Friday News Roundup — May 24, 2024

May 24

A Sobering Memorial Day Reminder of the Costs of Conflict

By James Kitfield

The forces behind global conflict and confrontation that have roiled geopolitics in recent times increased dramatically this past week. The resulting instability could have a profound impact on the United States and its role as the leader of the rules-based international order.

This week the international isolation of Israel resulting from its devastating campaign against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza accelerated dramatically. After the horrendous Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 that killed more than 1,200 Israelis, Israeli military operations and bombardment in Gaza have reportedly resulted in more than 35,000 Palestinian deaths, and widespread hunger verging on outright famine.

In response, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced pending arrest warrants this week for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in addition to three top leaders of Hamas, for potential war crimes and “crimes against humanity.” President Joe Biden joined Israeli leaders in denouncing the move, and neither country is a signatory to the ICC. But if arrest warrants are ultimately issued then the court’s 124 member states, including many European allies, would be obligated by treaty to enforce the arrest warrants if targeted individuals set foot on their soil.

Not altogether coincidentally, this week U.S. allies Spain, Ireland and Norway joined 140 other member states of the United Nations in formally recognizing a Palestinian state, a symbolic move that reflects growing consensus in the international community that the only realistic path to peace in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the two-state solution long promoted by the United States. In recent months Netanyahu has made his long opposition to a Palestinian state increasingly explicit, however, putting him at odds with the Biden administration’s diplomacy to try and end the current fighting.

All of these developments are painting President Joe Biden increasingly into a difficult corner as a staunch defender of Israel who often finds himself at odds with Netanyahu. Biden recently took the dramatic step of withholding some U.S. weapons from Israel in response to its intensifying operations in the crowded Gaza enclave of Rafah, for instance, warning that an all-out offensive would have a devastating impact on civilians and cross one of his “red lines.” Biden is famous for remarking as vice president that superpowers “don’t bluff,” and if Israel continues to trample his red line in Rafah and create an additional humanitarian catastrophe there it could further alienate young U.S. voters critical to the Democratic coalition, damaging Biden’s prospects in this year’s presidential election.

Not coincidentally, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson announced this week that Prime Minister Netanyahu will soon address a joint meeting of Congress. The move is reminiscent of the Israeli leader’s end run around the Obama White House in 2015 by addressing a joint session of Congress in opposition to the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal.

Meanwhile, the costs of the U.S. Congress’ months-long delay in approving critical military aid to Ukraine was felt this week on the battlefield, where Russian forces continued a surprise offensive that has achieved the largest territorial gains since Moscow’s initial invasion in 2022. Analysts have warned that Russian forces have seized the initiative and will likely maintain their momentum in coming months as demoralized and outmanned Ukrainian forces fight a desperate rear-guard action, and wait for critical American military aid to finally reach the front lines.

In the Indo-Pacific this week, China’s military launched provocative exercises in the air and sea lanes surrounding Taiwan as “punishment” for a new, democratically-elected president taking office. Taiwan was forced to scramble jets and naval forces and put its military forces on high alert, with new President Lai Ching-te calling on Beijing to immediately stop its military intimidation, and pledging to “neither yield nor provoke” the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership.

This weekend’s Memorial Day celebrations will offer a sobering reminder of the potential consequences and costs of a world beset by conflict and confrontation.

James Kitfield is a Senior Fellow at CSPC.

Marylanders Deserve Ranked Choice Voting

By Julia Nickles Bryan

Marylanders will be faced with untenable choices when they cast their votes during the primary election to select their representatives and leaders. We have lots of good candidates, but we have an election system incapable of discerning whom most voters support.

By splitting the vote between two or more similar candidates, the current system effectively suppresses the expression of support for candidates of similar policy positions or who represent the same underrepresented group. The outcome fails to generate a result that reflects true voter preferences. This method fosters toxic elections, as candidates vie to evoke the most emotion and to garner the most media (and social media) attention. Negative campaigning has become the norm as candidates know they don’t need to appeal to a broad electorate, just a small but loyal minority. This system undermines our democracy as voters realize that their vote is wasted. In Maryland’s primaries, when the winner garnering the most votes does so with 25% of the vote, that means 75% wanted someone else.

