DIME without the 'M' is DIE: A Case for Conventional Military Power in Modern Strategy Discourse

By Geoff Hertenstein

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Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked university and professional military education students to participate in our third annual student writing contest by sending us their thoughts on strategy.

Now, we are pleased to present an essay selected for honorable mention by Geoff Hertenstein from the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College.

Fear of great power parity creates panic among the strategy community that the United States is unable to respond to flashpoints of crisis across the globe, such as the Russian take over of Crimea or Chinese actions in the South China Sea.[1] Supposedly, American hesitancy rests on an inability to adequately strategize. To overcome this shortcoming, experts want the United States to be more like its opponents, adopting the teachings of Sun Tzu and winning wars before wars are fought via the use of diplomacy, intelligence collection, and economic power, thereby marginalizing the use of military force.[2] This insight means changing the calculus among these four instruments of national power, inviting disaster since one invites reconfiguring DIME without the “M” as DIE. In fact, the United States has put these elements into proper balance and sits firmly in the realm of strategic choice, where the country can choose its interventions when and where it wants to and on its own terms because it enjoys a preponderance of military force. 

The awkward elephant in the room when Xi and Modi meet

Ananth Krishnan

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The plan remains a thorny issue in relations. In the past two weeks alone, this has manifested in two ways. First, during Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s September 7 visit to Pakistan, when both countries reiterated their objective of expanding the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship belt and road project.

Kashmir issue and said it was against any unilateral action to complicate the dispute. This comes after India’s move to revoke Article 370 of the Indian constitution and split the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories, Jammu-Kashmir and Ladakh.

The expression of support brought a sharp response from India, which said it “reject[s] the reference to Jammu and Kashmir in the joint statement issued by China and Pakistan after the recent visit of the Chinese foreign minister” and “consistently expressed concerns to both China and Pakistan on the projects in [the] so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is on the territory of India that has been illegally occupied by Pakistan since 1947”.

The Observer view on the Afghanistan peace process

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When Donald Trump revealed a secret plan for a “peace summit” with Afghan Taliban chiefs at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland earlier this month, the news caused a sensation. The idea that a group, officially designated as terrorists by the United States, was to be given the red-carpet treatment reserved for important allies shocked many in Washington.

In fact, Trump had already cancelled the meeting – and with it, the entire, protracted US-Taliban withdrawal talks process. Trump claimed he changed his mind after a US soldier was killed in a Taliban suicide bombing. “Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they [the Taliban] admitted to... an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great, great soldiers and 11 other people,” he tweeted.

Afghanistan’s Road to Peace Still Needs US Leadership

By Farhat Popal and Chris Walsh

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For nearly a year, Washington and the Taliban were engaged in peace talks and had even reached a tentative agreement. In mid-September U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly ended those negotiations. Today, it is unclear if the year-long dialogue will be salvaged. What does remain certain is that U.S. leadership is still needed for long-term sustainable peace. 

A rash withdrawal will put Afghan women and girls at risk of losing hard won freedoms, and without support from the United States and its allies, Afghanistan could once again become a safe haven for terrorism.

Ideological competitors like China and Russia will gladly fill any void, as seen in places like Myanmar, Syria, and Ukraine. These authoritarian regimes are more likely to exploit Afghanistan’s resources and geopolitical value than invest in the rights of Afghans, particularly women and girls, or good governance. They are also more likely to allow con

As US-Taliban Peace Process Collapses, an Opportunity for Russia?

By Samuel Ramani

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On September 9, U.S. President Donald Trump declared that talks with the Taliban were “dead,” after the militant group carried out a car bombing in Kabul which killed a U.S. soldier. Trump’s remarks followed his cancellation of a meeting with the Taliban at Camp David and dashed hopes for a U.S.-Taliban agreement to end the war in Afghanistan. 

