Diplomacy & Crisis News

Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin meets with his Ukrainian counterpart on Thursday as Washington keeps its attention on Russia.

Even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and other global challenges, children and youth are nearly 50 per cent more likely than older people to believe that the world is becoming a better place, according to the results of a landmark intergenerational poll published on Thursday. 

The project of a stronger, more united continent is on life support. It’s time for a new vision.

Despite a crisis of trust both within the country and abroad, three months after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, it is taking halting steps to pursue international legitimacy, a senior UN official in Kabul told the Security Council on Wednesday.

Not for the first time, the U.S. president misspoke about the island at the center of U.S.-China tensions.

The White House still lacks a coherent China strategy.

Relaxing restrictions on the Punjab border could lead to a bigger shift as both sides recalibrate relations.

Kyiv and the West can work together to strengthen security.

 

The border crisis between Poland and Belarus is more complex than a dispute between two sovereign nations. The extension of the EU border into the former Warsaw Pack area and towards the former border of the Soviet Union was always a source of tension as Poland was seen as a barrier to large armies coming from Western Europe. The trauma of the Second World War on Soviet citizens is notable in foreign policy arrangements since that time, and mirrors much of the history of Central Europe as a bulk-ward against the Wehrmacht, The Grand Armee of Napoleon, and many other historical disputes that placed the Polish people in the middle of wider conflicts.

The resulting Realpolitik that motivated the West and East of Europe to be weary of sharing a direct border with each other placed the Polish people into a revolving wheel of suffering and of erased identity. While the Polish people and culture survived and thrived in the areas known as historic Poland, the maintenance of a nation state was often determined by outside forces, making the Polish people strangers without a nation of their own in their historical homelands. The Poland once ruled by Medieval kings was not the same one that Napoleon stepped foot in, and was still drastically different than the Poland that came out of the Second World War. The end result is that Poland was a nation that often remained nameless despite having a rich culture and history. Poland is one of the oldest nations in European history, but remained absent as a state within Europe for much of the last 800 years.

The irony of citizens from Iraq, Syria and Yemen being trapped between the Belorussians and European Union at the Polish border mirrors much of European history as well as their own. As Poland was always the target of power politics in its region, the people of Iraq, Syria and Yemen are now often seen to be citizens of countries in a power vacuum, victims of political agents at home and now abroad that are used as a part of a larger conflict. When negotiations are taking place between Western Powers and those in the region, a missile launched at Iraq that murders its citizens is not mentioned or considered by any negotiators. Despite being indigenous peoples in their own lands, their nations are always at risk of disappearing due to external factors and foreign interests.

In reality, the conflict on the border is not between the Polish people and those from Iraq, Syria and Yemen. This latest clash has mostly been orchestrated by outside forces, wishing to keep their treatment of nameless nations maintained and who deem inequality as the norm. This is an experience Polish, Iraqi, Syrian and Yemeni people have always shared, and negotiations between these nations should reflect their own culture and experiences, not those of the real outsiders.

Although progress has been made in Somalia’s electoral process, it has been slow and uneven, the UN Special Representative for the country said in a briefing to the Security Council on Wednesday.

Tehran needs to restore the nuclear deal—but the Raisi administration’s officials aren’t up for the job.

Mardi 25 juin, un camion piégé a explosé sur la base aérienne de Khobar, en Arabie saoudite. L'attentat, qui aurait causé la mort d'une vingtaine de personnes, toutes américaines, confirme la montée des tensions dans le royaume, où une forte contestation s'est développée depuis la guerre du Golfe. Dans (...) / Démocratie, Politique, Bahreïn - 1996/07

Months after the coup, Beijing seeks stability—and protections for its investments—above all.

Moscow occupying its neighbor would be expensive, dangerous, and pointless.

Les fantastiques avancées de la science comportent des risques dont l'opinion est rarement avertie. Le serait-elle qu'un autre danger apparaît : celui — faustien — de réaliser tout ce qui est potentiellement faisable. L'Assemblée parlementaire du Conseil de l'Europe a certes publié, le 8 novembre, un (...) - 1988/12

As civil war spreads, Kenya and the African Union are trying to broker a cease-fire.

