I was for Germany. China is determined not to allow Washington to control affairs 90 miles off its coast, just as the U.S. refused to accept a Soviet military presence in Cuba. And once combat started, America’s allies would be more likely to opt out than in, leaving the fight to the U.S.

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Uncle Sam’s determination to be forever entangled in foreign wars is a very good reason not to join the armed services. The best way to solve the recruitment problem is to end frivolous interventions on behalf of peripheral interests. The armed services’ essential task is defending Americans—not sanctimonious Euroweenies, kleptocratic Saudi royals, well-heeled South Koreans, indifferent Taiwanese, and endless others.

If the infamous Blob, as the foreign policy establishment has been called, refuses to abandon its determination to dominate the globe, it almost certainly will have to impose conscription. However, a return to the hated practice would foster resistance, intensify partisan polarization, and spur social conflict. Moreover, coercing service would reduce the quality of the U.S. military, hiking indiscipline, reducing retention, and draining morale. Doing so might put more people in uniform, but far fewer would want to be there and prepared to give their all in combat, especially in the frivolous interventions of late.

The Washington War Party continues to spend wildly to dominate the globe, threat of national insolvency be damned. However, the challenge of finding young men and women willing to act as sentinels for a conflict-filled global empire is proving more daunting. If Americans increasingly refuse to serve, the Pentagon will have to do more than the policy equivalent of adjusting the deck chairs of the Titanic. Republicans and Democrats alike might have to again put America’s defense first.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Doug Bandow

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire.

The American Conservative · by Doug Bandow · December 7, 2023

5. Japan Is Destined to Have Nuclear Weapons

Excerpts;

If there is a convincing argument against Japan acquiring nuclear weapons, it concerns the possibility of proliferation. Specifically, if Tokyo went nuclear, Seoul would likely do so as well. This is probably the most potent objection to nuclearization. The South Koreans have always been more positively disposed toward nuclear arms than Japan. Already, a majority of South Koreans, with a nuclear threat on their northern border, favor nuclear security. This percentage sharply increases if asked what they should do if the Japanese went nuclear. Their experience in World War II is not forgotten—many South Koreans view China more favorably than Japan. And they see the same unpredictable America that the Japanese do. Surrounded by a nuclear China and North Korea (and then a nuclear Japan), spurred on by a public that is pro-nuclear and uncertain about American guarantees, the leadership in Seoul would probably have no choice but to follow a path of proliferation. They are surely already holding discussions on the topic.

Yet, this should not trouble the Japanese. They need to remember that, whatever their differences, the South Koreans are their allies, not their enemies. The dangers they face emanate from Beijing and Pyongyang, not Seoul. There may be abstract or long-term risks to “world peace” from proliferation in East Asia, but the immediate dangers are an aggressive China, an unpredictable North Korea, and a faltering United States. With regard to their national security, these must be their immediate priorities.

In the end, the question of South Korea and the issue of nuclear proliferation present Japan with challenges that go to the heart of its national security. Since the end of World War II, Japan has prided itself on being the “peace nation,” leading the international battle to limit and eventually banish nuclear weapons. That goal seems as far away as ever. Yet, at the same time, the immediate threats to Japan’s national security have mounted, while its primary—indeed, only—protector has grown weaker and, exhausted by fruitless wars in Asia and the Middle East, shows every sign of withdrawing ever more from the international stage. The weary United States seems to be rediscovering its isolationist traditions. Japan’s stand as a beacon for global peace increasingly seems a luxury it can ill afford.

Should Japan continue on the idealistic path that was possible only because of America’s protections? Or should it accept the reality of a profoundly altered global situation in which they can rely on no one but themselves? Even the most hopeful and pacifist among the Japanese may realize that there is only one answer to these questions. Japan must develop nuclear weapons.

Japan Is Destined to Have Nuclear Weapons

The National Interest · by Barry Gewen · December 8, 2023

“[The Japanese have] a pretty clear view of where they’re going; they’re heading towards becoming a nuclear power in five years.” - Henry Kissinger, April 2023.

My country, Japan, has reached a historic crossroads: It must develop nuclear weapons because it really does not have a choice.

If one is realistic about the current geopolitical situation in Asia, there is only one issue that matters: The circumstances that served Japan so well following its defeat in World War II no longer exist. A nuclear China is an ever-expanding menace, flexing its muscles well beyond its borders. North Korea has a growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and shows no signs of tempering its hostility toward its neighbors. Most of all, the American “nuclear umbrella” that allowed us so many years of peace and prosperity under Washington’s military protection is increasingly frayed, probably irreparably. A long list of government officials and academic experts has always viewed America’s guarantees of protection against enemies as the foundation of its security. What policymaker in Japan, looking at the present disarray in Washington, can still take those guarantees for granted?

In the years after World War II and at the height of the Cold War, Japan was the bulwark of the American presence in Asia. The two countries were mutually committed to offsetting China’s rise and countering the spread of Communism. Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone declared that Japan and the United States shared an “inseparable destiny.”

Looking back now, one can see that there were always cracks and potential ruptures in that “destiny,” even if politicians papered them over. After the war, Japan, not unreasonably, became an international voice for the cause of peace. Written into its Constitution is a renunciation of war and the use of force to settle disputes. To some—over one-third of the public, according to one poll—such language had transformed Japan from a militaristic state into a pacifist nation with a special mission in the world. However, others, including influential figures in the government, interpreted the Constitution as giving Tokyo the leeway to develop nuclear weapons if necessary. But the issue never developed into a genuine debate. People in Japan refused to discuss it.

As the only country to be victimized by atomic bombs, many Japanese were passionately opposed to their use—“Never again!”—or even their development. John Foster Dulles referred to this as a “nuclear allergy,” a phrase he used in 1954 after a fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, was exposed to radiation from an American thermonuclear test on Bikini Atoll. The number of people affected was minuscule compared to the thousands of dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Still, it was as if all the emotions that had been tamped down since 1945 suddenly exploded. Within a month, the Diet passed a resolution opposing nuclear testing, while a public petition collected the signatures of more than half of the country’s registered voters in support of the resolution. (The incident also spurred the production of the movie “Godzilla.”) Japan was on its way to developing an international reputation as “the peace nation,” a designation that made its citizens proud. And in the years that followed, Japan introduced dozens of resolutions to the United Nations General Assembly calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Admittedly, there was incontrovertible hypocrisy between Tokyo’s opposition to nuclear weapons while it sheltered under the American nuclear umbrella. In 2016, New Zealand offered a UN resolution declaring that nuclear weapons should never be used under any circumstances. It attracted more than 100 cosponsors, Japan included. At the same time, eighteen nations backed a competing statement arguing that the use of nuclear arms might be necessary for reasons of national security. The two declarations were clearly incompatible. Japan was the only nation to sign both. But such contradictions didn’t bother the pacifist-minded public. Discussion of nuclear weapons was the third rail of Japanese politics. “Peace education” was required in public schools, and even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs funded anti-nuclear programs. Any leader who suggested a change in policy was bound to pay a political price.

Not even China’s first successful nuclear test in 1964 had much of an impact on public opinion—though it did bring home to many Japanese political leaders just how dependent the nation was on America and its bombs. Perhaps the majority of the Japanese people could shield their eyes and remain complacent. However, government officials charged with maintaining national security could not afford to ignore the Chinese threat. A split was emerging between elite opinion and the popular temper that would only grow in the years to come. It seemed that Japan’s longstanding anti-nuclear stance had become dependent on people who refused to adapt to a changing international situation, who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Prime Minister Eisaku Sato personified the division. After the Chinese test, he lamented his countrymen’s policy blinders and said the public had to be educated about the new realities. This would take time, he thought. Meanwhile, Sato took the only path open to him. He traveled to Washington to plead with President Lyndon Johnson to reaffirm America’s commitment to Japan’s defense. There was clearly something hat-in-hand, undignified, about Sato’s supplications—the U.S.-Japan alliance was never one of equals—but he did have one trump card up his sleeve. If Johnson didn’t supply the needed reassurances, he warned, Japan would have to consider developing its own nuclear weapons. In 1964, public opinion wouldn’t have countenanced that, and Sato no doubt knew it. Yet, the threat was convincing enough and disruptive enough to get Johnson’s attention. He issued a statement, reiterating it in 1967, that the United States was prepared to prevent China from employing nuclear weapons.

That was what Sato had hoped for, and it allowed him to then tack in the opposite direction. When he came home, he transformed from a leader for national security to a leader for peace. In December 1967, he enunciated what would become the foundation of Japan’s nuclear policy ever since: the “Three Nonnuclear Principles.” Japan would not develop nuclear weapons; It would not possess nuclear weapons; It would not allow nuclear weapons to be stationed on its territory. In private, Sato allegedly called the promises “nonsense.” Later, the always ambivalent (or two-faced) Sato added a fourth pillar, in essence declaring that Japan would adhere to the Three Principles as long as it retained confidence in America’s nuclear umbrella. For his efforts, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974.

Indeed, Washington’s reliability and its nuclear umbrella have always been at the heart of Tokyo’s security policy. Posed in its simplest terms, the question is: Would America be willing to risk the destruction of Los Angeles to protect Tokyo? As the Chinese and the North Koreans expand their nuclear capabilities, the question has taken on lethal pertinence. As the question grows in importance for Japan’s future, one is forced to look back at the U.S.-Japan alliance and ask how strong it is or has ever been. Japan has always been the junior partner. Washington makes a decision, and Tokyo accommodates and adapts. But should it be satisfied to remain a junior partner?

A historic turning point in the relationship arrived in the early 1970s when Richard Nixon went to China and took the United States off the gold standard. These were profound “shocks” to Japan’s political and economic positions. Crucially, they demonstrated to Tokyo that Washington was prepared to pursue what it perceived to be its national interest, even if it damaged the interests of its allies. To be sure, the internationally-minded Nixon offered reassurances to the Japanese government—and it adapted. Then, America abandoned its ally in South Vietnam, and Japan adapted. The United States also turned its back on allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, Japan adapted. Washington failed to support Tokyo when North Korea kidnapped Japanese citizens. It drew a “red line” in Syria and refused to uphold it. It withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, and the nuclear agreement with Iran. It made promises to defend the integrity of Ukraine, then failed to risk the lives of its own troops after the Russian invasion. Just how much can Tokyo trust any promises coming out of Washington?

What’s more, Japanese doubts are double-edged. If they have serious concerns about the United States doing too little, they also worry about it doing too much. In the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has proved to be impetuous and sanctimonious, canceling agreements with Russia, invading Iraq and Afghanistan, and intervening in Libya with little consideration of the long-term consequences. By tying their security to the decisions of impulsive and unreliable leaders in Washington, the Japanese are allowing themselves to be whipsawed. This is not a condition any country should have to live with, certainly not one as powerful as Japan.

Perhaps no other issue reveals the uncertainty and weakness of the U.S.-Japanese alliance at present as the vulnerability of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, claimed both by Japan and China (where they are known as the Diaoyu Islands). A full-scale attack on Japan by China is unimaginable, but gradual encroachments that shift the balance of power in the Senkakus are another matter. This dispute has continued for decades. Yet, in recent years, as the nuclear-armed Chinese have grown stronger militarily, they have become more assertive, sending Coast Guard patrols into what they claim are “Chinese territorial waters,” and scrambling their aircraft overhead. There are about two dozen Chinese military bases within range of the Senkakus, but only four U.S. and Japanese bases.

Apart from this growing disparity, the larger question for Tokyo is how reliable an ally Washington would be if the dispute developed into a full-scale crisis. Would Americans be willing to shed blood for dots in the ocean they have never heard of? Examples like Ukraine offer no comfort. And it should be remembered that Japan has territorial disagreements with Russia as well. No single dispute may be enough to trigger an all-out war with either China or North Korea (or Russia). But is it time for Japan to consider its own nuclear deterrent to replace the American deterrent and neutralize the salami tactics of its enemies?

Since the end of World War II, there have been two broad foundations to its “nuclear allergy” —and both have been steadily eroding. The growing threats in Asia have already brought into question the first foundation, the reliability of the American nuclear umbrella. The second is Japanese public opinion, with its traditionally profound aversion to nuclear weapons. But, like everything else in East Asia, that has been changing, too. Recent polls point in different directions at once. Some show the majority of Japanese are losing faith in the alliance with America. Others indicate that reliance on Washington’s nuclear umbrella remains strong. Japan seems to be a nation suffering from cognitive dissonance. As everyone knows, polls provide only a snapshot of public opinion (and depend on the way a question is posed). They tell us little about trends. But the trends in Japan all seem to be pointing in one direction.

The generation with personal memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is dying out, while younger generations appear to be more receptive to a nuclear Japan. Nuclear weapons are no longer a taboo subject. When the North Koreans fired a missile across Japanese territory toward the end of the last century, that was a history-changing event comparable to what the Americans experienced when the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957. Suddenly, the entire country seemed at risk and began to reconsider its options. The perceived threats only increased in the twenty-first century, most notably with the North Korean nuclear test in 2006 and repeated flights of North Korean missiles over Japanese territory. By 2022, after the Russians invaded Ukraine, despite American promises of protection, an overwhelming majority of Japanese were ready to debate the subject of nuclear weapons after decades of willed silence.

In any public debate, several objections would be raised to Japan going nuclear. In fact, many of these are nonsensical. It has been said that the Japanese people would be unwilling to sacrifice any of their wealth and prosperity at the expense of developing nuclear arms and the necessary delivery systems. But in recent years, Japan has shown itself ready to give up some of the easy life and accept dramatic increases in military budgets. Besides, if a country like Pakistan (or North Korea) is prepared to pay for nuclear security, Japan, with the world’s third-largest economy, can certainly afford to do the same. Rather, it is all a question of national will, which, in turn, depends on how much confidence the Japanese people have in the American deterrent.

