China’s Air Force Might Be Back in the Nuclear Business

By Roderick Lee

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The Department of Defense’s recent 2020 China Military Power Report reiterated an assessment first made in the 2018 China Military Power Report: that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has re-assigned the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) with a nuclear counterattack mission after a several-decade-long hiatus. (The PLAAF conducted most of the PLA’s early nuclear testing, but the PLA then-Second Artillery, now Rocket Force, later took on the role as China’s primary nuclear force.) This assessment is based on the fact that the new H-6N bomber is capable of carrying a new air-launched ballistic missile, currently in development, that may be nuclear-capable.

Unlike platforms that the PLA explicitly associates with nuclear missions, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic missile submarines, it is harder to positively demonstrate China’s intent to use long-range bombers as part of a nuclear triad just because they are technically capable of delivering a nuclear payload. However, there is now a growing body of evidence to suggest that China has created an operational bomber unit tasked with conducting nuclear strikes, alongside the acquisition of weapon systems needed to conduct air-launched nuclear strikes.

Where Did the H-6Ns Go?

The first piece of evidence suggesting that the PLA has elevated a new bomber unit is the disappearance of China’s new H-6N bombers.

US-China Techno-Nationalism and the Decoupling of Innovation

By Alex Capri

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The U.S.-China hybrid cold war is spreading into places once thought to be detached from geopolitics.

In the technology space, there has been a steady progression of export controls on tangible, hard technology, followed by restrictions on data access and usage, and, most recently, new controls are emerging that will impede the free movement and development of human capital.

All of these restrictions will accelerate decoupling from Chinese supply chains, digital platforms, and knowledge networks. But the latest restrictions on human capital — especially as they relate to collaborative, knowledge intensive activities — will change the way global universities and centers of innovation can operate.

The overarching force behind all of this is techno-nationalism: a mercantilist behavior that links a nation’s tech capabilities and enterprise with issues of national security, economic prosperity, and social stability.

Going forward, techno-nationalism will impact the academic and innovation landscape in three ways.

First, affected institutions will decouple from blacklisted Chinese universities and academic programs.

PLA military coercion increases

By Bill Gertz
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The People’s Liberation Army is stepping up provocations and military coercion in Asia as part of a strategy to increase its power and influence throughout the region, according to a National Defense University expert.

NDU China specialist Joel Wuthnow said the aggressive tactics, mainly using “gray zone” warfare below the level of armed clashes, have been employed near Taiwan, Japan and the South China Sea in recent months.

“U.S. forces in the region were not immune from aggressive Chinese tactics,” he said. “In February, U.S. Pacific Fleet reported that a P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft had been targeted with a high-powered laser from a Chinese destroyer west of Guam.”

It was the latest in a series of Chinese lasing incidents against U.S. aircraft, including strikes against U.S. military aircraft near China’s military base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa.

Mr. Wuthnow told a hearing Wednesday of the congressional commission on China that Beijing has sought to use a combination of military diplomacy and provocative actions in the region. The coercive activities, however, overshadowed the diplomatic campaign.

Why Thailand’s Protesters Are Up in Arms Against the Monarchy

Pavin Chachavalpongpun, Joshua Kurlantzick 

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Thai students and other activists have staged a series of escalating pro-democracy protests in recent months, drawing some of the biggest crowds since the country’s last coup in 2014. Their demands initially focused on constitutional reforms and new elections, after last year’s vote was widely seen as skewed toward a party aligned with the military. The demonstrators also called for an impartial investigation into the apparent abductions and murders of anti-government activists living abroad. Several Thai dissidents who had been living in Laos disappeared last year, while the bodies of others were found in the Mekong River, disemboweled and filled with concrete.

But as the recent uprising has grown in size and spread across the country, reaching educational institutions and other locales in smaller towns far away from Bangkok, the protesters have increasingly taken aim at the third rail of Thai politics: the monarchy.

