China’s Nuclear and Missile Capabilities: An Overview

Maj Gen PK Mallick, VSM (Retd)

Since China first conducted a nuclear weapon test in 1964, its nuclear doctrine has remained unchanged and is underpinned by two principles: a minimum deterrent doctrine and a No First Use (NFU) policy. China’s 2019 defence white paper states, “China is always committed to a nuclear policy of NFU of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances, and not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones unconditionally.”

However, a recent U.S. Department of Defence (DoD) report claims that the scope of China’s nuclear modernisation and its lack of transparency “raise concern that China is not only shifting its requirements for what constitutes a minimal deterrence but that it could shift away from its longstanding minimalist force posture.” The data available show that China is modernising and expanding virtually every element of its nuclear forces, including each aspect of its nuclear weapons and missile, sea, and air delivery systems. What is not clear are China’s current and planned holdings of nuclear weapons, China’s future plans for deploying additional delivery systems, its commitment to some form of NFU, first preemption, or launch on warning, and the extent to which it will accept what might be called a form of ‘minimum assured destruction.

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Think tanks can link Taiwan, India

By Sana Hashmi

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India’s top think tank the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) just concluded India’s flagship foreign policy dialogue — the 2021 Raisina Dialogue. Over the past six years, the Raisina Dialogue, funded by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, has attracted several heads of states, ministers, policymakers and top academics from around the world.

The impact of the Raisina Dialogue and the discussion revolving around it have proved beyond doubt that think tanks are one of the most important actors in a country’s foreign policy projection and decisionmaking process.

The ORF, with its international outreach, has been able to further establish a coherent strategic identity of India worldwide.

India, which has a rich strategic culture, can articulately convey its interests through its vast number of foreign policy think tanks.

The contributions of the late K. Subrahmanyam, India’s leading strategic thinker, could not be overemphasized in bolstering the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (now renamed as the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses), a foremost think tank in India with a global voice, and shaping India’s strategic culture.

The ministry also funds several other dialogues, such as the Delhi Dialogue and the Indian Ocean Dialogue, the focus of which is fostering a dialogue with the strategic community in the Indo-Pacific region.

Biden’s Afghan gamble

Bruce Riedel

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I have been involved in U.S. policy vis-à-vis the wars in Afghanistan since Christmas Eve 1979, when I was in the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) operations center as the Russians invaded the country. The National Security Agency reported detecting 300 Russian flights that day from Soviet bases in Central Asia to Kabul, air-lifting an elite airborne division to the capital.

Washington was taken by surprise, but in less than a month President Jimmy Carter put together a strategy and an alliance with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviets that went on to win the final and decisive battle of the Cold War. Two weeks after the invasion, the CIA shipped the first weapons to Karachi for the mujaheddin.

We have made many mistakes in Afghanistan. We paid almost no attention to the country after the Soviets left, and it descended into a failed state that was misruled by the Taliban and hosted al-Qaida. President George W. Bush took his eye off the ball after the invasion in 2001 and let Osama bin Laden escape into Pakistan. By 2005, he was encased in his hideout in Abbottabad. With America bogged down in Iraq, al-Qaida regenerated.

By 2006, it was more dangerous than ever. The British foiled an al-Qaida plot that summer to simultaneously blow up a half-dozen airplanes en route from the United Kingdom to America and Canada over the Atlantic Ocean. Bin Laden had directed the plot from his hideout and used Pakistanis living in England as suicide bombers. It would have been worse than 9/11.

China urges U.S. to restrain frontline forces in nearby seas

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The Chinese defence ministry urged the United States on Thursday to rein in its frontline forces which Beijing has said have become more active in the air and seas near China this year.

China has frequently maintained that a U.S. military presence in the South China Sea, East China Sea and Taiwan Strait is the main destabilising factor in the region. The United States has said it has freedom of navigation in these areas, which China regards as its geo-strategic backyard.

Since U.S. President Joe Biden U.S. took office in January, operations of U.S. warships in the seas around China have risen by 20%, while the activity of U.S. reconnaissance aircraft has risen by 40% compared with last year, Chinese defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian told a press briefing on Thursday.

"We urge the U.S. side to strictly restrain its frontline forces, abide by regulations including the Rules of Behaviour for Safety of Air and Maritime Encounters and International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, and prevent similar dangerous incidents from happening again," Wu said.

Asked for a response, Biden's National Security Council referred Reuters to the U.S. Department of Defense, which declined to comment.

The U.S. Navy earlier this month took the rare step of publishing a photo on its main website of a U.S. guided missile destroyer, the USS Mustin, watching China's Liaoning aircraft carrier carry out an exercise.

Wu said the USS Mustin had interfered with the Chinese exercise and threatened the freedom of navigation of both vessels and the safety of their crews.

He said Chinese Navy ships warned away the Mustin and Beijing had lodged a formal complaint to the United States over the matter. "The aircraft carrier is no 'homebody'. It will routinely train in seas further from its shore."

