Friday News Roundup — April 16, 2021
Leaving Afghanistan; the U.S.-Japan “Special Relationship”; Russia Sanctions; and Global Trends 2040
Good morning and greetings from Washington, D.C., on this April 16th, known as Emancipation Day in the District of Columbia. This commemorates the DC Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862, which predated the Emancipation Proclamation, ended slavery in the district and paid compensation to both slaveholders and the emancipated. While not as well-recognized as the Juneteenth holiday, it is a reminder of how the District’s history, like many other places, is interwoven with that of civil rights in America.
This week in Washington, it was a week of announcements. Most notable was President Biden’s call for U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, marking what could be the final chapter in that 20 year conflict. On Thursday, the administration also announced a range of sanctions against Russia as tensions with Moscow remain. Closer to home, Speaker Pelosi announced that President Biden will be giving his first address to Congress on April 28th, while in the meantime debate continues over infrastructure plans. The combination of measures now known as the “China Bill” continues to enjoy bipartisan support, in theory, but the reality of a 50–50 Senate looms large. Today, as well, Japanese Prime Minister Suga is visiting the White House in the first visit of a foreign leader of the Biden administration.
As we look at both the Russia sanctions and the Afghanistan withdrawal, our social media will be highlighting events on those topics. Our recent Geotech report had a section on Russian hacking and SolarWinds, while last month’s book event with author Wesley Morgan looked at the long arc of the conflict in Afghanistan. This week, as well, Joshua reviewed Walk in My Combat Boots, and found it to be a more superficial examination of the U.S. military.
In this week’s roundup, Ethan takes the lead looking at the Afghanistan withdrawal deadline, and what that might actually entail. Dan looks at what opportunities are ahead for the U.S.-Japan alliance as Prime Minister Suga visits Washington, while Joshua breaks down the sanctions on Russia. Michael digests the Global Trends 2040 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. As always, we wrap with news you may have missed.
The hard to believe end of Afghanistan
Ethan Brown
Despite the tremendous formal announcement by President Biden this week that U.S. forces will commence with a full withdrawal from Afghanistan, no later than September 11th, 2021 (a symbolic anniversary no doubt), the manner in which these orders are promoted must give pause as we consider the full politicking at play. At best, the Taliban and Afghan governments will let the present situation on the ground simmer ahead of yet another fighting season, while the slightest provocation — highly probable given the fractured nature of disunited fighting cells and other violent groups at play in the war-torn country — gives the administration all the justification it needs to keep the forever war ongoing through the next election cycle.
Let me emphatically state at the onset that I applaud the announcement and hope for its full execution, and especially the statement by senior Biden administration officials acknowledging that “after a rigorous review, President Biden has decided to draw down the remaining troops…there is no military solution to the problems plaguing Afghanistan”. After having spent nearly three total years of my life in Afghanistan over multiple deployments, I won’t shed a tear over the last C-17 turning off the ramp at Bagram Airfield bringing U.S. personnel back home. What I worry about, and the manner in which the President carefully qualified his decision, is that this is all window-dressing ahead of an escalation, or at least a continuation, of U.S. involvement in a battlespace that lost its strategic value long ago.
What happens on May 2nd, when U.S. forces will obviously still be present and established at the big bases alongside their NATO partners, in direct violation of the terms of the February agreement signed in Doha by former President Trump? In the past year, U.S. military commanders have reported a drop in attacks against coalition troops, but the violence has instead vectored towards the Afghan population and the withered shell of Afghan national defense forces. The continued presence of U.S. forces in the country was predictable months ago, when those pesky and difficult to pinpoint sources of attacks “gave U.S. officials pause” about following through with the May 1st deadline.
While the administration is making all of the right pronouncements, even going so far as to say that a conditions-based departure was unrealistic (which has been the ‘strategy’ for a decade now), but predictable hawks and mongers in congress are opposed to the withdrawal…Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnel said “precipitously withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan is a grave mistake”, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called it a very difficult decision for the President and that there is no easy answer. “Demagogic harmonies appease tone deaf ears/but paper tigers always burn and voices disappear…war is dreaming of itself/the end of everything” is a chilling lyrical theme for what is playing out on these rhetorical platforms, both for Afghanistan and compounding areas of challenging policy decisions abroad. And of course, a recent intelligence report proffered to congress (classified obviously, can’t have those pesky constituents to see the thin justifications for staying in Afghanistan because they wouldn’t hold up to public scrutiny) suggest a doomed outlook for everything if U.S. forces depart.
