PAKISTAN’S ECONOMIC WOES: THE WAY FORWARD

by Shahroo Malik

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Pakistan’s economic woes – dwindling foreign exchange reserves, low exports, high inflation, growing fiscal deficit, and current account deficit – are nothing new, and once again, the country finds itself knocking on the doors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for what will be its 22nd loan. While the exact amount of this package has not been determined, Pakistan already owes the IMF billions from previous programs. Indeed, 30.7% of Pakistan’s government expenditure is earmarked for debt servicing, which cannot be supported by its decreasing revenues. Already on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) grey list, and with the current Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) government enjoying internal institutional consensus on the national agenda, Pakistan must focus its attention on resolving its economic woes before it finds itself on the shores of bankruptcy.

Current State of the Economy

Pentagon crafts options to counter Russian and Chinese influence in Venezuela

By CONNOR O’BRIEN 

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Editor's Note: This edition of Morning Defense is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro Defense subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 5:30 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro's comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.

QUICK FIX

— The Pentagon is crafting military options to deter Russian, Chinese and Cuban influence in Venezuela, but stopping short of military action against the embattled regime of President Nicolas Maduro.

— In an interview, the new top House Defense Appropriations Republican, Rep. Ken Calvert, argues lawmakers need to provide on-time funding to help the military match advances by Russia and China and wants to see more efficiency at the Pentagon.

— Amid a long drought in on-camera briefings by senior defense officials, the top Homeland Security spokesman is headed to the Pentagon to become the next assistant to the secretary for public affairs.

Army Secretary Reveals Weapons Wishlist for War with China & Russia

BY MARCUS WEISGERBER

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Army Secretary Mark Esper says he wants to shift money away from light vehicles and cargo helicopters made for “different conflicts” of the past.

U.S. Army leaders revealed Tuesday that they are briefing top military commanders about new weapons being built specifically for “high-intensity conflict” against China and Russia, in a new effort to assure that they could provide vital firepower for those potential battlefields of the future.

Army Secretary Mark Esper said he wants to shift some money away from vehicles and aircraft more suited for conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and into “what I need to penetrate Russian or Chinese air defenses.”

Among the new weapons and technologies he said are critical: long-range artillery, attack and reconnaissance aircraft, air and missile defenses, and command-and-control networks. Esper said the artillery — known as Long-Range Precision Fires — could be used “to hold at bay Chinese ships.”

Army Secretary Reveals Weapons Wishlist for War with China & Russia

BY MARCUS WEISGERBER

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Army Secretary Mark Esper says he wants to shift money away from light vehicles and cargo helicopters made for “different conflicts” of the past.

U.S. Army leaders revealed Tuesday that they are briefing top military commanders about new weapons being built specifically for “high-intensity conflict” against China and Russia, in a new effort to assure that they could provide vital firepower for those potential battlefields of the future.

Army Secretary Mark Esper said he wants to shift some money away from vehicles and aircraft more suited for conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and into “what I need to penetrate Russian or Chinese air defenses.”

‘Belt and Road’ Will Help the World. China? Not So Much.

Tyler Cowen

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The global economic development initiative that China calls “One Belt, One Road” is considered one of Beijing’s major instruments in its geopolitical conflict with the U.S. But it’s unlikely to do much to boost Chinese power as it helps most of the world.

China is investing in fixed assets and infrastructure from southeast Asia to the Balkans and East Africa. That poses a danger to China that host countries will eventually nationalize the assets without giving China comparable value in return. It’s a lesson the U.S. learned when it lost control of the Panama Canal and Saudi Arabian oil assets.

I was struck by a recent deal between China and Montenegro that gave China the right to access land in Montenegro as collateral, in case Montenegro does not repay certain loans. This has upset people in Montenegro, and it makes China seem like an imperialist country with territorial designs. But there’s also a more benign interpretation: China is demanding land as collateral because it knows Montenegro is not creditworthy. The loan sent Montenegro’s ratio of debt to gross domestic product to almost 80 percent, from 63 percent in 2012.

The World China Wants

BY FREDERICK KEMPE

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European Union leaders sat down this week in Brussels for a summit with a China it recently branded a “systemic rival,” and the United States is nearing the end game of trade talks with a China that national security documents refer to as a “strategic adversary.”