The Thai king is technically a constitutional figurehead, but in reality, the royal palace has long played a major role in government. Those who criticize it risk long jail sentences under Thailand’s harsh lese majeste law, as well as a recent internet security law, the Computer-Related Crime Act, passed during military rule in 2016. And many Thais genuinely revere the royal family.

Why blanket 14-day quarantines may be causing more harm than good

Peter Singer
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The international response to coronavirus has been a mixture of 2 metre distancing, 14-day quarantines and month-long lockdowns.

However, focusing on blanket measures may not be as effective as we hope.

Agile decisions, based on a person-by-person basis could be more effective and help to reduce the economic damage caused by COVID-19.

When COVID-19 first appeared, strict quarantine requirements and short, tight lockdowns would have been a small price to pay to keep it at bay. Now that the pandemic has infected over 26 million people in 213 countries and territories, we need to find new ways to control it that are not just effective, but also efficient.

Emerging Stronger From the Great Lockdown

By Kristalina Georgieva, Gita Gopinath

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For more than six months, the world has grappled with the severe health and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global economic activity collapsed in the second quarter of 2020, when about 85 percent of the global economy was in lockdown for several weeks. As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) first stated in its April World Economic Outlook, this is without historical parallel.

In its severity, the Great Lockdown of 2020 has naturally evoked comparisons to the Great Depression, which began in 1929. But today’s crisis is truly like no other. Although it’s too early to make a definitive judgment, we can already say that the severity and speed of the declines in economic output, employment, and consumption during the Great Lockdown were far greater than at the onset of the Great Depression. In just one month, from March to April, the U.S. unemployment rate roughly tripled to 14.7 percent, a level not reached in the Great Depression for nearly two years.

Equally unique has been the sharp rebound of output, consumption, and employment. With more than 80 percent of countries easing lockdown restrictions, the global economy has begun to recover from the depths of the downturn. The speed of this turnaround is also in dramatic contrast to the Great Depression, during which negative growth persisted for four years and the cumulative global contraction far exceeded that which is projected for the Great Lockdown.

Germany is well placed to lead a tougher EU response to Russia

Constanze Stelzenmüller

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The poisoning of Alexei Navalny, a prominent critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, has brought Russian relations with Western countries to a perilous impasse.

After doctors in Berlin identified the substance used as a military-grade nerve agent of the novichok group, German chancellor Angela Merkel issued a sharp condemnation: Mr. Navalny was “meant to be silenced,” she said, adding: “This raises very difficult questions that only the Russian government can answer, and must answer.”

German cabinet ministers raised the possibility of stopping the controversial gas pipeline project Nord Stream 2 — an idea Ms. Merkel now refuses to rule out. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov flatly rejected the notion. Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian parliament, accused “foreign powers” of “creating tensions.” Kremlin-controlled media is churning out disinformation.

Now it is Berlin that will have to answer difficult questions. Can Germany find an appropriate next move that does not look like an embarrassing climb-down? Can it, since it now holds the EU’s rotating six-month presidency, broker a consensus on how to deal with Russia in a divided Europe? How to combine sanctions with a policy that does not punish civil society or close the door to pragmatic co-operation?

Finding a national consensus will be hard enough. Germany’s mainstream parties are torn over Russia. Some of the harshest critics are the conservative foreign policy committee chair (and would-be heir to Ms. Merkel) Norbert Röttgen; his competitor, the businessman Friedrich Merz; finance minister Olaf Scholz, a center-left Social Democrat; and the leadership of the Liberals and the Greens. Defenders include the conservative economy minister, Peter Altmaier; fellow-conservative state premier Armin Laschet (in the running to be chancellor); and the leaders of the Social Democratic party.

The 9/11 Commission Report, the Pandemic and the Future of Homeland Security

By Carrie Cordero

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Lawfare has from time to time allowed me, as a longtime contributor, to use this space to acknowledge the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and reflect on some aspect of the 9/11 Commission Report, the definitive accounting of the federal government’s failure to prevent the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., formally titled the “Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.” The 9/11 attacks were formative for me: I started that day working on counterterrorism matters at my desk at Main Justice, and by midmorning was dispatched to the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center across the street to stand up a temporary station for Department of Justice lawyers handling emergency foreign intelligence surveillance applications. In the decade since leaving government service, I’ve often returned to the report each September, before a semester of teaching begins, to cull from its narrative and recommendations observations about the United States’s present national and homeland security challenges.

