The Dispatch - October 18th, 2024
Welcome to The Dispatch! We are excited to share CSPC’s redesigned newsletter with you. Going forward The Dispatch will be delivered to your inbox on a bi-weekly schedule (every other Friday) and will feature regular columns from CSPC staff and Senior Fellows, covering the whole range of issues areas the Center works on, from national security and space policy to the geopolitical and technological competition with China and political and electoral reform efforts here in the United States. This inaugural edition features contributions from CSPC President & CEO, Glenn Nye and Senior Vice President Peter Sparding, as well as articles from Senior Fellows Jeanne Zaino, James Kitfield, and Robert Gerber. We hope that you will find the newsletter useful and would be delighted to receive your feedback or thoughts on how we can improve going forward.
We also encourage you to check out recent articles by CSPC staff in other publications. President Glenn Nye and Senior Democracy Fellow Jeanne Sheehan Zaino, writing for the LSE's Phelan United States Centre, explore how political discontent during crises can drive democratic reform, while Senior Vice President Peter Sparding discusses President Biden’s visit to Germany in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
An Innovation Agenda for the Next Administration
On “day one” the next American president will need a strategy to win the Sino-American technology race
(Photo Credit: Jon Sullivan)
By Glenn Nye and Peter Sparding
With the presidential campaign entering its final stretch there is great interest in what policies the next administration will pursue. Many observers are especially keen to understand how Washington intends to manage its critical geostrategic competition with China going forward. Unfortunately, detailed plans for a future U.S. innovation strategy to win the Sino-American technological race have been in short supply. In their single TV-debate the two presidential candidates squared off over their approaches to China, but they focused mostly on defensive actions and the military sphere. Questions about strengthening U.S. technological capacities went largely Yet this is one of the key issues the next American president must confront.
At the outset, the next administration should map the agencies and key personnel currently involved in shaping innovation and competition policies. Better streamlining and coordination of these efforts is vital. To that end they should seriously consider creating a new role at the Deputy National Security Adviser level in the White House. While there are currently advisers on cyber and emerging technology issues as well as international economics, an individual overseeing and coordinating an economic security portfolio, potentially as the head of an Economic Security Council, might usefully act as a coordinator across the federal government.
There is significant bipartisan agreement in Washington and among industry leaders around the need to follow up on the $52 billion in incentives and investments contained in the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. Largely due to measures included in the legislation, the United States is projected to more than triple its semiconductor manufacturing capacity between 2022 and 2032, according to a recent report by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). Significantly, our nation is also growing its global share of advanced chip manufacturing, thus decreasing our dependency on overseas sources and limiting our exposure to future supply chain interruptions.
Yet given the massive efforts undertaken in China to surpass the United States and dominate global chip markets, the next administration will need to follow up on the progress achieved by the CHIPS Act. One promising avenue for further support of U.S. chip production would be to extend and expand existing tax credits for semiconductor manufacturing, which are slated to expire at the end of 2026. Over the medium to long term, we must also better prepare the American workforce for well-paid jobs in chip design and manufacturing, as well as in other high-tech sectors.
Lingering questions and concerns remain about the readiness of the U.S. education and workforce development systems to prepare workers for jobs in the technology fields of the future. While the current and previous administrations have launched initiatives to improve STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education outcomes in the United States, much more remains to be done. A renewed effort to include the private sector in the development of education and training programs to better ensure that workers’ skills match industry demands is imperative. The next administration should also build on promising apprenticeship initiatives already underway, and expand support for these on-the-job training programs where feasible.
Immigration targeting certain high skilled workers has historically represented one of the United States’ foremost advantages vis-à-vis our international competitors. Yet even before recent campaign clashes over immigration, this topic had become a political hot potato. In fact, U.S. policy makers have tried to reform U.S. immigration laws in this field for decades without much success.
Meanwhile, China is aggressively attempting to attract foreign talent to bolster its own high-tech workforce. A 2023 report by the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party warned that the People’s Republic “is gaining on the United States in the race for global talent.” Given that nearly 20 percent of the STEM-workforce and more than half of doctorate-level computer and mathematical scientists and engineers in the United States are foreign-born, a sensible immigration policy crafted to support a larger innovation strategy is clearly required.
