Diplomacy & Crisis News

Beijing wants stability. That could serve some U.S. ends.

Afghan civilians continue to bear the brunt of the Taliban takeover in the country where humanitarian needs remain critical and widespread among existing and newly displaced populations, UN agencies said on Tuesday.

Zone tampon entre les empires russe et britannique au XIXe siècle, l'Afghanistan proclamera son indépendance en 1919. Mais des frontières artificielles séparent les ethnies et les tribus. Ces divisions seront aggravées par les guerres, soviétique d'abord, américaine ensuite, déplaçant des millions (...) / Afghanistan, Asie centrale, Kirghizstan, Pakistan, Tadjikistan, Agriculture, Conflit, Minorité nationale, Réfugiés, Fondamentalisme, Turkménistan, Guerre civile - Asie

Trevor Filseth

Stimulus,

Although the worst days of the pandemic have receded, and many Americans are returning to work, some stimulus advocates have continued pushing the payments.

Panic over the highly transmissible COVID-19 “Delta variant” has led to a renewed interest in a fourth stimulus check.

New cases of the virus averaged roughly 120,000 per day across the United States last week. This rate of infection, a substantial increase from the low rates in the spring and early summer, is on par with the numbers from early February, prior to President Joe Biden’s approval of the American Rescue Plan Act, which sent out $1,400 stimulus checks to nearly all adult Americans.

The purpose of the stimulus payment was to “stimulate” the U.S. economy by providing families with money to spend, maintaining a cash flow, and preventing the economy from freezing up. These payments are typically reserved for dire economic circumstances—for instance, in March 2020, when millions of workers were furloughed overnight. President Donald Trump’s $1,200 stimulus checks have been widely (though not universally) hailed as effective in combating poverty and restoring market activity.

Although the worst days of the pandemic have receded, and many Americans are returning to work, some stimulus advocates have continued pushing the payments. A Change.org petition calling for monthly $2,000 checks, though roundly criticized from some corners for its implausibility, has now crossed 2.8 million signatures—roughly 2 percent of the total number of Americans who voted in the 2020 election.

In Congress, Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who had previously advocated for the monthly $2,000 measure, introduced legislation in the House of Representatives that would provide a $1,200 payment to most American adults and a further $600 to children. Separately, more than eighty members of Congress–roughly sixty representatives and twenty senators, all of them Democrats–have publicly supported a fourth stimulus check.

However, a fourth stimulus check is exceptionally unlikely to be passed. While the Delta variant has returned the United States to mask-wearing and social distancing, the economy is still projected to grow by as much as six percent in 2021, drawing the need for stimulus payments into question.

Moreover, Congress has shown other priorities. The $1 trillion infrastructure bill crafted in a bipartisan compromise recently passed the Senate; it is headed to the House, where it will be approved by the Democratic majority, and then to Biden for his signature. This bill does not include any further stimulus payments.

Senate Democrats are also working to craft a $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” bill that could be passed without the option of a Republican filibuster. This bill contains spending for a number of Democratic priorities but does not include further stimulus checks.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for The National Interest.

Image: Reuters

Stephen Silver

DirecTV and Dish, Americas

A new report says the age and conditions of satellites don’t bode especially well for the future of either entertainment service.  

It’s been known for a while that Dish and DirecTV are both declining, especially when it comes to subscribers. The two satellite broadcasters have been bleeding subscribers for years, even more than other pay-TV companies. And at the same time, there has been upheaval with both companies, as DirecTV was recently spun off from AT&T, while Dish Network has been pivoting towards the wireless business. 

Now, a new report says the age and conditions of satellites don’t bode especially well for the future of either service.  

MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett, as cited by FierceWireless, noted that the two companies’ satellites are notably long in the tooth. Dish has eleven satellites, nine of which are older than ten years old, a situation that’s similar for DirecTV. AT&T said last year that its most recent DirecTV satellite launch would be its last.  

“To dwell on whether a given quarter’s subscriber losses are a little better, or a little worse, than expected, or than last quarter, is to miss the point,” Moffett’s research note stated. “We are witnessing the long, slow goodbye of satellite TV. The terminal value of a satellite TV platform with neither satellites nor subscribers is, quite obviously…zero.” 

The note also said that while the satellites could last longer than expected, set-top boxes “can’t unscramble signals from the other’s satellites.” 

“That programming dispute should be kept in mind as one considers Q2 results; programming costs could rise sharply if RSNs return with broadcast nets (the cost of broadcast nets can be assumed to rise with or without the RSNs),” the note added. “Absent a renewal, subscriber losses would be expected to accelerate without the local broadcast networks.” 

Dish and Sinclair did reach a deal this week to temporarily stave off the removal of more than one hundred channels, per USA Today.  

“We have agreed to a short-term extension with DISH to continue conversations," David Gibber, senior vice president and general counsel for Sinclair Broadcast Group, told the newspaper in a statement Tuesday. "We will continue to update our viewers as this develops. Sinclair stands willing to continue to negotiate in good faith and to enter into a longer extension to allow for the continued carriage of our channels to DISH’s subscribers.” 

Dish dropped another 67,000 net pay-TV subscribers in the second quarter of 2021, according to earnings released earlier this month. That left the company with 10.99 million Pay-TV subscribers as of the end of that quarter. Dish had lost  96,000 pay-TV subscribers in the previous quarter. Dish’s Sling TV service, however, did gain customers in the quarter.  

As of the end of the quarter, the company had 10.99 million Pay-TV subscribers, including 8.55 million Dish TV subscribers and 2.44 million for Sling TV.  

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for the National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver. 

Image: Reuters

Climate-related and geophysical events resulted in the loss of 312,000 lives and directly affected more than 277 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, a new report released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) revealed on Tuesday.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Stimulus,

Despite such payments reaching tens of millions of Americans, the passionate calls for another round just can’t seem to be silenced.

In recent weeks, the U.S. economy appears to have kicked into high gear, as the Labor Department has reported that the unemployment rate is sitting at 5.4 percent, the lowest registered since the start of the ongoing pandemic in early 2020.

Not to be outdone, the number of job openings in the U.S. economy surged to more than ten million in June—the highest on record—as the labor market continues its recovery from last year’s devastating economic shutdowns.

For those still struggling Americans holding out hope for another round of stimulus payments, such positive data don’t seem to bode well for the Internal Revenue Service cutting more checks. Moreover, President Joe Biden’s administration currently has made known no plans to resume sending out more stimulus checks, of which most Americans have received in total three throughout the past year.

Passionate Calls

Despite such payments reaching tens of millions of Americans, the passionate calls for another round just can’t seem to be silenced. For example, there are currently more than five online petitions calling for recurring monthly stimulus checks of $2,000 until the health crisis ends.

