Friday News Roundup — December 9, 2022
The Biden administration successfully negotiated the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner from Russian custody, gaining her freedom in exchange for the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout. While it may have had the drama of a spy thriller, it was naked hostage-taking by Moscow and another reminder of just how Putin’s Russia operates.
Happy 105th Finnish Independence Day (December 6). Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto and Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström both visited Washington this week for discussions with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on their respective countries’ applications to join the NATO alliance (still unratified by Turkey and Hungary), as well as the situation in Ukraine. The three ministers recently attended the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Bucharest. FM Haavisto and FM Billström also made a side visit to Kiev. FM Billström told an Atlantic Council audience December 7 that “(Putin’s) vision to establish a geographical and cultural sphere under Russian hegemony is meant also to weaken the EU, NATO, and ultimately press the United States out of Europe… Anything less than a Russian defeat in Ukraine would embolden Russia, and other authoritarian powers.”
China flipped the switch on its strict COVID lockdown policy after a series of anti-government protests across the country. The government is claiming that the policy change was the product of carefully-considered science-backed reasoning, not protests. Cases are spiking and there are shortages now in Beijing of basic medicines like Tylenol and ibuprofen.
Meanwhile, China’s leader Xi Jingping headed to Saudi Arabia for meetings with the Saudi royal family, other Gulf leaders, and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. China will likely seek assurances on global energy prices and bring home some vaguely worded mutual cooperation agreements. Human rights will not be on the menu.
Back in the United States, Georgia voters re-elected Raphael Warnock to a full six-year term in the U.S. Senate in a runoff election against former NFL star Herschel Walker. Democrats thought this meant they were fully in charge, until Kyrsten Sinema decided otherwise.
In the press this week Ethan Brown wrote of how ambiguous statements on Ukraine risk further escalation. Sophie Williams published an article in the Diplomatic Courier on the important topic of Ukraine’s options for prosecuting Russian war crimes.
In this week’s roundup, we start by remembering Jim Kolbe, who epitomized statesmanship and bipartisanship in a life of public service. Glenn Nye, Dan Mahaffee, and Hidetoshi Azuma share updates from their travel to Japan. Ethan Brown looks at how the unveiling of the B-21 Raider demonstrates the future of stealth and strategic power projection.
Bidding Farewell to Congressman Jim Kolbe
Washington lost a true statesman with the recent passing of Congressman Jim Kolbe. After establishing a highly regarded career Representing Arizona in Congress, Jim continued to be a strong advocate for bipartisanship, friendly relations with key foreign partners and allies, and robust international development, in the best interests of the United States. He was respected by members of both parties for his dedication to American values and willingness to work with leaders of all stripes. He had many friends across the public policy community and was a joyous character for all those who served with him across various organizations as he generously donated his time and energies. We will miss Jim.
Dispatches from Japan
CSPC President and CEO Glenn Nye
As CSPC concludes a visit to Tokyo this week we are reflecting on a series of conversations with friends representing the Japanese government, think tank, and corporate communities. It is clear just how much in common our countries have in terms of shared challenges in competing effectively with an assertive China as we seek to compete for mastery of the technologies that will define the future and seek to dissuade the CCP from moving militarily against Taiwan. The challenge requires nuanced approaches, as we must effectively balance an imperative to diversify economic dependencies for critical supplies to more friendly sources, while continuing to trade where it is in our mutual benefit. We must do this while making defense preparations that would raise the cost of any potential invasion of Taiwan and allow us to protect our allies and interest in the Indo-Pacific.
Japan has taken serious strides lately to prepare itself and coordinate with the United States toward our common goals. On the heels of passing a new economic security law, Japan has now taken the difficult step of doubling its defense budget while changing doctrine to develop deterrent counter-strike capabilities. Japan is considering economic deterrents as well and investing heavily in the production of domestic semiconductor capacity. Securing supply chains has been an important step as Japan works to complete an overhaul of its national security and defense strategies before the end of the year. There is a clear sense in Japan that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would present an immediate threat to Japan itself, and a worry about the growing centralization of power in China on one individual in a highly authoritarian system.