Despite various export, import and tariff skirmishes that have been fought in recent years with China, Washington also still lacks a truly strategic trade policy. After the political failure of the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and even the less ambitious trade pillar of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), the next administration thus needs to reassess and develop a new approach to U.S. trade policy.
A reinvigorated U.S. trade policy should accept that there are domestic political constraints on all-encompassing free trade deals, but also offer a compelling argument that leveraging relationships with regional partners and allies is necessary to win the “geotech” competition with China for supremacy in the technologies of the future. A useful starting point would be agreements with allies and friends to align critical sectors of their economies when feasible. Such deals could initially focus on key sectors such as semiconductors, critical minerals, telecommunications, and clean tech and energy. As a venerable ally and high-tech leader, Japan could be a lynchpin partner in such efforts. We could also lean on the example of the revised U.S-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade deal, which with bipartisan Congressional support was renewed and adapted to meet evolving priorities. Meanwhile, blunt tools such as tariffs should be precisely targeted to support a comprehensive innovation and competitiveness strategy, rather than deployed randomly.
The United States has made significant down payments on an effective geotech and innovation strategy, but we must better leverage a whole-of-government approach and our unmatched private sector dynamism to ensure continued U.S. technological leadership. The next American president should be prepared to move decisively towards that goal on day one.
Glenn Nye is a former Member of Congress from Virginia. He is President and CEO of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. Peter Sparding is Senior Vice President at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress and author of the forthcoming book “No Better Friend? The United States and Germany Since 1945.”
the Blue Dot
In a too-close-to-call race, a tiny “blue dot” on the electoral map may determine whether the next president is chosen by the House of Representatives
by Jeanne Zaino
Map of the Electoral College for the United States presidential election, 2020.
In late September, for a brief moment, the political world was transfixed by the ‘blue dot’. The ‘blue dot’ is a reference to Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district, which – unlike the rest of the state – went Democratic in the last presidential election.
If you look back at the Electoral Map for Nebraska in 2020, you will see a sea of red with a blue dot in the middle. This is only possible in two states, Nebraska and Maine, because unlike the forty-eight others, they do not use a winner take all system to allocate electoral votes. Instead, they use the congressional district method; meaning they allocate two electoral votes to the popular vote getter and one electoral vote to the winner in each congressional district.
Normally, the fact that Democrats have a solid chance of once again getting one of Nebraska’s five electoral votes wouldn’t matter much. This, however, is anything but a normal presidential election year. If there is one thing that Democrats and Republicans all agree on, it’s that the 2024 race is too close to call which means that one vote can be determinative.
Consider, for instance, one scenario - Vice President Harris wins the ‘Rust-belt’ states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) and former President Donald Trump wins all the other swing states, the so-called ‘Sun-belt’ (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina). In this case, with the blue dot, Harris would get 270 electoral votes and become president. Without the blue dot, however, they would be tied at 269-269 and the selection of president would be thrown to the House of Representatives.
This is why earlier this Fall, Republican’s tried to get Nebraska’s governor to call the state legislature back into session to change the way it allocates electoral votes. Governor Jim Pillen (R) said he would if he had the votes, but in the end he did not because one state senator from Omaha, remained steadfast in his opposition to the plan.
The battle over the blue dot played itself out via lawn signs, on social media, and elsewhere. The fact that the House could decide the next president may confound Americans today, but it would not have been shocking – or unwelcome – to most of the Founders.
The Virginia Plan, written by the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, called for selection of the president by the legislature. This was one of the few areas on which the Virginia and its rival, New Jersey Plan, agreed. Despite this, when it came to vote on a mode of selection, all four of the plans under consideration, including Madison’s, were rejected. As a result, the issue was turned over to the Committee on Postponed Parts. In September the Committee came back with its recommendation – a compromise in which both the people and the states would have a voice, or what we know of today as the Electoral College. Like many agreements, it was not entirely satisfying to anyone, but records suggest that delegates agreed, not only because it was late in the process, but because they assumed that most of the time no candidate would get a majority of electoral votes and the choice would almost always revert to congress, as many thought it should.
On this they have been proven wrong. Of the fifty-nine presidential elections between 1789-2020, only 3% (two) have been decided in the House of Representatives; the vast majority (97%) have been decided by the Electoral College.