All of the conditions are present for retaining the status quo — more rotations and continued ‘pressure campaigns, precision engagements, advisory missions’ to help ANDSF, and keeping the forever war rolling on. The announcement to vacate Afghanistan came with stipulations: forces would remain in place to protect diplomatic personnel (expected and rational, but the offensive authorities they would be granted were left unsaid), and of course, the lengthened withdrawal timeline that spans the summer months of guaranteed hostilities. The President’s personal inclinations for keeping special operations forces employed in Afghanistan in a counter-terror role is well documented, and such classified units who are often employed alongside intelligence services under Title 50 authorities live blurred operational lives in such locales, especially in this highly-publicized future environment flux.
When the deadline arrives and U.S. forces remain in place on May 1st, the Taliban have already sworn to respond with violence, and despite a planned April 24th summit in Turkey for NATO members to discuss the future of Afghanistan, the Taliban have stated emphatically that they will not participate in any summits until all foreign forces have vacated, doubling down on confrontational rhetoric Wednesday in response to the new withdrawal timeline.
An escalation in violence during this one last pivotal fighting season, or a failure on the Taliban to honor their end of an agreement (ironic, since the May 1st date clearly wasn’t important enough to adhere to), or the vague, ethereal threats of a returning al Qaeda/other violent extremist boogeyman…it all stacks up nicely for the Biden administration to reverse course in a few months with a declaration that we can’t continue this withdrawal — the situation on the ground is too volatile, the risk to human rights is too great, the Taliban can’t work with the Afghan government — all of the old trope. It’s a cut barely above newspeak, only because the policymakers saying Afghanistan is double-ungood would be too on the nose for this kind of war that was never meant to be won.
The human rights argument for remaining doesn’t hold water when viewed critically either; protecting the hard-fought rights of Afghan women and girls would be a curious enough justification, considering the soft stance American Presidents have taken on other human rights issues of late…the Uighurs, the Royhingas, the Kurds, just to name a few. Why would Afghan women’s rights be the figurative hill American policy chooses to die on, when previous administrations have made weak diplomatic critiques on those other human rights issues…if they were publicly decried at all?
I hope that I am wrong in this prognostication, I really do. No one would be happier than me to point back to this Friday News Roundup come September 11th, and brandish a press bulletin confirming the end of U.S. forces operationally engaged in Afghanistan. Former Chief Diplomat and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell likened our present timeline to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989: “we’ve done all that we can do…What are those troops being told they’re there for? It’s time to bring it to an end…[the Soviets] did it the same way, they got tired and they marched out and back home. How long did anyone remember that?”
To be sure, there is no good decision here, and the President’s options are bad on all accounts. But this decision needs to follow through with conclusive action, because the new world of competition requires that blood and money must go to arenas that serve American interests. Afghanistan, where the road paved with good intentions always seems to detour, serves no purpose in American national security.
The Next Special Relationship
Dan Mahaffee
There are few commonalities between the early days of the Trump administration and those of the Biden administration, but one important one is early engagement by the Prime Minister of Japan. In November 2016, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe traveled to Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet with President-elect Trump. At that time, there was much to be clarified in terms of the statements Candidate Trump had made about the U.S.-Japan alliance and the ultimately-doomed U.S. participation in the Trans Pacific Partnership. Over the past four-plus years, what became clearer for sure was the depth of the partnership and the scope of the shared challenges Washington and Tokyo face. Now, with Prime Minister Suga visiting Washington as the first foreign leader to visit the Biden White House, it is worth taking stock of how the U.S.-Japan relationship can continue to evolve, deepening into a transpacific special relationship for the 21st century.
Forefront in the U.S.-Japan alliance is the treaty alliance between our nations and decades of military cooperation in conflict, peacekeeping, and humanitarian response. While limited by its constitutional framework and public opinion, Japanese leaders’ continued efforts to expand Japan’s defense capabilities, both in terms of the law as well as military hardware, are an example of a U.S. ally contributing and expanding their share of the partnership. Deepening defense cooperation with Japan should not only focus on the conventional partnership, but also where cooperation in space and cyber domains is possible.
