FRIDAY NEWS ROUNDUP — JANUARY 20, 2023
Two stories dominated the headlines in Washington this week. First, the continued fallout from the discovery of classified materials at a Biden-led think tank in Washington and the president’s private home in Delaware has the president facing a major scandal. House committees are readying their investigations. Second, we are on a path to debt ceiling brinksmanship, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen informed Congress on Thursday that the $31.4 trillion statutory debt limit had been reached and extraordinary measures were now being used to avoid default. Our nation indeed has a debt and deficit problem, but playing chicken with the full faith and credit of our nation will not solve our yearly deficits nor the unfunded entitlement programs.
In international news, government officials, CEOs, and influencers gathered at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. (A note for all the English-speaking journalists out there: the correct pronunciation is “Da-VOSE” according to CSPC’s in-house Swiss-American). UN Secretary General António Guterres took the opportunity to call on business leaders to take responsibility for a slate of problems the world finds itself in today, notably climate change. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in Zurich, then He delivered an “all is well” speech on China’s economy. China is forecasting 3% GDP as it continues to battle COVID after Beijing abruptly lifted restrictions. Also seen at Davos: Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitchko, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), and Governors Brian Kemp of Georgia and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said this week that she would step down from her post in February. In today’s Roundup, Robert Gerber offers several different takes on this announcement.
On Wednesday, Dan Mahaffee joined Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Patrick Harker and Michael Farr, founder and CEO of investment firm Farr, Miller & Washington, in a discussion of the economic forecast for 2023. Dan delivered remarks on the brinksmanship surrounding the debt ceiling and the geopolitical headwinds for the economy, and joined the other speakers in a panel discussion and audience Q&A.
Joshua C. Huminski, the Director of the Mike Rogers Center for Intelligence & Global Affairs, argued about the need to focus on arming Ukraine in the near term, while looking to learn the lessons from this conflict for NATO’s future armament and force design needs for Breaking Defense. Huminski also reviewed Dip Faloyin’s “Africa is Not a Country” for the Diplomatic Courier. Through engaging prose, frankness, and a touch of humor, Faloyin dismantles Western stereotypes of Africa, presenting a richer perspective of the continent’s history and its inextricable link to colonialism. CSPC’s executive assistant Sophie Williams published her final article in a three-part series for the Diplomatic Courier on Ukraine’s options for prosecuting Russia.
In today’s Roundup, Ethan Brown looks at how the U.S. could leverage Turkey’s desire for F-16 fighter aircraft against Ankara’s blockage of NATO expansion. Gracie Jaime and Hidetoshi Azuma write about Japan’s call for a permanent secretariat for data governance, and Hidetoshi reflects on the significance of the end of the Yoshida Doctrine for Japanese foreign and security policy. CSPC welcomes our new spring semester interns Gracie Jaime (University of California — Merced) and Zach Moyer (Virginia Tech).
Turkey Eyes F-16s Despite Continuing to Undermine NATO
Ethan Brown
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met in person with Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week, in an effort to finalize an arms deal between Ankara and Washington that would send $20 billion of U.S. military equipment to Turkey. This deal includes the Block 70 F-16 fighter jets and a variety of upgrades to Turkey’s existing F-16 fleet.
The Biden administration has a great deal of skin in this game, hoping to use the arms sale to ease tensions with Ankara and move forward with Sweden and Finland’s plans to join NATO — efforts which Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has overtly and consistently stymied since the summer amidst the Ukraine crisis. The accession hold up stems from Erdogan’s desire to secure political dissidents through extradition and/or deportation from those Nordic nations. This would include individuals who have sought refuge in Sweden, and in particular Kurdish nationals who participated in a protest of the Turkish leader in Stockholm last week.
This is a delicate and complicated issue for multiple reasons, all of which are consistently made worse by Turkey’s flagrantly atrocious human rights and democratic credibility record, antagonism with its NATO neighbors and partners, the recurring blockage of Finland and Sweden’s accession into NATO amidst the Ukraine crisis, and Turkey’s consistent undermining of NATO integrity at a pivotal epoch of international power balancing.