Another anti-nuclear argument, equally nonsensical, is that if Japan went nuclear, the global community would respond with sanctions and diplomatic isolation. History tells a different story. After India and Pakistan exploded their bombs in 1998, the world reacted with consternation and hostility. That quickly passed, and both countries were soon welcomed back into the so-called family of nations. Washington even agreed to assist New Delhi’s civilian nuclear program. Where the Japanese are concerned, they can be confident that Washington would not abandon its most formidable ally in Asia because it had decided to strengthen its national security by going nuclear. There are already influential voices in America insisting that a nuclear Japan would benefit the United States.

One also hears arguments from geography. It is said that Japan is especially vulnerable to nuclear attack because its cities and population are concentrated in a relatively small amount of territory. The contention is that Japan is safer without nuclear weapons because a relatively small attack by the Chinese or North Koreans would do a colossal, unacceptable level of damage. Tell that to the Israelis, about whom it is said that two well-placed bombs would annihilate the whole country. Where are the voices in that tiny nation calling for unilateral disarmament?

If there is a convincing argument against Japan acquiring nuclear weapons, it concerns the possibility of proliferation. Specifically, if Tokyo went nuclear, Seoul would likely do so as well. This is probably the most potent objection to nuclearization. The South Koreans have always been more positively disposed toward nuclear arms than Japan. Already, a majority of South Koreans, with a nuclear threat on their northern border, favor nuclear security. This percentage sharply increases if asked what they should do if the Japanese went nuclear. Their experience in World War II is not forgotten—many South Koreans view China more favorably than Japan. And they see the same unpredictable America that the Japanese do. Surrounded by a nuclear China and North Korea (and then a nuclear Japan), spurred on by a public that is pro-nuclear and uncertain about American guarantees, the leadership in Seoul would probably have no choice but to follow a path of proliferation. They are surely already holding discussions on the topic.

Yet, this should not trouble the Japanese. They need to remember that, whatever their differences, the South Koreans are their allies, not their enemies. The dangers they face emanate from Beijing and Pyongyang, not Seoul. There may be abstract or long-term risks to “world peace” from proliferation in East Asia, but the immediate dangers are an aggressive China, an unpredictable North Korea, and a faltering United States. With regard to their national security, these must be their immediate priorities.

In the end, the question of South Korea and the issue of nuclear proliferation present Japan with challenges that go to the heart of its national security. Since the end of World War II, Japan has prided itself on being the “peace nation,” leading the international battle to limit and eventually banish nuclear weapons. That goal seems as far away as ever. Yet, at the same time, the immediate threats to Japan’s national security have mounted, while its primary—indeed, only—protector has grown weaker and, exhausted by fruitless wars in Asia and the Middle East, shows every sign of withdrawing ever more from the international stage. The weary United States seems to be rediscovering its isolationist traditions. Japan’s stand as a beacon for global peace increasingly seems a luxury it can ill afford.

Should Japan continue on the idealistic path that was possible only because of America’s protections? Or should it accept the reality of a profoundly altered global situation in which they can rely on no one but themselves? Even the most hopeful and pacifist among the Japanese may realize that there is only one answer to these questions. Japan must develop nuclear weapons.

About the Author:

Barry Gewen is the former editor of the New York Times Book Review.

The National Interest · by Barry Gewen · December 8, 2023

6. The Office That Henry Kissinger Built

Excerpts:

For Kissinger, it was not just organization that mattered; it was first-class personnel staffing that made a National Security Adviser effective. His first comment to me as National Security Adviser was, “Good job on Pottinger,” referring to my deputy National Security Adviser appointment. Kissinger’s own deputies, Al Haig and Brent Scowcroft, went on to become a secretary of state and a two-time National Security Adviser, respectively. To the end, Kissinger was mentoring young policymakers to become America’s future leaders.

Even in his final days, Kissinger was thinking, writing, and speaking about the need for a strong foreign policy to deter America’s adversaries. Every National Security Adviser who takes up the same charge, who works in Henry Kissinger’s West Wing office, should ask themselves, “What is their grand strategy” for keeping America secure?

The Office That Henry Kissinger Built

Every American has Dr. Henry Kissinger to thank for helping to shape a more peaceful world. Every National Security Adviser who served after Kissinger has him to thank for skillfully securing their office close to the president in the West Wing of the White House.

The National Interest · by Robert C. O’Brien · December 7, 2023

Every American has Dr. Henry Kissinger to thank for helping to shape a more peaceful world. Every National Security Adviser who served after Kissinger has him to thank for skillfully securing their office close to the president in the West Wing of the White House.

Before the Nixon Presidency, the State Department was largely responsible for setting America’s foreign policy. Nixon entered office with the intention to direct foreign policy from the White House. Revitalizing and reorganizing the National Security Council early in his first term was critical to Nixon’s efforts. Kissinger understood that being steps from the president’s desk would help increase the National Security Adviser’s and National Security Council’s influence within the White House, so he secured what had been the press secretary’s corner office just down the hall from the Oval Office.

Philosophically aligned and working in newfound physical proximity allowed the unlikely pair—a Quaker politician from California and a Jewish refugee academic from Harvard—to forge a collaborative partnership that produced the most salient American foreign policy grand strategy after World War II. Their historic accomplishments tilted the Cold War balance of power in America’s favor. They negotiated the Paris Peace Accords to end the Vietnam War, opened relations with the People’s Republic of China, initiated détente with the Soviet Union, saved Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War (while expelling Soviet influence from the Middle East), and re-started the Middle East peace process that paved the way for the Camp David Accords of 1979.

Kissinger’s appointment as National Security Adviser took him by surprise: “I had been closely associated with Nelson Rockefeller,” Kissinger recounted to a Nixon Library audience in 2016, “who was the principal opponent of President Nixon.” The thirty-seventh president saw things differently: “I had a strong intuition about Henry Kissinger,” Nixon wrote in his Memoirs, “and I decided on the spot that he should be my national security adviser.”

What Henry Kissinger Told Me

Today, because of Nixon’s and Kissinger’s legacy, the National Security Adviser is the president’s principal counselor on all foreign policy and security matters. I was the twentieth person to succeed Kissinger in that office. Like he was with my predecessors and successor, he was generous with his time and advice on things practical, political and strategic.

On arms control, I spoke with Kissinger at length before sitting down with the Russians. His years of working with longtime Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin to negotiate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty gave him detailed insights into how the Russians negotiate. I brought these observations with me to the negotiating table and found that many Soviet tactics were still employed by the Russians fifty years later.

Even two years into the Trump Administration, I inherited a National Security Council staff that had ballooned in size during the Obama administration. I turned to Kissinger – whose institutional knowledge was unrivaled – to advise me on organizational structure and decision-making processes. Then, in his mid-90s, he recalled with ease the structure of the Nixon NSC, down to titles at every level and day-to-day workflows, which proved invaluable as we streamlined NSC operation. Condi Rice shared with me that Kissinger had given her similar counsel when she took over as National Security Adviser for President George W. Bush.

For Kissinger, it was not just organization that mattered; it was first-class personnel staffing that made a National Security Adviser effective. His first comment to me as National Security Adviser was, “Good job on Pottinger,” referring to my deputy National Security Adviser appointment. Kissinger’s own deputies, Al Haig and Brent Scowcroft, went on to become a secretary of state and a two-time National Security Adviser, respectively. To the end, Kissinger was mentoring young policymakers to become America’s future leaders.

Even in his final days, Kissinger was thinking, writing, and speaking about the need for a strong foreign policy to deter America’s adversaries. Every National Security Adviser who takes up the same charge, who works in Henry Kissinger’s West Wing office, should ask themselves, “What is their grand strategy” for keeping America secure?

About the Author

Ambassador Robert C. O’Brien served as U.S. National Security Adviser from 2019 to 2021 and is Chairman of the Board of the Richard Nixon Foundation.

The National Interest · by Robert C. O’Brien · December 7, 2023

7. Imagining the Future of Landpower

Excerpts:

Watling’s force design also addresses the growing role of drones and unmanned aerial systems within a more holistic conception of combined arms. This counters former Google CEO Eric Schmitt, a dedicated Pentagon advisor, who visited Ukraine and concluded that the future of war will be “dictated and waged by drones” alone. Watling is acutely aware that drones and AI are being employed with substantial operational impact in ongoing conflicts. Yet, there is more to warfare than strike operations, and the author generates ideas for exploiting unmanned platforms, as well as countering their employment against US forces.

This is a meticulously researched product that makes evidence-based judgments on future force design at a granular level. It is a timely exploration of ongoing changes in the character of warfare and draws upon ongoing trends and prudent extrapolations. Policymakers and military service force developers can glean numerous insights from Watling’s painstaking scholarship. The proposals in The Arms of the Future are highly relevant to American defense requirements, at least with respect to conventional warfare. Unconventional requirements and the special operations community will not find much to delve into. Readers may contest some conclusions, but they cannot doubt that the author framed the right questions and offered actionable solutions. There is a need for objective and urgent testing of concepts and capabilities today. The best place to start would be with the incisive observations and ideas in this book.

Imagining the Future of Landpower - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Frank Hoffman · December 8, 2023

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Jack Watling, The Arms of the Future: Technology and Close Combat in the Twenty-First Century (Bloomsbury, for the Royal United Services Institute, 2023)

There is an ongoing debate in the US military establishment about the changing character of war. Officially, we acknowledge the need for significant change over continuity, yet very few agree on the details. Ongoing conflicts raise questions. In particular, just how will the rapid diffusion of low-cost unmanned systems and an array of accurate, lethal top-attack munitions impact warfare and US defense priorities? How should tomorrow’s landpower adapt to the purported changing character of war. What is now a legacy capability and what are the new priorities shaping US military investments? A new book, The Arms of the Future: Technology and Close Combat in the Twenty-First Century, gets to the heard of that debate, taking a forward-leaning look at these questions and urging adaptation. It races up to and past what a prior article in these pages called “the inflection point between evolutionary and revolutionary adaptation.”

The author’s thesis is clear: despite more than adequate evidence of the need to change how armies fight, they are not modernizing or restructuring their forces properly. Rather than transform the force coherently, “Armies today are largely seeking to retain tried and tested structures while adding new capabilities onto their platforms.” Bolting new capabilities onto existing platforms, the author contends, is inefficient and adds costs.

The author of this consistently informative and often provocative book is a senior research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute. Jack Watling is widely recognized as an international expert in land warfare and has drawn accolades for a series of consistently penetrating monographs and commentaries on the ongoing war in Ukraine. His latest product is not simply an academic exercise; it is built upon extensive interviews, experimentation reports, direct observation, and interviews from exercises and contemporary wars.

Watling’s design builds from the bottom up, logically tracing from tasks to structure. His ideas are already influencing European military thinking, particularly how the British Army intends to fight—more dispersed and also more lethal. They are wholly deserving of serious attention by the US defense establishment as we adapt American defense priorities after Ukraine. It’s going to take innovative thinking and creative applications of tactics, techniques, and advanced training to address the action/counteraction dynamics inherent to war.

The book has two major sections. The first lays out the author’s projection of the future operating environment. In five concise chapters Watling details the transparency of the battlespace, the contested electromagnetic spectrum, the limitations of protection amid rising lethality, the complexity of combat support, and the enduring reality of urban operations. There is little variance with the US Army’s projected operational environment with the exception of TRADOC’s forecast on climate change.

In the chapter dealing with protection and enhanced lethality, Watling’s judgments on the trends and tradeoffs in mobility, firepower, and armored protection were notable and are a significant theme in animating his force design. He argues against slow and evolutionary change:

Today improvements in lethality are improving exponentially. Improvements in protection by contrast have begun to advance logarithmically with smaller gains requiring ever-greater resource to achieve. This has far-reaching consequences for how militaries think about and design their fighting systems.

The best chapter involves the longstanding problems associated with urban warfare. While the advantages that Western militaries bring to bear are often negated in urban terrain, there are options and opportunities to succeed in urban battles as shown in detailed studies of US-directed operations against ISIS in Mosul in 2014. Watling draws on insights from other contemporary conflicts in Narakano-Karabakh, Iraq, and Ukraine. The ongoing battle for Gaza may add a new chapter and force us to recall old but ignored lessons about fighting in cities. The author clearly thinks control of urban nodes is critical.

The second part of The Arms of the Future is devoted to exploring the implications of the projected security environment for force design. Dr. Watling devotes separate chapters to each component of a modern combined arms system. His task organization is illustrative but not prescriptive. Watling offers an inherently integrated and mutually supported force design with four subsystems. The first is the maneuver system, which the author tasks with reconnaissance, screening, and counterreconnaissance. The battle group he proposes for screening is comprised of four companies—support (including headquarters), reconnaissance, mechanized infantry and light cavalry. The second is the fires system, comprised of four components—command and control, target acquisition, lethal fires, and nonlethal fires. For fires, Watling develops a formation with three layers: long-range rocket artillery, cannon, and loitering munitions. Third is the assault system. Watling frames his design for this component on an urban assault battalion that has three armored assault companies, an engineering company, and a robotic autonomous systems company. Each assault platoon includes six vehicles—two tanks with smoothbore cannon (fifty-four tons or less) and active protection for kinetic vertical attack and four vehicles with 30- to 60-millimeter cannon for suppression and countering unmanned aerial systems. Finally, there is the support system. This includes command and control, mobile combat support elements, force/hub protection assets, and electronic warfare and information operations resources.

