Our Japanese sources are worried about the increase in China’s defense budget and military capabilities, as well as Beijing’s growing aggression toward its neighbors. Their worries have been confirmed by China’s furious reaction to Takaichi’s speech. Beijing has demanded that Japan “fully repent for its war crimes” and “stop playing with fire on the Taiwan question.” Note that this over-the-top reaction comes after almost two years of deteriorating relations:

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has launched a global diplomatic against Japan. Beijing is also putting immense pressure on Tokyo to hurt Japanese businesses and taxpayers. The tensions have escalated to limited military actions, which are short of clashes but are increasingly dangerous.

Diplomatically, China is painting Japan as an aggressor. They point to Japan’s brutal colonization of Taiwan and parts of China as evidence of mala fide intentions. The CCP is peddling the narrative that Takaichi is an aggressive nationalist who aims to undermine Chinese sovereignty. They also paint her to be an unqualified, inexperienced and irresponsible leader. This Chinese narrative seeks to weaken Takaichi’s ability to govern Japan and damage her international reputation.

In a now-deleted social , a Chinese diplomat in Osaka commented that “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off.” This post was seemingly directed at Takaichi, as the post was linked to a news article on the prime minister’s Taiwan remarks. The various arms of the Chinese government have been singing in one chorus condemning Takaichi for launching a new era of aggressive Japanese nationalism. Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s claim that Japan has crossed a red line and that all countries have the responsibility to “prevent the resurgence of Japanese militarism” has upped the diplomatic ante.

FOI Senior Partner Glenn Carle, a retired CIA officer who now advises companies, governments and organizations on geopolitical risk, believes China’s diplomatic outrage to be “a tempest in a Beijing-made teapot.” He points that China has been pushing nearly all its Asian neighbors around, notably in the South and East China Seas. Most recently, the PLA conducted large-scale military exercises against Taiwan at the end of 2025. In a threatening two-day exercise, the PLA simulated a blockade of Taiwan for the second time in the year, increasing anxieties in both Taipei and Tokyo.

Carle holds that this bullying of neighbors, other states and even foreign citizens who do not adhere to the CCP party line makes Japan rightly nervous. He argues that Beijing’s constant refrains to historic wrongs and use of the “Japanese militarism” card is self-serving, hypocritical and dishonest. The CCP uses this narrative cynically, often to divert attention from a domestic problem or to put pressure on Japan. Carle believes that Beijing damning Tokyo is akin to “blaming the person being bullied for going to the gym to get in shape so that he can stand up better to bullying in the future.”

Undeterred by such concerns, Beijing is tooting its diplomatic horn as loudly as it can. In a large-scale coordinated campaign, China has sent two letters to the UN criticizing Japan, accusing it of threatening “an armed intervention” over Taiwan and conducting “a grave violation of international law.” Beijing has also leaned on Russia and North Korea to publicly denounce Japan. China is also signaling South Korea’s claim to the Takeshima/Dokdo islets, which is disputed by Japan. 

Analysts suggest that Beijing has also managed to come to some form of a backroom deal with Washington, which has led to the absence of high-level backing for Takaichi. Notably, the Japanese feel some angst over the lack of a forceful statement from the White House. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s delicate balancing act — he has that the US will find ways to work with China without undermining Washington’s security commitments to Japan — has not reassured Tokyo.

Tensions between the two nations are at a high point. China is not only turning the diplomatic ratchet but is also using economic leverage and military maneuvers to pressure Japan to backtrack. 

Tensions go beyond diplomacy

Beijing has issued an advisory to its citizens against traveling to Japan. This has reduced the number of Chinese tourists to Japan. Sales of goods and services have suffered. Over the last few years, Chinese shoppers have provided a big boost to the Japanese economy. Now, department stores and the retail industry are hurting. Hotels have suffered from cancellations. From January to November, tourists from Mainland China and Hong Kong accounted for of all tourists to Japan. The number of Chinese tourists during this period grew by 37.5% since last year.

Recently, Japan has emerged as a key destination for Chinese students. Not only do they come to study at universities in Tokyo and Osaka, but they also flock to private boarding schools. Rugby School Japan (RSJ) and Harrow International School Appi are two examples of posh destinations for rich Chinese students. The CCP has asked Chinese students to reconsider studying in Japan, hurting a growing sector of the Japanese economy.

China has also reinstated a de facto import on Japanese seafood. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Beijing imposed this ban on August 24, 2023, and only lifted it in of this year. Although Japanese exports a record in 2024, the lack of Chinese demand has slowed their growth. China is a valuable export market for Japan, and Beijing’s ban hurts Japanese exporters.

China has also Japanese film releases and canceled cultural events. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — Infinity Castle, a Japanese anime, was China’s top-grossing foreign film of the year. China is the second-largest cinema market in the world, and Japanese anime has enjoyed a breakout year in this market in 2025. Now, six Japanese anime productions, which would have been otherwise released, find themselves in cold storage. Japanese cultural performances such as and anime events have been gaining in popularity in China. They are also on hold.

Notably, China has not yet restricted rare earth exports to Japan this year as it did with the US in 2025. Most other Chinese products are still coming to Japanese markets as well. In earlier crises, Beijing called for boycotts of Japanese products. This time, it has . In private, Chinese officials have been assuaging concerns of Japanese executives running their operations in China. 

Yet Japanese investor confidence has been falling in recent years. According to Japan’s Ministry of Finance, the country’s net foreign direct investment into mainland China fell by in the first three quarters of 2023, reaching the lowest amount since the data series began. That year, in a poll by the Japanese Chamber of Commerce in China, only 10% of the 8,300 firms surveyed said they planned to increase investments. Our business sources in Tokyo confirm this trend. China-Japan trade relations have suffered because of the latest crisis, but tensions have been increasing in recent years.

Both nations ramped up military actions, but there are limits

Military maneuvers have caused greater concern. On December 11, two American B-52 bombers with Japanese fighters over the Sea of Japan. That very day, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Japanese Defense Minister ShinjirĹŤ Koizumi their commitment to deterring aggression in the Asia-Pacific in a call and reaffirmed the US-Japan Alliance. 

This followed an alarming incident on the first weekend of December when Chinese J-15 fighter jets twice targets on Japanese F-15 fighters. The Japanese jets were monitoring the People’s Liberation Army Navy aircraft carrier CNS Liaoning in international waters near Japan’s Okinawa Islands. 

In addition, two Russian Tu-95 nuclear-capable strategic bombers from the Sea of Japan toward the East China Sea to rendezvous with two Chinese H-6 bombers. The Russian and Chinese bombers performed a “long-distance joint flight” in the Pacific. Four Chinese J-16 fighter jets joined them “as they made a flight between Japan’s Okinawa and Miyako islands.” The Miyako Strait between the two islands is classified as international waters, but a joint Russian-Chinese operation here is seen by Tokyo as highly provocative. Japan also simultaneous Russian air force activity in the Sea of Japan, consisting of one early-warning aircraft A-50 and two Su-30 fighters. Clearly, Beijing has decided to increase pressure on Tokyo and has the support of Moscow to do so.

Our sources in China, not only in the government but also in the private sector, suspect Japan plans to remilitarize. They fear Japanese military support for Taiwan and Tokyo strengthening claims on disputed islands. They also fear the Japanese military fortifying positions in islands currently under its control, such as the Senkaku Islands and the Yonaguni Island. Yonaguni marks the tail end of an archipelago stretching north to Japan’s main islands. Since Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Taipei in 2022, China has increased the pressure on Taiwan and strenuously to Japanese plans for Yonaguni.

The Japan Times us that “up and down the 160-strong Ryukyu island chain, Japan is putting in place missile batteries, radar towers, ammunition storage sites and other combat facilities.” Tokyo is also deploying major military assets on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands. These include F-35 fighter jets and long-range missiles. Tokyo is also increasing the presence of the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, Japan’s version of the US Marine Corps.

Chinese suspicions about Japan’s intentions are also fed by Tokyo’s rapid increase in defense spending. In 1976, Prime Minister Miki Takeo capped Japan’s defense spending at 1% of GNP. In 1987, Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro abolished this official limit but Japan did not cross the 1% mark for decades. In December 2022, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio announced Japan would increase its defense budget from 1% to 2% by the 2027 fiscal year. To Chinese eyes, Japan is abandoning its postwar pacifism and embracing militarism again. However, it is important to remember that the increase in the Japanese budget has occurred over a period when the yen has depreciated substantially against the dollar. While the Japanese have been able to increase purchases of domestic weapons, higher budgets have not translated into proportionately more US arms: 

Yet despite higher defence spending, demography and politics mean Japan faces barriers to military development. In common with Germany, Japan is a major country looking to build a realistic military capability to face a larger potential adversary. Both have shrinking native populations and more attractive civilian opportunities for potential recruits. The Japan Self-Defense Forces regularly fall short of recruitment goals, often by 50%. Technology cannot, at present, fully compensate for major shortfalls in personnel.

Politically, Japanese leaders are becoming increasingly concerned about their reliance upon the US for defence needs. Our military sources in Tokyo share that a growing segment of these leaders expect Japan to become more capable of and more willing to engage in military actions without US support.

Even if recruitment shortfalls are overcome, and disquiet over US reliability wanes, military strength now requires advanced capabilities that remain in short supply in Japan. Just as in Germany, there are not enough skilled personnel in AI and machine learning, cybersecurity, data analytics and cloud computing. Indeed, Japan faces a general shortage of IT skills: In 2021, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) reported a deficit of 220,000 IT personnel in 2018, rising to 790,000 by 2030. Japan simply does not have enough people, including those with much-needed skillsets, to prosecute a major war.

In a nutshell, China’s real and imagined fears about Japanese remilitarization are grossly exaggerated. Note that Beijing’s own defense spending has 13-fold in 30 years. The Center for Strategic and International Studies points out that China’s official defense spending was nearly $247 billion in 2025, but other estimates are much higher. One study places this figure to be $471 billion. More importantly, China has manufacturing muscle. Its navy, air force and missiles have expanded dramatically. China has dual-use satellites and technologies, and can churn out drones by the millions as well. Some analysts even argue that China is a more powerful version of pre-World War II Japan. Unsurprisingly, as Carle points out, Tokyo is hitting the military gym.

The dark shadow of history

Even though China has emerged as a global superpower, it still carries burning resentments. Our Chinese sources constantly point out that Taiwan was Japan’s first colony and Tokyo ruled the island for years until the end of World War II. Imperial Japan beat Qing China in the Sino-Japanese War, which ended with the 1895 of Shimonoseki. This inaugurated the era of , the Southern Expansion Strategy, which held that Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands were Japan’s sphere of influence. Similar to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine that regarded Latin America as lying in the US sphere of influence, Nanshin-ron led to the creation and then expansion of the Japanese empire in Asia. 

Imperial Japan tried to turn Taiwan into a showpiece “model colony,” establishing order, eradicating disease, building infrastructure and creating a modern economy. Thanks to these , “Taiwan soon became the most-advanced place in East Asia outside Japan itself.” On the flip side, the Japanese ruthlessly crushed local rebellions and forced the Taiwanese to learn Japanese as well as absorb Japanese culture. Nevertheless, many of our Taiwanese sources say that Taiwan’s experience of Japanese rule was much better than the experience of their Chinese relatives in the 1950s and 1960s under the CCP.

In Mainland China, many still bitter memories of the period of Japanese imperial expansion after Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria. On December 13, the CCP an annual national memorial ceremony — this began in 2014 after Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power and inaugurated a period of more aggressive nationalism —  for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre. In 1937, 88 years ago, Japanese troops infamously tortured, looted, raped and 100,000 to 200,000 Chinese civilians, which the country remembers to this day.

China is also emotional about another seemingly trivial and largely symbolic issue. Our Chinese sources are unhappy with Japanese leaders visiting Yasukuni Shrine. This shrine honors about 2.46 million people who died in wars from the late Edo period (1800s to 1868) to World War II. Of these, 14 were held to be “Class A war criminals” by victorious allies. They were enshrined in 1978, kicking off a diplomatic and political controversy that rages to this day. Takaichi is a nationalist who has regularly paid respects at Yasukuni in the past. Koizumi, her defense minister, , “It’s true I have paid respect there every year on the anniversary of the end of the war.” As you can expect, this has kicked off a furor in Chinese nationalist circles.

Our Japanese sources are tired of China’s constant harping on the past. They politely point out that the CCP conveniently forgets the tens of millions who died in Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and the complete chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Since World War II, Japan has abided by its US-imposed pacifist , invested hugely in China and funded schemes around the world, especially in the Global South. Note that Japan is still the financial contributor to the UN.

Besides, the Japanese think that the CCP is using history as a weapon to cut the nationalist Takaichi down to size at the very start of her prime ministership. An examination of Japan’s recent history vindicates their argument. Shinzo Abe, Takaichi’s political godfather and Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Beijing that attacking Taiwan would be “economic suicide.” In a virtual keynote on December 1, 2021, Abe said, “A Taiwan contingency is a Japanese contingency, and therefore a contingency for the Japan-U.S. alliance.” 

When he made the speech, Abe was no longer prime minister, but he was still the leading light of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). He was echoing the 1972 US-China Joint , also known as the Shanghai °ä´ÇłľłľłÜ˛Ôľ±±çłÜĂ©, which adopted a “One China” policy and called for “a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question.” In the communiquĂ©, both the US and China agreed that “international disputes should be settled on this basis, without resorting to the use or threat of force.” That is precisely what Abe and Takaichi want in relation to Taiwan.

Note that other Japanese politicians have also taken a similar view to Abe’s. In 2021, Nobuo Kishi, the then defense minister, claimed, “The peace and stability of Taiwan are directly connected to Japan.” The same year, his LDP colleague Tarō Asō, the then deputy prime minister, said, “If a major problem took place in Taiwan, it would not be too much to say that it could relate to a survival-threatening situation” for Japan. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Kishida, prime minister from October 2021 to October 2024, repeatedly asserted that “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,” which was clearly alluding to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Takaichi is not as out of line with her Japanese predecessors as the CCP and Chinese nationalist outrage would suggest.

Takaichi’s Taiwan remarks are viewed differently by both sides

Takaichi’s comments on Taiwan were not part of a speech or statement. She was merely responding to a question in parliament from Katsuya Okada of the Constitutional Democratic Party. The prime minister did not say that Japan would use military force to defend Taiwan or commit to any specific action in aid of Taipei in the case of a Chinese invasion. After mentioning the possibility of a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan in the case of a Taiwan contingency, Takaichi said that the Japanese government would make its judgment by synthesizing all information based on the specific circumstances of the actual situation.

Japanese diplomats painfully point out that their prime minister’s language reflects Tokyo’s consistent position on the issue. Saya Kiba, one of our Japanese authors, explains “how Japan’s strategic ambiguity, security law and US alliance constrain direct defense of Taiwan.” She points out that, while Takaichi’s explanation did not formally violate Japan’s existing Taiwan policy, it went further than previous prime ministers had dared to go in the past.

Beijing takes a different view and sees  Takaichi as a potential threat. The first female prime minister of Japan is the daughter of a policeman and is perceived as a security hawk. Takaichi has positioned herself as Abe’s heir and Beijing has no love lost for the late leader who “from Japan’s pacifist policies to confront China’s nationalistic designs.” Abe visited Yasukuni and fathered the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in 2007 to keep the Indo-Pacific “free and open”. The CCP has not forgotten or forgiven these actions.

China Daily, an English-language newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP, has that Takaichi is hyping up the “China threat” to consolidate her right-wing political base and accelerate military expansion. In 2024, the China Institute for International Studies (CIIS) objected to the 2022 Japanese National Security Strategy that its communist neighbor to be “an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge” to Japan. Per CIIS, Japan these words only to rationalize and legitimize its remilitarization.

In addition, US President Donald Trump’s October visit to Japan has not gone down well with China. The dealmaker-in-chief and Takaichi that Japan would invest $550 billion into American industries and pay a baseline 15% tariff rate, apart from buying energy and weapons from the US. Beijing believes that Takaichi is appeasing Trump to win American support against China.

On the other hand, Tokyo is increasingly nervous about Beijing’s increasing belligerence. Shrill nationalist condemnation in the media, diplomatic actions, economic pressure and military actions rightly make Japan anxious. The end-of-year military drills around Taiwan described earlier rightly raise security concerns in both Taipei and Taiwan. Note that Carle and this author raised the alarm about a joint Russian and Chinese fleet Japan’s main island of Honshu in October 2021. In our eyes, this was a watershed moment and we took the view that Tokyo would have no choice but to boost its defense. As we predicted, Japan has done so since.

Today, the stage is set for rising tensions between China and Japan. At the heart of the China-Japan dispute are two contrasting worldviews. The “One China” policy is sacred for the CCP, which views a Taiwanese declaration of independence and third-party support for Taiwan’s independence as a direct threat to China’s sovereignty. Popular opinion in China patriotically supports the CCP position on Taiwan, and Chinese rhetoric on social media is increasingly jingoistic. In contrast, Japan views Taiwan as a de facto independent state and China as an increasingly aggressive revisionist power. Also, Tokyo views a Chinese threat to Taiwan as a risk to Japan’s national security. Chinese control over Taiwan would facilitate Beijing’s ability to take over islands both China and Japan claim as their own. 

China’s belligerence and Japan’s response has set into motion a chain of events that could end dangerously. Even though Japan recently its post-World War II pledge never to possess nuclear weapons, talk of acquiring its own nuclear deterrent is now in the public domain. This is a first since Japan surrendered to the US after suffering the twin nuclear disasters of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese leaders seem to be heeding the advice Carle gave them when he visited Tokyo: “Hold America as close as possible, but Japan should count only on itself.”

As a result, East Asia is increasingly dangerous. Both Japan and China are quietly preparing for a potential armed conflict. A slight misjudgment, miscalculation or misstep by leaders in Beijing or Tokyo, or even a pilot or sailor, could lead to far-reaching global consequences.

[ assisted the author in researching for and editing this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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A moral groundwork

From its inception, America has framed its defining conflicts as to restore human and divine justice. For example, the Revolutionary War was not just a fight for independence; it was a battle against tyranny and a defense of individuals’ “unalienable rights endowed by a Creator” — a concept deeply influenced by Enlightenment philosopher John Locke. The Revolutionary War established of individualism, egalitarianism and activism, values rooted in both Enlightenment ideals and Judeo-Christian principles that celebrate individual liberty and human dignity. These secular and spiritual ideals are embedded in foundational American documents such as the and the .

Similarly, the Civil War, while centering on economy and sovereignty, transformed into a moral crusade with President Abraham Lincoln’s opposition to slavery. By linking the war to the liberation of slaves, Lincoln set the groundwork for a United States based on equality and human dignity.

This moral foundation has defined America’s involvement in global conflicts throughout the 20th century. In both world wars, America intervened not merely out of self-interest but out of a sense of duty to preserve democracy, national interests with moral responsibility. President Franklin D. Roosevelt America’s fight against Nazism and fascism as a battle between good and evil, reinforcing the nation’s belief that democracy must prevail globally. Through its wartime efforts, America created a world order in which liberal values could thrive. The United Nations and its are the fruits of that moral American vision whose legacy has defined international order to this day.

The Cold War further emphasized America’s commitment to spreading liberal democracy. In contrast to the communist ideology that elevated the above the individual, America championed the right of every human being to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Democratic and Republican presidents, from to , equally emphasized the importance of this moral vision in the free world’s fight against communism. That philosophical commitment, more than mere technological or economic might, helped America win the Cold War and led to the spread of democratic governance across the world.

The loss of morality

Today, however, US foreign policy is increasingly abandoning its moral vision. This decline stems from a significant in bipartisan support for promoting democracy worldwide. Domestic challenges, along with perceived failures in recent nation-building efforts abroad, have dampened the American public’s and policymakers’ interest in democracy overseas. This shift has triggered an isolationist trend in US foreign policy arguably unseen since .

Because America’s global influence is built on not just military might or economic power, but a , the recent reluctance to follow that path risks undermining a legacy carefully built following WWII. By stepping back from the world stage, America risks creating a power vacuum that authoritarian regimes are eager to fill, leaving a more isolated US vulnerable to new threats in the long term.

When President Barack Obama from supporting democratic uprisings in and , he left in the lurch populations striving for freedom against brutal dictatorships, undermining American credibility. Similarly, President Joe Biden’s from Afghanistan ceded control back to the Taliban, reversing years of progress in women’s rights and civil liberties. Now, President-Elect Donald Trump may for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression when he goes back to the White House in January 2025. US foreign policy risks yet another retreat — one that could determine the fate of Ukraine’s sovereignty and, by extension, the resilience of democracy in Europe.

If Ukraine falls to Russian aggression, it could much of Eastern and Northern Europe and set a dangerous precedent for the unchecked expansion of the Kremlin’s authoritarianism westward. This scenario would ripple across the region, threatening the democratic security of the Baltic states, the Caucasus and potentially Central Europe, posing the gravest challenge to democracy in Western Europe since World War II.

A collapse of democratic resistance in Ukraine could also to expand its influence in the Asia-Pacific. If America and its allies hesitate in Europe, Beijing might seize the opportunity to assert dominance over Taiwan and pressure Japan, while North Korea could feel encouraged to take aggressive steps toward South Korea. The effects could reach as far as India and Australia. Such outcomes would jeopardize decades of democratic progress in the Indo-Pacific and destabilize an entire region critical to global economy and security.

In addition to these risks, a potential US withdrawal from NATO would not only embolden external adversaries but could also fracture Europe internally. This move could empower pro-Russian factions within the European Union to pursue closer ties with Moscow, sidelining pro-democracy and pro-American parties. An eastward European shift would strain Washington and lay the groundwork for a strategic encirclement of the United States.

Given the rise of authoritarianism worldwide, the US must renew its commitment to human rights and democracy. While both Democrats and Republicans may hesitate to champion liberal values abroad, now more than ever, the US needs to reset its moral compass, recommit to its moral foundations in foreign policy, and prioritize the promotion of democratic ideals in the world. This renewed commitment to democracy in foreign policy is essential for preserving America’s global leadership but also critical for keeping the world a freer and safer place.

[ edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post American Foreign Policy Needs to Reset Its Moral Compass appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.” At home in the US, domestic divisions would “widen into violent clashes and divisive debates… Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” That historian concluded, “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Now that a “far-right patriot,” one President-elect Donald Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency “with thundering rhetoric,” let’s explore the likelihood that a second Trump term in office, starting in the fateful year 2025, might actually bring a hasty end, silent or otherwise, to an “American Century” of global dominion.