As we look ahead to 2023, we will benefit greatly from increased coordination with Japan on economic elements of national security, building the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework into a solid regional foundation for the exploration of further trade ties that would allow the U.S. significant power in determining trade rules along with like-minded friends in the region. The U.S. and Japan share some strengths in terms of technological innovation, a sincere focus on supply chain security, and an ability to leverage a community of like-minded countries as we work to win the narrative competition of governing systems and approaches to issues like digital citizenship in open societies. We conclude our current trip with a validation of our focus on the U.S.-Japan relationship and a renewed dedication to working together on our toughest shared challenges.
Japan’s Next Restoration
Dan Mahaffee
Japan understands the challenge posed by China. As a trading partner, neighbor, and military rival, Japan looks warily at the aggressive tone of China, the consolidation of power by Xi Jinping, and the rapid growth of the Chinese military. Responding to the challenge — and heeding the U.S. call for more allied burden-sharing — Japan has made a major step forward by more than doubling its upcoming defense budget over the next five years to hit a 2% of GDP goal.
For many of us who look around the world, seeing the danger of revanchist powers, it seems common sense to make the necessary preparations to deter conflict. Frankly put, we are in a time where if we seek peace, we must assure that we are prepared for war. For Japan, this has meant also confronting the historical burden that has shaped and limited Japanese defense planning. Like those of us surveying the threats ahead, the Japanese people and their leaders are moving beyond the constraints of the past to re-arm and deter Beijing and Pyongyang.
Throughout our meetings with Japanese leaders, this need for military preparation was understood within the context of the broader challenge of our economic interdependence with China, but the growing threat posed by Xi Jinping’s one-man vision for an increasingly nationalist, authoritarian, and statist China. Assumptions about stability and reliability can no longer be taken for granted, nor could China’s genocide of the Uyghurs, assault on Hong Kong’s freedoms, and the threat of an invasion of Taiwan. Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine also made it clear to the Japanese people that conventional and destructive military conflicts can still happen in the 21st century.
With the expanded resources of the enhanced defense budget, Japan is looking to build the deterrent capability needed to ensure that China and North Korea fear the consequences of attacking Japan. Japan is also understanding how cyber, electromagnetic, space, and undersea capabilities will likely shape the nature of a conflict in the region — all the while bolstering conventional naval, air, and missile capabilities. Understanding the importance of the space domain, the Japanese Air Self Defense Force will become the Air & Space Defense Force. Japan is moving to conduct cutting-edge research in these areas, while also expanding its purchases from the United States. These purchases include Tomahawk missiles.
The United States can build on these existing defense partnerships to help further promote Japanese defense, as well as learning what capabilities we can use that Japan has already developed. For example, Japan is a leader in minesweeping capabilities and non-nuclear submarine technology. Japan also has ready, off-the-shelf flying boats (the US-2) which could prove essential for logistics and operations in any Indo-Pacific conflict. Partnership with Japan can build on this and more.
Japan will soon also be releasing updated national security strategy documents, tying together these new resources with ways and means, ends and interests. There are challenges ahead still. Japan’s history makes the development of a security clearance system — which the nation lacks — a heated political debate. A sizeable and vocal element still opposes what is seen as the revival of pre-WWII militarism. As with any country, there is the question of how this is paid for. All of that will need to be overcome. Hidetoshi describes this sea change from the Japanese perspective in greater detail.
