Friday News Roundup - August 23

A World on Fire

By James Kitfield

With an American presidential election of nearly unprecedented volatility entering its home stretch, and the U.S.-led global order rocked by two major wars that are poised on the knife edge of consequential inflection points and possible escalation, the state of geopolitics has rarely been as uncertain and dangerous in modern times.

Allies looking for support and steady guidance from Washington, D.C. in these difficult times will have to contend with a distracted superpower. An election season already marred by a nearly successful assassination attempt against Republican nominee and former president Donald Trump, and the unexpected withdrawal of sitting President Joe Biden, now enters its final phase with this week’s Democratic National Convention formally nominating Vice President Kamala Harris as its presidential candidate.

This week U.S. intelligence officials also revealed that Iran has attempted to hack both the Harris and Trump presidential campaigns, apparently successfully in Trump’s case. This comes atop evidence that both Russia and China are also attempting to use cyberattacks and disinformation operations to sow discord, exploit acute divisions in American society and possibly influence the outcome of the election. Meanwhile, Trump has recently used Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create and propagate false images and disinformation about his opponent. The former president also continues to refuse to state whether he will accept the outcome of the election, raising the dark specter of another possible January 6, 2021.

This week Secretary of State Antony Blinken crisscrossed the Middle East attempting to finally reach a ceasefire deal in the bloody Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The war began with a Hamas terrorist attack that killed some 1,200 Israelis, and took an estimated 250 hostage, and has since led to the death of more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza. The Biden administration’s diplomacy this week also included a phone call between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who reportedly agreed to a U.S.-proposed “bridging proposal” before bad-mouthing it publicly.

With Tehran and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah reportedly poised to attack and escalate the conflict if a deal is not struck in response to recent Israeli assassinations in Lebanon and Iran, the United States has amassed a large armada of warships in the region in support of Israel. In the Middle East, Blinken this week thus referred to the “fierce urgency of now,” noting that “intervening events come along that may make things even more difficult, if not impossible…[This is] probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security.”

In Europe, Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine has taken an unexpected turn. Ukraine this week continued to press its surprise offensive into southern Russia that began on August 6, with the Ukrainian army reportedly capturing more than 480 square miles of Russian territory and 93 Russian villages and settlements, displacing an estimated 122,000 civilians and taking many hundreds of Russian soldiers prisoner. In pressing its attack, the first on the Russian homeland since World War II, Ukraine also reportedly launched 45 drones this week against Russian targets, including inside Moscow.

The surprise Ukrainian offensive has apparently caught Russian forces flat-footed, and they have struggled to respond. It has also undoubtedly boosted the morale of Ukraine’s war-weary population after Moscow’s unprovoked invasion and constant bombardment beginning more than two years ago. The offensive’s long-term strategic value and sustainability given Russia’s superior numbers of troops and weaponry, however, is very much unclear.

From the sidelines it’s possible to admire the courage and boldness of our allies in Kiev and Ukrainian forces, while at the same time worrying about just how hard and for how long they should poke a Russian bear in its own lair, especially one armed with the world’s largest arsenal of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons.

James Kitfield is a CSPC Senior Fellow and Journalist-in-Residence

This week you can catch CSPC Senior Fellow James Kitfield on NRP’s 1A Friday News Roundup, International Edition (11 am — 12 pm). https://the1a.org/segments/israel-hamas-ceasefire/

Requiem for American Heroes

By Ethan Brown

The month of August is my least favorite month of the year. For one, it’s a dark and somber time for members of the Special Operations community. In particular, the Air Force Special Operations tribe mourns several casualties from its ranks during this eighth month. These include Tactical Air Control Party (TACPs) Maj. David Gray (killed in Action), TSgt Timothy Officer (killed in Training), Combat Controllers (CCT) Matt Roland and Forrest Sibley, (killed in action), to name only a few with whom I had a personal or professional connection in one form or another. And of course, the darkest day in USSOCOM history was the shootdown of EXTORTION17, carrying with it nearly 40 American special operators on a secret raid in the Tangi Valley, Wardak Province, Afghanistan, in August of 2011. My former team sergeant was part of the quick reaction force hastily scrambled to protect the downed helicopter and relieve the beleaguered ground force involved in the raid, which quickly became a Fallen Angel mission, which I covered in this space four years ago. Not to be forgotten are the Marines and Paratroopers who were killed during the chaotic final days of August 2021, as American forces withdrew from Afghanistan.