An Asymmetric Defense of Taiwan

by Michael O'Hanlon 

In recent months, as China’s threats against Taiwan have mounted, strategists and policymakers have been debating whether it is time for a change to the somewhat tortured method by which the United States has sought to preserve stability across the Taiwan Strait since the late 1970s. The current policy of “strategic ambiguity” seeks to keep everyone guessing as to whether America would militarily counter a Chinese attack on its much smaller neighbor. Washington’s specific response would depend on how a crisis began and unfolded. That is because America has had multiple, sometimes conflicting goals—to deter China from attack, to preserve good U.S.-China relations, and to discourage pro-independence forces within Taiwan all at once. Some now favor discarding this elaborate balancing act in favor of an unambiguous commitment to Taiwan’s security.

There is just one problem with this way of thinking. A promise by America to defend Taiwan does not mean that it could defend it. That is especially the case if one considers a protracted Chinese blockade of the island, and imagines that the United States would try to break the blockade directly. Such an attack would employ China’s quiet submarine fleet and perhaps some use of precision missiles. The goal would likely be to strangle Taiwan into capitulation, as Germany almost did twice against Britain in the world wars. Taiwan has just increased its military budget 10 percent, to about $15 billion a year, but it is dwarfed by China’s total, which is more than fifteen times as great. At that level of investment, Taiwan may be able to fend off an outright Chinese invasion attempt with a “porcupine” defense featuring sea mines, anti-ship missiles launched from shore batteries and helicopters, and concentrated resistance wherever China tries to come ashore. But it would likely fare less well against a more indirect Chinese strategy.

Bargaining with China Today to Save the World Tomorrow

By Bill McKibben

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As tough jobs go, few are tougher than John Kerry’s. He has to weigh future harm against current crime, a moral balancing act that few leaders have ever faced. The former Secretary of State, at the age of seventy-seven, signed on as President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, tasked with trying to get the rest of the world to step up its game on climate change. He was largely responsible for last week’s Earth Day virtual summit, and the first big test of his work will come in Glasgow, in November, when the world’s leaders gather for the most important climate talks since the Paris accords conference, in 2015.

It would be hard enough to get the world marching forward on climate if it were the only issue in play: some nations export oil and gas, and some import it; some are poor, and some are rich; some have built coal-fired empires, and others are still burning wood. A few things are breaking in Kerry’s favor: in most capitals around the world, the fossil-fuel industry still plays an outsized role, but now there are new counter-pressures from a burgeoning climate movement, which makes some leaders more pliable. And the rapid fall in the price of renewable energy opens the door to quicker action. So Kerry’s task, considered purely in isolation, is still incredibly difficult, but perhaps a little less so than it used to be.

China’s Soft Power in Europe Falling on Hard Times

Ties Dams, Xiaoxue Martin and Vera Kranenburg

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An inherent conceptual difficulty in assessing China’s soft power relates to the Asian giant’s growing economic weight, a key feature of its international image. Three examples will help illustrate this methodological dilemma. From the Swedish perspective, the conceptual scope of ‘China’s soft power’ clearly excludes economic appeal, as the current state of Sino–Swedish relations points to growing economic interdependence, while China’s image is deteriorating dramatically. In Greece, China is systematically trying to bolster its economic presence through a culture-focused image-boosting strategy. Last but not least, in many countries young Europeans enrol at Confucius Institutes in the hope that, given China’s economic prowess, command of the Chinese language will improve their career prospects. Nye states that soft power is the ability to affect others to obtain preferred outcomes through attraction and persuasion, rather than coercion or payment, adding that the main sources of a country’s soft power are its culture, political values and foreign policies.8 On the extent to which the notion of soft power applies to the Chinese state, Nye argues that military power and economic prowess often have secondary soft-power effects and that this is important in applying the notion to the Chinese case.

Thus, Chinese investment in a European country may be accompanied by forceful image-boosting policies, or not. Hence, investment can provide an opportunity to increase China’s soft power, but an investment per se is not automatically a sign of soft power. The investment may reflect the ability to affect others to obtain the preferred outcomes through payment, and so in and of itself falls outside the definition of soft power, but a possible PR campaign accompanying that investment would be included, even if stricto sensu it cannot be divorced from the actual payment

Why Mohammed bin Salman Suddenly Wants to Talk to Iran

By Trita Parsi

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“We are seeking to have good relations with Iran,” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Saudi television this week. “We are working with our partners in the region to overcome our differences with Iran.” Only four years ago, the notorious royal sang a different tune, claiming dialogue with Iran was impossible. “How do you have a dialogue with a regime built on an extremist ideology?” he said, pledging that Saudi Arabia would take the battle to Iranian territory.

What changed to make this 180-degree shift possible?

One factor looms larger than all others: increasing signs that the United States is serious about shifting its focus away from the Middle East. It’s not so much anything Washington has done but rather what Washington has stopped doing—namely, reassuring its security partners in the region that it will continue to support them unconditionally, no matter what reckless conduct they engage in. Washington’s turn away from entangling itself in the quarrels and stratagems of its Middle Eastern partners has compelled the region’s powers to explore their own diplomacy. Contrary to the doomsday predictions of Washington’s foreign-policy establishment, chaos has not been unleashed by the United States’ pending military withdrawals from the region. Instead, regional diplomacy has broken out.