The only way our thinking can benefit from history is if we understand it as a school, rather than a prison. Speaking personally, it was not lost on me the significance of the date this week when I could now toast the mutually beneficial spirit of U.S.-Japan relations. We have learned from shared hardship, but can also understand what was most beneficial. At the peak of the 1980s Cold War — an era as contentious and dangerous as now — President Reagan and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone provide a model for the U.S.-Japan relationship in a time of geostrategic peril. Reagan and Nakasone understood the strategic vitality of Japan — on one hand as a military partner and “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, but also true partners in interests, values, and vision for the future. It was perhaps Prime Minister Nakasone who described it best, fittingly using our shared love of baseball. (A game, where like our approach to China, the defense uniquely controls the ball.) Nakasone described the relationship like that of the “battery” — pitcher and catcher. Nakasone told Reagan that the U.S. could be the pitcher, and Japan the catcher. The pitcher controls the ball; the catcher still best directs it over the plate and uses their knowledge of the batter against them. That is the history we can also build upon.
More broadly, the Japanese leaders see themselves at a turning point in history. In the 19th century, the Meiji restoration was just such a turning point. It is also a similar to the point in history when “Ron and Yasu” truly led the U.S.-Japan relationship through tumultuous times — all the while strengthening each other. At the time, the cry for fukoku kyohei, or “rich country, strong army” brought about an expansion of the military and the modernization of Japan’s forces to the point that it could challenge the European powers and join the powers of the world. Today Japan seeks another restoration, but one as a valued U.S. partner doing its own part to address an increasingly dangerous world. There are lessons from Tokyo for Washington, and indeed all of our allies, on how a nation must utilize its resources in these dangerous times.
Notes from Tokyo on Japan’s Security Normalization
By Hidetoshi Azuma
The Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC) completed its inaugural trip to Tokyo this week. Led by President & CEO Honorable Glenn Nye III, Senior Vice President & Director of Policy Dan Mahafee, and Senior Fellow Hidetoshi Azuma, the trip highlighted a series of high-level off-the-record round table discussions with Tokyo’s top political leaders, government officials, and private-sector executives on the emerging geotechnological and economic security challenges to the US-Japan alliance. Such frank exchanges of opinions provided invaluable insights into Japan’s evolving thinking on its position and role in today’s geopolitical landscape increasingly overshadowed by the ascendancy of authoritarianism led by China and Russia. Overall, they reflected the renewed acceleration of Japan’s security normalization beginning in this passing year with far-reaching implications for the future of Washington’s most important alliance in the Indo-Pacific.
The most important takeaway from the trip was the seachange in Japan’s strategic thinking. Despite having historically exhibited reservations in its security policy, Japan now appears increasingly eager to play a proactive role in the defense of the rules-based order along with its American ally from its authoritarian rival. Such a transformation was largely due to Tokyo’s sober recognition of the simmering geopolitical crisis and opportunities surrounding Japan. Indeed, the current geopolitical landscape poses an existential threat to the resource-scarce island nation in novel ways. To be sure, the prospect for a physical invasion of Japan is all but nil thanks to the US military’s forward presence despite the growing possibility of China’s aggression over Taiwan. Tokyo rightly views its real security challenges to emerge mostly in the economic domain in which Japan paradoxically finds itself both poised to lead and remains vulnerable simultaneously.
Tokyo’s solution so far has been to bolster Japan’s economic security to prevail in today’s geotechnological competition driven by the US and China. The dialogue with local Japanese policymakers revealed Tokyo’s growing willingness to cooperate with the US ultimately to boost the rules-based international order increasingly beleaguered by the authoritarian alternative. Their willingness indicated that Tokyo no longer views the US-Japan alliance through the traditional lens of the hub-and-spoke paradigm and now envisions a more equal relationship within the alliance. The real significance of Tokyo’s emerging thinking is that the scope of burden-sharing with Washington now encompasses non-traditional domains of war, including the economic one, which are not necessarily within the purview of the US-Japan defense cooperation. The upshot is the unusual speed with which Tokyo has directed its economic security policy this passing year, culminating in the historic Economic Security Promotion Law designed to empower Japan in the geotechnological competition.