Career diplomats are concerned that the State Department won’t institute changes to address bullying or mismanagement in the future.

Kris Osborn

Aircraft Carriers, Americas

The US Navy is getting another aircraft carrier, get excited!

Here's What You Need to Remember: While there is naturally much focus upon the first-in-class USS Ford, which is nearing its first deployment, as well as the second-in-class USS Kennedy, the new USS Enterprise (CVN 80) is slated for delivery by as soon as 2028.

Progressing quietly beneath the ongoing discussion about just what the future may hold for America’s aircraft carriers, the Navy’s third Ford-class carrier is powering along toward being ready for duty.

While there is naturally much focus upon the first-in-class USS Ford, which is nearing its first deployment, as well as the second-in-class USS Kennedy, the new USS Enterprise (CVN 80) is slated for delivery by as soon as 2028. Construction on the ship began in 2017, and builders are now performing early manufacturing and structural fabrication, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) Vice President of New Construction Aircraft Carriers, Lucas Hicks, told The National Interest in a written statement.

Most of the technologies are expected to be quite similar to the first two Ford-class carriers, yet they will likely integrate more quickly given that the Navy has had practice with the Kennedy and Ford. There are also new shipbuilding methods which have been progressing throughout the trajectory of Ford-class development, according to Hicks, who said HII is incorporating a number of lessons learned from building the Ford and Kennedy. The “build strategy” improvements, he said, including more outfitted superlifts, described at larger and more complete than on prior carriers.

“It will be the first aircraft carrier built completely using digital drawings and procedures rather than traditional paper work packages and products. The use of digital data and digital tools is more user-friendly and intuitive, making the execution of shipbuilders’ work more efficient,” Hicks explained.

Some of these construction innovations have already been underway with the USS Kennedy, the second Ford carrier slated to hit the ocean in the next few years. It involves a process Newport News Shipbuilders, a division of HII, describe as “modular construction” wherein ship compartments are assembled together before moving them to the dock to expedite the building process. Smaller segments of the ship are welded together into a structural “superlift,” as Hicks described with the Enterprise, to advance construction before the ship is lifted up into drydock.

Construction begins with the bottom of the ship and works up with inner-bottoms and side shells before moving to box units. The bottom third of the ship gets built first. Also, some of the design methods now used for the Kennedy include efforts to fabricate or forge some parts of the ship—instead of casting them because it makes the process less expensive, builders explained.

HII is working to take some of these newer methods to a new level with the Enterprise, a process which is in large measure being assisted or improved through the use of digital modeling. The Enterprise’s keel is slated to be laid in 2022, HII reports.

The Enterprise is part of a Navy “two-carrier” buy plan designed by the Navy to lower production costs and streamline technological integration. The fourth Ford-class carrier, called CVN 81 is already progressing through several key planning and preparation phases.

Kris Osborn serves as Defense Editor for the National Interest. He previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army - Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also been an anchor and on-air military analyst for national TV networks.  

This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Flickr

James Holmes

China, Asia

Confrontation shouldn't be inevitable.

Here's What You Need to Know: If rivals see their courses as preordained and Thucydides’ supposed trap as inescapable, both will gird for what they regard as inevitable.

A 2018 panel at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis asked whether—as Professor Graham Allison’s book contends—China and the United States are “destined” for war. Indeed, Professor Allison numbered among the panelists who discussed the new China challenge.

The short answer from the gathering: maybe.

Commentators have held forth on this topic from antiquity till the present day. The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus taught that character is destiny. Herodotus maintained that custom is destiny. We hear that geography is destiny, or demographics is, or some other factor is. This time of year sports commentators even tell us football teams can control their destiny—chiefly by winning every game against opponents that also want to win. In that spirit, one literature specialist counsels that destiny goes by many names, including “God, gods, fate, accident, fortune, necessity, [and] circumstance.”