Like much of the rest of the international community, Russia expressed disappointment with the breakdown of U.S.-Taliban peace negotiations. Russia’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, said that Trump’s cancellation of U.S. talks with the Taliban was a “negative signal,” but claimed that statements from Taliban representatives and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised hopes for future dialogue. On September 14, a Taliban delegation traveled to Moscow to discuss a revival of peace negotiations with the United States, and Taliban spokesman Mohammed Suhail Shaheen vowed to continue negotiating with Washington, provided that the United States “shows commitment to what they have agreed.”

Russia’s decision to host Taliban representatives just days after the collapse of U.S.-led peace negotiations suggests that it is serious about assuming a more prominent role in the conflict resolution process. Russia also views the breakdown of U.S.-Taliban peace negotiations as an excellent opportunity to strengthen its cooperation with two other major stakeholders in Afghanistan: China and Pakistan. 

Abdullah Qardash: IS Successor To Al-Baghdadi? – Analysis

By Remy Mahzam*

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AMAQ, a news agency affiliated with Islamic State (IS), had reported on 7 August 2019 that the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has appointed Abdullah Qardash as his successor. The appointment came at a time when speculations are widespread concerning al-Baghdadi’s deteriorating health after he was injured during a battle in Hajin last year. Qardash’s promotion as al-Baghdadi’s successor can be seen as not only an attempt to restore confidence amongst members but also reinvigorate a fresh series of attacks and possible revival of the IS terror franchise.

Al-Baghdadi is literally the last man standing among the group’s founding members and was last seen in an 18-minute video message on 29 April 2019 rallying his supporters while acknowledging the group’s defeat by US-led Kurdish forces. Many IS top leaders were killed in the siege in Eastern-Syria and the remaining fighters have dispersed and resumed guerilla warfare elsewhere.

Who is Abdullah Qardash?

How Britain exports Islamist extremism to Bangladesh

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Since the first wave of Bangladeshi migrants arrived in Britain in the 1970s, foreign-born preachers have held sway in the community. For a while the most visible consequence to outsiders was when Bangladeshi restaurants stopped selling alcohol, after conservative clerics such as Delwar Hossain Sayeedi came to preach temperance to the diaspora in the 1990s (some curry houses found a theological loophole in the form of “bring your own booze”). Recent years have seen more serious worries about the influence of foreign extremists. In February Shamima Begum, an east-London schoolgirl, was stripped of her British citizenship after running away to join Islamic State (is) in Syria.

Yet in Dhaka, amid a rising tempo of terrorist attacks, officials are asking who is radicalising whom. Bangladesh’s government often blames outsiders for its problem with radical Islam. But here it has a point. British citizens have been implicated in the planning, funding and promotion of terrorism in Bangladesh, to the alarm of the country’s security services. “We do not know what is driving radicalisation in Britain,” says a senior officer in Bangladesh’s Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Bureau, “but it is contaminating our society.”

MINING THE FUTURE

BY GWEN KERAVAL

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A fight between the United States and China is brewing over 5G and the question of who can be trusted to control the world’s wireless infrastructure. But scant attention is being paid to an issue of arguably greater importance to the future of the world’s economy and security: China’s control of the raw materials necessary to the digital economy. No new phone, tablet, car, or satellite transferring your data at lightning speed can be made without certain minerals and metals that are buried in a surprisingly small number of countries, and for which few commonly found substitutes are available. Operating in niche markets with limited transparency and often in politically unstable countries, Chinese firms have locked up supplies of these minerals and metals with a combination of state-directed investment and state-backed capital, making long-term strategic plays, sometimes at a loss. Through in-depth analysis of company reports and disclosures, mapping of deal flows, quantification of direct and indirect equity stakes, and other primary research, FP Analytics has produced the first consolidated review of this unprecedented concentration of market power. Without rhetoric or hyperbole, this fact-based analysis reveals how rapidly and effectively China has executed its national ambitions, with far-reaching implications for the rest of the world.