The report was specific in its remit to reshape government to address the terrorism threats that existed at the time, but its lessons withstand the passage of time. When it was issued in 2004, the report served two purposes: one, to provide a definitive factual narrative of the events and circumstances that led up to the attacks, and two, to provide recommendations about how to structure the federal government to protect against a future terrorist attack. But as time goes on, the report has come to serve an important third role: as a warning to the American public and its leaders about the importance of addressing emerging threats before it is too late. As I write this year’s reflection—sitting in our home’s dining room, which I’ve spent the weekend converting to a combined home office and middle school homeroom because schools and offices remain mostly shuttered due to the federal government’s failed response to the coronavirus—I have three concurrent, interrelated observations to share. The first concerns the pandemic; the second, the Department of Homeland Security and its continued viability; and the third, the capacity of the U.S. national and homeland security community to address emerging threats and challenges. 

How Trump Could Win

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

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Among the categories of professionals that Donald Trump seems intent on obliterating, one is Republican political strategists. The figures who guided his political rise in 2016 have been much diminished, because of criminal indictment (Steve Bannon), criminal prosecution (Roger Stone), incompetence (Brad Parscale), or domestic ruptures (Kellyanne Conway). Trump’s campaign does not have many strategists, nor, it has often seemed, much strategy. At the Republican National Convention, the idea of a second Trump term remained so undefined that the Party did not even offer a formal platform. Asked by the Times’ Peter Baker what he meant to do with a second term, Trump said, “I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done.” The President has long succeeded by creating an environment of constant chaos; now his campaign seems to be drowning in it.

Foreign Technological Interests Increasingly Threaten U.S. Security

By James Stavridis & Frances Townsend

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As the battle for global tech dominance intensifies, so too does the threat to America’s national security interests.

For years, the United States has experienced a collective assault on its technological edge from other countries. Companies, many of which are state-sponsored, have significantly increased the number of resources they invest in research and innovation with an eye toward usurping America's position as the world's leader in the high-tech space. China, for example, has been particularly aggressive in its investment in developing new technologies and, according to a report from the Council on Foreign Relations, will likely lead the world in R&D spending by the next decade.

It is undeniably dangerous for the U.S. to fall behind our potential adversaries in this space. Deterring growing threats from nations such as Russia, China, Iran, and others will depend on America's ability to rapidly advance in the spheres of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, robotics, and big data. To do this, we must keep our internet open and accessible, protect U.S. intellectual property to promote innovation in the private sector and avoid adopting policies that harm American tech companies' global competitiveness. We must also simultaneously adopt smart policies that make it easier for the Department of Defense and intelligence community to acquire advanced technologies developed by the private sector.

America's unique values allow the type of internet its citizens enjoy – one that is open, accessible, and welcoming of free expression and association. And one that is not used by government to suppress voices, discriminate, or mine data on citizens and eschew privacy and security. Unfortunately, this cannot be said for some other countries. As a quick scan of recent headlines will reveal, there are many bad actors out there. Countries with fundamentally different interests and values often exploit the internet for nefarious purposes – surveilling their people, censoring information, and identifying dissidents for arrest and imprisonment based on political, social, or religious speech online.

Did Donald Trump’s Bob Woodward Interviews Just Cost Him the Presidency?

by Jacob Heilbrunn
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President Donald J. Trump is right where he usually likes it—in the middle of a furor.

Two stories erupted on Wednesday that added to the conflagration that always seems to be flickering around the edges of his presidency. The first is Bob Woodward’s release of his new book Rage and of audiotapes indicating that Trump deliberately sought to downplay the severity of the coronavirus pandemic. The second is the accusation by a former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official named Brian Murphy that he was told by Acting Director Chad F. Wolf, among others, to cease reporting on assessments of Russian interference in the American 2020 elections.

