Tag: China
Stevenson’s army, January 27
– WaPo says US isn’t planning Ukraine offensive
– Michael Kofman et al. have their suggestions on WOTR
– Kenya court blocks Haiti mission; Haiti suffers.
– Congress approves F16s to Turkey
– Additional countries halt aid to UNRWA
– Biden promises border crackdown if new law is passed
– WaPo says Trump plans expanded trade war with China
– Fred Kaplan revisits Ukraine nuclear decision with declassified documents
– SAIS Prof Hal Brands sees risks of global war
– NYT reviews Gaza peace efforts
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My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, September 26
– Peter Baker sees a divided America. Note this point:
In an increasingly tribal society, Americans describe their differences more personally. Since Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center, the share of Democrats who see Republicans as immoral has grown from 35 percent to 63 percent while 72 percent of Republicans say the same about Democrats, up from 47 percent. In 1960, about 4 percent of Americans said they would be displeased if their child married someone from the other party. By 2020, that had grown to nearly four in 10. Indeed, only about 4 percent of all marriages today are between a Republican and a Democrat.
– WSJ says US warned Iran in advance of suicide bombers.
– WSJ says US will meet with China about Red Sea– Vox sees more war going on.- Analyst says Iraq is falling apart
– FP questions Biden’s Venezuela policy
– FP reports European reactions to Trump
-WaPo says US foreign military training has inconsistencies
– Europe has different models of conscription
– Think tank reports on Chinese FDI in Latin America
– Experts see North Korea readying for military action
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, September 24
– Turkey approved Sweden in NATO; Hungary still needs to act.
– Republican Senators fight over border & Ukraine, shows weakened McConnell
– Some Senators question Biden authority to attack Houthis [My view: President has authority & precedents for Red Sea operations, not for defense of Israel]
– Taiwan Caucus group goes to Taiwan.
– WOTR writer sees corruption in Chinese rocket forces
– Scottish prof says AI is already changing the battlefield
– WSJ says US sees new threats in West Africa
– Deja vu: Heritage supports Jimmy Carter’s road-mobile ICBM plan
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My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, January 16
The Federal Government is closed today, but I’m open. No broadsheet papers, however — new carrier who’s “never seen snow.”
-Semafor says Iran IRGC has people in Yemen
– Iran admits attack in Erbil.
– US approves Javelins to Kosovo.
– Here’s summary of new CR, with Senate voting maybe tonight.
– RollCall says Speaker Johnson wants to cut DHS via 302[b] allocations
– Sen. Sanders wants vote on Israeli practices in Gaza
Here’s Politico’s report on Dean Steinberg et al.’s visit to Taiwan:
US DELEGATION IN TAIWAN: A delegation of former senior administration officials tasked by the State Department “to travel in their private capacity to Taiwan” is meeting with the island’s post-election incoming senior officials. Landing in Taipei just a day after the election, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg met with Lai, outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, leaders of the Kuomintang opposition, and the Taiwan People’s Party’s Ko Wen-je, who’s set to be a kingmaker in the race for the parliament speakership.
According to Laura Rosenberger, chairperson of the American Institute in Taiwan, the delegation stressed that the U.S. intends to work with all parties in Taiwan, adding there would be more meetings with senior Taiwanese officials on stronger cooperation, including in beefing up Taiwan’s self-defense. There’ll also be continued cooperation in trade and technology, Rosenberger added.
The concern — a parliament run by Lai’s rivals: Rosenberger’s remarks come as diplomats in Taipei are waiting to see how an opposition-led parliament could delay the DPP government’s policies, especially on defense. The Kuomintang, which stresses engagement with China, had a track record of criticizing military procurement on the grounds of corruption allegations.
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My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Avoiding the slippery slope to the wider war
Hizbollah and Israel are trading tit for tat attacks across the Lebanon-Israel border. The Houthis in Yemen are attacking shipping in the Red Sea. The US and UK have raided Houthi military assets. Shia “popular mobilization forces” (PMFs) are attacking US facilities in Iraq and US forces are occasionally responding. Iran has launched missiles into Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Erbil, targeting the house of the US Consul General. Even added altogether it won’t amount to the 1000 deaths required to designate something a “war,” but we are clearly on the slippery slope to the long-feared wider war in the Middle East.
Iran is benefiting
This should not be welcome in the US. Ukraine is already absorbing vast quanitities of US military supplies. Deterring China from attacking Taiwan is stretching not only logistics but also US naval operations. Israel’s war on Gaza is requiring enormous amounts of US and European materiel, without any prospect of improving US security.
But the enemy gets a vote. Iran may not be directing all of what Hizbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and the Iraqi PMFs are doing. But Tehran has supplied the means and resistance ideology that motivates them all. Iran is hoping to force the US out of the region. So far, that isn’t working. The US has deployed additional naval and other assets to the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Tehran is enriching more uranium and moving closer to nuclear weapons capability. No more than a few weeks would be required for Iran to construct an atomic weapon, assuming its scientists have already done the necessary designs, experimented with the required conventional explosives, and acquired the needed non-fissile material.
My former dean, Eliot Cohen, argues that the way to prevent the wider war is to levy a devastating attack on the Houthis, rather than the well-calculated proportional one the Biden Administration has so far administered. I’m not sure he is wrong, but it will take a more reckless president than Biden to pursue that course. That is something neither Eliot nor I would welcome.
Regaining advantage
The US needs somehow to regain a more advantageous position in order to shape the course of events. The place to start is Gaza. Biden should end the war there by reading the riot act to Prime Minister Netanyahu: no more weapons if the killing of civilians continues at anything like previous pace.
A pause in the large-scale attacks on Gaza would give the Israelis an opportunity to unseat the unpopular Netanyahu and put in his place a government that prioritizes the fate of the hostages, humanitarian conditions inside Gaza, and negotiations with the Palestinians. Such a government would also continue targeted raids on Hamas leadership and militants who participated in the October 7 attack on Israel. But it would end the disproportionate bombing of civilian areas and open Gaza up to both commercial and humanitarian shipment of goods and services.
Such a pause would give diplomats an opportunity to pursue the possibility of an agreement between Lebanon and Israel on outstanding, but relatively minor, border issues, thus depriving Hizbollah of a major rallying cry. It would also relieve pressure on Iraq to evict American bases. As for the Houthis, they have proven resilient. No quick blow is going to make them go away. We are in for a long effort to deprive them of the military capabilitiues they have amassed in recent years.
Good fortune
We should count our blessings. China is in economic trouble and in no position to attack Taiwan anytime soon. The Taiwanese election yesterday of a pro-independence leader will provoke lots of Beijing rhetoric, and many planes crossing the Taiwan Strait median line, but no actual military attack.
Moscow has celebrated the European and American blockage of assistance to Ukraine, but we can hope that is temporary. It is vital that Kyiv get whatever it needs to chase Russian forces from all of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. That alone would greatly enhance American leverage worldwide.
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Stevenson’s army, January 13
– Taiwan voted for a president viewed as less friendly to Beijing.
– Additional strikes against Houthis, and more details.
– Fred Kaplan is supportive; Bloomberg’s Marc Champion sees a win for Iran
– Biden defends his authority, sent notice to Congress.
– I agree, both since Congress has endorsed anti-piracy operations since 1790 and since international law supports freedom of the seas. [Enshrined in UNCLOS, though US hasn’t yet ratified.]
– Reminder: CRS often has good background materials, such as this.
-WaPo says US diplomats helped avert a coup in Guatemala.
– Defense One article criticizes another military nomination hold.
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My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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