America's China experts ignore the Chinese Communist Party

BY JAMES DURSO

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U.S.-China trade talks are back on and the sides will meet in October. 

China reportedly wants to sweeten its offer in exchange for the U.S. delaying tariffs and easing the pressure on flagship technology company, Huawei. China is likely worried about what one observer called the “terrifying scenario” of the accelerating “decoupling” of the two economies and, most importantly to Chinese premier Xi Jinping, discontent in leadership circles.

As the revived trade talks were coming together, one group of China experts, let’s call them the Old China Lobby, publicly addressed President Donald Trump and the Congress, saying “China is not an enemy.” The group acknowledged it was “troubled” by China’s recent behavior, but then pivoted to its objective: highlighting that “many U.S. actions are contributing directly to the downward spiral in relations.” Not once did the experts use the word “Communist.”

How Not to Confront China

by Ali Wyne James Dobbins

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President Donald Trump issued a bold declaration late last month: “We don’t need China and, frankly, would be better off without them.”

Most U.S. observers agree that Washington needed to recalibrate its policy towards Beijing. The latter has grown more authoritarian as it has become more prosperous, defying the longstanding Western hope that the adoption of market-oriented reforms would produce steps toward political liberalization. China’s militarization of the South China Sea and its predatory trade practices have also helped to persuade even many of President Trump’s detractors that he has spurred an essential debate on U.S. policy towards China.

Yet, having concluded that China is America’s foremost challenger, his administration is confronting it in a manner that may be unlikely to advance U.S. competitiveness or enlist much support abroad.

Consider five points.

How the United States Could Lose Iraq

by Michael Rubin

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The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is both the most expensive and largest embassy in the world, and more than ten times the size of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. The Baghdad complex—which includes its own power station, water treatment plant, and an Olympic-size swimming pool—and cost over $1 billion. In theory, more than one thousand diplomats and officials from other agencies work there, with security officials inflating that number three-fold.

And yet, more than a decade after U.S. diplomats began moving in, American influence in Iraq has never been lower. True, influence declined with the U.S. military presence, but that does not explain it all. Generations of diplomats have complained about resourcing, arguing that small diplomatic investments save money in the long-run by obviating the necessity for future military interventions.

Iran says it will destroy any aggressor as tensions build in Gulf

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As it unveils a new exhibit at a defence museum in Tehran, Iran has warned it will pursue and destroy any aggressor should it come to war. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Iran has threatened to pursue and destroy any aggressor, and says war may be unavoidable in the wake of drone attacks on Saudi Arabian oilfields and a US troop build-up in the Gulf.

A day after the head of Iran’s elite Republican Guards said on state TV that “limited aggression will not remain limited,” the Iranian foreign minister told American network CBS that he was not confident that war could be avoided, while again denying Iranian involvement in the attacks on Saudi Arabia.

In an interview with Face the Nation due to be aired Sunday morning, US time, foreign minister Javad Zarif said: “I’m not confident that we can avoid a war. I’m confident we will not start one, but I’m confident that whoever starts one will not be the one who finishes it.”

Iran denies suffering from cyber attack on its oil sector

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A cyber threat-tracking website has noted that a few interruptions to the Internet connection in Iran did occur throughout 21 September, adding, though, that the impact was limited to a limited number of providers and web resources, Trend reports citing Sputnik.

Iran denied on Saturday that its oil fields had been successfully attacked during a cyber operation, after online reports emerged of disruptions in the oil sector.

“Contrary to Western media claims, investigations done today show no successful cyber attack was made on the country’s oil installations and other crucial infrastructure", the government’s cyber security office said, as cited by AFP.

According to NetBlocks, an organisation that tracks internet outages and shutdowns, some “network data show intermittent disruptions to internet connectivity in #Iran", although it acknowledged that "the cause was unclear and impact limited", affecting primarily “online industrial and government platforms".