So, it’s surprising that transatlantic leaders are neither working at common cause nor asking the most crucial geopolitical questions of our age.

What sort of world does China want to create? 

With what means would it achieve its aims? 

And, what should the United States and Europe do to influence the outcome? 

The Dangerous Dregs of ISIS

By Robin Wright

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Afew days before the collapse of the Islamic State’s caliphate, I visited one of the new “pop-up prisons” that had been hastily converted to hold thousands of surrendering isis fighters in Syria. The numbers wildly exceeded all expectations, including estimates by U.S. intelligence. The most striking sight at the prison entrance was a mound of human hair lying on the raw concrete floor. Clumps of it—some brown, some graying, most of it greasy or matted—had been shaved off the heads and faces of fighters before they were taken to group cells. “Lice,” one of the guards told me.

The prison at Dashisha, in eastern Deir Ezzor province, had been an oil-storage facility. In just four days, the compound of modest brick and stucco buildings had been filled with fifteen hundred fighters from countries on four continents, including France, Libya, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Iraq, and the United States, the warden told me. Average-sized rooms had been fitted with metal doors; each cell had a small barred window that I had to stand on my tiptoes to peer through. Each one was crammed, wall to wall, with dozens of men squatting on the floor. The isis fighters wore new T-shirts, in army green, and whatever trousers they had on when they were captured.

Hard Truths in Syria: America Can’t Do More With Less, and It Shouldn’t Try

by Brett McGurk

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Over the last four years, I helped lead the global response to the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS)—an effort that succeeded in destroying an ISIS “caliphate” in the heart of the Middle East that had served as a magnet for foreign jihadists and a base for launching terrorist attacks around the world. Working as a special envoy for U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, I helped establish a coalition that was the largest of its kind in history: 75 countries and four international organizations, their cooperation built on a foundation of U.S. leadership and consistency across U.S. administrations. Indeed, the strategy to destroy the ISIS caliphate was developed under Obama and then carried forward, with minor modifications, under Trump; throughout, it focused on enabling local fighters to reclaim their cities from ISIS and then establish the conditions for displaced people to return.

Doing the Haka

By George Friedman

Despite the furor that rages, the world appears to be quietly moving along.

In New Zealand, the Maoris have a ceremonial dance called the haka. Today it’s performed at rugby matches and consists of the New Zealanders making stylized threatening gestures, including sticking out their tongues at their competitors, crouching, jumping and chanting. It is deeply rooted in Maori history, but for all its energy and passion, it does not do what it is intended to do, which is frighten their opponents, and the rugby match goes on.

The political history of humankind is filled with the haka and the violence that was meant to come next. Yet even at the great turning points, the deepest agonies of humanity, life went on. This was no comfort to those caught in the moment. They died but, in the end, so did everyone. That is of course too Olympian a perspective for most of us, and certainly for those of us with children and grandchildren, but there is a terrible truth to it.

On a lesser level, there are moments when the haka goes on, when all sides are determined to frighten each other and frighten the world, yet it means no more than at a rugby match. Coming back down to earth, we seem to be at a moment like that. The furor rages, but the world appears to be quietly moving along.

How global value chains open opportunities for developing countries

David Dollar

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Traditional trade statistics measure the gross value of trade. When a smart phone goes from China to the United States, what is recorded as an export is the full value of the phone. It would be more accurate to say that the United States is importing different types of value added from different partners: labor-intensive assembly from China, more sophisticated manufacturing inputs from South Korea, and services from the United States, since even foreign-brand phones have a lot of U.S. technology.

In recent years, major economies have produced annual input-output tables that deconstruct production into its many constituent parts. There is a growing amount of research into the value added in trade, as well as into the stages of the value chain. These studies provide new perspectives on trade. The Global Value Chain Development Report 2019, produced by the World Trade Organization and other partners, has a wealth of findings, some of which are especially relevant to developing countries.

THE CASES OF CHINA AND VIETNAM

Advanced gene editing may mutate into WMDs

Shambhavi Naik

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Last June, German police arrested a man planning a terror attack by releasing large quantities of the biological toxin ricin, said to be 6,000 times more poisonous than cyanide. The raids on a block of flats in Cologne blew the lid off our worst fears: non-state actors laying their hands on bioweapons.

