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81. What Can FEMA Learn from the Historic 2017 Hurricane and Wildfire Seasons?

Author:
Jason Thomas Barnosky, Patrick S. Roberts, and Joie D. Acosta
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
The 2017 hurricane and wildfire seasons were among the worst on record in the United States. The storms that year included three of the five costliest in the nation’s history: Harvey and Irma along the Gulf Coast, and Maria in the Caribbean. More than 70,000 wildfires scorched about 10 million acres. All told, these events affected the lives of nearly 47 million people, testing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in unprecedented ways.
Topic:
Natural Disasters, Governance, and Political Science
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

82. Hitting Home: Cyber-Hybrid Warfare in Ukraine and Its Impact on the United States

Author:
Yuriy Danyk, Chad Michael Briggs, and Tamara Maliarchuk
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
The conflict in Ukraine has received renewed attention in Washington D.C., and it is worth considering the relevance of this conflict to US national security interests. The open conflict in eastern Ukraine since 2014 has been part of a larger hybrid war, including political and information warfare, cyber warfare, assassinations, promotion of corruption, and traditional (kinetic) warfare carried out by destructive geopolitical actors (DGAs) [1]. The conventional conflict cannot be taken out of context, and it is the less visible and “dark” aspects of hybrid warfare that should particularly worry the United States. Hybrid warfare consists of a wide spectrum of attacks, from conventional to covert, carried out to destabilize one’s opponent. Rather than being isolated incidents, cyber attacks often represent part of a wide spectrum of coordinated, offensive strategies against countries like Ukraine and the United States.
Topic:
National Security, War, Cybersecurity, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Europe, Ukraine, North America, and United States of America

83. Civilians Versus Their Governments: China, the United States, and the Changing Nature of Conflict and Security in Africa

Author:
Obert Hodzi
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
With a few exceptions, armed civil wars are no longer commonplace in Africa, but anti-government protests are. Instead of armed rebels, unarmed civilians are challenging regimes across Africa to reconsider their governance practices and deliver both political and economic change. In their responses, regimes in countries like Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Rwanda, and Burundi have favored the combat mode—responding to dissent with military and repressive means. With few options, civilian movements look to the United States for protection and support while their governments look to China for reinforcement. If the United States seeks to reassert its influence in Africa and strengthen its democratic influence, its strategy needs to go beyond counterterrorism and respond to Africa’s pressing needs while supporting the African people in their quest for democracy and human rights.
Topic:
Security, Conflict, State Violence, and Civilians
Political Geography:
Africa, China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

84. Catching Up: China’s Developing Military Power

Author:
Ian Williams
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
For decades, China has engaged in a fervent game of “catch-up” with U.S. military capabilities. This effort, which has ballooned China’s defense spending to 620 percent of its 1990 level, is beginning to bear real fruit. While still far from achieving military parity, China’s military technology and doctrine are quickly coalescing into a coherent form of warfare, tailored to overpowering the U.S. military in a short, sharp conflict in the Eastern Pacific. This strategy of “informationized” warfare focuses first on eroding U.S. situational awareness, communications, and precision targeting capabilities.
Topic:
Security, Science and Technology, Military Affairs, Weapons, Military Spending, Conflict, and Surveillance
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