Making the original prediction

Let’s begin by examining the reasoning underlying my original prediction. (Yes, I was the historian.) Back in 2010, when I picked a specific date for a rising tide of US decline, this country looked unassailably strong both at home and abroad. President Barack Obama’s administration was producing a “post-racial” society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the US was on track for a decade of dynamic growth — the auto industry saved, oil and gas production booming, the tech sector thriving, the stock market soaring and employment solid. Internationally, Washington was the world’s preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization and its democratic governance still the global norm.

Looking forward, leading historians of the empire agreed that the US would remain the world’s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times in 2002, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely-read book on imperial decline, that “America’s array of force is staggering,” with a mix of economic, diplomatic and technological dominance that made it the globe’s “single superpower” without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia’s defense budget had “collapsed” and its economy was “less than that of the Netherlands.” Should China’s high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it “might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance” — but that wouldn’t be true until 2032, if then. While the US’s “unipolar moment” would surely not “continue for centuries,” its end, he predicted, “seems a long way off for now.”

Writing in a similar vein in The New York Times in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain’s imperial decline, the “doom mongers” who “conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony.” While Rome was riven by “internecine strife” and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the US was “constitutionally stable” with “an enormous industrial base.” Taking a few “relatively simple steps,” he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.

When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a of 140 historians from universities on three continents who were studying the decline of earlier empires — particularly those of Britain, France and Spain. Beneath the surface of this country’s seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires.

By 2010, economic globalization was cutting good-paying factory jobs here, income inequality was widening and corporate bailouts were booming — all essential ingredients for rising working-class resentment and deepening domestic divisions. Foolhardy military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed by Washington elites trying to deny any sense of decline, stoked simmering anger among ordinary US citizens, slowly discrediting the very idea of international commitments. And the erosion of the US’s relative economic strength from half the world’s output in 1950 to a quarter in 2010 meant the wherewithal for its unipolar power was fading fast.

Only a “near-peer” competitor was needed to turn that attenuating US global hegemony into accelerating imperial decline. With rapid economic growth, a vast population and the world’s longest imperial tradition, China seemed primed to become just such a country. But back then, Washington’s foreign policy elites thought not and even admitted China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), that “U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.”

Our group of historians, mindful of the frequent imperial wars fought when near-peer competitors finally confronted the reigning hegemon of their moment — think Germany vs Great Britain in World War I — expected China’s challenge would not be long in coming. Indeed, in 2012, just two years after my prediction, the US National Intelligence Council that “China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030” and this country would no longer be “a hegemonic power.”

Just a year later, Chinese President Xi Jinping, drawing on a massive in foreign-exchange reserves accumulated in the decade after joining the WTO, announced his bid for global power. This would come in the form of what he called “the ,” history’s largest development program. It was designed to make Beijing the center of the global economy.

In the following decade, the US–China rivalry would become so intense that, last September, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall : “I’ve been closely watching the evolution of [China’s] military for 15 years. China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.”

The global rise of the strongman

Another major setback for Washington’s world order, long legitimated by its promotion of democracy (whatever its own dominating tendencies), came from the rise of populist strongmen worldwide. Consider them part of a nationalist reaction to the West’s aggressive economic globalization.

At the close of the Cold War in 1991, Washington became the planet’s sole superpower, using its hegemony to forcefully promote a wide-open global economy — forming the in 1995, pressing open-market “” on developing economies and knocking down tariff barriers worldwide. It also built a global communications grid by 700,000 miles of fiber-optic submarine cables and then 1,300 satellites (now 4,700).

By exploiting that very globalized economy, however, China’s soared to $3.2 trillion by 2016, surpassing both the US and Japan, while simultaneously 2.4 million US jobs between 1999 and 2011, ensuring the closure of factories in countless towns across the South and Midwest. By fraying social safety nets while eroding protection for labor unions and local businesses in both the US and Europe, globalization reduced the quality of life for many, while creating inequality on a staggering scale and stoking a working-class reaction that would crest in a global wave of angry populism.

Riding that wave, right-wing populists have been winning a steady succession of elections — in Russia in 2000, Israel in 2009, Hungary in 2010, China in 2012, Turkey in 2014, the Philippines and the US in 2016, Brazil in 2018, Italy in 2022, the Netherlands in 2023, Indonesia and the US again in 2024.

Set aside their incendiary us-vs-them rhetoric, however, and look at their actual achievements and those right-wing demagogues turn out to have a record that can only be described as dismal. In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro the vast Amazon rainforest and left office amid an . In Russia, President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, his country’s economy to capture some more land (which it hardly lacked). In Turkey, President Recep Erdoğan caused a crippling , while 50,000 suspected opponents. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte 30,000 suspected drug users and China by giving up his country’s claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has wreaked havoc on Gaza and neighboring lands, in part to in office and stay out of prison.

Prospects for Donald Trump’s second term

After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, the US is no longer the — or perhaps even an — “exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries. And as it has become more of an ordinary country, it has also felt the full force of the worldwide move toward strongman rule. Not only does that global trend help explain Trump’s election and his recent re-election, but it provides some clues as to what he’s likely to do with that office the second time around.

In the globalized world the US made, there is now an intimate interaction between domestic and international policy. That will soon be apparent in a second Trump administration whose policies are likely to simultaneously damage the country’s economy and further degrade Washington’s world leadership.

Let’s start with the clearest of his commitments: environmental policy. During the recent election campaign, Trump climate change “a scam” and his transition team has already drawn up to exit from the Paris climate accords. By quitting that agreement, the US will abdicate any leadership role when it comes to the most consequential issue facing the international community while reducing pressure on China to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Since these two countries now account for (45%) of global carbon emissions, such a move will ensure that the world blows past the target of keeping this planet’s temperature rise to C until the end of the century. Instead, on a planet that’s already had 12 recent of just such a temperature rise, that mark is expected to be permanently reached by perhaps 2029. That is the year Trump finishes his second term.

On the domestic side of climate policy, Trump last September that he would “terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam, and rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.” On the day after his election, he committed himself to increasing the country’s oil and gas production, a celebratory crowd, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world.” He will undoubtedly also wind farm leases on Federal lands and the $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electrical vehicle.

As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the US economy. In 2023, the International Renewable Energy Agency that, amid continuing price decreases, wind and solar power now generate electricity for less than half the cost of fossil fuels. Any attempt to slow the conversion of this country’s utilities to the most cost-effective form of energy runs a serious risk of ensuring that US-made products will be ever less competitive.

To put it bluntly, he seems to be proposing that electricity users here should pay twice as much for their power as those in other advanced nations. Similarly, as relentless engineering innovation makes electric vehicles cheaper and more reliable than petroleum-powered ones, attempting to slow such an energy transition is likely to make the US automotive industry uncompetitive at home and abroad.

Calling tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump has slapping a 20% duty on all foreign goods and 60% on those from China. In another instance of domestic–foreign synergy, such duties will undoubtedly end up crippling US farm exports, thanks to retaliatory overseas tariffs. Simultaneously, it will dramatically raise the cost of consumer goods for US citizens, stoking inflation and slowing consumer spending.

Reflecting his to alliances and military commitments, Trump’s first foreign policy initiative will likely be an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. During a CNN town hall meeting in May 2023, he he could stop the fighting “in 24 hours.” Last July, he : “I would tell [Ukrainian President] Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal.”

Just two days after the November 5 election, Trump reportedly Putin over a phone call “not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe.” Drawing on sources inside the Trump transition team, the Wall Street Journal that the new administration is considering “cementing Russia’s seizure of 20% of Ukraine” and forcing Kyiv to forego its bid to join NATO, perhaps for as long as 20 years.

With Russia drained of manpower and its economy pummeled by three years of bloody warfare, a competent negotiator — should Trump actually appoint one — might indeed be able to bring a tenuous peace to a ravaged Ukraine. Since it has been Europe’s frontline of defense against a revanchist Russia, the continent’s major powers would be expected to play a . But Germany’s coalition government has just collapsed; French President Emmanuel Macron is crippled by recent electoral reverses and the NATO alliance, after three years of a shared commitment to Ukraine, faces real uncertainty with the advent of a Trump presidency.

US allies

Those impending negotiations over Ukraine highlight the paramount importance of alliances for US global power. For 80 years, from World War II through the Cold War and beyond, Washington relied on bilateral and multilateral alliances as a critical force multiplier. With China and Russia both rearmed and increasingly closely aligned, reliable allies have become even more important to maintaining Washington’s global presence. With 32 member nations representing a billion people and a commitment to mutual defense that has lasted 75 years, NATO is arguably the most powerful military alliance in modern history.

Yet Trump has long been sharply critical of it. As a candidate in 2016, he the alliance “obsolete.” As president, he mocked the treaty’s mutual-defense clause, even “tiny” Montenegro could drag the US into war. While campaigning last February, he that he would tell Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO ally that didn’t pay what he considered its fair share.

Right after Trump’s election, caught between what one analyst “an aggressively advancing Russia and an aggressively withdrawing America,” Macron insisted that the continent needed to be a “more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context.” Even if the new administration doesn’t formally withdraw from NATO, Trump’s repeated hostility, particularly toward its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to eviscerate the alliance.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the US presence rests on three sets of overlapping alliances: the entente with Australia and Britain; the with Australia, India and Japan and a chain of bilateral defense pacts stretching along the Pacific littoral from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Via careful diplomacy, the administration US President Joe Biden those alliances, bringing two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines that had drifted Beijing-wards, back into the Western fold. Trump’s penchant for abusing allies and, as in his first term, from multilateral pacts is likely to weaken such ties and so US power in the region.

Although his first administration famously waged a trade war with Beijing, Trump’s attitude toward the island of Taiwan is bluntly transactional. “I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he in June, adding: “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.” In October, he the Wall Street Journal that he would not have to use military force to defend Taiwan because Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” Bluster aside, Trump, unlike Biden, has never committed himself to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack.

Should Beijing indeed attack Taiwan outright or, as appears more likely, impose a crippling on the island, Trump seems unlikely to risk a war with China. The loss of Taiwan would break the US position along the Pacific littoral, which for 80 years has been the fulcrum of its global imperial posture. This would push its naval forces back to a “second island chain” running from Japan to Guam. Such a retreat would represent a major blow to the US’s imperial role in the Pacific, potentially making it no longer a significant player in the security of its Asia-Pacific allies.

A silent US recessional

Adding up the likely impact of Trump’s policies in this country, Asia, Europe and the international community generally, his second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos and a further loss of global leadership. As “respect for American authority” fades, Trump may yet resort to “threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But as I predicted back in 2010, it seems quite likely that “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Among the things Trump got right during his first residency in the White House was slapping Congress and the American public upside the head with a two-by-four to finally wake them up and realize that the Communist Party of China (CCP) is not a benign force in the world. This time around, Trump has the advantage of a Congress and an American public nearly unified in their opposition to the CCP, which should make it easier to ramp up the pressure on Beijing, particularly given the Republicans’ clean sweep of the Executive and Legislative branches.

Trump’s “subtlety of a Mack truck”-driven approach to foreign policy stands a good chance of backfiring vis-à-vis American businesses, however, as many of them continue to feed from the Chinese teat. Tens of thousands of American businesses continue to manufacture, import from and/or export to China despite the many hardships associated with COVID-19, the downturn in the Chinese economy and the crackdown on foreign businesses in recent years. Their voices will undoubtedly be heard at the White House as Trump attempts to tighten the noose on Beijing.

Trump’s cabinet and other nominations to date provide ample evidence that he is intent on burning the place down — so why stop at America’s borders? The foreign policy patch-up job Biden attempted to complete over the last four years — during which, many European governments, in particular, silently wondered whether an agreement with Washington was worth the paper it is printed upon — will be quickly eviscerated. An unvarnished foreign policy whose core is nationalism, protectionism and a zero-sum approach to engagement is sure to delight friend and foe alike.

Is China ready for four more years of Trump?

Beijing is certainly ready, with a list of countermeasures aimed at the American government and American businesses. US businesses in China are going to find operating there even more unpleasant for the next four years. The CCP may also be expected to attempt to strengthen its bilateral relationships around the world as America retreats and will undoubtedly find heightened levels of interest, especially in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. The newly inaugurated mega-port in Peru is emblematic of how Beijing continues to use its Belt-and-Road infrastructure projects to strengthen its economic and diplomatic relationships. Trump’s re-election meshes nicely, also, with Beijing’s policy of self-reliance and the Made in China 2025 policy.

But the degree of economic, political and diplomatic malaise in China will also be impacted by Trump’s second term. The Chinese economy could be significantly smaller than official statistics suggest. It is spending more and more to produce less and less. Most of its natural resources are in decline, its workforce is shrinking, Xi’s dictatorial rule has prompted increasing domestic uneasiness, its economy is under growing pressure, and its Asian neighbors are ever ore alarmed by China’s aggressive actions in the region — and they are reacting to it. 

China is exhibiting classic signs of a peaking power. Xi’s crackdowns at home and increasing aggression abroad. The military buildup during peacetime is unprecedented. And China is much more willing to extend its security perimeter and to strengthen its alliances with some of the world’s most detestable regimes.

The Chinese word for crisis (·Éŧľ±ÂáÄ«) contains characters that signify danger (危) and opportunity (ćśş), and Trump 2.0 represents both. Xi will want to use the next four years to de-emphasize China’s many domestic challenges and re-emphasize its growing stature in the world. If one envisions a cessation of the Ukraine and Israel/Gaza/Lebanon/Iran wars in 2025, Xi will feel he has more latitude to further strengthen China’s relationships with Russia, Iran, and Israel. Similarly, he is likely to feel more emboldened to introduce new initiatives to ingratiate China with a broader array of governments in areas where progress has been less pronounced, such as regarding climate change and natural disaster relief.

It seems doubtful that Trump will choose to embrace areas of possible collaboration with China, but we can expect a heightened degree of generalized competition, with an increased potential for conflict. Trump’s presidency will coincide with 2027 — the year Xi has targeted for the Chinese military to be ready to invade Taiwan. Trump will likely be tempted to cut some sort of deal with Xi (as he is so transaction-oriented) to essentially cede Taiwan to Beijing in return for something of substance for America. One can only speculate what that might be, but what seemed impossible only a few years ago seems increasingly possible, if not likely, now.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Iran isn’t the only nation advancing its nuclear capabilities in recent years. In 2019, the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which banned intermediate-range land-based missiles, citing alleged Russian violations and China’s non-involvement. The US is also its nuclear arsenal, with to deploy nuclear weapons in more NATO states and proposals to extend its to Taiwan.

Russia, too, has intensified its nuclear posture, expanding nuclear and updating its on first use. In 2023, the nation in the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which limited US and Russian-deployed nuclear weapons and delivery systems. In 2024, it stationed in Belarus. Russia and China have also deepened their , setting China on a path to rapidly expand its arsenal, as nuclear security collaboration with the US has steadily over the past decade.

The breakdown of diplomacy and rising nuclear brinkmanship among major powers are heightening nuclear insecurity among themselves, but also risk spurring a new nuclear arms race. Alongside Iran, numerous countries maintain the technological infrastructure to quickly build nuclear weapons. Preventing nuclear proliferation would require significant collaboration among major powers, a prospect currently out of reach.

The US detonated the first nuclear weapon in 1945, followed by the Soviet Union in , the United Kingdom in , France in and China in . It became evident that with access to uranium and enrichment technology, nations were increasingly capable of producing nuclear weapons. Though mass production and delivery capabilities were additional hurdles, it was widely expected in the early Cold War that many states would soon join the nuclear club. Israel developed nuclear capabilities in the , India detonated its first bomb in and South Africa built its first by . Other countries, including , , , , and , pursued their own programs.

However, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), enacted in 1968 to curb nuclear spread, led many countries to abandon or dismantle their programs. After the end of the Cold War and under Western pressure, Iraq its nuclear program in 1991. In a historic move, South Africa voluntarily its arsenal in 1994. Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine the nuclear weapons they inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union by 1996, securing international security assurances in exchange.

Nuclear proliferation appeared to be a waning concern, but cracks soon appeared in the non-proliferation framework. Pakistan conducted its first in 1998, followed by North Korea in , bringing the count of nuclear-armed states to nine. Since then, Iran’s nuclear weapons program, initiated in the 1980s, has been a major target of Western non-proliferation efforts.

Nuclear ambitions in the Middle East, Asia and Europe

Iran has a strong reason to persist. Ukraine’s former nuclear arsenal might have deterred Russian aggression in 2014 and 2022. Elsewhere, revolutionary Muammar Gaddafi, who Libya’s nuclear program in 2003, was overthrown by a NATO-led coalition and local forces in 2011. If Iran achieves a functional nuclear weapon, it will lose the ability to leverage its nuclear program as a to extract concessions in negotiations. While a nuclear weapon will represent a new form of leverage, it would also intensify pressure from the US and Israel, both of whom have engaged in a cycle of escalating sometimes deadly confrontations with Iran and its proxies over the past few years.

An Iranian nuclear arsenal could also ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Its relations with Saudi Arabia remain delicate, despite the brokered by China. Saudi officials have they would obtain their own nuclear weapon if Iran acquired them. Saudi Arabia gave significant to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, with the understanding that Pakistan could extend its nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia, or even the latter with one upon request.

Turkey, which hosts US nuclear weapons through NATO’s , signaled a policy shift in 2019 when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan foreign powers for dictating Turkey’s ability to build its own nuclear weapon. Turkey’s growing partnership with Russia in could meanwhile provide it with the enrichment expertise needed to eventually do so.

Middle Eastern tensions are not the only force threatening non-proliferation. Japan’s renewed friction with China, North Korea and Russia over the past decade has intensified Tokyo’s focus on nuclear readiness. Although Japan a nuclear program in the 1940s, it was dismantled after World War II. Japan’s , however, remains measured in months. Despite this, for nuclear weapons remains low, given the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where nuclear bombings in 1945 killed more than 200,000 people.

In contrast, around of South Koreans support developing nuclear weapons. South Korea’s nuclear program began in the 1970s but was under US pressure. However, North Korea’s successful test in 2006 and its severance of , and to the South in the past decade, coupled with the of peaceful reunification in early 2024, have again raised the issue in South Korea.

Taiwan pursued a nuclear weapons program in the 1970s, which similarly under US pressure. Any sign of wavering US commitment to Taiwan, together with China’s growing nuclear capabilities, could prompt Taiwan to revive its efforts. Though less likely, territorial disputes in the South China Sea could also motivate countries like Vietnam and the Philippines to consider developing nuclear capabilities.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has also had significant nuclear implications. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently to the European Council that a nuclear arsenal might be Ukraine’s only deterrent if NATO membership is not offered. Zelenskyy later his comments after they ignited a firestorm of controversy. Yet if Ukraine feels betrayed by its Western partners — particularly if it is forced to concede territory to Russia — it could spur some factions within Ukraine to attempt to secure nuclear capabilities.

The war has also spurred nuclear considerations across Europe. In December 2023, former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer a European nuclear deterrent. Donald Trump’s re-election in the 2024 US presidential election could amplify European concerns over US commitments to NATO, with France having increasingly an independent European nuclear force in recent years.

Nuclear collaboration

Established nuclear powers are unlikely to welcome more countries into their ranks. But while China and Russia don’t necessarily desire this outcome, they recognize the West’s concerns are greater, with Russia doing in the 1990s to prevent its unemployed nuclear scientists from aiding North Korea’s program.

The US has also previously been blindsided by its allies’ nuclear aspirations. US policymakers underestimated Australia’s determination to pursue a nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s, including covert attempts to obtain a weapon from the UK. Similarly, the US was initially of France’s extensive support for Israel’s nuclear development in the 1950s and 1960s.

Smaller countries are also capable of aiding one another’s nuclear ambitions. Argentina offered considerable to Israel’s program, while Israel assisted . Saudi Arabia financed Pakistan’s nuclear development and Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist is of having aided Iran, Libya and North Korea with their programs in the 1980s.

The slippery slope to nuclear conflict

Conflicts involving nuclear weapons states are not without precedent. Egypt and Syria attacked nuclear-armed Israel in 1973 and Argentina faced a nuclear-armed UK in 1982. India and China have clashed over their border on several occasions. Ukraine continues to resist Russian aggression. But conflicts featuring nuclear countries invite dangerous escalation, and the risk grows if a nation with limited conventional military power gains nuclear capabilities; lacking other means of defense or retaliation, it may be more tempted to resort to nuclear weapons as its only viable option.

The costs of maintaining nuclear arsenals are already steep. In 2023, the world’s nine nuclear-armed states spent an estimated managing their programs. But what incentive do smaller countries have to abandon nuclear ambitions entirely, especially when they observe the protection nuclear weapons offer and witness the major powers intensifying their nuclear strategies?

Obtaining the world’s most powerful weapons may be a natural ambition of military and intelligence sectors, but it hinges on the political forces in power as well. In Iran, moderates could counterbalance hardliners, while continued support for Ukraine might prevent more nationalist forces from coming to power there.

Yet an additional country obtaining a nuclear weapon could set off a cascade of others. While larger powers are currently leading the nuclear posturing, smaller countries may see an opportunity amid the disorder. The limited support for the , in effect since 2021, coupled with the collapse of other international treaties, reinforces the lingering allure of nuclear arms even among non-nuclear states. With major powers in open contention, the barriers to nuclear ambitions are already weakening, making it ever harder to dissuade smaller nations from pursuing the ultimate deterrent.

[, a project of the Independent Media Institute, produced this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Recent events illustrate the rising tensions of the new Cold War in the Pacific. From June to September of this year, the Chinese and Russian militaries conducted joint maneuvers that ranged from live-fire in the South China Sea to air patrols circling Japan and even US airspace in . To respond to what Moscow “rising geopolitical tension around the world,” such actions culminated last month in a joint Chinese–Russian that mobilized 400 ships, 120 aircraft and 90,000 troops in a vast arc from the Baltic Sea across the Arctic to the northern Pacific Ocean. While kicking off such monumental maneuvers with China, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the US of “trying to maintain its global military and political dominance at any cost” by “increasing [its] military presence… in the Asia-Pacific region.”

