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101. COVID-19 and Superpower Competition: An Effective American Response

Author:
Amit Gupta
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
Before COVID-19 became a global pandemic, the growing consensus among analysts was that we were entering a period of deglobalization. According to the economic analyst Mohammed el-Erian deglobalization was taking place because by the 2000s the adverse economic impact of globalization had become apparent to the Western middle class. Secondly, the U.S.-China trade war saw rising tariffs and a call for rebuilding national manufacturing capabilities. The COVID-19 pandemic was the last nail in the coffin as countries adopted highly individualistic and nationalistic policies that put national interest above any global concerns.1 Coupled with the perceived drive to deglobalization is the fact that we have re-entered an era of great power competition with the 2017 National Security Strategy clearly stating that both Russia and China are revisionist powers that challenge American primacy and that, “… want to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests. China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor.”2 What this article argues is that true security in the emerging international system will require precisely those aspects of globalization that the critics decry because no single country can effectively tackle such a complex and deadly threat as the COVID-19 pandemic through strictly national measures. Further, the emerging great power competition is one not just of military and economic rivalry but, much in the same way as during the Cold War, it is a struggle between different ways to organize societies and particularly to deliver goods and services efficiently and justly. With the latter in mind, how the United States and its allies and partners lead the response to COVID-19 will have an impact on the outcome of global power relationships. If China provides better solutions on dealing with the pandemic, then it will be able to undercut the American-created liberal international order. To discuss this issue, we need to first explain what globalization is and why, in a COVID-19 world, it provides the security solutions to the challenge posed by the disease.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Globalization, Strategic Competition, COVID-19, and Superpower
Political Geography:
China, Global Focus, and United States of America

102. China, the West, and the Future Global Order By Julian Lindley-French and Franco Algieri

Author:
Julian Lindley-French and Franco Algieri
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
The primary purpose of this article is to respectfully communicate to a Chinese audience a Western view of the future world order. China needs the West as much as the West needs China. However, the West has awakened geopolitically to the toxic power politics that Russia is imposing on Ukraine and China’s support for it. China is thus faced with a profound choice: alliance with a declining and weak Russia or cooperation with a powerful bloc of global democracies that Russia’s incompetent and illegal aggression is helping to forge. The West is steadily morphing into a new global Community of Democracies with states such as those in the G7, Quads, and Quints taking on increasing importance as centers of decisionmaking.2 All three groupings reflect an emerging implicit structure with the United States at their core, European democracies on one American geopolitical flank, with Australia, Japan, South Korea, and other democracies in the Indo-Pacific region on the other American geopolitical flank. The force that is forging such a community is China as it morphs into a superpower. Specifically, China is choosing to be an aggressive putative superpower. President Xi Jinping’s aggressive worldview is of a China defined by its opposition to the United States and, by extension, America’s democratic allies and partners. A new world is being forged from within the increasingly hot cauldron of U.S.-Chinese strategic competition. However, does that mean this new world is inevitably now set on a crash course to conflict, something akin to a re-run of the collapse of pre–World War I Europe into systemic war? Or is it not too late for both sides to forge a pragmatic peace—a peace forged from respect, rather than destructive and disrespectful confrontation? On the face of it, President Xi seems to have made his choice, but in some very important respects siding with Russia in geopolitical conflict with the community of democracies seems counterintuitive when we look at China from a Western perspective (as this article does). This perspective also implies China’s “choice” might not be as firm as some would have it—a profound but essentially simple choice between siding with Vladimir Putin and confrontation with the West or continued growth, wealth, and power through collaboration with the West? The facts speak for themselves. Using the most favorable economic statistics for the combined Chinese and Russian economies—purchasing power parity—their combined economies are worth some $27 trillion in 2022. Using the same data for G7 countries, the core of the emerging Community, the total is $39 trillion.3 Add Australia and South Korea to the aggregate and the figure is $42 trillion. If nominal gross domestic product (GPD) is compared, the contrast is even more striking with the combined GDPs of China and Russia in 2022 totaling $20.2 trillion, while the combined GDPs of the G7 countries amount to $45.2 trillion, which when Australia and South Korea are added increases to $48.8 trillion.4 Critically, China’s trade with the democracies is over 10 times greater than that with Russia,5 while in 2020, China’s merchandise trade surplus with the rest of the world totaled $535 billion, with much of that figure due to surpluses with both the United States and Europe.6
Topic:
Security, Geopolitics, Strategic Competition, International Order, and Superpower
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, and United States of America