While space cooperation can build on existing military, civil, and commercial partnerships, cyber security cooperation is a more multifaceted challenge. Both the United States and Japan share the vulnerabilities of highly-connected societies; in both countries, most of the threat is faced by the private sector; and both countries respect privacy and civil liberties in ways that our cyber adversaries do not. Therefore, facing many of the same circumstances, the United States and Japan, in concert with other close intelligence allies, should further cyber defense cooperation, information sharing, and incident response.
Alongside defense and cybersecurity cooperation, technology cooperation and economic partnerships are also vital. Here is where the United States and Japan have to confront Beijing’s increasingly techno-authoritarian statist economy. Japanese and U.S. innovation leadership can help to ensure that technologies like 5G and 6G networks, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing serve open societies rather than authoritarian regimes. The deepening of U.S.-Japan cooperation on critical technologies can demonstrate an alternative to China’s model, while also harnessing the potential of our leading tech multinationals, world-renowned universities, and the rule of law. To further support innovation leadership, both countries can work together towards secure, resilient tech supply chains, as well as public-private partnerships to hasten technology development, testing, and rollout. In his piece in The Wall Streeet Journal before visiting Washington, Prime Minister Suga highlighted the creation of a digital agency responsible for coordinating the digitization of the Japanese economy. Coordinating the security and economic aspects of our technical and digital partnerships is the next step for the U.S.-Japan alliance and can hopefully one day serve as a model for alliances and partnerships with other high-tech democracies.
This U.S.-Japan cooperative model is a bilateral relationship that can easily grow to harness multilateral networks, as well as to exercise joint leadership in international bodies. Already, the deepening cooperation amongst the Quad countries demonstrates U.S.-Japan leadership in concert with Australia and India. Washington and Tokyo can work together to deepen ties with other regional partners. Washington will have a key role to play in stronger trilateral ties with Seoul; Japan’s warming ties with Taiwan are a powerful signal to other global players. This cooperation is not only limited to government cooperation, as U.S. and Japanese firms will have to face down Beijing and its firms seeking to set authoritarian-friendly international standards for technology and business.
Much as the U.S.-UK special relationship defined 20th century transatlantic politics — and remains a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy — the U.S.-Japan relationship can evolve into something similar for the scope of the challenges we face in the 21st century, both in the region and around the globe. The shared interests of our countries align in from security to economic matters, yet our alliance rests on a deeper foundation of shared values. These values, lessons from our shared history, and an innovative spirit for the future combine for the most important alliance of the 21st century.
Biden Administration Issues New, Wide-Ranging Sanctions on Russia
Joshua C. Huminski
On Thursday, the White House announced a new wide-ranging set of sanctions against Russia targeting 38 entities, individuals, and companies for election interference and recent cyber hacks (32 for election interference and six for supporting the cyber activities of Russian intelligence). Ten intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover were also expelled. The sanctions also targeted a Pakistani company, Second Eye Solutions, and its owners, which the United States alleges helped the Internet Research Agency (IRA) conceal its identity. Along with the European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, the U.S. also sanctioned five individuals and three entities associated with the occupation of Crimea.
The United States formally alleged that Russian foreign intelligence, the SVR, was responsible for the SolarWinds hack, stating that it had “high confidence in its assessment of attribution.” A detailed breakdown of the vulnerabilities used in the SolarWinds hack was released by the NSA, Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, and the FBI. The White House also rolled back its confidence level about the alleged Russian bounty program, rumors of which circulated last year, with a senior official saying there was low-to-moderate confidence, because it was partly based on information from detainees.
In a statement accompanying the announcement the White House said:
The Biden administration has been clear that the United States desires a relationship with Russia that is stable and predictable. We do not think that we need to continue on a negative trajectory. However, we have also been clear — publicly and privately — that we will defend our national interests and impose costs for Russian Government actions that seek to harm us.
For his part, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said:
These actions are intended to hold Russia to account for its reckless actions. We will act firmly in response to Russian actions that cause harm to us or our allies and partners. Where possible, the United States will also seek opportunities for cooperation with Russia, with the goal of building a more stable and predictable relationship consistent with U.S. interests.
