Friday News Roundup — April 21, 2023
Friday greetings to you and Eid Mubarak to those celebrating the end of Ramadan. This week’s news focus was on the looming debt ceiling and the “Limit, Save, and Grow Act of 2023” proposal put forth by Speaker McCarthy. The act would raise the debt ceiling until next March, in exchange for a range of spending cuts, domestic spending capped at FY2022 levels, recouping unspent COVID funds, a halt to student loan forgiveness, and a range of other regulatory cuts and energy proposals. While questions continue about whether McCarthy can get the legislation passed, it looks like its best chances will come if the GOP caucus sees it as a starting point for negotiations with the White House — which so far does refuse to negotiate over the debt ceiling. Whether a broader budget can be passed, as well as how any debt ceiling deal is whipped through the House or Senate, remains to be seen. That said, the looming deadline is likely growing nearer, as early 2023 tax receipts are down compared to expectations.
Receiving less coverage, but important in terms of articulation of U.S. China strategy, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen gave a speech on Thursday stating that the Biden administration did not call for decoupling, nor see mutual economic growth as incompatible with U.S. interests. However, she did note that the administration would choose security over economic interests when both were at stake, but emphasized that the countries could have a “constructive” and “healthy” relationship.
Overseas, the fighting has intensified in Sudan, with two military factions battling for control as talks to transition to civilian government failed. International mediators have been unable to bring about a cease fire, while the United States and other nations increasingly look at military options to evacuate those trapped by the fighting.
CSPC is proud to release two reports to the public, available on our website. “Securing Digital Freedom” provides recommendations on how we can promote digital freedom and ensure that the digital networks upon which we rely and the information we see on our screens can be trusted. “Fostering Cooperation between the U.S. Congress and the Diet of Japan” provides recommendations for deeper dialogue and collaboration between the two allies’ legislative bodies.
Joshua C. Huminski, the Director of the Mike Rogers Center for Intelligence & Global Affairs, reviewed Peter Frankopan’s “The Earth Transformed”, a new global history that puts climate and nature at the center of civilization’s rise. The omission of climate, Frankopan shows, has warped our understanding of humanity’s global expansion, but has been a key driver of everything from trade and politics, to war and peace.
CSPC Presidential Fellows alumni continue to contribute to the debate. Sarath Ganji, now a U.S. Fulbright Scholar, has an article in the Journal of Democracy’s latest print edition that explores the seedier side of sports diplomacy (i.e., sportswashing), from its origins in 2015 to its latest expression in the investment empires of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
In this week’s roundup Dan Mahaffee covers how the wargaming exercise of the Select CCP Committee is a reminder of the utility of gaming and planing. Ethan Brown looks at the personnel challenge revealed by the Pentagon budget. Zachary Moyer covers trade talks between Russia and India.
The Power of Gaming
Dan Mahaffee
Gamers and national security have been in the news a lot recently. The leak of classified briefing documents by Jack Teixeira of the Massachusetts Air National Guard focused a lot of attention on his gaming community and chat rooms where the documents were shared. Less prominently noted, in terms of gaming and national security, was that the Select CCP Committee led by Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) would be participating in a wargaming exercise over a theoretical Taiwan conflict. As the committee’s recent foray into gaming reminds us, the use of gaming or similar strategic exercises is very important in examining the critical aspects of the geotech challenge ahead.
The Select CCP Committee met on Wednesday night to carry out a Taiwan wargame facilitated by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). What the gaming exercise revealed was the need to stockpile arms on Taiwan now; concerns with U.S. weapons production (compounding what we already know from the European theater); and the need of the business community to better prepare for a potential conflict and its economic fallout. As further analysis of the wargame noted, the Committee saw first hand how geography made rapid resupply of the island a challenge.
That the Committee also noted concerns — albeit ones that are already apparent — regarding arms production, this gets into the deeper challenge of fixing our procurement system and addressing the consolidation and loss of defense capacity of the so-called “peace dividend” years. Inevitably, it has come time to reinvest those dividends, but capacity is not something that we can stand up overnight, particularly as defense platforms and components become ever more complex. Led by my colleague Joshua Huminski of the CSPC Mike Rogers Center, we have found that a good first step when considering complex decisions or scenarios for the entire gamut of challenges — national security, intelligence, biopreparedness, critical technologies, societal resilience, etc. — is to take the desired capabilities or authorities you need in the wargame or scenario you imagine for the late-2020s or early-2030s, and then ask yourself what hard decisions or complex reforms do I need to make, or at least get started, now to give me what I need then.