Power brokers in Congress — chief among them being Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee — are utterly opposed to the President’s ambitions to see the deal through. Sen. Menendez recently released the following statement: “I strongly oppose the Biden administration’s proposed sale of new F-16 aircraft to Turkey,” Menendez said in a statement. “President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan continues to undermine international law, disregard human rights and democratic norms and engage in alarming and destabilizing behavior in Turkey and against neighboring NATO allies. Until Erdogan ceases his threats, improves his human rights record at home — including by releasing journalists and political opposition — and begins to act like a trusted ally should, I will not approve this sale.”
Turkey has consistently chosen regionalism and pivoting between strategic benefactors over its international obligations as a key member of NATO, an issue I’ve covered repeatedly in this space, and one which holds NATO back from effectively achieving its goal of institutional cohesion against the Russian threat to European stability. The question remains, how much is NATO willing to tolerate from Ankara when Erdogan’s bid to retain power is prioritized over ensuring stability and security in Europe?
Naturally, Finland and Sweden are a huge get, and one that is undeniably a major priority for the North Atlantic Alliance. And its conclusion requires universal concurrence by all parties, the single trump card that Turkey possesses as it looks to secure itself against strategic interests. But acquiescing to Turkey’s desires for such a gain risks incentivizing Erdogan’s regime to maintain the status quo. The chances of free and fair elections ousting Erdogan from power in the coming months are interesting (and appealing to liberal democratic adherents), on account of Turkey’s current economic crises and general discontent with the Turkish Presidents ruthless crackdown on civil liberties, but Erdogan has weathered many threats to his power over the course of two decades. And he knows how critical Turkey is to NATO, meaning he feels no incentive to change behavior — internationally or domestically — and continues to hold NATO hostage while America continues to enable such behavior.
What are the risks if congress is able to stave off the deal negotiated by Secretary of State Antony Blinken? As of now, nothing earth-shattering. The F-16s promised in the arms sale are subject to Lockheed-Martin’s colossal backlog of Foreign Military Sales commitments. Whatever production lines are able to produce in the coming years must first go to Taiwan, which is waiting on 66 of the 4.5-generation fighters after having already spent the $8 billion to acquire them. Ankara is keen to lock in this deal because the American congress has already approved the sale of the 5th-generation F-35 to Greece — Turkeys primary competitor in the Mediterranean — which once again demonstrates that Ankara and Erdogan’s priorities remain fixated on the internal assurance of power and influence, not against strategic threats to the alliance.
Congress can, and should, resist the administration’s push to get F-16s sold to Turkey. It needs to do so because Turkey occupies a fragile position itself right now: Moscow, who has pursued deepened ties with Turkey despite those NATO obligations of the latter, remains on its backfoot in Ukraine and cannot be viewed as a credible, long-term partner when contrasted with a newly revitalized NATO. Because of this, congressional leaders can afford to use this well-stated desire from Turkey for F-16s to secure concessions on the things that matter to NATO credibility: human rights, democratic process, and assurance on its commitments to the alliance itself. Ankara wants the F-16s? It can have them, if Erdogan agrees to abide by the results of elections if he loses in May; and he should cease the extortion demands for political dissidents from Sweden and Finland and vote to allow their NATO memberships; and Erdogan must reach diplomatic stability with Athens and desist from continuing to undermine security in the Med; and Erdogan’s regime must improve liberties and civil rights domestically. If those concessions are met, let Turkey have its F-16s, since they will have a long wait regardless.
But if definitive, positive changes are not agreed to and followed by Erdogan, then congress should hold firm on its position to deny this arms sale. Its own credibility is at stake here as well.