The most publicized among them is Denver-area restaurant owner Stephanie Bonin’s Change.org petition, which has already secured roughly 2.8 million signatures.

“I’m calling on Congress to support families with a $2,000 payment for adults and a $1,000 payment for kids immediately, and continuing regular checks for the duration of the crisis,” the petition says. “Otherwise, laid-off workers, furloughed workers, the self-employed, and workers dealing with reduced hours will struggle to pay their rent or put food on the table. Our country is still deeply struggling.”

The petition added that unemployment checks alone aren’t enough to survive on for many Americans. Making matters worse is that many states have already eliminated the $300 enhanced federal unemployment benefits. 

“For our team and other Americans who can claim unemployment, even the maximum payments will not be enough for most people to continue paying their bills—and avoid slipping into poverty,” it says.

Democrats On Board

This past spring, more than twenty Senate Democrats pressed Biden to include recurring direct payments in future legislations.

“While we are pleased that the American Rescue Plan included a one-time direct payment and an extension of federal unemployment insurance programs, a single direct payment will not last long for most families,” the lawmakers wrote.

“This crisis is far from over, and families deserve certainty that they can put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. Families should not be at the mercy of constantly-shifting legislative timelines and ad hoc solutions,” they added.

Currently, the closest equivalent to another round of stimulus checks are the expanded child tax credits. Also approved via Biden’s stimulus bill, the federal government is now allowing eligible parents to collect $250 or $300 for each child every month through the end of the year. 

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Reuters

The vaccination against Ebola of high-risk populations began on Monday in Côte d’Ivoire following the discovery of an outbreak in the country three days ago. The swift response came after vaccines manufactured by Merck, which the World Health Organization (WHO) helped to secure to fight a four-month long outbreak in neighbouring Guinea, were quickly sent to the country. 

James Holmes

History, Asia

Bypassing the Hawaiian Islands, in short, would have spared Japan a world of hurt—as Admiral Yamamoto foresaw.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Doing less—or forswearing an effort entirely—always constitutes a viable strategic option. Doing nothing was an option Japan should have exercised rather than assail Pearl Harbor. That’s the lesson from alt-history.

Suppose Robert E. Lee had laid hands on a shipment of AK-47s in 1864. How would American history have unfolded? Differently than it did, one imagines.

Historians frown on alt-history, and oftentimes for good reason. Change too many variables, and you veer speedily into fiction. The chain connecting cause to effect gets too diffuse to trace, and history loses all power to instruct. Change a major variable, especially in a fanciful way—for instance, positing that machine-gun-toting Confederates took the field against Ulysses S. Grant’s army at the Battle of the Wilderness—and the same fate befalls you. Good storytelling may teach little.

What if Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbor? Now that’s a question we can take on without running afoul of historical scruples. As long as we refrain from inserting nuclear-powered aircraft carriers sporting Tomcat fighters into our deliberations, at any rate.

RECOMMENDED: How D-Day Could Have Been a Disaster 

When studying strategy, we commonly undertake a self-disciplined form of alt-history. Indeed, our courses in Newport and kindred educational institutes revolve around it. That’s how we learn from historical figures and events. Military sage Carl von Clausewitz recommends—nay, demands—that students of strategy take this approach. Rigor, not whimsy, is the standard that guides ventures in Clausewitzian “critical analysis.” Strategists critique the course of action a commander followed while proposing alternatives that may have better advanced operational and strategic goals.

Debating strategy and operations in hindsight is how we form the habit of thinking critically about present-day enterprises. Critical analysis, maintains Clausewitz, is “not just an evaluation of the means actually employed, but of all possible means—which first have to be formulated, that is, invented. One can, after all, not condemn a method without being able to suggest a better alternative.” The Prussian sage, then, scorns Monday-morning quarterbacking.

RECOMMENDED: How Japan Could Have Won World War II 

That demands intellectual self-discipline. “If the critic wishes to distribute praise or blame,” concludes Clausewitz, “he must certainly try to put himself exactly in the position of the commander; in other words, he must assemble everything the commander knew and all the motives that affected his decision, and ignore all that he could not or did not know, especially the outcome.” Critics know how a course of action worked out in retrospect. They must restrict themselves to what a commander actually knew in order to project some realistic alternative.

RECOMMENDED: Could Russia Have Won the Cold War? 

It doesn’t take too much imagination to postulate alternative strategies for Imperial Japan. Indeed, eminent Japanese have themselves postulated alternatives. My favorite: the high naval command should have stuck to its pre-1941 playbook. The Pearl Harbor carrier raid was a latecomer to Japanese naval strategy, and it was the handiwork of one man, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto. Had Yamamoto declined to press the case for a Hawaiian strike, or had the high command rebuffed his entreaties, the Imperial Japanese Navy would have executed its longstanding strategy of “interceptive operations.”

In other words, it would have evicted U.S. forces from the Philippine Islands, seized Pacific islands and built airfields there, and employed air and submarine attacks to cut the U.S. Pacific Fleet down to size on its westward voyage to the Philippines’ relief. Interceptive operations would have culminated in a fleet battle somewhere in the Western Pacific. Japan would have stood a better chance of success had it done so. Its navy still would have struck American territory to open the war, but it would have done so in far less provocative fashion. In all likelihood, the American reaction would have proved more muted—and more manageable for Japan.

The Hollywood version of Yamamoto puts the result of Pearl Harbor well, prophesying in Tora! Tora! Tora! that “we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.” That’s a rich—and rather Clausewitzian—way of putting it. Clausewitz defines a combatant’s strength as a product of capability and willpower. Yamamoto alludes to the United States’ vast industrial and natural resources, depicting America as a giant in waiting. He also foretells that the strike on Battleship Row will enrage that giant—goading him into mobilizing those resources in bulk to smite Japan.

Assaulting the Philippines may have awakened the sleeping giant—but it’s doubtful it would have left him in such a merciless mood. He would have been groggy. Here’s Clausewitz again: the “value of the political object” governs the “magnitude” and “duration” of the effort a belligerent mounts to obtain that political object. How much a belligerent wants its political goals, that is, dictates how many resources—lives, national treasure, military hardware—it invests in an endeavor, and how long it sustains the investment.

It pays a heavy price for goals it covets dearly. Lesser goals warrant lesser expenditures.

The Philippine Islands constituted a lesser goal. The archipelago constituted American territory, having been annexed in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War of 1898. But the islands also lay on the far side of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from American shores. And they had been absent from daily headlines since the days when imperialists like Theodore Roosevelt wrangled publicly with anti-imperialists like Mark Twain about the wisdom of annexation. Americans reportedly had to consult their atlases on December 7 to find out where Pearl Harbor was located. The Philippines barely registered in the popular consciousness—full stop.

