Indian Strategic Studies

21 May 2022

Sri Lanka’s President Is Girding Himself for the Long Haul

Virginia Jeffries and Laxmanan Sanjeev

Embattled Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s party soundly defeated an urgent no-confidence vote against the government on Tuesday after rallying coalition support, but the leader still faces loud calls from the public to resign. Opposition leaders who moved to hold the vote after their constituents turned against the president could still bring the motion forward again—but the president and his powerful family appear to be girding themselves for the long haul, even as protesters continue to gather in the capital, Colombo.

Sri Lanka has now faced two months of nationwide anti-government protests, the country’s largest popular uprising since its independence. Severe food and fuel shortages have driven people into the streets, protesting what they see as years of mismanagement and corruption. (The ruling Rajapaksa family denies these allegations.) The president’s cabinet resigned in April. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa—Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s brother, who also served as president from 2005 to 2015—stepped down last week amid violence and fled the capital. However, protesters have said they won’t stand down until the Rajapaksa regime is out for good.

Swedish Defense Minister: ‘In Our Part of Europe, NATO Will Be Much Stronger’

Amy Mackinnon

On Wednesday, Sweden and Finland formally submitted their applications to join NATO at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, ending their long-standing policies of military nonalignment as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a cascade of strategic shifts across Europe.

Both countries have cooperated closely with the alliance in recent years, and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said he expects the accession process to be “quick and swift,” but it may not all be plain sailing as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to block the membership bids, accusing Finland and Sweden of accommodating Kurdish militants. (Croatia is also now throwing a wrench in the works.)

Foreign Policy sat down with Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist on Wednesday to discuss Stockholm’s change of heart, the accession process, and how the country was preparing to fend off efforts by Moscow to sow chaos.

Indo-Australian Voters and the 2022 General Election

CAROLINE DUCKWORTH, DEVESH KAPUR, MILAN VAISHNAV

On May 21, 2022, voters in Australia will elect the country’s forty-seventh parliament. The incumbent Liberal-National Coalition (hereafter, Coalition) government, led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, is hoping to win a fourth consecutive term. Recent opinion polls, however, indicate that the country’s principal opposition force, the Australian Labor Party (ALP), is on track to oust the Coalition from power after nearly a decade in office.

One increasingly important demographic group appears to be leaning significantly toward the ALP: Australians of Indian origin. This is the headline finding of a new survey conducted by researchers from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in partnership with the research firm YouGov.

North Korea May Be Trapped Between Famine and Plague

Ankit Panda

Back in January 2020, North Korea looked on with concern as a then-novel coronavirus epidemic emerged in China. Preventing the spread of this virus beyond China’s borders was a matter of “national survival,” Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers’ Party’s official newspaper, said.

For 28 months afterwards, North Korea implausibly reported zero cases of COVID-19—even as the virus tore through the rest of the world. Like the Chinese Communist Party next door, the Workers’ Party of Korea opted to pursue a zero-COVID strategy premised on sealing off the country’s borders. Unlike China, enforcement consisted of, among other measures, shoot-on-sight orders.

20 May 2022

Long Shadows: Deterrence in a Multipolar Nuclear Age

Stacie Pettyjohn and Jennie Matuschak

This report examines the nuclear policies and postures of the United States and its three primary nuclear adversaries: China, Russia, and North Korea. It concludes that the world is entering a multipolar nuclear era, which is unprecedented, and far more complex and challenging than the Cold War. The current nuclear order has been gradually shifting over the past decade. Russia remains the United States’ only nuclear peer, but the arms control regime that constrained the superpowers’ nuclear arsenals is disintegrating. Relations between Washington and Moscow have worsened since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling. China’s nuclear arsenal is growing in size and sophistication, potentially enabling Beijing to launch conventional attacks behind its nuclear shield. This development will shape both competition among Beijing, Washington, and Moscow and potential future military confrontations. Similarly, North Korea has a small but expanding number of deployed nuclear weapons and is improving its missile technology. In this new nuclear environment, the United States must deter two nuclear-armed great powers as well as a regional nuclear power from launching conventional and nuclear attacks on itself and its allies. As the number of nuclear-armed states grow, interactions become more complex and the risks of miscalculation and misperception increase. The ramifications of this new reality are not well understood, aside from the implication that there is a growing risk that nuclear weapons might be used. The study’s findings have five primary implications for American policy and nuclear posture. To improve strategic stability and enhance deterrence, the United States should take several courses of action.