103. The 21st Century's Great Military Rivalry

Author:
Graham Allison and Jonah Glick-Unterman
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
A quarter-century ago, China conducted what it called “missile tests” bracketing the island of Taiwan to deter it from a move toward independence by demonstrating that China could cut Taiwan’s ocean lifelines. In response, in a show of superiority that forced China to back down, the United States deployed two aircraft carriers to Taiwan’s adjacent waters. If China were to repeat the same missile tests today, it is highly unlikely that the United States would respond as it did in 1996. If U.S. carriers moved that close to the Chinese mainland now, they could be sunk by the DF-21 and DF-26 missiles that China has since developed and deployed. This article presents three major theses concerning the military rivalry between China and the United States in this century. First, the era of U.S. military primacy is over: dead, buried, and gone—except in the minds of some political leaders and policy analysts who have not examined the hard facts.1 As former Secretary of Defense James Mattis put it starkly in his 2018 National Defense Strategy, “For decades the United States has enjoyed uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain. We could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, and operate how we wanted.”2 But that was then. “Today,” Mattis warned, “every domain is contested—air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace.”3 As a result, in the past two decades, the United States has been forced to retreat from a strategy based on primacy and dominance to one of deterrence. As President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and his National Security Council colleague Kurt Campbell acknowledged in 2019, “The United States must accept that military primacy will be difficult to restore, given the reach of China’s weapons, and instead focus on deterring China from interfering with its freedom of maneuver and from physically coercing U.S. allies and partners.”4 One of the architects of the Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy put it less diplomatically and more succinctly: “The era of untrammeled U.S. military superiority is over.”5
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Deterrence, Strategic Competition, Rivalry, and Military
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and United States of America

104. SOUTHCOM Commander ADM Faller on U.S.-China Strategic Competition in the Western Hemisphere

Author:
Craig S. Faller
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Project 2049 Institute
Abstract:
The Project 2049 Institute is pleased to announce the publication of remarks made by Admiral Craig Faller at our recent event, “Near and Present Danger: SOUTHCOM Commander ADM Faller on U.S.-China Strategic Competition in the Western Hemisphere.” In his remarks, Admiral Faller addresses the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ambitions in Latin America and the Caribbean, from both an economic and strategic perspective, which support its pursuit of global dominance and the imposition of authoritarian values on international institutions. In addition, Admiral Faller highlights SOUTHCOM’s recent activities in the Western Hemisphere and suggests a practical framework to develop and sustain trusted partnerships in the region that will promote democratic values in the face of CCP coercion.
Topic:
Bilateral Relations, Authoritarianism, Geopolitics, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

105. Enhancing U.S.-China Strategic Stability in an Era of Strategic Competition

Author:
Patricia M. Kim
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
As strategic competition between the United States and China intensifies, preventing a destabilizing arms race and lowering the risk of military, especially nuclear, confrontation is critical. The essays in this volume—based on a series of workshops convened by USIP’s Asia Center in late 2020—highlight both the striking differences and the commonalities between U.S. and Chinese assessments of the root causes of instability and the drivers of conflict in the nuclear, conventional missile and missile defense, space, cyberspace, and artificial intelligence realms.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Nuclear Weapons, Science and Technology, Peace, Artificial Intelligence, Strategic Competition, and Strategic Stability
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