“China is not a future threat,” US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall in September. “China is a threat today.” Over the past 15 years, Beijing’s ability to project power in the Western Pacific, he claimed, had risen to alarming levels. He said the likelihood of war was “increasing” and, he predicted, it will only “continue to do so.” An anonymous senior Pentagon official that China “continues to be the only U.S. competitor with the intent and… the capability to overturn the rules-based infrastructure that has kept peace in the Indo-Pacific since the end of the Second World War.”

Indeed, regional tensions in the Pacific have profound global implications. For the past 80 years, an island chain of military bastions running from Japan to Australia has served as a crucial fulcrum for US global power. To ensure that it will be able to continue to anchor its “defense” on that strategic shoal, Washington has recently added new overlapping alliances while encouraging a massive militarization of the Indo–Pacific region. Though bristling with armaments and seemingly strong, this ad hoc Western coalition may yet prove, like NATO in Europe, vulnerable to sudden setbacks from rising partisan pressures, both in the US and among its allies.

Building a Pacific bastion

For well over a century, the US has struggled to secure its vulnerable western frontier from Pacific threats. During the early decades of the 20th century, Washington maneuvered against a rising Japanese presence in the region. These actions produced geopolitical tensions that led to Tokyo’s attack on the US naval bastion at Pearl Harbor that began World War II in the Pacific. After fighting for four years and suffering nearly 300,000 casualties, the US defeated Japan and won unchallenged control of the entire region.

Aware that the advent of the long-range bomber and the future possibility of atomic warfare had rendered the historic concept of coastal defense irrelevant, in the post-war years Washington extended its North American “defenses” deep into the Western Pacific. Starting with the expropriation of 100 Japanese military bases, the US built its initial postwar Pacific naval bastions at Okinawa and, thanks to a 1947 agreement, at Subic Bay in the Philippines. As the Cold War engulfed Asia in 1950 with the beginning of the Korean conflict, the US extended those bases for 5,000 miles along the entire Pacific littoral through mutual-defense agreements with five Asia–Pacific allies: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Australia.

For the next 40 years to the very end of the Cold War, the Pacific littoral remained the geopolitical fulcrum of US global power, allowing it to defend North America and dominate Eurasia. In many ways, the US geopolitical position astride the axial ends of Eurasia would prove the key to its ultimate victory in the Cold War.

After the Cold War

Once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Cold War ended, Washington cashed in its peace dividend, weakening that once-strong island chain. Between 1998 and 2014, the US Navy from 333 ships to 271. That 20% reduction, combined with a shift to long-term deployments in the Middle East, degraded the Navy’s position in the Pacific. Even so, for the 20 years following the Cold War, the US would enjoy what the Pentagon “uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain. We could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, operate how we wanted.”

After the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, Washington turned from heavy-metal strategic forces to mobile infantry readily deployed for counterterror operations against lightly armed guerrillas. After a decade of fighting misbegotten wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington was stunned when a rising China began to turn its economic gains into a serious bid for global power. As its opening gambit, Beijing started in the South China Sea, where oil and natural gas deposits are . It also began expanding its navy, an unexpected challenge that the once-all-powerful US Pacific command was remarkably ill-prepared to meet.

In response, in 2011, President Barack Obama a strategic “pivot to Asia” before the Australian parliament and began rebuilding the US military position on the Pacific littoral. After withdrawing some forces from Iraq in 2012 and refusing to commit significant numbers of troops for regime change in Syria, the Obama White House a battalion of Marines to Darwin in northern Australia in 2014. In quick succession, Washington gained access to five near the South China Sea and a new South Korean naval base at on the Yellow Sea. According to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, to operate those installations, the Pentagon to “forward base 60 percent of our naval assets in the Pacific by 2020.” Nonetheless, the unending insurgency in Iraq continued to slow the pace of that strategic pivot to the Pacific.

Despite such setbacks, senior diplomatic and military officials, working under three different administrations, launched a long-term effort to slowly rebuild the US military posture in the Asia–Pacific region. After “a return to great power competition” in 2016, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson that China’s “growing and modernized fleet” was “shrinking” the traditional US advantage in the region. “The competition is on,” the admiral warned, adding, “We must shake off any vestiges of comfort or complacency.”

Responding to such pressure, the administration of President Donald Trump added the construction of 46 new ships to the Pentagon , which was to raise the total fleet to 326 vessels by 2023. Support ships aside, when it came to an actual “fighting force,” by 2024 China had the world’s with 234 “warships.” The US deployed only 219, with Chinese combat capacity, according to US Naval Intelligence, “increasingly of comparable quality to U.S. ships.”

Paralleling the military build-up, the State Department reinforced the US position on the Pacific littoral by negotiating three relatively new diplomatic agreements with Asia–Pacific allies Australia, Britain, India and the Philippines. Though those ententes added some depth and resilience to the US posture, the truth is that this Pacific network may ultimately prove more susceptible to political rupture than a formal multilateral alliance like NATO.

Military cooperation with the Philippines

After nearly a century as close allies through decades of colonial rule, two world wars and the Cold War, US relations with the Philippines suffered a severe setback in 1991. That country’s senate refused to renew a long-term military bases agreement, forcing the US 7th Fleet out of its massive naval base at Subic Bay.

After just three years, however, China occupied some shoals also claimed by the Philippines in the South China Sea during a raging typhoon. Within a decade, the Chinese had started transforming them into a network of military bases, while pressing their claims to most of the rest of the South China Sea. Manila’s only response was to a rusting World War II naval vessel on Ayungin shoal in the Spratly Islands, where Filipino soldiers had to fish for their supper. With its external defense in tatters, in April 2014 the Philippines an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with Washington. This allowed the US military quasi-permanent facilities at five Filipino bases, including two on the shores of the South China Sea.

Although Manila won a from the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague that Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea were “,” China dismissed that decision and continued to build its bases there. And when Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines in 2016, he revealed a new policy that included a “separation” from the US and a toward China. That country rewarded the policy with promises of massive developmental aid. By 2018, however, China’s army was anti-aircraft missiles, mobile missile launchers and military radar on five artificial “islands” in the Spratly archipelago that it had built from sand its dredgers sucked from the seabed.

Once Duterte left office, as China’s Coast Guard harassed Filipino fishermen and blasted Philippine naval vessels with water cannons in their own territory, Manila once again started calling on Washington for help. Soon, US Navy vessels were conducting “freedom of navigation” patrols in Philippine waters and the two nations had staged their biggest ever. In the April 2024 edition of that exercise, the US deployed its mobile Typhon Mid-Range capable of hitting China’s coast, sparking a bitter from Beijing that such weaponry “intensifies geopolitical confrontation.”

Manila has matched its new commitment to the US alliance with an unprecedented rearmament program of its own. Just last spring, it signed a $400 million deal with Tokyo to five new Coast Guard cutters, started receiving Brahmos from India under a $375 million contract and continued a billion-dollar deal with South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries that will produce ten new naval vessels. After the government a $35 billion military modernization plan, Manila has been negotiating with Korean to procure modern jet fighters. This is a far cry from a decade earlier when it had no operational .

Showing the scope of the country’s reintegration into the Western alliance, just last month Manila hosted joint freedom of navigation in the South China Sea with ships from five allied nations: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines and the US.

Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the AUKUS alliance

While the Philippine Defense Agreement renewed US relations with an old Pacific ally, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving Australia, India, Japan and the US, first launched in 2007, has now extended US military power into the Indian Ocean. At the 2017 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Manila, four conservative national leaders led by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump decided to the “Quad” entente (after a decade-long hiatus while Australia’s Labour Party governments cozied up to China).

Just last month, President Joe Biden hosted a “” where the four leaders agreed to expand joint air operations. In a hot-mike moment, Biden bluntly : “China continues to behave aggressively, testing us all across the region. It is true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South Asia, and the Taiwan Straits.” China’s Foreign Ministry : “The U.S. is lying through its teeth” and needs to “get rid of its obsession with perpetuating its supremacy and containing China.”

Since 2020, however, the Quad has made the annual Malabar in India into an elaborate four-power drill in which aircraft carrier battle groups maneuver in waters ranging from the Arabian Sea to the East China Sea. To contest “China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region,” India that the latest exercise this October would feature live-fire maneuvers in the Bay of Bengal, led by its flagship aircraft carrier and a complement of MiG-29K all-weather jet fighters. Clearly, as Modi it, the Quad is “here to stay.”

While the Trump administration revived the Quad, the Biden White House has promoted a complementary and controversial AUKUS defense compact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the US (part of what Michael Klare has called the “” of US foreign and military policy). After months of secret negotiations, their leaders that agreement in September 2021 as a way to fulfill “a shared ambition to support Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy.”

Such a goal sparked howls of diplomatic protests. Angry over the sudden loss of a $90 billion contract to supply 12 French submarines to Australia, France the decision “a stab in the back” and immediately its ambassadors from both Canberra and Washington. With equal speed, China’s Foreign Ministry the new alliance for “severely damaging regional peace… and intensifying the arms race.” In a pointed remark, Beijing’s official Global Times newspaper said Australia had now “turned itself into an adversary of China.”

To achieve extraordinary prosperity, thanks in significant part to its iron ore and other exports to China, Australia had exited the Quad entente for nearly a decade. Through this single defense decision, Australia has allied itself firmly with the US. It will to British submarine designs and top-secret US nuclear propulsion, joining the elite ranks of just six powers with such complex technology.

Australia will spend a monumental to build eight nuclear submarines at its Adelaide shipyards over a decade. Additionally, it will host four US Virginia-class nuclear subs at a naval base in Western Australia and buy as many as five of those stealthy submarines from the US in the early 2030s. Under the tripartite alliance with the US and Britain, Canberra will also face additional costs for the joint development of undersea drones, hypersonic missiles and quantum sensing. Through that stealthy arms deal, Washington has seemingly won a major geopolitical and military ally in any future conflict with China.

Stand-off along the Pacific littoral

Just as Russia’s aggression in Ukraine strengthened the NATO alliance, so China’s challenge in the fossil-fuel-rich South China Sea and elsewhere has helped the US rebuild its island bastions along the Pacific littoral. Through a sedulous courtship under three successive administrations, Washington has won back two wayward allies: Australia and the Philippines. They are once again anchors for an island chain that remains the geopolitical fulcrum for US global power in the Pacific.

Still, with more than 200 times the ship-building capacity of the US, China’s in warships will almost certainly continue to grow. In compensating for such a future deficit, the US’s four active allies along the Pacific littoral will likely play a critical role. (Japan’s navy has more than 50 warships and South Korea’s 30 more.)

Despite such renewed strength in what is distinctly becoming a new cold war, the US’s Asia–Pacific alliances face both immediate challenges and a fraught future. Beijing is already putting relentless pressure on Taiwan’s sovereignty, breaching that island’s airspace and crossing the median line in the Taiwan Straits monthly. If Beijing turns those breaches into a crippling embargo of Taiwan, the US Navy will face a hard choice between losing a carrier or two in a confrontation with China or backing off. Either way, the loss of Taiwan would sever the US’s island chain in the Pacific littoral, pushing it back to a “second island chain” in the mid-Pacific.

As for that fraught future, the maintenance of such alliances requires a kind of national political will that is by no means assured in an age of populist nationalism. In the Philippines, the anti-US nationalism that Duterte personified retains its appeal and may well be adopted by some future leader. More immediately in Australia, the current has already faced strong dissent from members blasting the AUKUS entente as a dangerous transgression of their country’s sovereignty. And in the US, Republican populism, whether Trump’s or that of a future leader like J.D. Vance could curtail cooperation with such Asia–Pacific allies, simply walk away from a costly conflict over Taiwan or deal directly with China in a way that would undercut that web of hard-won alliances.

And that, of course, might be the good news given the possibility that growing Chinese aggressiveness in the region and a US urge to strengthen a military alliance ominously encircling that country could threaten to turn the latest Cold War ever hotter. This would transform the Pacific into a genuine powder keg and could lead to a war that would, in our present world, be almost unimaginably destructive.

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The DPP’s main rival is the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang party. The Kuomintang once ruled mainland China but evacuated to the island of Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese Civil War to Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Kuomintang claimed to be the rightful government of the entire Republic of China (RoC) and vowed one day to return to the mainland. To this day, the official name of Taiwan is still “Republic of China.”

The Kuomintang established an authoritarian rule over their new island home which lasted for decades. During the 1980s and 1990s, however, Taiwan democratized. Unlike the CCP-ruled mainland, Taiwan today boasts a robust multiparty democracy.

The Kuomintang has long since abandoned dreams of rescuing the mainland from communism by force. Still, they see themselves as Chinese, hope one day to achieve a peaceful reunification of China and seek to maintain cordial relations with the mainland.

In contrast, the DPP believes that Taiwan and China are two separate nations. In the mainstream DPP view, the Republic of China is Taiwan, an independent nation distinct from mainland China. They favor closer ties with Washington and seek to distance Taipei from Beijing. Thus, Zhongnanhai views the DPP, and Lai in particular, with hostility.

Taiwan’s new president is weaker

Lai identifies himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence.” In his May 20, 2024 inauguration speech, Lai demonstrated a departure from Tsai’s approach, signaling a more assertive stance on Taiwanese sovereignty.

Beijing saw Lai’s speech as a provocation and, three days later, launched two days of intensive military exercises around Taiwan. These maneuvers, labeled by the Chinese military as “strong punishment” for Taiwan’s “separatist acts,” marked a significant escalation in cross-strait tensions. The exercises were not limited to the vicinity of Taiwan’s main island but extended to target Taipei-controlled islands such as Kinmen, Matsu, Wuqiu, and Dongyin for the first time. These islands lie close to the Chinese coast, according to maps released by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) distrusts Lai and is using these exercises to send Lai a clear signal. 

Despite Beijing’s firm stance, immediate escalation appears unlikely. Although the DPP kept control of the presidency in this year’s elections, it lost its majority in the legislature. The Kuomintang now controls three more seats than the DPP does. Thus, Beijing perceives Lai as potentially wielding less influence than Tsai.

Lai is clearly weaker than his predecessor. He took the presidency with 40% of the vote; in 2016 and 2020, Tsai had dominated with 56% and 57%, respectively.

With the DPP losing its majority in the Legislative Yuan, Lai confronts significant challenges in advancing his agenda. In May, the Kuomintang joined with the third party, the Taiwan People’s Party, to pass a controversial reform bill. This legislation significantly enhances the Legislative Yuan’s authority to oversee the executive; to interrogate officials, military figures and citizens; and to demand documentation. Tens of thousands of protestors filled the streets of Taipei, calling the reforms unconstitutional. Lawmakers engaged in scuffles on the Legislative Yuan floor. Amid incidents of inter-party violence on the street, Taiwan’s future political trajectory remains uncertain.

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Great Britain confronted serious colonial crises in India, Iran and Palestine before plunging headlong into the and imperial collapse in 1956. In the later years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union faced its own challenges in Czechoslovakia, Egypt and Ethiopia before crashing into a brick wall in its war in .

America’s post-Cold War victory lap suffered its own crisis early in this century with disastrous invasions of and . Now, looming just over history’s horizon are three more imperial crises in Gaza, Taiwan and Ukraine that could cumulatively turn a slow imperial recessional into an all-too-rapid decline, if not collapse.

As a start, let’s put the very idea of an imperial crisis in perspective. The history of every empire, ancient or modern, has always involved a succession of crises — usually mastered in the empire’s earlier years, only to be ever more disastrously mishandled in its era of decline. Right after World War II, when the United States became history’s most powerful empire, Washington’s leaders skillfully handled just such crises in Greece, Berlin, Italy and France, and somewhat less skillfully but not disastrously in a Korean War that never quite officially ended.

Even after the dual disasters of a bungled covert invasion of Cuba in 1961 and a conventional war in Vietnam that went all too disastrously awry in the 1960s and early 1970s, Washington proved capable of recalibrating effectively enough to outlast the Soviet Union, “win” the Cold War and become the “lone superpower” on this planet.

In both success and failure, crisis management usually entails a delicate balance between domestic politics and global geopolitics. President John F. Kennedy’s White House, manipulated by the CIA into the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, managed to recover its political balance sufficiently to check the Pentagon and achieve a of the dangerous 1962 Cuban missile crisis with the Soviet Union.

America’s current plight, however, can be traced at least in part to a growing imbalance between a domestic politics that appears to be coming apart at the seams and a series of challenging global upheavals. Whether in Gaza, Ukraine or even Taiwan, the Washington of President Joe Biden is clearly failing to align domestic political constituencies with the empire’s international interests. And in each case, crisis mismanagement has only been compounded by errors that have accumulated in the decades since the Cold War’s end, turning each crisis into a conundrum without an easy resolution or perhaps any resolution at all. Both individually and collectively, then, the mishandling of these crises is likely to prove a significant marker of America’s ultimate decline as a global power, both at home and abroad.

Creeping disaster in Ukraine

Since the closing months of the Cold War, mismanaging relations with Ukraine has been a curiously bipartisan project. As the Soviet Union began breaking up in 1991, Washington focused on ensuring that Moscow’s arsenal of possibly nuclear warheads was secure, particularly the atomic weapons then stored in Ukraine, which also had the largest Soviet nuclear weapons plant at Dnipropetrovsk.

During an August 1991 visit, President George H.W. Bush told Ukrainian Prime Minister Leonid Kravchuk that he could not support Ukraine’s future independence and gave what became known as his “chicken Kiev” speech, : “Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.” He would, however, soon recognize Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as independent states since they didn’t have nuclear weapons.

When the Soviet Union finally imploded in December 1991, Ukraine instantly became the world’s third-largest nuclear power, though it had no way to actually deliver most of those atomic weapons. To persuade Ukraine to transfer its nuclear warheads to Moscow, Washington launched three years of multilateral negotiations, while giving Kyiv “assurances” (but not “guarantees”) of its future security — the diplomatic equivalent of a personal check drawn on a bank account with a zero balance.

Under the on Security in December 1994, three former Soviet republics — Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine — signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and started transferring their atomic weapons to Russia. Simultaneously, Russia, the US and Great Britain agreed to respect the sovereignty of the three signatories and refrain from using such weaponry against them. Everyone present, however, seemed to understand that the agreement was, at best, tenuous. (One Ukrainian diplomat the Americans that he had “no illusions that the Russians would live up to the agreements they signed.”)

Meanwhile — and this should sound familiar today — Russian President Boris Yeltsin raged against Washington’s plans to expand NATO further, accusing President Bill Clinton of moving from a Cold War to a “cold peace.” Right after that conference, Defense Secretary William Perry Clinton, point blank, that “a wounded Moscow would lash out in response to NATO expansion.”

Nonetheless, once those former Soviet republics were safely disarmed of their nuclear weapons, Clinton agreed to begin admitting new members to NATO, launching a relentless eastward march toward Russia that continued under his successor George W. Bush. It came to include three former Soviet satellites: the Czech Republic Hungary, and Poland (1999); three former Soviet Republics: Estonia Latvia, and Lithuania (2004); and then three more former satellites: Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia (2004). At the Bucharest summit in 2008, moreover, the alliance’s 26 members that, at some unspecified point, Ukraine and Georgia, too, would “become members of NATO.” In other words, having pushed NATO right up to the Ukrainian border, Washington seemed oblivious to the possibility that Russia might feel in any way threatened and react by annexing that nation to create its own security corridor.

In those years, Washington also came to believe that it could transform Russia into a functioning democracy to be fully integrated into a still-developing American world order. Yet for more than 200 years, Russia’s governance had been autocratic, and every ruler from Catherine the Great to Leonid Brezhnev achieved domestic stability through incessant foreign expansion. So, it should hardly have been surprising when the seemingly endless expansion of NATO led Russia’s latest autocrat, Vladimir Putin, to the Crimean Peninsula in March 2014, only weeks after hosting the Winter Olympics.

In an interview soon after Moscow annexed that area of Ukraine, US President Barack Obama the geopolitical reality that could yet consign all of that land to Russia’s orbit, saying: “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”

Then, in February 2022, after years of low-intensity fighting in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, Putin sent 200,000 mechanized troops to capture the country’s capital, Kyiv, and establish that very “military domination.” At first, as the Ukrainians surprisingly fought off the Russians, Washington and the West reacted with a striking resolve — cutting Europe’s energy imports from Russia, imposing serious sanctions on Moscow, expanding NATO to all of Scandinavia and dispatching an impressive arsenal of armaments to Ukraine.

After two years of never-ending war, however, cracks have appeared in the anti-Russian coalition, indicating that Washington’s global clout has declined markedly since its Cold War glory days. After 30 years of free-market growth, Russia’s resilient economy has weathered sanctions, its oil exports have found , and its gross domestic product is to grow a healthy 2.6% this year. In last spring and summer’s fighting season, a Ukrainian “counteroffensive” failed and the war is, in the view of both Russian and Ukrainian , at least “stalemated,” if not now beginning to turn in Russia’s favor.

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Most critically, US support for Ukraine is faltering. After successfully rallying the NATO alliance to stand with Ukraine, the Biden White House the American arsenal to provide Kyiv with a stunning array of weaponry, totaling $46 billion, that gave its smaller army a technological edge on the battlefield. But now, in a move with historic implications, part of the Republican (or rather Trumpublican) Party has broken with the bipartisan foreign policy that sustained American global power since the Cold War began. For weeks, the Republican-led House has even to consider President Biden’s latest $60 billion aid package for Ukraine, contributing to Kyiv’s recent reverses on the battlefield.

The Republican Party’s rupture starts with its leader. In the view of former White House adviser Fiona Hill, Donald Trump was so to Vladimir Putin during “the now legendarily disastrous press conference” at Helsinki in 2018 that critics were convinced “the Kremlin held sway over the American president.” But the problem goes so much deeper. As The New York Times columnist David Brooks recently, the Republican Party’s historic “isolationism is still on the march.” Indeed, between March 2022 and December 2023, the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of Republicans who think the US gives “too much support” to Ukraine from just 9% to a whopping 48%. Asked to explain the trend, Brooks that “Trumpian populism does represent some very legitimate values: the fear of imperial overreach… [and] the need to protect working-class wages from the pressures of globalization.”

Since Trump represents this deeper trend, his hostility toward NATO has taken on an added significance. His recent remarks that he would Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO ally that didn’t pay its fair share sent shockwaves across Europe, forcing key allies to what such an alliance would be like without the United States (even as Russian President Vladimir Putin, undoubtedly sensing a weakening of US resolve, Europe with nuclear war). All of this is certainly signaling to the world that Washington’s global leadership is now anything but a certainty.