Afghan Taliban brokers ceasefire between Pakistan and TTP

BILL ROGGIO

The Afghan Taliban played a key role in extending a ceasefire between the Pakistani state and the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan (TTP). The Haqqani Network, an integral part of the Taliban whose leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is the Taliban’s deputy emir and minister of the interior, reportedly helped facilitate the negotiations.

General Fiaz Hameed, the commander of the XI Corps or Peshawar Corps and former director of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, “held direct talks with the TTP top leadership on the assurances of the Haqqani Network,” according to The Express Tribune.

Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed “the mediation of the Islamic Emirate” facilitated the ceasefire extension.

How to Avoid Extremism on Social Media

Alexandra Evans

She's a policy researcher at RAND. Her recent work has focused on the growing threat of online extremism—work that has required long days immersed in violence, racism, misogyny, and hate. It led her and fellow extremism researcher Heather Williams to oversee the creation of a scorecard to help social media users—or parents, or advertisers, or the social media companies themselves—avoid the kind of content they've seen.

That's not as easy as it might sound. Extremist groups have been trolling the internet for decades, and they have learned to temper their words and disguise their intentions. Nazis and hard-right militia members don't always shout their fury at the digital masses. Sometimes, they whisper.

“There's this idea that there's a dark part of the internet, and if you just stay away from websites with a Nazi flag at the top, you can avoid this material,” Evans said. “What we found is that this dark internet, this racist internet, doesn't exist. You can find this material on platforms that any average internet user might visit.”

The Quad Needs a Harder Edge It’s Time for the Group to Prioritize Its Security Agenda

Dhruva Jaishankar and Tanvi Madan

In 2017, when Australia, India, Japan, and the United States restarted their informal, four-way dialogue known as the Quad, many were skeptical. After all, the Quad’s hiatus had been prompted by Australia’s decision in 2008 to withdraw in order to protect its own ties with China, and it was far from clear that the four parties would hold together this time, either. Almost five years later, the Quad has made demonstrable progress. The group has survived major leadership transitions in the United States and Japan, as well as internal differences on topics such as the Russia-Ukraine war. Moreover, the Quad has grown in profile and widened its scope to include critical and emerging technologies, COVID-19 vaccines, and humanitarian assistance. Far from being a marginal body, the White House now describes the Quad as “a premier regional grouping . . . on issues that matter to the Indo-Pacific.”

How digitalization of industries can empower humanity

Åsa Tamsons

Have you heard about the veteran trucker from Texas, Tiffany Heathcott? It is a fascinating story about a mother of seven with three grandchildren who has been driving trucks together with her husband across the US for almost ten years. Nowadays, she is also the world's first remote truck driver.

When Einride, the Swedish freight technology company providing digital, electric and autonomous shipping, contacted Tiffany with an offer to become an Einride Pod Operator, she almost thought it was a joke. An Einride Pod is an electric truck remotely controlled by drivers and is notable for its lack of a driver's cab. It is a completely new type of job, a role that has never existed.

"People are nervous that they're going to lose their job. But they're still going to need their experience to drive these autonomous vehicles," she says.

Creating thousands of new jobs with electric vehicles

How China uses global media to spread its views — and misinformation

Lili Pike

A small news website in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A popular South African digital media platform. A Spanish language newswire service. Over the past year, all three far-flung news organizations have run similar stories claiming that a U.S.-run lab had created covid-19 or, more recently, articles that said the U.S. was operating a secret bioweapons program in Ukraine.

That these theories have also been simultaneously promoted by Chinese government officials is no coincidence — all three of those media outlets have ties to the Chinese government.