In other words, Tokyo’s policymakers are now increasingly catching up with its military establishment in its appreciation of Japan’s geostrategic imperatives. Historically, the US-Japan military-to-military relationship had historically been the ultimate source of such imperatives as a legacy of the US military occupation of post-WWII Japan under General Douglas MacArthur. As a result, the bilateral military channel served to coordinate Japan’s geostrategic imperatives in service of the US regional policy to guide Tokyo’s policymakers. Such a peculiar arrangement long stifled strategic thinking among Japan’s political leaders, who often resigned themselves to the comfort of Washington’s paternalistic guidance. By contrast, many of the current generation of Japanese politicians increasingly seek direct communication with their American counterparts in Washington and demonstrate enthusiasm for boosting alignment of bilateral geostrategic priorities.
Such a major political development in Tokyo manifested itself in the recent achievement of the historic increase in its defense spending from 1% of GDP to 2%. This was a consequential event given postwar Japan’s lingering cultural constraint of pacifism, which had historically overshadowed the country’s military affairs with its bizarre brand of Orwellian political correctness. For example, the Japanese law dictates that JSDF personnel are to be designated as “national public servants in special service” and therefore are not entitled to many of the privileges accorded by the Geneva Conventions due to their non-combatant status. While such cultural constraints remain, Tokyo’s political establishment accomplished subtle leadership by demonstrating appreciation of its pressing geostrategic imperatives and willingness to fulfill them without upsetting the prevailing political norms. Moreover, the upcoming defense spending hike underscores Tokyo’s sober understanding of the perennial importance of hard power and its rejection of economic security as a panacea to Japan’s national security needs as previously worried about by many. Finally, increased defense budgets in the future would inevitably require economic sacrifices by Japanese people, leading them to be more responsible in achieving a more equal alliance with the US.
These significant political developments suggest that the US-Japan alliance is entering a new phase of its evolution. Indeed, the decades-long debate on the burden-sharing in the US-Japan alliance appears to have been finally resolved, and the present focus is increasingly on the question of integration. In fact, the US Department of Defense’s doctrine of integrated deterrence appears to be shared even at the political level in Tokyo. As today’s geotechnological competition intensifies, many of Tokyo’s political leaders are increasingly willing to advance the integration of even the entire Japanese society into the expanding scope of the US-Japan alliance. For example, the US-Japan Economic 2+2 Dialogue launched earlier this year aims to include the economic domain within the purview of the US-Japan alliance. Meanwhile, the Japanese private sector increasingly demonstrates understanding for such a seachange in economic dynamics and is now looking to accelerate targeted decoupling from China while pivoting to the US for more opportunities in a new era. The emerging picture is that the Japanese private sector is looking to lead the imperative of integration by providing the US with an essential alternative to Chinese technologies.
The CSPC’s first trip to Japan coincided with the watershed moment in the history of the US-Japan alliance. What initially began as a military expedient in response to the threat of communism during the Cold War has evolved to meet another historic challenge this time of authoritarianism. The US-Japan alliance is no longer just a military pact, but is now a thriving framework guiding the integration of the two long-standing allies. Such a remarkable transformation is inextricable from Japan’s accelerating security normalization now driven largely by its political and even business leaders instead of its military establishment. As Japan sheds off its postwar paradigm, the CSPC’s tradition of frank, off-the-record round table discussions with policymakers is more relevant than ever in appreciating the thinking of Washington’s most important ally in today’s geotechnological competition with China.
A reset for American power projection
Ethan Brown
On the Second of this month, the aviation world changed. You’ll be forgiven for missing its pronouncement amidst the political and Ukraine-themed turmoil that dominates the headlines these days. But all the same, the Air Force finally (and cautiously) unveiled the B-21 Raider: the world’s first 6th-gen aircraft, whose purpose is resetting the force projection capabilities for the United States.
The B-21 comes with much anticipation, but moderated fanfare, and a particularly keen promotional nod to strategic competitors with its cautiously choreographed reveal ceremony. That is to say, officials were quite coy about the aircraft shown to a small crowd of senior defense personnel, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as the key speaker. Mark Gunzinger of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies called it “very carefully staged.” Photographers were permitted to take pictures from a very few staged locations outside the hangar in Palmdale, CA. And the capabilities (extrapolating theories below) are more clearly suggested by what senior defense officials didn’t say, according to air power expert Todd Harrison: “what’s most interesting is what they can’t show us…you want to reveal things that you think will help deter Russia or China from doing things that might provoke us into war. But you don’t want to show too much, because you don’t want to make it easy for your adversary to develop plans and technologies to counter your capabilities.”