Crisis in Gaza

Just as in Ukraine, decades of diffident American leadership, compounded by increasingly chaotic domestic politics, let the Gaza crisis spin out of control. At the close of the Cold War, when the Middle East was momentarily disentangled from great-power politics, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization the 1993 Oslo Accord. In it, they agreed to create the Palestinian Authority as the first step toward a two-state solution. For the next two decades, however, Washington’s ineffectual initiatives failed to break the deadlock between that Authority and successive Israeli governments that prevented any progress toward such a solution.

In 2005, Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to withdraw his defense forces and 25 Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip with of improving “Israel’s security and international status.” Within two years, however, Hamas militants had in Gaza, ousting the Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas. In 2009, the controversial Benjamin Netanyahu started his nearly continuous 15-year stretch as Israel’s prime minister and soon discovered the as a political foil to block the two-state solution he so abhorred.

Not surprisingly then, the day after last year’s tragic October 7 Hamas attack, theTimes of Israel this headline: “For Years Netanyahu Propped Up Hamas. Now It’s Blown Up in Our Faces.” In her lead piece, senior political correspondent Tal Schneider reported: “For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.”

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This Is Not an “Ordinary” Israel–Hamas Conflict

On October 18, with the Israeli bombing of Gaza already inflicting severe casualties on Palestinian civilians, President Biden flew to Tel Aviv for a meeting with Netanyahu that would prove eerily reminiscent of Trump’s Helsinki press conference with Putin. After Netanyahu the president for drawing “a clear line between the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism,” Biden endorsed that Manichean view by condemning Hamas for “evils and atrocities that make ISIS look somewhat more rational” and promised to provide the weaponry Israel needed “as they respond to these attacks.” Biden said nothing about Netanyahu’s previous arm’s length or the two-state solution. Instead, the Biden White House began vetoing ceasefire proposals at the U.N. while , among other weaponry, 15,000 bombs to Israel, including the behemoth 2,000-pound “bunker busters” that were soon flattening Gaza’s high-rise buildings with increasingly heavy civilian casualties.

After five months of arms shipments to Israel, three U.N. ceasefire vetoes, and nothing to stop Netanyahu’s plan for an of Gaza instead of a two-state solution, Biden has damaged American diplomatic leadership in the Middle East and much of the world. In November and again in February, massive calling for peace in Gaza in Berlin, London, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Istanbul, and Dakar, among other places.

Moreover, the relentless rise in civilian deaths in Gaza, striking numbers of them , has Biden’s domestic support in constituencies that were critical for his win in 2020 — including Arab-Americans in the key swing state of Michigan, African-Americans nationwide, and younger voters more generally. To heal the breach, Biden is now for a negotiated cease-fire. In an inept intertwining of international and domestic politics, the president has given Netanyahu, a natural ally of Donald Trump, the opportunity for an October surprise of more devastation in Gaza that could rip the Democratic coalition apart and thereby increase the chances of a Trump win in November — with fatal consequences for US global power.

Trouble in the Taiwan Strait

While Washington is preoccupied with Gaza and Ukraine, it may also be at the threshold of a serious crisis in the Taiwan Straits. Beijing’s relentless pressure on the island of Taiwan continues unabated. Following the incremental strategy that it’s used since 2014 to secure a half-dozen in the South China Sea, Beijing is moving to Taiwan’s sovereignty. Its breaches of the island’s airspace have increased from 400 in 2020 to 1,700 in 2023. Similarly, Chinese warships have crossed the median line in the Taiwan Straits 300 times since August 2022, effectively erasing it. As commentator Ben Lewis warned, “There soon may be no lines left for China to cross.”

After recognizing Beijing as “the sole legal Government of China” in 1979, Washington to “acknowledge” that Taiwan was part of China. At the same time, however, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, requiring “that the United States maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force… that would jeopardize the security… of the people on Taiwan.”

Related Reading

What’s Going to Happen to Taiwan Now?

Such all-American ambiguity seemed manageable until October 2022 when Chinese President Xi Jinping the 20th Communist Party Congress that “reunification must be realized” and refused “to renounce the use of force” against Taiwan. In a fateful counterpoint, President Biden , as recently as September 2022, that the US would defend Taiwan “if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.”

But Beijing could cripple Taiwan several steps short of that “unprecedented attack” by turning those air and sea transgressions into a that would peacefully divert all Taiwan-bound cargo to mainland China. With the island’s major ports at Taipei and Kaohsiung facing the Taiwan Straits, any American warships trying to break that embargo would face a lethal swarm of nuclear submarines, jet aircraft, and ship-killing missiles.

Given the near-certain loss of two or three aircraft carriers, the US Navy would likely back off and Taiwan would be forced to negotiate the terms of its reunification with Beijing. Such a humiliating reversal would send a clear signal that, after 80 years, American dominion over the Pacific had finally ended, inflicting another major blow to US global hegemony.

Washington now finds itself facing three complex global crises, each demanding its undivided attention. Any one of them would challenge the skills of even the most seasoned diplomat. Their simultaneity places the US in the unenviable position of potential reverses in all three at once, even as its politics at home threaten to head into an era of chaos. Playing upon American domestic divisions, the protagonists in Beijing, Moscow, and Tel Aviv are all holding a long hand (or at least a potentially longer one than Washington’s) and hoping to win by default when the US tires of the game. As the incumbent, President Biden must bear the burden of any reversal, with the consequent political damage this November.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings, Donald Trump may try to escape such foreign entanglements and their political cost by reverting to the Republican Party’s historic isolationism, even as he ensures that the former lone superpower of Planet Earth could come apart at the seams in the wake of election 2024. If so, in such a distinctly quagmire world, American global hegemony would fade with surprising speed, soon becoming little more than a distant memory.

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Then there are borders, the cement that holds together the international order. Nation-states are the building blocks of that order, so the borders that separate them function as a mysterious force that keeps countries apart and yet allows them to come together in the United Nations and other global institutions.

Borders are essential to trade, transport and tourism. They are hostile to migrants and refugees. And they also a collectively agreed-upon fiction. All borders are artificial, forged through war, colonialism and domination.

Yet if borders suddenly had no meaning, powerful countries would invade their neighbors and seize the land they covet. Of course, some countries haven’t waited for the international order to collapse to make this happen.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was, among other things, a blatant violation of an international border. The October 7 raid by Hamas and the subsequent war unleashed by the Israeli army in Gaza both violated a border, which technically divides two entities, not two separate countries. Near the end of 2023, it even looked as though Venezuela were a part of Guyana that it has long considered its own territory.

It’s no surprise, then, that the recent election of Lai Ching-te as Taiwan’s new president has been greeted by some observers as a triggering event. This year, they say, mainland China will finally follow through on its persistent threats and an all-out invasion of Taiwan. According to this scenario, Beijing has noted that while the Russian and Israeli aggressions have generated international outcry and even some serious global pushback, it’s nothing that either country can’t withstand.

In the lead-up to Taiwan’s elections this month, tensions in fact have been mounting across the Taiwan Strait. Should Taiwan declare sovereign independence from the mainland, effectively establishing a de jure border between the two, Beijing may well respond aggressively. “Many American officials believe that Beijing would indeed launch an invasion of the island should the Taiwanese declare their independence and that, in turn, could easily result in U.S. military intervention and a full-scale war,” military affairs analyst Michael Klare.

For the time being, however, the game of pretend continues. The international community treats Taiwan in many ways as a sovereign country but pretends that there is only “one China.” Although it continues to lose diplomatic support — Nauru just recognition to Beijing, which brings the total for Taipei down to a meager dozen — Taiwan continues to press for membership in global institutions as though it were a sovereign entity. Beijing treats Taiwan as simply an unincorporated territory with delusions of grandeur.

The wars currently dominating the headlines were not exactly surprises. Russia gave plenty of notice of its intentions to intervene in Ukraine and indeed had already absorbed the Crimean peninsula and parts of the Donbas back in 2014. Israel launched four significant attacks on Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021.

Mainland China, for its part, has that reunification is “inevitable” and that the two sides face a stark choice between war and peace. Military drills near Taiwan last year were designed, to Beijing officials, to counter the “arrogance” of separatists, and numerous aircraft from the mainland have the informal border that runs down the middle of the Taiwan Strait.

So, will the erosion of international norms and escalation of threats from Beijing necessarily lead to war with China in 2024?

The recent elections

In Taiwan’s flourishing democracy, two main parties have contested for power over the last few decades. The Kuomintang (KMT) prefers closer rapprochement with the mainland, while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) edges more toward independence. With Lai Ching-te as its presidential candidate, the DPP just won an unprecedented third consecutive presidential term.

You’d think that the mainland would have gotten used to the DPP at this point, after eight years in power. But for some reason, Beijing looks at Lai Ching-te differently.

A former doctor who became in rapid succession a legislator, mayor and vice-president, Lai is now a political veteran. When he started out in politics, he was an ardent supporter of Taiwanese independence. But that as he rose through the ranks. He now says that he’s comfortable with the current status quo, by which he means his country’s de facto independence.

This is a pragmatic approach not only with respect to Beijing but domestic politics as well. Although the DPP won the presidential election this month, it lost its parliamentary majority. It now has one fewer seat than the KMT. This means that a third party with 8 seats will hold a pivotal position in determining actual policies.

This third party, the relatively new center-left Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), takes a position somewhere between the DPP and the KMT on the question of sovereignty. Indeed, the party’s official color is turquoise, a pointed reference to the longstanding struggle between the forces of green (KMT) and blue (DPP). TPP leader and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je himself during the election campaign as “the only person who is acceptable to both China and the United States. This is currently my biggest advantage.”

Generally, Washington and Taipei see eye to eye. After all, the United States has long shipped arms to the island, with the latest package from August totaling . Between 1980 and 2010, Taiwan received in arms shipments.

At the same time, the United States has adhered to the “one China” policy, which Joe Biden just after the election when he said, “We do not support Taiwan independence.” At the same time, however, US politicians have been traveling to Taiwan more often, with even Ed Markey leading a delegation there to warn Beijing of US support for the island.

The lion’s share of the Pentagon’s budget is devoted to buying the big weapons systems — jets, carriers, space weapons — to counter a major rival like China. But that doesn’t mean that Washington wants a war with China. Quite the opposite, given military commitments to Ukraine, the increased demands from Israel and now the on the Houthis in and around the Red Sea.

But, of course, most wars are not planned in advance.

What Taiwan wants

Taiwanese identity has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Back in 1992, only 17% of the population as “Taiwanese,” compared to 25% who called themselves “Chinese.” Another 46% said that they were “both Chinese and Taiwanese.”

Today, more than 62% of those surveyed say that they’re “Taiwanese.” And the number who call themselves “Chinese” has dropped all the way to 2.5%. A strong driver of this transformation is demographic, with the dying off of the generation that either came over from the mainland with the Kuomintang forces or still harbored hopes of returning there at some point.

Despite this greater sense of a separate identity, Taiwan’s fate is still inextricably tied to the mainland. Consider the economic interdependence of the two. As the Taiwan government itself likes to boast, the country invested into the mainland between 1991 and 2022 while cross-strait trade in 2022 totaled $205 billion. The mainland is actually Taiwan’s trade partner, responsible for 22% of total trade.

However, as with the decoupling taking place between the United States and China, cross-strait economic relations seem to be changing as well. Taiwanese investments in the mainland to a 20-year low in 2023, though this reflects more the rising costs of labor in China than any specifically political decision to invest elsewhere.

The mainland remains dependent on one key Taiwanese export: semiconductors. Taiwan has practically cornered the market, particularly on the most advanced chips used for AI and quantum computing, where it controls of the trade. US controls on technology transfer to China have ensured that the mainland, though it would prefer to achieve self-sufficiency in this regard, still needs to import these chips from Taiwan.

The Taiwanese, meanwhile, are well aware of the fate of Hong Kong. The residents of this ±đ˛ÔłŮ°ů±đ±čĂ´łŮ, which reverted to China’s control in 1997, thought they would be able to run their own democratic institutions until at least 2047, according to provisions in the handover agreement. The on the Hong Kong protest movement in 2021, sending protesters to jail or to exile in places like Taiwan, called into question Beijing’s commitment to “one country, two systems.” The forced absorption of Hong Kong has strengthened the independence movement in Taiwan and, on top of the consolidation of a distinct Taiwanese identity, led to the three-term success of the DPP.

The current status quo, for Taiwan, has translated into a stable democracy, a vibrant civil society, a per-capita GDP to South Korea and Japan and a mutually prosperous arrangement with Beijing. On the negative side, Taiwan spends a lot on its military — of GDP with a record expenditure in 2023 — and has to endure a steady diet of threats from Beijing.

Plus, only a dozen other countries, most of them miniscule, treat Taiwan like an authentic nation. No seat in the UN, no membership in the World Bank, no participation in the World Health Organization: That’s the price Taiwan has to pay for this belittling status quo.

The meaning of those land grabs

Although Beijing might dismiss the international outcry against Russia and Israel as relatively insignificant, it has paid close attention to how effectively Ukraine has fought back against Russian occupiers. Although Taiwan is tiny compared to Ukraine and China’s military is considerably more sophisticated than Russia’s, it would be no easy task for China to gobble up Taiwan.

Sending a sufficient force across the Taiwan Strait, for instance, would be extraordinarily , particularly under a rain of missiles from Taiwan. The terrain makes landings difficult, and there are few routes from the east coast to the rest of the island. The preparations for such an amphibious assault would be relatively easy to monitor. Also, China hasn’t fought a war in many decades; who knows how its troops would fare under hostile conditions. The embarrassing retreat of the Russian army after it failed to seize Kyiv serves as a warning to hawks in Beijing.

But leaders sometimes do crazy things. And China has the option of threatening a devastating aerial assault, up to and including nuclear weapons, to force Taiwan to capitulate without a shot fired.

China’s ultimate calculation may come down to what’s happening around other border conflicts and whether the world is on the verge of a land grab free-for-all. In addition to what’s happening in Ukraine and Gaza, Saudi Arabia is territory in Yemen, Turkey to remain militarily active in northern Syria, and countries desperate to soil for growing food or their carbon credit accounts are engaged in numerous mercantile land grabs.

Climate change is also contributing to the general feeling that “the world is going to the dogs, so I’m going to get what I can while I can.” As it disappears under the rising waves, land has become a more valuable commodity. Land hunger was behind the terrifying settler movements of the past — the westward expansion and dispossession of Native Americans in the United States, the colonial enterprises of the nineteenth century throughout the Global South, the Nazi attempt to create a larger lebensraum for Germans. Today, the hunger remains, though the rationales have shifted to securing food supplies, sufficient “critical raw materials” for energy transitions and carbon sinks to balance high levels of emissions in the home countries.

Taiwan faces a number of challenges that have nothing to do with the mainland. Its population in 2019, and it has the fertility rate in the world. As an island, it is particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise, alongside increasing fresh-water as a result of changing monsoon patterns.

Cooperation with the mainland and the international community on these issues is essential. The status quo — little engagement across the Taiwan Straits and low levels of Taiwanese participation in international institutions — has no future in a volatile world. But can Beijing suspend its territorial claims that currently exceed its grasp in favor of peace, justice and mutual economic benefit?

Rationality says yes. Nationalism says no.

[ first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post What’s Going to Happen to Taiwan Now? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Since the country’s democratization in the 1990s, Taiwan’s democracy has matured into a solid democracy. As summarized in the 2022 Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) on Taiwan, the country enjoys “stable democratic institutions and a vibrant civil society, and does extremely well in guaranteeing its citizens political rights and civil liberties.” In particular, the report highlights the quality of Taiwan’s “regular, universal and secret multiparty elections, which are usually undisputed and widely covered by the media”. Yet, the report also stresses that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) pursues a range of activities and strategies to influence Taiwan’s electoral processes.

China’s electoral meddling

Beijing’s interest in Taiwan’s elections is rooted in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) view that the island is an integral part of China. Free and fair elections in Taiwan challenge this position because they are an expression of the island nation’s de facto sovereignty. To sway Taiwan’s voters, China pursues a three-pronged strategy that combines political and military pressure, economic means and attempts to sway Taiwanese public opinion. These are specifically aimed at weakening support for Lai and the DPP, who Beijing suspects of working towards de jure independence, and at strengthening the electoral prospects of Hou and the KMT, whose policy platform promises more conciliatory cross-Strait relations.

Ko’s position on cross-Strait issues is less clear-cut, but he is of relevance to Beijing because his candidacy means splitting the opposition vote, thus potentially increasing the chances for a DPP win. Earlier plans of Hou and Ko to run on a common ticket faltered due to their to agree on who should run as presidential candidate.

On the political stage, China prevents Taiwan’s involvement in international organizations that require formal statehood and pressures and entices countries to forego state-to-state relations with Taipei. In the March of 2023, for instance, Honduras diplomatic relations to Beijing, leaving Taiwan with the diplomatic recognition of only 13 countries. Moreover, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to conduct aerial and naval in the Taiwan Strait. These political and military measures are meant to create an atmosphere of defeatism among the Taiwanese and drive home the inevitability of a unification, coercive if necessary, with the mainland.

Beijing also employs a mix of economic coercion and incentives, leveraging Taiwan’s deep economic integration with the mainland. Since the DPP came into power in 2016, China has repeatedly restricted to its markets for Taiwanese firms and a number of agricultural imports, especially targeting producers from southern Taiwan where the DPP is strongest. At the same time, by preferential trade agreements, market access and investment promises in the case of a KMT victory, China seeks to sway the Taiwanese electorate towards voting for Beijing-friendly alternatives.

Finally, China is attempting to Taiwanese public opinion and electoral outcomes through online campaigns, cyber warfare and attempts to influence local media. Chinese content farms and cyber trolls seek to sow dissent and spread false rumors. They attempt to discredit Taiwan’s government and to undermine citizen’s confidence that Taiwan and its international partners could successfully resist unification. Meanwhile, pro-China Taiwanese influencers and web personalities spread pro-unification messages. As part of its so-called “” program, the CCP sponsors tours to China by Taiwanese local politicians and leaders of cultural institutions. Such tactics aim at undermining trust in the electoral process, the media, political parties, and individual candidates while drumming up support in favor of candidates aligned with Beijing’s preferences. 

Taiwan’s countermeasures and democratic resilience

Taiwan’s government and civil society are acutely aware of these efforts and take steps to counter electoral interference. Taiwan’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies are on and the Ministry of Justice monetary rewards for tips related to interference in elections. The defense ministry routinely on the PLA’s actions and the Taiwanese military’s responses, aiming to instill confidence in the Taiwanese public. Other state agencies, including educational institutions, are also involved in bolstering public resilience, for instance through developing and communicating civil defense measures.

These measures are complemented by from within Taiwanese society to counter disinformation. A large, open and diverse media landscape ensures that a variety of perspectives and opinions are voiced, while numerous news outlets scrutinize political narratives and expose misinformation. Civil society actors, including voluntary fact-checking collectives and tech-savvy individuals, address fake news and propaganda and increase media literacy, while grassroots initiatives work to strengthen the public’s resilience against external manipulation. All this occurs against the backdrop of a lively democratic political culture, which is marked by a competitive and diverse political landscape and engaged citizens who are resilient in the face of external pressures and blatant misinformation.

Consequently, China’s attempts to influence Taiwan’s public opinion do not appear to have been particularly fruitful. Polls less than 9% of Taiwanese respondents consider China a credible partner. Moreover, most pre-election polls Lai as a likely winner of the presidential race, even though the DPP might lose its majority in Taiwan’s legislature. While this would limit Lai’s ability to pursue his domestic policy agenda, such a scenario is unlikely to mean major changes in the relationship with China, since foreign policy is mainly determined by the president.

That said, China is to further increase its activities in the weeks leading up to the election, meaning that ongoing and tireless vigilance by Taiwanese authorities and civil society will be needed. The outcome of the 2024 general elections will shape Taiwanese politics and cross-strait relations in the crucial coming years.

If Lai is victorious, he is expected to continue the policy of increasing Taiwan’s international maneuvering space and intensifying ties with democratic allies. Should Hou win, he has promised to reduce tensions across the strait through greater economic integration. Regardless of the outcome of the elections, however, Beijing’s stance will not change, and neither will the prevailing Taiwanese resistance to compromising on their de facto sovereignty.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Taiwan’s 2024 Election Between Chinese Disinformation and Democratic Survival appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

The title of Johnstone’s piece — “Think Tanks Are Information Laundering Ops For War Profiteers” —

highlights, in her usual down-to-earth muckraking style, the points to a flagrant and systemic conflict of interest, that deserves examination.

The configuration of actors is clear. On one side we find the defense contractors (the “war profiteers,” major players at the core of the military-industrial complex). On another is the “billionaire-owned newspaper” that publishes the article. And in the strategic middle lies a “think tank” that provides not just the copy but the supposed intellectual legitimacy of the story. Together, they work as a skilled trio acting out a well-rehearsed scenario in the interest of a US foreign policy that has clearly taken on the character of a new Cold War.

Johnstone specifically targets the author of the article, David Axe, a US military correspondent for Forbes, whose body of work she has tracked over the years. Though he published a graphic novel with the title, War is Boring, Axe has consistently demonstrated his deep commitment to the excitement of war. Johnstone doesn’t hesitate to characterize him as a seasoned “war propagandist.” She describes his piece in The Telegraph as a “covert advertorial for Lockheed Martin’s JASSM missile.”

To make her case, she reveals a relevant fact about the source of the story. It is entirely based on a study conveniently provided “by the military industrial complex-funded think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).” Allowing herself a note of Captain Renault-style irony,  Johnstone claims that readers will “be shocked and astonished and surprised and stunned to learn” that the Think Tank “lists the Lockheed Martin Corporation as one of its top donors.”

Johnstone’s description unveils for the unsuspecting reader a highly efficient, well-funded but largely invisible system conducted by a star-studded cast of top-level performers. It includes Washington politicians in the White House and Congress, the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy, the powerful, monopolistic defense contractors and their army of lobbyists, the intelligence community and the indispensable think tanks that craft the narrative that will be confided to dutiful journalists such as David Axe.

°Ő´Ç»ĺ˛ą˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition, authored by Caitlin Johnstone:

Think tank:

An institution in which scholars are paid by the rich and powerful to think up reasons why it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid.