At first glance, the lack of a system for command and control and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance seemed jarring. However, the author argues that command is more of an enabling function and tied more to ensuring alignment, sustainment, and coordination. Here the author embraces some insights from Exeter Professor Anthony King, who argued in Command: The Twenty-First Century General for less directive leadership models and for more distributed and participative decision-making. The Arms of the Future reinforces King’s argument that command must evolve with changes in the character of conflict. This topic is the subject of some debate and should be developed further.

The US joint warfighting community is seeking answers to many questions raised in The Arms of the Future. In particular, the US Army Futures Command and the Marine Corps Force Design are wrestling with the promised potential of disruptive technologies, and the tradeoffs involved in designing tomorrow’s land combat capabilities. Army leaders are seeking more transformative efforts rather than merely modernizing. Separating fact from fiction depends on clear and observable results, either from experimentation or ongoing combat operations, and this is a strength of Watling’s approach.

The Arms of the Future offers a number of conclusions regarding maneuver, armored vehicles, and unmanned systems. With respect to maneuver, the author rejects the “maneuver is dead” school, but still appreciates the appropriate role of materiel attrition to future success. Watling argues for a modern combined arms system fit for purpose rather than a heavier package of impressive and exquisite technological wizardry that is laminated onto existing organizational structures and practice. There is still a clear need for offensive maneuver, as argued by Professor Stephen Biddle, yet the ability to maneuver successfully is going to require rethinking. In that perpetual contest of adaptation in warfare, the combined arms system must continue to evolve. Watling’s detailed ideas on formations and capabilities are worthy contributions to the debate on contours of that evolution.

With respect to armor, The Arms of the Future is relevant to the ongoing debate about the future of the tank. Watling understands that there is a continued role for mobile, protected lethality on the battlefields of the future. He agrees that the tank is not dead but appreciates the need to adapt its employment in warfare. Watling’s arguments align with the respected Israeli scholar, Azar Gat, who has argued for fighting vehicles in the thirty-ton range, with an emphasis on active protection systems over heavy armor and the attendant logistical demands. The US Army’s search for armored mobility that is lighter, hybrid, and highly automated is an appropriate objective, but we must avoid illusions about purely technological solutions. Successful maneuver will require an ability to project ambiguity, deception, and misdirection across domains. “The protection offered by armor may be illusory,” Watling concludes, “but it is in casting illusions that armies can regain survivability.”

Watling’s force design also addresses the growing role of drones and unmanned aerial systems within a more holistic conception of combined arms. This counters former Google CEO Eric Schmitt, a dedicated Pentagon advisor, who visited Ukraine and concluded that the future of war will be “dictated and waged by drones” alone. Watling is acutely aware that drones and AI are being employed with substantial operational impact in ongoing conflicts. Yet, there is more to warfare than strike operations, and the author generates ideas for exploiting unmanned platforms, as well as countering their employment against US forces.

This is a meticulously researched product that makes evidence-based judgments on future force design at a granular level. It is a timely exploration of ongoing changes in the character of warfare and draws upon ongoing trends and prudent extrapolations. Policymakers and military service force developers can glean numerous insights from Watling’s painstaking scholarship. The proposals in The Arms of the Future are highly relevant to American defense requirements, at least with respect to conventional warfare. Unconventional requirements and the special operations community will not find much to delve into. Readers may contest some conclusions, but they cannot doubt that the author framed the right questions and offered actionable solutions. There is a need for objective and urgent testing of concepts and capabilities today. The best place to start would be with the incisive observations and ideas in this book.

Dr. Frank Hoffman is a distinguished research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University. He is a former Marine infantryman.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Savannah Baldwin, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Frank Hoffman · December 8, 2023

8. Israel-Hamas War: Biden Administration Bypasses Congress to Approve Sale of Tank Shells to Israel

Israel-Hamas War: Biden Administration Bypasses Congress to Approve Sale of Tank Shells to Israel

The New York Times · by Edward Wong · December 9, 2023

Israeli soldiers work on their tank near the Israel border on Friday.Credit...Amir Cohen/Reuters

The State Department is pushing through a government sale to Israel of 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition, bypassing a congressional review process that is generally required for arms sales to foreign nations, according to a State Department official and an online post by the Defense Department on Saturday.

The State Department notified congressional committees at 11 p.m. on Friday that it was moving ahead with the sale, valued at more than $106 million, even though Congress had not finished an informal review of a larger order from Israel for tank rounds.

United Nations Security Council members raised their hands in favor of a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza on Friday. The United States vetoed the motion.

The United States’ decision to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution that called for an immediate cease-fire in the war in Gaza has sparked frustration among Arab governments that are pushing to end the conflict, with one group of regional officials expressing “deep dissatisfaction” over the move.

Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority — which Washington and others have floated as a potential governing body for postwar Gaza — called the veto “a mark of shame that will follow the United States for many years” and said that American officials’ policy toward Israel had made their country “a partner in genocide.”

Maps: Tracking the Attacks in Israel and Gaza

See how Israeli troops reached Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza.

Smoke rising over Shajaiye district as seen from Nahal Oz, Israel, on Saturday.Credit...Atef Safadi/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Israeli military struck targets from the air, ground and sea across the Gaza Strip overnight into Saturday, it said, as aid-raid sirens warning of incoming rocket fire blared in Israeli communities near Gaza.

About a week into Israel’s new push in the south, the military said that much of the close-quarters fighting in its ground assault was taking place in Shajaiye, a neighborhood in northern Gaza that the Israeli military has called “a terrorist hotbed.”

Children waited in line for food offered by a charity in Rafah in December.Credit...Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

A humanitarian aid group warned on Saturday that thousands of children in the Gaza Strip are at risk of dying from malnutrition after two months of war that have decimated the territory’s economy and destroyed its infrastructure.

Save the Children, a British charity, said that it had documented the cases of at least 7,685 children under the age of 5 who were so malnourished that they required “urgent medical treatment to avoid death.”

Israeli army spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, in Tel Aviv last month.

Israeli troops conducted at least one targeted raid in the Gaza Strip on Friday in a failed attempt to rescue hostages held by Hamas, both sides said, making competing claims about deaths and injuries inflicted.

The Israeli military and the military wing of Hamas gave differing accounts, leaving it unclear whether they were describing the same rescue attempt or two separate events.

Destroyed buildings in Jabaliya. Credit...Hatem Moussa/Associated Press

As criticism mounted of Israel’s mass detention of Palestinian men in Gaza, the government defended the roundup, saying it needed to detain hundreds of men to determine if any of them were connected to Hamas.

The detentions sparked outrage after photos and video of the detainees — tied up outdoors and stripped to their underwear — spread widely on social media on Thursday.

An Israeli tank during a drill in northern Israel in October.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Israel has asked the State Department to approve an order for 45,000 rounds of ammunition for the types of tanks operating in Gaza, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the request.

The value of the order is more than $500 million, they said. Israeli tanks have been operating throughout Gaza during the war, as well as in northern Israel, where they have fired into Lebanon. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in Israel’s military offensive, which began on Oct. 7 after Hamas carried out terrorist attacks across southern Israel, killing an estimated 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting about 240 others.

Refaat Alareer giving a lecture at the Islamic University of Gaza in 2021.Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

The Palestinian academic and activist Refaat Alareer was killed on Wednesday in an airstrike in northern Gaza, according to his father-in-law. He was 44.

A literature professor at Islamic University of Gaza, Mr. Alareer became known outside the territory for editing two books of essays and short fiction in English about the struggles of life in Gaza, “Gaza Writes Back” and “Gaza Unsilenced.”

Palestinian journalists mourn colleagues Saeed Al-Taweel and Muhammad Sobh, who were killed in October by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City.Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

Reporting inside Gaza is extremely challenging right now. Israel has prevented journalists from entering the region except when accompanied by its military, and then only under certain conditions, while Egypt, along its border, is also blocking access. Communications have been limited, in part because of the Israeli siege of the enclave. Many Palestinian journalists in Gaza have been killed in airstrikes. And even before the war, Hamas restricted what reporters could cover in Gaza, limiting their movement, interrogating their sources and translators and expelling foreign reporters for work deemed objectionable.

The Times, along with other news organizations, has asked the governments of Israel and Egypt for direct access to Gaza because reporting on the ground is vital to understanding this crisis. Throughout the war, The Times has been working with journalists who were already in Gaza when the siege began. We have been interviewing residents and officials in Gaza by phone and using digital apps. We have asked people in the area to share their stories with us on video, which we then confirm are real. We also verify photos and social media posts using similar techniques, scrutinizing them to determine where and when they were taken or written and cross-checking with other sources, such as satellite imagery. We cross reference any information we gather with interviews with the U.N. and other international organizations, many of which have employees in different parts of Gaza.

In general, we try to avoid relying on a single source and we seek to include detailed information whenever possible.

The New York Times · by Edward Wong · December 9, 2023

9.

'

The author expects some blowback that will hopefully drive critical discussions. It is now 2035.

Please go to the website link  https://www.armyupress.army.mil/journals/military-review/special-topics/fwwp-toc/fwwp-2023/babb/ or the PDF link to view this. in the proper format. : https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/Future-Warfare-Writing-Program/2023/Babb/Baab-2035-UA1.pdf

Excerpts;

Conclusion

But our [China’s] strength is what it has always been—our judicious patience. The Americans are incapable of behaving patiently. They change their government and their policies as often as the seasons … They’re governed by their emotions, by their blithe morality and belief in their precious indispensability.

—Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War17

As U.S. and Chinese military forces conduct joint patrols through the Northern Sea Route, share intelligence on Russia forces in the Far East and Central Asia, and support United Nations operations across the globe, a long-term modus vivendi between the two powers is clearly underway. Mutual acceptance of each other’s systems of government and regional and security prerogatives was a first step. Both sides clearly saw the costs and lack of rewards of global leadership and control versus international influence based on a larger consensus to deal with significant global issues beyond the means of any one state to deal with effectively. Most importantly, China and the United States together are needed to control and mitigate the effects of a myriad crises around the globe not unlike those that have existed throughout history. There is now a shared national interest to oppose a malignant and bellicose Russia that continues to cause and inflame many of these problems for the world.

2035: Sino-American Détente

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Agreements started in the mid-2020s for expansive cooperation on issues of mutual concern resulted in the development of a “near-ally” relationship between the United States and China by 2035. (Artificial intelligence image created by Charlotte Richter, Military Review)

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Preface. Army Futures Command (AFC) Pamphlet 525-2, Future Operational Environment: Forging the Future in an Uncertain World, 2035-2050, discusses four “alternative futures.” These are warfighting scenarios the United States Army must be prepared to confront to “deter or fight and win against.” The first is a “New Cold War,” where the United States and China “compete to achieve global primacy.” The second is “Ascending Powers,” where the United States and China compete within a multipolar system of “persistent instability and conflict.” The third is “Stable Competition,” a bipolar world where “China ascends to superpower status.” Alternative four is “Clashing Coalitions,” where the world is multipolar and “geographically unpredictable.”1 In all four futures, China is a major protagonist. This article outlines a fifth alternative that includes dealing with issues outlined in AFC’s pamphlet but also offers an alternative history from 2023 to 2035 where the United States and China end up as near allies that together confront Russia and a range of military operations across the globe.

This article is written in late 2035.

What China’s campaign of co-option, coercion, and concealment has in common with Putin’s playbook is the objective of collapsing the free, open, and rules-based order that the United States and its allies established after World War II, the order that some believed, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, was no longer contested.

—H. R. McMaster, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World2

In 1971, Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai began the process of fundamentally altering a long adversarial Sino-American relationship. The United States was an aggressive, if not leading, participant in China’s century of humiliation.3 To protect American citizens and commerce, U.S. naval forces patrolled the Yangtze River and its tributaries beginning in the 1850s. In 1900, an American joint force participated in the multinational effort during the Boxer Relief Expedition that included operations against Chinese imperial forces. This event led to the subsequent stationing from 1900 to 1941 of both U.S. Army and Marine elements in multiple locations in China. Through World War II and the second phase of the Chinese Civil War, U.S. forces supported Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists who were ultimately defeated in 1949 by Mao Zedong and the communists. The first major direct military conflict between the Americans and Chinese communist forces occurred from 1950 to 1953 on the Korean Peninsula.

This animosity and periodic confrontations with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continued through two major crises in the Taiwan Strait in the 1950s and Chinese support to North Vietnam through the 1960s. However, a slow process of change in the relationship became possible with Mao’s split with the Soviet Union in the late 1950s. By 1969, this deterioration progressed to conflict over the demarcation of their common border. By the early 1970s, China played a key supporting role for the United States in ending the long Vietnam War. By the end of the 1970s, China was at war with Vietnam with an invasion in early 1979, fewer than five years after the fall of Saigon, and only weeks after Deng Xiaoping’s visit to Washington.

With the 1984 visit of President Ronald Reagan to China, military-to-military activities with the United States increased significantly with weapons sales, intel sharing, and closer military-to-military ties. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the driving force behind improving Sino-U.S. military ties. That said, as military and diplomatic relations grew more estranged over the following decades, mutual economic entanglements expanded as the Chinese economy steadily grew and became more integrated into the global system. Trade with the United States continued to expand, despite worsening relations. In the early 2020s, economic decoupling and independence became the goal of both sides; however, that evolved over time to de-risking. The economic relationship eventually settled into selective detaching and a return to a new form of bounded globalization that reemphasized prudent nationalization of key sectors with increased protection of security-related industrial and technological ideas and property. This dichotomy lasted until the U.S. presidential election of 2032 and subsequent policies supporting Sino-American détente on a level not seen since the early 1970s.

