Diplomacy & Crisis News

Stephen Silver

North Korea, Asia

North Korea was scheduled to receive nearly two million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, although negotiations stalled at some point.

Since the start of the pandemic, North Korea has continued to claim that it has zero cases of coronavirus, much to the disbelief of the worldwide medical and diplomatic establishments.

Some reports earlier this month indicated that North Korea appears not to have a strategy for mitigating the virus. The Voice of America has reported that the North Korean regime “has done little to advance the process to receive vaccines from COVAX,” which is an international organization for distributing coronavirus vaccines.

North Korea was scheduled to receive nearly two million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, although negotiations stalled at some point.

“News of countries vaccinating their people or life returning to normal is rarely, if ever, transmitted within North Korea, perhaps over fears that it might trigger resentment against the regime for its failure to secure shots,” Pratik Jakhar of BBC Monitoring wrote in an op-ed published by Foreign Policy this month. “In contrast, the propaganda apparatus has been unusually quick to report on cases rising abroad and the spread of COVID-19 variants.”

Now, a new report says North Korea is once again reporting zero positive tests.

The North Korean regime has told the World Health Organization (WHO)    that they still have no cases, following the testing of 693 people. That brings the total of those tested in North Korea to 35,947, according to NK News.

An Amnesty International report last July looked at North Korea’s claims about having zero coronavirus cases.

“North Koreans are well aware that when making contact with family or friends living in South Korea, there is always a chance that they are being wiretapped,” a North Korean pharmacist told Amnesty International. “So phone calls and letters are usually made under the premise that someone might be listening to or reading their conversations. They will never say a word related to COVID-19, as this can cost their lives.” 

Last week, the president of South Korea said in a speech that he hopes to cooperate with North Korea on fighting the pandemic. This includes inviting North Korea into the Northeast Asia Cooperation Initiative for Infectious Disease Control and Public Health. That organization currently consists of South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, Mongolia, and the United States. Its goals include “information sharing, shared stockpiling of medical supplies and joint training of COVID-19 response personnel.” 

“It is clear that the COVID-19 threat is not temporary, which makes [the initiative] even more important,” Moon Jae-in said in the speech.  

“For us, division is the greatest obstacle to our growth and prosperity and a tenacious barrier that obstructs permanent peace,” the South Korean president added. “We can also remove this barrier.”

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for the National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver. 

 Image: Reuters

John Allen Gay

Afghanistan, Asia

The moral stain of Afghanistan’s chaos does splatter us. Yet continuing the conflict had moral costs of its own. Withdrawal critics have often ignored or downplayed these costs, but thanks to the withdrawal, these are costs the United States will no longer pay.

“Afghanistan,” wrote Johns Hopkins professor Hal Brands in 2019, “is best seen not as a morality play but as a classic foreign policy dilemma in which all the options are bad ones.” The tragic scenes unfolding in the country this week must be understood in this context. Some pundits are proclaiming that the U.S. withdrawal was an evil act and that continued U.S. participation in the conflict was clearly the morally superior choice. They hold that the ongoing U.S. presence was cheap—their view of tens of U.S. casualties and tens of billions of U.S. dollars per year. Their position ignores the high moral costs of remaining in the war, our duties to our own nation, and the profound moral failures of our partner government. Afghanistan was a land of nasty tradeoffs that any moral declamations must reckon with. These are tradeoffs that we will no longer be making.

The price of fighting

Above all we must remember that war is a morally costly activity. Even the most careful and well-intentioned major military operation will kill many civilians, displace many more, and devastate civilian property. This was especially true in Afghanistan. Like many insurgent forces, the Taliban do not wear uniforms and can operate in civilian areas. As the conflict grew more unpopular, the U.S. assistance mission had turned to airstrikes to keep the Taliban at bay while keeping U.S. casualties down. This had driven up civilian casualties. With the Taliban growing in strength and the regular Afghan military hesitant to fight without air support, these casualties would likely have remained high.