Regaining the Philippines, then, would have represented a political object commanding mediocre value at best—especially when full-blown war raged in Europe and adjoining waters, beckoning to an America that had been Eurocentric since its founding. Chances are that the U.S. effort in the Pacific would have remained wholly defensive. The U.S. leadership would have concentrated resources and martial energy in the Atlantic theater—keeping its prewar promise to allied leaders in deed as well as in spirit.

Bypassing the Hawaiian Islands, in short, would have spared Japan a world of hurt—as Admiral Yamamoto foresaw. Forbearance would have granted Tokyo time to consolidate its gains in the Western Pacific, and perhaps empowered Japan’s navy and army to hold those gains against the tepid, belated U.S. counteroffensive that was likely to come.

Now, let’s give Yamamoto his due as a maritime strategist. His strategy was neither reckless nor stupid. Japanese mariners were avid readers of the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, and going after the enemy fleet represents sound Mahanian doctrine. Crush the enemy fleet and you win “command of the sea.” Win maritime command and contested real estate dangles on the vine for you to pluck afterward.

And indeed, the Mahanian approach did pay off for the Imperial Japanese Navy—for a time. Japanese warriors ran wild for six months after Pearl Harbor, scooping up conquest after conquest. But a vengeful giant can regenerate strength given adequate time. As Yamamoto himself predicted, Japan could entertain “no expectation of success” if the war dragged on longer than six months or a year.

Doing less—or forswearing an effort entirely—always constitutes a viable strategic option. Doing nothing was an option Japan should have exercised rather than assail Pearl Harbor. That’s the lesson from alt-history.

James Holmes is Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific (second edition forthcoming 2018). The views voiced here are his alone. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Trevor Filseth

Canada,

Despite their chance to overtake the Liberal Party, Canada’s minority parties have not unanimously welcomed the decision.

On Sunday, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that Canada would hold a federal election on September 20, 2021. With the announcement of the election, Trudeau’s minority government, which has held power in Ottawa since October 2019, is slated to dissolve.

The contest was officially confirmed after Trudeau’s Sunday meeting with Canadian Governor-General Mary Simon, who has the authority to call for new elections.

In a speech regarding the election, Trudeau claimed that the vote would give Canadians a vote on the government’s actions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including its support for mandatory vaccinations for all government workers and travelers.

“We are experiencing a historic moment,” Trudeau said in French, “and you have something to say about it. You have the right to choose the future of our country, whether to pursue our vaccination efforts or to continue our support programs.”

Trudeau’s party, the Liberal Party of Canada, is heavily favored in polls and is widely expected to win next month’s contest. The prime minister has highlighted his administration’s commitment to creating a national childcare plan, a popular initiative among many Canadians, as a reason to support the Liberals during the election. Another major voting issue is the government’s proposed vaccine mandates, which have led to heated opposition as well as strong support.

A third issue of significant concern to many Canadians is the ongoing evacuation in Kabul, whose fall to the Taliban militia on Sunday prompted massive and chaotic evacuation efforts. The Canadian government has committed to helping Afghans who supported Canada’s military mission in the country evacuate, but some have been left behind, according to Canada’s Global News.

Despite their chance to overtake the Liberal Party, Canada’s minority parties have not unanimously welcomed the decision. Erin O’Toole, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and Canada’s official opposition leader, criticized Trudeau’s decision to hold an election during the spread of the highly contagious “Delta variant” of the COVID-19 virus. O’Toole has opposed the government’s proposed vaccination mandate.

Meanwhile, Yves-Francois Blanchet, leader of Canada’s secessionist Bloc Quebecois party, argued that if Canada’s health situation was precarious enough to require mandatory vaccinations, it would not be safe to hold an election: “If the threat is so significant that we need to impose mandatory vaccination, is it not too dangerous to go to the polls?”

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for The National Interest.

Mark Episkopos

Afghanistan, Asia

Moscow has found a like-minded partner in its handling of the Afghanistan crisis in the form of Beijing, holding joint military drills of an unprecedented scale with the People’s Liberation Army on Chinese soil earlier in August.

With the Taliban on the verge of victory in Afghanistan, Russia and its Central Asian allies are scrambling to contain the conflict’s regional spillover effects.  

“The war is over,” proclaimed Taliban officials on Monday after taking the presidential palace in Kabul. The seizure of Kabul marks the latest in a string of major Taliban gains over the past month, as the militant group moves to establish itself as the country’s sole political authority in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.  

But the Taliban’s swift ascent has brought with it a new wave of regional instability that is already spilling over into neighboring Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The problems are as numerous as they are complex. Thousands of Afghan refugees, composed in large part of Afghan government forces and officials, as well as Afghan citizens at odds with the Taliban’s fundamentalist policies, are flooding into Tajikistan. Russian defense minister Sergey Shoigu said last week that the Taliban now controls Afghanistan’s border with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, adding that the militants have vowed not to cross over into Central Asia. But this blanket assurance, even if taken at face value, hides a litany of dangerous nuances. First, the Taliban is not and does not function as a traditional government with a clearly defined and enforced military chain of command. Recent reports corroborated by eyewitness accounts show that the Taliban has outsourced control over the Tajik border to Ansarollah—an Tajikistani militant group that carried out terror attacks against Afghani government assets in late 2020. It is not at all clear that the Taliban, which denies working with Ansarollah, will have either the will or the means to prevent the latter from carrying out raids into Tajikistan and skirmishing with Tajikistan’s border forces in the near term. Secondly, the Taliban has no shortage of covert tools at its disposal to destabilize Tajikistan; among them, the infiltration of militants among refugees, the creation of sleeper cells, drugs and weapons smuggling, and the northward proliferation of radical Islamist literature. “We must be careful not to exaggerate the number of such fighters traveling [from] Central Asia to Afghanistan, but we have seen from the past decade in Syria and Iraq that it takes just a few individuals to cause trouble for regimes back home,” Jennifer Murtazashvili of the University of Pittsburgh told Eurasianet.

Tajikistan has appealed for outside help to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)—a six-member Eurasian security alliance headed by Russia. Even as the Kremlin cautiously courts the Taliban in hopes of minimizing the geopolitical spillover effects from the ongoing turmoil in Afghanistan, Russian and CSTO officials are signaling their ironclad commitment to protecting Tajikistan’s side of the Afghan-Tajik border. “The organization continues to attach priority in its activity to political and diplomatic methods. If the situation escalates and a threat emerges to the security of the Republic of Tajikistan, all the necessary collective measures stipulated by the statutory documents will be taken to render assistance to the ally,” said CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas.  