This month will forever be an emotional gauntlet for service members and veterans who served in the post-9/11 wars, hallmarked by the end of the war in Afghanistan. If not for the sake of their own post-traumatic stress struggles, then for having personal recounts of teammates lost to combat or post-combat trauma (like suicide, which claims an annual average of 6500 veteran lives since 2007). Looming above those individual challenges, there are those who are currently battling or have lost their fight to cancer, an unrecognized epidemic which stalks American servicemembers like the reaper at levels comparable to, indeed exceeding those average deaths in combat during the years of America’s longest war. Cancer will soon become the calling card of America’s forays into Afghanistan and Iraq, and will leave a lasting and permanent scar on our society. Approximately one-in-five service members hailing from the “GWOT generation” are likely to be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and those numbers are considerably higher for those who deployed to the literal war zones, and even more so for the many who deployed repeatedly.

Not all August memories for service members are entirely dark, as this month marks the two-year passage of the bipartisan Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act. For decades, service members who went into harm’s way were denied care and acknowledgment of their exposure to noxious and toxic substances which resulted in chronic diseases, cancer, and other maladies (which included a generation of Gulf War veterans who had to wait decades for such recognition, if they long enough). But the memorial of the PACT Act becoming law calls to memory the harsh reality that wayward grand strategy and policy in absentia led to so many Americans (and our coalition brothers and sisters) returning to fight a war which defied political outcomes and lacked a discernable end state. The veteran community is fortunate to have had Congress come together –really, a wholly bipartisan endeavor– to pass a comprehensive bill like the PACT Act, which rightfully begins the necessary care and management of veterans. But its celebratory passage is a reminder that such a gesture took far too long to address well-known problems and dangers to American men and women who served this nation.

While waiting for Congress to take accountability for these hard truths, plenty of amazing Veteran Support Organizations (VSO) stepped up to fill the void of immediate needs and veteran/family support. These include the incredible efforts of nonprofits like the Hunter Seven Foundation, who specialize in cancer research/early detection, and treatment support for special operators diagnosed with common and rare forms of the disease which lays low so many superhumans of the special operations community.

So in this shortened roundup entry from me, now the grizzled old veteran of America’s longest war (who refuses to acquire or wear the emblazoned VFW hat, though I do ardently support my local VFW outpost when I can), I’d like to suggest that our readers take a few moments in quiet reflection on the sacrifices service members have made, and especially in this dark month of the year. Perhaps it is merely ironic that Congress usually takes its recess during this time before returning to the last term of the fiscal year, but August simultaneously serves as a time of reflection for this veteran who has somehow found himself involved in the policy circuit, advising (read: critical of) many of the strategic decisions made by the American body politic. Or perhaps it is apropos that the congress take a breather from the policy churn (national conventions notwithstanding) and use this time to reflect.

The reflection I would offer as necessary this month is that we, as a society, do not swiftly turn the page on this dark chapter of history and hope it fades into the shadows of memory and history books. Being part of a democracy means we review critically our decisions and strategic endeavors and take individual responsibilities for ensuring our liberal democracy stays true to core values. As difficult as this month is for so many veterans, it necessarily serves as a reminder of the bloody price we pay to enjoy the freedoms we hold so dear, or indeed take for granted. Three years ago, I shared my conflicted, emotionally-charged thoughts in this space as American forces finally left Afghanistan for good. I’ll close with some of those same remarks:

“That war took too many of our bravest, including the suicide attack which claimed another 13 American lives and wounded at least a dozen more, making it one of the bloodiest days of this forsaken conflict. Their sacrifices must never be forgotten, nor should we ignore the lessons that this chapter in American history would teach about how we spend our blood and treasure.”