The sanctions also targeted Russian debt, prohibiting U.S. financial institutions from buying any government bonds issued from the Russian Central Bank, Russian National Wealth Fund and the Ministry of Finance after 14 June. Long seen as a “nuclear option”, this is the first time that sanctions have directly targeted Russian debt. The efficacy of this measure will be limited as it only pertains to U.S. institutions — European and other countries’ financial institutions are unaffected and will still be to buy this debt.
Moreover, the ban does not affect secondary markets — only those directly purchased from the Russian government. This measure is certainly a shot across the bow, and the White House retains the ability to expand these sanctions. According to the White House, “This directive provides authority for the U.S. government to expand sovereign debt sanctions on Russia as appropriate.”
A statement from Secretary of State Blinken also expressed concern for the health of dissident figure, Alexei Navalny, who is currently in prison outside Moscow for parole violations. According to Secretary Blinken, “In addition, together with partners and allies, on March 2 the U.S. responded to Russia’s attempt to poison Aleksey Navalny using a chemical weapon and his subsequent arrest and imprisonment. We remain concerned about Navalny’s health and treatment in prison, and call for his unconditional release.”
What is perhaps most impressive about this suite of sanctions is the comprehensive nature and cross-departmental coordination of the effort — to include international partners — and the level of detail in identifying and attributing Russian intelligence operations, something to which much has been alluded and inferred, but little direct connection in such a public fashion.
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, said “Such aggressive behavior will certainly be strongly rebuffed, and the response to sanctions will be inevitable.” She added, “Washington must realize that it will pay for the degradation of bilateral relations.” The foreign ministry summoned Ambassador John Sullivan for “discussions.”
Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, added that Russia viewed the sanctions as “illegal”. Entertainingly, the SVR dismissed accusations that it was involved in cyber activity as “словоблудие” which is roughly translated as ‘windbaggery’, ‘meaningless blather’ or ‘yackety-yak.’
These sanctions and actions very much appear to be indicative of a Biden administration that is seeking to find a fine balance in dealing with Russia. On the one hand, in a recent call between President Biden and President Putin, there appeared to be an agreement on a bilateral summit in a third country, and it is clear from the language that the administration would prefer to avoid a continued deterioration in relations. Only a few months ago an extension to New START was reached, so there are areas of potential cooperation.
At the same time, the White House is trying to strike a, at least publicly, more assertive posture toward Moscow than that of President Biden’s predecessor, President Trump. Here of course, the administration is imposing costs for Russia’s behavior such as election interference and the SolarWinds hack. These actions are not mutually exclusive. The administration is looking to appear, in the words of Gordon Correra of the BBC, “resolute but proportionate.” This sentiment was expressed by a senior official who said, “we’re not looking for escalation. We’re providing a proportionate and tailored response.”
For his part, President Biden said as much in a speech shortly after the sanctions were announced:
I was clear with President Putin that we could have gone further, but I chose not to do so. I chose to be proportionate. The United States is not looking to kick off a cycle of escalation and conflict with Russia. We want a stable, predictable relationship. If Russia continues to interfere with our democracy, I’m prepared to take further actions to respond. It is my responsibility as President of the United States to do so.
Yet, the sanctions and expulsions are unlikely to affect Russian behavior, something the White House acknowledges. Jonathan Finer, principal deputy national security adviser, said “Our view is that no single action that we will take or could take in and of itself could directly alter Russia’s malign behavior.” He added, “But this is going to be a process that is going to take place over time, and it will involve a mix of significant pressure and finding ways to work together.”
While some have suggested that the sanctions will disrupt Russian activities, such as those of the Prigozhin-related operations and deter future actions, the reality is that previous rounds of sanctions and expulsions have neither disrupted nor deterred Moscow’s ability or intention to act. While the targeting of Russia’s national debt is interesting, it did not really result in significant financial disruption and, unless it is more wide-ranging such as the Iran sanctions — a truly escalatory step — it is unlikely to have a significant effect. Indeed, Russia’s finance ministry expressed confidence it can simply replace American debt buyers with foreign purchasers.