Iran-Saudi Crisis Resurrects an Old Question: Does the U.S. Need to Be There at All?

BY KEITH JOHNSON
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The attack last weekend on Saudi oil installations—which U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described as an “act of war”—has U.S. and Saudi officials scrambling to calibrate a response, dabbling in extra sanctions but leery of unleashing a military strike.

Yet it also raises a question: Must the United States keep spending blood and treasure to protect the oil flows of the Persian Gulf at a time when, as President Donald Trump repeatedly says, the United States is virtually energy independent?

The drone-and-missile attack on a pair of Saudi oil installations, which both Washington and Riyadh blame on Tehran, is part of the broader struggle between the United States and Iran, of course. But as the United States weighs its response, it comes in the context of a seldom-questioned, decades-old U.S. commitment to do whatever it takes to ensure that oil flows freely out of the Persian Gulf.

Iran denies suffering from cyber attack on its oil sector

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A cyber threat-tracking website has noted that a few interruptions to the Internet connection in Iran did occur throughout 21 September, adding, though, that the impact was limited to a limited number of providers and web resources, Trend reports citing Sputnik.

Iran denied on Saturday that its oil fields had been successfully attacked during a cyber operation, after online reports emerged of disruptions in the oil sector.

“Contrary to Western media claims, investigations done today show no successful cyber attack was made on the country’s oil installations and other crucial infrastructure", the government’s cyber security office said, as cited by AFP.

According to NetBlocks, an organisation that tracks internet outages and shutdowns, some “network data show intermittent disruptions to internet connectivity in #Iran", although it acknowledged that "the cause was unclear and impact limited", affecting primarily “online industrial and government platforms".

Why We Need Religion More Than Ever In The Pursuit Of Peace – OpEd

By Blerim Mustafa*

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The proliferation of political crises and armed conflicts in every corner of the world does not exclude religious groups, which unfortunately also contribute to animosities, intolerance and hatred. The Middle East has been on the hit-list of violet extremist groups for decades. One telling example is Syria where clashes have on occasion taken religious or denominational overtones, fracturing Syrian society for decades to come. They have given rise to sectarian divisions along ethnic and religious lines in a country where inter-religious harmony once prevailed. We observe a similar situation in Iraq. In Myanmar, government security forces unleased a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing and hatred against the Muslim Rohingya population. The military crackdown on the Rohingya community has significantly aggravated inter-communal violence in the country. And in the Central African Republic, armed militant groups sloganizing misrepresentations of Islam and Christianity, commit abuses and human rights violations on each other on a daily basis.

The conclusion that can be drawn is that the proliferation of political crises and armed conflicts indiscriminately target communities and societies regardless of religious beliefs or denominations. Violent extremism cannot be ascribed to one religion or region of the world. The recent appalling violent extremist attacks in Christchurch, Oslo and Colombo illustrate that violent extremism targets societies and communities blindly and where we least expect it to happen.

Israeli Gridlock

By Jacob Shapiro

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Parliamentary elections held Tuesday in Israel produced a remarkable and unfamiliar result: everyone, including Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister in the country’s history, lost. Neither his religious-conservative bloc nor the slightly-to-the-left party led by his primary challenger, former military chief Benny Gantz, secured enough support to form a majority. Avigdor Liberman, the head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, a one-time Netanyahu ally and current kingmaker, could deliver a majority to the incumbent if he wanted to but appears hellbent on keeping him and his religious partners out of power.

Netanyahu has offered to negotiate with Gantz and Liberman over a potential unity government, which would feature a joint premiership like the one Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir had after the 1984 election, but Gantz isn’t interested, committing again to forming a “broad and liberal unity government” on Thursday. His second in command, former prime ministerial hopeful Yair Lapid, told reporters that Gantz will form such a government as soon as Netanyahu steps aside. In short, whether or not Israel is dragged into a third election this year will depend on the unlikely event that Netanyahu abdicates power or is forced to step down as leader of the Likud party.