Mohammed bin Salman’s soothing comments were most likely a reference to secret talks between Iran and its Arab neighbors in Iraq, first reported by the Financial Times, that were aimed at reducing tensions and putting an end to the war in Yemen. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who has a clear interest in resolving Saudi-Iranian tensions, as their enmity and proxy fighting all across the region risk further destabilizing Iraq, has been facilitating the Arab-Iranian discussions.

ISIS Propaganda in the Time of Coronavirus

By Galit Truman Zinman

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Islamic State (ISIS), which has lost both territory and its means of governance, has managed to preserve its cyber-dependent propaganda network. During the COVID-19 crisis, the terror organization used advanced media technologies to cultivate the idea of reviving a utopian caliphate. Over the past year, it has used the video-sharing app TikTok to recruit a youthful target audience, shape the outlook of that audience, and induce it to identify with the global jihad movement.

The Islamic State (ISIS) has been working since its establishment in 2014 to transform territory and society, restore Muslim honor, and impose the so-called utopia of a “justice-guided” Islamic caliphate, which it describes as “a historical marvel destined to pave the way for the great war” against the infidels. The group’s sophisticated and professional global advocacy and propaganda network has disseminated thousands of videos; nashids (religious songs); posters; articles in magazines and periodicals; messages on social networks, blogs, and forums; video games; and so on. This propaganda is put out in multiple languages to target different audiences. Its purpose is to boost awareness of the organization’s efforts to shape moral and religious life and to encourage people to join. The terror group has appealed to Muslims all over the world to change the prevailing order and build the ideal caliphate.

The Attack on Natanz and the JCPOA

By Dr. Ardavan Khoshnood

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In the morning hours of April 11, the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran was attacked, allegedly by Israel. The strike came at a sensitive time, as Iran and world powers are discussing Washington’s return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the removal of sanctions. According to Israeli estimates, as the Islamic Republic does not wish to jeopardize a US return to the JCPOA, its response to the Natanz strike will probably be belated and highly circumscribed.

On April 11, 2021, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) announced that its Natanz nuclear facility had had an accident that caused a blackout. A couple of hours later, the head of the AEOI, Ali Akbar Salehi, stated that the accident was in fact sabotage. The attack resulted in an explosion, and according to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, a culprit has been identified and is being sought.

This is not the first time the Natanz nuclear facility has been attacked. The first strike is believed to have taken place in 2007, when the facility was targeted in a joint Israeli-US cyberattack. The attack inserted a malicious computer virus, Stuxnet, into the facility’s systems, resulting in heavy damage. The latest known attack on Natanz prior to the April 11 blackout was in July 2020, when an explosion at the facility caused serious harm to the centrifuges.

The U.S. Military Needs to Stay Out of the Information Warfare Game

By R. Jordan Prescott

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Last October, Cyber Command tweeted a picture of a Russian bear dropping a Halloween candy bucket full of its latest malware trick or treats. From conception to deployment, the effort took 22 days.

The American military may be the finest in the world but its social media skills are embarrassing. (In true government form, the number of days spent producing the image was one less than the number of pages in the report detailing the exercise.)

If America is to succeed in the contested information space, then it should leave the mission to the nation’s civilian agencies.

The History

Once upon a time, the United States was extremely capable of information operations and influence campaigns.

During the Cold War, the United States applied an array of diplomatic and intelligence resources to counter Soviet information activities. Through coordinated campaigns in print, on radio, libraries abroad, and a roster of speakers, the U.S. successfully introduced foreign audiences to American interests and values. When necessary, American also covertly funded friendly parties and unions in other countries and created front organizations to expose communist atrocities. When given a choice between their regime’s state media and Radio Free Europe, oppressed Eastern Europeans chose the latter.

U.S. Security Partners and Putin’s S-400

Bradley Bowman

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has used the S-400 to sow division within NATO, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been a willing accomplice. Putin now seeks to use the S-400 to create division between the United States and its Saudi and Indian partners. The United States responded to Ankara’s decision on the S-400 by removing Turkey from the F-35 program and imposing sanctions.

With no pre-nuptial agreement declared, Bill and Melinda Gates' split leaves billions in play

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Billionaire philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates, one of the wealthiest couples in the world, announced yesterday that they are ending their marriage after 27 years together. What will follow is expected to be one of the largest divorce settlements in history.

While Melinda Gates’ net worth is not clear, Bill Gates is worth approximately $131 billion, Forbes reports, making him the fourth richest person in the world. Their global charity has a US $50 billion endowment and has focused on global development, education, healthcare and climate change.

With no pre-nuptial agreement declared, Bill and Melinda Gates' split leaves billions in…

In a joint media statement, the two said they don’t think “we can grow together as a couple” but would continue to work together on their philanthropic ventures. The news quickly turned attention to how one of the world’s biggest fortunes, which includes the largest private philanthropic organization in the world, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will be divided.