Indeed, what is highly indicative of the sensitive nature of the aircraft lies in the available pictures: photographers were explicitly prohibited from shooting any media of the tail of the aircraft — the most vulnerable section of any plane and one of the most difficult segments to ensure is ‘stealthified’ — more on that in the ‘capabilities’ section below. That the B-21 was shown to a select group only heightens the intrigue, contrasted to the rollout of its predecessor the B-2 in 1988, which featured over 2000 viewers.
The B-21, simply put, is the world’s first 6th-generation aircraft, and it ushers in what many experts would argue is a key pivot in the balance of power in the future of potential strife and increased competition. This aircraft is built to render the advantage of a defensive opponent — perhaps one that attempts to insulate itself behind a Anti-Access/Area-Denial zone — moot in the endeavor. Range, concealment, and displacement of deep-strike capabilities counters the geographic advantage of an adversary that is on the short-end of the logistics chains…in this theoretical case, China, for whom the messaging and capabilities of the B-21 are very much engineered to deter.
Stealth: a (very) brief history
The flying wing is built by defense giant Northrop-Grumman, the same weapons manufacturer who built the Raiders progenitor, the B-2 Spirit during the 1980s, and the similarities (based on the few photos available of the new bomber) are striking. Both are sleek, W-shaped, flattened bodies, and are big enough to cover an entire football field.
The F-117 ushered in America’s stealth aircraft era (USAF Photo/TSgt. James Mossman)
Radar-defeating technology is a highly complex and seemingly mystical innovation of aerospace engineering. The capability for deceiving and hiding from radar signal returns originates in World War II, when radar (small radio waves which are emitted and ‘bounce’ off of objects like airplanes and return to the array) first entered combat applications. An innovative experimental engineer, Jack Northrop (yes, ‘Northrop’) would design a YB-49 flying wing in 1949, pioneering an aircraft with rounded edges that would better dispel radar cross-sections.
Various designs, countermeasures, and spoofing methods all culminated in a cacophony of techniques and materiel that would contribute to what then-Defense Secretary Harold Brown dubbed “stealth” on August 22, 1980; as of that date, the U.S. Air Force had already begun test flying the F-117 Nighthawk, the very first advanced radar-defeating aircraft in U.S. inventory. The B-2 was also in development during this time. All of those designs were fielded by Northrop-Grumman and Lockheed Martin, employing definitive electromagnetic wave dispersal theories conjured by an obscure Russian physicist name Pyotr Ufimtsev in the 1960s — the very bedrock of stealth engineering which the Soviet Union would ignore for decades.
Those early flying wings with rounded edges, channelized engine exhausts, secretive and classified paints and epoxies, and a million other tiny details would go on to produce the vaunted F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter — both remain stealth capable, with the former reportedly having the radar cross-section (return image) of a golf ball and undetectable until within 20 miles of the searching radar array.
Six decades of secret development would produce a flying marvel that utterly renders most modern air-defense systems moot. Today’s stealth offering, the B-21, is a manifestation of all of those aircraft (and many attempts, failures, redesigns, and revisions) as the first bomber of the 21st century.
How stealth is achieved
Stealth is a tricky topic, and concealment — critical in any military operation — is much more difficult in the skies above Terra. Clouds and distance create some form of cover, but nothing escapes radar, unless of course, it’s a stealth aircraft.