Technology has always changed war and its arsenal. Scientists, security experts and diplomats are increasingly talking about biological weapons when they discuss strategies to prevent proliferation of conventional and nuclear weapons. While biological attacks have been rare since the end of World War II, isolated incidents have been reported. The ‘anthrax letters’, which killed five people in the US following 9/11, is one such incident.

The renewed attention to biological warfare also stems from advances in gene editing technologies. CRISPR-based technologies have allowed humans to edit genomes and manipulate organisms with precision at a low cost. The use of these technologies in humans, plants, animals and micro-organisms has spread rapidly. CRISPR has broken out of labs into garages and DIY kits. This ‘democratisation’ of science has triggered concerns about the misuse of technology to create pathogens that can be weaponised.

Op-Ed: A force for the final frontier

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You’re enjoying a sunny afternoon stroll through White Plaza, having actually decided to attend your CS lecture, when flashy posters catch your attention. Uncle Sam mouthing, “We want you!” and wagging his patriotic finger? Not interesting. But wait, what’s he wearing? A white spacesuit in place of his navy blazer, above the slogan, “Join the Space Force, see the galaxy!”

We’re one step closer to this reality, since the signing of the Space Policy Directive-4 (or SPD-4) on February 20, 2019. According to the newly published document, “[t]he term ‘United States Space Force’ refers to a new branch of the United States Armed Forces to be initially placed by statute within the Department of the Air Force.” Translated, not only is the Space Force actually happening, it will be a subset of a larger military branch, much as the Marine Corps is part of the Navy, or the Air Force began as a component of the Army.

Alan Greenspan: Can the U.S. Economy Stay on Top?

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The markets are jittery about a possible recession. The U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision earlier this year to ease off further interest rate increases in 2019 as it keeps a watchful eye on economic signals — after doing four hikes in the previous year — has only buttressed those fears.

But former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan does not see a recession on the horizon, based on an indicator his firm constructed and tracks. “Right at the moment, that particular series shows we’re still deleveraging. It’s very difficult to envisage that sort of economy going into a recession,” he said during an interview with Wharton professor Kent Smetters, faculty director of The Penn Wharton Budget Model, at a forum focused on Greenspan’s new book, Capitalism in America: A History, which he co-authored with Adrian Wooldridge of The Economist.

Greenspan’s consulting firm developed an indicator that tracks a company’s capital appropriations at the time its board authorizes an investment, instead of waiting for the decision to be reflected in the expenditures report months later. This signal has been an “extraordinarily effective leading indicator of recessions,” Greenspan noted.

The United States Will Be Shocked by Its Future

BY STEPHEN M. WALT

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As a species, we seem to be in a period of considerable uncertainty, where familiar features of the political landscape are disappearing, and it is not clear what will replace them. Will NATO and the European Union be around in five or 10 years, and in anything like their present form? Will the United States still be fighting shadowy opponents in distant lands? Is China destined to dominate Asia, and maybe the world? Will artificial intelligence sweep away jobs in sector after sector of the economy? How much of the planet will be underwater or uninhabitable due to climate change, and how many millions of people will be seeking refuge from war, crime, oppression, corruption, or environmental degradation? Are the dysfunctions afflicting many wealthy democracies a momentary blip or the beginning of a slide into dictatorship?

I could go on, but you get the idea. Prediction is always hard, of course, especially about the future, but there was a time when many people thought they knew exactly where we were headed. Back in the early 1990s, plenty of American pundits, professors, and politicians were confident they knew what the future held, and many of them were pretty optimistic about it. People like Samuel Huntington and Robert Kaplan saw dark days ahead, but scholars like Francis Fukuyama, journalists like Thomas Friedman, and politicians like Bill Clinton believed a shiny new globalized world of liberal democratic capitalism was dawning and would render old-style power politics obsolete.

The Russian State’s Use of Irregular Forces and Private Military Groups: From Ivan the Terrible to the Soviet Period

by Sergey Sukhankin 

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Introduction

Russia’s growing employment of non-linear forms of warfare (including private military contractors) has long historical traditions. This paper seeks to discuss the main milestones of historical evolution of Russia’s use of mercenary and irregular forces from Tsarist Russia to the final days of the Soviet Union.