The Woodward audio tapes have Trump declaring, “I don’t want to create panic, as you say, and certainly I’m not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy. We want to show confidence. We can show strength.” Trump’s money quote: “I always wanted to play it down.”

The one official who comes out well is national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien, informing Trump at the outset in late January that the coronavirus would be the greatest threat he would confront in his presidency: “this is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

Clements Center Fellows on Post-Pandemic National Security: A Viral New World

By Archit Oswal & Madison Lockett , Peter Denham , Nicholas Romanow 

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A Lesson from the COVID Economic Shock by Archit Oswal

Over the course of two days, Halliburton, an oil services company, laid off 1,000 employees at its corporate headquarters in Houston. Ever since oil prices fell through the basement, my father, a senior manager at the company, knew that this day would come. Knowing that his senior position would not exclude him from the upcoming layoffs, he braced for the worst.

Many of these reductions will be permanent, but they only hint at the larger story. As COVID-19 destroys global demand for the commodity, once known as "black gold," countries that depend on oil revenue to cover their budgets must now contend with the frightening consequences of a prolonged depression in oil prices. Middle Eastern oil producers will struggle to carry out plans for economic diversification that require lofty oil prices. Countries with challenging economic and political situations before the pandemic now face catastrophe. Venezuela, Nigeria, Libya, and Iraq could see heightened social unrest in the coming months as their already feeble governments run out of money. Without loans from the IMF or rich countries, all four countries and others like them face economic disaster.

My father survived the mass layoffs at Halliburton, but many of his counterparts around the globe weren't as lucky. COVID-19 and the subsequent economic meltdown prove that economies oriented towards the production of a single commodity shoulder massive risks that threaten global economic stability. After the Cold War, economic liberalization promoted by our government incentivized some countries to specialize in the production of a single good or commodity. While economically efficient, liberalization also encouraged lopsided economic development, thereby creating vulnerabilities that opportunistic rivals can exploit during an unexpected crisis. Because well-diversified economies strengthen the global economy by withstanding shocks better than their highly specialized counterparts, we must temper our desire for narrowly efficient markets by committing to economic diversification in the developing world. 

Higher education in the UK is morally bankrupt. I’m taking my family and my research millions, and I’m off

Ulf Schmidt

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As academics in England prepare for their strange new semester, I have been making the most of the familiar countryside of the idyllic North Downs in Kent. This summer, the picnics and the walks have been bittersweet: after more than 25 years in the UK, I am leaving to take up a professorship at Hamburg University in Germany.

Why am I am going back to the country of my birth? England no longer feels like home. Instead, since the Brexit vote of 2016, I have felt like a “leaver” in a waiting hall. Now I am going, and the emotional cost will take a long time to come to terms with.

I was from Germany, but I no longer feel I am from there. My seven-year-old son was born in England. His first language is English – he is English through and through. He loves fish and chips; he knows all the players in the England football team (although he’s quite a fan of Wales as well). Now we are going to Germany, and it’s life-changing and daunting for us all.

Europe’s Global Test

Rosa Balfour

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The coronavirus pandemic could give birth to a more autonomous and strategic EU. But the bloc must resolve its internal tensions and find its place in an increasingly fragmented world.

It took a virus to bring Europe out of its recent interregnum—a time when, as Antonio Gramsci wrote in his Prison Notebooks, “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” Post–Cold War optimism had led to a major step toward political unity in the 1992 Treaty on European Union. But the EU, unable to continue reforming, was then haunted by unfinished business throughout the crisis-ridden 2010s. It was left brittle, lame of mission, and bereft of the United Kingdom.

After the coronavirus pandemic, the continent will be different. Global instability will force Europeans to find comfort in the relative resilience of their own system, bolstered by a coronavirus recovery plan approved in late July 2020. The EU can seek opportunities from the freefall of global leadership to find new allies and a different space in the world.

But rhetoric about a “Hamiltonian moment” is misleading: European integration is not following the linear trajectory imagined by its founding fathers to become the United States of Europe. EU leaders bounced back during their summer 2020 marathon summit, but the hard-fought negotiations revealed persistent fractures. Still, the first steps toward transformation were taken.