Contextual note

Some may say that Johnstone is unfairly picking on an author who, in his publications, has demonstrated seriously detailed knowledge of all kinds of weaponry and takes a keen interest in the effects they produce. In his journalism, Axe has shown little interest in the logic of war itself. Does his passion for weapons and his skill at describing their performance justify Johnstone’s calling him “a war propagandist?”

A glance at some of his descriptions of war, even in the context of War is Boring, helps to justify this accusation. In a flattering C-SPAN in 2010 promoting the  graphic novel, he explained his feeling that “if war is boring then peace is way worse.” In the book, he makes it clear that he didn’t appreciate the dull moments of waiting around when nothing much is going on the battlefield. He seems to accept boredom as a casualty of war. In his own words, he relishes those “golden nuggets of excitement and the tiny little gems of a good story.”

Like most true war propagandists, Axe is sensitive to what war means for the US economy and the capacity of an empire to manage the world’s resources. When describing the war in the Congo, which he calls “the worst war Americans don’t know anything about,” he explains — presumably to justify the US military presence there — that Congo is “a country that really matters to the developed world” as “a source of much of the world’s rare earth minerals.” To clarify his meaning, he adds: “Without Congo, we wouldn’t have this high tech society we have.”

Axe concludes that his graphic novel on war in the Congo is aimed at getting Americans to feel more involved in that war. Whether that commitment to military action makes him a war propagandist, he seems to have assimilated the same imperialistic attitude that Elon Musk demonstrated concerning Bolivia’s lithium when he tweeted: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

In another interview about War is Boring, Axe boldly claims that he and the illustrator of his book do “not serve advertisers in the defense industry, and we also have imaginations and integrity. We know who we work for — our readers, not the government. Not the arms industry.” One is left wondering, given the connections Johnstone reveals, whether this isn’t his way of admitting that it’s in his journalism, rather than as the author of books, that he serves the arms industry. What is clear is that Axe believes deeply in the vocation of the US military to serve the needs of the corporations who have provided us with “this high tech society we have.”

Historical note

The concept of think tanks can be traced back to the Progressive Era in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The obscene prosperity of the Gilded Age induced the wisest strategists of capitalist success to find ostensible ways of demonstrating that “filthy lucre” could serve social and not just personal or commercial ends.

The emerging age of Public Relations (PR) reached maturity in the 1920s under the intellectual leadership of Edward Bernays, the author of Propaganda (1928). Wealthy philanthropists began to see think tanks as worthy investments, designed to persuade an otherwise skeptical public of their commitment to harness the best and most objective human intelligence in the formulation of enlightened public policy. Think tanks could thus be counted on to propose “wise policies,” independent of, but decidedly not in conflict with their own interests.

The prestigious British think tank, Chatham House, that think tanks emerged “as �study groups’ which brought together academics and government officials to discuss policy issues within a confidential setting.” This innocuous description paints a picture of the nation’s “brightest” concerting with democratically elected officials to produce a Panglossian “best of all possible worlds.” The description carefully leaves out the third party in the initiative: the enterprises or wealthy individuals who funded them.

Quite logically, the Cold War turned out to be the golden age of think tanks. They provided the perfect model of the use of “human intelligence” to address the needs of an age dominated by ideological rivalry. Humanity entered the age of mass and indeed global propaganda. Despite the end of the Cold War three decades ago, that age has been artificially prolonged to this day.

We can attribute the persistence of a culture of propaganda quite simply to the enduring success of an economic model based on a permanently militarized economy. Never has so much wealth and power been concentrated in a system too densely and intricately structured to be disentangled by even the most thorough and creative human intelligence.  This has produced a widely shared belief system — a permanently militarized mindset — fostered by think tanks funded by those certain to benefit financially from a growing obsession with national security.

In her brief newsletter diatribe, Caitlin Johnstone schematically sketches the complete logic of a system that stretches across global finance to politics, engages the massively profitable defense industry and employs think tanks to elaborate a respectable-sounding rationale. And of course, at the other extreme, it generously feeds the media with seemingly objective information and assessment. I’m not describing a conspiracy. It is a cleverly engineered, well-oiled structure — complete with a convenient — that allows everyone to interact, often without even thinking about how their specific role connects with the system.

What better way to ensure that nobody — not even the “thinkers” in the tank or the journalists spreading the wisdom they produce — realizes that they are actively producing something “evil and stupid” while sharing the belief that it’s “good and smart?”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51łÔąĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post No Thanks to Think Tanks appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Meanwhile, the countries that would form the EU pursued a vigorous and profitable policy of promoting trade with China. Germany led the way in this respect, especially through the export of German automobiles. This particular trend is weakening at the moment, although generally trade with China has recovered well.

There is a new problem. This is the openly declared and increasingly explicit US policy of curbing the growth and sophistication of the Chinese economy. This is being done because the US fears that China could pose a security threat to the US, and its allies, including Taiwan. The US wants to deny China access to certain types of semiconductors. Security concerns were cited by the Trump Administration when it imposed hefty tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum. China responded with tariffs of its own. The US is also putting pressure on its allies to join in some of these measures.

An Expert Explains Why We Need a New Cold War With China

The goal is to prevent China from developing strongly in areas that might make a key contribution to its national security. The World Trade Organization (WTO), of which China is a member, aims to ensure that global trade is governed by predictable and transparent rules. But “national security” is a matter of subjective judgment, to which such rules cannot easily be applied. Furthermore, China does not want WTO rules to apply to state-owned enterprises, while the US is undermining the appeals mechanism on WTO rulings.

The law of the jungle in international trade suits big counties, but not smaller ones. Economies such as Ireland are fortunate to be part of an EU bloc that will defend their interests.

Recently, the US published its National Security Strategy. It accused China of “wanting to reshape the international order” and of “assertive behavior”…hardly a hanging offense.

It said that it wanted the US to “outcompete” China, and added that it would oppose any unilateral change in relations across the Taiwan Strait. It also said that the US does not support Taiwan independence and remains committed to a “One China” policy.

This language is quite conciliatory and makes one wonder what the then Speaker Nancy Pelosi was trying to achieve with her recent high-profile visit to Taiwan—at a time when we may need China to talk sense into the Russians and get them to back out of their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

China had a strong record of defending the territorial integrity of states, notably against European powers in the nineteenth century. So it should not be neutral about the imperialist behavior of Russia!

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Two Reasons China Can Be a Valuable Partner for Europe appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Shared with journalists on his flight back from China, Macron’s thoughts were focused not on Ukraine but on the hypothesis that the US might seek to use the issue of Taiwan’s status to engage NATO in a proxy war with China, following a pattern similar to Ukraine. Western media nearly unanimously upbraided Macron, if not for violating a sacred commitment or disrespect for the moral authority of NATO, at least for its inappropriate timing. Responsible people don’t make destabilizing statements like that in times of war, when everyone is expected to pitch in.

Clearly nobody wanted to hear, let alone analyze the significance of the point Macron seemed to be making. Taiwan is, after all, officially a province of China, though it has been permitted to function autonomously. Aware of the increasingly belligerent rhetoric in Washington, the French president feared that the US might be tempted to act in ways intended to provoke a military action by China. This would subsequently engage NATO and oblige France to follow. Macron saw that hypothesis as justifying a European declaration of independence from NATO.

I was curious how much Chad happened to know about this episode or the general question of how NATO’s solidarity plays out in cases of extreme confrontation.

“Reading between the lines,” I said, “especially given things he has said in the past indicating his lack of confidence in NATO, Macron appears ready to consider breaking with NATO over the Taiwan issue. In the context of NATO’s and France’s ongoing engagement in supporting Ukraine’s resistance to Russia, is there any legal justification for Macron’s position?”

Chad immediately clarified the legal context.

“NATO operates on the principle of collective defense, where an attack against one member is considered an attack against all members. This principle is enshrined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that the members of NATO will assist any member that is the subject of an armed attack.

However, the decision to invoke Article 5 is a political one, and each member has the sovereign right to decide whether or not to participate in a particular military action. The decision to participate in military operations is based on national policies, and each country has the right to formulate and execute its foreign policy independently.

In the case of Ukraine, while it is not a member of NATO, the alliance has provided political and military support to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. This support has included economic assistance, training and advice for Ukrainian armed forces, and sanctions against Russia. However, NATO has not invoked Article 5 in this conflict, as it is not an armed attack against a member state.

In the context of a hypothetical conflict between the US and China over Taiwan, it is unclear whether such a conflict would be considered an armed attack against a NATO member state. However, if France believed that its sovereignty was being violated by its presence in NATO and its obligation to participate in a particular military action, it may consider breaking with the alliance over that issue. Whether such a move would be legally justified would depend on the specific circumstances and the interpretation of the relevant international treaties and agreements.”

Chad’s answer was helpful. The question of mutual security commitments from so many nations with contrasting interests is by definition complex. There are no simple answers. Hoping to get some clarity, I continued with another question.

“Some analysts claim that what is clearly a proxy war in Ukraine is not about the defense of Ukraine as much as about preparing regime change in Russia. They suggest that the same logic is at play concerning Taiwan. It would mean using a bordering territory to destabilize a rival great power and eventually bring down the current regime. Does anything in the history of recent US foreign policy substantiate this interpretation?”

“It is true that the US has a history of involvement in regime change operations in other countries. Some notable examples include the 1953 coup in Iran, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, and the 1973 coup in Chile. In more recent years, there have been accusations of US involvement in regime change attempts in countries such as Venezuela and Syria.

In the case of Ukraine, the US and its European allies have been supportive of Ukraine’s pro-Western government and have provided political and economic assistance in the face of Russian aggression. However, it is unclear to what extent this support is motivated by a desire to bring about regime change in Russia. While some analysts may hold this view, others may argue that the primary motivation is to counter Russian influence in the region and support Ukraine’s sovereignty.

With regards to Taiwan, the US has a long-standing policy of supporting Taiwan’s de facto independence from China, and has provided military and economic support to Taiwan for decades. However, the US has also pursued a policy of engagement with China, recognizing it as a rising global power and seeking to maintain a stable and constructive relationship. While there may be concerns about China’s behavior in the region and its potential threat to Taiwan, it is unclear to what extent the US would be willing to engage in a conflict with China over Taiwan, and whether regime change in China is a primary objective.”

Again, I appreciated Chad’s recognition of the complexity of the issues.

“You’re absolutely right to say that none of this is clear” I said approvingly. “The question on everyone’s mind today is what happens when the rhetoric gets so heated there is no way to back down. We are hearing more and more voices in politics and the media telling us that Americans should think of China as an enemy. In other words, Americans are being told they are at war with a nation that has a population four times greater than the US. We are also hearing members of Congress push for the independence of Taiwan, in violation of the accepted One China policy. And despite the fact that the Taiwanese people have consistently responded in surveys that they do not seek independence from China, but merely the autonomy of the current status quo. With a looming presidential election in the US, isn’t it likely or simply possible that if politicians and the media insist that China is the enemy, there is a real danger of direct confrontation? Couldn’t something similar to the Ukraine situation occur?”

“It is certainly a possibility that heated rhetoric and actions could lead to direct confrontation between the US and China. The current US-China relationship is complex, and tensions have risen in recent years over issues such as trade, human rights, and territorial disputes in the South China Sea. While some politicians and media outlets in the US have been increasingly vocal about China as an adversary, others have called for more constructive engagement and cooperation with China.”

“I take that point, but I’m really worried about what the effect of the presidential campaign over the next 18 months will have. I think even you, with your insistence on always seeing a balance between two opposing sides, have noticed that political rhetoric in the US is reaching dangerous levels and that the famous “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality might be leading us to a brink.”

Chad nodded sadly as I concluded, “No time for that today. Let’s pick up the discussion tomorrow.”

*[In the dawning age of Artificial Intelligence, we at 51łÔąĎ recommend treating any AI algorithm’s voice as a contributing member of our group. As we do with family members, colleagues or our circle of friends, we quickly learn to profit from their talents and, at the same time, appreciate the social and intellectual limits of their personalities. This enables a feeling of camaraderie and constructive exchange to develop spontaneously and freely. For more about how we initially welcomed Chad to our breakfast table, click here.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Breakfast with Chad: Macron, NATO and Taiwan appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Three major topics, absent from the news even six months ago, now dominate everyone’s reflection: multipolarity, dedollarization and, of course, most disquietingly, a potential nuclear showdown between China and the US. Even if the war in Ukraine were to end tomorrow, the world will continue attentively surveying the two slow-moving trends of multipolarity and dedollarization. The degraded relationship between the US and China, however, has suddenly become the focus of more immediate fears. All of these topics are, of course, intimately related.

Because the major factor in Chinese-American relations is the status of Taiwan, commentators are scrutinizing every statement related to a possible shift in the official American position of “strategic ambiguity.” Just as attentively, they listen to every indication coming from China about Beijing’s attitude with regard to Taiwan, as well as its reaction, increasingly militaristic, to what it sees as a pattern of provocations from the US.

With their focus on the governments of China, the US and Taiwan itself, the commentators have paid far less attention to what the Taiwanese people think. After all, in cases like this, where global geopolitical interests are in play and war between nuclear powers appears on the horizon, who bothers listening to what the people of a small island think or desire?

Much like Ukrainians before the Russian invasion, the Taiwanese population is divided. Even more radically, it is confused. No one can predict where the cleverly and secretly planned strategies of superpowers will lead. Especially in a case like this, where the two rivals regard a populated island as a strategic asset they feel it is in their right to control.

If anyone was truly curious about the thoughts and feelings of the Taiwanese people rather than those of the governments involved in the drama, they would be wise to discover a podcast in January with James Lee, an assistant research fellow at the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Among other insights, Lee cites recent polling showing that trust in Taiwan’s principal economic ally, the US, has been declining.

“Something that doesn’t get noticed very much in the United States is, we don’t really know what is driving this doubt about U.S. credibility. From my personal observation, when you watch the news in Taiwan, people here are very, very attentive to the semiconductor industry, and how important it is for Taiwan’s security. Turn on the TV in the daytime and a cable talk show will be talking about TSMC. They’re very concerned that TSMC is going to come under pressure to export its technology to the United States.”

°Ő´Ç»ĺ˛ą˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Credibility:

An attribute that indicates the level of belief one may have in the sincerity of the intentions of another person, based either on the consistency of that person’s behavior or, in the case of manifestly inconsistent behavior, its ability to bully others into a form of artificial respect.

Contextual note

The US and Western media in general have seriously underestimated the effect of two recent historical moments on the credibility of the US, in its role as a global actor and the reigning hegemon. For many countries that had been taught to count on US protection, the Biden ˛ą»ĺłľľ±˛Ôľ±˛őłŮ°ů˛ąłŮľ±´Ç˛Ô’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan served as a wakeup call. The American retreat took place after two decades of an aggressive, persistent, largely unjustified and equally unmanageable war that overturned a government, failed to provide a viable alternative, was extremely costly in blood and treasure, instituted a regime nourished by corruption, only to ultimately abandon the terrain to the enemy it vowed to eliminate. The US added insult to injury when it seized the dollar assets of the Taliban government, aggravating the population’s misery.

The other major dent in US credibility for overseas observers came from the incompetently improvised foreign policy of Donald Trump during his four years in the White House. His slogan “America first” sent a simple message to the populations of the globe: you simply don’t count, even as Washington kept insisting that it alone had the right to apply and enforce the rules of a “rules-based order.” Trump had a specifically traumatizing effect on Taiwan. In the interview Lee explains that “Trump got a lot of people worried when he said that the United States may not adhere to its One China Policy… It seemed Trump was treating Taiwan as a pawn and had a very transactional way of thinking about Taiwan in the U.S.-China relationship. ”

Today, the Taiwanese cannot dismiss the possibility that Trump may even return to power following next year’s election. At the same time it understands that US President Joe Biden, who left Afghanistan by the wayside, is 80 years old and has lost any physical and mental spryness he once may have had. None of this bodes well for Washington’s credibility.

It’s also worth noting that, contrary to the impression US media has created, the Taiwanese fear any deviation from the One China Policy, which insists on seeing Taiwan as part of China. Ambiguity, yes. Independence, no.

Historical note

The US –  and especially its most bellicose Republican senators, followed by much of the media – has achieved a kind of consensus concerning China. They see Beijing’s  visible effort at building up its military as a manifestation of the regime’s imperial ambition. It appears to them as a prelude to invading Taiwan before moving on to subjugate entire swathes of Southeast Asia. This has become the standard template in the US for defining the “secret” intentions of any of its declared enemies. Putin, as everyone should know by now, only invaded Ukraine to reconstitute the Soviet Union and then to deploy his powerful military to dominate Europe.

When George W Bush invaded Iraq and unleashed the dogs of war across great swathes of the Middle East, he claimed: “We will fight them over there so we do not have to face them in the United States of America.” In other words, overturning governments halfway across the globe is “deterrence,” US style. In the podcast, Lee claims that China’s intention behind its military buildup, devoid of any intention of invasion of other countries or even of Taiwan, is “to achieve deterrence.” At the same time he warns that “there is a risk that the U.S. is thinking about this issue too much in military terms, and isn’t doing enough to achieve deterrence on the political side of things.”

How can any observer not see this as part of a pattern? It reflects everything that has played out over recent decades of US foreign policy. The most lucid commentators on the war in Ukraine have been wondering why the Biden administration has not only not pursued a negotiated settlement to the war, but has even prevented the Ukrainians from engaging in negotiations. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin offered the clearest answer to that question a year ago, when he hinted that the aim of the campaign was not to defend Ukraine, but to “weaken Russia.” Others, including Hillary Clinton, have with some delectation about engaging Russia in a war of attrition.

The Taiwanese cannot dismiss the idea that they may be treated in a similar way. This has produced an incredibly uncomfortable situation for Taiwan’s population, who appear to be aware of the fact that they are inextricably connected to China through history, geography, culture and language and only tangentially connected to the US and the rest of the world through their domination of the business of manufacturing semiconductors. But what the Taiwanese think or desire will have little impact on what the world’s most powerful democracy decides concerning their fate.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.

Read more of 51łÔąĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Should Taiwan’s People Have a Voice in their Fate? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Donald Trump’s Court Troubles

The former president has been charged and had to appear in court. The charges are not quite straightforward. Trump and his supporters claim the trial is a witch hunt. His opponents think he deserves to be tried on every charge imaginable. Many political analysts believe that court troubles might fire up the flagging Trump campaign. They are the equivalent of Twitter for the publicity-seeking former president.

Prima facie, it seems that an ambitious prosecutor has brought the court action against Trump. It might have unintended consequences. This attention on Trump is bad news for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. He was emerging as the leading Republican candidate but Trump’s court troubles have thrust the governor in the shadows. It is too early to tell what will transpire but Trump’s troubles will have enormous consequences.

Taiwan’s President Visits the US

On March 30, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen visited the US and met US Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. This upset China and increased US-China tensions over Taiwan.

Tawan, China and the US are caught in an unusually precarious balancing act. Taiwan’s leaders are trying to defend their autonomy without provoking Mainland China. Chinese leaders are asserting ownership without triggering catastrophic war. American leaders are attempting to deter Chinese invasion of Taiwan without provoking that very act. Each country is caught between these two opposing imperatives, making for a very tricky situation.

OPEC+ Cuts Oil Production

On April 2, OPEC+ announced it would cut production by 1.18 million barrels of oil per day. The reduced production comes during a record-high demand for oil and mounting inflation for the global economy. This OPEC+ action spells trouble for poorer countries, which will struggle with inflation, interest rates and debt. It also marks a major realignment of OPEC away from the US after the Russia-Ukraine War.

The deal US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made with Saudi King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud in 1945 is now off. As per this deal, the US guaranteed security for the House of Saud while the Saudis promised uninterrupted supply of oil. Now, the US is energy independent and China is the largest importer of Saudi oil. It has managed to broker resumption of diplomatic ties between Sunni Saudi Arabia and revolutionary Shia Iran. A new era has emerged.

The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Trump’s Fraud Charges, Taiwan’s Defiance and OPEC’s New Moves appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

President Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs on Chinese goods worth . He cited the theft of intellectual property and currency manipulation as reasons for penalizing China. Mike Pence, as Trump’s vice president, declared that the US would prioritize over cooperation in its relations with China. 

President Joe Biden’s administration is not only continuing with Trump’s tariffs, but it is also introducing restrictions on the export of certain semiconductor chips to China. Their goal is to prevent China from getting access to cutting-edge technology and to hobble the semiconductor industry.

Why Semiconductors Are a Really Big Deal

Industry experts that Taiwan now “produces over 60% of the world’s semiconductors and over 90% of the most advanced ones.” Officially, Taiwan is a part of China. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) won the civil war, the Kuomintang (KMT) fled to an island off Mainland China. For decades, both the CCP and KMT maintained a “One China” policy.

Taiwan has since transitioned into a democracy. The KMT is no longer in power. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen belongs to the Democratic Progressive Party. She has a historic visit to the US and met the US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The Chinese are clearly not pleased with this visit or this meeting. De facto, Taiwan has become militarily and politically independent of Beijing.

Taiwan has become a flashpoint for US-China relations. In the last few years, US media has been speculating about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China’s rhetoric has also been hardening. Beijing is restricting the exports of rare earths needed to build the batteries necessary for renewable power.

As US and China Clash, Taiwan Moves Closer to the Brink of Disaster

China has increased military spending as well. Chinese defense expenditure by 15% per year from 1990 to 2005. This trend has continued. In March 2023, China a defense budget of $224.8 billion, marking a 7.2% increase from 2022. Beijing is also prioritizing its navy, and navies can be used to enforce blockades.

The US Navy has long been dominant globally but now faces a challenge in the Pacific from the Chinese Navy. In any confrontation with China, the US can count on the support of  its allies in NATO, and from countries like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia. On the other hand, China has no significant allies, except perhaps Russia.

Interestingly, the country whose population feels most threatened by China is India. A found 73% Indians worrying about China’s military rise. A large majority of the Japanese are also worrying about the threat from China. Just before Christmas last year, Japan its defense spending, announcing it would double it over the next five years. In contrast, only 48% of the French and 40% of Germans feel China poses a risk to their respective countries.

Han and Hindu Nationalism Come Face to Face

The US has complained repeatedly about China not trading fairly with the rest of the world. Yet the US continues to weaken the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the only body that could discipline Chinese unfair trade practices. Thus, US-China trade tensions have been increasing steadily.

Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, has called for a structured relationship between China and the US. He for “managed strategic competition” between the US and China in his 2022 book, The Avoidable War. Strong institutions such as the WTO would help.