There is a better way: ranked-choice voting.

Ranked-choice voting allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference. With some simple changes to the ballot, Maryland voters could have this option. As we do every day, we select what we want, and if that one is not available, we’re fairly content with our second choice, and so on. Why can’t we elect our leaders this way?

To read the entire opinion editorial, please follow this link to the Baltimore Sun.(https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/05/07/marylander-ranked-choice/)

Julia Nickles Bryan is a CSPC Trustee and a member of All Votes Count Maryland (allvotescountmaryland.org).

U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Alliance of the Future

By Joshua W. Walker

While the role that technology innovation plays was highlighted as “driving the alliance in the 21st century,” it is harder to wrap our minds around this compared to the more tangible military and space innovations capturing the headlines. In part, this is because in both countries, the private sector — not the government — will be key in galvanizing the progress. It is also because there are so many actors, including corporate giants, pledging large cross-border investments per the impressive list of deliverables in the White House fact sheet, including Microsoft, Google, Daiichi Sankyo, Amazon Web Services, Toyota and Honda Aircraft, among many others.

The U.S. and Japan have the capacity to go even further. Washington and Tokyo’s infrastructures in terms of dealing with technology are not where they need to be to meet this moment. As was discussed during the World Economic Forum, another “Industrial Revolution” is taking place. To capture the benefits of the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution, the U.S.-Japan relationship needs to take a page out of the Rapidus-IBM partnership so it is not all in vain.

What’s most interesting about this partnership is that it’s not just about two companies, but also two ecosystems — two governments, university networks and the local municipalities who are making 1+1=3. What powers this at the macro level is the major investment of the U.S. Chips Act, which is a huge step forward in terms of investing in U.S.-grown cutting-edge tech. This is also best represented with IBM and its New York headquarters and through Rapidus’ work with Hokkaido Prefecture in tandem as a public-private partnership.

To read the entire opinion editorial, please follow this link to The Japan Times (https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2024/05/16/japan/us-japan-semiconductor-alliance/)

Joshua W. Walker is a CSPC Senior Fellow and President and CEO of Japan Society.

Russia’s Adaptation Spurs Questions on West’s Strategy

By Ethan Brown

As a defense analyst, I often hesitate to tout fear-mongering and playing into the more hawkish narratives involving strategic competitors or crises abroad. But in cases like Russia’s surprising industrial and economic recovery in very recent months, the concerns of a broadening of the conflict in Ukraine appear to be well founded and force the West to ask some difficult questions, and the most obvious being, “what’s next?”

Just two months ago (March), Russian forces had dealt with a staggering volume of casualties in its Ukrainian invasion, hundreds of thousands, over $200 billion in spent resources, nearly two dozen major assets (maritime vessels) lost in the Black Sea, and dozens of aircraft shot down (note my analysis on this subtopic from a few weeks ago). The quality of its forces was evidently ineffective (read: atrocious and inferior) when the war began in February 2022. Simply, Russia spent big only to seemingly have nothing to show for military gains besides Russian and Ukrainian blood, and the war of attrition became the underlying principle. Thus, NATO and Western states began to bolster Ukraine’s capacity to induce and survive attrition, thinking to out-spend Moscow in the endeavor to see this conflict to its end. Just a year ago, Western experts were assessing years-to-decades before Russia could hope to recover its resources which have been lost in the conflict, owing largely to the sweeping economic sanctions and pressures of international levers of power applied against the aggressor in this crisis.

The fundamental assumption, most simply, was the West sought to enable Ukraine to withstand Russian efforts to attrit and degrade the defenders, while simultaneously trying to stranglehold international imports and exports of Russian military industrial capacity, a two-front economic offensive with intimate ties to national security objectives. Economists like Jon Kirshner–who believe in the closeness of political economy and national security–would be proud.