According to TMZ, the divorce petition they obtained includes no official prenuptial agreement. As Keon Family Law notes, Bill reportedly did ask Melinda to sign a “prenuptual” agreement after their marriage in 1994 in the interest of shareholders.

Terry Glavin: The obscene, unpardonable death of democratic reform in Hong Kong

Terry Glavin

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Out of the disunity and fractious tensions that followed the failure of the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests, that was the one slogan that kept Hongkongers united in a multi-faceted agitation for democratic reform that brought millions of people into the streets of the former British colony, starting two summers ago.

Do not split, even if you’re a respectable solicitor and veteran of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy politics and you are obliged to hold your tongue while young militants take to confronting the tear gas and truncheons of the widely-loathed Hong Kong Police Force with mayhem and Molotov cocktails.

Do not split. That was the idea. And you could say it succeeded, even if Hong Kong’s democrats are now united only in grief over their abandonment by the world’s democratic powers and by their distress as Xi Jinping’s police state carries out the final stages of its encirclement, occupation and extinguishment of the flourishing and nominally autonomous city-state.

Hong Kong’s democrats are now united only in grief and distress

Biden’s ‘stratagem’ is no grand strategy for a superpower

Marwan Bishara

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United States President Joe Biden’s speech in Congress this week underlined the depth and detail of his transformative national agenda. But his hurried muttering about America’s powerful rivals also revealed the vagueness and inconsistency of his foreign policy.

His administration has been refreshingly bold and transparent in its domestic agenda, but annoyingly casual and ambiguous in its foreign policy.

The absence of an urgent major strategic challenge – of the scale of 9/11, the Korean, Vietnam or Gulf wars – and the devastating impact of the pandemic have relegated foreign policy to the bottom of the US administration’s agenda.

This has allowed Biden to speak like a “liberal internationalist”, but behave like a “pragmatic realist”. He rejoined the multilateral agreements and international institutions that were abandoned by his predecessor and announced a final military withdrawal from Afghanistan, but his commitment to democracy and human rights there and elsewhere has remained rhetorical at best.

His foreign policy team has designed a pragmatic, cost-benefit “foreign policy for the middle class”, yet has been boasting of America’s hot pursuit of global leadership, seemingly at all cost.

It has emphasised humility but laid claims to surplus morality, consistently preaching to fellow world leaders and vowing to prevail against China and other world powers.

It is no wonder some believe the administration has been unexpectedly tough, while others reckon it is terribly weak. Biden may have foresight and experience, but he has no clear, comprehensive or comprehensible strategy to speak of.

Or perhaps there is one, but it is more of a stratagem than a grand strategy. It allows administration officials to speak out of both sides of their mouth, to say one thing and do another, in a way that unsettles adversaries and flusters nagging allies.

Illusions of Autonomy: Why Europe Cannot Provide for Its Security If the United States Pulls Back

Hugo Meijer

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Europe’s security landscape has changed dramatically in the past decade amid Russia’s resurgence, mounting European doubts about the long-term reliability of the U.S. security commitment, and Europe’s growing aspiration for strategic autonomy. Could Europeans develop an autonomous defense capacity if the United States withdrew completely from Europe? If the United States were to do so, any European effort to develop an autonomous defense capacity would be fundamentally hampered by profoundly diverging threat perceptions and severe military capacity shortfalls that would be very costly and time-consuming to close.

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Full text of Illusions of Autonomy: Why Europe Cannot Provide for Its Security If the United States Pulls Back

What Comes After the Forever Wars

Stephen M. Walt 

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By bringing the United States' pointless military campaign in Afghanistan to a close, U.S. President Joe Biden has delivered on his desire to end the "forever wars." But as Steven Cook pointed out in Foreign Policy last week, the phrase "ending forever wars" offers little guidance for how the United States should now approach key national security issues. To do that, the country needs to draw the right lessons from disappointments of the past 20-plus years and identify the principles and goals that should guide foreign- and national security policy from this point forward.

The wars that are finally coming to a close resulted from the unipolar era's odd combination of hubris and alarm. On the one hand, U.S. elites were supremely confident: They believed liberal democracy was the wave of the future and the United States' unmatched military power could be a powerful tool for promoting it. Because they saw U.S. primacy as a benevolent condition that would be good for Americans and nearly everyone else, they assumed other states would support Washington's efforts to expand a liberal global order. A few countries might have other ideas, of course, but they were seen as too weak to resist the United States' well-intentioned campaign and destined to fall in line eventually. Even after the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis, U.S. elites also tended to see globalization as a wholly positive development with hardly any negative effects.

Building a wall of denial against gray-zone aggression

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Key Points

With forms of aggression below the threshold of war (“gray-zone aggression”) increasing, liberal democracies’ defense and deterrence need to include more than armed forces.

This means creating deterrence by denial by building societal resilience, in which the private sector and the wider civil society help in limiting the harm of any aggression against the country.

Doing so is in the interest of both businesses and ordinary citizens, as they are harmed by gray-zone aggression.

This report offers proposals from voluntary citizen resilience training to government-industry national security consultations that would bolster countries’ societal resilience.