Specifically, this paper will explore:

Key ideas/motivations that guided the Russian state in employing these groups prior to 1917;

The evolution of the Soviet approach toward irregular forces and their use within the scope of (para)military operations;

Participation of Soviet “military advisors” in regional conflicts and zones of instability as part of the geopolitical power play against the West (primarily the United States);

To Avoid an Iraq-Style Disaster Under Trump, Bolton Must Go

by Daniel L. Davis 

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President Donald Trump’s instincts on a number of key foreign-policy issues over the past two years have not only been right, but also represent sorely needed policy course-corrections. Yet since his inauguration, some of the president’s closest advisors have consistently steered him away from his better ideas, leaving us to languish in losing wars—and unnecessarily risking getting us into new ones.

For Trump to escape the molasses pit of failed wars, he must replace some key advisors with capable people who are aligned with his views and can implement his vision. The first of those ineffectual advisors who needs to go is John Bolton.

Bolton has long served in government and the Washington think-tank establishment, but his foreign-policy prescriptions have been outright disastrous for the United States.

The longest professional baseball game is begun in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The game is suspended at 4:00 the next morning and finally completed on June 23.

American Revolution: The British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere and other riders warn the countryside of the troop movements.

Lowering The ‘Barr’: The Attorney General’s Disappointing And Disrespectful Dissing Of US Intelligence Community – Analysis

By George W. Croner*

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(FPRI) — Last week, while testifying before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, William Barr, the Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, and the executive official who sits at the apex of the national security pyramid in terms of approving applications for foreign intelligence electronic surveillance in the United States, said he would scrutinize the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, including whether “‘spying’ conducted by American intelligence agencies on the campaign’s associates had been properly carried out.”

Saying that “spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr promised to look into “the genesis and the conduct” of the FBI inquiry. “I think spying did occur,” Mr. Barr said. “The question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I’m not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated. But I need to explore that.”[1]

Diego Garcia: The ‘Unsinkable Carrier’ Springs A Leak – OpEd

By Conn Hallinan

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The recent decision by the Hague-based International Court of Justice that the Chagos Islands — with its huge U.S. military base at Diego Garcia — are being illegally occupied by the United Kingdom (UK) has the potential to upend the strategic plans of a dozen regional capitals, ranging from Beijing to Riyadh.

For a tiny speck of land measuring only 38 miles in length, Diego Garcia casts a long shadow. Sometimes called Washington’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” planes and warships based on the island played an essential role in the first and second Gulf wars, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the war in Libya. Its strategic location between Africa and Indonesia and 1,000 miles south of India gives the U.S. access to the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and the vast Indian Ocean. No oil tanker, no warship, no aircraft can move without its knowledge.

Most Americans have never heard of Diego Garcia for a good reason: No journalist has been allowed there for more than 30 years, and the Pentagon keeps the base wrapped in a cocoon of national security. Indeed, the UK leased the base to the Americans in 1966 without informing either the British Parliament or the U.S. Congress.

The Russian State’s Use of Irregular Forces and Private Military Groups: From Ivan the Terrible to the Soviet Period

By: Sergey Sukhankin

Source Link

Introduction

Russia’s growing employment of non-linear forms of warfare (including private military contractors) has long historical traditions. This paper seeks to discuss the main milestones of historical evolution of Russia’s use of mercenary and irregular forces from Tsarist Russia to the final days of the Soviet Union.

Specifically, this paper will explore:

Key ideas/motivations that guided the Russian state in employing these groups prior to 1917;

The evolution of the Soviet approach toward irregular forces and their use within the scope of (para)military operations;

Participation of Soviet “military advisors” in regional conflicts and zones of instability as part of the geopolitical power play against the West (primarily the United States);

The phenomenon of “special forces” (Spetsnaz) as a means to achieve specific tasks.

What the Army learned from a February cyber exercise

By: Mark Pomerleau 

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The Department of Defense’s cyber warriors have started using the first cyber training platform developed by the military specifically for their needs.

The Persistent Cyber Training Environment will allow the operational cyber force to conduct large scale training as well as to rehearse for specific missions. Such a capability for cyber forces does not currently exist.

In February, members of the PCTE program office, which the Army is executing on behalf of the joint force, took the first working prototype to a joint cyber exercise called Cyber Anvil. Now, with what the Army is calling prototype B, cyber mission force teams from five different time zones, seven geographic locations with over 100 participants from across the joint force can simultaneously plug in.