What wasn’t anticipated was Moscow’s ability to endure economic pressure with its industrial base, which has proven to be startlingly resilient, which makes perfect sense as the conditions of recovery unfold. Those sanctions and multilateral support-for-Ukraine, if aimed against a democratized, market-driven economy may well have been crippling. Russia’s military industry, however, appears implacable to Western sanctions and indeed, as the Russian State has become even more centralized in its management of the industrial production capacity, as noted in last week’s Ukraine war update from the Institute for the Study of War: “Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to publicly prioritize the further mobilization of the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) while also attempting to assuage possible domestic fears about the negative effects of increased Russian defense spending.”

It should be noted that economic sanctions, including the likes of those put in place just a few days ago by the U.S. federal government targeting that Russian industrial base, are less likely to be effective in terms of degrading the industrial base owing to the fact that Russia can afford to carefully string along its military equipment production thanks to the relative low costs of living and increase in wages as the war drives labor shortages. And most important of all, there are the other actors involved in this complex tapestry with whom Moscow has increasingly relied to help navigate those sanctions.

China plays a big role, with defense trade between Beijing and Moscow exceeding well over $200 billion since the war began in 2022. Iran and Russia have a close relationship which indeed includes the export of Iranian assets which have been found in Ukraine’s front lines, to say nothing of the billions of dollars in arms trades between the two states. Artillery has become one of the most viral topics in this conflict, and as such, it shouldn’t surprise the world that North Korea–another Moscow-dependent aggressor state–has provided an assessed volume of millions of 152mm shells to Russia earlier this year.

These examples demonstrate that the initial concept of pitting western economic actions against Russia’s industrial resilience in the hopes of one outlasting or degrading the other are ineffective, and as such, we should not be surprised that Russia has slowly begun to reemerge as a legitimate, powerful threat to international order. The West has hoped and strategized to manage this conflict without engaging Russia directly, with the ideal outcome being the long-game of attrition ultimately fouling Moscow’s aims to violently incorporate Ukraine back into its sphere of control, not just influence. Putin appears to understand this long-game very well, evidenced by the recent shake-up of military leadership which featured an economist appointed as the head of the Russian Defence Ministry instead of another senior officer to replace Sergei Shoigu.

Some important context: the surge in resources used by Russian forces at the front are not necessarily “new” materiel, but sources across the intelligence and defense communities assess that the flow of weapons and equipment are actually more of the old, Soviet-era equipment which has been refurbished for present use. The flood of materiel would certainly suggest a ramp-up of production, when in reality it is truly break-glass-because-of-war, and those Russian forces being used as fodder are making due with what is available. But according to a RUSI report from earlier this year, the West can assume that increased production of new equipment, weapons and war making materiel is indeed on the horizon, dependent on Russia’s ability to merely sustain through 2024, and with the actual uptick occurring next year.

At face value, and again intending to avoid sensational and hawkish rhetoric, Russia appears to have a vector towards defense industrial recovery so as to sustain its ability to make war in Ukraine and force an end-state favorable to Moscow. Last year, I opined about the possibility of the collapse of the Russian state owing to the tragically endemic historical cycle of Russian institutions’ illness and inability to adapt, evolve, and recalibrate, even when faced with a dearth of domestic support for national objectives. I defend that my thesis there–that Russian institutions are at risk of terminal death by their ineffectiveness–remains viable, but only if we consider Russia as the lone actor on the opposition side of the crisis. The issue is invariably more complicated and isolated, traditionalist tactics for inducing economic pressure are no longer a viable tool in achieving the West’s strategic goals. Adaptation means that those supporting Ukraine’s favorable endstate in the West need to factor in a much broader approach to inducing economic pressure on Russia, or we risk seeing Russian military industry making a roaring return to form in ways that could force the undesired outcome in Ukraine.

Ethan Brown is a Senior Fellow at CSPC

Ben Pickert