As memories of the Soviet dissolution faded and the excesses and failures of the Putin and Xi regimes were exposed, the new regime in Beijing again opened the door to economic changes not seen since the time of Deng Xiaoping.

Working more closely with American and European businesses was recognized by the post-Xi era Chinese government as critical for reenergizing economic growth. Xi Jinping’s destructive left turn, especially in his third five-year term, had caused significant economic stagnation, putting at risk the CCP global external relationships, internal control, and especially legitimacy. For more than a decade, China’s inward-looking protective policies curtailed investments and led foreign businesses to diversify away from China. After the collapse of the Xi regime, foreign companies slowly began to return to the Middle Kingdom to take advantage of technical capabilities and irreplaceable manufacturing advantages in addition to greater access for goods and services in the Chinese market. Xi’s programs to avoid any semblance of a Soviet Union-style collapse fueled the CPC’s ultimately self-destructive move inward and to the neo-Marxist left. This had been exacerbated by the slow recovery from COVID and successful American and Western efforts to decouple the economies and strengthen relationships with friends and allies in Asia. However, as memories of the Soviet dissolution faded and the excesses and failures of the Putin and Xi regimes were exposed, the new regime in Beijing again opened the door to economic changes not seen since the time of Deng Xiaoping.

The Emerging Situation

By 2035, the eras of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and shared Sino-Russian anti-Americanism, had passed into the dustbin of history. The weak leadership that immediately emerged in both Russia and China at the end of the 2020s was followed in Beijing with the return of a strong, pragmatic nationalist leader less guided by ideology than workable policies to address emerging national security and economic growth concerns. While relations with Russia worsened, China mended fences with a West that was slow to recognize the sea change in Beijing. The relationship had been poisoned by China’s aggressive military posture during the Xi era and the ever-present “all relations are based on deception” paradigm that initially prevented a more balanced view of China’s actions and objectives.

China slowly began to recover from economic stagnation and took advantage of the significant successes in reductions in fossil fuel needs that nuclear power, alternative energy sources, and transportation system electrification allowed. The virtual end of the global oil economy nearly beggared an unprepared Russia. The new post-Putin regime was forced to embark on a dramatic and risky program to exploit alternative resources in the Far East and the former SSR Central Asian states. This was often directly at odds with Chinese interests and developments in these regions.

Russian aggression created political and social discontent in Central Asia and in Russia east of the Urals. China began to react more forcefully in the west and north as Russia attempted to play a greater role across the former SSR “-stans,” Siberia, and the Far East. This fracturing of the Sino-Russian relationship was exacerbated as both nations vied for influence and non-oil critical resource extraction not only in Central Asia but also in Africa and South America. In addition, concerns over the future development and usage of the Northern Sea Route continued to divide the two states as its value for trade and commerce became more fact than hope. China, northern European states, and the United States were united in the desire for security, freedom of access, and support to navigation along this vital sea line of communication.

Whether led by Peter the Great, the Soviet Communist Party, or the neonationalist Putin, Russia has always been an expansive empire without easily defendable borders and a mean streak of often well-founded paranoia. China, on the other hand, is a long-established empire whose borders have expanded and contracted since the establishment of the Qin Dynasty in 221 BCE, depending on the ruling dynasties’ proclivities for addressing foreign threats or domestic stability and consolidation. For China—ancient, dynastic, or modern—there has always been a Hobbesian choice of which enemy to fight. The external potential foes most often originate in the north, and there are the ever-present internal threats to stability. Temporarily ruling dynasties and regimes experienced their rise, plateau, and inevitable loss or squandering of the right to rule. By 2030, the Xi regime had lost the “mandate of heaven” and was unable to meet the needs and demands of the Chinese people as Xi dealt unsuccessfully with his paranoias.

By 2035, the crises in both Ukraine and Moldova, which was invaded and occupied by Russia in 2027 as the U.S.-Taiwan crisis erupted, had reached a relatively stable, if still uneasy, status quo.

In the final analysis, strong personalities heading autocratic regimes, with supporting sycophant oligarchs, magistrates, or politburos, are still likely to rule in both countries for the coming decades. However, since 1949, the CCP has shown an amazing ability to rebound successfully after debilitating autarky. Between 1966 and 1976, Mao turned China inward during the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution that drove China to isolate itself from the world. While Xi Jinping did not move as far left as Mao, he did attempt to reduce China’s reliance on global trade, if not resources. As Deng Xiaoping opened China back up to the world post 1978, the CCP after Xi is embarked on a similar course of reopening.

China has also successfully conducted turnarounds from costly outwardly aggressive periods in pursuit of unachievable foreign policy goals and the ever-present requirement to maintain domestic stability. China’s internal policy changes and more realistic international goals have led to a return to solid economic growth, stable government, and more “harmonious” international relations, with one major exception. During the first five years of the 2030s, China and Russia emerged as each other’s most likely enemy and primary threat, to the great advantage of the United States.

China and Russia are destined to vie for control of Halford Mackinder’s heartland and regional dominance.4 Both empires also demand influence on the global stage in consonance with their history, demographics, and geography. However, in this truly multipolar world, China’s increasingly closer relations with the West has been strengthened by years of Russia’s continued threat to NATO and its overbearing behavior toward Central and Far East Asia. A harbinger of these policies in Asia was Russia’s “peacekeeping” effort in Kazakhstan in 2022. This aggressive deployment in China’s backyard eventually evolved into a full-on Sino-Russian split. It also led to the fracturing of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that had formed in 2001 to assist China and Russia with working together diplomatically, economically, and in the areas of security and defense in the Eurasia region. The United States reacted, albeit slowly and tentatively, with support for closer Chinese ties to Europe as the split became more obvious. In 2033, the new American administration’s national security documents outlined measures to support China and take advantage of the growing animosity between the two rival Eurasian powers.

By 2035, the crises in both Ukraine and Moldova, which was invaded and occupied by Russia in 2027 as the U.S.-Taiwan crisis erupted, had reached a relatively stable, if still uneasy, status quo. The Chinese economy that peaked before COVID and then began its precipitous decline in the late 2020s helped drive the new regime’s mandate to address the myriad domestic issues that grew in the Xi era.5 China’s internal and diplomatic situations were significantly influenced by the failure of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as the Western-feared “debt trap” evolved into Beijing’s own “debt entanglement.” China’s relative economic decline, exacerbated by its debt crisis and demands by the Chinese people to address internal issues, was instrumental in a sharp decline not only in foreign lending but also in offshore resource procurement and manufacturing, and this led to a significant drop in defense spending.

The theater commands of the People’s Liberation Army, 4 February 2016. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the military threat from Russia, China was forced to not only curb the growth of the People’s Liberation Army but also to make significant reductions in forces, operational tempo, and spending on research and development. More surprising were curbs on intelligence operations. Spying, a cornerstone of China’s way of war, was outlined over two thousand years ago in Sun Tzu’s 2,500-year-old treatise on war. Sun Tzu, a contemporary of Confucius, stated that intelligence is vital to the national and military leadership’s ability to deal with threats and to maintain power.6 However, the developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and Western success in securing of systems and communications in the cyber domain seriously curtailed machine and human intelligence collection and complicated source management. In terms of internal surveillance that had been the hallmark of the Xi control regime, AI became a key countersurveillance tool in the hands of China’s well-educated and the all too often idle and discontented younger population.

Access to artificial intelligence; exploitation of social media; broad availability of cyber capabilities, drones, and a lethal array of antiair, antiship, and antiarmor weapons systems; and an organizational and doctrinal approaches for their use have flourished in both regular and irregular forces of both state and nonstate actors.

Successful programs in the mid-2020s by the United States and the West to deprive China of key defense technologies also helped bring on a plateau and then a reduction in major military systems development and acquisition. Defense of the homeland and securing influence and access to resources in Central and Far East Asia became the hallmark of China’s defense policy as clearly outlined in its 2034 Defense White Paper. The China dream of the Xi administration to displace a declining United States and gain a globally harmonious hegemony with, by, and through an expanding and more capable military, expansive BRI with greater port accesses worldwide, and the fostering of an alternative geopolitical model, failed spectacularly. The debt trap so feared by many U.S. security analysts became a diplomatic and economic tarpit with widespread backlash against Chinese “liaison institutes,” private and state-supported companies, China’s cash-strapped central banks, and diplomatic communities.

Perhaps as important geo-strategically, American presidential and congressional elections in 2028 and 2032 slowly returned political parties to greater consensus for a foreign policy of measured global engagement while maintaining reasonable growth in defense expenditures. The U.S. military, despite some lingering holdovers in the fringes of both political parties and in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) leadership, no longer sees China as its “pacing threat.”7 For more than a decade, China’s “rise” and military expansion kept the United States, its friends and allies in the region, and key NATO partners more focused on security for the region, drove weapons improvements, and finally drove a realistic and militarily supported “pivot” to Asia.

The United States and its allies and friends slowly put into place their own mutually supporting anti-access/area denial system along the first and second island chains designed to keep an aggressive China from breaking out. This strategy and these new systems are now focused on the Russian Far East and supporting pan-Asian informal security regimes as Moscow has now attained top billing as America’s potential threat. However, throughout the world, there are islands of instability that demand American support for multinational approaches to global security. Localized conflicts caused by climate change, loss of arable land with diminishing agricultural yields, accelerating and expanding refugee migrations, mutating terrorist regimes, and civil wars with accompanying massive human rights violations and dislocations are now being addressed.The complexity and diversity of the potential threats precludes a singular focus and demands capabilities and plans across the spectrum of conflict.

Responsibility to protect deployments by the United Nations with NATO, U.S., and Chinese military contingents and support increased significantly, driven by a shared desire to “do something” to ameliorate the worsening conditions. This concept emerged thirty years ago in a world summit “to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.”8 However, it receded into the background as the new Cold War emerged in both Europe of and Asia. At about the same time in 2005, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick talked about China as a “responsible stakeholder,” a role that has now also come to pass.9

Chinese and American troops are increasingly working side-by-side throughout the world, conducting multidomain operations across the lower end of the spectrum of conflict against sophisticated and surprising technically savvy nonstate actors and failed or failing states. Access to artificial intelligence; exploitation of social media; broad availability of cyber capabilities, drones, and a lethal array of antiair, antiship, and antiarmor weapons systems; and an organizational and doctrinal approaches for their use have flourished in both regular and irregular forces of both state and nonstate actors. China, the West, and the U.S. have been forced to cooperate far beyond what was imaged even in the early 2030s.

Perhaps most importantly for the improved Sino-U.S. relationship is the changed situation in Taiwan and the South China Sea. In the USINDOPACOM security environment of 2035, the Taiwan situation has returned to the 1970s consensus with the passing of the “Cuban Missile Crisis moment” in the fall of 2027. The result of what might have been a catastrophic escalation to major conflict was a new communique reaffirming a modified One China policy. The new Tianjin communique included a separate “secret” face-saving agreement that reunification is an issue for China’s “future generations” to decide, and for American defense support to Taiwan to be much reduced. The support to Taiwan through the 2020s and increasing pressure from neighboring Asian states not only cast doubt on the possibility of a successful PLA invasion but also convinced China of the folly of continuing a policy of forced reunification. This major change was the result of a near catastrophic escalation.

A widening conflict was averted after a brief clash that began with a U.S. destroyer that was badly damaged while transiting the Taiwan Strait. This resulted in an air battle during which numerous U.S., PRC, and Taiwan planes were shot down, and one of China’s South China Sea islet fortresses was obliterated in retaliation when PLA forces fired on Philippine fishing vessels overwatched by U.S. naval assets. War was averted only by a quick diplomatic intercession by the Association of Southeast Asian States led by Vietnam and Indonesia. Neither a CCP reunification of Taiwan, nor sovereignty claims in the Spratly Islands, nor a “winning without fighting strategy” are now seen as viable to the regime in Beijing. Reuniting with Taiwan through coercive and military approaches were not viable at acceptable cost. Both sides agreed to continue a One China policy and “kick the chips down the road.” This incident and Xi Jinping’s failure to convince the People’s Liberation Army leadership that the United States would not escalate, set the stage for negotiation and the strategic relook by the PRC and the United States. This was a Cuban Missile Crisis moment for both countries and the region.

China’s growing fears of conflict with Russia also played a significant role in driving the Chinese to the negotiating table over Taiwan and South China Sea. This major change in the regional security environment eliminated the most potentially volatile situations between the United States and China. At the same time, China reached an accommodation with the nations of the Association of Southeast Asian States after a decade of counterproductive “wolf warrior” diplomacy and attempts to intimidate those nations adjacent to and near the South China Sea. By the late 2020s, the key assumptions outlined in Michael Pillsbury’s One Hundred Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower and Rush Doshi’s The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order were no longer valid.10 Two decades of fraught relations and escalating tensions from 2012 to 2027 were not appropriate foundations for Sino-U.S. relations.

In a very prescient book, The Avoidable War, published in 2022 by former Australian prime minister and China expert Kevin Rudd, presented ten factors that drove Xi’s foreign and domestic policies.11 He outlined not only what drove Xi’s policies but also how and why the United States saw China as the rising and most dangerous potential enemy. Mutual misunderstandings, animosities, and worst-case assumptions fueled what was nearly a road to war.