Europe’s success will depend on its ability to reinvent its democratic processes and renew its engagement in the world.

Europe will be hard-nosed in countering its economic recession, exploiting domestic and international opportunities. In the long term, Europe’s success will depend on its ability to reinvent its democratic processes and renew its engagement in the world.

The Devil Is in the Data

By Alex Engler 

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In the late 19th century, chemist Harvey W. Wiley analyzed the health effects of processed foods, alerting the nation to how contaminated they were. His 50-year campaign led to the Food and Drugs Act, the Meat Inspection Act, and, eventually, our modern standards of food safety. But a reformer akin to Wiley would be stymied by the technology sector today. Many observers agree that it’s long past time to implement more regulation and oversight on the tech sector. Yet the practices of these companies are obscured to reporters, researchers and regulators. This information asymmetry between the technology companies and the public is among the biggest issues in technology policy.

Users themselves often have little window into the choices that tech companies make for them. Increasingly more of the web is bespoke: Your feeds, search results, followers, and friends are yours and yours alone. This is true offline, too, as algorithmic tools screen job applicants and provide personalized medical treatments. While there are advantages to these digital services, this personalization comes at a cost to transparency. Companies collect enormous volumes of data and feed them through computer programs to shape each user’s experience. These algorithms are hidden from view, so it is often impossible to know which parts of the digital world are shared.

And it’s not just users who are operating in the dark. Many of the practices of technology companies are also obscured to the government institutions that should be providing oversight. Yet it is impossible to govern algorithms with anecdotes, so this needs to change. Government agencies need to be able to access the datasets that drive the tech sector.

15 skills LinkedIn say will help you get hired in 2020 - and where to learn them

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It can be difficult to discern which skills companies are prioritizing, and what makes your résumé — but not another — stand out to recruiters. This common gripe among job seekers is why LinkedIn uses its vault of business data to create a job market road map each year.

This year, the company used data from 660+ million professionals in its network and 20+ million job listings to determine the hard and soft skills that are most in-demand (and most likely to get a candidate hired) in 2020.

To define the most in-demand skills, LinkedIn focused on skills that are in high demand relative to their supply. Demand was measured by identifying the skills listed on the LinkedIn profiles of people who are getting hired at the highest rates. Only cities with 100,000+ LinkedIn members were included in LinkedIn's evaluation, according to the company.

Below, we compiled the most in-demand hard and soft skills of 2020, according to LinkedIn. The online courses we listed to help you build these skills — LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, Coursera, and edX — are among the most popular and inexpensive options available today.

Coursera and edX allow you to take classes from the top universities in the world, like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, and more, for a fraction of the cost. You can audit nearly all of these courses for free, but auditing typically doesn't include graded homework or full access to course materials. You also don't receive a certificate of completion when you audit, which you can add to your résumé, CV, and LinkedIn profile. Enrollment fees for these online courses typically range from $30-$160.

Anduril’s New Drone Offers to Inject More AI Into Warfare

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THIS SPRING, A team of small drones, each resembling a small, sensor-laden helicopter, scoured a lush stretch of wilderness near Irvine, California. They spent hours circling the sky, seeking, among other things, surface-to-air missile launchers lurking in the brush.

The missiles they found weren’t enemy ones. They were props for early test flights of a prototype military drone stuffed with artificial intelligence—the latest product from Anduril, a defense-tech startup founded by Palmer Luckey, the creator of Oculus Rift.

The new drone, the Ghost 4, shows the potential for AI in military systems. Luckey says it is the first generation that can perform various reconnaissance missions, including searching an area for enemy hardware or soldiers, under the control of a single person on the ground. The vehicle uses machine learning (the method behind most modern AI) to analyze imagery and identify targets, but it also relies on more conventional rules-based software for critical control and decisionmaking among swarm teammates.