Japan Will Ask G7 to Establish Permanent Digital Governance Body
Gracie Jaime and Hidetoshi Azuma
Japan’s Minister of Digital Affairs Taro Kono announced on January 11 at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that Japan — as current head of the G7 group of nations — would push for a new international body to operationalize Japan’s “Data Free Flow with Trust” initiative. Kono also said that Japan would be willing to fund such an institution. Data Free Flow with Trust (DFFT) is “a guiding principle for international cooperation on data flows,” which was introduced by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the 2019 G20 Osaka summit. Goals include encouraging value-creating exchanges of data across borders by creating a mechanism to strengthen security, authentication, and other “pillars of trust.” Kono described the challenges of countries wanting different regulations for data policy, saying, “Among the G7, the United States places more emphasis on data free flow, and European countries place more on privacy protection.” He said Japan was somewhere in the middle. Kono added, “we know each country has its view and policies on data but cooperation to ensure interoperability and transparency among the national systems is possible.”
Kono said that the international body would feature a permanent secretariat and could offer an international registry of country-level regulations pertaining to data transfers and data localization. This would provide clarity for the global business sector and be a resource for countries seeking to develop their own legal frameworks. The institution could also serve as a forum where private and public policy experts could develop and implement specific concrete projects that will turn DFFT into reality.
Responding to a question, Kono said that the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and APEC data privacy principles were alternate forums where some of the DFFT principles can be advanced. The United States has not yet fully committed to Data Free Flow with Trust but has embraced the APEC data privacy principles and will likely pursue a set of common digital trade principles via IPEF. The U.S. Congress has not passed national data privacy legislation, which could be an obstacle to pursuit of international agreements in this area.
Indeed, just as the troubled fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) demonstrated, the future of Tokyo’s DFFT agenda hinges largely on Washington’ policy. DFFT is a culmination of domestic discourse putatively aimed to inspire a new perspective about the Internet as various issues, such as disinformation, began to undermine trust in cyberspace in the 2010s. Tokyo’s solution was to transform the Internet into a virtual society firmly grounded in trust similar to Japan in which social trust is vital to its unrivaled national cohesion. This is quintessentially a Japanese perspective on the Internet where trust supersedes freedom, which carries more weight above all else for the U.S. This fundamental difference in values would be an additional challenge for Tokyo’s digital agenda. Given Japan’s limited influence on the world stage, continued U.S. reservation would likely remain the largest obstacle.
Admired Public Servant Voluntarily Steps Down. Why is This Such a Rare Thing?
Robert W. Gerber
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made a surprise announcement this week that she would resign from her post on February 7. Ardern, who has served 5 ½ years in office, explained that she felt she “no longer had enough in the tank” to continue to meet the high demands of the job. Opposition party leader Christopher Luxon graciously thanked Ardern for her service and wished her well. President Biden told PM Ardern “the U.S.-New Zealand partnership is stronger than ever, thanks in large part to your leadership. Your stewardship in advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific was crucial — I look forward to deepening our nations’ ties for generations to come.” Ardern entered the global spotlight in 2017 when she became the world’s youngest female head of government at age 37. She earned praise for her leadership after the tragic Christchurch mosque shooting, for successfully managing New Zealand’s COVID response, and for relations between the government and the indigenous Maori community.
Some pundits chose to analyze her announcement through the prism of the challenges that many working mothers face. Ardern also faced a toxic political environment — something by no means unique to New Zealand — that produced threats against her and her family, although she said this was not a factor in her decision. Her resignation is an opportunity to reflect on these realities and how we can address them, but it is also a window to ask why it is that more politicians — men and women — do not choose to hand over the reins of power to a worthy successor after completing a successful term in public service. There is something noble about saying “I’ve given this project 100%, and now I’m going to allow someone else the chance to lead.” It would be interesting to study the correlation between voluntary turnover of political offices and public faith in institutions. Ardern is part of a new generation of young global leaders that includes notables Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, Finnish PM Sanna Marin, Icelandic PM Katrin Jakobsdottir, and British PM Rishi Sunak — all under 52 years old. Interestingly, among the G7 leaders who are expected to gather in Japan in May 2023, the average age will be 52 if you remove President Joe Biden (80) from the calculation.