Working out the terms of this arrangement to manage relations between the world’s two biggest powers will not be easy. It would require creativity and goodwill on both sides. Statesmanship is the need of the hour.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Is a US-China Conflict Inevitable Now? appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

A 2021 by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) tells us that the US is the leader in research and development. Thanks to its top-class universities, fantastic talent pool, vast capital, innovative culture and extraordinary ecosystem, the US dominates “electronic design automation (EDA), core intellectual property (IP), chip design, and advanced manufacturing equipment.”

When it comes to manufacturing, which is referred to as fabrication in the industry, East Asia is top dog. Gone are the days of Fairchild when a group of eight brilliant engineers could walk off to launch the modern semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley. Now, manufacturing semiconductors needs massive capital investments. New foundries can “cost between and can take three to five years to build.”

Why Semiconductors Are a Really Big Deal

To run such a capital-intensive industry, government backing helps. So does robust infrastructure and a skilled workforce. BCG rightly tells us that East Asia has all these ingredients to make its semiconductor industry thrive. China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan have followed strong industrial policies, backing the semiconductor industry as a national priority. The US, where this industry began, now makes a mere 12% of the world’s semiconductors.

Taiwan’s Extraordinary Success in Semiconductors

In assembly, packaging and testing, China leads because of its cost advantage. Its neighbors make more advanced stuff. As per BCG, “all of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity—in nodes below 10 nanometers—is currently located in South Korea (8%) and Taiwan (92%).” According to some, Taiwan is the Mecca of the semiconductor industry.

The biggest success story in the country is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). It is the largest contract chipmaker in the world. In 2021, Kathrin Hille of The Financial Times about a TSMC plant that would make 3 nanometer semiconductor chips, which would be 70% faster and more power efficient than the most advanced in production at the time. TSMC has a history of making big investments that take a while to generate returns. In 2021, it budgeted $25-28 billion for capital investment. Competitors in the US have struggled to keep up because Wall Street forces them to focus on quarterly earnings and, until the 2022 CHIPS Act, the government offered few goodies.

TSMC has also invested wisely. It has plowed money into developing cutting-edge technology. The company has constructed giant fabrication plants, known as “fabs.” Hille’s 2021 reportage described a fab that measured 160,000 square meters, the equivalent of 22 football (soccer) fields. TSMC has not only on economy of scale but also efficiency of operations. The company achieves 95% yield in its factories. This means that 19 out of the 20 chips it makes are perfect. 

The success of TSMC and other Taiwanese semiconductor companies owes a great deal to the national culture. Taiwan’s rigorous education system churns out high-quality electrical engineers and excellent technicians. The proverbial East Asian work ethic also helps. Employees work extraordinarily hard to maintain high production standards. 

So far, location has helped too. Since Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 economic reforms, China has grown spectacularly. After joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, the Middle Kingdom has become the factory of the world. It is the largest manufacturer of electronics. As China’s next door neighbor, Taiwan’s location made the country an ideal location for semiconductor manufacturing and a strategic hub for the industry.

Geopolitical Typhoons Threaten Taiwan

Taiwan’s location and success are both a blessing and a curse. As mentioned above, location played a part in Taiwanese success. It has played a part in making the country integral to the semiconductor global supply chain. This global reliance on Taiwan might compel the US to support this breakaway island more robustly against China. Yet this threat comes precisely because Taiwan is next door to China and the legacy of a civil war that began in the 1930s divides the two. 

In 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) triumphant. Its rival, the Kuomintang (KMT), fled Mainland China and took refuge in Taiwan, which they named as the Republic of China (ROC). The CCP-led People’s Republic of China (PRC) believes in the One-China principle and seeks eventual “unification” with ROC. In Beijing’s eyes, Taiwan is a renegade province that must return to the fold just as Hong Kong.

As US and China Clash, Taiwan Moves Closer to the Brink of Disaster

Increasingly, the Taiwanese do not find reunification a palatable idea. The that kept tempers under control is now fraying. This agreement allowed the CCP and KMT to kick into the long grass the tricky question of which of their two governments was the legitimate, exclusive representative of “China.” Instead, both of them focused on more immediate practical matters.

Unlike China, Taiwan is a rambunctious democracy of 23 million people. In 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen, led her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to victory. She has refused to endorse the 1992 Consensus. This has caused great offense to President Xi Jinping who has brought back a Mao-style personality cult to China. Under him, China has become ultranationalist and hyper-aggressive. In recent years, Beijing’s “” diplomacy has unleashed a torrent of online abuse, misinformation and disinformation. The temperature in the Taiwan Strait has been rising.

Top analysts in the US have been worrying about the superpower’s reliance on Taiwan. They argue this semiconductor superpower is a single point of failure. Therefore, the US must develop its semiconductor industry again. President Joe Biden and the Congress have taken note. As referred to earlier, the CHIPS Act was enacted last year. In the words of the , this legislation will “lower costs, create jobs, strengthen supply chains, and counter China.” 

It is not only the US that is spending tens of billions of dollars on semiconductor production. The EU is also getting into the act. Japan and South Korea are investing as well. The 800-pound gorilla in the room is China. Beijing is putting in hundreds of billions of dollars to move up the semiconductor industry value chain—make complex high-value chips, not just simpler low-value ones. Such massive investments by competitor nations could threaten Taiwan’s current top dog status in the semiconductor industry.

There is another wrinkle for Taiwanese industry. The US has instituted a series of measures to China’s access to cutting-edge semiconductor chips, technology and manufacturing equipment. Historians have drawn parallels between this measure to the US 1939-41 sanctions on Japan. As per , these “sanctions so boxed in the imperial government that in the end there seemed no better option than to gamble on surprise attack.” Cutting off China from semiconductor capability “is a lot like cutting Japan off from oil in 1941.” Beijing’s incentives to attack its island neighbor for its semiconductor fab plants have just increased and so have Taiwan’s headaches.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post What You Need to Know About Taiwan and Semiconductors appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Apparently, we need them for everything. These days, washing machines, refrigerators, cars and almost everything we use have semiconductors. So do more complicated things such as ships, planes and rockets for outer space.

The ongoing Russia-Ukraine War has demonstrated that semiconductors are essential for weaponry too. Precision-guided bombs, missiles, drones, fighter jets and naval vessels are all reliant on semiconductors. They have become the new magic technology that underpins almost everything.

What are semiconductors?

Simply put, semiconductors are integrated circuits (ICs), also known as microchips. A “is a set of electronic circuits on a small flat piece of silicon.” Transistors on this chip act as electrical switches that turn electrical current on or off. These switches are tiny. Advanced manufacturing creates an intricate pattern of multilayered latticework of interconnected shapes on silicon wafer.

The Unbearable Shallowness of “Deep AI”

Semiconductors first became important back in the 1950s. Nobel laureate William Shockley brought a brilliant group of scientists and technologists to Mountain View in sunny California. By then, a perfect “convergence” of many factors was about to make the San Francisco Bay Area the ideal place for high technology manufacturing. 

To keep away from German spies, the military had been conducting research in this idyllic valley of orange groves close to the Pacific Ocean. In 1939, Stanford graduates Bill Hewlett and David Packard had started their iconic company in the latter’s garage. They soon moved to where other tenants included Eastman Kodak, General Electric and Lockheed.

Shockley pioneered the modern semiconductor. He was the genius who came up with the idea of using silicon to make the transistors.  These regulated or controlled current or voltage flow as well as amplifying and generating electrical signals and acting as a switch or gate for them. Shockley turned out to be a much better scientist and technologist than a manager or entrepreneur. His best brains left to create a new company. Shockley immortalized them as “the traitorous eight” and founded Fairchild. The modern semiconductor industry was born.

Don C. Hoefler’s term, “,” has come to be the name for this part of the world south of the stunning city of San Francisco. Crystal Fire, an iconic book by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, chronicles how semiconductors led to the birth of the information age. °Ő´Ç»ĺ˛ą˛â’s tech giants are located close to where Shockley set up shop. Google is headquartered in Mountain View, Apple is in Cupertino and Facebook is in Menlo Park.

Yet semiconductors are no longer manufactured in Silicon Valley. In fact, only 12% of the world’s semiconductors are now made in the US in Oregon, Arizona, Vermont, Massachusetts, Idaho and Utah. In 2022, the average export price per chip was $2.16 for the US in contrast to $0.19 for China. So, the US mainly makes complex, high-value chips. With cheaper cost bases, four other major global semiconductor —China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan—have emerged. 

Some companies design, others fabricate (i.e. manufacture) semiconductors and semiconductor devices, such as transistors and integrated circuits, and still others do both. A few large companies such as Intel, TSMC and Samsung dominate the semiconductor industry.

The reason why big companies dominate this industry is because it now costs an arm and a leg to manufacture semiconductors. A foundry can “cost between and can take three to five years to build.” A semiconductor fabrication foundry, also known as a semiconductor fab, is a specialized factory that needs expensive high-precision equipment. It has to be maintained and updated regularly to perform complex processes such as photolithography, etching, doping and deposition.

Why are semiconductors important?

In the age of computers, smartphones and smart appliances, demand for semiconductors has shot up. The Semiconductor Industry Association () tells us that the industry “shipped a record 1.15 trillion semiconductor units in 2021.” The dollar value of these units was $555.9 billion. Yet their importance goes far beyond their dollar value.

Semiconductors have been rightly the “brains of modern electronics.” During the last half-century, they have made “electronic devices smaller, faster, and more reliable.” Today, there are more than 100 billion semiconductors—the same number as the stars in the Milky Way. The SIA tells us that “in 1984, mobile phones weighed about 2 lbs., cost around $4,000, and held a charge for only about 30 minutes of talk time.” The reason you are reading this on a laptop or a smartphone is because of the semiconductors powering your device.

As mentioned earlier, everything from dishwashers to missiles uses semiconductors. The future might involve even more of the same. The age of artificial intelligence (AI) and smart manufacturing depends on humble semiconductors that enable cheap computing power. Investor and philanthropist Antoine van Agtmael has repeatedly argued that brainbelts are the future, a smart new economy is around the corner and semiconductors are fundamental to both.

Smart Brainbelts, Not Donald Trump, Are Making America Great Again

It is for this reason that the Biden administration launched a new policy to Chinese access to AI and semiconductor technologies. Starting October 7, 2022, leading designers such as Nvidia and AMD can no longer sell their high-end semiconductor chips to China. In addition to cutting out China, the US is boosting semiconductor production at thome. The July 2022 CHIPS Act strengthens research, design and manufacturing of semiconductor chips in the US. The SIA us that this legislation would “fortify the economy and national security, and reinforce America’s chip supply chains.”

National security has come into question because most cheap chips come from China and a significant percentage of high-quality ones come from Taiwan. If war broke out between China and Taiwan, the US could be in trouble. Unsurprisingly, even fractious Washington, DC had to respond and it has done so decisively.

tells us that the US “is pulling out all the stops to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing.” Gone are the days of free trade. US President Joe Biden has launched a full scale industrial policy to dominate a critical technology. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union and the US embarked upon a space race. Now, a full on semiconductor fight has begun.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Why Semiconductors Are a Really Big Deal appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan has ignited tensions between China and the United States, with China enraged at foreign intervention in what they perceive as an internal affair. Atul Singh, founder of 51łÔąĎ, and Glenn Carle, a former CIA Deputy National Intelligence Officer, examine the controversy surrounding Pelosi’s trip and the implications it holds.

The US’s longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity” regarding Taiwan’s status has become increasingly uncertain. President Biden’s (ostensibly unintentional) messaging has implied a greater willingness for military intervention in defense of the island than overt policy would officially commit to.

China relies heavily on international shipping lanes that could easily be choked in the event of war. It perceives itself as encircled by adversaries, with the US aligning with Taiwan and several other neighbors against its interests. The rise of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party, which openly questions the One China Principle, adds to Beijing’s anxiety. Meanwhile, China’s nationalist sentiment and growing military capabilities enable an assertive posturing in the Taiwan Straits.

Pelosi’s visit, with the stated goal of reinforcing global norms and supporting Taiwan, made global headlines. However, as Glenn suggests, the timing may have been ill-advised: the US’s position is clear enough, and is not aided by an unnecessary public insult to the Chinese leader. Neither should the US put so much pressure on China that it is induced to cooperate with Russia. So far, China has been more or less indifferent to Putin’s pleas for help in Ukraine, and we should aim to keep things that way.

Atul and Glenn wrap up with a discussion of President Xi’s place in Chinese history, comparing him with his more prudent predecessor Deng Xiaoping. Xi’s imperial ambitions may be leading him on a collision course with the US, with disastrous results for either or both of the great nations. The country has very little experience in extending itself as far as it is doing now, and it will need to proceed carefully.

[ wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post As US and China Clash, Taiwan Moves Closer to the Brink of Disaster appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Could Pelosi really have failed to understand that her friendly gesture would unsettle the situation of the very people she believed she was helping? As one Taiwanese professor writing for Newsweek, “Taiwan has been relegated to serving as the proving ground for Great Power insecurities.” Is that the role she imagines the Taiwanese would like to be playing in geopolitics?

Her president, Joe Biden, warned her of possible unintended consequences. Ironically, that warning produced unintended consequences for Biden himself, who was left looking like a president unable to get his own party’s Congressional leader to make and enforce foreign policy, his job and not hers. What does it mean to be “leader of the free world”? In Ukraine the US is fully engaged in a war it refuses to fight but believes it will win. The vaunted “strategic ambiguity” that defines its Taiwan policy has become 100% ambiguity and 0% strategy. Apart from poking nuclear bears and hoping their excessive reaction will make the US look like an innocent victim to the outside world, does the US have any kind of consistent geopolitical strategy?

In such a context, how should Washington’s allies react? Europe has shown solidarity on Ukraine, but that may already be fraying. At least the US can count on the UK to always be at its side. The automatic alignment shown by the then prime minister Tony Blair two decades ago, and still prime minister Boris Johnson this year, has cast Britain as the poodle of its former 13 colonies who have since expanded across the continent. It’s slightly more surprising that the UK’s “serious” (non-tabloid) media, with a reputation for independence, now follows suit, dutifully echoing its US counterparts. Just as the CIA has long been dictating the content of its reporting to The New York Times and The Washington Post, MI6 may be fulfilling the same function for the BBC, The Guardian and others in London.

Not only is there a noticeable “’close alignment’ between foreign policy in London and Washington” as the BBC last year, but the BBC itself appears to embrace that alignment. Reporting from Beijing on the consequences of Pelosi’s visit, BBC’s Stephen McDonell offers a take on Pelosi’s visit that paints China as the unique provocateur.

“Those with more militaristic tendencies in the upper echelons of power here,” McDonell speculates, “must have secretly welcomed the visit by Ms Pelosi. It has provided an ideal excuse to ramp up the war games around Taiwan in preparation for what they see as the inevitable day when it will be seized by force.”

°Ő´Ç»ĺ˛ą˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Militaristic tendencies:

A pathology shared not only by a majority of politicians in increasingly militarized nations but also by establishment and corporate news media as evidenced in its reporting

Contextual note

Readers should notice that the title of McDonell’s piece twists the logic of the entire episode by metaphorically describing it as a sporting event: “Pelosi visit: Taiwan puts the ball firmly in Xi Jinping’s court.” This framing curiously casts Taiwan in an active role. It hides the reality that neither China nor Taiwan sought to play an active role in this chain of events. Even Biden appeared to be passive. Pelosi is the one throwing unplayable balls in other people’s courts.

To skirt any reference to the idea that Pelosi’s visit was an unnecessary and risky provocation, McDonell redefines the drama as evidence of China’s deep belligerence, implicitly contrasting it with the peaceful pursuit of democratic ideals by the US. In this showdown, China is the aggressive military power to be feared. Certainly not the US.

Less than a week later, McDonell is at it again. In a new, “China-Taiwan: What we learned from Beijing’s drills around the island,” McDonell returns to his mindreading of the Chinese elite. “The hardliners in the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party,” he writes, “would probably be quite happy with where Nancy Pelosi’s visit has left them.” In the original article, he claimed that the Chinese “must have secretly welcomed the visit by Ms Pelosi.” A claim based on “must have” and supported by “would probably be” is not journalism. It is the language of polemic and more specifically propaganda. The supposed probability of attributed emotions is not something honest reporters on the beat should be expected to cover.

Despite the lack of discernible consistency in Washington’s foreign policy, McDonell proves consistent in his journalistic practices. Once again, he frames the drama in terms of sport. He claims that the Chinese militarized response to the provocation “is seen as a win for those who want it to happen.” Pelosi’s unneeded and unwanted diplomatic meddling is no longer a factor. It’s all about Chinese belligerence.

McDonell thus proves his commitment to prolonging the style of propaganda that has accompanied the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It is all about denying that the US could ever provoke a drama elsewhere. If and when military hostilities do break out around Taiwan, thanks to reporters like McDonell we can understand and endlessly repeat that it boils down to an “unprovoked” aggression by an autocratic government controlled by evil-minded “hardliners,” Putin being the archetype of an autocratic hardliner.

This usefully simplifies the public’s understanding of the Taiwan drama. On the “democratic” side, there was a “visit,” a perfectly friendly gesture. Who doesn’t like to be visited? On the autocratic side, there is –  or will soon be – an unprovoked aggression. The template already exists, at least since February 24 of this year. But it has other precedents: the in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 or Saddam Hussein’s terrifying (but non-existent) weapons of mass destruction. Autocracies – and never democracies – are addicted to starting unprovoked wars.

McDonell employs another trick that has become common thanks to the Ukraine conflict. It consists of the journalist leaping inside the brain of designated enemies to reveal their secret thoughts. We have seen endless examples in recent months of professional and citizen journalists alike telling us what Vladimir Putin (aka Peter the Great reborn) is really thinking. McDonell doesn’t dare imagine what the obviously ”inscrutable” Xi Jinping is thinking, but he does suppose that Xi was one of the clique in the “upper echelons of power” who “must have secretly welcomed the visit by Ms Pelosi.”

Journalism about US foreign policy has become formulaic on both sides of the Atlantic. At least since George Bush’s invasion of Iraq, The New York Times has been the consistent leader, probably creating the template McDonell could follow. This week, David Sanger and Amy Qin at The New York Times also invoke a sports metaphor in the title of their written in the aftermath of the Pelosi visit: “As China Plans Drills Circling Taiwan, U.S. Officials Fear a Squeeze Play.” The authors claim that US officials “worry that the events of the next few days could trigger an unintended confrontation between China’s forces and Taiwan’s.” By “unintended” they mean accidental, as they cite imaginary scenarios of “a missile over the island” or “an incursion into disputed airspace” leading “to a midair conflict.” In other words, if it happens, don’t blame Pelosi. She had nothing to do with it. It’s those inscrutable Chinese hardliners.

Historical note

Most serious commentators acknowledge that, intentional or not, Pelosi’s move was not just a friendly “visit” but a game-changer that marks a historical turning-point. The consensus, supported by currently in the US Congress towards recognizing Taiwan’s independence, is that the “strategic ambiguity” initiated four decades ago has already morphed into an increasingly ambiguous non-strategy that is likely at some point to turn into conflict. The question will not be if, but on what scale?

This year, the media has done a superb job evacuating history from its reporting of the Ukraine conflict. Despite his status as a celebrity, Henry Kissinger’s warnings that there are historical factors complicating the narrative left the media indifferent. That same media has totally excluded authoritative and active voices such as John Mearsheimer  – people who know the history  – from any mention on its airwaves or in its columns.

As the tacit acceptance of “strategic ambiguity” fades, we can begin watching the construction of a new pseudo-historical narrative. If the Ukraine coverage is anything to go by, more speculation about the nature and depth of the Chinese enemy’s private thoughts will replace any reference to actual historical reality. That is already borne out by McDonell’s reporting at the BBC.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of 51łÔąĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Even the BBC Now Offers US-friendly Propaganda on Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan Melodrama appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Japan used Taiwan during the Second World War as the launching pad for its aggressive operations in Southeast Asia. At the end of the war, with the Japanese defeated and Mao Zedong’s communists in control of mainland China, Mao’s rival, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Kuomintang, fled to Taiwan. This put the dissident government out of Mao’s reach. Chiang declared his government the Republic of China (ROC) in opposition to Mao’s People’s Republic of China (PRC). For forty years a single-party regime ruled Taiwan following Chiang Kai-shek’s initial declaration of martial law in 1949.

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Because the United States had defined its post-war identity as anti-communist, Taiwan held the status of the preferred national government in what was then referred to as “the free world.” The fate of Taiwan — still referred to by its Portuguese name, Formosa — figured as a major foreign policy issue in the 1960 US presidential campaign that pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon. The debate turned around whether the US should commit to defending against the People’s Republic two smaller islands situated between continental China and Taiwan.

In short, Taiwan’s history and geopolitical status over the past 150 years have become extremely complex. There are political, economic and geographical considerations as well as ideological and geopolitical factors that make it even more complex. These have been aggravated by a visible decline in the supposed capacity of the United States to impose and enforce solutions in different parts of the globe and the rise of China’s influence in the global economy.

Complexity, when applied to politics, generally signifies ambiguity. In the aftermath of the Korean War, the Eisenhower administration established a policy based on the idea of backing Taiwan while seriously hedging their bets. Writing for , Dennis Hickey explains that in 1954, the US “deliberately sought to �fuzz up’ the security pact [with Taiwan] in such a way that the territories covered by the document were unclear.”

Following President Nixon’s historic overture in 1971, the US established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. This led to the transfer of China’s seat at the United Nations from the ROC to Mao’s PRC. The status of Taiwan was now inextricably ambiguous. US administrations, already accustomed to “fuzzy” thinking, described their policy approach as “strategic ambiguity.” It allowed them to treat Taiwan as an ally without recognizing it as an independent state. The point of such an attitude is what R. Nicolas Burns — President Joe Biden’s still unconfirmed pick for the post of US ambassador to China — calls “the smartest and most effective way” to avoid war.

Recent events indicate that we may be observing a calculated shift in that policy. In other words, the ambiguity is becoming more ambiguous. Or, depending on one’s point of view, less ambiguous. There is a discernible trend toward the old Cold War principle of brinkmanship. A not quite prepared President Biden recently embarrassed himself in a CNN Town Hall for stating that the US had a “” to defend Taiwan. The White House quickly walked back that commitment, reaffirming the position of strategic ambiguity.