An enormous amount turns on how you define terms like “destiny,” or the “trap” part of Allison’s signature catchphrase “Thucydides Trap.” The latter refers to the conceit of established great powers using armed force to maintain their standing atop the pecking order or when upstart challengers reach for the sword to seize that lofty status for themselves. Geopolitical asymmetries ensnare hegemons and would-be hegemons alike—speeding them along the path to war.

If rivals see their courses as preordained and Thucydides’ supposed trap as inescapable, both will gird for what they regard as inevitable. If they believe they enjoy some say-so over the workings of destiny, then they might find some way to navigate their differences. And if one contender accepts the logic of the Thucydides Trap while the other rejects it, watch out: strategic competition could take on a seesaw character as action begets misperception begets reaction, and on and on. The action-reaction cycle could set war loose through different understandings of the dynamics at work.

Far from an exercise in hair-splitting, then, this is a philosophical debate pregnant with fateful consequences. The central question: does destiny master us or can we master it? If America and China are captive to destiny and destiny is remorseless, then there’s little for the U.S. naval and defense establishment to do except get ready. The sea services and land-based arms of military might must ready themselves for inevitable combat. If force is the only option, then the only questions left involve where, when, with what, and with which allies the U.S. armed services will attempt to crush or dishearten the foe. The reciprocal is true for China’s People’s Liberation Army.

If on the other hand, it is possible for the contestants to take charge of their destiny—in whole or in part—then they might find some way through the quarrels and disparate visions that separate them. Some mix of deterrence, diplomacy, and economic outreach or coercion could forestall war.

Now, entertaining the possibility of peace scarcely exempts American military planners from getting ready. Not for nothing did founding father George Washington proclaim—channeling the classics—that “to be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.” After all, the point of peacetime naval and military diplomacy is to cast a “shadow” over an antagonist’s deliberations and actions. The greater the possibility of defeat appears to foes who square off against the U.S. military, the longer and darker the shadow cast—and the likelier they are to desist from actions Washington deems objectionable.

Here’s one way to think through this question of whether armed strife is preordained. Crudely speaking, scribes from Greek antiquity forward have crafted three ideas about destiny. The first is fate. Fate is implacable and inescapable. The concept of irresistible fate feels very Calvinist, entailing preordination. We are the playthings of fate. Vast forces sweep us along wherever they will. Think about Odysseus, buffeted around the Mediterranean Sea for twenty long years on his return voyage from the war against Troy. The adventurer from Ithaca could do little except comply with the whims of fate. Even the gods and goddesses of Olympus found it hard to speed his return home (in part because they were working at cross purposes, as was their wont).

The classics sometimes set forth a less fatalistic concept of destiny. Playwrights and philosophers commonly warn mortals not to choose to do things that offend the “deathless gods” lest the gods exact terrible vengeance and impose a bleak destiny on the offenders. Retribution for hubris—overweening pride—constitutes a staple of classical literature. Hubris brings on Nemesis as surely as night follows day. The Greeks never quite say so, but it is possible that other vices also elicit divine retribution. Bottom line, this variant of destiny permits human beings the power to choose. It’s up to them to exercise that power wisely.

And then there’s the manageable, if still stubborn, variety of destiny. Riffing on the classics, Niccolò Machiavelli terms it "fortune." Fortune, proclaims the Florentine philosopher-statesman, is like a violent river that sweeps everything and everyone before it after a storm. But Machiavelli adds that human beings can exercise foresight during tranquil times before the onset of a tempest. They can construct dams and other engineering works to block or divert flood waters when they come. We can master fortune, in other words, by peering ahead into the future and being venturesome in the here and now—guarding against its wiles. This is a comforting interpretation coming from a writer known for his bare-knuckles approach to politics.

So who’s right? Does destiny exist in geopolitics, and if so, how much scope for free will does it allow societies and statesmen? Is it possible for rising and falling nations and their allies to be destined for war? The answers potential antagonists give will prod them to design and deploy strategy, forces, and operational methods in a certain fashion. Believers that war is fated will comport themselves as though battle is imminent. Those convinced they can master fortune dwell in the realm where military implements can persuade or dissuade. Different strategies result.