Over the past couple of decades, China has built an international media empire: opening state media bureaus overseas, investing in foreign media companies and forging partnerships with others. It’s part of a broader campaign to build its global influence, especially in developing countries, as laid out in a recent report from the Atlantic Council.

Biden Finally Realized He Can’t Ignore Cuba Any Longer

William M. LeoGrande

President Joe Biden has finally learned the lesson that each of his 11 predecessors had to grudgingly accept when it comes to Cuba: Some U.S. interests can only be advanced by engaging with Havana. After a policy review that lasted 15 months, during which former President Donald Trump’s draconian economic sanctions remained in place, the State Department recently announced it will relax the measures that have had the greatest direct impact on the Cuban people.

The change comes at a moment when irregular migration from Cuba is aggravating the crisis on the U.S. southern border and Latin American heads of state are threatening to boycott the upcoming Summit of the Americas if Cuba is excluded.

Two Turkey Experts on Why Erdoğan Is Rejecting NATO Expansion

MARC PIERINI, SINAN ÜLGEN

In a video posted to Twitter on Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he would oppose Finland’s and Sweden’s bids to join NATO, citing concerns over combating terrorism. Since expansion requires unanimous support from all thirty members, the bids—prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—now face an uncertain future. Below, Carnegie Visiting Scholars Marc Pierini and Sinan Ülgen discuss Turkey’s motivations and the alliance’s options.

Why is Turkey objecting to Finland and Sweden joining NATO? Was this move expected?

Marc Pierini: The objection surprised NATO partners, since prior discussions didn’t signal much divergence on the subject, especially as it was discussed between the Finnish and Turkish presidents. And Ankara had been supportive of NATO’s earlier statements on expansion.

Won’t Get Fooled Again: Is Lukashenko Trying to Distance Himself From Russia?

Artyom Shraibman

Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s strongman leader, has started signaling his unease over how the war in Ukraine is unfolding. Despite being Moscow’s only ally in Europe, Lukashenko has lamented that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military campaign is “dragging on.” He has also urged the West not to lump Belarus in with Russia as a co-aggressor.

It is not clear exactly when Lukashenko learned that Russia planned to use his country and military facilities as a staging ground for its invasion of Ukraine. Back in January, Russia publicly claimed that it had moved troops into Belarus for a joint military exercise. In normal times, Belarus’s participation in such an exercise would have been a no-brainer. For Lukashenko, displays of loyalty to Russia in the military sphere have always been the quickest way to Putin’s coffers.

China's policy-induced slowdown is a warning to the world

The Chinese economy is losing steam. Industrial production dropped 2.9% year on year in April, the lowest since January-February 2020, when COVID-19 first hit.

China's zero-COVID policy, which has led to drastic measures such as the Shanghai lockdown, is serving as a drag on the global economy. Instead of moving to a post-pandemic era, the world now has to scrutinize Beijing's policy choices and adjust accordingly.

Clouds hang over most economic categories. Automobile production is down by more than 40%. Personal computers and smartphones are similarly sluggish. Retail sales have fallen 11.1% and investment in real estate development has shriveled.

Ukraine war: Don’t underestimate Russia cyber-threat, warns US

Gordon Corera

I

Despite warnings, major cyber-attacks on the West have so far not materialised.

But Russia shouldn't be underestimated, Rob Joyce, director of cyber-security at the National Security Agency said.

Meanwhile independent hackers targeting Russia in support of Ukraine could also spark escalation, he warned.

"I'm still very worried about the threats emanating from around the Russia-Ukraine situation," Mr Joyce, one of America's most experienced cyber officials, said.

Initial surprise that Russia did not launch an all-out cyber-assault to cripple Ukrainian infrastructure as the war began has been replaced by an understanding that there has been far more aggressive activity than first thought.

What Is China Learning From Russia’s War in Ukraine?

David Sacks

Beyond Europe, the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is being felt most keenly 5,000 miles away, on the island of Taiwan. Many Taiwanese worry that they might be the next to suffer an invasion by a more powerful neighbor. Those fears are not unreasonable. While Ukraine and Taiwan differ in many ways, as relatively young democracies living alongside larger authoritarian neighbors with long-standing designs on their territory, the two face strikingly similar strategic predicaments.