Luckey says the drones can carry a range of payloads, including systems capable of jamming enemy communications or an infrared laser to direct weapons at a target. In theory the drone could be fitted with its own weapons. “It would be possible,” he says. “But nobody’s done it yet.”

Hyten: New Warfighting Concept to Erase Battlefield Lines

By Connie Lee

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A new warfighting concept due to be delivered by the end of the year will do away with the traditional concept of “battlefield lines,” said Air Force Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. 

Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Mark Esper tasked the Pentagon with developing new warfighting ideas for engaging in future conflicts that incorporate all battle domains and address threats outlined in the National Defense Strategy. This will require the services to restructure its forces and change the way they operate.

The development process is still in the experimentation phase, Hyten said Sept. 9 at the Department of Defense Artificial Intelligence Symposium and Exposition, which was held virtually due to COVID-19 safety concerns. However, the upcoming concept is beginning to take shape, he noted.

"We're about there and we're starting to understand what that [concept] really is," he said.

The upcoming document — which is slated to be released in December — will be unique in that it changes the way the military will operate by eliminating lines on the battlefield such as fire support coordination lines, he noted. Instead of designating areas for each of the service’s operations, fires will come in from multiple domains, he said.

Not in my backyard: Land-based missiles, democratic states, and Asia’s conventional military balance

Frank A. Rose

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On August 2, 2019, the United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. It occurred in response to a Russian violation: the illegal deployment of a ground-launched cruise missile, the 9M792. However, Russia’s violation was not the only factor for Washington. As a non-signatory to the INF Treaty, China’s major build-up of its regional ballistic and cruise missile force has seriously eroded the U.S. conventional military advantage in East Asia.

In response to the threat posed by China’s missile force, some experts have proposed that the United States and its allies deploy ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles of their own as a way to re-establish a more favorable conventional military balance in the region. There are significant military benefits to such a proposal: Ground-based systems are highly survivable, cost effective, and would help increase magazine capacity.

But the political challenges associated with deploying ground-launched missile systems in democratic states are significant. A more effective strategy would be for the United States and its allies to: 1) improve their air- and sea-based cruise missile capabilities in the region; 2) advance pragmatic arms control and risk reduction measures aimed at enhancing dialogue and limiting Chinese missile capabilities; and 3) enhance the resiliency of their critical infrastructure, especially space and cyber systems.

CHINA’S MARCH

Over the past decade, China has significantly improved its military capabilities, especially those designed to prevent potential adversaries from projecting power into the region. As Lieutenant General Robert Ashley, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), testified to Congress in 2018:

India’s Ambitious Nuclear Power Plan – And What’s Getting in Its Way

By Niharika Tagotra

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As India embarked on its commercial nuclear power production in 1969, its nuclear power program was conceived to be a closed fuel cycle, to be achieved in three sequential stages. These stages feed into each other in such a way that the spent fuel generated from one stage of the cycle is reprocessed and used in the next stage of the cycle to produce power. This kind of a closed fuel cycle was designed to breed fuel and to minimize generation of nuclear waste. The stage at which India is currently at in its nuclear power production cycle will be a major determinant of the future of nuclear power in India.

The three-stage nuclear power production program in India had been conceived with the ultimate objective of utilizing the country’s vast reserves of thorium-232. It is important to note that India has the world’s third largest reserves of thorium. Thorium, however, cannot be used as a fuel in its natural state. It needs to be converted into its usable “fissile” form after a series of reactions. To aid this and to eventually produce nuclear power from its thorium reserves, Indian scientist Dr. Homi J. Bhabha drew the road map of the three-stage nuclear program.

Large Population Decline Expected In China And India

by Katharina Buchholz
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While experts have long agreed that the world has already set the course for a future population decline, there has been disagreement about just how fast and where exactly the number of people on this Earth will shrink.

Medical journal The Lancet recently published research by the University of Washington suggesting that population decline could be more rapid than previously thought, especially in the world’s most populous nations China and India. The researchers assume that world population will peak already just after the middle of the century, earlier than projected by the U.N. Population Division. They pointed out that models of populations growth have proven to be very stable while those dealing with population decline were much less reliable.

