Friday News Roundup - April 26, 2024
With the U.S. Congress this week finally overcoming a months-long deadlock on an extraordinary $95 billion foreign aid package, the Biden administration wasted no time in rushing military support to a beleaguered Ukraine. At a virtual meeting of the 50-nation, U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Friday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted that the ad-hoc alliance has “moved heaven and earth” to supply Ukraine with what it needed to fend off the unprovoked Russian invasion.
Matching actions to rhetoric, the Pentagon earlier this week approved the rushed delivery of $1 billion in desperately needed air defense munitions, artillery rounds and the long-range rockets for the U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which will be quickly pulled from existing U.S. military stocks. A follow-on $6 billion military aid package expected to be finalized on Friday will reportedly include additional artillery and air defense munitions, drones, counter-drone weapons and air-to-air missiles to be fitted on Ukrainian fighter aircraft, all part of the $61 billion aid package for Ukraine passed by Congress and signed by President Biden on Wednesday.
In related news on the foreign policy front, Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing this week, where he met with his Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The meeting was part of an ongoing effort on the part of both sides to tamp down on rising U.S.-Sino tensions and keep lines of communications open between the world’s two most powerful nations. The agenda, however, revealed just how difficult it will be to keep the intensifying strategic competition between the two rivals from spiraling into conflict.
Just in the past week Congress has passed a law banning the hugely popular, Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok unless it is sold in the next year; Chinese coast guard cutters attacked with water cannons ships of U.S. treaty ally the Philippines over a disputed shoal in the South China Sea; and the State Department castigated Beijing for its continued support for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
After meeting with Blinken for five hours on Friday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi bluntly warned that tensions in the relationship were “increasing and building.” Said Blinken after the meeting, “Even as we seek to deepen cooperation where our interests align, the United States is very clear-eyed about the challenges posed by [China], and about our competing visions for the future.”
Blinken’s stop in Israel next week also promises to be difficult. U.S. brokered talks on a cease-fire deal allowing for the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza are stalled, and tensions continue to rise between Israel and the United States over next steps in the war. Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has announced an impending military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. On his last visit to Israel in March, Blinken publicly warned against such a military operation, noting that the United States has seen no credible Israeli plan for protecting the more than one million displaced Palestinian civilians now sheltering in the area.
On the home-front, college campuses across the United States erupted with pro-Palestinian protests this week, with a multiple schools calling on the police to break up the protests, leading to the arrest of hundreds of protesters nationwide. With reports of anti-Semetic threats accompanying some protests, school administrators have been caught in the middle trying to draw a line and reach a balance between free speech on campus and threatening or unduly disruptive behavior, with results that have seemingly satisfied no one.
And if anyone needed a reminder that this presidential election season is like none other in U.S. history, former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s alleged criminal behavior was the focus of not one, but two court cases this week. In a New York courtroom, defendant Trump sat before a jury of his peers, accused of election interference in a “hush money” case dating back to 2016. At the same time the U.S. Supreme Court was hearing oral arguments from Justice Department prosecutors and Trump lawyers in a sweeping immunity case tied to the January 6, 2021 insurrection, a decision by the Supremes that will have profound implications not only for Trump, but also for the powers of the presidency.
In this week’s roundup CSPC Senior Fellow Ethan Brown analyzes Iran’s recent, direct attack on Israel, and Senior Fellow Robert Gerber examines the implications of an increased drain on U.S. electricity production and grid because of the dual challenge of increased demand and more extreme weather. CSPC Senior Fellow Hidetoshi Azuma provides insights into the significance of the Trump-Aso meeting at Trump Tower on April 23 for the future of the US-Japan alliance.
Iran’s Drone Attack on Israel Wasn’t a Failure
The charred remains of an Iranian Shahed kamikaze drone in Mykolaiv Oblast (Wikimedia Commons)
By Ethan Brown
The prevailing headline in international military news over recent weeks was the exchange of airborne attacks between Iran and Israel. The latter targeting key personnel in Syria and the former being a retaliation by Tehran for the attacks, and one which ultimately appears feckless on the surface as none of the explosive drones made it to their targets within the vaunted Iron Dome.
It would behoove strategists and policy thinkers to not consider this a resounding success for Israel, although the efficacy of the aerial defense system defeated all but a single errant missile of the more than 300 (missiles and drones) launched, none of which actually crossed into Israeli territory.
If it hasn’t been made clear from the onset, while Iran failed to achieve anything of operational or strategic level value in terms of collateral damage or damage in any significant sense, this was the first time the world has seen Iran undertake an actual sustained, mass attack using the most in-vogue tool available to modern nation states: drones.