In addition, personnel can create training content and use virtual environments to play along with a scenario, Liz Bledsoe, deputy product manager for PCTE, told Fifth Domain in April.

The Good Life After Work

ROBERT SKIDELSKY

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In order to manage the latest wave of automation, we must have ends that are more compelling than merely wanting more products and services. Without an intelligent definition of wellbeing, we will simply create more and more monsters that feed on our humanity.

LONDON – Almost all “robots are coming” stories follow a tried-and-true pattern. “Shop Direct puts 2,000 UK jobs at risk,” screams a typical headline. Then, quoting from authoritative reports from prestigious institutes and think tanks, the article in question usually alarms audiences with extravagant estimates of “jobs at risk” – that is, percentages of workers whose livelihoods are threatened by high-tech automation. To quote another representative example: “A new report suggests that the marriage of [artificial intelligence] and robotics could replace so many jobs that the era of mass employment could come to an end.”

Sometimes, this bleak outlook is softened by distinguishing between “jobs” and “tasks.” Only the routine parts of jobs, it is said, will be replaced. In these more upbeat assessments of the “future of work,” humans will complement machines, not compete with them.

Our Zero-Emission Future

JEFFREY D. SACHS

A low-cost shift to clean energy is now feasible for every region of the world, owing to the plummeting costs of solar and wind power, and breakthroughs in energy storage. The total system costs of renewable energy, including transmission and storage, are now roughly on par with fossil fuels.

NEW YORK – The solution to human-induced climate change is finally in clear view. Thanks to rapid advances in zero-carbon energy technologies, and in sustainable food systems, the world can realistically end greenhouse-gas emissions by mid-century at little or no incremental cost, and with decisive benefits for safety and health. The main obstacle is inertia: politicians continue to favor the fossil-fuel industry and traditional agriculture mainly because they don’t know better or are on the take.

Data Protection is Social Protection

MAGDALENA SEPÚLVEDA

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Social-protection programs are supposed to do just what the name implies: protect those segments of society that are most in need. Demanding that beneficiaries effectively renounce their rights to personal privacy and data protection, as many governments are doing, amounts to just the opposite.

MEXICO CITY – In recent decades, social assistance programs around the world have been strengthened to the point that they now benefit more than 2.5 billion people, usually the poorest and most vulnerable. But rising pressure to apply biometric technology to verify beneficiaries’ identities, and to integrate information systems ranging from civil registries to law-enforcement databases, means that social programs could create new risks for those who depend on them.

What the Air Force learned from insurgents’ networks

By: Mark Pomerleau  

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Gen. Mike Holmes, commander of Air Combat Command, meets Airmen in March. Holmes wants an Air Force network that would mimic the way commercial cell phones automatically connect to the proper cell phone network or Wi-Fi. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman First Class Andrew Kobialka)

Air Force leaders plan to experiment this summer with a mesh network that would allow military users in hard-to-reach areas to connect to the service’s top secret network and share intelligence information without the fear of losing service.

Department of Defense officials worry that in a potential conflict with China or Russia, adversaries will look to shut down friendly communications channels. As a result, soldiers will need resilient and redundant forms of communication.

To combat that possibility, Air Force officials want a system that has multiple ways to quickly connect to the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System.

The New Revolution in Military Affairs

By Christian Brose

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In 1898, a Polish banker and self-taught military expert named Jan Bloch published The Future of War, the culmination of his long obsession with the impact of modern technology on warfare. Bloch foresaw with stunning prescience how smokeless gunpowder, improved rifles, and other emerging technologies would overturn contemporary thinking about the character and conduct of war. (Bloch also got one major thing wrong: he thought the sheer carnage of modern combat would be so horrific that war would “become impossible.”)

What Bloch anticipated has come to be known as a “revolution in military affairs”—the emergence of technologies so disruptive that they overtake existing military concepts and capabilities and necessitate a rethinking of how, with what, and by whom war is waged. Such a revolution is unfolding today. Artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, ubiquitous sensors, advanced manufacturing, and quantum science will transform warfare as radically as the technologies that consumed Bloch. And yet the U.S. government’s thinking about how to employ these new technologies is not keeping pace with their development.