Moscow has found a like-minded partner in its handling of the Afghanistan crisis in the form of Beijing, holding joint military drills of an unprecedented scale with the People’s Liberation Army on Chinese soil earlier in August. For now, Moscow and Beijing are aligned in their policy of pursuing diplomatic ties with the Taliban whilst reinforcing the Afghan-Tajik border. The Russian and Chinese embassies in Kabul are among the only diplomatic missions functioning normally in Afghanistan, following a wave of western evacuations in recent weeks.  

The Putin administration has made it clear that direct Russian military intervention into Afghanistan is not on the table, but experts warn that this could change if Moscow’s uneasy early truce with the Taliban were to crumble. “If it becomes necessary to stabilize Afghanistan or the neighboring territories, then we will see the formation of a coalition under the leadership of Russia and China,” Vasily Kashin, a senior research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Far Eastern Studies, told Nikkei Asia.  

Earlier this month, Russia’s Central Military District announced that Russian forces held joint exercises with the Uzbek and Tajik militaries to maintain preparedness against the “threat of penetration of radical terrorist groups into the border countries of the Central Asian region.” Those exercises were preceded by bilateral military drills between Russia and Uzbekistan at the Termez training ground. Shoigu noted at a separate event on August 10 that Russia will continue to conduct drills with regional partners near the Afghan border, a measure that partly serves to reassure the Kremlin’s anxious Central Asian allies amid its ongoing overtures to the Taliban.

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for the National Interest. 

Image: Reuters

James Holmes

Chinese Submarines, Asia

Word has it that China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) has staged a breakthrough in submarine propulsion.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The PLA Navy may be poised to overcome a technological and tactical defect that has plagued it since its founding.

Word has it that China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) has staged a breakthrough in submarine propulsion. At any rate, that’s the word from marine engineer Rear Admiral Ma Weiming, a specialist in electromagnetic systems. Admiral Ma recently reported on state-run CCTV that shipwrights are installing shaftless rim-driven pumpjets in China’s “next-generation nuclear submarines,” meaning attack or ballistic-missile boats. (Click here for a layman’s description of pumpjet technology.) Ma crowed that Chinese engineers are “now way ahead of the United States, which has also been developing similar technology.”

If Admiral Ma is playing it straight—rather than hyping promising but yet-to-be-proven gadgetry—then the PLA Navy is poised to overcome a technological and tactical defect that has plagued it since its founding. American submariners long lampooned Soviet and Chinese nuclear boats for being noisy and easy to detect. PLA Navy boats remained backward long after the Cold War. Ultraquiet propulsion, though, would put an end to unquestioned U.S. acoustic supremacy, opening up new operational and strategic vistas before the PLA Navy while ushering in a deadlier phase of U.S.-China strategic competition.

The rim-driven pumpjet is an electrically driven “propulsor” that simplifies and thus quiets an engineering plant. Older technology typically uses gears to connect the elements of a drive train. Steam spins the innards of high-speed turbines. Turbines spin far too fast for any main propulsion shaft or propeller, however, so ships outfitted with traditional engineering plants have “main reduction gears” that step down the speed of rotation drastically, to speeds useful for the shaft that turns the screw and impels the hull through the water. Gears are noisemakers. Pumpjet technology dispenses with them, simplifying and silencing plant operations.

The design also reduces cavitation—bubbles churned up when a propeller turns rapidly underwater, leaving low-pressure zones behind the blades where water can boil. Cavitation emits noise that enemy sonar operators may hear. Thus it can alert hostile anti-submarine-warfare (ASW) forces, helping them find, track and target the emitter. Hence the allure of novel technology that suppresses cavitation.

Now, there are ample grounds for skepticism toward Admiral Ma’s claims. New technology remains a hypothesis until tested out in real-world operations. But at the same time it’s doubtful Ma was simply showboating for Chinese TV viewers. Rising competitors have caught up with established navies before, or even leapfrogged them in certain areas. The Imperial Japanese Navy defied expectations, devising the Long Lance torpedo that it deployed to devastating effect at Pearl Harbor. The Soviet Navy concocted antiship missiles and torpedoes that give the U.S. Navy fits to this day. Thus it behooves us to ask what if: what if China pulls off a technological leap of similar magnitude?

Set aside the question of whose submarines are quieter than whose. Boastfulness—the urge to be the biggest, best and most of everything, and to have others acknowledge it—forms a strand in China’s cultural DNA. Ma is indulging in it. But no one is going to hold a contest to measure noise given off by U.S. Navy and PLA Navy boats, and award victory to the quietest fleet. Combat is the true arbiter of military effectiveness—and undersea combat hinges on whether “hiders” or “finders” prevail. It pits a sub’s capacity for silent running against the acuity of ASW sensors and operators trying to ferret it out.

In other words, if American hiders remain quiet enough to evade Chinese finders, they hold the advantage of stealth. If acoustics has befriended the PLA Navy, then American finders have a problem. And if both submarine services can elude ASW hunters, then both they and surface fleets are in dire peril. “Peer” submarines could engage one another at close proximity in the deep, or strike against surface vessels without warning. Indeed, the surface of embattled oceans could verge on no-go territory. That prospect makes this thought experiment about the future of subsurface warfare worthwhile.

Suppose rim-driven pumpjet propulsors do pan out for China’s navy. How might commanders use newly elusive boats? First of all, they might afford nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs, known to U.S. submariners as “boomers”) precedence when installing newfangled propulsion hardware. The PLA Navy already operates a sizable fleet of diesel-electric attack subs that satisfices for antiaccess/area-denial purposes. They can make shift until silent-running nuclear-powered attack subs (SSNs) join the fleet. SSNs can wait. By contrast, the navy stands at the brink of fielding its first effective SSBNs.

Fabricating a new capability would seem to take precedence over improving an old but adequate one—especially if the nation’s nuclear deterrent depends on the new capability. If this logic prevails, how will the PLA Navy employ working boomers? To all appearances, it envisions employing the South China Sea as an offshore “bastion” for SSBNs, much as the Soviet Navy of yesteryear made semienclosed waters into protected bastions for its missile boats. Undersea deterrence, then, probably numbers among the motives impelling the PLA to transform rocks and atolls into fortified outposts, acquaint itself with underwater hydrography, and so forth. China’s Type 094 SSBNs or their pumpjet-equipped descendants could slip out of the sub base on Hainan Island, descend into South China Sea waters, lose themselves in the depths and dare rival navies to come into China’s “near seas”—expanses that fall under the shadow of land-based PLA missiles and aircraft—to hunt them.