How complex supply chains would be upset and the economic impact of the conflict was also made clear during the wargame. The lawmakers felt that the outcome of the simulation suggested that they needed to do more to warn the private sector of the risks of conflict. In some senses, we see the private sector already moving to hedge some of their supply chains, production is being spread from China to other areas, or the companies are building one supply chain for China, one outside. Still, this is moving at a slower pace than the growing tensions over Taiwan, but we must also remember that the shared economic costs for the U.S. and China of a conflict and both their dependence on Taiwan are a brake on conflict and at least a continuing pressure to maintain the precarious but prosperous status quo, no matter how heated the rhetoric might get.
Certainly the private sector should be doing more to consider the risks of a Taiwan conflict and the economic impact, but this should be part of a broader re-recognition of geopolitics’ importance in the corporate boardroom. If that lesson has not been learned already post-Covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, then the prospect of war in Taiwan, or any Indo-Pacific conflict for that matter, will be a rude awakening.
In conversations with leaders and thinkers in both Washington and Tokyo, I find there is growing agreement on the paucity of and need for “post-Taiwan” planning. While much of our attention is focused, and perhaps rightly so, on an immediate Taiwan conflict — and hopefully incorporating lessons from Ukraine into that planning — there is little in the way of considering what the United States and its allies will face after the potential range of outcomes of a Taiwan conflict. Each of the scenarios from a rapid Chinese victory to slow destructive capture of the island, or perhaps an unresolved naval battle or a standoff over a blockade, all still require U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic efforts for what comes after. And, circling back to the impact on the private sector, all of these scenarios result in significant economic ruin, changing the calculus of strength in any post-conflict world.
Gaming and other strategic or scenario-focused exercises are important for government and private sector leaders. Since we were founded at the behest of President Eisenhower, we remember his maxim as a general, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.” His Solarium Exercises were just such a planning process for the Cold War, and Chairman Gallagher, having also led the Cyber Solarium, knows the importance of that gaming and planning process — especially with the complex geopolitical challenges we face. It will be important for other leaders to carve out time with their teams to do the same.
DoD Budget squabbles gloss over personnel management problems
Ethan Brown
The DoD has entered its annual tradition of fighting, lobbying, cajoling and otherwise scraping amongst its components for congressional approval on budgetary proposals for the coming year. The services released their combined budget request for congressional review last week, and the topline increases and inflation adjustments have produced a request in excess of $842 billion — the largest defense budget in history (though some still think it too small).
Some services, like the Air Force, are actually exploring options for moving ahead on programs of record and proposed programs of record without explicit congressional concurrence: with an aim to kick-start initiatives based on “technologically surprise or technological opportunity”, according to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. The Secretary made this request on account of the increasing competition with China, as nearly a dozen new-start programs have remained in limbo under the fog of congressional resolutions on new tech programs. These programs are aimed at ensuring a space and air capability gap versus Beijing, namely in streamlining acquisitions authorities and reacting to emerging threats — both viable avenues for the complexity of this slow-boiling conflict.
The Navy remains anchored to an enduring and weary fight of its own: shipyards and the laborious service contracts for building new vessels of the future fleet while it continues to divest in poorly managed programs of the past. That simple reality is that the industrial base which builds the ships for our fleets are inarguably overburdened as the Navy is emerging from the poorly-shaped Littoral Combat Ship program which was obsolete when its maiden voyages were underway. Now, the Navy is pivoting its program vector towards upgrading other fleets and replacing the Virginia-class submarines that are being sold to Australia under the AUKUS deal.
Some of the ‘good’ in the budgetary proposals include increased (and in some cases, dramatically) the integrated deterrence and space combat power toplines, $11 billion for the former and $33 billion for the latter, which includes missile defense and space-dependent systems and networks upgrades. The Navy took on the single biggest chunk of the baseline operational funds in the proposal at $52.8bn, while the smallest purse for operational funds (the “train, organize, and equip” component) still belongs to the Space Force at $3.3bn. USSOCOM and Joint Readiness both requested an operational budget between Nine and Seven billion, respectively. Simply, everyone is looking to upgrade tech, get tech, initiate research and development on tech, and fielding existing tech under development. $5.1 billion is dedicated to climate research and facility innovation (installation overhauls).
Notably, in the wake of the Ukraine military aid nearly equaling the budget for any individual service last year (current tallies for Ukraine support equaling more than $46 billion as of February, according to the CFR tracker), an additional five billion has been requested for rebuilding munitions stockpiles, totaling a $30.6 bn for FY2024 in an effort to rebuild the weapons stockpiles drained by the Ukraine effort.
But the push to devote more appropriations to technological upgrades, inevitably, comes at a dire cost. So what programs of record get slashed first? Personnel and manning. It happens every time the Defense Department tries to find ways to invest — splurge — on more tech and gadgets instead of investing in its most important resource: human hardware.