2024 marks the 60th presidential election in American history. If the choice of chief executive reverts to the House, it will be the first time in two-hundred years. We have to go back to 1824, when the House chose John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson, despite the fact that Jackson won more popular (152,901 -114,023) and electoral (99-84) votes than his leading opponent. A furious Jackson would go on to describe the decision of the House as a ‘corrupt bargain’ between Adams and Speaker of the House Henry Clay to overturn the will of the people; and judging from the results of the next presidential election (1828), which Jackson won in a landslide, most voters seemed to agree.
It is unclear how voters in this election cycle would react to the House choosing the president, and chances are it will not come to that. If it does, however, it will be unusual in the modern era, but neither wholly unprecedented or unwelcome by the Framers.
Jeanne Sheehan Zaino is Professor of Political Science, Iona University, Bloomberg Political Contributor & Senior Democracy Fellow at CSPC.
Vladimir Putin’s Doomsday ‘Mind Games’
If the Russian tyrant is successful in reimagining the power of nuclear weapons, there is reason to fear the blackmailing will never stop
By James Kitfield
NATO Summit in Washington, D.C., July 11, 2024 (Official State Department photo by Chuck Kennedy).
On the eve of a White House meeting between President Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy a few weeks ago the sound of nuclear saber rattling could be heard from Moscow like a familiar ill-omen. The primary subject of the Biden-Zelensky summit was Ukraine’s request to use long-range weapons supplied by Washington to respond in kind to relentless Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian territory.
In a reckless distortion of the nuclear deterrence doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” that has governed and provided stability to superpower relations since the outset of the Cold War, Russian President Vladimir Putin posited new rules that would “clearly set the conditions for Russia to transition to using nuclear weapons.” The threat from the Kremlin was intentionally chilling: if the United States greenlighted the use of long-range conventional weapons supplied to Ukraine for strikes deep inside Russia then the United States and NATO would be fair game as targets for a nuclear counterstrike.
“It is proposed that aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or support of a nuclear state, be considered as their joint attack on the Russian Federation,” said Putin.
Ever since ordering Russia’s far larger conventional military to invade neighboring Ukraine in 2022, Putin has repurposed the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons. He’s used it not as a traditional defense to deter other nuclear powers from aggression or coercion, but rather as an offensive instrument of blackmail to hold the West at bay while he violently eviscerates a democratic neighbor.
Putin thus drew an early “red line” against NATO’s direct intervention on Ukraine’s behalf with thinly veiled nuclear threats of consequences “never seen in your entire history.” In 2023 the Kremlin further announced a decision to deploy “tactical” nuclear weapons -- shorter range and lower yield weapons, of which Russia possesses nearly 2,000 – to third country and close ally Belarus. When French President Emmanuel Macron made comments at a security conference last February suggesting that his NATO member state might cross Putin’s red line and deploy troops to Ukraine, Putin upped the ante by announcing the first of its kind military exercise simulating regional attacks with tactical weapons against not only Ukraine, but potentially NATO members Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.
To date Putin’s threats have not deterred the United States and NATO from offering Ukraine extensive lethal and non-lethal support, but there is profound risk of miscalculation in this escalating nuclear brinksmanship. When Russian forces were in full retreat and in danger of being surrounded in the autumn of 2022 during the battles for Kherson and Kharkiv, for instance, the Kremlin allegedly seriously considered a nuclear strike to forestall a military debacle. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius recently reported that the U.S. intelligence community told President Biden that there was a 50-50 chance that Putin would resort to using tactical nuclear weapons to regain the initiative.
In retrospect, some experts believe that inflection point pushed the U.S. and Russian nuclear superpowers closest to the brink of all-out war since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The rest of the world continues to closely watch and take notes.
“The fabric of nuclear deterrence is changing, its mind game adjusting to a new era of nuclear brinksmanship,” noted nuclear weapons expert and former NATO deputy secretary-general Rose Gottemoeller, writing earlier this year in Foreign Policy. “So far, Putin and those around him have been the most active practitioners, but North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, whose nuclear capacity now extends beyond his regional neighbors, has been not far behind. Beijing…could be tempted to follow Putin’s example as its nuclear force structure becomes more modernized and its ambitions extend throughout Asia” .