Much as Russian President Vladimir Putin has described restoring the “historical unity” between Russia and Ukraine as a kind of spiritual mission, Chinese President Xi Jinping believes that reuniting mainland China with what he views as its lost province of Taiwan will help cement his place in history. Xi speaks of Taiwan in much the same way Putin talks about Ukraine, highlighting blood ties and arguing that China and Taiwan are one family. Whereas Putin has recently challenged the traditional understanding of state sovereignty, in order to suggest that Ukraine does not deserve it, Xi (like his predecessors) denies Taiwan’s sovereignty altogether.

Here’s how the war in Ukraine is impacting world trade and investment

Michele Ruta

The war in Ukraine is causing worldwide disruptions to trade and investment, affecting auto makers in Europe, hoteliers in Georgia and the Maldives, as well as impacting consumers of food and fuel globally . Although the world’s poor—who spend a large part of their incomes on life’s necessities—are the most vulnerable, no country, region, or industry is left untouched by these disruptions.

A new World Bank report -- The Impact of the War in Ukraine on Global Trade and Investment -- shows that world trade will drop by one percent, lowering global GDP by just under one percent. Manufacturing exporters such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Mexico see a sharp decline, especially in energy intensive sectors. Net exporters of crops, including Turkey, Brazil, and India, and of fossil fuels, such as Nigeria and countries in the Middle East, see a surge in their exports, attenuating the negative effects of the war. The economic shock waves are moving through five channels: commodity markets, logistics networks, supply chains, foreign direct investment (FDI), and sectors such as tourism.

Oil, Energy and Mining in International Politics

Despite concerns over the environmental impact of industrial mining and the contribution that fossil fuels make to global warming, resource extraction continues to be a major source of revenue for both developing countries and wealthier nations alike. In fact, the amount of resources being pulled from the earth has tripled since 1970, though the global population has only doubled in that time.

Global efforts to reduce carbon emissions as part of climate change diplomacy notwithstanding, fossil fuels remain among the most prized extractives, for a simple reason: Global demand combined with the wealth they generate have historically given some countries, including members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, outsized global influence.

Afghanistan Rising: It’s Time to Let the Taliban Fall

Michael Rubin

What’s the difference between Afghanistan and Ukraine? Not as much as you might expect.

Ukraine and its resistance have captured the Western imagination in a way Afghanistan never did. European leaders and Congressional delegations head to Kyiv to have their photographs taken with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy with an urgency few did with former Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani: Western politicians know they gain more from being seen with Zelenskyy than vice versa.

It is likely that the Biden administration wishes to forget that it initially counseled Zelenskyy’s surrender. The Ukrainian leader rose to the moment and showed himself to be more Winston Churchill than Neville Chamberlain. He inspired his countrymen to fight for a cause in which they believed and against an enemy against whom they could unite. The ramifications for the liberal order would be disastrous had Zelenskyy chosen differently.

Turns Out Afghanistan’s Fate is a Game-Changer - Part II

Allyson Christy

A chessboard demands openings with foresight and stable authorities. As Zbigniew Brzezinski discusses in The Grand Chessboard, the task facing the United States from the turn of the twenty-first century forward involves “management of conflicts and relationships in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East” for which a rival power could challenge American “interests” or “well-being.”

China’s Gambit

Chinese leadership exploits voids, including those left vulnerable by Western neglect, and in some cases, by the West having ignored the threat of economic offensives. Using soft power approaches, China exerts influence by capitalizing on massive infrastructural projects—including agreements with U.S. allies and partners. Beijing courts development and financial favors along its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—a modern Silk Road that subsidizes economic growth amid accusations of debt-trap diplomacy. In recent years, China has also increased its role in U.N. peacekeeping missions which essentially serves to safeguard its massive investments.