In reality, sanctions are a measure to show displeasure at actions or to threaten to dissuade potential actions. With regard to Russia, they are more of the former than the latter. The continued imposition of sanctions has become almost background noise for the Russian elite, a cost of doing business. Sanctions and indictments, naming and shaming, all have done very little to change Moscow’s behavior and nothing suggests that they will do so now.
If the administration wanted to go further, it absolutely could have and will retain the ability to do so. Targeting oligarchs and their second and third order connections would severely affect Putin’s inner circle, and likely have immediate effects. Perhaps most significantly, the new nuclear option could be the president sanctioning companies doing business with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline — something mandated by Congress, but which the administration has thus far refrained from doing. In his speech following the sanctions, President Biden demurred on sanctioning the pipeline, saying “Nord Stream 2 is a complicated issue affecting our allies in Europe. I’ve been opposed to Nord Stream 2 for a long time from the beginning even when I was out of office and even before office, before I left office as vice president. But that’s still is an issue that is in play.”
Yet, suggesting that these represent a “sword of Damocles” over Putin are severely misguided. Sanctions alone are a necessary, but not sufficient, policy tool. What is needed is a comprehensive policy towards Russia and this is not yet forthcoming. What sanctions off-ramps are there? What incentives can Washington and the West offer to bring Putin to the table or change his behavior? Thus far there have only been sticks and few carrots. A bilateral in a third country is less an incentive and more something that occurs in the course of normal business. If anything, the potential for real action rests much more in Putin’s hands with the mobilization of forces near Ukraine’s border and Crimea. While the likelihood remains low that those activities are a prelude to an invasion, it is still a possibility.
National Intelligence Council Peers into Crystal Ball
Michael Stecher
Last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on where the world is going in the next 20 years. The report, Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World is an exercise in “strategic foresight”. The analysts who wrote the paper collaborated and coordinated broadly to think about the key drivers of the current international political system and the way those forces are likely to interact over the next two decades. From those first- and second-order effects, they lay out 5 hypothetical scenarios of what the year 2040 could look like. The implicit task of the reader is to decide which scenario is most desirable and what are the steps that they can take to influence outcomes in that direction.
The report itself is interesting. I went into it expecting it to be a total bummer, and it is not: it is merely a serious bummer. That it is a bummer is hardly a surprise: it is a document written at a specific time and it is somewhat difficult to be optimistic in 2021. Looking back at the Global Trends 2015 — released in December 2000 — the tone is one of restrained optimism: there would be challenges coming from population dynamics, economic inequality, and climate change; but those challenges would be mediated through a system in which the United States, as the world’s predominant power, has the most ability to influence outcomes (even if that predominance was likely to be constrained by a rising China and the risk of a “superpower EU” that provided an alternative pole of global power).
Many of the trends identified in Global Trends 2015 have indeed played out, though certainly not all of them. The stresses of water scarcity and poor governance played out in the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War. Others are a mixed bag: global trade, which Global Trends 2015 said would continue alongside globalization, has grown, but has also been significantly below trend since the 2008 financial crisis. Others are total misses: the risks posed to the global financial system mostly reflect the most proximate crisis to the authors, the 1997–98 emerging markets debt crisis, while the actual financial crises came from a very traditional overvaluation of the stock market (the dotcom bust) and the mortgage-linked Great Recession.
The Global Trends reports, while making claims about the future, are really statements about the present and the recent past. The emerging consensus is that the last 20 years have been pretty rough. U.S. global power has peaked and is in either absolute or relative decline. Climate change, which was a long-term risk in 2000 is clearly a present risk today. And in the interim, we have suffered three extremely improbable events — the September 11 attacks, the 2008 financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic — all of which had terribly negative consequences. When the Global Trends 2015 report was written, the term “black swan” only referred to certain Australian waterfowl.
Unsurprisingly, the report released last week is mostly concerned with how systems deal with strain. Poorly designed megacities in the global south will continue to draw in migrants from rural regions but will be unable to create the kinds of productivity growth that fueled New York in the 1950s or Shanghai in the 2010s. Climate change will cause more people to suffer economic instability and raise the risk of displacement, and attempts to ameliorate it are likely to have negative side effects and come up short. Population booms will cause instability in some regions (Sub-Saharan Africa) and aging or shrinking populations will make it difficult to sustain economic growth in others (Western Europe, Russia, Japan). On the other side of the ledger, some regions will have moved past the most dangerous phase of their demographic transitions (Eastern Europe, Middle East, Southeast Asia, parts of Latin America), easing migration pressures and making it easier to promote human development.