This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared to be pushing back in the other direction, the Chinese with “terrible consequences” if they make any move to invade Taiwan. Blinken added, the Taipei Times reports, that the US has “been very clear and consistently clear” in its commitment to Taiwan. 

°Ő´Ç»ĺ˛ą˛â’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Consistently clear:

In normal use, unambiguous. In diplomatic use, obviously muddied and murky, but capable of being transformed by an act of assertive rhetoric into the expression of a bold-sounding intention that eliminates nuance, even when nuance remains necessary for balance and survival.

Contextual note

If Donald Trump’s administration projected a foreign policy based on fundamentally theatrical melodrama that consisted of calling the leader of a nuclear state “” and dismissing most of the countries of the Global South as “shitholes,” while accusing allies of taking advantage of the US, the defining characteristic of the now ten-months-old Biden ˛ą»ĺłľľ±˛Ôľ±˛őłŮ°ů˛ąłŮľ±´Ç˛Ô’s foreign policy appears to be the commitment to the old 1950s Cold War stance known as brinkmanship.

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In November, the CIA director, William Burns, comically threatened Russia with “consequences” if it turned out — despite a total lack of evidence — that Vladimir Putin’s people were the perpetrators of a series of imaginary attacks popularly called the Havana syndrome. This week, backing up Biden’s “of a â€�strong’ Western economic response” to a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was more specific. “One target,” France 24 reports, “could be Russia’s mammoth Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany. Sullivan said the pipeline’s future was at â€�risk’ if Russia does invade Ukraine.” This may have been meant more to cow the Europeans, whose economy depends on Russian gas, than the Russians themselves.

These various examples have made observers wonder what is going on, what the dreaded “consequences” repeatedly evoked may look like and what other further consequences they may provoke. The US administration seems to be recycling the nostalgia of members of Biden’s own generation, hankering after what their memory fuzzily associates with the prosperous years of the original Cold War.

Historical Note

Britannica brinkmanship as the “foreign policy practice in which one or both parties force the interaction between them to the threshold of confrontation in order to gain an advantageous negotiation position over the other. The technique is characterized by aggressive risk-taking policy choices that court potential disaster.”

The term brinkmanship was coined by Dwight Eisenhower’s Democratic opponent in both of his elections, Adlai Stevenson, who dared to mock Secretary of State John Foster Dulles when he celebrated the principle of pushing things to the brink. “The ability to get to the verge,” Dulles explained, “without getting into the war is the necessary art…if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.” Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, inherited the consequences of Dulles’ brinkmanship over Cuba, the nation that John Foster’s brother, CIA Director Alan Dulles, insisted on invading only months after Kennedy’s inauguration. This fiasco was a prelude to the truly frightening Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, when Kennedy’s generals, led by Curtis Lemay, sought to bring the world to the absolute brink.

When, two years later, Lyndon Johnson set a hot war going in Vietnam, or when, decades later, George W. Bush triggered a long period of American military aggression targeting multiple countries in the Muslim world, the policy of brinkmanship was no longer in play. These proxy wars were calculated as bets that fell far short of the brink. The risk was limited to what, unfortunately, it historically turned out to be: a slow deterioration of the capacities and the image of a nation that was ready to abuse its power in the name of abstract principles — democracy, liberation, stifling terrorism, promoting women’s rights — that none of the perpetrators took seriously. Threats and sanctions were features of the daily rhetoric, but the idea at the core of brinkmanship — that some major, uncontrollable conflagration might occur — was never part of the equation.

The Biden administration may have serious reasons for returning to the policy of brinkmanship. The position of the United States on the world stage has manifestly suffered. Some hope it can be restored and believe it would require strong medicine. But there are also more trivial reasons: notably the fear of the administration being mocked by Republicans for being weak in the face of powerful enemies. 

Both motivations signal danger. We may once again be returning to the devastating brinkman’s game illustrated in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔąĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Taiwan Becomes a Point of Strategic Ambiguity

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While President Joe Biden said in an October town hall that the US was committed to defending Taiwan, his administration later walked back his statement as it clashed with Washington’s official policy of strategic ambiguity vis-à-vis Taipei. Strategic ambiguity, or not publicly declaring how the United States would react in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, has guided US-Taiwan relations for over 40 years.

The policy has recently come under scrutiny as relations between Tapei and Beijing continue to deteriorate and as the prospect of an invasion, according to some analysts, becomes more likely.

Chinese Ambitions

Admiral Philip Davidson, who led the US Indo-Pacific Command until April, in March to the Senate Armed Services Committee that annexing Taiwan is “clearly one of [China’s] ambitions” and that the threat will likely materialize within six years. Taiwan’s defense ministry last month that Beijing would be able to launch an attack against the island with minimal losses by 2025.

Despite sending nearly , alongside nuclear-capable bombers and anti-submarine aircraft, into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone in early October, coinciding with the anniversary of the declaration of the People’s Republic of China, President Xi Jinping said that Beijing was committed to pursuing peaceful unification with Taiwan. According to John Culver, a former CIA analyst, Xi has framed unification as a requisite to achieving the “China Dream” by 2049, that Xi may take risks that his predecessors would not in order to secure unification.

Taiwan is likely not prepared for a Chinese invasion. It spends just over $11.5 million on defense. This, as former Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger , is an amount similar to that of Singapore, which has a population a quarter of the size of Taiwan’s and lacks the existential threat facing Taipei. Pottinger added that Taiwan neglected national defense for the first 15 years of the 21^st century, spending too much on equipment that would be quickly destroyed in an invasion.

The readiness of its military was also called into question by a Wall Street Journal published last month reporting low-quality basic training and a widespread unwillingness to defend the island. The article quoted US Marine Colonel Grant Newsham as stating that while Taiwan’s military has well-trained troops and “,” it lacks adequate funding and could benefit from more training with the US and its allies. The Wall Street Journal also reported that many Taiwanese expect the US to intervene in case of kinetic military action by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

While the US supports Taiwan through arms sales, it remains committed to strategic ambiguity. Instead, the US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific, a document declassified near the end of President Donald Trump’s tenure, recommends that the United States “e˛Ô˛ą˛ú±ô±đ Taiwan to develop an effective asymmetric defense strategy and capabilities that will help ensure its security, freedom from coercion, resilience, and ability to engage China on its own terms.”

While the framework has not been formally implemented, the Biden administration has not replaced the document, and officials within the administration have acknowledged a degree of continuation of Trump-era policies vis-Ă -vis China and Taiwan.

Constant Reminder

As Washington readies itself for escalation with Beijing, others are less convinced that rising tensions between China and Taiwan will result in violence. Project 2049 research associate Eric Lee, for instance, that the threat is “nothing new,” and that the growing perception of China as a threat to the United States is what has led to greater alarm regarding Taiwanese-Chinese relations.

According to , former head of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, China’s aim is to prevent Taiwanese independence, not to seek forceful unification. She adds that every leader since Mao Zedong has projected determination to unify Taiwan with the mainland, and that while some Chinese have come to believe that time is no longer on China’s side and that it should use force to compel unification, Xi has resisted such pressures. The latest five-year plan that came into effect in 2021 describes China’s policy vis-à-vis Taiwan as a “peaceful development of cross-strait relations.”

Those who believe that China is unlikely to use kinetic action against Taiwan think that it will instead pursue unification using economic and political means. Taiwan is heavily reliant on China’s economy: Beijing is Taipei’s , which gives the mainland leverage over the island. China has isolated Taiwan by pressuring countries not to sign free trade agreements with Taipei and has pushed for the island’s exclusion from the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, two major trade agreements in the Indo-Pacific Region.

China has also restricted tourism to Taiwan and has pressured international businesses to label the island as a Chinese province. Taiwan also faces a brain drain to China as hundreds of thousands of well-educated Taiwanese opt to work on the mainland instead of their home country, with Chinese firms offering the wages available on the island.

Glaser argues that China’s goal is to “constantly remind” the Taiwanese of its increasing power to instill a pessimism about Taiwan’s future and deepen cleavages within its political system. While pursuing unification through this gradual, nonviolent approach will likely take longer than kinetic action would, it will also be less costly and risky for the Chinese government.

As tensions between Taiwan and China grow, the possibility of a Chinese invasion is considered by some as more imminent than ever before. Taiwan’s military is not prepared for kinetic action against the PLA, and calls to assist Taiwan by increasing arms sales and conducting joint exercises with its military are consequently growing in the US.

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However, not everyone is convinced that the Chinese government will pursue unification through violent means. Some argue instead that Beijing is more likely to use economic and political coercion to achieve unification. Regardless of the means, the Chinese government will likely continue to pursue unification with Taiwan as it is a crucial step toward the Chinese government’s future dreams.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Nature hates a vacuum and, when it comes to war, so does US media that has always viewed peace as a vacuum. Publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post must keep the public focused on the global military mission of the United States. Middle East terrorism is still hanging around, but the idea of deploying a massive military effort to oppose it has been definitively discredited.

Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are the kind of formless enemies that justify an infinitely prolonged hot war, keeping military activity going. But cold wars are all about an arms race, and terrorist groups simply can’t compete.

Algeria to France: No Thanks for the Memories 

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With the disengagement from the Middle East, some may have the impression that we have entered a period of peace. But Washington’s strategists would panic if they believed there was a real possibility of peace. Like the media, they know that the American public needs to believe in an ongoing noble military mission whose purpose is to vanquish the next formidable enemy of the American way of life.

In the past, it has depended on having a clearly defined ideological rival: first communism, then terrorism. What comes next isn’t yet clear, but the media and the security state know it needs to be put in place, if only to justify the massive and continually bloated military budget.

For the past five years, politicians and media fearful of Donald Trump have spent their energy playing on the Cold War reflex of suspecting Russia. They remember how effective it was in the 1950s and â€�60s. The marketers of the security state understood that the idea of an evil Russia was so deeply implanted in the American mindset that it can still inspire a reflex of both hatred and fear. The Soviet Union disappeared three decades ago, but Russia itself is associated with the idea of something existentially evil. 

Through clever management of the news, the intelligence community, echoed by the media, successfully instilled the idea that Donald Trump was Vladimir Putin’s best friend forever. Now, with Trump out of the picture, at least temporarily, Russia’s feeble and failing economy clearly poses no credible threat to the US. China has thus become the logical and far more credible adversary for anyone imagining an impending war scenario.

The New York Times is accordingly directing the public’s attention to the effort now being made in Washington with a focus on Taiwan: “At the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, officials are trying to figure out if the longtime American policy of “strategic ambiguity” — providing political and military support to Taiwan, while not explicitly promising to defend it from a Chinese attack — has run its course.”

This week, Daniel L. Davis, a retired lieutenant colonel in the US Army, in The Guardian that war over the defense of Taiwan should be avoided at all costs. “Publicly, Washington should continue to embrace strategic ambiguity,” he recommends, “but privately convey to Taiwanese leaders that we will not fight a war with China.”

°Ő´Ç»ĺ˛ą˛â’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Strategic Ambiguity:

The normal content of all diplomatic discourse

Contextual Note

President Joe Biden appears to be respecting at least half of Davis’s recommendation. He that he has spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping about Taiwan, and that the two agree they will “abide by the Taiwan agreement.” It consists of having relations with Taiwan but not recognizing it as an independent nation. Strategic ambiguity will remain intact. But is Biden ready to explain to Taiwan that the US has no intention of going to war with China?

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen is clearly aware of the ambiguity. She that the “Taiwanese people would â€�rise up’ should Taiwan‘s existence be threatened.” This is certainly true, but without US backup, rising up may not be an effective response to the world’s second most powerful army. At the same time, she “reiterated a call for talks with China” and admitted that Taiwan is “influenced by Chinese civilization and shaped by Asian traditions.”

Clearly, the US cannot go to war with China over Taiwan. At the same time, the US needs to maintain the idea that a war with China is possible. In the 1950s and 1960s, a militarized economy thrived thanks to the belief instilled in Americans that a nuclear war with Russia was possible, if not inevitable. It was just a question of what minor spark might set it off. This literally was the era of Dr. Strangelove.

In response to China’s Taiwan’s defense zone with 56 Chinese military aircraft, Taiwan’s Premier Su Tseng-chang last week accused China of being “more and more over the top.” Could this be an allusion to Washington’s vaunted policy of its “over the horizon” capacity to intervene in Afghanistan? Or does the expression simply mean “exaggerated” and “beyond the ordinary”? Dr. Strangelove was an over-the-top satire about military decisions that literally went over the brink.

As with everything concerning Taiwan’s situation in the coming months and years, the ambiguity will be more evident than the strategy.

Historical Note

The 1975, hearings in the US Senate forced American media to reveal the longstanding complicity between the CIA and the media concretized in . Congressional testimony a carefully structured propaganda campaign run through privately-owned commercial media. Its purpose was to instill the Cold War mentality required to justify an aggressive foreign policy and the unrelenting expansion of the all-powerful military-industrial complex.

It specifically sought to exaggerate the USSR’s destructive capacity while maintaining the public’s belief that the Soviet regime’s unique goal was to undermine, if not physically destroy, the American way of life. A cartoon Superman appeared on TV every day to convince children that the superhero was fighting for “truth, justice and the American ·É˛ą˛â.”

Fast forward to 2016. Following the rock-solid marketing logic of never calling into question a formula that has paid off in the past, much of the Democratic-leaning legacy media, more worried about Donald Trump than Russia itself, began promoting the multiple threads of what developed into the Russiagate narrative.

It appeared to be the easiest means of developing the propaganda required to protect and reinforce the military-industrial complex that some feared that Trump was threatening when he began challenging the “deep state.” Though Trump had no such intention, inciting Americans to think so could only work to the advantage of the Democrats.

This tactic nevertheless encountered a problem of credibility. Not enough people were convinced that Russia was still the evil Soviet Union. Once Trump was gone, the Russia threat definitively lost its sting. Post-Soviet Russia has only negligible influence on the world economy, unlike the Middle East with its historically established virtual monopoly on fossil fuel and its utility for the US as the vector of petrodollars. 

With Russia reduced to insignificance and the Middle East written off the agenda, China has become the only credible candidate to play the role of America’s fright-inducing enemy. China is conveniently run by the Communist Party, like the Soviet Union was. Its features and behavior identify it as an alien economy. It possesses a political system that is clearly autocratic and therefore the enemy of capitalist democracy.

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Everything is falling into place for a new Cold War that will take center stage following the shame-faced exit of the global war on terror. All eyes (including the ) are trained on China. In Act I, Taiwan will be the focus of attention, as it was 70 years ago when it was known as . But China is not the Soviet Union, and the US is no longer an empire sweeping up the spoils of European colonialism. What happens next will be difficult to forecast. We are truly entering an age of strategic ambiguity.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔąĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Bestowed with its own and seen as “historic,” the electoral victory of President-Elect Tsai Ing-wen and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has shaken up the political landscape in Taiwan. But it’s not just the island-nation that is holding its breath in anticipation of change. The results of the general election on January 16 have inevitably shifted political tectonics for and East Asia.

The DPP’s decisive win against the former ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT),  was not completely unprecedented. Its victory had been predicted to be “,” due to its plans of slowing down the state’s reconciliation with Mainland China.

Throughout incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou’s terms in office since 2008, numerous pro-China agreements were signed to promote greater trade, tourism and investment between Taiwan and China. To top it off, Ma had a historic meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore last November.

The pro-China policies of the Ma administration, however, were only hurting the Taiwanese economy. China is Taiwan’s biggest export market, accounting for 25% of products shipped. In 2015, Taiwan’s economy  as a result of Beijing’s economic slowdown and currency devaluation woes.

The game-changing term that spurred Taiwanese voters  was the desire for economic and social change; change that can only be set in motion if Taiwan does not move closer to China. This was what Tsai and the DPP promised to deliver if voted into power.

What contributed to the KMT’s expected defeat on January 16 was its lackluster, uninspiring presidential campaign. The party offered few new policies to alleviate socioeconomic grievances on the ground, such as Ěý˛ą˛Ô»ĺ. Its basic emphasis on deepening relations with China was one that was clearly out of sync with young Taiwanese voters, and not even the replacement of Tsai’s opponent, Hung Hsiu-chu, with Eric Chu could help.

Tsai and the DPP, on the other hand, listened to most of the Taiwanese people—especially the young generation—and  to enforce social justice, fairness and the rebuilding of Taiwan’s economy. More importantly, she had the support of the New Power Party, which was formed just 11 months ago by young Taiwanese who were part of the 2014 Sunflower Movement. The party has emerged as an unlikely star in the elections, with one of its candidates, .

The Rise of Tsai and the Potential Ripple Effects in Asia

With astounding academic credentials and policy experience, President-Elect Tsai is not someone who should be taken lightly. A graduate of Cornell University and the London School of Economics, she served as chair of the Mainland Affairs Council between 2000 and 2004 and was the main driver of reform within the DPP after its electoral defeat in 2008.

She does, however, face an uphill task of implementing the reforms she promised during her campaign. Her administration will have to find ways to decrease Taiwan’s economic dependency on China and improve the country’s military preparedness, which has been lax in recent years due to Ma’s pro-China policies.

Tsai’s time as president will not be without pressure and tension. During Taiwan’s previous sole DPP presidency under Chen Shui-bian in 2000-2008, relations with China were often tense. The world is not watching with bated breath. The Tsai presidency is now an additional foreign policy grievance for Beijing, especially after a year of shaky relations with Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and the US over the .

The rise of Tsai, however, is a sign of shifting political times in the wider region. Unlike other female leaders in Asia—such as Aung Sung Suu Kyi of Myanmar or President Park Guen-hye of South Korea—Tsai does not hail from a political family.

Despite not having any political connections, she has proved her ability to commit strongly to her principles. Throughout her election campaign, she emphasized the need to reexamine cross-strait negotiations and rules with China, and she has not backed the so-called “.” Officials from Beijing and the KMT government, at that time, created the consensus to promote a public understanding that there was “only one China,” without truly defining what that meant in practical terms.

Tsai’s stance toward China makes her someone that Taiwanese and Hong Kongers will scrutinize, given that Hong Kong’s political future  after the Umbrella Revolution that took place in 2014.

LGBT Rights

The president-elect’s quiet, pragmatic approach of listening to young Taiwanese voters, and her solid stance toward matters that have become benchmarks of social justice and openness such as  are political tactics that politicians in countries such as Singapore should take note of. In June 2015, she acknowledged in a speech that she is attempting, through her bid for presidency, to help Taiwan become the forefront of crafting “new Asian values.”

These values are needed now more than ever in not only Taiwan, but in Asia. The wave of economic turbulence Asia has faced over the last two decades has resulted in “unsustainable results in resources.” Revamped Asian values that promote innovation, sustainability, equitable distribution and social justice have to be enforced.

Some may argue that Tsai has succeeded in doing so because Taiwan is one of the strongest and more open civil societies in Asia. But the fact that she chose to place LGBT rights prominently in her campaign—despite —is a sign of Taiwan’s current generation of politicians acknowledging that it’s only a matter of time before such issues become political matters on an equal footing with housing, education and health care in East Asia.

Until then, Tsai’s presidency over the next four years will be an interesting one as she paves the way for a less confrontational approach to counter China’s quest for unification, while dealing with domestic socioeconomic concerns that her voters want solved.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The son of a Kenyan Muslim who occupies the White House gave a stirring State of the Union address on January 12. President Barack Obama recognized back in 2004 that his presence on the stage was “pretty unlikely.” He declared then that . He was right. At its best, the United States can be a magical country with opportunity, multiculturalism and freedom.

Obama personifies this spirit of America. No European country would elect a black man to office. The same is true for any country in Latin America, the Middle East or Asia. At its best, the US has managed to assimilate minorities from distant shores and multiple faiths. This land of Puritans who set out to create a “Shining City upon a Hill” now has a Supreme Court with three Jews and six Roman Catholics as justices. Despite fervent Evangelicalism in the country, not one Protestant—leave aside a Puritan or Evangelical—is a justice in the highest court of the land.

Since Americans declared their independence in 1776, they have managed to forge a future that is markedly different to the Old World. Old Etonians still rule the United Kingdom with aplomb and the Queen remains the big boss of the Church of England. Social mobility in Britain might have improved since Victorian times, but the top positions are still out of reach for a commoner.

Yet when you peer under the hood or the bonnet, both the US and the UK are more complex than they appear. In the US, health care is supremely expensive and millions still lack access to it, despite Obama’s signature health care reform. In the UK, everyone has access to health care if not of the five star sort that the rich get in the US. A men end up in jail, while no minority in the UK suffers mass incarceration.

Obama’s address has come at a critical time. Global markets have been jittery this week. Stocks fell in Japan, Europe and the US because of sell orders from oil producing countries. Oil prices continue to sink even as sanctions on Iran end as part of the nuclear deal. Emerging markets relying on commodity prices are in disarray. Even the Chinese dragon is huffing and puffing instead of breathing fire.

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is playing Cassandra. It predicts a “” in which stock markets could fall by 20% and oil could slump to $16 a barrel. It states that “the world has far too much debt to be able to grow well” and automation is “on its way to destroy 30-50% of all jobs” in affluent economies.

Barack Obama / Flickr

On July 4, 2015, this author argued that the “the beginning of the end of the current debt-fueled global financial system.” On September 19, this author wrote that unresolved economic contradictions made the . RBS is painting a grimmer picture and advising investors to “sell (mostly) everything” because there is no one “left to take up the baton of growth.” The Wall Street Journal reports that plunging oil prices “.” Clearly, Obama could not have chosen a better time to bid adieu.

Globally, things did not go well this week. Indonesia, a country where Obama spent some of his childhood, has suffered a terrorist attack. Six explosions and trigger happy gunmen killed three people and wounded over 20. Indonesian commandos emerged with credit as they dealt with the situation swiftly and efficaciously. Yet the largest Muslim country in the world remains vulnerable. In 2002, the . Jemaah Islamiyah, a violent Islamist group, was found responsible. This time, the predictably claimed responsibility for the attacks. More attacks will inevitably occur as fundamentalists and bigots attack the syncretic form of Islam that Indonesia practices.

This week, an , of which at least eight were German tourists. Fifteen others were wounded, most of them German again. Istanbul’s posh Sultanahmet district has been largely deserted since. The Islamic State is the suspect again. Security in Turkey is taking a beating. Many suspect Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of  in the past. Now, Erdoğan has a fight on his hands even as he continues to focus more on pummeling the Kurds than on curtailing the Islamic State.