Or if Chinese Communist Party leaders feel comfortable granting SSBN skippers the liberty to venture outside the near seas (though that’s a lot of atomic firepower to entrust to a naval officer whose loyalties might prove suspect), the Luzon Strait affords a convenient entryway to the western Pacific. Within the strait lies the Bashi Channel, a deep underwater thoroughfare into the Pacific. The weather between Luzon and the southern tip of Taiwan often works against airborne ASW; subs transiting the channel can conceal their whereabouts by diving beneath thermal layers that play tricks with sound. An ultraquiet SSBN, in short, could thrive in South China Sea patrol grounds—and beyond.

Second, PLA Navy commanders doubtless salivate at the prospect of ultraquiet attack boats. They could merge new SSNs—presumably the Type 095s under development—into their antiaccess defenses against the U.S. Pacific Fleet. They could package new with old units inventively. For example, they could station a picket line of diesel boats and older Type 093 SSNs along likely axes of approach from Hawaii or U.S. West Coast seaports. Speedy but quiet Type 095s could act as “skirmishers,” operating forward of the pickets. SSNs could snipe at the Pacific Fleet’s flanks during its westward voyage while scouting for the rest of the fleet, and for shore-based PLA defenders. They could mount piecemeal attacks against the American fleet, or even try to herd it toward the picket line for additional punishment.

PLA commanders thus could use ultramodern platforms to wring new value out of legacy platforms. Such an approach would harness the latest technology while staying true to China’s Maoist tradition of “active defense.” Active defense—which, as Chinese military folk remind us, remains the “essence” of Chinese military strategy decades after Mao Zedong’s demise—envisions luring foes deep into Chinese-held territory. PLA defenders stage tactical actions to weary enemies as they come. They fall on isolated units and try to smash them. Successive small-scale attacks enfeeble enemy forces, setting the stage for decisive battle on Chinese ground.

Think about the options that may become available to Chinese skippers as propulsor technology matures. Diesel boats could act as western Pacific pickets, or congregate in wolfpacks to concentrate firepower from multiple axes. Relatively noisy Type 093s could act as decoys, distracting American ASW hunters while Type 095s spring ambushes at opportune moments. And on and on. Commanders could combine and recombine forces in limitless ways—in keeping with China’s way of war.

Call it undersea active defense.

Third, the advent of quiet-running SSNs would let the PLA Navy play submarine-on-submarine games reminiscent of those once played by U.S. and Soviet boats. To date, lacking a peer to U.S. Navy Los Angeles– or Virginia-class SSNs, the PLA Navy has employed its submarine fleet mainly as an antisurface force. It waits offshore for hostile forces to approach, then does its best to pummel them with missiles or torpedoes. American submariners, by contrast, will tell you the best ASW weapon is another submarine. They view hunting subs as their chief contribution to high-seas warfare. Chinese submariners might follow suit if their boats ran quiet enough, and boasted sensors sensitive enough, to make sub-on-sub ASW an option. Or they might incorporate ASW into their operational portfolio while retaining the emphasis on antiship missions.

Either way, PLA submarine operations would take on an intensely offensive hue. No longer would the sub force be a mostly static force lofting antiship missiles toward adversary surface task forces. It would seek out adversary subs as well—and, if successful, project China’s antiaccess defenses into the depths in a serious way for the first time. No longer could the United States’ silent service prowl Asian waters with impunity. Indeed, if both fleets were comparable in stealth, cat-and-mouse games might predominate. This would be a dangerous business. Reaction times would be minimal if boats could only detect and track one another at intimate range. Proximity would magnify the prospect of collisions, accidents of other types, or even inadvertent exchanges of fire. Both navies and their political masters must think ahead about how to manage close-quarters encounters in the deep.

And fourth, the debut of pumpjet-equipped SSNs would empower Beijing to mount a standing presence in faraway recesses of the South China Sea and Indian Ocean for the first time. Diesel boats have ventured into the “far seas” in recent years, but they must put into port at regular intervals to refuel. This exposes them to detection. SSNs can remain at sea, and undersea, as long as their food and stores hold out. The crew—not the engineering plant—thus constitutes the limiting factor on a nuclear-powered boat’s at-sea endurance. The Indian Navy has taken notice of PLA Navy forays into India’s home region, and grasps the implications of high-tech Chinese SSNs cruising the Indian Ocean. Indeed, some Indian mariners deem such a presence a red line for competition between the two navies.

It can be no accident, then, that there’s an antisubmarine flair to this summer’s Malabar exercises among the Indian Navy, U.S. Navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. All three navies dispatched aircraft carriers for maneuvers for the first time. The Japanese flattop JS Izumo is a euphemistically dubbed “helicopter destroyer” optimized for hunting submarines. What hostile subs may lurk in the Bay of Bengal, where the exercises are underway, apart from China’s? Hider-finder competition, it seems, has come to the Indian Ocean.

Does new engineering technology herald an age of Chinese maritime supremacy? Of course not. Carl von Clausewitz portrays martial strife as constant struggle between “wrestlers” striving to “throw” each other for strategic gain. That goes for acoustic one-upmanship as well. One contender innovates; the other resolves to outdo it. It appears, consequently, that more equal undersea competition lies in store. To prepare for it, U.S. Navy submariners must learn to think of PLA Navy subs not as prey to be devoured by American predators but as worthy foes, capable of some sub hunting of their own. The silent service must adjust to the new, old reality of peer competition beneath the waves.

The game’s afoot.

James Holmes is professor of strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific (second edition forthcoming 2018). The views voiced here are his alone.

This first appeared in 2017.

Image: Reuters. 

James Holmes

China, Asia

September 17, 1894, was a dark day for dynastic China.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Like all such rivalries, the Sino-Japanese rivalry will be punctuated by moments of triumph and tribulation as the pugilists grapple for strategic advantage. So it has been for the past 125 years. So, in all likelihood, shall it remain for the coming years if not decades. Better settle in.

The Pentagon proclaims that an age of long-term strategic competition among great powers is upon us. How long is long, though?

Very long, maybe. To see why juxtapose two anniversaries that fell during this year, both of equal moment for contemporary Asia. Communist China ballyhooed the first, the 70th anniversary of its founding on October 1, 1949, in part by sending an arsenal of high-tech weaponry rumbling through the streets of Beijing. The hoopla obscured the second anniversary, which came just a couple of weeks before—namely the 125th anniversary of the first Sino-Japanese War.

Communist officialdom is less eager to trumpet that one. That’s because September 17, 1894, was a dark day for dynastic China. A Japanese fleet cobbled together from secondhand boilers and other components with foreign help crushed the Qing Dynasty’s Beiyang (Northern) Fleet off the Korean west coast. Naval experts of the day rated the Qing force superior to its opponent, so the encounter administered a rude shock all around. In fact, defeat at the Battle of the Yalu is central to China’s “century of humiliation.”