Should the two giants [China and the U.S.] find a way to coexist without betraying their core interests—through what I call strategic managed competition—the world will be better for it. Should they fail, down the other path lies the possibility of a war many times more destructive than what we are seeing in Ukraine today—and, as in 1914, one that will rewrite the future in ways we can barely imagine.12

The basis of Xi’s security policies was founded on a goal of national rejuvenation, anchored in the legacy of China’s weakness and exploitation during the hundred years of humiliation. Xi was determined that this would not happen to China again, and this was an easy sell to the people of China who saw the United States as engaged in a program to stop its rightful rise to global influence. However, China’s real goals, even under Xi, were more defensive than offensive. The objective was global influence compatible with China’s new place in the world and secure borders with the fourteen adjacent states, Japan, and the United States rather than expansion of a global empire controlled by a new “tribute system.”

Former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster had outlined Xi’s aggressive “three-pronged” strategy, which he characterized as “co-option, coercion, and concealment.”13 Through most of the 2020s, many American foreign policy experts saw China as the major security threat to the United States and its allies. However, a frank discussion of the consequences, global and regional, of a war with China was generally avoided. Few wanted to think about much less explore in any detail how limited military operations in the South China Sea or Taiwan could spiral out of control leading to horizontal escalation across the Indian Ocean and along vital global sea lines of communication. The possibilities of escalation to global conflict were never fully elucidated nor the following questions answered with any clarity or depth. A term from the Vietnam War by Professor Douglas Pike comes to mind: “vincible ignorance.”14

What does war with one-fifth of mankind, armed with nuclear weapons, in their home waters or territory, against a government that practices civil-military-economic-intelligence fusion look like? What is the direct existential security threat to the American homeland, and what are the triggers, or red lines, for such a war with China?

As this current détente with China goes forward, what are the residuals from the formerly fraught relationship that should be understood and addressed? Looking at Rudd’s ten characteristics outlined in The Avoidable War and how these evolved through the early 2030s in terms of the China threat and foreign and domestic policies provides a useful roadmap to how and why the U.S.-China relationship evolved relatively quickly from near conflict to near alliance. In hindsight, the American strategy was based on worst-case assumptions that thankfully did not materialize.

The U.S. national security documents of the early 2020s were full of dubious underlying assumptions on which unrealistic strategies were built that may have protected the Nation and its allies and friends in the region, but also provoked a provocative and escalating response from China. A key issue was the inability of the U.S. policy community to come to grips with China’s rightful place in the security, diplomatic, and economic global environment, and this almost led to war. An analysis of China’s evolution over the last decade through the lens of Rudd’s ten characteristics along with a sober view of China’s historical lessons, which they used and understood, helps explain how we got to where we are today. The bottom line is Xi’s goals were more aspirational than achievable and not a true reflection of China’s true global intentions and national direction. Reviewing these ten characteristics is a method of evaluating why many of the assumptions that drove America’s broad anti-Chinese agenda and animosity did not stand up over the test of time.

Core Interest 1: “The First Circle: The Politics of Staying in Power” (Chapter 4)

Keeping the CCP in power is the key driving factor in Xi’s decision. A classic example was his turnaround in 2023 of the three-year COVID lockdown. The driver is not ideology, it is pragmatism; Marxism is the vocabulary, but not the foundational ethic of Xi thought. The party fears the people and for good reason. Xi is as subject to losing the mandate of heaven as any past dynastic emperor. In addition, the party has had and will have factions that ebb and flow as the dynamics of the influence of the people and regional blocks fluctuate.

Core Interest 2: “The Second Circle: Securing National Unity” (Chapter 5)

Economic growth was the key to national unity. Initially, the Chinese people fully supported the rejuvenation of the Middle Kingdom, the party’s call for protection and reunification of core sovereignty to include Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the South China Sea. Over the decade, it became increasingly clear that the United States and the West were not the enemy and responsible for the “splittist activities” as claimed by the CCP. The measured reduction in aggressive activities by the United States and its partners in concert with a persistent information campaign showed results over time on the views of the Chinese people. A strategy based on the false assumption that “the only thing China understands is power” with its attendant increasing military pressure on its periphery changed with the American acceptance of the reality of China’s more defensive posture reminiscent of Sun Tzu’s “invincibility lies in the defense” strategy.15

Core Interest 3: “The Third Circle: Ensuring Economic Prosperity” (Chapter 6)

China could not recover the economic growth targets necessary to support domestic stability without Western technology, markets, and investments. The deep flaws of Xi’s policies began to become apparent with his COVID response and grew inexorably over time. There could be no economic recovery and development without capitalism, access to technology, and foreign markets. China was forced to move back to Dengist policies.

Core Interest 4: “The Fourth Circle: Making Economic Development Environmentally Sustainable” (Chapter 7)

Global climate issues demanded U.S., European, and Chinese cooperation. Catastrophic crop failure in China, significant reduction in global food sources, and technology-inspired fixes demanded Sino-American cooperation. As throughout its history, poverty (in this case the stalling of China’s economic rise) and the number and severity of natural disasters presage the loss of the mandate of heaven.

Core Interest 5: “The Fifth Circle: Modernizing the Military” (Chapter 8)

Non-security demands for funds and the costs of the systems and operational forces for multidomain operations forced China to dramatically reduce defense spending. Naval and aviation expenditure were the first to be curtailed. Ironically, the country that Mao introduced to People’s War and the important of men over technology saw its weakness across the security domain—not in the technology of it forces, but in the leadership, organization, and especially the preparation and quality of its forces.

Core Interest 6: “The Sixth Circle: Managing China’s Neighborhood” (Chapter 9)

China had few allies among the fourteen states on its border. Russia was always a potential threat and is now the enemy. Myanmar is a continuing embarrassment of human rights abuses and autocratic government. Pakistan is a long-standing ally normally poorly and inadequately governed by its military. North Korea is more of a millstone than border buffer fortress. India and Vietnam are ancient enemies, constantly testing the winds for policy changes and never trusting the words or actions of the Beijing government. Beyond the bordering states are a second web of problematic powers in Australia, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore, all allies or close friends of the United States. China has no friends and only needy allies on its border.

The wolf warrior diplomacy and “wolfpack business practices” drove many nations into the Western diplomatic and economic camp. China’s coercion backfired dramatically, first in the nations on its periphery, but as its economy shrank, its repayment demands intensified to become a global phenomenon. China’s continued activity as a bad or inconsistent friend drove most away. Xi’s bad-neighbor policy backfired and underwent systematic revision.

Core Interest 7: “The Seventh Circle: Securing China’s Maritime Periphery—the Western Pacific, the Indo-Pacific, and the Quad” (Chapter 10)

There is no Chinese Ma Han, and the Middle Kingdom is not a natural naval power as outlined in the writing of Alfred Thayer Mahan. Reminiscent of the end China’s Treasure Fleet of the voyages of Zheng He, China’s navy shrank in size and became very much a defense force in its home waters inside the first island chain. This was driven in part by a U.S. strategy not to concentrate on breaking through the anti-access/area denial defensive system, but to instead build a defensive belt with its allies from the Republic of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, and India; China could not compete. This allied naval defense strategy helped build a near NATO-type organization when very few analysts believed such unity was possible. In addition, Japan, Australia, and India’s naval modernization programs also helped to convince China that its maritime program could not compete again a vast allied armada, despite the self-imposed fiscal cap of the size of the U.S. Navy of just over three hundred ships.

Core Interest 8: “The Eighth Circle: Going West—The Belt and Road Initiative” (Chapter 11)

This program was a catastrophic failure. It was an unaffordable, unmanageable, and unsupportable program. The BRI did not evolve past an economic program to facilitate trade and resource access to a much-feared military basing system. It became a major drain on China’s resources and led to a backlash against its too often heavy-handed methods and overseas jobs program for Chinese workers. Like the Treasure Fleet of Zheng He, the new leadership in China abandoned the program. It did consolidate its investments in those areas where key resources critical to China’s economic development were located, predominately in Africa.

The less publicized land segment of the BRI was mortally wounded in Central Asia by the growing competition with Russia. Beyond that, this New Silk Road was not fiscally sustainable or sufficiently profitable given the transportation infrastructure costs and lack of transit-state markets. How do you collect on the debt trap with Pakistan or Iran? The cost of buying influence and greater access was more than China could bear as the domestic requirements for funding took precedence.

Core Interest 9: “The Ninth Circle: Increasing Chinese Leverage Across Europe, Africa, and Latin America and Gaining a Foothold in the Arctic” (Chapter 12)

China’s efforts in South America and Africa caused a significant reaction. Other foreign competitors began to learn from and outcompete China in acquiring access to needed natural resources. The host nations also became more sophisticated in their demands for not only better terms for what was extracted, but also for local refinement, manufacturing, and production. Several attempts by China to move beyond economic relationships for the ports and facilities they had developed for overtly military purposes, as a remedy for the incurred debt, backfired. Military access to another nation’s ports is mostly a function of the circumstance at the time of the conflict or crises for which they are needed. Nations have their own self-serving interests that must align with those of their allies to survive. The BRI saw major and extensive economic, military, and diplomatic setbacks.

Core Interest 10: “Changing the Global Rules-Based Order” (Chapter 13)

A study of history, and especially Japan’s attempt to establish an East Asian coprosperity sphere, is instructive for understanding 2035 China. China was never going to repeat Japan’s mistakes, even by winning without fighting. The cost of empire and global influence are a bill China was never going to pay. Perhaps Fukuyama’s “End of History and the Last Man”16 is instead better viewed as an end of empires. It is not about the inevitability of the triumph of democracy or autocracy, but the inevitability of conflict and search for global balance of power. A global order dominated by China was never in the cards. A correct reading of China’s new “tribute system” showed not domination, but measured management of foreign affairs by pragmatically dealing with stronger and weaker powers on its periphery for its own stability, national interests, international legitimacy, and harmony.

China’s goal, even under Xi, was not global hegemony, nor even the displacement of the not so pacific Pax Americana that emerged after World War II. China showed it was willing to participate in a system that attempted secure regional harmony, using compromise, cajoling, and coercion only as a last resort. The new Han China of Xi Jinping was never going to be the second coming or the foreign Mongol Yuan (1279–1368), the foreign Manchu Qing (1644–1911), or even the Han Chinese Ming (1368–1644). These dynasties ruled a China that aggressively expanded and protected the Middle Kingdom for over seven centuries until the end of rule by emperors in 1911. The rise and fall of these three dynasties, and many before them, are instructive for a sober look at China and its future.

Conclusion

But our [China’s] strength is what it has always been—our judicious patience. The Americans are incapable of behaving patiently. They change their government and their policies as often as the seasons … They’re governed by their emotions, by their blithe morality and belief in their precious indispensability.

—Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War17

As U.S. and Chinese military forces conduct joint patrols through the Northern Sea Route, share intelligence on Russia forces in the Far East and Central Asia, and support United Nations operations across the globe, a long-term modus vivendi between the two powers is clearly underway. Mutual acceptance of each other’s systems of government and regional and security prerogatives was a first step. Both sides clearly saw the costs and lack of rewards of global leadership and control versus international influence based on a larger consensus to deal with significant global issues beyond the means of any one state to deal with effectively. Most importantly, China and the United States together are needed to control and mitigate the effects of a myriad crises around the globe not unlike those that have existed throughout history. There is now a shared national interest to oppose a malignant and bellicose Russia that continues to cause and inflame many of these problems for the world.

Notes

1. Army Futures Command Pamphlet 525-2, Future Operational Environment: Forging the Future in an Uncertain World, 2035-2050, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Publishing Office [GPO]), 7–14, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1128552.pdf
2. H. R. McMaster, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World (New York: Harper, 2020), 124.
3. The following quote is germane: “The ensuring catastrophes are viewed with considerable dismay in contemporary China, as part of the ‘century of humiliation’ that ended only by the reunification of the country under an assertive nationalist form of Communism.” Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2012), 58. The Kowtow Questions, the Opium War, and chapter 3, “From Preeminence to Decline,” outline the Century of Humiliation.
4. Matt Rosenberg, “What Is Mackinder’s Heartland Theory?,” Thoughtco.com, 10 September 2018, https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-mackinders-heartland-theory-4068393. Sir Halford John Mackinder was a British geographer who wrote a paper in 1904 called “The Geographical Pivot of History.” Mackinder’s paper suggested that the control of Eastern Europe was vital to control of the world. Mackinder postulated the following, which became known as the Heartland Theory:
5. Who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland.
6. Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island.
7. Who rules the World Island commands the world.
8. The “heartland” he also referred to as the “pivot area” and as the core of Eurasia, and he considered all of Europe and Asia as the World Island.
9. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 147, 149. Chapter 13, “Employment of Secret Agents,” states, “There is no place where espionage is not used” (147), and “secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move” (149).
10. Hal Brands and Michael Beckley, Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China (New York: Norton, 2022), xiii. This book argues, “Americans urgently need to start seeing the Sino-American rivalry less as a 100-year marathon and more of a blistering, decade-long sprint. That’s because China will be a falling power far sooner than most people think.” Their argument is that China has already peaked.
11. Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2022 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2022), 4.
12. “The Responsibility to Protect populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing has emerged as an important global principle since the adoption of the UN World Summit Outcome Document in 2005.” “What is R2P?,” Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, accessed 30 October 2023, https://www.globalr2p.org/what-is-r2p/.
13. “Robert Zoellick’s Responsible Stakeholder Speech,” National Committee on U.S. China Relations, https://www.ncuscr.org/fact/robert-zoellicks-responsible-stakeholder-speech/. In 2005, Zoellick, then deputy secretary of state, “urged China to become a ‘responsible stakeholder.’”
14. Michael Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (New York: St. Martin Griffin, 2016); Rush Doshi, The Long Game: China Grand Strategy to Displace the American Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). These two books by Michael Pillsbury and Rush Doshi make powerful arguments that China’s long-term goal is to supersede the United States as the global leader. These two works by prominent China scholars underpin America’s China policy that emerged in the Trump and Biden administrations.
15. Kevin Rudd, The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China (New York: PublicAffairs, 2022).
16. Ibid., 2
17. McMaster, Battlegrounds, 105.
18. “Interview with Douglas Eugene Pike,” 13, https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/mss/mfdip/2004/2004pik01/2004pik01.pdf. This quote is from a transcript of an interview with Douglas Pike by John Hutchison, for the Association of Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project that was conducted in February 1989.
19. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, 85
20. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press,1992), https://www.amazon.com/End-History-Last-Man/dp/0743284550.
21. Elliot Ackerman and James Stavrides, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War (London: Penguin, 2021), 94.