Take for example my old career field: Tactical Air Control Party, the personnel whose primary function was formed air control of aircraft and airstrikes during GWOT. A proposed manning adjustment in the Air Force’s budget plans will reduce this critical capability by 44%.The Navy and Marine Corps will face similar reductions in specific career fields, many of which evolved and became far more preeminent in GWOT constructs than is envisioned in the future fight where technology has become such a prevalent focus, albeit the collective budgets for all services are proposing a 5.2% pay increase to pace inflation.
But in contrast, the expanded budgets from the services are hopeful in growing the human inventory by 12 to 13,000 personnel in total by FY2024, both a goal for the DoD and the White House in budget proposals sent to congress. Those efforts to increase the force writ large are undermined by significant shortfalls in recruiting, an area which scarcely received a budget increase at all for the forthcoming budget. Force management is a constant rollercoaster for services and one that severely constrained readiness in 2013, under the banner of “Sequestration” which drained personnel and training at a time when grand strategy was in a transition.
Purchasing hardware is up, filling billets for the most important resource — people — is down, and the two are (and will always) be at odds with one another.
The answer to compounding national defense challenges is never going to be less expensive, and one of the few constants in Washington policymaking is the need to spend more money on the military. But the initiatives to expand appropriations on technology, hardware, and an attempt to flood a strained industrial base with more cash when it struggles to meet current and overdue demands, while simultaneously struggling to meet recruiting requirements is a tremendous risk which bodes ill for contending in a complex national security arena. The DoD should focus on investing in the human hardware which makes the defense enterprise work, elsewise, the hardware is irrelevant.
India-Russia Trade Talks and Strategic Concerns
Zachary Moyer
On April 17, 2023, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov met in New Delhi to begin advanced trade talks in an effort to increase relations between the two countries. Since the war on Ukraine, Russian crude oil that has lost its market in Europe is being sold at discount prices in India. India has not spoken against Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine and calls for a diplomatic dialogue for peace.
Russia has been a friend and major arms contributor to India for the past two decades. In the wake of the war in Ukraine, Russia has continued to sell weapons to India, which is a valuable market. India is also a major destination for discounted Russian oil and Russia has displaced Iraq as the number one oil exporter to India this year. India, which still has a large agricultural sector, is also hoping to increase fertilizer imports from Russia in the current trade talks.
An obstacle to the current trade talks is the imbalance of exports between Russia and India, with India importing more Russian goods than it can export back to Russia. Manturov spoke on this trade imbalance: “We need to find a niche in the products which India can replace.” Manturov is reportedly focusing on machinery and technology imports to keep the Rupee-Ruble exchange balanced.
It is currently unclear whether or not the bilateral trade talks are pointing to a comprehensive or sectoral agreement, but news coverage is largely focused on the high-volume arms, energy, and fertilizer trade. It is reported that an updated Bilateral Investment Treaty for investment protections are also being discussed with the last BIT signed by India and Russia in 1994. India and Russia are also both recommencing multilateral trade discussions with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) which also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, however this discussion will require the agreement of the aforementioned member states as well.
China remains an uncomfortable component in the relationship between Russia and India. As the relationship between China and Russia grows closer, relations remain tense between India and China. For this reason, the May meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin did not sit right with many in New Delhi. On the reverse, India’s relations with the United States and allies in the “Quad” Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is a direction in India’s strategic concern around China that includes Russian opponents: the United States, Japan, and Australia.
The United States has recently surpassed China as India’s number one trade partner in 2023 and similarly to Russia, the United States has continued to sell arms to India. As the United States looks to the Indo-Pacific strategy to compete with China in the Quad and IPEF, we must consider the forces of alignment and competing interests with India in our competition with China and what that must mean for our ally’s growing relationship with Russia.
News You May Have Missed
Russia Bombs Russia
In a statement by the Russian Ministry of Defense, a Su-34 warplane accidentally bombed the Russian city of Belgorod, not far from the border with Ukraine. It appears some kind of bunker-busting munition was actually dropped from the aircraft, before burrowing under a city street and then delay-detonating. Reports indicated that no one was killed and two were injured.
Ruling Party in Uganda Delays Anti-LGBTQ Bill for Review
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni sent proposed anti-LGBTQ legislation back to the parliament, controlled by his ruling party, for “strengthening.” It is unclear what this means, as the proposed legislation proscribes life imprisonment for those identifying as LGBT and the death penalty for what is termed “aggressive homosexuality.” International human rights campaigners and U.S. and European diplomats continue their efforts to halt or slow the legislation, while the bill’s near-passage has already triggered a slew of attacks on the Ugandan LGBT community.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.