Banishing painful memories from the century of humiliation is inseparable from the “Chinese Dream,” President Xi Jinping’s project for making China great again. Losing to imperial navies such Great Britain’s Royal Navy, as imperial China did time after time during the 19th century, was bad enough. Losing to upstart Japan—a lesser Asian competitor that had secluded itself from the region and the world for a quarter-millennium, emerging only in the 1860s—was worse in Chinese eyes.

China must turn the world right-side up again to make Xi’s dream of great power come true.

But there was more to the debacle off Korea than dishonor, cringeworthy though the battle’s results were. As my colleague Professor Sally Paine attests, Japan’s limited military victory in the Sino-Japanese War carried unlimited geopolitical repercussions. Japan made itself Asia’s foremost naval and military power. It then ran roughshod over Asia and the Pacific for the next half-century—making short work of the Russian Navy in 1904-1905, conquering territory across continental Asia, and giving Allied forces all they could handle in World War II.

In a day’s fighting, then, the Imperial Japanese Navy upended the region’s Sinocentric pecking order. In turn, the Sino-Japanese War set in motion a maritime strategic contest—sometimes peaceful, sometimes not—that persists to this day. One hundred twenty-five years: that’s what you call long-term strategic competition.

And it is far from over. In effect, Communist China wants to repeal the outcome of the Battle of the Yalu in order to certify its stature as Asia’s predominant geopolitical force and a global sea power of note. In its nondescript way, democratic Japan would like to reaffirm its primacy. Ever since 1895, writes Paine, “the focus of Chinese foreign policy has been to undo [the war’s] results whereas the focus of Japanese foreign policy has been to confirm them.”

Martial sage Carl von Clausewitz would nod knowingly at this perpetual-motion cycle of competition and conflict. “Even the ultimate outcome of a war,” maintains Clausewitz, “is not always to be regarded as final. The defeated state often considers the outcome merely as a transitory evil, for which a remedy may still be found in political conditions at some later date.” He knew whereof he spoke, having taken part in decades of recurrent warfare against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

Seems the old military maxim holds true: no war is over until the vanquished agree it’s over. The same goes for strategic competition. Post-Napoleonic France never got over its thirst for lost grandeur. Thankfully, it also never marched Europe over the precipice again in its quest to renew national greatness.

So, it seems, memories run long in societies that once knew martial and diplomatic preeminence and lost it. On a subterranean level the Sino-Japanese War and century of humiliation must help account for this year’s showmanship in Beijing and other precincts. Party prelates want to impress not just on the Chinese people but also on foreign audiences—including Japanese—that China is back in a big way.

Still, never surrender to hype made in Communist China. The People’s Liberation Army does not field invincible forces operated by martial supergeniuses. It fields impressive but beatable forces operated by fallible human beings. It is far from a foregone conclusion that China would steamroll Japan in a new trial of arms.

Think about the balance of military might. Japan not only deploys a compact but world-class navy, styled a Maritime Self-Defense Force, but is allied to the United States, which operates the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps—the predominant seagoing force of the age. Yokosuka and Sasebo play home to the U.S. Seventh Fleet, an armada centered on an aircraft-carrier strike group and robust amphibious forces. So long as Tokyo and Washington keep their friendship strong, there will be no more one-on-one fights for mastery of Pacific waters. Any fight will embroil America.

The allies must broadcast a message of solidarity early and often, and back up their message with military exercises to prove they can make good on forceful words. They must show that Japanese and U.S. maritime forces comprise a single keen-edged implement wielded by a resolute, indivisible alliance. Metaphor alert: the news broke recently that amphibious aircraft carrier USS America is headed for Japan, complete with F-35 stealth fighter/attack aircraft to augment allied air power. The vessel will call Sasebo home.

America goes to Japan!

There U.S. forces must stay, reminding all parties to the competition that America has skin in the game. Neither Beijing nor Tokyo appears willing to relinquish its claims to primacy in Asia. Neither appears able to overpower the other without fearful consequences. It is doubtful, consequently, that the Sino-Japanese competition will end any time soon—either in humbling defeat or tidings of everlasting victory for Tokyo or Beijing. As the shade of Clausewitz might counsel, this is a long-term strategic competition in which each contender interprets setbacks as temporary evils to be redressed at some later date.

Like all such rivalries, the Sino-Japanese rivalry will be punctuated by moments of triumph and tribulation as the pugilists grapple for strategic advantage. So it has been for the past 125 years. So, in all likelihood, shall it remain for the coming years if not decades. Better settle in.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and the author of A Brief Guide to Maritime Strategy, due out Sunday. The views voiced here are his alone. This article is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Trevor Filseth

Politics, Americas

The recall election has two parts.

California’s 2021 recall election is set to take place in less than a month on September 14. While the election was initially dismissed as a publicity stunt by the state’s Republican minority, and support for the recall floundered in the polls, it has since turned into a real contest. Polls in California, a heavily liberal and Democratic state, have remained surprisingly close between supporters and opponents of the recall. In a recent SurveyUSA poll, a shocking 51 percent of state residents indicated they would not vote for Newsom while 40 percent of the residents indicated they would vote to keep him. This result surprised many observers, who noted that Newsom had handily won his 2018 race for governor with 61.9 percent of the vote.  

There are forty-six candidates listed on the ballot to replace Newsom. Among these, the frontrunner is conservative radio and television host Larry Elder, who has so far raised more than $4.5 million in campaign contributions. Other major conservative candidates include Kevin Faulconer, the moderate Republican mayor of San Diego; John Cox, a businessman who ran against Newsom as the Republican nominee for governor in 2018; and Caitlyn Jenner, a celebrity and media personality. 

While a handful of minor Democrats have independently filed to run—most prominently YouTube personality Kevin Paffrath—the state’s Democrats have instead thrown their weight behind Newsom, pushing their supporters to vote down the recall and not choose an alternative candidate. Democrats across the country have also rallied to Newsom’s support, with President Joe Biden voicing his support for Newsom and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) running television advertisements on his behalf in the state. 

The recall election has two parts. The first part asks voters whether they would like to recall Newsom or not; the second part asks who they would like to replace him. If a majority of voters decide to recall Newsom on the first question, then the candidate with the most votes on the second question replaces him as governor. The system is first-past-the-post and there are more than forty total candidates, which means it would technically be possible for Newsom’s successor to be elected with less than three percent of the vote—a fact that has raised eyebrows in Sacramento and elsewhere in the United States.  

The last governor of California to be recalled was Gray Davis, a Democrat, in 2003. Davis, who was widely unpopular in the state for implementing a gasoline tax, was replaced by actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who served from 2003 until 2011 and remains the last Republican governor of the state. 

The recall election is set to cost the state of California roughly $276 million to run. 

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters

Trevor Filseth

economy, Americas

No, but it’s complicated.