85. European defence policy in an era of renewed great-power competition

Author:
Douglas Barrie, Lucie béraud-Sudreau, Henry Boyd, Nick Childs, Bastain Giegerich, James Hackett, and Meia Nouwens
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Institute for Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In 2019, European governments’ combined defence spending, when measured in constant 2015 US dollar terms, surpassed the level reached in 2009, before the financial and economic crisis led to a series of significant defence-spending cuts. However, a different strategic paradigm – one that Europe is struggling to adjust to and which is once more a concern for European governments – has re-appeared in this past decade: great-power competition. Russia attempted to change international borders in Europe through the use of force in 2014 by annexing Crimea and continues to support an armed insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Moscow’s challenge to Euro-Atlantic security exists in multiple dimensions: as both a conventional military and also a hybrid-warfare issue, with Russia working to dislocate existing societal alignments and disrupt political processes in Western states. The poisoning of a former Russian intelligence officer (and of his daughter) in the United Kingdom, attributed by the British government to Russia, underlines further how much the character of conflict has changed. How to manage the challenge Russia poses without simply reverting to Cold War logic remains a worrying problem for governments in NATO and the European Union member states. Meanwhile, European security establishments are beginning to recognise the growing political, economic and military influence of a rising China. Although less of an immediate challenge, China’s growth in these areas has possible profound consequences in the long run. Indeed, in December 2019, NATO declared: ‘We recognise that China’s growing influence and international policies present both opportunities and challenges that we need to address together as an Alliance.’2 For the United States, China has already become the pacing military threat. The US Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, released in June 2019, opens with the assertion that ‘the Indo-Pacific is the Department of Defense’s priority theater’. In other words, the European theatre is not. European analysts and officials have begun to wonder whether the US might begin to see Europe through an Asian lens, seeking to generate European commitments to the Indo-Pacific region, or at the very least getting Europeans to take on greater responsibility for their own security and thereby freeing up US resources. Although there will be some elements of the US military presence in Europe that are indispensable to US military action in other regions of the world, that might not be enough to sustain Washington’s firm commitment to European security in the future, regardless of who occupies the White House. Significantly, not even the US has the capability to fight two major wars simultaneously any more, meaning binary choices regarding focus are inevitable. As some observers have argued, Europeans need to urgently assess what Washington’s choices in this regard – and their implications for Europe – might look like. Considering both how to deter Russia and what a European contribution to containing China might entail represents a major challenge for Western European nations, which have relegated defence to a secondary position, as almost a discretionary activity. European states partially demobilised in the 1990s and early 2000s, intellectually and in terms of their force structures, in response to the end of the Cold War. For example, according to IISS data, in 1990 West Germany alone was thought to be able to field 215 combat battalions and the UK 94. Today it is a fraction of that. However, security challenges relating to regional instability, crisis management and transnational terrorism – which all dominated the previous two decades – have not disappeared. On the contrary, all these still demand attention and the investment of European resources. While there is a growing recognition among Europe’s analytical community, and some governments, that things cannot simply continue as before in terms of regional security and defence, coherence and resolve among core actors in the Euro-Atlantic sphere have weakened. The US administration has intensified its call for better transatlantic burden sharing, at the same time displaying a cavalier attitude to the collective-defence commitment enshrined in NATO. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has also expressed severe doubts about the viability of NATO’s collective-defence mission. In addition, the British decision to leave the European Union in 2020 implies that the EU has lost one of its most militarily experienced and one of its most capable member states. There is a tendency among many observers and some politicians to argue that European NATO and EU member states need to clarify the political dimension of their defence ambition, via-à-vis greater strategic autonomy, before resolving the problem of how to meet this ambition militarily, at what cost and in what time frame. Indeed, at times, the debate about European strategic autonomy seems to focus more on the degree of independence from the US that its various proponents would like to achieve and less on the military requirement that autonomy is meant to respond to. It is now widely accepted across Europe that Europeans need ‘to do more’ for their own security and defence. Most of the intellectual energy allocated to this aspiration is spent on achieving better coordination – and even a level of integration – among European armed forces. This is useful, but only if it is directed at building capability to provide for the defence of Europe. The existing military capabilities of the European NATO member states fall short when compared to the force requirements generated by the political–military level of ambition as defined by NATO, or for that matter the EU.5 However, this should not be an excuse to lower the level of ambition, nor should the assumption that Europeans are unable to defend themselves be declared an inevitability. Defence output is the result of political, financial and military choices by governments. To think systematically about the challenge of providing capabilities that can meet Europe’s emerging military requirements, The International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Hanns Seidel Foundation convened a group of thinkers and practitioners from Germany and the UK. The group took seriously the US assertion that Europe needs to be able to provide for its own defence. If Europeans can achieve this, they will be valuable partners to the US in upholding and strengthening the liberal international order on which Euro-Atlantic prosperity and security depend. Meeting twice in 2019, the group discussed threat assessments, debated European capability gaps and scoped potential approaches to addressing them. The following pages draw on the group’s deliberations but do not represent a consensus position.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Regional Cooperation, European Union, and Military Spending
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, North Atlantic, Asia, and North America

86. GERMANY ON THEIR MINDS German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Their Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988

Author:
Anne C. Schenderlein
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, approximately ninety thousand German Jews fled their homeland and settled in the United States, prior to that nation closing its borders to Jewish refugees. And even though many of them wanted little to do with Germany, the circumstances of the Second World War and the postwar era meant that engagement of some kind was unavoidable—whether direct or indirect, initiated within the community itself or by political actors and the broader German public. This book carefully traces these entangled histories on both sides of the Atlantic, demonstrating the remarkable extent to which German Jews and their former fellow citizens helped to shape developments from the Allied war effort to the course of West German democratization.
Topic:
Migration, Religion, Refugees, Holocaust, and Anti-Semitism
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Germany, and North America