Trump Should Send Iran a Reality Check

Hussein Ibish
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Iran is convinced that it is winning the confrontation with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. This view will likely encourage Iran to launch more attacks against its neighbors. It is crucial that Washington and its partners correct this misapprehension and restore deterrence before more mayhem ensues.

President Donald Trump insists that American restraint is “a sign of strength that some people just don’t understand!” But, as Senator Lindsey Graham suggests, the Iranian leaders will probably misinterpret the lack of a robust kinetic response to last weekend’s massive attacks on key Saudi oil installations as weakness.

The attack, which temporarily knocked out more than 50% of Saudi oil output, demonstrated that Iran has concluded that momentum is on its side, and that it has little to fear from paper tigers unable or unwilling to seriously fight back.

Blast From the Past

BY WILLIAM BURR
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Shortly before sunrise on Sept. 22, 1979, a U.S. surveillance satellite known as Vela 6911 recorded an unusual double flash as it orbited the earth above the South Atlantic. At Patrick Air Force Base in Florida, where it was still nighttime on Sept. 21, the staff in charge of monitoring the satellite’s transmissions saw the unmistakable pattern produced by a nuclear explosion—something U.S. satellites had detected on dozens of previous occasions in the wake of nuclear tests. The Air Force base issued an alert overnight, and President Jimmy Carter quickly called a meeting in the White House Situation Room the next day.

Nuclear proliferation was just one of the Carter administration’s headaches in late 1979. The president was dealing with a slew of foreign-policy dilemmas, including the build-up to what would become the Iran hostage crisis. Carter was also preparing for a reelection campaign in which he had hoped to showcase his foreign-policy successes, from brokering Israeli-Egyptian peace to successful arms control talks with Moscow. The possibility that Israel or South Africa, which had deep clandestine defense ties at the time, had tested a nuclear weapon threatened to tarnish that legacy. And the fact that South Africa’s own nuclear weapons program, which the Carter administration was seeking to stop, was not yet sufficiently advanced to test such a weapon left just one prime suspect: Israel. Leading figures within the administration were therefore keen to bury the story and put forward alternative explanations.

Those alternative explanations were widely dismissed by many members of the scientific and intelligence community at the time; four decades years later, they look even more questionable.

After 6 Years in Exile, Edward Snowden Explains Himself

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Edward Snowden, arguably the world’s most famous whistle-blower, is a man who lived behind plenty of pseudonyms before putting his true name to his truth-telling: When he was first communicating with the journalists who would reveal his top-secret NSA leaks, he used the names Citizenfour, Cincinnatus, and Verax—Latin for “truthful” and a knowing allusion to Julian Assange’s old hacker handle Mendax, the teller of lies.

But in his newly published memoir and manifesto, Permanent Record, Snowden describes other handles, albeit long-defunct ones: Shrike the Knight, Corwin the Bard, Belgarion the Smith, squ33ker the precocious kid asking amateur questions about chip compatibility on an early bulletin-board service. These were online videogame and forum personas, he writes, that as a teenager in the 1990s he’d acquire and jettison like T-shirts, assuming new identities on a whim, often to leave behind mistakes or embarrassing ideas he’d tried out in online conversations. Sometimes, he notes, he’d even use his new identity to attack his prior self, the better to disavow the ignoramus he’d been the week before.

The United Nations is trying to pressure the world into faster action on climate change

By Umair Irfan 
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This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

In the run up to the United Nations Climate Action Summit this Monday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has repeatedly warned countries that they need more than empty promises to fight climate change. “Don’t come to the summit with beautiful speeches,” Guterres said at a press conference last month. “Come with concrete plans ... and strategies for carbon neutrality by 2050.”

Guterres has convened the gathering of world leaders ahead of the United Nations General Assembly, which begins Tuesday, to secure more ambitious commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions than those made in 2015 during the signing of the Paris climate agreement. Already, several countries have said they will increase those commitments, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, according to the 2020 NDC Tracker, just released by the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank in Washington, DC.