Design is a major factor in how these aircraft avoid radar detection, upright profiles (like elevators and vertical tail struts) allows electromagnetic signals to ‘bounce’, which is why stealth-capable aircraft are seldom sharply vertical designs, or high profiles like a common fighter jet. For modern and indeed, the futuristic B-21, those long leading edges of the wing shape and broadly rounded to improve lift coefficients and disperse such radar attraction. Further, there is no ‘tail’, the wide, flat and seemingly laboriously lifting wing enhances the ability to confuse and scatter radar and infrared signatures. That design is entirely suitable for achieving incredible lift which minimizes the need for sustained thrust once at altitude.
Of course, high speeds help with avoiding detection (such as Lockheed’s “skunk works” factory believed and achieved with the coolest airplane of all time: the SR-71). But supersonic speeds create a problem for detection — thermal cross-sections from the afterburners and engine exhausts — where the B-2 and F-22s employed cowled engine vents or the F-35 employed thrust-vectoring, the B-21s ability to overcome this type of detection vulnerability remains unknown at this time. Again, Secretary Austin opined that very hidden truth about what wasn’t shown at the reveal: “The B-21 looks imposing, but what’s under the frame, and the space-age coatings, is even more impressive”.
Then there is the paint, which on its own is a monumental achievement of chemistry and engineering. Always a dark gray or black — which absorbs heat rather than refracting it — the paint on B-2s and F-22s consists of an epoxy resin that literally has microscopic iron balls, which resonate incoming radar waves for increased dispersal.
The B-21, contrasted with it’s older sibling, is slightly smaller, and variations to the craft like a more rounded nose/cockpit hub, totally seamless engine inlets, and sectional-bonding of large areas of the frame have taken the LO (low-observable) capabilities of this aircraft to new heights of anti-detection.
Strategic Competition implications
This aircraft is built for one thing, with a host of modular applications. Much like the B-2, which was built to carry nuclear missiles deep behind enemy lines undetected and later adapted to low-intensity conflicts, the B-21 is meant to clear the hurdle of enemy defense zones.
The advantage of defense goes to China in a Pacific crucible; should the United States face down the potential of conflict with Beijing in the coming years, logistics will be stretched to the point of breaking, and the only possibility short of trans-continental engagements — at least in those early days of confrontation — will be offset by an ability to achieve long-range strikes with conventional weapons that are not easily defeated by air-defense networks and overlapping denial zones.
The United States already possessed such global strike prowess The explicit capabilities of the Raiders ancestor (the B-2) remain classified as it remains a key part of the nuclear triad, but the reach of that precursor stealth-behemoth is unquestioned: these were the first manned aircraft to launch airstrikes in Afghanistan, as part of a 44.3-hour long initial flight from Missouri-to-Afghanistan-to-Diego Garcia — non-stop — for the two-men crews assigned to conduct the attacks. Yes, that number is completely true, those first dozen B-2s remained aloft and fully functional for nearly two days without touching the ground, and employed the new and vaunted JDAM to kick off the Global War on Terror. It achieved a similar feat in 2017 while engaging Islamic State targets in Libya. Such is the tremendous capability of this innovative flying machine.
But the B-2 is seemingly ancient compared to the feats of aerospace innovation today. Somehow, incredibly, the B-52 — the oldest aircraft in the U.S. inventory — is still the bulk of our bomber force. But the B-21 aims to do what the lumbering Stratofortress and B-2 Spirit cannot in a potential conflict with a strategic competitor: render the defense advantage irrelevant by stealth and firepower.
News You May Have Missed
German Authorities disrupt far-right, conspiracy theorists planning coup
Inspired by Q-Anon and Covid conspiracy theories, a group of Germans–including some with links to the armed forces–were arrested by authorities after their plan to launch attacks and overthrow the German government was uncovered. The conspirators aimed to overthrow the German government, which they claim is an illegal entity established by the post-World War II allies.
UK, Italy, and Japan Move Ahead on 6th Generation Fighter
The three nation consortium announced the move ahead on the Tempest 6th generation fighter jet program which aims to follow on to existing 5th generation aircraft such as the F-35. This consortium comes as the UK seeks to reiterate its post-Brexit defense cooperation with European partners, while Japan also aims to diversify its defense procurement.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.