Turns Out Afghanistan’s Fate is a Game-Changer - Part I

Allyson Christy

The world watched in astonishment as America withdrew from Afghanistan last year. Reality hit hard in August, as departures were fast-tracked, initiating chaos, violence, tragedy—creating widespread panic as events quickly unfolded. Satellite images showed crowds rushing the Kabul International Airport; many swarmed the only runway while others tried grabbing onto military aircraft. Video later showed the horror of two people falling to their deaths after a plane was airborne. The U.S. Air Force later confirmed finding human remains inside the landing gear of a C-17. Shock peaked when a bomb exploded at the airport a few days later, killing at least 169 Afghans and 13 US service members, and leaving many injured.

Sri Lanka’s Meltdown Puts China’s Strategic Influence in Jeopardy

Mohamed Zeeshan

In this Jan. 2, 2018, file photo, a Chinese construction worker stands on land that was reclaimed from the Indian Ocean for the Colombo Port City project, initiated as part of China’s ambitious One Belt One Road initiative, in Colombo, Sri Lanka.Credit: AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, File

When President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family stormed to power in Colombo in 2019, Beijing had much cause to celebrate. Only years earlier, the new president’s elder brother, Mahinda, had been instrumental in heralding a new era of Chinese influence in his country — hosting an array of dazzling infrastructure projects under Beijing’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Beware the Himalayan Heat: China, India, and Pakistan on the Brink

Daniel Markey, Andrew Scobell, Vikram Singh

This spring, as the snows melt in the high Himalayan borderlands between India, China, and Pakistan, the longstanding threat of crisis, or even war, looms. We, the co-chairs of a new study group report from the United States Institute of Peace, find that too few in U.S. national security and foreign policy making circles appreciate just how dangerous this region has become, how regional dynamics have changed over the past several years, and what more Washington should do in response.

This is the world’s only region where three nuclear-armed states share contested and frequently violent borders, and where two nuclear powers — India and Pakistan — have launched airstrikes on each other’s territories. All three powers are investing heavily in their armed forces, deepening their border defenses, and expanding their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems. Although we hope these investments will enhance deterrence and encourage restraint, we judge the opposite to be more likely.

First of Its Kind: The Extended Range Cannon Artillery Will Change Ground Warfare

Kris Osborn

The U.S. Army’s Extended Range Cannon Artillery program (ERCA) stands to be a true gamechanger. The Army plans for the new weapon system to offer a variety of new capabilities to warfighters, including hitting enemy air defenses from stand-off ranges beyond the range of enemy fire; targeting troop formations and mechanized units before they engage U.S. forces; and sending precision guided, maneuverable rounds more than twice the distance of traditional weapons at enemy targets.

The ERCA program, which offers breakthrough levels of precision, range, and guidance in comparison to traditional 155mm artillery is now being prepared for a year long operational assessment.

“We've got six prototypes. Right now, we'll have eighteen ready by the end of next fiscal year for delivery to a battalion at Fort Bliss, Texas, where we'll go into a one year operational assessment,” Maj. Gen. John Rafferty, director of the Long Range Precision Fires Cross Functional Team at U.S. Army Futures Command, told The National Interest in an interview.

Swarming to Victory: Drones and the Future of Great Power Competition

Christian Trotti

Force planners have long agonized over the tradeoff between high-intensity warfighting and low-intensity presence operations. However, new developments in autonomous technologies and uncrewed systems are transforming this longstanding dilemma into a false dichotomy. As mass becomes increasingly essential to the future battlefield, large drone fleets may be the solution to both warfighting and presence requirements, providing much-needed synergies under a tighter defense budget.

Preparing to fight and deter great power wars and maintaining a global military presence are two of the Department of Defense’s most important missions, but they bear competing requirements. While the former traditionally involves fewer and more advanced systems (i.e., capability, or “quality”) to overpower adversary forces, the latter necessitates greater numbers of platforms (i.e., capacity, or “quantity”) to “strike terrorists, train allies, contest disputed waters,” and address quotidian adversarial aggression. Achieving the ideal balance has always been a challenge, but it is especially problematic now as threats proliferate and the actual purchasing power of the U.S. defense budget declines.