One of the most common accusations surrounding the government’s Social Security benefits programs is that the fund for Social Security is “raided” and used to pay for other government needs. 

In reality, the economics of Social Security is far more complicated. While the government does borrow money from the Social Security trust fund, then it does so in a legal way, and in a way that requires it to pay back what it borrowed, plus interest. 

Here’s How It Works 

Money for Social Security is collected from existing workers’ Social Security taxes, which they usually pay on top of other income taxes. While most taxes go to the government’s general fund, Social Security taxes are set aside for the Social Security Administration’s trust fund, and the money in this trust fund cannot be used to simply pay for a different government program if the government needs extra cash that year. 

Instead, the trust fund increases its funds by investing in U.S. treasury bonds. By purchasing the bond, the Social Security Administration (SSA) loans its funds to the rest of the government, which can then use the money to fund its own programs. However, the government is obliged to pay back the bonds that the SSA buys, with interest—ultimately supplementing the SSA’s total assets, and allowing them to reliably pay benefits on time. 

What Could Go Wrong? 

The current system is reliant on the U.S. government keeping its word and repaying the bonds it issues. If the government became unable or unwilling to pay back the bond for the full amount it owes, it will “default” on it—essentially claim it cannot pay and offer a lower sum instead. 

Bonds are typically very stable; unlike more speculative investments, they typically offer an iron-clad pledge to pay back the full amount, at the expense of a very low-interest rate. But other countries have been known to default on their bonds before, usually as part of some larger financial crisis. The United States has never done this and purchases of U.S. bonds are considered a very safe investment. The United States’ high creditworthiness has also solidified its role as the bedrock of the global economy. As a result, the U.S. dollar’s role is the standard for world commerce. 

In theory, the U.S. government maintains the option to default. This would be an extremely poor decision, however, because other investors would see it and be far less willing to loan their own money to the government in the future. Moreover, Social Security’s funds would be impacted and American seniors, who vote in extremely high numbers, would probably hold the guilty party accountable. 

Therefore, “raiding” the Social Security trust fund would be political and economic suicide for the U.S. government, so retirees can rest easy that their money is safe for now. 

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters

Ethen Kim Lieser

Social Security,

As inflation continues on its current trajectory, millions of senior citizens across the country have voiced frustration that their dollars just won’t stretch far these days.

The data over the past several months have signaled that the consumer price index (CPI)—the primary indicator of inflation in the United States—has been steadily pointing north.

And as inflation continues on its current trajectory, millions of senior citizens across the country have voiced frustration that their dollars just won’t stretch far these days. In the worst cases, some seniors are even being forced to choose between medicine and food.

However, there could be much-needed help in a few months, as Social Security’s cost of living adjustment (COLA) for next year is expected to receive a major boost. According to the Senior Citizens League, a nonpartisan senior group, that boost could come in the form of a 6.2 percent cost-of-living adjustment, which would be the highest registered in nearly forty years. Last year, the Social Security COLA was only 1.3 percent.

“The estimate is significant because the COLA is based on the average of the July, August, and September CPI data,” Mary Johnson, a policy analyst for the Senior Citizens League, said in a statement. “With one-third of the data needed to calculate the COLA already in, it increasingly appears that the COLA for 2022 will be the highest-paid since 1983 when it was 7.4 percent.”

Short-Term Solution?

The sizeable bump in Social Security payouts may solve the financial problems of some seniors, but there are experts who believe that the Social Security Administration (SSA) needs to be even more aggressive with its adjustments going forward.

“We’re not seeing any improvement in the share of people who have incomes above the Elder Index (a measure of the cost of living for older U.S. adults),” Jan E. Mutchler, professor of gerontology and director of the Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging at the University of Massachusetts Boston, said in an interview with CNBC. “We’re seeing sustained high levels of people who do not appear to have the resources they really need to get by in retirement.”

Diversify Income

According to the SSA, approximately twenty percent of married couples and forty percent of singles receive at least ninety percent of their income from the Social Security program.

“Over the past twelve years, Social Security COLAs have averaged just under 1.4 percent,” a Motley Fool expert wrote. “That’s hardly been enough to keep pace with inflation.”

Against this backdrop, the expert suggested that younger workers need to start preparing for their retirements now.

“Unfortunately, Social Security isn’t perfect, and it’s seniors who have been paying the price for a long time,” she said. “It’s important that current workers recognize the program’s limitations and take steps to save aggressively for retirement on their own.”

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Reuters

What Washington can do about it now

Ethen Kim Lieser

Health, Americas

Gottlieb says he expects the coronavirus to become an endemic virus in the United States and other Western countries after the Delta surge eventually subsides later this year.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, contends that companies that make vaccinations mandatory for their employees likely won’t need any additional precautions against the coronavirus.

“I think businesses right now probably don’t need to be implementing additional measures,” Gottlieb, a physician who worked at the FDA under former Republican Presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush and now serves on the board of coronavirus vaccine maker Pfizer, said Thursday on CNBC. 

“The belief is people who are vaccinated who develop the infection might be contagious early on in the course of the infection, but they clear the infection more quickly,” he continued.

In just the past few weeks, McDonald’s, United Airlines, Google, Facebook, Tyson Foods, Equinox, Walmart, and Disney have announced plans to require at least part of their workforce to get inoculated.

Vaccinated people still need to be highly vigilant against the contagion and get tested if they need to, Gottlieb added. 

“You’re certainly seeing infection rates go up among the vaccinated population,” he noted. “People who were vaccinated a while ago are more susceptible to COVID. Eventually, some of those infections are going to result in bad outcomes.”  

Endemic Virus 

On Friday, Gottlieb told CNBC that he expects the coronavirus to become an endemic virus in the United States and other Western countries after the Delta surge eventually subsides later this year.  

“We’re transitioning from this being a pandemic to being more of an endemic virus, at least here in the United States and probably other Western markets,” he said.

Third Vaccine Shot 

Meanwhile, a key U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel—Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—unanimously voted to recommend booster shots of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s vaccines to immunocompromised individuals. This decision is expected to clear a major hurdle in enabling vulnerable Americans to get a third dose of a vaccine.  

“Over the past almost year and a half I have taken care of many patients with life-threatening disease, and including deadly disease, and even after a vaccination,” Dr. Camille Nelson Kotton, a transplant and infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, told the panel.  

“They’re just suffering from a lack of good vaccine protection, we know that vaccine efficacy is diminished in this population,” she added.  

The FDA had already approved third doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for “solid organ transplant recipients or those who are diagnosed with conditions that are considered to have an equivalent level of immunocompromise.” However, left off the list were recipients of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine manufactured under its Janssen division.  