Drones first entered the defense dialogue en masse circa 2020, when the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan featured a prolific employment of drones in offensive attacks between the two states. Armenia, it should be noted, had built a defense arsenal centered around old Soviet and (barely) more modern Russian missile systems–weapons like the SCUD, Tochka, and Iskander long-range missiles as well as myriad Soviet-era Multiple-Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS). They also inventoried a variety of the TRG-300 and Polonez rocket-assisted artillery packages. Very limited in terms of unmanned-aerial systems, and extended-network sensor capabilities.
Azerbaijan, on the other hand, spent its defense modernization funds on a far greater variety of systems included Israeli loitering munitions, such as the Harop, Orbiter, and Skystriker UAVs; these are essentially small drones which are given machine-learning targeting software, launched towards the enemy front lines, and left to find targets of opportunity, making them highly modular, effective –cheap– and deadly options to enable their fire and maneuverability. Azerbaijan functionally won the conflict, ostensibly, and Armenia only survived after Moscow ‘brokered a truce’ and instilled a 2,000-strong “peacekeeping” force to pacify the situation.
Israeli smart drones and throwaway munitions won that conflict against bigger, heavier, longer-range artillery and missiles. Azerbaijan even retro-fitted old Soviet An-2 Colt biplanes (meant for short-range cargo and other non-kinetic tasks) with remote-piloting capability to draw out Armenian air defense systems for the kamikaze drones to target more effectively.
Iran is far more capable than either Azerbaijan or Armenia to enhance, develop, and progress its military tools, especially after throwing a massive wave of attacks against the vaunted Israeli air defense network. While (thankfully) the attack was unsuccessful, Israel and it’s partners/allies would be foolish to think that this is the end of Tehran’s efforts to advance a capability of modern warfare–the drone/smart munition craze–or that the success of the Iron Dome means a more capable attack isn’t forthcoming in a future opportunity. Drones have proven their outsized value, influence, and modularity on the battlefield in Nagorno-Karabakh, Africa, Ukraine and indeed, Russia and China are both doubling-down on their efforts to replicate the success of these throwaway munitions (Russia is doing a terrible job by the way).
It’s a fascinating discussion on cost-induction for an adversary, where the use of cheap flying plastic robots with some autonomy calls into question what competitors are willing to sacrifice to enemy kinetic effects on the battlefield: akin to these fleets serving as avatars for military or strategic assets being damaged as opposed to men and material. Traditional warfare, and even modern insurgencies face the basic question of attrition: eliminate more of the enemy themselves, or induce such damage to their key infrastructure (which requires the commitment of high-value tools, weapons, assets and again, people) so as to force capitulation (the old Clausewitz trope). Drone warfare, now, has demonstrated that nation-states (and indeed, non-state actors such as the proxies Iran is so adept at employing) are able to induce costs against adversaries for relatively little investment.
Bringing this back to the lede, Iran may have in fact failed to induce literal, structural, or strategic costs against Israel using their dozens of missiles and approximately 170 drones, but the innovators inside Iran’s military most certainly did not shake off the dust of failure and chalk it up as a “oh well.” They are learning how their systems were defeated by Israel and her allies, and a better euphemism would be “next time.”
Tehran is one of the world’s leading exporters of combat drone technology, with customers and proxies across four continents enjoying the products of Iranian design. The failure to inflict significant damage in Israel has done little to impede an ongoing Iranian drone export racket, either, with strategic experts expecting Tehran to expand its clientele list for drones to be used in war zones abroad and regionally. Indeed, Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones have made their mark in the Ukraine conflict (another battlefield testing ground for what works and more “next time” events).
The key takeaway from the events over the last two weeks in the Middle East are that, while developed nations with robust defense architectures (like the United States, European allies and Israel) can point to Israel’s recent success against drone attacks and feel confident in those systems, these are not the battlefields where the proliferation of drone combat will be felt the strongest. Rather, it is likely, probable, and realistic to expect an increased in Iranian drone activity at the fringes of strategic competition (theaters of vulnerability against less-capable states like the African continent, continued proxy support across the Levant, and deeper into Central Asia); places where Tehran has an interest in expanding its regional hegemony, drawing the West into more hot zones, and rest assured, Iranian engineers and military planners have
learned a great deal from their recent “failure.”
Ethan Brown is a Senior Fellow at CSPC
Preventing Flickering Lights
Wind farm in West Virginia (Photo credit: author)
By Robert W. Gerber
The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal recently reported that electricity demand will soon outpace production and transmission capacity in the United States. Some utilities have doubled their five-year forecasts for electricity demand. The demand will come from new data centers that process AI and cryptocurrency, and to a lesser extent from new industrial onshoring and the electrification of transportation. By 2026, data centers will consume more that 6% of U.S. energy with increasing share beyond 2026, according to the International Energy Agency.