Ethan Brown is a senior fellow at the CSPC.

Kishida the Iconoclast

By Hidetoshi Azuma

The Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida arrives at the press conference to announce his decision to resign on August 14, 2024 (Photo Credit: The Office of the Prime Minister of Japan)

The Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida unveiled his decision not to seek another term on August 14. His decision was the latest in the series of his strategic surprises initiated ever since he secured premiership almost three years ago. Indeed, few foresaw his rise and fall. Even more surprising were his unrivaled policy achievements, especially in security policy, during his short three-year tenure. While Kishida’s three years await the judgment of history, his short-lived premiership has irreversibly transformed the internal dynamics of domestic Japanese politics with unmistakable implications for the future of the US-Japan alliance.

During his three-year tenure, Kishida consistently defied expectations. Indeed, his rise to premiership itself was a surprise and was due to the uneasy, last minute-political compromise struck by senior politicians in the smoke-filled room of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in summer 2021. His original patrons, the former prime minister Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister Taro Aso, and the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI Minister) Akira Amari, formed the so-called 3A coalition to guide the newly-anointed premier. Their expectation was that Kishida would take cues from them and accelerate Japan’s security normalization to ensure a policy continuity from Abe’s long tenure. In other words, the new Japanese leader was comparable to a hired Chief Executive Officer (CEO) answerable to a handful of senior board members at a traditional Japanese company. Just as most Japanese CEOs come and go in a few years, Kishida emerged largely as a stop-gap measure with a clear mandate defined by his patrons at the beginning of the post-Abe era.

Little did his patrons know that Kishida was in fact a shrewd survivalist. He unleashed his survivalist persona when he openly defied Abe and later dismantled his predecessor’s legacy. The schism between Kishida and Abe began over Tokyo’s response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning in February 2022. Kishida effectively upended Abe’s long-standing policy of engagement with Moscow overnight. Immediately after Abe’s assassination in July 2022, Kishida wasted no time in undoing his slain predecessor’s legacy. He was almost merciless in opportunistically exploiting the embarrassing scandals surrounding the Korean Christian cult, the Unification Church, in order to undermine the Abe faction remnants. Significantly, he attempted to deliver a coup de grace on Abe’s allies while simultaneously seeking their support for accelerating Japan’s security normalization, culminating in Tokyo’s historic decision to double its defense spending and revise its national security strategy by December 2022. He succeeded in this seemingly forbidding task by astutely positioning himself as a loyal, if not even servile, disciple of one of his original patrons, Aso, leading the former prime minister to increasingly emerge as the kingmaker commanding the fate of his administration.

Emboldened, Kishida did deliver a coup de grace on the Abe faction by pulling off the unthinkable earlier this year: the dissolution of his own faction, the Kochikai. He even did so with the expectation of causing a domino effect of factional dissolution within the LDP, leading to the demise of not only the Abe faction but also all other groups save the Aso faction. While factions were indeed the source of moneyed politics long overshadowing the LDP as criticized by Kishida, they provided a necessary intra-party competition in which future leaders could be cultivated under the guidance of experienced factional leaders. In this respect, Kishida’s fateful decision ended up unintentionally delivering a crippling blow to the future of the LDP already in decline. Absent factions, which previously functioned as the LDP’s built-in stabilizer, Japan’s ruling party has devolved into kingmaker politics driven by a handful of senior politicians commanding ever-changing coalitions without institutional backing. In other words, Kishida has unintentionally sealed the LDP’s fate, and its demise is now a question of time.

Ironically, Kishida has succumbed to the very kingmaker politics he helped create when Aso finally lost any remaining confidence in the incumbent Japanese leader earlier this month after months of his plummeting support rate and the US President Joe Biden’s symbolic exit from the presidential race in July. Kishida then chose to withdraw himself from the LDP presidential election next month to effect a facade of honorable retreat. Expectedly, the Japanese public largely sympathized with Kishida, allowing him to comfortably retreat from the Kantei to the nearby LDP headquarters without the shame of defeat. Moreover, Kishida’s strategic retreat could even allow him to become a future kingmaker in his own right in a ruling party devoid of factions. Indeed, he wasted no time in acting as a de facto third kingmaker when he summoned his ministers on August 15 to encourage them to vie for his post.