“Currently there are no data to support the use of an additional mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose after a primary Janssen COVID-19 vaccine in immunocompromised people,” Dr. Neela Goswami, a Center for Disease Control and Prevention official, wrote in her presentation to ACIP.  

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.  

Image: Reuters

Western powers are divided on how to deal with a possible refugee exodus as the Taliban regain control.

James Holmes

World War I, History

They don't call it the "Great War" for nothing.

Here's What You Need to Know: False lessons of history could beget bad decisions in the here and now.

November 11, 2018—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—marked the centennial of the armistice concluding the First World War. Your humble correspondent traveled to Kansas City, Missouri, to offer remarks as part of “1918: Crucible of Conflict,” the centennial symposium at the National World War I Museum and Memorial. After two days of listening to learned commentators hold forth about sundry dimensions of the war, the armistice, and the interregnum between the world wars, it’s clear the Great War still casts a long cultural shadow.

Bottom line: history matters. A partial or garbled understanding of history means any guidance we distill from it is partial or garbled as well.

Faulty guidance is a real prospect. Ask the man on the street what the war was about, and in all likelihood he’ll reply with something about trench warfare. Soldiers huddled in muddy, miserable trenches under constant artillery bombardment represent the dominant image of World War I. And that comprises a major part of the story for sure. But why does our cultural memory obsess over trench warfare in France? The obvious reason for Americans is because that’s where American doughboys fought from 1917–1918. That was our war.

We tend to stress the combined bomber offensive against Nazi Germany, the landings in North Africa, Italy, and Normandy, and other American spheres of endeavor in World War II while scanting the horrific and arguably decisive fighting between German and Soviet armies. In the same vein it’s natural to remember what our soldiers, sailors, and airmen did in the Great War. These were sons and daughters of America.

It also makes sense to concentrate on France because the West is where the guns of August rang out in 1914 and where the Great War ended in November 1918. The German Army’s “Schlieffen Plan“ sent legions careening through Belgium into France before the offensive stagnated under stiffer-than-expected French and British resistance. The static fighting that constitutes the lore of World War I ensued. During the spring of 1918 the German Army launched a series of titanic offensives in hopes of breaking a French Army that verged on mutiny or driving the British Expeditionary Force into the sea before the United States could intervene in force. And France is where the Allies at last amassed enough combat power to puncture German lines at multiple points at the same time—letting them break through and compel Berlin to consent to the armistice we remember today. Beginnings and endings imprint themselves on the popular mind.

And then there’s the cultural dimension. France witnessed feats of heroism that helped forge the U.S. Army and Marine Corps into what they are today. Legendary figures such as General John J. Pershing made their names on the Western Front. Legendary figures from subsequent U.S. history—Harry S. Truman, George S. Patton, Douglas MacArthur—made their debuts as junior officers. At the Battle of Belleau Wood in May-June 1918, American soldiers and marines blunted a German spearhead aimed at Paris—and helped prepare the ground for the Allied counteroffensive and victory. “Retreat, hell! We just got here,” proclaimed one ornery marine when urged to retreat before the German onslaught. Try not pumping your fist at that show of bravado.

Furthermore, think about all the marvelous cultural artifacts that came out of the Great War. The poetry of British soldiers Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen ranks among the finest war poetry—heck, the finest poetry, full stop—ever written. There’s an elegiac quality to the life stories of Brooke and Owen: both fell in military service, Brooke toward the war’s beginning and Owen near its end. In a sense their stories make literary bookends for the war in France. In 1915 Canadian officer Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae composed “In Flanders Fields,” a poem that remains a staple of Veterans’ Day observances a century hence, after presiding over the funeral of a fallen comrade. Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a testimonial from a German perspective to the horrors seen in France. Such relics convey drama—and drama makes lasting popular memories.

Powerful testaments to trench combat obscure accounts of other theaters. Even contemporary pop culture—think the early seasons of Downton Abbey—reinforces the Western bias in our memories of World War I. Not even the eloquence of Ernest Hemingway, whose A Farewell to Arms is set in Italy rather than France, can fully counteract that bias. There’s something melancholy about hurling men against fire—sending soldiers over the top into murderous machine-gun and artillery fire and barbed wire—that continues to beguile.

Without taking anything away from the monumental literature, visual arts, and music commemorating the fighting in France, though, it’s crucial to remember that entrenched combat in the West is far from the whole story of the Great War. The war of movement that German commanders hoped to stage in France actually happened to the East, for example. Why? Because the sheer physical scale of western Russia rendered heavily armed perimeter defense impractical. In the West the Allies and Central Powers could dig in because France is a relatively compact country bracketed by the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Pyrenees Mountains. It was a closed system by contrast to the open system that is Russia. Had armies attempted perimeter defense in the East, their lines would have been so long that no army could field enough troops or weaponry to guard them.

Germany’s defeat of the Russian Army coupled with revolution in Russia prompted that country to conclude an armistice and leave the war via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Its departure liberated German commanders to transfer troops westward, mounting their spring 1918 offensives with heavy numerical superiority over demoralized French and British armies. (U.S. forces in Europe remained in training until that summer.) The Allies tried opening a southerly maritime route at Gallipoli in 1915, with disastrous results. The Great War saw bitter mountain warfare between Italy and Austria-Hungary. British and French forces campaigned in the Middle East, where the open, flat terrain sometimes permitted cavalry charges to succeed. The desert theater made Englishman T. E. Lawrence “Lawrence of Arabia”—and spurred Lawrence to write one of the great treatises on irregular warfare. Japan scooped up German colonies in the Pacific and China, helping set the stage for the Pacific theater of World War II.

And on and on. Do these non-Western theaters matter today? Yes. Contemporary endeavors lie downstream of culture, and the Great War has become part of the cultural memory for all of the erstwhile combatant states. How they understand their past shapes how they conduct themselves now. For instance, try asking an Australian about the Great War; you’re more likely to find yourself regaled with tales of the “ANZAC”—Australia/New Zealand—expeditionary force at Gallipoli than stories about trenches spanning France. This is Australia’s founding legend. A Russian or Italian would take a different view from an American, Briton, or Frenchman.

Supposed lessons from a conflict are graven on the minds of the generation that fought it, on the children of the combatants, and to lesser extent on their grandchildren. After that they pass into common memory, helping comprise a set of axioms about the world and how the society should help manage it. Historical lessons foreclose certain political and strategic options in future controversies while prodding a society and its leadership toward others. Ergo, it behooves posterity to compile as comprehensive an understanding of bygone events as possible—helping us learn accurate lessons from those events.

False lessons of history could beget bad decisions in the here and now, while wise lessons bolster our chances to excel. History isn’t just of antiquarian interest. It’s essential to executing foreign policy and strategy well.

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 November 2018.

Image: Imperial War Museum / Wikimedia Commons