The gulf between supply and demand has a number of ramifications. It will delay the building of new data centers, which will have implications for the digital revolution. There are implications for climate: the gap complicates “net zero” goals as more fossil fuel power generation will be needed. The gap also could delay adoption of electric vehicles. Finally, it raises concerns about consumers facing higher energy bills in the face of aggregate increased power demand. This is both an economic problem (inflation) and a political problem (angry constituents).
Reliable and affordable electricity are essential to economic prosperity. In fact, one of the United States’ comparative advantages in attracting foreign direct investment is the relatively inexpensive cost of energy per kilowatt hour. Electricity per kilowatt hour in Europe is at least twice as expensive. In terms of reliability, the United States underperforms compared to other industrialized countries. The U.S. grid has been described as “vulnerable.” 83% of power outages are due to extreme weather. Increases in extreme weather over the past ten years are well documented, and climate scientists predict this to only get worse.
The U.S. Energy Information Agency offers a more rosy long-term outlook predicting that “the U.S. power grid doubles in capacity from 2022 to 2050 to meet increasing demand for electric power, and most newly built capacity will be from renewable energy technologies.” But if power utilities are correct about the near term problem in certain regions of the country, we should consider what could be done now to mitigate what could be an environmental, economic, and political conundrum. Here are a few ideas:
Accelerate permitting for renewable energy projects and transmission infrastructure. This includes on-site distributed energy; for example, some data center developers are already building their own gas-fired plants paired with a “nanogrid.”
Companies could charge market rates for free AI services and data storage — e.g. digital photos on your iPhone.
Locate new data centers in the high north near hydro and geothermal sources of power and where temperatures are cooler
Ramp up energy efficiency and conservation in buildings, homes, industry, and transportation networks.
Fund and incubate technological breakthroughs — heightened power demand provides a business case for small modular reactor, better wind and solar (paired with large battery systems), more efficient data centers, ultra-high capacity power lines, and smart grid technology — and even “magic balls”. Smart metering in Chattanooga, Tennessee has reduced outages by over 50%.
Power line upgrades: according to the International Energy Agency, the current global spending pace on grid upgrades is half of the $600 billion needed annually through 2030 to meet net-zero emissions targets. The U.S. Department of Energy is working on this: it announced a $20 billion grants program in early 2024 explicitly for this purpose. Permitting is a major bottleneck for many projects though.
Hardening the grid, notably burying America’s unsightly and hazardous above-ground power lines.
Advancement of policies that support development of interregional electric transmission lines, which can reduce costs and increase reliability. Alongside this, policymakers should explore deregulation of electricity rates so they can float in a more market-based approach.
Prioritization — lawmakers may have to decide who gets the power, based on its most productive use. Just don’t call it rationing…
In sum, the U.S. electricity production and grid face a dual challenge of increased demand and more extreme weather. Solving this problem is important to U.S. economic competitiveness and requires a confluence of new technologies, efficiencies, smart policy, and strategic spending.
Robert Gerber is a Senior Fellow at CSPC
Mr. Aso Goes to Trump Tower
The former US President and Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump presents the Key to the White House to the former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso at Trump Tower on April 23 (Photo Credit: Truth Social)
By Hidetoshi Azuma
The former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso met with the former US President and Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump at Trump Tower in New York on April 23. The Trump-Aso meeting was extraordinary in that it occurred only two weeks after the US-Japan summit led by President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington. It effectively defied conventional wisdom, let alone diplomatic decorum, surrounding Japan’s perceived reluctance in the US-Japan alliance. In fact, the meeting underscored Japan’s growing anxiety over the future of American power in the world and its renewed enthusiasm for leading the bilateral alliance undaunted by domestic US politics.
The inaugural Trump-Aso meeting occurred against the backdrop of the highly-touted Biden-Kishida summit and Ksihida’s historic address to the joint session of Congress just two weeks prior. While some previous Japanese leaders had reached out to US presidential candidates, such as in the case of the former prime minister Shinzo Abe’s meeting with the then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in September 2016, Aso’s visit to Trump Tower earlier this week was unprecedented in that he met the incumbent US president’s rival candidate. Moreover, Aso met with Trump in a private capacity while entirely excluding government involvement, including even the use of official translators, leading the Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa to publicly deny Tokyo’s hand in the meeting. The sensitive timing of his visit also contributed to the extraordinary nature of Aso’s New York trip.