Dr. Geoff Babb was commissioned from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1973 as a U.S. Army military intelligence officer. After serving in the Defense Intelligence Agency as a ground forces analyst, he was assigned to Monterey, California, Hong Kong, and Beijing for language and area studies. He was then assigned to Joint and Army Headquarters in Hawaii. In 1991, he joined the Command and General Staff College faculty at Fort Leavenworth. After retiring from the military, he earned a masters degree in East Asian languages and cultures, and a doctorate in Chinese history from the University of Kansas. He currently serves as a professor in the Department of Military History.

armyupress.army.mil

10. Opinion | Kissinger Was Right About China, and He Still Is

Some comments from a friend and colleague who flagged this for me.

 is a piece from the NYT done by a Chinese professor at Tsinghua Univ in Beijing.  Wonderfully done info ops or heartfelt opinion about how the Chinese intelligentsia really feels, impossible to tell. To easy to dismiss as party pablum. It does back up the thesis, that Russia is the enemy, and China could be once again our ally in the future. Neither the yin or the yang is always predominate. I truly believe the pragmatic social Leninists in Beijing are not Russia or North Korean in culture or proclivity in terms of their warlike nature, but must be viewed through a different and much more nuanced lens. I also believe the chances are really small that China is capable of leading a new Global rule based order. Their Asian buddies the Japanese tried it and failed even regionally. We have chased the ten foot tall Russian through the Cold War and the Washington anti-China crowd wants a new Cold War, however, the Chinese are shorter, maybe seven foot.  

Opinion | Kissinger Was Right About China, and He Still Is

By David Daokui Li

Dr. Li, a professor of economics at Tsinghua University, wrote from Beijing.

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

The New York Times · by David Daokui Li · December 6, 2023

Dec. 6, 2023

Credit...Associated Press

By

Dr. Li, a professor of economics at Tsinghua University, wrote from Beijing.

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

In the cold winter of 1972, a schoolteacher in a poor Chinese village asked his whole class: “The U.S. president, Nixon, and his adviser Dr. Kissinger will be in China. What should we do?”

Then 8 years old, I was a good student and had just finished my homework — writing down 50 times in Chinese characters the omnipresent political slogan “Down with the American imperialists! Down with the Soviet revisionists! Long live Chairman Mao!”

So I quickly popped up with an answer: “Arrest them, because they are our enemies.”

Within a few years, I realized how wrong I had been. The American outreach crafted by Henry Kissinger helped catalyze decades of complex political changes in China, leading to an era of reform and opening that eventually lifted 800 million people out of poverty and opened the eyes and minds of even more people.

All of that greatly affected my life, along with the lives of millions of other young students. Five years after Mr. Kissinger’s visit, China reopened colleges after being effectively closed for a decade. Through hard work and good luck, I was able to enter college and later went to the United States to obtain my Ph.D. from the same university where Mr. Kissinger received his. What a magical change for a schoolboy who had just been copying down party propaganda. The simple lesson I learned that day? Don’t be tricked by political slogans.

I can think of no other political figure or thought leader today who helped to initiate as monumental a positive impact on a foreign country as Mr. Kissinger. Although his death at the age of 100 last week has triggered polarized reactions in America, it has aroused overwhelmingly warm sentiments in China’s normally harsh internet space. Grateful articles by private citizens in his memory have gone viral. As the debate rages on over his legacy, I believe one thing is indisputable: Mr. Kissinger was right about China.

Forty years after I called for Mr. Kissinger’s arrest, I found myself standing nervously next to him on a stage facing a live audience of 2,700 people in Toronto for the Munk Debate, which also included Niall Ferguson and Fareed Zakaria. The debate topic: “Be it resolved, the 21st century will belong to China.” Mr. Kissinger took the con side of the argument, and I was pro. I wished I had been on his side. Not only because I continued to feel guilty about suggesting he be thrown into a Chinese jail but also because I disagreed with the proposition I was being asked to argue; I have never believed that China will own the world.

To the disappointment of my debate teammate, Mr. Ferguson — but to my secret satisfaction — we lost. It was clear that Mr. Kissinger’s authority on and command of the topic, coupled with Mr. Zakaria’s articulate presentation, gave their team a significant advantage. Most of the audience left the debate less convinced that the 21st century would belong to China.

Mr. Kissinger’s approach to China was formed by his lifelong study of world history and politics. He had a deep understanding of the interplay among big powers and an inherent understanding of China’s perspective on the world. Underneath it all, he had an unwavering loyalty to America’s best interests.

There are three important lessons to be gleaned from Mr. Kissinger’s approach to China. First, China is not a great threat to the United States. China simply does not appear to have the global ambition, institutional capacity, historical tradition or ideological clarity to replace and behave like the United States of today. Its geographical position doesn’t help. During the Toronto debate, Mr. Kissinger said rhetorically: Look at a map of the world. China is bordered by 14 countries. How many of them can China count on as stalwart friends? How much energy does China have left to spend on managing global affairs after coping with its neighbors? The United States, by contrast, has only two.

Second, no one can change China from the outside. Its size and history make this impossible. You may work with China and help its leaders initiate domestic changes, but you can never change it from the outside. Mr. Kissinger argued repeatedly, including in his book “On China,” that China has thousands of years of history of sophisticated political institutions that continue to exist today. It is impossible and counterproductive to push China to change unless the forces of change come from inside. In fact, as early as the late 1960s, Chairman Mao had already begun thinking about allying with the United States to better resist the growing ambitions of the Soviet Union. Had Mao not made up his mind to work with Washington, Mr. Kissinger could never have made his historic trip to China in 1971.

Third, the United States must treat China as an equal partner to resolve global challenges, including nuclear nonproliferation, climate change, proper governance of artificial intelligence and sustainable development. This point is more relevant today than ever: China is now the world’s largest producer of solar panels and windmills, a global leader in artificial intelligence research and the only nation operating its own crewed space station.

In recent years, many American political leaders have begun to disagree with Mr. Kissinger’s approach, especially the first one. As a result, U.S. foreign policy has become increasingly hawkish toward China. This is very unfortunate. Yes, China has become more powerful and gained more international influence. But Beijing does not participate in any international military conflict. To my knowledge, China has not trained any top foreign officials in the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Party School and has no plan to change in this regard. Continuing to treat China as a growing threat is a major diversion of U.S. political energy, to say the least.

Mr. Kissinger was a refugee of the Nazi regime and unquestionably loyal to the United States. His strategies served American interests: The United States won the Cold War and enjoyed the peace dividend with years of economic prosperity. Of course, China, too, has risen fast, but just because China has done well does not mean that the United States is losing. Don’t blame Mr. Kissinger’s China strategy for America’s domestic problems today. Just focus on solving them.

Reviewing the past helps one to understand the present, Confucius said. Re-examining Mr. Kissinger’s views about China upon his death would be a good learning exercise for American statesmen today.

Mr. Kissinger was right about China and still is.

David Daokui Li is a professor of economics at Tsinghua University and the author of the forthcoming “China’s World View: Demystifying China to Prevent Global Conflict.”

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A version of this article appears in print on , Section SR, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Kissinger Was Right About China, and He Still Is

326

The New York Times · by David Daokui Li · December 6, 2023

11. It’s Time to Reconsider U.S. Military Aid

Excerpts:

Far too often when dealing with crises, the U.S. toolbox has been shrunken down to a mere two implements: guns and sanctions. Washington gives or sells weapons to its friends and allies on a scale so vast as to be almost unimaginable to the broad U.S. public. And Washington slaps sanctions, from restrictions on accessing the international financial system to travel bans, on those it regards as offensive.

These reflexes have become so strong that they have atrophied almost every other response to crisis, most of all traditional diplomacy. The United States needs to get back in the business of making peace between enemies—and there is no place better to start than with Israel and the Palestinians. For years, rotelike statements about the need for a two-state solution have been mouthed like pious vows, but where has the diplomatic will and fiber needed to help bring this about been for all of this time? Absent.

Biden and other U.S. presidents have pretended that arming Israel to the hilt and providing it with security guarantees would somehow give Washington the influence or leverage to help bring Israel around to working with determination toward a lasting settlement with the Palestinians. The weapons keep getting delivered, but the persistent and resourceful diplomacy needed to accomplish that always remains over the horizon.

Any discussion about more money for weapons for Israel above its routine funding is an opportunity not just to reduce the ongoing atrocities, but also to change this flawed dynamic.

It’s Time to Reconsider U.S. Military Aid

As Congress stalls, the U.S. public has good reason to demand more transparency on Biden’s funding for Ukraine and Israel.

Howard French

Howard W. French

By Howard W. French, a columnist at Foreign Policy.

Foreign Policy · by Howard W. French · December 18, 2023

December 8, 2023, 11:58 AM

On Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden issued what sounded like a desperate call in his bid to help Ukraine sustain its all but stalemated war effort against invading forces from Russia. “This cannot wait,” Biden said in televised remarks. “Congress needs to pass supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess. Simple as that.”

In fact, there has been nothing simple about the Biden administration’s most recent supplemental budget requests for Ukraine. From the outset, Biden seems to have calculated that by pairing a call to Congress for money for Ukraine with a request for additional funds for Israel, Republican skeptics of the U.S. role in containing Russian expansionism under President Vladimir Putin would be brought along by a sense of urgency about combating Hamas. In fact, with U.S. public opinion reeling with outrage in the immediate aftermath of the militant organization’s attack on southern Israel, Biden’s conventional-seeming calculation may have almost seemed like a no-brainer.

The Republican-led House of Representatives, though, had other thoughts. We’ll see your Israel/Ukraine request and raise the stakes with a big cut to the Internal Revenue Service, came their poker-style reply. They won’t say so this clearly, but the IRS funding cut request is fundamentally about weakening tax collection enforcement on high-income people and businesses. And when that effort went nowhere, congressional Republicans switched to another gambit, trading their approval for some new supplemental war funding for radically conservative changes to immigration law.

The result, thus far, has been a stalemate.

Yet the delay caused by this wrangling is providing more time for badly needed critical discussion. Continuing support to Ukraine against clear Russian aggression seems like sensible policy for the United States. Indeed, a strong new rationale for checking Russia’s war to annex Ukrainian territory has come from an unlikely quarter in recent days, with Venezuela’s threats to seize a large, oil-rich portion of the territory of neighboring Guyana, despite a long-standing international court ruling in the latter’s favor. This is a reminder that Putin-style behavior is a threat not just to Europe, but also to peace everywhere.

But after ponying up nearly $76.95 billion already, the U.S. public has good reasons to ask where this money going in the medium to longer term, what it will help achieve, and at what ultimate costs. In the midst of a war, it is hard to achieve complete operational and strategic candor, because revealing one’s bottom line is ultimately helpful to one’s adversary. But Biden’s support for Ukraine thus far has come with too little discussion whatsoever of parameters and realistic objectives, and the time for such things is rapidly approaching.

The problems with Biden’s funding request for Israel run much deeper and have gone almost wholly unaddressed. Israel has been the United States’ largest aid recipient for decades; from 1948 to March 2023, the U.S. gave Israel a total of $158 billion, with the vast majority of it going to military assistance to strengthen the country’s security. By all accounts, Israel has one of the most capable armed forces not just in the Middle East but in the entire world.

That’s why it should have raised more eyebrows in the United States when Biden rushed up an offer of an additional military aid within days of the Hamas attack.

Almost no effort has been expended in publicly explaining why a muscle-bound and militarily fearsome Israel needs orders of magnitude more money for its defense establishment to fight a militant organization, no matter how loathsome and determined as Hamas is. Washington has deployed major warfighting assets of its own, including aircraft carrier groups, to the immediate region to deter more direct conventional involvement against Israel by Iran or any other actor amid the ongoing crisis.

So what exactly will all of this additional U.S. aid buy?

Enhancing Israel’s existing capability for “flattening” the Gaza Strip, as recent statements by current and former senior Israeli officials have suggested, cannot be the answer. The devastation that Israel has already wreaked on Gaza with military might designed to fight and defeat competing standing armies has already surpassed unacceptable levels, according to international humanitarian relief agencies and steadily higher levels of disapproval in U.S. public opinion surveys.

As U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin himself recently warned, by continuing on the present path, Israel risks “strategic defeat” through nominal victory. By killing Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, in extraordinary numbers, Israel is positioning itself to look out over the endless rubble of Gaza and proclaim victory without having truly uprooted Hamas, while simultaneously guaranteeing hatred and attempts at vengeance from new generations of Palestinians.

Voices have begun to emerge, belatedly and somewhat tentatively still, from the U.S. Democratic Party coalition to warn that a major change of course is necessary. They have included statements from Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Chris Murphy of Connecticut. And part of that change in course, as these two senators have begun to hint, must involve an end to unconditional U.S. military assistance to Israel.