Executive Summary

NATO member states and partners today face national security threats that extend far beyond military aggression. Indeed, they are regularly targeted by nonmilitary means, so-called gray-zone aggression. Because gray-zone aggression can include any mea­sures below the level of war, including illegal ones, it is impossible for the targeted countries to deter every act with the threat of punishment.

INTELLIGENCE AND THE TYRANNY OF PROCESS

Addison McLamb 

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The 76ers’ erstwhile GM Sam Hinkie could be an impressive Army doctrine writer. Hinkie’s leadership mantra—“trust the process”—headlined the Philly NBA team’s operational overhaul in 2013, but resulted in his leaving ignominiously soon after the team’s 1-21 2015 start. Like Hinkie, the Army’s military intelligence (MI) branch canonizes its four-step analytical process of “intelligence preparation of the battlefield.” Unfortunately, this is often at the expense of developing creative, inductive frameworks for more abstract or asymmetric situations.

The Army’s tactical intelligence analysis manual does not contain the word “creative” nor the phrase “critical thinking.” “Think” itself (including conjugations) gets just nine mentions over the 228 pages. “Product” is strong at 128 hits, although “process” (203 hits) and “step” (330) pull ahead. And if deliverables are unclear at any point, Appendix A’s fifty-nine different checkboxes assist users in hand-railing the sequence to completion. The manual as a whole reads like a black box focused on practitioners’ efficiency in iterating inputs and outputs rather than their efficacy in solving problems. On the whole, intelligence preparation of the battlefield, or IPB, is a very basic framework for entry-level analysts. It’s a chrysalis—something to be grown out of—not an end-all liturgy to be perfected for its own sake.

Rote processes help objectify complexity and scale quickly. Templates can be made once, then easily shared. It is psychologically comforting to check boxes. But with intelligence analysis, overemphasizing structured frameworks may be hardening mental models of our soldiers just as modern war’s evolution to complex, multi-domain operations is becoming more salient. Greater training emphasis on creative thinking and inductive reasoning—especially as they relate to pattern recognition—needs to be incorporated within MI training.

The Coming AI Hackers

Bruce Schneier 

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Introduction

Artificial intelligence—AI—is an information technology. It consists of software. It runs on computers. And it is already deeply embedded into our social fabric, both in ways we understand and in ways we don’t. It will hack our society to a degree and effect unlike anything that’s come before. I mean this in two very different ways. One, AI systems will be used to hack us. And two, AI systems will themselves become hackers: finding vulnerabilities in all sorts of social, economic, and political systems, and then exploiting them at an unprecedented speed, scale, and scope. It’s not just a difference in degree; it’s a difference in kind. We risk a future of AI systems hacking other AI systems, with humans being little more than collateral damage.

This isn’t hyperbole. Okay, maybe it’s a bit of hyperbole, but none of this requires far-future science-fiction technology. I’m not postulating any “singularity,” where the AI-learning feedback loop becomes so fast that it outstrips human understanding. I’m not assuming intelligent androids like Data (Star Trek), R2-D2 (Star Wars), or Marvin the Paranoid Android (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). My scenarios don’t require evil intent on the part of anyone. We don’t need malicious AI systems like Skynet (Terminator) or the Agents (Matrix). Some of the hacks I will discuss don’t even require major research breakthroughs. They’ll improve as AI techniques get more sophisticated, but we can see hints of them in operation today. This hacking will come naturally, as AIs become more advanced at learning, understanding, and problem-solving.

The impact of quantum technologies on secure communications

By Robert Clark

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This ASPI report examines the impact of quantum technologies on secure communications. It provides an overview of the key technologies and the status of the field in Australia and internationally (including escalating recent developments in both the US and China), and captures counterpart US, UK and Canadian reports and recommendations to those nations’ defence departments that have recently been released publicly.

The report is structured into six sections: an introduction that provides a stand-alone overview and sets out both the threat and the opportunity of quantum technologies for communications security, and more detailed sections that span quantum computing, quantum encryption, the quantum internet, and post-quantum cryptography. The last section of the report makes five substantive recommendations in the Australian context that are implementable and in the national interest.

A key message on quantum technologies relates to urgency. Escalating international progress is opening a widening gap in relation to Australia’s status in this field. It is critical that, in addition to its own initiatives, the Defence Department transitions from a largely watching brief on progress across the university sector and start-up companies to a leadership role—to coordinate, resource and harness the full potential of a most capable Australian quantum technologies community to support Defence’s objectives.

The Case for Campaign Analysis: A Method for Studying Military Operations

Rachel Tecott Andrew Halterman 

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Despite extensive use by security studies scholars, the campaign analysis method has not been formally defined or standardized. Campaign analysis is a method involving the use of a model and techniques for managing uncertainty to answer questions about military operations, and consists of six steps: question selection, scenario development, model construction, value assignment, sensitivity analysis, and presentation of results. The models that scholars develop to direct analysis are significant intellectual contributions and can be adapted by other scholars and practitioners to guide additional analyses.