In their base scenario, researchers assumed growing access to education and contraception for women would catapult Indian and Chinese fertility below replacement levels quickly, leading to population levels of just 1.1 billion and 731 million people in India and China in 2100, respectively. The researchers did not see the same factors at play in most African nations, where population growth would continue to 2100 and beyond, according to the model. This would make Nigeria the second-largest nation on Earth ahead of China by 2094.

Bangladesh’s Ambiguity on Religion Has Been Expensive for the Country

By Shafi Md Mostofa

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Bangladesh declared itself a secular state with its birth in 1971. Secularism was chosen as one of the four pillars that were to guide official policy. To what extent Bangladeshi people were “secular” to begin with is a matter of considerable debate, although by secularism in Bangladesh one means pluralism of religious faiths as opposed to more expansive definitions of the term. Bangladesh’s polity could not come to a well-defined position as to what kind of state it would be.

Under Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman — Bangladesh’s first prime minister and considered father of the nation — secularism faced an initial setback when the Education Commission of 1973 found that the majority of the country’s citizens were in favor of religious education. From 1975 onward, after Bangabandhu’s term in office, Bangladesh has yet to fully settle on the principles that would govern it. This has led subsequent regimes to play around with political Islam as well as secularism.

The original constitution was changed in 1978 with installment of the phrase “absolute trust and faith in the Almighty Allah” by the Ziaur Rahman government in order to replace secularism as a state principle. Rahman’s government also built fraternal relationships with countries in the Middle East. The military dictator who followed Rehman, Hussain Muhammad Ershad, went one step further to declare Islam as the state religion in 1988. These military regimes resorted to religion to legitimize their power, which they had usurped unconstitutionally.

China Is Hostage to a Rules-Based Multilateral System

YUKON HUANG

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The broad campaign attacking China during a U.S. presidential contest, launched by the administration of President Donald Trump, has traction because of widespread popular support in the United States for disengaging with China. This has fostered a competition between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden about who would be tougher in dealing with Beijing.

Disengagement, however, is not a realistic option—the costs are simply too great for both sides. But the path to better outcomes is exceptionally narrow, as the required compromises go against the instincts of both countries’ current leaders. The United States would have to concede that China’s rise necessitates a fundamental reset in great power relations, and China would need to moderate its behavior and ambitions.

From the U.S. side, any such reset will likely have to await the outcome of the elections, given the Trump administration’s reported intention “to leave a lasting legacy of ruptured ties between the two powers,” as the New York Times summarizes. Meanwhile, a change in Beijing’s trajectory would require Chinese President Xi Jinping to rethink whether he has overreached in his vision for China. If there is a basis for forging a more constructive relationship, it will likely come from China’s dependency on a rules-based multilateral system to become a more prosperous and innovative great power. By recognizing China’s needs, the United States can forge a new strategy of engagement that would benefit both nations.

China’s Bid to Write the Global Rules on Data Security

By Shannon Tiezzi

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On September 8, speaking at an international seminar on digital governance, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi unveiled a new “Global Initiative on Data Security.” In the words of Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, the new initiative is an attempt at “contributing Chinese wisdom to international rules-making” on data governance.

The initiative, as outlined by Wang, involves eight points:

First, approach data security with an objective and rational attitude, and maintain an open, secure and stable global supply chain.

Second, oppose using ICT activities to impair other States’ critical infrastructure or steal important data.

Third, take actions to prevent and put an end to activities that infringe upon personal information, oppose abusing ICT to conduct mass surveillance against other States or engage in unauthorized collection of personal information of other States.

Fourth, ask companies to respect the laws of host countries, desist from coercing domestic companies into storing data generated and obtained overseas in one’s own territory.

China’s new economic strategy may not sit well with its people

David Uren
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China’s export machine has shifted up a gear, with global sales close to a record levels in July and August as its manufacturers respond to the demand generated by Covid-19 stimulus programs in Europe and the United States.

With global trade volumes facing a steep fall and prices also depressed, China’s share of world exports, which reached 13.5% last year, is likely closer to a record 16% now, which would be almost double the share of the US.