Fighting in the conflict had been heavily concentrated in rural areas; Kabul had been safer for the common Afghan. And our view of Afghanistan is heavily shaped by Kabul—it is more accessible to journalists, especially Western journalists, and is home to many English-speaking professionals. This is the part of the country that had benefited the most from the establishment of the 2001-2021 Afghan government. As Brookings’ Vanda Felbab-Brown, writing with former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan John R. Allen, pointed out, drawing on survey work she had done in Afghanistan,

Urban women may prefer for fighting to go on, particularly as urban areas are much less affected by the warfare than are rural areas, and their male relatives, particularly of elite families, rarely bear the battlefield fighting risks. For them, the continuation and augmentation of war has been far less costly than for many rural women.

It is unsurprising that the media’s parachute regiment thus found a country eager to continue the war, eager to have American forces remain and American airstrikes continue—and a country that would change profoundly under new rulers.

The picture in rural areas was more complicated, Felbab-Brown and Allen wrote:

For many rural women, particularly in Pashtun areas but also among other rural minority ethnic groups, actual life has not changed much from the Taliban era, formal legal empowerment notwithstanding. They are still fully dependent on men in their families for permission to access health care, attend school, and work. […] Afghan women in rural areas—where an estimated 76 percent of the country’s women live—experience the devastation of bloody and intensifying fighting between the Taliban and government forces and local militias. Loss of husbands, brothers, and fathers to the fighting generates not only psychological trauma for them, but also fundamentally jeopardizes their economic survival and ability to go about everyday life.

What does that add up to? They write: “peace is an absolute priority for some rural women, even a peace deal very much on the Taliban terms.” Felbab-Brown’s survey is not the only data point here. 2018 saw a public peace movement in Afghanistan, one that pressured Taliban and government alike, with demonstrators marching barefoot hundreds of miles through dangerous terrain to show support for a peace process. Voices like the rural women or the peace marchers do not fit in a clean narrative of good and evil, of a battle between miniskirted modernity and bearded barbarism. The war was costing Afghanistan tens of thousands of lives and regular mass displacement, and many Afghans had come to favor peace at any price.

The price for America

The war’s cost for the United States was high, too, even if it wasn’t like that of Vietnam or World War II. U.S. casualties would surely have followed had we broken the Doha Agreement that had kept the Taliban off our backs for more than a year. Too many in Washington see our side of the war as an abstraction and speak of U.S. involvement in conflicts in euphemisms like “kinetic action,” “presence,” or “light footprint.” Consider, then, this recent Associated Press profile of a chaplain who had spent the War on Terror caring for the families of U.S. war dead and for the mortuary technicians who prepared bodies for funerals:

Some families seem to sink into a catatonia that he knows means he should give them space. Others come clutching photos of the lost or otherwise tip [him] off that his conversation might help. […] Sometimes, he’ll find a child hasn’t been told why they’re there. Others pose wrenching questions, like a boy who asked the minister who would play catch with him now that his father was gone. […] The work can bring some of the steeliest to crumble. He’s seen drivers who transported families of the dead bawling and embalmers who reached their breaking point and found a new profession. A handful of times over the years, a mortuary staffer has died by suicide or suffered through an attempt.

The war had also produced a swarm of veterans bearing physical, mental, and moral injuries. Some came back as different people. Some hid their problems in alcohol or drugs. Some died by their own hand. And even the many who came back well lost time with family—something that surely has been one factor in the many divorces in the military community.

There was also a military cost to the war. Time spent preparing for deployment, deploying, and redeploying is time unavailable for training more relevant to current U.S. security needs. Our air forces have spent the last two decades flying racetracks over places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, waiting to be called for a strike; they spent the decade before that enforcing the no-fly zones over Iraq. All that time, effort, and money went into present-tense consumption of military power, not future-tense development of military power. We spent the first decades of the “Pacific Century” using land power, not building sea power. We operated in uncontested airspace with persistent surveillance and reliable communications, an environment nothing like what we’ll confront in a major power war. Our military was eating its seed corn; China’s was putting every last kernel in the ground. That fact has a moral reality, too. Every day it looks more and more likely that U.S.-China relations will define the middle of the century. Our military is less prepared to play its part in that. In conflict, that could end up costing us more dead in a few hours than we’ve lost in Afghanistan in a few decades. It could make that conflict more likely.