China’s Nuclear and Missile Capabilities: An Overview

Maj Gen PK Mallick, VSM (Retd)

Since China first conducted a nuclear weapon test in 1964, its nuclear doctrine has remained unchanged and is underpinned by two principles: a minimum deterrent doctrine and a No First Use (NFU) policy. China’s 2019 defence white paper states, “China is always committed to a nuclear policy of NFU of nuclear weapons at any time and under any circumstances, and not using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or nuclear-weapon-free zones unconditionally.”

However, a recent U.S. Department of Defence (DoD) report claims that the scope of China’s nuclear modernisation and its lack of transparency “raise concern that China is not only shifting its requirements for what constitutes a minimal deterrence but that it could shift away from its longstanding minimalist force posture.” The data available show that China is modernising and expanding virtually every element of its nuclear forces, including each aspect of its nuclear weapons and missile, sea, and air delivery systems. What is not clear are China’s current and planned holdings of nuclear weapons, China’s future plans for deploying additional delivery systems, its commitment to some form of NFU, first preemption, or launch on warning, and the extent to which it will accept what might be called a form of ‘minimum assured destruction.

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Countries That Let the Virus Run Rampant Are a Danger To Everyone

By Marian Blasberg, Rafaela von Bredow, Veronika Hackenbroch, Kunal Purohit und Christoph Schult

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COVID-19 patients in the emergency department of a New Delhi hospital: India has reported 315,000 new infections in a single day, more than ever before. 

No one knows if Mumtaz Shaikh will survive. He’s 48 years old, not the typical age of someone who dies from COVID-19. But SARS-CoV-2 is raging in India like never before – including in the megacity of Mumbai. The clothing seller is among the many who have been infected.

Shaikh is one of thousands of COVID-19 patients across India whose lives are in danger. It’s almost impossible for them to find help because SARS-CoV-2 has swept across the country with such force that the already underfunded health care system is on the verge of collapse. When Shaikh was admitted a week ago Thursday for respiratory distress, the hospital had run out of oxygen to put him on a ventilator.

The hospital called at 2 a.m. Shaikh’s wife Shahnaz and a cousin, Sidrah Patel, who had gone to the hospital with her, couldn’t believe it. They were told to find oxygen for Shaikh themselves, but it was in short supply everywhere. Only three days earlier, 11 people died in another Mumbai suburb, reportedly because doctors could no longer ventilate them. The two women called around. "After over an hour, someone suggested a local politician,” Patel says. "He then agreed to lend us an oxygen cylinder.”

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY REALITY OF AFGHANISTAN

By John McLaughlin

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U.S. service members walk off a helicopter on the runway at Camp Bost on September 11, 2017 in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.SOURCEAndrew Renneisen/Getty

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

The Taliban are strong and well-armed. The elected government is weak, corruption is rife, and government security forces are struggling. What could go wrong?

President’s Joe Biden’s decision to bring all U.S. troops home from Afghanistan by Sept. 11 has provoked enormous controversy across the political spectrum. Opinion divides between those outraged by what they see as a potentially disastrous “cut and run” decision and those who insist that keeping troops there would just prolong an unwinnable war that has already consumed 20 years and many lives. Critics and supporters are about equally divided, and each side can make a good case, so let’s peel back the arguments to see what’s underneath.

Biden has long been skeptical of prolonged involvement in Afghanistan. He argues that Washington has accomplished its goal of defeating al-Qaida terrorists there, killing Osama bin Laden and ensuring the country is no longer a haven for terrorists like him. He said we were never there to unify Afghanistan, which he said had “never been done.”

Those who agree with Biden’s decision add that Afghanistan must be pushed down the priority list at a time when competition from major powers like China outweighs continuing concerns about terrorists — even though we must continue to monitor and keep pressure on them. Others simply argue that America cannot stay as long as it would take to ensure a modern state takes hold in Afghanistan — so let’s acknowledge that now.

THE QUAD HAS MET: NOW IT NEEDS TO GET TO WORK FOR MARITIME ASIA

BY JOHN BRADFORD

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Last month, the top leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States assembled for the first leader-level summit of the so-called “Quad.” This dialogue partnership dates to 2007 and is built on a foundation laid during the cooperative response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. After wallowing in diplomatic doldrums, the recurring ministerial-level events held during the tenures of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Donald Trump put wind into its sails. The fact that President Joe Biden made it a point to host the group so early in his tenure suggests sustained commitment to ensuring that the Quad’s work continues to build speed. However, the course of the Quad remains uncharted. While the four leaders may share similar worldviews and have demonstrated broad consensus regarding the value of meeting for dialogue, there is divergence among their preferred approaches to the most vexing challenges. Furthermore, residual mistrust impedes the close cooperation necessary to establish an alliance. Still, the leaders’ official statement and their joint op-ed in the Washington Post give plenty of guidance for officials to start taking workman-level action for the real benefit of maritime Asia.