Rapid technological change and complex information environments will raise the risk of political miscalculation that leads to interstate war. The key structural supports of the postwar liberal order, having fallen into disrepair, will completely calcify. The dispersion of global power will make collective action more difficult and increase the prevalence of intrastate conflicts with foreign-backed proxy forces. Citizens will feel increasing disillusionment at the disconnect between their economic ambitions and the state’s capacity to deliver on them, fostering democratic backsliding and crass populism.
See? Mostly a bummer. And that is certainly the line that the commentariat took with it too.
But understanding this as a piece of its time is important too. The pervasive sense of doom is understandable but blinkering. While this report was released last week, it was written over the course of many months. The impending end of the COVID-19 pandemic casts the entire enterprise in a slightly different light, as we are reminded of the ability of technological solutions to break out of things that look like traps. 6 months ago, people were cautiously hopeful that life would be back to normal by early 2022. Today, ¼ of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, with millions of additional shots being given every day.
20 years from now, I am cautiously optimistic that we will find many more of these trends have upside in them. The energy revolution that is making solar and wind energy more cost effective than fossil fuels will break the developing world out of the dichotomy of growth vs. the environment. Automation can provide a boon to aging workforces and can restore productivity growth to lagging sectors like healthcare and education. Population dynamics in many places look good for economic growth and a combination of immigration and remittances can help in other areas. Rising living standards can ease the pain in politics. There is plenty of reason for pessimism looking out 5, 10, and 20 years, but the problems are not purely structural or unsolvable. That might not fit into the executive summary of Global Trends 2040, but I hope that policymakers can keep a little optimism in mind.
News You Might Have Missed
Cuba Without Castros
Sarah Naiman
When Cuba’s top politicians return home after the island’s eighth Communist Party Congress next week, they will step into a Castro-free country for the first time in 60 years. First Secretary Raul Castro has ruled since 2016, when he assumed the position following the death of his brother, the famous communist revolutionary Fidel Castro. At the time, Castro promised that he would step back from the country’s top position during its eighth Communist Party Congress; this week, the international community expects that vow to be upheld. The next Secretary will likely be Cuba’s current president and Castro’s protégé, Miguel Diaz-Canel. While this next generation of leaders is not expected to bring a much-needed overhaul to Cuba’s dysfunctional system of governance, some reform is inevitable, as the pandemic and the rise of the internet have eroded confidence in the socialist model. To demonstrate that he is qualified to carry on the Castro torch, “Diaz-Canel has sought to win the party’s trust with his government’s catchphrase ‘We are continuity.’” It will be fascinating to see whether Cuba can continue to operate in its current ways without the social and historically revolutionary weight of the Castros.
Record PLAAF Incursion Into Taiwanese Airspace
Miles Esters
As U.S. and Chinese naval forces amass in the South China Sea, China’s military flew a “record number” of warplanes into Taiwan’s southwest air defense identification zone (ADIZ). According to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, the incursion on Monday consisted of 18 fighter jets, as well as four nuclear-capable bombers, two anti-submarine aircraft, and an early warning aircraft. In recent months, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force has carried out regular flights over the international waters separating southern Taiwan and the Taiwanese-controlled Paratas Islands in the South China Sea. As reported by Business Insider, “PLA warplanes conducted 1,710 air sorties and 1,029 maritime incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ in 2020” and that number is expected to increase this year. Furthermore, Taiwan spent 8.7% of its total military budget in the same year intercepting Chinese flights. Many analysts suggest that the Chinese military’s strategy of frequent encroachments into Taiwan’s ADIZ is a form of attrition and psychological warfare meant to exhaust their forces and decrease the public’s alertness against a potential Chinese invasion. A day before this incident, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken reasserted America’s legal commitment to Taiwan and said that the U.S. would “make sure [the country] can defend itself”, adding that it would be a “serious mistake for anyone to try to change the status quo by force.” The island nation will remain at the epicenter of China’s increasingly aggressive and nefarious regional ambitions as China has not ruled out using force to reclaim Taiwan.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.