But because Biden continues to act as if he believes that permitting little to no public distance between the United States and Israel is the best way to steer that country onto a smarter and more humane approach to the challenge of Hamas, this remains a steep uphill fight.

This is not a call to cut Israel off altogether. This is not an argument that Israel has no right to defend itself, which would be grotesque and absurd. And this is not, least of all, as some defenders of Israel pretend that much criticism of that country is, a defense of Hamas. Hamas is an abomination and its murderous tactics against Israeli civilians, including the revolting weapon of rape and alleged sexual mutilation, are the proximate cause of both the bloodlust that has swept Israel and the vast wave of death under Israeli bombs, missiles, and gunfire that has washed over Gaza.

The Gaza crisis offers more than just an opportunity for the United States to think carefully about the nature of its military support for Israel and the guilt by association that may redound to it for continued large-scale death in Gaza, especially if Israel’s tactics are deemed more widely to amount to war crimes. This is also a good moment for Washington to think afresh about the nature and purpose of U.S. power in the world.

Far too often when dealing with crises, the U.S. toolbox has been shrunken down to a mere two implements: guns and sanctions. Washington gives or sells weapons to its friends and allies on a scale so vast as to be almost unimaginable to the broad U.S. public. And Washington slaps sanctions, from restrictions on accessing the international financial system to travel bans, on those it regards as offensive.

These reflexes have become so strong that they have atrophied almost every other response to crisis, most of all traditional diplomacy. The United States needs to get back in the business of making peace between enemies—and there is no place better to start than with Israel and the Palestinians. For years, rotelike statements about the need for a two-state solution have been mouthed like pious vows, but where has the diplomatic will and fiber needed to help bring this about been for all of this time? Absent.

Biden and other U.S. presidents have pretended that arming Israel to the hilt and providing it with security guarantees would somehow give Washington the influence or leverage to help bring Israel around to working with determination toward a lasting settlement with the Palestinians. The weapons keep getting delivered, but the persistent and resourceful diplomacy needed to accomplish that always remains over the horizon.

Any discussion about more money for weapons for Israel above its routine funding is an opportunity not just to reduce the ongoing atrocities, but also to change this flawed dynamic.

Foreign Policy · by Howard W. French · December 18, 2023

12. The Climate Envoys Who Could

Excerpts;

Despite renewed U.S.-China cooperation, the hardest work lies ahead. In China’s case, this includes actually reducing emissions. By 2025, all countries are expected to set their climate targets for 2035—which for China means determining a pace for emissions reduction for the first time. So far, China has only committed to peaking its emissions before 2030. At COP last week, Xie said China would submit new climate targets for 2030 along with its goals for 2035, signaling that the government may be willing to step up its ambition.

The U.S., meanwhile, has been implementing the Inflation Reduction Act—the most significant climate bill in U.S. history—but it must reduce its emissions at a faster rate to meet its 2030 targets. It has also yet to provide developing countries with the full financial support it has pledged—let alone what experts say is needed.

“What happens in the post-Kerry-Xie era is a huge question mark,” said the former senior U.S. climate diplomat who helped negotiate the Paris Agreement. “I sense that both Kerry and Xie are seriously in legacy-cementing mode,” fighting “as hard as they can to lock in as much progress as they can before they ride into the sunset.”

The Climate Envoys Who Could

John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua have forged a close working relationship as the superpowers they represent have drifted apart.

DECEMBER 8, 2023, 5:33 PM

By Lili Pike, a D.C.-based journalist covering China and climate change.

Foreign Policy · by Lili Pike · December 18, 2023

Early last month, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua, the special climate envoys representing the United States and China, held talks in southern California ahead of the Xi-Biden summit. The location—Sunnylands, a desert estate near Palm Springs—was symbolic. It was there that Xi Jinping and Barack Obama first met as presidents in 2013 and secured a climate breakthrough: a commitment to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, a group of powerful greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air conditioners.

As Kerry and Xie arrived in Sunnylands 10 years later, they found themselves in more perilous circumstances, and with a finite window of opportunity. Friction between the U.S. and China disrupted climate talks in 2022, and new tensions—whether from the South China Sea or Taiwan’s upcoming January election—could slam the window shut again. Plus, Xie, China’s lead climate negotiator for the better part of two decades, will reportedly retire later this month.

The two envoys wasted no time during their summit, according to two climate experts familiar with the discussions. Kerry, who is 79, and Xie, who is 74 and recently recovered from a stroke, stayed up until 2 or 3 a.m. every night, hashing out plans. When the meetings reached their scheduled end, Kerry and his team drove west to Los Angeles with Xie, checking in to the Chinese team’s hotel to continue talking until their flight’s departure.

Climate has become a rare area of in-depth coordination between the two superpowers; the joint statement that would emerge from Sunnylands was the latest of three such statements from Xie and Kerry in the past three years. They are the elder statesmen of the climate circuit—Xie’s ruddy, round face as familiar as Kerry’s gaunt silhouette at international conferences. The extent of U.S.-China cooperation, former Chinese and U.S. officials as well as climate experts told Foreign Policy, is partly attributable to the two envoys and their bond, developed over decades of negotiations.

“This is a very good example of how personal leadership can transcend national differences,” said Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “I think both Xie and Kerry, they are pushing that potential to the limit.” The two men have known each other for 25 years, and for both, climate diplomacy is far more than a job—it is a mission.

Xie, then vice chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission (left), and U.S. special envoy for climate change Todd Stern (right) initial a memorandum of understanding on clean energy and climate change between the U.S. and China in Washington, D.C.

Xie, then vice chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission (left), and U.S. special envoy for climate change Todd Stern (right) initial a memorandum of understanding on clean energy and climate change between the U.S. and China in Washington, D.C., on July 28, 2009.Alex Wong/Getty Images

Born the same year as the People’s Republic of China, 1949, Xie’s early years were similar to those of many officials of that generation. During the Cultural Revolution, he was “sent down” to the countryside along with millions of other young people—to the northeastern tip of China, bordering Siberia. “My sense is the people who had that experience came back with a profound sense of the need for development, but [Xie] always coupled it with this view that the environment needs to be protected,” said Deborah Seligsohn, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University who was formerly an environmental counselor at the U.S. Embassy in China.

Xie went on to study engineering at Tsinghua University and became an environmental official in the 1980s. By 1993 he was head of China’s version of the EPA. He held that position through the height of China’s economic boom—a difficult time to be in charge of protecting the environment. In 2005, Xie resigned from his position after a major chemical spill in the northern Songhua River. Though he had taken the fall for the crisis, he proved resilient. In 2007, he was appointed vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, a powerful post given the department’s role in economic planning. At the same time, he became China’s lead international climate negotiator—and it was then that his path intertwined with Kerry’s

Kerry’s own interest in environmentalism was sparked early on. “Carson instilled in me and a whole generation a sense of moral urgency,” Kerry wrote in his 2018 autobiography, referring to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published his freshman year at Yale, which documented rampant pesticide pollution. As a Massachusetts senator starting in the ‘80s, Kerry promoted environmental legislation and attended international climate negotiations. “All through the years when he was a senator, if one senator would show up at the COP meetings at the end of the year, it was John Kerry,” Todd Stern, the lead U.S. climate negotiator during the Obama administration, said in a 2021 interview, referring to the annual U.N. climate summits called Conference of the Parties.

Xie’s first meeting with Kerry as head of the Chinese delegation, at the Bali COP in 2007, was a fiery standoff, said Qian Guoqiang, a Chinese climate diplomat in attendance. “Xie was sitting down and Kerry opened up the talk in a very tough way,” telling China what to do, Qian said. Xie replied, “‘We aren’t going to talk in this way. You first need to realize you have your problems,’” Qian recalled. “They were like two lions fighting with each other.” Eventually, Kerry moderated his tone, Qian said.

Then-U.S. Sen. John Kerry (center) speaks to journalists with Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett (left) near the venue of the U.N. Climate Change Conference 2007 in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia.

Then-U.S. Sen. John Kerry (center) speaks to journalists with Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett (left) near the venue of the U.N. Climate Change Conference 2007 in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, on Dec. 10, 2007. Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images

That early meeting shows not only how far the diplomats’ relationship has come since, but also how far the two countries have moved toward consensus on climate action. At the time, there was a divide under the Kyoto Protocol, the prevailing climate agreement, between developed countries and developing countries, with the latter free of any binding obligations. The U.S. and other major countries didn’t support that framework—particularly after China became the world’s largest emitter in 2006. Meanwhile, Xie and other Chinese officials argued that China’s per-capita emissions remained much lower than those of developed countries—the largest historical emitters—which still hadn’t met their climate promises. The argument came to a head at the 2009 COP in Copenhagen, which was supposed to produce a new global climate framework but failed to yield consensus.

In those years, Xie was known to publicly air his frustration with developed countries. At the 2011 COP in Durban, South Africa, he gave a widely broadcast speech in the final hours of the negotiations. “You’ve talked for 20 years, but you haven’t honored your commitments,” Xie said, pounding his fist. “We’ve done what we should do, but you haven’t. What qualifications do you have to lecture us?” The hall of delegates erupted in applause.

“He’s a canny negotiator,” said Jonathan Pershing, a former lead U.S. climate diplomat in the Obama and Biden administrations. “He uses a combination of charm—he’s completely charming—and bluster.”

As another former senior Obama-era climate negotiator described Xie, “He’ll pound his fist on the table, and then give you a hug. But part of the reason that works is because I think nobody ever questions … [whether] he’s genuinely committed.”

A Chinese worker walks among the solar modules of a newly installed 100MW photovoltaic on-grid power project in Dunhuang of China’s northwest Gansu province.

A Chinese worker walks among the solar modules of a newly installed 100MW photovoltaic on-grid power project in Dunhuang of China’s northwest Gansu province on July 21, 2010. Feng Li/Getty Images

Despite the fireworks, the U.S. and China started to move toward one another behind the scenes. Stern told Foreign Policy that after Copenhagen, China “wanted to find a way forward in general, but also in particular with the United States.”

China saw that climate action could be in its interest, allowing it to develop competitive green industries and reduce air pollution. “If you talked to Xie at that point, what you got from him was we’re doing climate, but we’re doing it on the back of these other issues,” Pershing said.

In order to bridge their countries’ differences, Stern and Xie also set about building their relationship. Stern and other leading U.S. climate diplomats traveled to Xie’s hometown, Tianjin, for climate meetings and rode the shiny, new high-speed rail there at their host’s invitation. Back in the U.S., Stern gave Xie the full American hot-dog-and-cracker-jacks experience at a Chicago Cubs game. “I sort of liked him right away,” Stern said. “I mean, he’s a very colorful guy.”

While Stern led the U.S. negotiations in those years, he credits Kerry for driving the process forward as secretary of state. According to his autobiography, Kerry made it his personal mission to help forge a new climate deal. He knew “the essential first step was finding a way to cooperate with China.” Kerry had witnessed the acrimony at Copenhagen and talked with Xie frequently in the following years. “We met in China, in the United States, at conferences around the world, all of which steadily built a trusting, personal relationship,” Kerry wrote.

Through this flurry of personal diplomacy, a major breakthrough came in 2014. The U.S. and China put forward new national emissions targets together, and in doing so, paved the way for the Paris Agreement, which all the COP countries agreed to the following year. Recalling the moment Obama announced the bilateral deal with Xi in the Great Hall of the People, Kerry wrote, “I finally felt we had reached a moment of turning. … In Beijing, there was a real sense of possibility.”

That U.S.-China climate consensus turned out to be short-lived, of course. Donald Trump soon pulled the U.S. out of the freshly inked agreement. But China stayed in the pact and went on to set a new goal on its own terms. In 2020, before the United Nations General Assembly, Xi announced that China would strive to be carbon neutral by 2060—a boost for the world’s climate hopes.

The pledge took the world by surprise, but Xie had been lobbying for it for years. He had taken a post as president of Tsinghua’s new climate institute; there he coordinated dozens of think tanks to model China’s pathways to carbon neutrality. Xie presented the results of that research to China’s highest-level policymakers ahead of Xi’s announcement, according to Zou Ji, president of Energy Foundation China, which funded the research. “I would say Minister Xie played a very important role to push—to facilitate—that process; otherwise, I saw no one else pushing that at such a high level.”

Kerry, as U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, shakes hands with Xie before a meeting in Beijing.

Kerry, as U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, shakes hands with Xie before a meeting in Beijing on July 17. Valerie Volcovici/Reuters

Joe Biden’s election and decision to rejoin the Paris Agreement revived hope—as well as questions about U.S.-China climate cooperation. Could the two countries pick back up where they had left off? And if so, what would successful U.S. climate diplomacy look like now that the two countries had set their respective targets?

Both presidents knew who to turn to for answers. Biden appointed Kerry the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate. Subsequently, Xie, who had left government for Tsinghua, was brought back as a special envoy on the Chinese side. “The two of them were absolutely the best choices for their two governments to be the climate envoys in this difficult period,” said John Holdren, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School who served as Obama’s top science advisor.

The old lions returned to a harsher political landscape. The Biden administration sought areas of cooperation but maintained a tough-on-China stance. China, in turn, didn’t accept the U.S. framework of overall “competition” between the two countries. Temperatures flared at the first bilateral meeting in Anchorage, Alaska.

Nonetheless, both sides seemed to agree that climate cooperation was in their best interest. A month after the Anchorage meeting, Kerry became the first Biden official to visit China. Later in 2021, after meeting 30 times, the two envoys reached a breakthrough during the Glasgow COP. In a joint declaration, they made some important new contributions: China had previously pledged to start decreasing its coal use in the 15th five-year plan period (2026-2030)—at Glasgow it agreed it would make “best efforts” to decrease its coal use earlier; both countries would work together to reduce potent, short-lived methane emissions this decade; and China would publish its own methane action plan.