What about the trap in Professor Allison’s Thucydides Trap? Enlightenment might likewise come from parsing this everyday metaphor. Traps come in endless varieties. People lay some traps. People stumble into others. Some are visible, others hidden. Some are inescapable, others easy to evade or escape. Some inflict fatal consequences; others exact lighter damage. Is the Thucydides Trap a steel trap that a hunter lays to pinion an animal’s leg? Or is it a sand trap that a dexterous golfer can exit without losing more than a shot or two from his overall tally?

These are questions of the significant moment. That being the case, it’s crucial for Washington to undertake some soul-searching as it declares that a new age of great-power competition is upon us, and as U.S. leaders try to discern how their counterparts in Beijing, allied capitals, and third parties see matters. This is no idle philosophical musing. It could shape Asia’s—and the world’s—future.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. The views voiced here are his alone.

This article first appeared in October 2018. It is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Kris Osborn

Chinese Nuclear Weapons, Asia

Why would any country need more than a small number of weapons in their arsenal?

Here's What You Need to Remember: “I am reacting to what they are doing, which is significantly increasing their nuclear force with silo-based ICBMs. Several years ago they made a decision to move in the direction of a much larger ICBM force. Policies are declarations of intent, but intent can change very quickly,” Kendall said. 

China’s massive and fast-paced push to add more nuclear weapons to its arsenal is fast changing the threat equation for U.S. leaders who see the country’s ongoing large-scale increase in Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) as a very “destabilizing” event. 

U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall says China’s move to add hundreds of new land-based, fixed ICBM silos amounts to their developing a “first-strike” capability. 

“Most of their weapons have been mobile ICBMs, so this is a very destabilizing move and I am not sure they understand the risk they are taking. Whether they intend it or not … their move creates a first-strike capability. If they continue down this path to increase their ICBM force, then that is a de facto first-strike capability,” Kendall told reporters at the Air Force Association Symposium. 

Kendall may have been referring to an event described in August at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium by the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command Adm. Charles “Chaz” Richard. 

“Only four months ago, commercial satellite imagery discovered what is accepted to nuclear missile fields in western China. Each has nearly 120 ICBM silos. Now these compliment and are added into what they already have,” Richard told an audience at the symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. 

Sure enough, Richard's mention of Chinese ICBM silos being detected by commercial satellites is something that aligns entirely with the information referred to by Kendall.

China’s clear ambition to massively expand its nuclear arsenal is something that has been on the Pentagon’s radar for some time, as it was cited as a serious concern last year in the Pentagon’s 2020 China Military Report.  

Following the publication of this report, senior Pentagon weapons developers and experts added even more specificity and expansion metrics describing China’s ambitious nuclear weapons expansion. 

“We do believe that over the next decade, that China is likely to at least double the size of its nuclear stockpile in the course of implementing the most rapid expansion and diversification of its nuclear arsenal in its history, China’s history,” Chad Sbragia, deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, told reporters last year according to a Pentagon transcript. “An ability to double the stockpile demonstrates a move away from their historical minimum deterrence posture.”

At the moment, China is known to have an official “no first use” policy with nuclear weapons. However that position does not appear to remain the case, Kendall explained. 

“I am reacting to what they are doing, which is significantly increasing their nuclear force with silo-based ICBMs. Several years ago they made a decision to move in the direction of a much larger ICBM force. Policies are declarations of intent, but intent can change very quickly,” Kendall said. 

Kendall’s concern about Chinese ICBMs aligns in several respects with the Pentagon’s 2020 China Report which adds that the number of Beijing’s ICBMs capable of threatening America will likely grow to 200 in the next five years. As an element of this expansion, China is increasing its inventory of long-range land-fired DF-26 Anti-Ship missiles able to fire both conventional and nuclear missiles.

If merely a few nuclear weapons could unleash massive, unimagined devastation upon cities and even entire countries, why would any country need more than a small number of weapons in their arsenal?

In keeping with Ancient military philosopher Sun Tzu’s famous “Mass Matters” concept, Richard said, “it does not matter if your weapons are superior if you do not have enough of them.”

Kris Osborn is the defense editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Master's Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

This article is being reprinted for reader interest.

Image: Reuters