China’s imports are down because its own economy is still feeling the effects of the pandemic, so its surpluses are rising. China’s efforts to stimulate its economy have focused on supplying business credit, rather than supporting the incomes of displaced workers, which has been the primary response among most rich countries.

Leading trade economist Brad Setser, with the US Council on Foreign Relations, says that with rising exports and falling imports, China appears headed for a current account surplus of US$400 billion by the first quarter of next year, which he predicts will become a source of global friction.

Don’t Rely on Hope; Attack Huawei’s Value Chain

By Bryan Clark, Dan Patt

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By any objective measure, the U.S. telecom industry is well behind its European and Asian counterparts in fielding gear that will power 5G networks. Continuing to cede the 5G infrastructure competition to foreign providers, especially market leader Huawei, poses significant risks to U.S. sovereignty and security even if Huawei's equipment isn't in U.S. networks. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration’s 5G strategy appears to rely primarily on the hope that American 5G competitors will naturally emerge from a combination of export controls and market forces.

The Administration may be right—eventually—but U.S. alternatives to Huawei are unlikely to mature before the company solidifies a dominant position in 5G. Instead, the U.S. government needs to mount a more proactive approach using its ongoing efforts in the Department of Defense to attack Huawei up and down the 5G value chain.

A good start, but not enough

Thanks to state financial and regulatory support and its fully integrated “turn-key” approach to network sales, Huawei has established itself as the leader in worldwide 5G deployments with about a third of the market. The company also embedded itself in the 5G ecosystem, making the largest contributions to 5G technical standards and receiving more 5G patents than any other company.

‘Decoupling’ the U.S. from China would backfire

David Ignatius

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When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he claimed there was a dangerous “missile gap” between Russia’s arsenal and that of the United States. But once he took office in 1961, Kennedy learned that the imbalance was the opposite of what he had argued. Instead of the 200 or more Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles that scaremongers had predicted, the Russians had just four.

Something similar may be happening now with the Trump administration’s claims that China poses a military and economic threat to the United States that’s so severe, Washington should begin “decoupling” its economic relationship with Beijing, especially in high-tech products.

President Trump amplified the China scare talk in remarks to reporters on Monday. “They’re building up a powerful military, and it’s very lucky that I’ve been building ours up because otherwise we’d be dwarfed right now by China,” he said. “If Joe Biden becomes president, China will own the United States.”

Trump called decoupling “an interesting word,” and implied he would pursue it in a second term: “Under my administration, we will make America into the manufacturing superpower of the world and we’ll end our reliance on China, once and for all, whether it’s decoupling or putting in massive tariffs.”

How a Rising China Has Remade Global Politics

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As much as any other single development, China’s rise over the past two decades has remade the landscape of global politics. Beginning with its entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001, China rapidly transformed its economy from a low-cost “factory to the world” to a global leader in advanced technologies. Along the way, it has transformed global supply chains, but also international diplomacy, leveraging its success to become the primary trading and development partner for emerging economies across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

But Beijing’s emergence as a global power has also created tensions. Early expectations that China’s integration into the global economy would lead to liberalization at home and moderation abroad have proven overly optimistic, especially since President Xi Jinping rose to power in 2012. Instead, Xi has overseen a domestic crackdown on dissent, in order to shore up and expand the Chinese Communist Party’s control over every aspect of Chinese society. Needed economic reforms have been put on the backburner, while unfair trade practices, such as forced technology transfers and other restrictions for foreign corporations operating in China, have resulted in a trade war with the U.S. and increasing criticism from Europe.

Meanwhile, China’s “quiet rise” has given way to more vocal expressions of great power aspirations and a more assertive international posture, particularly with regard to China’s territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Combined with Beijing’s military modernization program, that has put Asia, as well as the United States, on notice that China’s economic power will have geopolitical implications. Now the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has opened up opportunities for China to expand its influence, even as it has called into question both China’s credibility as a responsible stakeholder and the future of the supply chains that have fueled its economic success story.