87. National Security Update 12: Status of 2020 Defense Authorization/Appropriations and NDAA Highlights

Author:
Jack Kelly
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA)
Abstract:
Our twelfth IFPA National Security Update examines the current status of the U.S. defense authorization, appropriations, and budget process with a focus on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and assesses its strengths and weaknesses in light of key programs and policies discussed in previous Updates. Topics addressed in our National Security Update series include hypersonic missiles, missile defense priorities, nuclear modernization issues, President Trump's Executive Order on Electromagnetic Pulse, the status of the Space Force, China’s actions in the South China Sea and U.S. options, and the military applications of artificial intelligence. In early 2017, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis initiated an online series entitled National Security Update. Its purpose is to examine key foreign policy/defense issues and to set forth policy options. These updates are made available to the broad policy community within and outside government, including key policy makers in Washington, D.C.; members of Congress and their staffs; academic specialists; and other members of the private-sector security community. Future National Security Updates will address a range of topics in an effort to provide timely analyses and policy options.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Government, National Security, Budget, Weapons, Missile Defense, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
China, North America, South China, and United States of America

88. Japan’s Trade Policy in the Midst of Uncertainty

Author:
Yuka Fukunaga
Publication Date:
02-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
Abstract:
The multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been of the utmost importance for Japan's trade policy. In particular, Japan strongly supports the WTO’s rule-based dispute settlement mechanism, and frequently uses it. At the same time, in recent years, the adoption and implementation of regional and mega-regional trade agreements have become critical in Japan’s trade policy, with the stalling of the Doha Round negotiations in the WTO. Although the core of its trade policy remains the same today, Japan has been forced to rethink and modify it in response to the aggressive and unilateral trade policy of the Trump administration.
Topic:
World Trade Organization, Governance, Internet, Free Trade, and Trade Policy
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Asia, South Korea, North America, United States of America, and European Union

89. Sanctions and the End of Trans-Atlanticism: Iran, Russia, and the Unintended Division of the West

Author:
Rawi Abdelal and Aurélie Bros
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
Abstract:
Sanctions have become the dominant tool of statecraft of the United States and other Western states, especially the European Union, since the end of the Cold War. But the systematic use of this instrument may produce unintended and somewhat paradoxical geopolitical consequences. The sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Russian Federation in the field of energy are particularly illustrative of this phenomenon.
Topic:
Economics, Energy Policy, Sanctions, Geopolitics, Secondary Sanctions, and Transatlantic Relations
Political Geography:
Russia, Iran, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

90. Donald Trump and the “Alt-Right”: How Much Connection Is There?

Author:
Matthew Wilson
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI)
Abstract:
From the moment he first declared his candidacy for the presidency of the United States on a strongly nationalist platform promising to “make America great again,” Donald Trump has been dogged by accusations that he is too cozy with explicitly racist, fringe-right figures and movements. Periodically, critics have seized on phrases or images in Trump’s communications that they argue send subtle messages of encouragement or solidarity to Nazis and white supremacists. This began during the 2016 campaign, when former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke expressed enthusiasm for Trump’s presidential bid. When asked for his attitude regarding the support, Trump at first equivocated and professed insufficient knowledge of Duke and his movement, before explicitly disavowing Duke and the Klan some days later. The issue arose again during Trump’s first year in office, when he asserted that there were “very fine people, on both sides” of clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia between anti-Confederate statue protestors and far-right elements. Trump’s defenders insist that the “very fine people” he was referring to were members of local heritage groups and not the violent extremists who descended on the city from outside (and, indeed, in the same press conference Trump clarified that he was “not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally”). The issue, however, has not gone away; over the last several years, critics have periodically spotted images in Trump administration communications that they allege hearken back to historical European fascism, and recently he has been accused of using phrases with regard to law enforcement and protests that echo American segregationists. Just recently, the Trump campaign drew criticism for retweeting a video of a parade of his supporters in Florida, during which one participant shouted “White Power!” While the campaign later removed the video and claimed that they had not noticed the offending phrase, the incident reignited critics’ claims that Trump is at best indifferent toward—and at worst actively solicitous of—white nationalist support for his presidency.
Topic:
Politics, Domestic politics, Far Right, and Donald Trump
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America