The Collateral Damage in China’s COVID War

Yanzhong Huang

Two and a half years into the pandemic, China is rapidly losing its battle to maintain its “zero COVID” goal. The government’s total lockdown of Shanghai, its largest city and financial hub, has created economic chaos and engendered social backlash from tens of millions of residents who have been prevented from going outside, even to obtain food or to seek health care. Despite such protocols, the government was unable to prevent hundreds of thousands of new cases from emerging in the city during the lockdown, while causing much unnecessary hardship and suffering. Now a similar problem threatens the capital itself. Unwilling to acknowledge the changing nature of the virus, the Chinese government continues to claim that it can outrace the virus through extreme containment measures, even amid growing popular discontent.

The Right Way to Sanction Russian Energy

Edward Fishman and Chris Miller

Western sanctions are beginning to hit Russia where it hurts most: its energy exports. Over the last few weeks, the European Union, the biggest buyer of Russian oil, has been working on a plan to ban imports by the end of this year, although objections by Viktor Orban of Hungary have slowed progress.

For energy sanctions to work, however, they must be carefully designed to hurt Russia more than they hurt Western states. Their primary goal should not be to cut the volume of oil and gas leaving Russia, which would further drive up world energy prices and endanger domestic support, but to reduce the dollars and euros flowing into Russia. Moving forward, the EU should therefore focus collective efforts on a more ambitious approach: partnering with the United States and other allies to impose a global regime, backed by the threat of secondary sanctions, to cap the price of Russian oil and slash the Kremlin’s revenue.

How Pakistan Brought Cyberwar to Kashmir

Abhinav Pandya

India and Pakistan have fought four wars over Kashmir since 1947. In addition to the full-fledged conventional wars, Pakistan has sponsored and supported a proxy insurgency in Kashmir over the last three decades. The proxy war began by supporting terrorist organizations like the Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) and Hizbul Mujahidin (HM). However, over the last three decades, the proxy war has evolved and become highly sophisticated and complex: the rapid spread of the internet and mobile phones led planners within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to realize the potential of information technology revolutions in Kashmir.

Nature of cyber war evolving in real time, says Microsoft president

Alex Scroxton

Just as World War I saw the emergence of air forces as a battlefield tool, Russia’s war on Ukraine is demonstrating in real time how quickly warfare evolves to incorporate new technologies, with cyber warfare becoming an established tool and security experts becoming as critical as frontline troops, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, has said.

In a lengthy speech delivered to the company’s Envision event in the UK, Smith said that while the newspapers will record the attack began in the early hours of 24 February 2022, in reality Russia had for some time been using cyber attacks against Ukraine – at first as psychological warfare, but latterly in a more destructive manner.

“The first shells in this battle were actually fired in cyber space. And we at Microsoft were the first to see them. The very first weapon to be fired…was fired at more than 300 targets across the Ukrainian government, at IT companies and banks and agricultural companies. It was fired simultaneously by the Russian military in a coordinated way,” said Smith.

Putin’s Next Move: A Cyber War On NATO?

Stavros Atlamazoglou

Is Putin Planning a Cyber Attack? The director of one of the United Kingdom’s top spy agencies warned that Russia is looking to target the U.S., NATO, and European Union countries with cyberattacks for their ongoing support of Ukraine.

Putin’s Cyberwarfare Plan

The war in Ukraine isn’t going well for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. The Russian military has suffered failure after failure in Ukraine, losing thousands of troops, tanks, aircraft, and vehicles in the process.

Russia and Putin are becoming an international pariah as NATO wants to add new members. Sweden and Finland have decided to shed hundreds of years of non-alignment and join the transatlantic military alliance.

The Impact of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine in the Middle East and North Africa

Caitlin Welsh

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine leaves few agricultural markets untouched and threatens food security for millions in and outside the Black Sea region. The war has curtailed food exports from Ukraine and Russia, particularly wheat, maize, and sunflower oil, increasing the prices of these commodities; driven up demand for substitute products, including alternative cooking oils; and reduced exports of fertilizer from the Black Sea, shifting the quantity and nature of crops producers plan to grow worldwide. The high cost of energy adds upward pressure to food and fertilizer prices. Additionally, at the time of writing, twenty countries have imposed food-export bans in attempt to limit the impact of high food prices on domestic populations, while further reducing supplies on global markets1.