106. Syria at the Center of Power Competition and Counterterrorism

Author:
Aaron Y. Zelin
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
Even as U.S. policymakers must stay focused on the Assad regime’s culpability, they also face a complex web of power dynamics in which Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, and other actors are attempting to secure their various interests. After a decade of civil war in Syria, the core antagonist remains the Assad regime, which in 2011 ruthlessly suppressed peaceful protestors and has since tortured and executed tens of thousands of detainees. The regime also bears responsibility for fostering the growth of the Islamic State, in part by releasing Syrian jihadists at the start of the war. Yet even as U.S. policymakers must stay focused on Assad’s culpability, they also face a highly complex web of power dynamics in which Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, and other actors are attempting to secure their various interests. In this Policy Note, expert Aaron Zelin details how the world’s counterterrorism and Great Power challenges converge in Syria, and how they must be addressed holistically. To this end, he proposes policies on the diplomatic, humanitarian, legal, economic, and military fronts that can calm the fears of U.S. allies such as Israel, Jordan, and Turkey, and perhaps inspire a more robust opposition, backed by a diverse set of local and diaspora activists.
Topic:
Counter-terrorism, Syrian War, Strategic Competition, and Proxy War
Political Geography:
Russia, Iran, Turkey, Middle East, Syria, and United States of America

107. Why the CHIPS Are Down: Stock Buybacks and Subsidies in the U.S. Semiconductor Industry

Author:
William Lazonick and Matt Hopkins
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) is promoting the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act, introduced in Congress in June 2020. An SIA press release describes the bill as “bipartisan legislation that would invest tens of billions of dollars in semiconductor manufacturing incentives and research initiatives over the next 5-10 years to strengthen and sustain American leadership in chip technology, which is essential to our country’s economy and national security.” On June 8, 2021, the Senate approved $52 billion for the CHIPS for America Act, dedicated to supporting the U.S. semiconductor industry over the next decade. This paper highlights a curious paradox: Most of the SIA corporate members now lobbying for the CHIPS for America Act have squandered past support that the U.S. semiconductor industry has received from the U.S. government for decades by using their corporate cash to do buybacks to boost their own companies’ stock prices. Among the SIA corporate signatories of a letter to President Biden in February 2021, the five largest stock repurchasers—Intel, IBM, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Broadcom—did a combined $249 billion in buybacks over the decade 2011-2020, equal to 71 percent of their profits and almost five times the subsidies over the next decade for which the SIA is lobbying. In addition, among the members of the Semiconductors in America Coalition (SIAC), formed specifically in May 2021 to lobby Congress for the passage of the CHIPS for America Act, are Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, and Google. These firms spent a combined $633 billion on buybacks during 2011-2020. That is about 12 times the government subsidies provided under the CHIPS for America Act to support semiconductor fabrication in the United States in the upcoming decade. If the Congress wants to achieve the legislation’s stated purpose of promoting major new investments in semiconductors, it needs to deal with this paradox. It could, for example, require the SIA and SIAC to extract pledges from its member corporations that they will cease doing stock buybacks as open-market repurchases over the next ten years. Such regulation could be a first step in rescinding Securities and Exchange Commission Rule 10b-18, which has since 1982 been a major cause of extreme income inequality and loss of global industrial competitiveness in the United States.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Regulation, Legislation, Strategic Competition, Subsidies, and Lobbying
Political Geography:
United States of America

108. What Europeans think about the US-China Cold War

Author:
Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)
Abstract:
A majority of European citizens believe a new cold war with both China and Russia is under way – but they mostly do not think that their own country is involved. Most believe the US is already taking part in these confrontations, and they consider EU institutions as more likely than their own governments to be in a cold war with China and Russia. An optimistic interpretation sees the outsourcing of such great-power competition to Brussels as the arrival of a true EU foreign policy – but a more pessimistic analysis sees a gap emerging between Brussels on the one hand and member state capitals and EU citizens on the other. This difference in views between whether one’s own country is taking part in the brewing conflict, as opposed to whether America and the EU are, suggests there is no European public consensus that the world of tomorrow will be one of growing competition between democracy and authoritarianism. Given this risk, policymakers should find a different, less ideological, framing to generate public support for a strong transatlantic alliance.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, Authoritarianism, European Union, Democracy, Alliance, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Europe, and United States of America