Even as the global economy wobbles and terrorism takes international dimensions, Taiwan has some cheering news. Tsai Ing-wen was elected as president. She is the first woman elected to the position. Tsai supports de jure independence from China and promises greater transparency in government. Now that she is in power, she has vowed to preserve the status quo in relations with Beijing. However, she has asked the Chinese to respect Taiwan’s democracy and called upon both sides to avoid provocations.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the communists and the Kuomintang (KMT) fought a brutal civil war. The latter lost and fled to Taiwan. Since then, both countries have developed into dynamic economies. As a small island state, Taiwan has moved from authoritarian rule to a vibrant democracy. The KMT, which has ruled Taiwan for most of the past 70 years, lost to Tsai’s pro-independence party.

The KMT lost because people worried about low wages, increasing inequality and a flailing economy. They were uncomfortable about Taiwan’s growing economic dependence on China. Trade and investment flows have reached new highs. It is little surprise that China sneezed and Taiwan caught a cold.

Taiwanese voters have opted for a leadership that will not jump into bed with China but will keep a safe distance. They have voted for sovereignty, democracy and self-rule. China will not be too pleased because it still holds that Taiwan is a breakaway province. It just wants to preserve the status quo. Tsai is promising to adhere to it too, but she has a different set of values and has been elected on a platform of change. The risks of a China-Taiwan confrontation have just gone up.

In light of the events this week, Obama’s address was soothing not only for the US, but also for the rest of the world. At his best, the US president is an inspiring figure with spellbinding skills of oratory. At his last State of the Union address, Obama set out a case for an engaged, meritocratic and tolerant America. He was candid about his challenges even if he was at times glib about his proposed solutions.

The US is going through a strange crisis of confidence. Although the unemployment rate has fallen, more Americans have dropped out of the labor force. The number of Americans over 16 looking for work has dipped to . Rising inequality is breeding resentment. Charismatic candidates are running for president, promising quick fixes to deep problems. They are also peddling hate against immigrants and Muslims. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the frontrunners in the Republican primary, sending shivers down many spines.

In his last address, Obama did offer rhetorical and nationalistic red meat to Americans as their staple fare. He pointed out that the US is the strongest nation in the world to whom everyone turns for leadership. He also stretched the truth considerably when he claimed that American “troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world.” Yet for all its humbug, Obama’s speech is of historical importance.

The president spoke about opportunity and security in the new economy, with globalization and automation gobbling away jobs and squeezing the workers. He explained the importance, relevance and immediacy of climate change. He championed public health and increased trade. He argued for controlling the role of money in elections and ending gerrymandering.

Most importantly, Obama harked back to the Enlightenment and unambiguously rejected any politics “.” In a world of Trump, Cruz and the Islamic State, this is an invaluable message from a once “skinny kid with a funny name” who has become the most powerful man in the world.

*[You can receive “The World This Week” directly in your inbox by subscribing to our mailing list. Simply visit Ěý˛ą˛Ô»ĺ enter your email address in the space provided. Meanwhile, please find below five of our finest articles for the week.]

Is Terrorism the New Normal in Turkey?

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Turkey is in a state of uncertainty. Terrorism and war in the country’s southeast are a real possibility.

Since June 2015, there have been four major terrorist attacks in Turkey. One in particular, in Ankara, was the worst in Turkish history.

On January 12, 2016, a bomb rocked Istanbul. At around 10:20am (GMT+2), in the heart of Sultanahmet, just yards from the iconic Blue Mosque, ten people were killed and 15 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device. Six of the deceased were German tourists.

Questions were asked about the perpetrators. Was this the actions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)? Or was it the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a pro-Kurdish splinter group responsible for the recent mortar attack on Istanbul’s second airport in December? Was it the DHKP-C, a leftist revolutionary movement responsible for the January 2015 suicide bomb attack—also in Sultanahmet—that killed one police officer and injured another?

It is now known that a 1988-born Syrian was the suicide bomber. The gender…

The Most Important Presidential Campaign Speech: Bernie on the Banks

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In a recent speech, US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders took on big banks and Wall Street. Veena Trehan breaks it down.

On January 5, US Senator Bernie Sanders gave the most important speech by a presidential candidate this campaign season. The topic: Wall Street and the economy.

“Greed is not good,” proclaimed Sanders, riffing on Gordon Gekko’s famous pronouncement in the movie Wall Street, just miles from that financial center. “In fact, the greed of Wall Street and corporate America is destroying the fabric of our nation. And here is a New Year’s Resolution that I will keep if elected president. If you do not end your greed, we will end it for you.”

The bold speech addressed a topic that should be a main focus of debate, particularly during the race for the presidency. The 2008 financial crash caused a recession that is wiping out $6 to $36 trillion from America’s economy. Yet the talk received scant media coverage. It’s hard to attribute this to recent high-visibility…

Getting Out of Poland’s Remand Prison

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Maciej Dobrowolski spent 40 months in prison because he was accused of committing two felonies. The excessive use of detention in remand is under the spotlight in Poland.

On the far-flung northern outskirts of Warsaw, Poland’s largest remand prison, Warsaw-Bialoleka, serves as a distant memory of the country’s communist past. Built in the 1950s, it held 600-plus Solidarity leaders and activists following a crackdown on the movement during the communist regime’s imposed martial law three decades later.

Today, the facility detains well-over 1,000 inmates, and while it’s a different to the 1980s, some of them are held without sentence for much longer periods of time than the Solidarity internees.

Maciej Dobrowolski, 37, was living behind the impenetrable concrete walls and loops of barbed wire of the Warsaw-Bialoleka remand prison for over half of his 40 months inside.

Last September, he was unexpectedly released on bail, and he wholeheartedly credits his friends and the media for it, not the Polish judicial system. Now, stooping over a table at an…

An Open Letter From Indonesia to Daesh

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Muslims and non-Muslims in Indonesia will not be divided.

Today, Indonesians are mourning. Our people were taken away from us, and dozens of others were injured as a result of horrendous acts of terrorism in Jakarta that you claimed responsibility for. Several hours later, Indonesian authorities and the media reported that the attacks were perpetrated by Daesh, aka the “Islamic State.”

For us—the people who adhere to the same faith that you claim to belong to—the incident is painful. You have slandered our religion that does not propagate violence or murder against innocent individuals.

Do you realize that by committing such actions, you actually demean Islam itself? Have you ever thought what non-Muslims must think when they learn that an organization with the name “Islamic” is killing innocent people in such brutal and barbaric ways? Did you ever stop and think that the people whom you target may themselves be your brothers and sisters in Islam?

Do not forget that the country you attacked on January…

Refugees Welcome at Our Table

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Lyndall Stein remembers the remarkable people her parents welcomed in their London home.

Growing up in in London in the 1960s, we had two tables that welcomed refugees.

There was our kitchen table where my mother Jenny provided a never-ending flow of her nourishing bean soup, warmth and sustenance to the constant flow of refugees from South Africa, who fled prison and death but continued their fight for freedom. My mother always had refugees at her table.

There was another refuge from the rigors of the struggle: My Jewish father Sylvester’s poker table. The players—heroes in the fight against fascism and racism—bet for big stakes with their lives, small stakes at the table:

Helder Macedo, the great Portuguese poet and writer, who left his beloved country and language to escape the vicious regime of the fascist Salazar regime.

Rudi Nausser, who escaped Nazi Germany aged just 14 with his mother, carrying on them only a money belt to bribe their way out of GermanyĚý˛ą˛Ô»ĺ away…

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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For many in the Asia Pacific, 2015 tested the political prowess and limits of the region. The year saw territorial disputes over the South China Sea; an imploding Rohingya refugee crisis in Myanmar; frightening and an environmental catastrophe that affected its neighbors for months; a Chinese currency devaluation that rocked the global economy; and Japan and South Korea’s landmark deal that aims to settle the issue of wartime “comfort women.”

But 2015 wasn’t all that bleak: ASEAN, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, that was a decade in the making; Myanmar experienced a groundbreaking election; the ruling party in Singapore reasserted electoral power after the passing of Lee Kuan Yew; the Bandung spirit lived on through the Asia-Africa Conference; Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi flexed China and India’s soft (and hard) power muscles through their world tours; and Beijing abolished its controversial one-child policy.

But what lies ahead for the region in 2016?

The Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) will hold its 12^th national party congress in January. While the country’s foreign policy is not expected to change, the selection of Vietnam’s future leadership will have implications on its stance over the South China Sea dispute and its relations with China.

In mid-January, Taiwan will hold presidential and parliamentary elections, and it is believed the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will ride to “” against the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), due to the party’s plans of slowing down the state’s reconciliation with Mainland China.

South Koreans will head to the polls in April for parliamentary elections. The vote will be a test for President Park Guen-hye’s administration, which has seen its popularity dip after plans to reform the labor market and adopt a state-approved history textbook.

In the Philippines, more than 18,000 congressional and local posts will be decided in presidential and parliamentary elections on May 9. World champion boxer is just one of the many glitzy highlights of what is expected to be a .

And last but not least, Australia will go to the polls for parliamentary elections in late 2016. The Labor Party are expected to be in a favorable position of regaining power especially after a tumultuous political past, which has seen five prime ministers in power since 2010.

Myanmar © Shutterstock

Swimming With or Against International Currents?

Aside from the economic benefits the Asia Pacific stands to gain from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), it will also experience China’s attempt of expanding its influence in the region through its initiative, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). All eyes will be on the AIIB’s ambitious agenda and claims of complementing—and not competing with—existing international institutions such as the Asian Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Another trade pact known as the (RCEP) is due to join the ranks of the TPP and TTIP “sometime” this year. Leaders from 16 countries—including ASEAN, China, Japan and India—have been negotiating the terms of the deal since 2013. Once in effect, the RCEP will represent nearly half of the world’s population (3.4 billion people) and have a combined GDP of $22.7 trillion, or 30% of the global output.

The US presidential elections in 2016 will also have an impact on the Asia Pacific. If Hillary Clinton is elected, she is likely to continue . US-China relations will continue to be one of strategic rivalry, even as the economic and geopolitical stakes in bilateral cooperation “.”

South-South relations will deepen as well. More Asian countries are set to establish greater economic linkages with Africa through the newly created and individual initiatives, just as how . Asian-Latin American relations will see a boost in areas such as export promotion, urban planning, poverty reduction and financial regulation—with China and India predicted to .

Finally, how the Asia Pacific deals with climate change is one integral issue that will be on every country’s cards in 2016. Following the Paris climate change deal that was brokered in December, the responsibility of reducing emissions ultimately lies with the region, due to Asia being responsible for the . China and India’s slow but steady approach toward air pollution, , and various countries’ stretched resources in dealing with the increasing occurrence of floods and typhoons might mean that climate change reform is likely to remain vague in the year ahead.

On a lighter note, it’s worth mentioning that New Zealand in March. While some predict that the majority of voters will choose to keep the current flag, New Zealand’s decision to create a new identity—replacing the upper-left-corner Union Jack, a sign of colonialism, with a fern leaf—is one of many signs of how the region as a whole is trying to come into its own future.

Here’s to the Asia Pacific ushering in the . Happy New Year!

*[Note: This article was updated on January 3, 2016, at 02:50 GMT.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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The post The Asia Pacific in 2016 appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

By Kalyan M. Kemburi

Over the last two decades, cruise missiles were predominantly deployed by a select group of advanced industrial countries, in particular the United States. Subsequently, there had been a wider use of this weapon system by militaries, partly due to globalization which accelerated technology diffusion, but also because of affordability and operational requirements (in particular the search for asymmetric capabilities). 

Asian militaries top this list. The main advantage of cruise missiles involves the ability to strike targets accurately almost under any weather condition from a long-range by evading most air defenses, and with minimal risk to friendly forces. 

Asian Militaries and Cruise Missiles

Although most countries in Asia have acquired anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM), China, India, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan are developing or have deployed land-attack cruise missiles (LACM). Some Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam have also expressed interest. Japan has indicated interest in a system that could endow it with preemptive strike capabilities — for which cruise missiles could fit the bill.  

For countries such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, the high-cost of deploying missile defenses and the treaty restrictions in developing ballistic missiles have made cruise missiles an attractive system to strike against potential adversaries' ballistic missiles and artillery systems. 

As with any military technology, there is always a dynamic between defense and offence. Deployment of cruise missiles have also resulted in consequent developments in defense: active countermeasures include advances in early warning systems and the deployment of Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft, as well as the strengthening of passive defenses such as installations holding critical assets like aircraft or command and control equipment. Moreover, new operational requirements have intensified efforts to acquire high-speed cruise missiles. 

R&D in Supersonic and Hypersonic Systems 

Five countries in Asia — China, Japan, India, South Korea and Taiwan — have either civilian and/or military programs aimed at developing supersonic and hypersonic systems. It is generally agreed that supersonic systems (powered by ramjet engine) operate in the range of Mach 2-4 and hypersonic (scramjet engine) over Mach 5; most of the deployed LACMs fly at subsonic speeds of around 800km/hr. 

China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center and the National University of Defense Technology are currently working toward scramjet propulsion, pulse-detonation engines and turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) engines, with an aim to eventually develop hypersonic missiles and aircraft. Further, the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics has reportedly developed an experimental scramjet. 

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is involved in developing high-speed air-breathing propulsion for a hypersonic aircraft. JAXA is also collaborating with institutions based in Australia, Germany, Italy and the US in developing scramjet-based systems for space access. In 2012, Japan reportedly tested a rocket-based combined-cycle engine model under Mach 8. 

India currently deploys the ramjet-powered supersonic LACM Brahmos flying at 2.5-2.8 Mach, and has plans to collaborate with Russia to develop a kerosene-based hypersonic Brahmos 2. Concurrently, the Defense Research and Development Organization is working on a hypersonic system that could fly at Mach 6-7 speed propelled by scramjet. Similarly, for space access, India's civilian space agency has been working on a hydrogen-fueled scramjet engine. 

Taiwan's Hsiung Feng III (HF-3) LACM is propelled by a ramjet engine flying at a maximum speed of Mach 2 with an estimated range of 150-200 km. Initially developed as an ASCM by Chung Shan International Institute of Science and Technology, it was later reported that the missile also has land attack capabilities and entered into service in 2008. 

A new entrant of the cruise missile club, South Korea, has also been developing a supersonic Haeseong-2 LACM from the existing ASCM Haeseong-1 (Sea Star, or SSM-700K). In September 2011, Korea Times reported that the missile was slated for deployment by the end of 2013 and has a range in excess of 500 kms.

Additionally, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) has on the drawing board a two-stage Mach 4 scramjet propelled surface to air interceptor. Reportedly, KARI has ground-tested various scramjet components required for this concept. 

Evolution or Revolution in Fire Power 

Supersonic cruise missiles would increasingly become an attractive option due to the following factors.

Firstly, they reduce sensor-to-shooter to-target times. A supersonic LACM flying toward a target at a distance of 1,000 kms has clear time advantage of over 60 minutes over its subsonic counterpart.

Secondly, the kinetic energy of a supersonic missile not only increases the explosive power of a warhead, but also facilitates reduction of the warhead payload, which helps in expanding the range of the missile. Moreover, they are also very useful for targeting hardened targets; this is important given the hardening of installations as part of key passive defensive measures undertaken by many countries.

Thirdly, supersonic LACM used in conjunction with subsonic and theatre ballistic missiles create processing difficulties for any advanced early warning and air defense system. 

On the other hand, hypersonic air-breathing missile is a key emerging technology. For an effective and efficient use of this technology, changes are necessary in organizational structures, decision-making processes, operational concepts, and C4ISR systems. For most Asian militaries, accustomed to organizational and procedural inertia, bringing these changes in itself is revolutionary.

Moreover, enormous technical and financial resources are necessary to deploy a hypersonic cruise missile; therefore, over the next 10-15 years, supersonic cruise missiles offer a more viable complement to the existing cruise and ballistic missiles. 

Asian militaries are still in the process of inducting subsonic LACMs — supersonics in some cases — in significant numbers, and currently are working on innovative concepts and organizational changes that aim to take advantage of these systems in affecting the outcomes on the battlefield. Therefore, induction of high-speed missiles is evolutionary. 

Nevertheless, in a decade, military commanders in Asia would be able to have a cruise missile delivered to their target 1,500 kms away in less than 30 minutes. 

*[Note: Kalyan M. Kemburi is an Associate Research Fellow with the Military Transformations Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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Historically speaking, China has problems with the law. The older generation does not see laws as rights but rather as rules that are thrust upon them, to be obeyed without question. Chinese proverbs such as “the one who creates the law dies by the law” or “turbulent times demand harsh laws” make laws sound negative but necessary without any notion of justice. It was the wise judges who interpreted the laws that were praised in literature and folklore instead of the law itself. That’s because the laws were made for and by the ruling elite; so the person who actually interpreted them was the one wielding power.

In the Past

My father once told me: “The rest of the world follows rule of law but in China people make the rules.” That is true. China has never put the rule of law above anyone, even those who make decisions in matters of life and death. What is needed is higher importance to be placed on the enforcement of written law, as opposed to favoritism towards the powerful elite that wield its power. The concept that nobody is above the law – including the emperor himself — dates back thousands of years, but has hardly ever been put to practice. Ironically, in China, only the strong and powerful can push reforms forward effectively; a reality also reflected in  history.

When Doctor Sun Yat Sen was named provisional president of the new Chinese Republic in December 1911, he had great difficulty in reminding people that he wasn't the new emperor and had to refuse the traditional kneeling and kowtow tributes usually reserved for such a dignitary. For nearly 5,000 years, Chinese politics served to preserve dominant and powerful men; only recently did the country introduce a party system of governance, politics and constitutional law. Even then it was a single party with complete control of the country’s reins. Sun was quickly replaced by another mighty challenger, Yuen Sai Hoi. However, after Yuen's unsuccessful bid to crown himself the emperor, China plunged into a period of competing warlords until Chiang Kai Shek was able to unite the Chinese government under his control.

China again changed hands when the Chinese Communist Party, under the leadership of Mao Tse Dong, defeated the nationalists and emerged as the new sun on the country’s political horizon. Under Mao, China made great leaps and introduced reforms, although most of them ended disastrously. Nonetheless, he remained firmly in control of the communist nation. Under the tutelage of Deng Xiaoping, who rose from the ashes of the Cultural Revolution and pushed for open-market reform over the late 1970s to 1980s, the foundation of modern China’s prosperity and growth was laid.

Egypt and the US

In 2012, months before he was to step down from power, Premier Wen Jia Bao gave a speech on how political reforms should be the main theme in the coming years, for the current economic prosperity could not be sustained without taking steps to remedy the present situation. Most people viewed this as a call for democratizing the ancient country through open elections. They all missed the boat. The most important component of all reforms should be to first establish the rule of law.

In this context, Egypt stands as a powerful example of quasi democracy. Even though President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt was elected democratically, his recent disregard for the rule of law by pushing his own mandate reveals how the absence of a robust constitutional framework can still undermine the idea of democracy. On the flip side, the United States has remained powerful, prosperous and innovative much due to its strong foundations based on rule of the law, regardless of ethnicities or religions involved.

Professor He Weifang of Beijing University, an expert in law, understands this and has championed the rule of law in China. In his first book, “In The Name Of Justice: Striving for the Rule of Law in China,” he lays down necessary components in his plan that could pave the way for China to eventually achieve a separate and independent judicial system. He suggests the country must first set up an independent reform committee. Secondly, the government should only nominate judges rather than appointing them directly. This is necessary to set the courts apart from the official reporting system in the government. Judges and lawyers in mainland China have long complained of interference in trials by government officials.

A separation between the government and the judiciary must be established before respect for rule of law can permeate society. It is not just for the benefit of Chinese citizens; it will also instill faith among foreign investors who feel legal contracts signed in the country do not safeguards their interests adequately (although the situation has improved since China joined the WTO). There is no doubt that a more independent judicial system would boost confidence in China's further forays into the international arena. The economic success and models of law in both Hong Kong and Taiwan could serve as a test model for China to move forward.

However it remains to be seen if the ruling party is going to have the will to achieve such a phenomenal change. For example, Professor He's first step is to establish a committee consisting of scholars and law experts to study the existing legal framework. But his proposition cannot take off unless it is supported whole-heartedly by the ruling Communist Party or backed by the collective will of the ruling class. That takes us back to the idea that China needs a determined leader if it is to undertake bold reforms; urgent advice echoed by both Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao in their last address to the party before leaving office. The examples of Sun Yet Sen and early civilian presidents of nationalist China, who failed to push forth reforms due to lack of political and military will, act as a caution to future Chinese leaders. That was the exact reason why Chiang Zhimin attempted to hold on to his military office a bit longer before passing it on to Hu Jintau.

Xi Jinping

Can Xi Jinping emulate Deng Xiaoping and steer the country towards much-needed reforms? Or will he be like Hu Jintau and opt for the status quo and preserve the harmony of the party? The present signs look promising, for change seems to be on the agenda, even though a recent reshuffle in the standing committee, which left out a few high-profile reformists, does not reflect this sentiment.

There is a great need for reform in China. Words of caution from both Hu and Wen indicate that the Communist Party of China has taken note of the impending action. Also, Hu Juntao's voluntary relinquishment of all his posts to his successor Xi, unlike his predecessor Chiang Zhimin, indicates a willingness to give Xi the opportunity to move forward. Although some noted reformers were not included in the standing committee, there seemed to be consensus among the party on the reform front. Xi was given the mandate to move ahead and secure any reforms to keep the party in power and the country moving forward. The fact that, unlike in the past, high-level party members readily acknowledge the importance of the challenges facing China and the need for change means that they will heed to them. Xi Jinping may not appear as powerful a leader as is required to take China forward, but he will have to play that role nevertheless in order to achieve what China needs.

The most urgent reform he needs to address is the current Chinese judicial systems, because a robust and transparent legal structure is the cornerstone of every just and stable government. The present structure, riddled with abuse and corruption, is not only bad for China’s prospering economy, but also may undermine its global position and hurt strategic partners like the US in the long run. Despite its rhetoric on China’s questionable human rights and lack of democracy, Washington relies on Beijing’s cooperation on a great number of global issues, such as reining in North Korea. There is no doubt that reforms in judiciary and governance to stamp out evils like corruption and abuse of power are long overdue in China. The question, however, is how far and how fast they would be achieved under the new leadership. The answer alone will determine how serious China is about protecting its prosperity and relationship with the rest of the world.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

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