Before the war, Russia and Ukraine accounted for more than one quarter of global wheat exports. Most vulnerable to the impacts of the war-induced price increases are countries for whom wheat is a major source of calories, that rely on imports to meet their food-security needs, and that source a significant proportion of their imports from Ukraine and Russia. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), fifty countries rely on Russia and Ukraine for at least thirty percent of their wheat imports. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), these countries include Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Tunisia, Iran, Jordan, and Morocco2.

GALLAGHER OPENING STATEMENT AT HEARING ON PROFESSIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION AND THE NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, delivered the following opening statement at a hearing on professional military education and the National Defense Strategy.

Rep. Gallagher’s remarks as prepared for delivery:

Thank you, Chairwoman Speier, I appreciate your interest and support on this issue. I also want to thank our two panels of witnesses for being with us today. I will start today with a quote from Thucydides or Sir Francis Butler depends on what you reference. As a fellow scholar attribution is important. Anyway, “A nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its laws made by cowards and its wars fought by fools.”

The stakes with Professional Military Education and its intersection with the National Defense Strategy is of critical importance to the defense of our nation. The threats to the United States include an expansionist China, imperialistic Russia, radical extremism, cyber attacks and of course the COVID-19 pandemic. But the list goes on… The bottom line is we have to ensure our readiness through an unyielding commitment to out-thinking our opponents… whether they are state actors or other emerging threats…We have to get this right.

A Swedish Compromise Won’t Solve NATO’s Turkey Problem

KEVIN BARON

Four years ago, during the ISIS wars, Turkey frustrated U.S. commanders by fighting with America’s Western-friendly proxy partners—the Kurd-led Syrian Democratic Forces—and by playing cozy with Russia. During a visit to Syria, a top general told me that despite the Turkish autocrat, his racist views of the Kurds, and his nuclear geopolitics, it’s better in the long run to have Turkey in the NATO alliance than outside it.

Is NATO still sure about that? Times have changed since Turkey was causing trouble for U.S. special operators in the Syria sandbox. So have the stakes.

On Wednesday, Sweden and Finland did the once-unthinkable by giving up their semi-neutrality and formally applying for NATO membership. It’s a monumental shift that would bring more than 10 million Swedes, 5 million Finns, and 330,000 square miles of territory under the alliance’s nuclear umbrella and its Article V treaty-level obligation to defend it. Hours later, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan single-handedly blocked NATO from fast-tracking Sweden and Finland’s membership.

China and the West: It’s about understanding each other

AARON MC NICHOLAS

The rise of a strong and confident China has had more implications for Australia than perhaps any other advanced country apart from the United States, as evidenced by the ongoing public debate over the impact of China’s new bilateral security agreement with the Solomon Islands. More than any other US ally, Australia has been forced to grapple with the consequences of a souring relationship with China in fields such as trade, higher education, regional security and foreign influence in domestic politics. Former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s book can thus be described as nothing short of indispensable for Australian, as well as US, observers who seek to understand how to view this ascending presence in their neighbourhood, and how they themselves are viewed likewise.

19 May 2022

America’s Wars Are Fought by Relatively Few People. That’s a Problem for Phil Klay.

Phil Klay

At first I thought Phil Klay had made a mistake in collecting his nonfiction magazine, newspaper and online work from the past dozen years into a new book, “Uncertain Ground.”

Klay’s first book, “Redeployment,” in 2014, was an achievement hard to match. It was a group of 12 short stories set in wartime Iraq, where Klay had been a Marine Corps public affairs officer during the “surge” of 2007-8. Among other recognitions it won the National Book Award for fiction, plus enthusiastic reviews both from those with extensive military experience and from those with none. Six years later, he published “Missionaries,” a novel of ideas based on the drug-and-guerrilla wars of Colombia. Its admirers included Barack Obama, who chose it as one of his books of the year.

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