109. Re-Thinking Assumptions for a 21st Century Middle East

Author:
Douglas A. Ollivant
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI)
Abstract:
American policy in the Middle East is based on outdated assumptions. There are at least four novel elements in or impacting the Middle East that require an adjustment in strategy: North American Oil Independence: The United States no longer relies on the Middle East for its supply of energy and could choose to act without that significant tie. Rise of China: The People’s Republic of China is now a near-peer to the United States and is taking steps to protect its own interests in the Middle East. Diminishing Conventional Threats to Israel: All conceivable regional enemies are now peace signatories, wrestling with internal instability, or both. Unconventional threats continue to challenge Israel’s security, but a ground invasion is now a remote possibility. Rise of Sub-State Actors: In addition to widely recognized terror and insurgent groups, other actors, such as financial firms, technology firms, and private military firms, interact with power that rivals that of weak states. These new factors—alone and in concert—make legacy strategies at least suboptimal, if not unsuitable. Today’s Middle East exhibits very different characteristics than that of the Middle East of the past century. An acceptable and suitable strategy must incorporate these new data points.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Oil, Non State Actors, Geopolitics, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Middle East, Israel, North America, and United States of America

110. Competing in Time: Ensuring Capability Advantage and Mission Success through Adaptable Resource Allocation

Author:
Dan Patt and William C. Greenwalt
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The keystone of the Department of Defense’s institutional architecture is not acquisition, but rather the budgeting process. This governs its ability to allocate funding to achieve national security objectives, links together requirements and purchasing, sets the calendar of the department, controls changes to investment priority, and serves as the mechanism for Congress to exercise its constitutionally granted appropriations powers. While there have been dozens of acquisition reform efforts, the budgeting process has been nearly untouched since 1961. Bureaucratic resource allocation processes—especially planning, budgeting, and appropriations—are a critical engine for maintaining an edge in a long-term military competition. In the 1950s, this realization was mechanized by the US, when fast-paced military developments with shifting directions were used to drive cost into ponderous Soviet planning processes. Ultimately, Soviet strategists also recognized that agility in resource allocation would ultimately determine the outcome of competition given a sufficiently long horizon. The Department of Defense (DoD) allocates resources through the Planning, Programming, Budget, and Execution (PPBE) system. PPBE is the scheme by which DoD sets its own plans and priorities and also how it asks Congress to approve its spending and provide oversight (often by verifying actual execution against predicted schedule and performance). The history of the PPBE dates to 1961 and is based on period industrial planning concepts. The PPBE’s inflexibility increases the difficulty of rapidly shifting funding to emergent innovations that appear promising, as new programs must typically wait more than two years to be included in the budget. Additionally, the PPBE encodes divisions between research, production, and operations activities that stymy iterative or feedback-based development. A common theme across core DoD processes including the PPBE is an emphasis on long-term prediction of future needs and an attempt to optimize high-performance weapons against projected requirements. When these conditions are not met (whether from shifting technology or shifting adversaries), these processes may not yield optimal, relevant, or militarily effective results. Historical analysis of innovation time cycles—the time measured from the origin of a new concept for military capability until its initial fielding—indicates the cycles were shorter prior to the implementation of the triad of McNamara-era processes, commonly with an average time around five years for both ships and aircraft, and have grown steadily since. Emerging technologies, especially information technologies, are central to future conflict and are largely commercial and globalized. The defense acquisition process and legacy defense industrial base approach struggle to accommodate timely adoption of these technologies, as evidenced by lengthy modern time cycles (more than ten years) for development and fielding of new-start weapon systems. China may have an edge in its resource allocation process, although this topic merits further investigation. Evidence includes their ability to develop and field twenty-five new unmanned aircraft systems from 2010 to 2020, including stealthy carrier-based unmanned systems. Efforts to improve adaptability that focus on acquisition milestones have been only partially successful. Analysis of the chained and linear components of the modern military capability development and fielding process suggests that it is difficult to create a competitive, adaptable resource allocation scheme without revisiting the PPBE and key decision processes that govern the ability to make rapid, early investments in new operational capability or concepts. Incoming administration leadership, military leaders, and Congressional leaders need to revisit institutional structure and the budgeting process recognizing the central role of time in driving innovation, adaptability, and resilience. It is not yet too late to favorably shape the trajectory of long-term military competition with China, but the only hope of an upper hand rests on agility and initiative.
Topic:
Defense Policy, National Security, Military Affairs, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China and United States of America