Cybersecurity and digital trade: Getting it right

Joshua P. Meltzer and Cameron F. Kerry

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INTRODUCTION: THE INTERACTION OF CYBERSECURITY AND TRADE

Trade and cybersecurity are increasingly intertwined. The expansion of the internet globally and use of data flows globally by businesses and consumers for communication, e-commerce, and as a source of access to information and innovation, is transforming international trade.[1] The spread of artificial intelligence, the “internet of things,” and cloud computing will work to increase global connectivity of businesses, governments, and supply chains. [2]

As global interconnectivity grows, however, so does exposure to the risks and costs of cyberattacks. For example, formjacking—using JavaScript to steal credit card details from e-commerce sites—or supply chains hacks which exploit third party services and software to compromise a final target, undermine business and consumer trust in using the internet for commerce.[3] The WannaCry ransomware attributed to North Korea infected more than 200,000 computers across 153 countries, costing hundreds of millions of dollars damage. What is clear is a lack of cybersecurity is costly and can undermine the trust of consumers and business in engaging in digital trade. Protecting trust in a digitally connected world necessarily involves collaboration across borders between the public and private sectors because global networks, organizations, and supply chains rely on the same systems and software, most of it supplied by enterprises, and they face the same threats.

The Air Force has 15 areas in cyber where it wants help

By: Mark Pomerleau   

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The Air Force wants industry to help provide support on a series of cyber-related capabilities that would range from software support to developing offensive cyber tools.

In a request for information posted Sept. 20 to the Federal Business Opportunities web site, the Air Force said it wants a “flexible and responsive contract vehicle to support the need for the demanding and rapidly evolving cyberspace contract services support.”

The RFI, described as “Enterprise Cyber Capabilities,” includes 15 areas such as command and control, cyber planning, modeling and simulation and intrusion detection.

Many of those 15 areas are operations focused. For example, on the software front, the service wants help developing code that can modify applications or special programs that may be used by actual teams executing non-kinetic attacks or senior leaders developing combined air campaign plans.

Google researchers have reportedly achieved “quantum supremacy”

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The news: According to a report in the Financial Times, a team of researchers from Google led by John Martinis have demonstrated quantum supremacy for the first time. This is the point at which a quantum computer is shown to be capable of performing a task that’s beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional supercomputer. The claim appeared in a paper that was posted on a NASA website, but the publication was then taken down. Google did not respond to a request for comment from MIT Technology Review.

Why NASA? Google struck an agreement last year to use supercomputers available to NASA as benchmarks for its supremacy experiments. According to the Financial Times report, the paper said that Google’s quantum processor was able to perform a calculation in three minutes and 20 seconds that would take today’s most advanced supercomputer, known as Summit, around 10,000 years. In the paper, the researchers said that, to their knowledge, the experiment “marks the first computation that can only be performed on a quantum processor.”

How a digital ecosphere helps individualized treatments reach patients

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Each year, there will be 23.6 million new cases of cancer worldwide by 2030, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The fight against cancer has made huge strides over the past 30 years. Survival rates have doubled and people are living longer with cancer than ever before. Novel treatments are helping patients delay the worsening of their disease or lower the chance of recurrence, while improving their overall quality of life.

Rising rates of cancer23.6 million

new cases of cancer worldwide in 2030, according to WHO.

However, cancer remains one of the world’s most pressing health care challenges. Because of an aging and growing population worldwide, there will be more patients with cancer seeking treatment. According to WHO, there will be 23.6 million new cases of cancer worldwide in 2030, and it is imperative that scientific and technological advancements outpace the growing burden of this deadly disease. 

Infographic Of The Day: How Massive Is The U.S. Stock Market Compared To The World?

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The U.S. still dominates the world stage in stock market capitalization. But where do all the rest come in?