The Yoshida Doctrine: An Obituary for Postwar Japan’s Grand Strategy
Hidetoshi Azuma
US president Joe Biden hosted his first summit of the year last week with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House. Biden’s priority engagement with Kishida underscores Washington’s growing recognition of the US-Japan alliance as arguably its most important military alliance. Indeed, the US president himself went out of his way to personally greet the Japanese prime minister arriving on the South Lawn. Under the veneer of the duo’s budding friendship was the tectonic shift shaking up the bilateral relationship largely driven by Japan’s accelerating security normalization. Having been steadily shedding its pacifist identity since the Korean War, Japan under Kishida has recently administered a coup de grace to its security minimalist grand strategic doctrine known as the Yoshida Doctrine. In fact, the unlikely feat of Japan’s foremost political dove was a major foreign policy victory for Washington in its historical engagement with Tokyo. Washington’s next task would be to inspire the creation of Japan’s new grand strategic doctrine in light of perennial US geostrategic imperatives for the region.
The Yoshida Doctrine emerged against the backdrop of post-WWII Japan’s resurrection underwritten by the US. Despite the present alliance, the US and Japan are in fact natural geopolitical rivals by virtue of geography and fought a consequential war over the control of the western Pacific during WWII. Indeed, Imperial Japan’s unconditional surrender signified the beginning of a long pause in the geopolitical rivalry which had overshadowed the two Pacific powers for almost a century prior. While Washington initially sought to emasculate postwar Japan through its demilitarization and democratization program, culminating in the 1947 pacifist Constitution of Japan, it suddenly reversed its course by promoting security normalization as the military imperatives of the Korean War urgently demanded security commitment from the former adversary. In other words, the US found itself confronting a contradiction its own very policy had created. Former prime minister Shigeru Yoshida offered a solution essentially trading postwar Japan’s sovereignty for its economic reconstruction guarded by continued US forward deployment in the country. Washington accepted Yoshida’s offer when he signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1951.
The real significance of the Yoshida Doctrine was that it successfully guided postwar Japan’s grand strategy of serving as Washington’s anti-communist bulwark. It was a remarkable feat of Yoshida’s ingenuity which simultaneously removed geostrategy from Tokyo’s statecraft and guaranteed economic reconstruction under US protection. Indeed, Imperial Japan’s expansionism was largely due to its resource-scarce geography and the perennial need to protect and expand sea lanes of communication for survival. In other words, Yoshida resolved Japan’s century-old problems with a stroke of a pen in San Francisco. The upshot was postwar Japan’s economic miracle and rise to the coveted status as the world’s second largest economy by the late 1960s while the country provided the US with a proverbial unsinkable aircraft carrier from which to project power deep into the Eurasian heartland.
One unintended consequence of the Yoshida Doctrine was the culture of security minimalism pervading Tokyo’s thinking about national security. In other words, although the Yoshida Doctrine emerged as a temporary guide for postwar Japan’s grand strategy, it later became the country’s default grand strategy itself. This was a classic case in which a doctrine drove a strategy and could potentially have become a recipe for disaster. For example, former prime minister Kakuei Tanaka exploited the spirit of the Yoshida Doctrine to deflect US demands for increased burden-sharing within the alliance. Washington recognized such a fundamental law inherent in the Yoshida Doctrine and sought to undermine it as early as even during the Korean War. Persistent US pressure on Japan has led to slow, yet steady security normalization enabled by Tokyo’s frequent reinterpretations of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. As a result, Japan incrementally expanded the scope of its national security, ultimately leading Tokyo to break its political taboo of overseas deployment when it sent troops to Iraq putatively for “humanitarian missions” in the 2000s.