Despite lacking strategic alignment across the full spectrum of security issues, the Quad members mostly see eye to eye regarding many elements in the maritime domain. This should enable the group to stand up as an operating framework for the free and legal use of the Indo-Pacific’s maritime space. The four members are those states that have shown the greatest committed capacity to ensuring the seas remain a free and open resource that enables the flow of commerce and information. These powers are also the region’s essential cartographic cardinal points. Their actions can set the regional standards for the Indo-Pacific and establish baseline mechanisms for wider cooperation.

How to prepare for war with China

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Long-time readers of this column have been hearing about the drum beats of war between China and the US for the best part of a decade. Back in May 2020, Coolabah Capital gave a detailed private seminar to hundreds of our wholesale clients assessing these risks and advised that the probability of major power conflict in the Indo-Pacific had lifted to as high as 50 per cent.

While none of our geopolitical advisers had quite such a pessimistic perspective (they tended to be in the still-elevated, circa 25 per cent camp), most are now handicapping war as a toss-of-a-coin prospect. In fact, one of our most accurate foreign policy advisers said Thursday that the conflict probabilities have lifted above 50 per cent. A “tell” in this regard is the combatants probing the contours of the cyber-security battlespace much more aggressively than before.

With facilities like Pine Gap essential to the Western war-fighting machine, Australia is in the cross hairs. Kristian Laemmle-Ruff

The prospects for war are actually higher in the next five years than the period thereafter because of how successfully China has closed the military capability gap with the US. Every day President Xi Jinping delays, his potential adversaries in a battle over Taiwan (which would undoubtedly include the US, Japan, Australia and the UK) are investing enormous effort to prepare for war and once again expand the capability gap. Sadly, the wider Australian community has yet to come to grips with these morbid contingencies.

China’s New Digital Currency Will Enhance Its Police State

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China’s central bank is currently conducting trials for its digital currency, which it hopes to have available for widespread use by the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. But many privacy advocates are alarmed at the amount of data that Chinese authorities will be able to collect through the new digital yuan, and the resulting potential for abuse.

On the Trend Lines podcast this week, WPR’s Elliot Waldman discussed the implications of China’s new digital currency with Yaya Fanusie, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

China Features Heavily in the Army’s Next Big Emerging Tech Experiment

BY PATRICK TUCKER

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The Army will expand its emerging technology experiment this fall, bringing in more operators, more stealth aircraft, Navy standard missiles and new AI tools, and will focus heavily on defeating a high-tech adversary with a striking resemblance to China.

The Army will hold its second Project Convergence experiment at Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona, and simultaneously at several other locations, from October 12 to November 9, Col. Tobin Magsig, the head of the Army’s Joint Modernization Command, told Defense One. First established last year, Project Convergence has become the Army’s largest technology combat experiment to test out new artificial intelligence, autonomy and software tools even rapid software development under battlefield conditions.

It’s also emerged as the most important U.S. military experiment to test out new concepts for interconnecting planes, drones, ships and operators across the battlefield and across the services, a broad effort called Joint-All Domain Command and Control, or JADC2. Unlike other experiments or military wargames that test current readiness levels, Project Convergence is aimed at rapidly accelerating the Army’s ability to find and take out targets by connecting people, vehicles and weapons through a massive, interconnected sensing and shooting kill web.

The Right Way To Fight A Maritime War Against China

By James Holmes

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“I see four distinct maritime ‘flashpoint’ zones, where the Chinese navy may potentially take military action against the U.S. and its allies, partners and friends. They are the Taiwan Strait; Japan and the East China Sea; the South China Sea; and more distant waters around China’s other neighbors, including Indonesia, Singapore, Australia and India.”

This suggests an approach to U.S. and allied strategy vis-à-vis China for times of strife. U.S. commanders and officialdom should look to the basics of strategy, concentrating in particular on the principle of concentration. Strategic grandmasters from Carl von Clausewitz to Alfred Thayer Mahan affirm that at its most fundamental, strategy is about amassing more firepower than the adversary at the scene of battle at the time of battle. Straightforward, isn’t it? Whoever’s stronger where it matters, when it matters, wins.

This oversimplifies a trifle. More firepower furnishes no ironclad guarantee of victory. In fact, there are no such guarantees. But it does bias the odds toward the better-armed gunslinger.

And yet Clausewitz points out that while everything in warfare is simple, accomplishing the simplest thing is difficult. In part that’s because of the climate of warfare, an endeavor rife with chance, dark passions, and Murphy’s Law. In part, it’s because the antagonist gets a say in how the endeavor unfolds and will do its darnedest to make sure it is stronger at the decisive place and time. The U.S. military and its regional allies should act on that logic, making themselves the ornerier contender rather than passively awaiting what the PLA Navy and the landbound air and rocket forces that back up the fleet choose to do off Taiwan, in the East or South China Sea, or elsewhere on the Indo-Pacific map.

Some principles that should govern war planning in the Western Pacific or the Indian Ocean include:

Washington Is Avoiding the Tough Questions on Taiwan and China

By Charles L. Glaser

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On China, U.S. policymakers have reached a near consensus: the country is a greater threat than it seemed a decade ago, and so it must now be met with increasingly competitive policies. What little debate does exist focuses on questions about how to enhance U.S. credibility, what role U.S. allies should play in balancing against China, and whether it is possible to blunt Beijing’s economic coercion. But the most consequential question has been largely overlooked: Should the United States trim its East Asian commitments to reduce the odds of going to war with China?