And, of course, the war’s financial cost was nothing to sneeze at. We were slated to spend $14 billion this year, and, as RAND’s Michael Mazarr pointed out, this number could have climbed if we’d stayed and the Taliban had continued to advance. That means we would be spending around what the federal government spends every year on children’s health insurance. It’s about half of what we spend on health research and training. It’s roughly what the Navy spends on shipbuilding or the amount the Navy and Air Force each separately spend on buying aircraft. It’s about the value of United Airlines. And it’s certainly a big amount for a country to be sending abroad when more than two million of its own citizens don’t have running water or indoor plumbing.

A bad government

Working with the Afghan government had a moral price, too. We had to overlook a lot of corruption—much of which was fueled by the money we pumped into Afghanistan. Uprooting that corruption would have been akin to uprooting the Afghan system. We had to overlook massive poppy production—and when we fought it, we pushed money toward the Taliban. We had to overlook pedophilic kidnappings by Afghan military leaders. We had to overlook nasty partners like General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who once suffocated hundreds of prisoners of war and who has twice caused political crises by kidnapping and torturing high-profile rivals. U.S.-backed strike teams and militias were no strangers to serious abuses too.

The Afghan military and Afghanistan’s political leaders bear the most moral responsibility, after the Taliban, for the situation in the country now. After decades of fighting, these men gave up and cut deals with the Taliban. Those who wanted to stand their ground found themselves isolated and abandoned by their comrades in arms. Pundits may speak of Biden abandoning the women of Afghanistan. This is navel-gazing. The women of Afghanistan were abandoned by their husbands, sons, and fathers. The Afghan military’s surrender was an act of cowardice and injustice against their own country and their fellow citizens. We would be outraged if our military did this to us. To be sure, the United States could have better prepared for Kabul’s fall, and there have been ignominious moments in the withdrawal—see the aerial evacuation of dogs, for example. But the ugly scenes at Kabul’s airport would not have happened had the Afghan military held its ground.

The higher levels of Afghanistan’s military leadership failed, too. They obviously did not prepare a competent fighting force. Their corruption certainly helped with that—some frontline personnel had not been paid in months, and many lacked supplies. Yet they also failed to deploy what they had well. All of Afghanistan’s major cities fell in a matter of days because the Taliban had methodically cut them off, one by one, in the preceding weeks and months. The Afghan military lost everything because it had tried to hold too much.

Afghanistan’s political leaders deserve the blame most of all. They oversaw all of this, and their venality, selfishness, and incompetence undercut support for the government.

This cuts into a set of deeper moral issues for the United States. It is right for us to wish the people of other lands well and at times to help them. Indifference would be a failure of solidarity—a denial of our common humanity. But a solidarity-only ethic denies subsidiarity. Humans are not abstractions—rational souls floating in the void. We are incarnate. We live in particular times, places, and cultures. These particularities impose duties on us—to our family and polity—that are more immediate than our duties to humanity at large. It is natural and just that Americans rushed to enlist after Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and not after, say, the fall of Mekelle or Kilinochchi. The Afghan state and its security forces bore the same duties to Afghanistan—duties they abandoned. Thus President Joe Biden’s statement Monday: “It is wrong to order American troops to step up when Afghanistan’s own armed forces would not.”

Behind all this, we must remember that the United States went to Afghanistan in the first place because we were victims. The de facto government of Afghanistan hosted a notorious international terrorist group. That group then killed thousands within the United States. We drove out this government and replaced it with a better one. We then spent nearly two decades strengthening the new government and providing reconstruction aid. We sacrificed thousands of our troops’ lives. We went above and beyond any reasonable duty that could be imposed on a victim of aggression. Was Abyssinia obliged to rebuild post-Mussolini Italy? How many decades of support did China owe post-Imperial Japan?

The moral stain of Afghanistan’s chaos does splatter us. Yet continuing the conflict had moral costs of its own. Withdrawal critics have often ignored or downplayed these costs, but thanks to the withdrawal, these are costs the United States will no longer pay.

John Allen Gay is executive director of the John Quincy Adams Society.

Image: Reuters.

A review of Christophe Jaffrelot's "Modi's India", which examines the rise of Hindu nationalism and ethnic democracy under Narendra Modi.

Peter Suciu

Afghanistan, Asia

Biden may be forever remembered as the president who lost the war in Afghanistan.