Against this backdrop, Aso and his rival, the former prime minister Yoshihide Suga, currently reign as Tokyo’s two most powerful kingmakers, overshadowing the election of Kishida’s successor next month. The incumbent prime minister’s sudden rise as the de facto third kingmaker would also complicate the internal dynamics of the LDP. Future candidates will therefore find themselves inescapable from the influence of kingmakers. After the former Economic Security Minister Takayuki Kobayashi unveiled his bid for the next LDP presidency on August 19, the expected roster of likely candidates includes the former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, the former Defense Minister Taro Kono, the former Environmental Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, among others. These names are rather lightweights in the history of LDP leadership, and questions would inevitably surround the next prime minister’s ability to effectively run his or her administration without factional support. To be sure, kingmakers will continue to reign, but their non-institutional status would mean fluidity unforeseen in the history of the LDP. Indeed, Kishida’s submission to kingmaker politics proved fatal, serving as an ill omen for his successor and beyond.

Kishida’s unceremonious exit from premiership will likely usher in a period of political stagnation marked by weak, revolving leadership in Tokyo as in the late 2000s. Such a possibility will likely prove catastrophic for the future of the US-Japan alliance. The US-Japan alliance is often compared to “the air,” signifying its indispensability for both countries, and has long been taken for granted. The inexorable rise of America First politics in the US could threaten such a policy orthodoxy, but the real challenge could well emerge from Japan due to the LDP’s growing internal fragmentation. Kishida’s contribution to Japan’s security normalization was undoubtedly praiseworthy, but it came with the unintended cost of undoing the foundation of the country’s ruling party in exchange for his own political survival. Kisida’s self-serving iconoclasm could therefore unravel in unforeseen ways for long just as he most recently defied his own expectations for a long tenure with his surprise retreat from premiership and sudden rebirth as the de facto third kingmaker in Nagatacho.

Hidetoshi Azuma is a Senior Fellow at CSPC.

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The Geopolitical Impasse in Western Sahara: France’s Policy Shift and Its Repercussions

The longstanding dispute over Western Sahara, a vast and sparsely populated region on the northwest coast of Africa, continues to be a significant geopolitical issue. Originally a Spanish colony, Western Sahara was annexed by Morocco in 1975 following Spain’s withdrawal. This sparked a protracted conflict with the Polisario Front, an Indigenous independence movement backed by Algeria, which views the territory as an area for Sahrawi self-determination.

Recently, the conflict has seen renewed international interest, particularly with France’s recent shift in policy. French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France now supports Morocco’s 2007 autonomy plan, which proposes limited self-governance for Western Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty. This marks a departure from France’s previous stance, which considered Morocco’s proposal as one of several potential solutions. The move aligns France with other Western nations, including the United States and Spain, who have also backed Morocco’s plan. This has sparked outrage from Algeria, leading to diplomatic tensions, with Algeria withdrawing its ambassador from France.

The international backing of Morocco’s proposal is perceived as a strategic alignment influenced by geopolitical considerations rather than an effort to resolve the conflict. Morocco has leveraged its recognition of Israel to gain U.S. support, while France’s shift may be aimed at strengthening ties with Morocco amid strained relations. However, these moves have drawn criticism for sidelining the Sahrawi people’s right to self-determination, a principle upheld by various international legal forums.

Algeria’s support for the Polisario Front is rooted in both ideological solidarity and strategic rivalry with Morocco. The conflict continues to affect regional dynamics, with the Polisario Front maintaining its quest for independence. The upcoming United Nations Security Council review in October is unlikely to yield significant changes, given the geopolitical complexities and entrenched positions of the involved parties. The Western Sahara issue remains a challenging international diplomatic puzzle, with no imminent resolution in sight.

Saakshi Philip is a CSPC intern.