The question of which commitments to keep and which to cut should come up whenever there are big shifts in the global balance of power. A rising power may be able to achieve previously unobtainable goals and embrace new goals, while the declining power may find that its existing commitments are becoming

Opinion: Ten years later, Islamist terrorism isn’t the threat it used to be

Fareed Zakaria

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This weekend marks the 10th anniversary of the operation, code-named Neptune Spear, that killed Osama bin Laden. It’s an opportunity to reflect on the state of Islamist terrorism and radical Islam more generally. And the initial diagnosis is clear: The movement is in bad shape.

Total deaths caused by terrorism around the world have plummeted by 59 percent since their peak in 2014. In the West, the current threat is less from Islamist violence than far-right terrorism, which has surged by 250 percent in the same period, and now makes up 46 percent of attacks and 82 percent of deaths.

Most Islamist terrorism today tends to be local — the Taliban in Afghanistan, Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabab in the Horn of Africa. That’s a major reversal from the glory days of al-Qaeda, when its leaders insisted that the focus must be not on the “near enemy” (the local regimes) but rather the “far enemy” (the United States and the West more broadly). Al-Qaeda has disintegrated into a bunch of militias in disparate places with no central command or ideology. The Islamic State is doing slightly better, with more funds, but it, too, searches for unstable or ungoverned places, such as Mozambique, where it can operate. This focus on local conflicts erodes any global appeal. Muslims around the world do not identify with local causes in Mozambique or Somalia.

Israel Tries Its Hand at ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran

Michael Koplow

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While tensions between Israel and Iran have been omnipresent in the Middle East for decades, the prospect of open military conflict between the two countries has never seemed closer than it does now. Over the past few months, the two rivals have escalated an undeclared naval war featuring unclaimed attacks on Israeli- and Iranian-owned ships. At the same time, Israel has continued its air strikes on Iranian weapons shipments transiting across Syria, and a damaging explosion on April 11 at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility was widely attributed to Israel.

All of this comes against the backdrop of U.S. President Joe Biden’s efforts to hold talks with Iran in order to explore the possibility of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal or crafting a new agreement to rein in Iran’s nuclear program. With a delegation of senior Israeli national security and intelligence officials in Washington this week for talks with the Biden administration on Iran, the spotlight is shining brightly on Israel’s current approach to countering Iran and whether or not its disagreements with the U.S. on this issue can be managed.

Why Tackling Corruption Is So Urgent—and So Difficult

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The world is constantly reminded that corruption knows no geographic boundaries. In South Africa, former President Jacob Zuma remains embroiled in court cases involving corruption allegations that helped remove him from power. In Malaysia, former Prime Minister Najib Razak was found guilty and sentenced to 12 years in prison last year over the fraud and embezzling charges that precipitated his downfall. A money laundering investigation launched in Brazil in 2008 expanded to take down a vast network of politicians and business leaders across Central and South America over the course of the following decade. And former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was plagued by officials who used their offices for private gain and were forced to resign.

The impact of actual corruption is devastating, whether it siphons money from government coffers or drives policy that is not in the public interest. The effects can be particularly pernicious in developing countries, where budgets are tight and needs are vast. The United Nations estimates that corruption costs $2.6 trillion in losses every year.

New Tools, Old Tricks: Emerging Technologies and Russia’s Global Tool Kit

ANDREW S. WEISS

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How will the Kremlin’s tool kit evolve as emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deepfake forgeries become more widespread?

Russia has long struggled to overcome the constraints imposed by the country’s chronic inability to retain talent in support of homegrown innovation and R&D. That reality may consign it to a follower role in the technological realm. Russia’s global activism continues to lean heavily on tried-and-true tactics and capabilities that are popping up more frequently in a variety of far-flung venues. The blatant and often sloppy nature of such efforts suggests the Russian leadership believes that even adverse publicity helps strengthen Moscow’s claim to the status of a global power.

Part of what makes the Kremlin’s current calling cards easier to spot—and more difficult to counter or deter—is a remarkable indifference to their knock-on effects. Present-day Russian cyber and influence campaigns are capable of doing a lot of damage—even if they can also sometimes be quite clumsy or fail to advance Russian strategic objectives. At the same time, Russia's operators are likely to remain highly technically capable and to make their mark by being operationally aggressive rather than by pioneering major technological advances.

“Myths work as conceptual aids, reducing complexity, condensing narratives, and making novel yet unknown technologies approachable, either in a utopian or dystopian way.”

Thomas Rid, Rise of the Machines (2016)

INTRODUCTION

Russia’s decline and technological backwardness have been touchstones for Western analyses and threat perceptions for centuries. The notion that it could not possibly compete head-to-head with more advanced countries has frequently provided false comfort to Western leaders. Even today overstated assessments of the fragility of the Russian economy encourage wishful thinking that the Kremlin will eventually come around and see the benefits of a more stable and cooperative relationship with the outside world.