To regain equilibrium in the calculus of nuclear deterrence, Gottemoeller advises U.S. leaders to maintain rhetorical discipline in talking about nuclear weapons, foregoing talk about desiring Russia’s “strategic defeat”; continue support for the current modernization of the U.S. nuclear triad of ICBM missiles, strategic bombers and nuclear missile submarines; and to promote arms control talks as a way to assure the rest of the world of its intention to ultimately reduce reliance on doomsday weapons in geopolitics.
“Finally and most importantly, the United States and its allies must sustain steady progress in military assistance to Ukraine,” writes Gottemoeller. “The most serious implication of the delayed funding vote in the U.S. Congress [earlier this year by House Republicans] was the United States could be halted in its tracks by a bully brandishing nuclear weapons.”
To date Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship has not deterred the United States and NATO from supporting Ukraine, nor has Kiev yet been defeated. Much could also depend on the outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election and its impact on sustained American support. But Vladimir Putin’s escalating threats have introduced growing doubt and uncertainty into the one equation in geopolitics intolerant of miscalculation. If he is ultimately successful in reimagining the power of nuclear weapons in the hands of bold aggressors, there is every reason to fear that the blackmailing will never stop. Nor will the allure of such doomsday weapons ever abate.
James Kitfield is a Senior Fellow at CSPC, and a three-time recipient of the Gerald R. Ford Award for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense.
Electricity for Prosperity
Nobel laureates highlight how inclusive institutions drive prosperity, as COP29 faces calls for reform to unlock climate finance in developing nations.
By Robert W. Gerber
28th Conference of Parties or “COP28" from 2023 (Photo Credit:Dean Calma / IAEA).
This week, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel prize in economics to researchers Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and James Robinson of the University of Chicago “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.” The researchers examined the development trajectories of former European colonies. Their studies affirmed that the establishment of “inclusive institutions” – i.e., those that promote equal protection under the law, fair competition, and individual political rights – resulted in higher levels of wealth creation and prosperity (also known as an “opportunity economy.”) Countries that failed to launch economically tended to have “extractive institutions” that only serve the interests of a small group of people.
The researchers’ conclusion is not exactly a revelation: people who follow development economics have long recognized the leading role of institutions as a multiplier of prosperity. Perhaps the Nobel committee sought to send a subtle message to authoritarians and populist politicians who have declared their intent to undermine institutions, such as independent judiciaries or a free press.
Strong institutions matter but they also need to evolve and adapt so they can continue to meet their mandate even in changing times. One long-standing global institution – the United Nations – will hold a major gathering November 11-22 in Baku, Azerbaijan: the 29th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as “COP29.” Delegates from UN member states will discuss how to best help so-called developing countries accelerate progress toward meeting their climate goals, among other topics. The challenge at hand is that most financing for climate mitigation (like clean energy) and climate resilience (like restoring wetlands) has taken root in wealthy countries. Developing countries, which tend to have higher levels of political risk, currency risk, and climate risk, have had difficulty attracting climate finance. The most ambitious negotiation at COP29 will center on a new set of donor commitments, known as the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance. Delegates will also try to reach consensus on who qualifies as a donor (China perhaps?), and what type of funds should count as “climate finance.”
Donors certainly play a vital role in helping countries meet their climate-related needs, which in turn supports both broader development aims as well as achievement of the Paris Agreement global climate goals. For example, multilateral development banks, such as the International Finance Corporation, and multilateral climate funds, like the Global Environmental Facility, issue concessional financing for projects, which in turn attracts private capital for “bankable” projects. This strategy, known as blended financing, has demonstrated some success. Equally important, however, is institutional reform at the country level. In many developing countries, a single ministry or state-owned company controls power generation and distribution. Independent regulatory authorities are largely absent, graft is rampant, fees are not collected, and there is little market incentive to expand or modernize the power grid. Often, governments in developing countries also subsidize fossil fuels, which makes renewables uncompetitive. This kind of environment dissuades private investment that countries could leverage to expand energy access and build cleaner and more resilient energy systems.
The UN as an institution takes a risk when it puts an outsized burden on donors to solve climate funding needs in developing countries at a time when most governments are facing looming fiscal deficits, and while some developed countries are experiencing politically-driven climate backlash. UN members would be wise to pursue consensus on how institutional reform at the country level can best help “crowd in” green energy financing. This would accelerate progress toward the UN’s own Sustainable Development Goal #7, which calls on members to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.”
Robert Gerber is a Senior Fellow at CSPC.