As a result, the Biden White House went out of its way to condemn Aso for his “crude and inappropriate” pursuit of Trump. Yet, this is a strange accusation given the recent engagement with Trump by the British Foreign Secretary David Cameron against which the Biden administration lodged no similar protest. The marked difference appears to derive from Washington’s seeming misunderstanding of the Kishida administration’s agenda. Kishida appears to have been fulfilling the wishes of the Biden administration ranging from defense modernization to the controversial LGBTQ legislation. Indeed, Biden once boasted about his role in persuading Kishida to double Japan’s defense spending, which later became Tokyo’s official policy. The Japanese prime minister has since taken the flak from his own constituents for his extreme pro-US, if not pro-Biden, stance, but has weathered even the most serious of political crises at home in decades thanks to the blessings from Aso, his patron and Japan’s unrivaled kingmaker. In other words, Kishida appeared to be Biden’s useful point man in Tokyo ready, willing, and able to implement whatever Washington sends his way with full backing from Japan’s most powerful kingmaker.
Therefore, Aso’s visit to Trump Tower this week may have appeared to be a sign of betrayal for the Biden White House as shown by its rather tactless, if not impulsive, reaction. Yet, such a perception of betrayal obscures Tokyo’s simmering anxiety over the future of American power around the world. Ironically, such trepidation has reached new heights during the last four years under Biden. Indeed, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine, the Israeli-Hamas War, and other emerging regional tensions have occurred all on Biden’s watch. Meanwhile, while Davidson’s window appears to close fast on Taiwan’s precarious fate, Biden’s America appears embroiled in domestic turmoil largely fueled by wokism and uninterested in the world. Inevitably, the growing sentiment in Tokyo these days has been one of mistrust of the US, leading Kishida to even admonish Congress against “an undercurrent of self-doubt” overshadowing Japan’s American ally.
Against this backdrop, Tokyo has essentially taken the helm of the US-Japan alliance through proactive engagement with the US, a marked departure from its traditional passivity in the bilateral burden-sharing. In other words, the US-Japan alliance has turned on its head, reversing the decades-long leader-follower hierarchy honored by the two allies. Kishida’s authoritative tone in his sermon to Congress earlier this month symbolized Tokyo’s emerging strategic doctrine. Indeed, Kishida reminded US lawmakers of his being a realist and pledged to support, if not lead, the US wherever and whenever in need. At stake are Japan’s national interests increasingly threatened not only by China but ironically also by perceived US retrenchment. Only relentless pursuit of geopolitical imperatives would remedy Japan’s growing sense of insecurity even if it meant crossing the partisan divide in the US at the risk of incurring ire from the Biden White House. Ultimately, Tokyo can afford to alienate Biden, but not the US-Japan alliance.
Therefore, the Trump-Aso meeting at Trump Tower earlier this week was inevitable. It was a strategic maneuver in Tokyo’s ruthless pursuit of its geopolitical imperative of shielding the US-Japan alliance from domestic US politics. Indeed, Aso has been touring around the world in recent years in an effort to bolster his protégé’s premiership, especially his emerging strategic doctrine of leading the US-Japan alliance. His globe-trotting speaking engagements culminated in his speech on the Capitol Hill hosted by the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC) this past January in which he called for the indefatigable defense of the rules-based international order by drawing lessons from the American criminologist George L. Kelling’s broken windows theory. In fact, Aso sought to meet with Trump in New York immediately after his Capitol Hill speech but found no success due to schedule conflict stemming from the former president’s judicial obligations. In this sense, the Trump-Aso meeting occurred on April 23 strictly by virtue of mutual availability, not as an insult to Biden.
Knowledge of what Trump and Aso discussed in the smoke-filled penthouse of Trump Tower may ultimately be the prerogative of those in the room where it happened. Yet, even such exclusive knowledge may be irrelevant after all. The real significance of the Trump-Aso meeting was that it did happen. This indisputable fact itself underscores the changing character of the US-Japan alliance. Whoever will be sworn into office in January 2025, Japan will remain committed to leading the US-Japan alliance. It is a choice driven by fear of perceived US retrenchment, not even China. In this sense, aligning Trump with Tokyo’s emerging strategic doctrine would be the most important geopolitical imperative ahead of the US presidential election this coming November. Having symbolically received the Key to the White House at the end of the Trump Tower meeting, Aso, Japan’s de facto deal maker-in-chief, appeared to have succeeded in striking his first deal with Trump for his country. If Trump secures reelection this November, the emerging Trump-Aso backchannel will undoubtedly become one of the most important drivers of America’s most important alliance.
Hidetoshi Azuma is a Senior Fellow at CSPC.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.