The advent of great power competition in the 2010s drove Japan home the need for a more proactive national security posture. Indeed, the culture of security minimalism was even enshrined in the defense doctrine of “senshu-boei (exclusively-defensive defense)” which consolidated the Yoshida Doctrine at the operational level and remained a major impediment to the modernization of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) in the age of hybrid warfare and other emerging threats. Tokyo’s solution was to essentially integrate the JSDF into the US military, a significant departure from the traditional sword-and-shield bilateral relationship spearheaded by former prime minister Shinzo Abe. Abe’s strategy was to change the legal system which was the foundation for the Yoshida Doctrine, culminating in the passage of the landmark 2015 security legislation enabling collective defense of Japan with the US. Abe’s ultimate aim was to replace the Yoshida Doctrine itself, a pursuit which came to a screeching halt due to his abrupt resignation in August 2020 and later his tragic assasination in July 2022.
Nonetheless, Abe’s legacy lived on while the Yoshida Doctrine increasingly showed its limits amidst the intensifying great power competition. The year of 2022 proved to be a decisive year in which Tokyo finally faced the reality for action. Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine beginning in February 2022 became a true wake-up call for Kishida’s fledgling administration, driving him to prepare for a potential two-front war in Asia as the prospect for China’s aggression over Taiwan loomed ever larger. Indeed, the way in which the US continues to lead from behind in the war in Ukraine has alarmed Tokyo’s national security establishment, leading to a rethink of the Yoshida Doctrine itself. In Kishida’s own words following the recent summit with Biden: “Ukraine may be the East Asia of tomorrow.” What he really meant was that Japan itself could be the next Ukraine as doubts at home on US security commitment mounted.
Against this backdrop, Kishida set out to destroy the Yoshida Doctrine once and for all. He did so with unrivaled subtlety which enabled him to carry out the task without inviting a major political backlash while securing his own power amidst the political storm caused by the ongoing Unification Church scandals. His strategy was to force drastic security reforms with cabinet decisions and to back them up with US approval. The upshot was the last-minute introduction of a policy package of defense spending increase and national security strategy documents toward the end of the year followed by a summit with the US president during the parliamentary recess. The new national security strategy document quietly administered a coup de grace on the Yoshida Doctrine with the incorporation of “counter-strike capabilities,” which could easily become first-strike capabilities depending on perceived circumstances of the given moment. Kishida’s ingenuity was also to be found in his continued embrace of the “senshu-boei” doctrine, which has long lost its original sense and could now justify even first strikes against perceived threats. While the general public harbors a degree of reservations about Kishida’s agenda, the Japanese leader himself will remain virtually unopposed as the Opposition struggles to mount serious challenges to his policy now endorsed by the US president.
The Yoshida Doctrine has quietly succumbed to its inevitable fate, and an obituary is in order. Yet, its demise occurred without much public knowledge while the US welcomed it with pomp and circumstance as Kishida arrived in Washington last week. Yoshida, the architect of the eponymous doctrine, never foresaw its longevity and expected an eventual replacement. Indeed, the doctrine was a mere political expedient driven by Cold War imperatives of the Free World. What he failed to foresee was that his own ideological and factional descendant would end his legacy. Kishida has done his job and will likely be remembered by historians as ranking among the historical stalwarts of Japanese politics, including Yoshida himself. The question is: what now? Now that Japan is nearing the completion of its security normalization, Washington must ensure that its ally’s future path be aligned with its geostrategic imperatives lest the unexpected derail the course as in the decades of 1920s and 30s.
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Final Ruler of British India Princely State Dies at Age 89
On January 14, the last Nizam of Hyderabad, Mukarram Jah, died in Istanbul, Turkey at the age of 89 marking the end of one of British India’s most prominent princely state families. Chief Minister of Telangana K. Chandrashekar “KCR” Rao, has expressed condolences and ordered the Nizam to be buried with state honors. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has focused on the oppression of Hindus in the former Muslim-led Nizamate. Last year, state BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar said of the Nizam’s legacy: “It is emotional because the Nizam’s men unleashed brutality on people… Not celebrating their liberation so as not to hurt someone’s sentiments is not acceptable.’’ Former state minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir disagreed saying: “His contribution to serving the people, especially in the fields of education and medicine was exemplary. He will be remembered not only as the eighth Nizam of Hyderabad but as an individual who always cared about his people from his homeland.”
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.