Newt Gingrich: A secret war is being fought all around us – And you may become a target

By Newt Gingrich

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 Paul Viollis argues the traditional U.S.IT structure is insufficient and must be replaced with an updated anti-crime model.

We are fighting a new war, with an invisible front line and an indiscernible enemy. We can be attacked at any time, without warning. And we aren’t doing enough to fortify and protect ourselves.

This war doesn’t involve tanks, artillery, or traditional armies. It isn’t even always fought between nations. It includes cyberattacks on companies, governments and individuals. It involves hacking, spreading propaganda through social media, intellectual property theft, and stealing military secrets.

This is America’s secret cyberwar – and we’ve been fighting it since the dawn of the Internet. It is the topic of this week’s episode of “Newt’s World.”

Why We Need To Prepare For The 5G Revolution – OpEd

By Nidhal Guessoum*
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Ren Zhengfei, the CEO of Huawei, the giant Chinese information and communications technology company, last week gave a long interview to The Economist in which he stated that he would gladly sell all of his company’s 5G technology to any Western company that may wish to buy it.

That announcement reverberated around the world due to its strategic significance. Indeed, the US government has banned American companies, including and especially Google (which makes the operating software Android for all smartphones other than iPhones, not to mention the Google search engine, the Google Maps tool, and other widely used and important software), from dealing with Huawei. Why? Because of suspicions that Huawei may plant electronic moles in its mobiles and/or networking equipment.

This is where the new, fifth generation (5G) mobile networks come in. These new networks, which American and British companies have started to deploy in parts of many cities, can connect to any device and at high speed. And that’s where the battles with Huawei appear: If the 5G network is to connect to various devices in ministries, universities, companies, airports and other high-value places, then they had better not be installed by a company that might siphon out sensitive information for the benefit of the Chinese government, or at the very least commercial and technological competitors.

National Cybersecurity Strategies in Comparison - Challenges for Switzerland

Author Marie Baezner, Sean Cordey
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In 2018, Switzerland released its second national cybersecurity strategy. In this publication, Marie Baezner and Sean Cordey put this approach into perspective by comparing the strategies, policies and governmental structures of Germany, Finland, France, Israel, Italy and the Netherlands. In so doing, Baezner and Cordey identify eight challenges states face when developing, implementing and maintaining their cybersecurity strategies that relate to 1) integrating cybersecurity goals into broader security frameworks; 2) coordination; 3) international cooperation; 4) crisis management; 5) situation analysis; 6) education, information and capacity building; 7) public-private partnerships, and 8) legislation.

National Cybersecurity Organizations, Main Bodies and Responsibilities: Germany

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The Evolution of US Defense Strategy in Cyberspace (1988 – 2019)

Author Stefan Soesanto
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In this publication, Stefan Soesanto looks at how US cyber defense strategy has evolved since 1988. To do so, Soesanto largely uses a deterrence-focused approach, rather than one driven by the intelligence community, legal sentiments, or private sector concerns. He finds that at its core, the evolution of US defense strategy in cyberspace follows a clear trajectory: It is incident driven, riddled with experimentation, and marked by a number of uncertain success stories in between.

The New Campaign to Convince Trump to Exit Afghanistan

by Curt Mills 
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“Great nations do not fight endless wars,” declares the start of a new ad from Concerned Veterans for America. Only the speaker is not an anti-war agitator—the speaker is the sitting president of the United States addressing Congress. 

The pull quote from Donald Trump’s State of the Union serves as the launching pad for a new television buy—around $200,000 on top of a $500,000 digital and mail campaign—to convince the president to, finally, end America’s longest war. “The president’s unique foreign policy message during the 2016 campaign was a key part of his appeal to an American public tired of endless,” William Ruger, vice president of foreign policy for the Stand Together Coalition, told me. “He would do the country a great service to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. And it would also service him well in 2020.”