That deal reflected some of the limits of China’s cooperation. For instance, China agreed to the softer methane language with the U.S. after declining to sign on to an international pledge to cut methane emissions 30 percent by 2030. “I always have the sense that [Xie’s] caught … between officially representing the interests of his country as defined by a system that’s bigger than him. … But also, within that context, genuinely pushing for positive progress with the belief that engagement and cooperation and joint leadership works,” said the former Obama-era U.S. negotiator.

Pershing, who was the no. 2 climate diplomat in Biden’s first year, credited Kerry for moving the conversation forward. “He’s indefatigable—the guy doesn’t seem to need to sleep very much. … I go to meetings, and around three o’clock in the morning, I’m going, ‘I think we’re not getting anywhere.’ And John is still out there continuing to say, ‘No, no, we can fix this. We can make this happen,’ and my experience is that he’s actually right.”

The nascent era of climate cooperation wasn’t insulated fully from the broader tensions, though. In August 2022, after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, Chinese officials cut off cooperation across the board, including on climate change.

A group photo from COP28 shows Kerry (second from right) and Xie (third from left) with Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the COP28 president (center), in Dubai.

A group photo from COP28 shows Kerry (second from right) and Xie (third from left) with Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the COP28 president (center), in Dubai, on Dec. 2. Stuart Wilson/COP28 via Getty Images

As diplomats in the U.S. tried to repair the bilateral relationship, Kerry and Xie quietly went back to work. After meeting frequently over the past year, and following their meeting in southern California last month, the envoys published the Sunnylands Statement, the longest and, in Stern’s opinion, strongest statement yet. China, for the first time, agreed to include all sectors of the economy and all greenhouse gases in its next Paris targets, due in 2025. Another critical, albeit wordy, goal on China’s side was to achieve “post-peaking meaningful absolute power sector emission reduction” in the 2020s—a significant goal because it “indicates [China’s] growing confidence in early peaking,” Li wrote. Both sides also supported the international goal to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.

The Sunnylands Statement is also notable for what it was lacking—for one, any clear commitment from China to stop building coal plants. Republicans have criticized Kerry for being soft on China and not forcing the country to take more aggressive measures in line with U.S. climate targets.

Read More

Protesters hold up signs representing Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden during the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Protesters hold up signs representing Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden during the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

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Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng gestures to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during a meeting in Beijing.

Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng gestures to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during a meeting in Beijing.

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A worker stands atop a solar panel during construction on the roof of a new development in Wuhan. Buildings can be seen in the background.

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The reality is that the U.S. has a limited ability to push China these days. In July, right as Kerry was visiting Beijing for talks with Xie, Xi said that China was committed to its climate goals, but the pathway and pace for meeting them “should be and must be determined by ourselves, and never under the sway of others.”

Climate experts acknowledged that the declaration is far from perfect, but they said it is significant, nonetheless. Referring to China’s commitment to establish an all-encompassing set of targets in 2025, Pershing said, “That’s a big thing. It doesn’t read like a big thing because we assumed that that would be true. But don’t assume. It’s not trivial. Making these statements alters the domestic action.”

Experts also said these statements have teed up progress in international climate talks. According to Pershing, unless the U.S. and China collaborate effectively ahead of negotiations, “the system kind of grinds, and maybe doesn’t move.” China also helps push forward recalcitrant countries, he added. “If you get China, which is a big partner for many places, you can move the rest of the world.”

At a press conference last month on the eve of COP28, Kerry echoed his sentiment, stating, “Without China and the United States aggressively moving forward to reduce emissions, we don’t win this battle.”

Kerry and Xie walk through the COP28 U.N. climate summit in Dubai.

Kerry and Xie walk through the COP28 U.N. climate summit in Dubai on Dec. 2. Kamran Jebreili/AP

After the current round of climate negotiations in Dubai wraps up next week, Xie is expected to retire from government. Kerry has also previously discussed retirement, Axios reported, although he hasn’t announced a date.

Liu Zhenmin, who most recently served as undersecretary-general of economic and social affairs at the United Nations, is expected to replace Xie. Climate experts are waiting to see whether Liu’s style and approach will align with Xie’s. Liu notably brings deep experience, having led China’s early U.N. climate negotiations, including the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in his career with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Despite renewed U.S.-China cooperation, the hardest work lies ahead. In China’s case, this includes actually reducing emissions. By 2025, all countries are expected to set their climate targets for 2035—which for China means determining a pace for emissions reduction for the first time. So far, China has only committed to peaking its emissions before 2030. At COP last week, Xie said China would submit new climate targets for 2030 along with its goals for 2035, signaling that the government may be willing to step up its ambition.

The U.S., meanwhile, has been implementing the Inflation Reduction Act—the most significant climate bill in U.S. history—but it must reduce its emissions at a faster rate to meet its 2030 targets. It has also yet to provide developing countries with the full financial support it has pledged—let alone what experts say is needed.

“What happens in the post-Kerry-Xie era is a huge question mark,” said the former senior U.S. climate diplomat who helped negotiate the Paris Agreement. “I sense that both Kerry and Xie are seriously in legacy-cementing mode,” fighting “as hard as they can to lock in as much progress as they can before they ride into the sunset.”

Foreign Policy · by Lili Pike · December 18, 2023

13. The Universities That Don’t Understand Academic Freedom

Excerpts:

Instead of overcorrecting for their inability to acknowledge past errors and recommit to protecting free speech, university leaders should follow the advice of those who care about and understand academic freedom. These leaders need to protect those who express a controversial opinion, regardless of what it is; they should punish students for forbidden conduct that disrupts classes or infringes on others’ right to express themselves; and they must get universities out of the business of taking institutional positions on political events.

Reflecting on her departure from Harvard, Hooven had helpful advice for how others could avoid her fate:

To begin with, university leaders must be encouraged to develop a moral compass, integrity, and a backbone—admittedly, this is often a tough order. Second, the university’s position on academic freedom must be frequently trumpeted. Third, administrators should never weigh in on the accuracy of controversial or offensive claims—doing so signals that views that fail the purity test are less likely to be protected. And finally, university leadership must frequently remind the campus community that the foremost mission of a university is the pursuit, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge. This cannot happen without academic freedom.

The Universities That Don’t Understand Academic Freedom

Leaders of prestigious institutions who can’t say whether advocating “the genocide of Jews” is allowed on campus seem to have a basic literacy problem with free speech.

By Yascha Mounk

The Atlantic · by Yascha Mounk · December 8, 2023

The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT testified in front of Congress this week. Their performance was a disaster.

The three leaders of these prestigious institutions seemed coached, presumably by a team of lawyers and PR consultants, to give hedging answers, and they doggedly stuck to their talking points. As a result, their responses were robotic, betrayed a lack of empathy, and never made a serious attempt to defend the larger mission that their universities supposedly serve. Throughout the hearing, the three presidents perfectly encapsulated the broader malaise of America’s most elite universities, which excel at avoiding lawsuits and increasing their endowments but seem to have little sense of why they were founded or what justifies the lavish taxpayer subsidies they receive.

The most damaging moments came when the three presidents were asked by Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate their universities’ policies on free speech. Such a call could be a violation, “if targeted at individuals, not making public statements,” Sally Kornbluth, the president of MIT, said. “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” Elizabeth Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, said. “It can be, depending on the context,” Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, said.

Many people who were rightly horrified by the congressional hearings faulted Kornbluth, Magill, and Gay for refusing to say they would punish students for expressing this kind of abhorrent sentiment. But that is overly simple. In a narrow, technical sense, the three presidents were correct to state that their current policies would probably not penalize offensive political speech. In a more substantive sense, universities should defend a very broad definition of academic freedom, one that shields students and faculty members from punishment for expressing a political opinion, no matter how abhorrent.

David Frum: There is no right to bully and harass

The real problem was that none of these university leaders made a clear, coherent case for their institutions’ values. So when they did invoke academic freedom, they came across as insincere or hypocritical—an impression only reinforced by their record of failing to stand up for those on their campus who have come under fire for controversial speech in the past.

When pressed by Stefanik, the presidents kept claiming a supposedly ironclad commitment to free speech as the reason they would not be able to punish calls for a genocide of Jews. But each of their institutions has failed lamentably to protect their own scholars’ free speech—by canceling lectures by visiting academics, pushing out heterodox faculty members, and trying to revoke the tenure of professors who have voiced views far less hateful than advocating genocide.

Universities are now paying the price for those missteps. If they claim to stand for free speech, they must be consistent. What they cannot do is engage in a selective enforcement of rules that effectively gives one form of hatred—namely pro-Hamas and anti-Jewish advocacy—the stamp of university approval while punishing students and faculty members for speech that certainly does not rise to the same standard of hatefulness.

The problems over freedom of expression at American universities long preceded the recent controversies. In October 2021, Dorian Abbot, a renowned climate researcher, was supposed to deliver the prestigious John Carlson Lecture at MIT. But because Abbot had written an article for Newsweek opposing affirmative action, graduate students at the school started a petition to stop Abbot from delivering his speech. The university duly complied.

Until 2021, Carole Hooven was a lecturer on human evolutionary biology at Harvard. When promoting a scholarly book about testosterone, she suggested on national television that there are two biological sexes: male and female. In response, a graduate student who also served as the director of her department’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging taskforce denounced Hooven’s remarks as “transphobic and harmful.” Hooven’s colleagues stopped talking with her, administrators failed to defend her, graduate students bullied her. Hooven first took a leave of absence and later left the university altogether.

Michael Powell: What happens when a poor state guts its public university

At the University of Pennsylvania’s law school, Professor Amy Wax has expressed views that many people (including me) find offensive. She has, for example, argued that America should select immigrants based on their cultures of origin, acknowledging that this “means in effect taking the position that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer non-whites.” Even so, nothing she has said remotely comes close to calling for genocide—yet the university has been trying to revoke Wax’s tenure and get her fired for years.

These aren’t isolated incidents; the failure is systemic. According to the free-speech rankings published by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), MIT does relatively poorly, in the middle of the pack at 136th out of 248 assessed universities. The University of Pennsylvania does awfully, in penultimate place at position 247. Harvard beats out stiff competition to come in dead last.

All of this provides crucial context for Tuesday’s embarrassing congressional hearing. The presidents of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn were disingenuous when they claimed that their response to anti-Semitism on campus was hamstrung by a commitment to free speech. Who can doubt that they would have been more forthright in condemning calls for the murder of trans people or the lynching of Black Americans, for example, when their own institutions have disinvited speakers for the crime of opposing affirmative action or have pushed out professors for believing that biological sex is real?

The blowback from the presidents’ disastrous congressional appearance has been so intense that all three, evidently fearing for their jobs, have quickly turned to damage limitation. Harvard published a statement from Gay on X (formerly Twitter) suggesting that her critics had misunderstood her: “Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”

The University of Pennsylvania released a video message from its president. Changing her answer, Magill now claimed that the language she was asked about in Congress “would be harassment or intimidation.” For decades, she explained, “Penn’s policies have been guided by the Constitution and the law.” But “in today’s world, where we are seeing signs of hate proliferating across our campus and our world in a way not seen in years, these policies need to be clarified and evaluated.” The university, she promised, would immediately start the process of rewriting its rules. (So much for the Constitution and the law.)

Magill could have used this moment to own up to her failures over the course of the past years and recommit herself to her mission. Instead, she is ineptly trying to mollify the public by promising that she will adopt more restrictive rules—effectively going even further in abandoning her university’s commitment to free speech.

Greg Lukianoff: The latest victims of the free-speech crisis

As David Frum argued this week, that reflex fundamentally misidentifies the source of the problem. The reason the recent bullying and intimidation of Jewish students have been allowed to continue is not that universities are unable to punish students who engage in harassment. Rather, some of the university presidents who appeared before Congress have failed to discipline students who broke existing rules against disrupting classes, destroying property, and targeting individuals for abuse. MIT, for example, reportedly desisted from punishing foreign-born students for clear violations of student-conduct rules for fear of affecting their visa status.

Stricter codes governing free speech won’t help students from minority groups who don’t enjoy the backing of university administrators in future. We have every reason to expect these officials to continue to apply those laws unevenly, chilling the speech of anybody who offends against campus orthodoxy while giving broad latitude to students who tout popular progressive causes to intimidate their enemies with impunity. As a statement this week from FIRE rightly pointed out, “universities will not enforce a rule against ‘calls for genocide’ in the way elected officials calling for President Magill’s resignation think they will. Dissenting and unpopular speech—whether pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian, conservative or liberal—will be silenced.”

Instead of overcorrecting for their inability to acknowledge past errors and recommit to protecting free speech, university leaders should follow the advice of those who care about and understand academic freedom. These leaders need to protect those who express a controversial opinion, regardless of what it is; they should punish students for forbidden conduct that disrupts classes or infringes on others’ right to express themselves; and they must get universities out of the business of taking institutional positions on political events.

Reflecting on her departure from Harvard, Hooven had helpful advice for how others could avoid her fate:

To begin with, university leaders must be encouraged to develop a moral compass, integrity, and a backbone—admittedly, this is often a tough order. Second, the university’s position on academic freedom must be frequently trumpeted. Third, administrators should never weigh in on the accuracy of controversial or offensive claims—doing so signals that views that fail the purity test are less likely to be protected. And finally, university leadership must frequently remind the campus community that the foremost mission of a university is the pursuit, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge. This cannot happen without academic freedom.

The Atlantic · by Yascha Mounk · December 8, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com