The ad notes that America has been mired in “eighteen years of conflict” and that “the war has cost the U.S. about $45 billion every year that we have been in it.” The pocketbook focus is tailored to a president who has long criticized an America taken advantage of overseas and in the midst of a generation of foreign policy failure. True to form: the ad will primarily run in Washington, DC and Northern Virginia, on both Fox News and the politically influential Sunday shows that Trump tends to watch.

Peace Making in Afghanistan: Future Pathways

Shanthie Mariet D’Souza

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The much-awaited peace deal with the Taliban by the U.S. collapsed before its final approval by President Trump. This was hardly surprising given the roadblocks that existed to such deal making. This calls for the rationale behind the now-derailed peace talks, which had overlooked the fact of centrality of Afghans in an externally mediated peace deal, to be reviewed. A series of necessary conditions need to be met before another attempt is made to make peace with the Taliban. Till such conditions are met, hasty attempts at negotiations will only lead to increase in violence, insecurity, and chaos in the conflict-ridden country. 

Deal Breakers

Peace talks with the Taliban ‘as far as I am concerned are dead’, declared U.S. President Trump on 9 September. Two days earlier, he had called off the plan to host the Taliban representatives and the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at Camp David for signing the peace deal. Just a few days before the commemoration of 9/11 attacks and the election campaign of 2020, Trump ostensibly didn’t think a peace deal would go down well with the voters. The Taliban, in response, promised more bloodshed in the days to come. The U.S. reciprocated by unveiling plans to hit the insurgents harder. Afghanistan has witnessed bloodshed for the past decade and the future, sans settlement, will remain equally violent. This paper takes stock of how the ‘post-no deal’ scenario may unveil in Afghanistan and the conditions which must be fulfilled before another effort at arriving at a peace settlement is made with the Taliban-led insurgency[1].

ASEAN Wants a U.S. Counterbalance to Chinese Regional Ambitions

by Richard Javad Heydarian

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Reflecting on the future of Sino-American competition in Asia, the late Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew argued that there is a widely “held consensus that the U.S. presence in the region should be sustained,” because “military presence does not need to be used to be useful,” and that American “presence [alone] makes a difference and makes for peace and stability in the region.” An enlightened realist, Lee saw this formula most relevant in the case of the South China Sea disputes, since “China will not let an international court arbitrate territorial disputes in the South China Sea”—a claim that proved prophetic, when China categorically rejected the Arbitral Tribunal award at The Hague years later.

For the Singaporean leader, the best antidote to Chinese revanchist instincts and defiance of international law is “the [continued] presence of U.S. firepower in the Asia-Pacific” so that the “[United Nations] Law of the Sea [will] prevail.” In short, he saw international law effect so long as it’s anchored by America’s naval prowess. And it’s precisely within this context, namely Southeast Asian nations’ desire for an American counterbalance to Chinese hegemonic ambitions, that one should understand the relevance of the inaugural ASEAN-U.S. Maritime Exercise (AUMX) in early-September. The five-days-long exercise covered a vast expanse of waters, stretching from the Sattahip naval base in Chonburi province in Gulf of Tonkin to Cape Cà Mau on the Cà Mau Peninsula in Vietnam.

The Ultimate Weapon: Could China Build a 'Nuclear' Aircraft Carrier?

by Robert Farley
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Credible reports confirm that the PLAN is already building at least one conventional carrier in the 80,000-ton range. Given how quickly Chinese shipbuilding has accelerated, does it make sense for the PLAN to think nuclear for its next generation of ships?

Current Carriers

China has taken huge steps forward in the past decade, acquiring and modifying an old Soviet carrier, and building a new ship to the same design. China will follow up the Type 001— essentially a half-sister to Liaoning, itself a half-sister to Admiral Kuznetsov—with the Type 002. Reportedly already under construction, the Type 002 is expected to use conventional propulsion, along with a series of technological advances such as an EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System) catapult system.