Twenty years ago this August, the mainstream media was focused on the disappearance of Chandra Levy, a twenty-four-year-old intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The case attracted attention as it was revealed she had been having an affair with former Gary Condit, a former Democratic lawmaker from California. The focus on the case all but ceased on September 11, 2001.

Just like that the world turned its attention to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The subsequent U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, followed by the liberation of Iraq some two and a half years later, defined the presidency of George W. Bush. He will always be the president who infamously “dragged” the United States into the Global War on Terror. 

Yet, after the fall of the Afghan capital to the Taliban this week, President Joe Biden may be forever remembered as the president who lost that war. Already, Biden has seen his numbers fall in the polls. While the country has remained deeply divided politically, Biden had approval numbers far exceeding his predecessor—only to see his mishandling of the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan bring those numbers down. 

According to FiveThirtyEight’s tracker, which utilizes a weighted average of polling, President Biden’s approval sat at just above 50 percent last Friday. The numbers had continued to plummet further, given that he was largely silent and out of sight over the weekend as the Taliban regained control. As of Monday afternoon, Biden's approval was at just 49.9 percent, the lowest since he took office in January.

Unfit for Office? 

Throughout the weekend and into Monday, there had been repeated calls that Biden was not fit to remain commander-in-chief after his handling of the events in Afghanistan. It was just weeks ago that Biden praised the Afghan security forces and said they were a far larger and better-trained fighting force than many of the United States’ NATO allies. However, in just a week nearly the entirety of Afghanistan fell to the insurgents. 

Across social media, the president was repeatedly mocked by his critics, with the hashtags #WheresBiden, #BidenDisaster and #25thAmendment Trending.  

Passing the Buck

Prior to speaking to the American public on Monday afternoon, the White House had issued a statement, in which Biden seemed to cast the blame on former President Donald Trump. 

“When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor—which he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019—that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021, deadline on US forces. Shortly before he left office, he also drew US forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500,” Biden said in that statement. 

“Therefore, when I became president, I faced a choice—follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies’ forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country's civil conflict,” he added. “I was the fourth president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan—two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.” 

During his address on Monday, Biden did say that as president the buck does stop with him, but also said that the Afghan security forces lacked the will or determination to even stand up to the Taliban. He had said he accepts responsibility for the withdrawal but added again that he didn’t want a future president to have to make the same difficult choices. 

“I am president of the United States and the buck stops with me,” Biden added. “I am deeply saddened by the facts we now face, but I do not regret my decision to end America's war-fighting in Afghanistan and maintain a laser-focus on our counter-terrorism mission there and in other parts of the world.” 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military small arms, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. 

Image: Reuters

Paul R. Pillar

Afghanistan,

When the United States ends most wars, it is the dominant American patterns of thought rather than the wisdom of Clausewitz that prevails.  And so there will likely be, years into the future, cries of “who lost Afghanistan” even though Afghanistan was never America’s to lose.

The recriminations and anguish that are dominating discourse in America in response to events in Afghanistan have roots in distinctly American ways of viewing war and peace.  Those ways are part of a larger lens through which Americans have tended to perceive the outside world.  That lens has been shaped by the unique history and circumstances of the United States, such as how two ocean moats have insulated it from most of the world’s threats and insecurities.

The traditional American notion of war and peace is non-Clausewitzian.  It rejects the Prussian theorist’s concept of war as an extension of politics by other means.  The American conception instead has been that war and peace are two distinct and separate states of affairs.  According to this view, a bright line marking a transition from war to peace should be characterized by a clear-cut U.S. victory, after which Americans put down their swords and return to their plows.

This view has especially characterized what Walter Russell Mead has called the Jacksonian tradition of American thinking about foreign relations, which has tended to be the most influential strain of thinking about war and peace throughout most of American history.  In the traditional Jacksonian view, war is something resorted to only infrequently, when a foreign threat arises that is sufficiently serious for the citizenry to rise up in anger and vanquish the threat.  It is no accident that Donald Trump—always attuned to the most visceral inclinations of that portion of the American citizenry to whom he appealed—hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office.

Most of America’s history of wars has nurtured such conceptual habits.  The Revolutionary War was considered a victory—after all, the colonies did win their independence—even though most of what the Continental Army accomplished was merely to survive until events in Europe turned the colonials’ way.  The War of 1812 was a draw, but many Americans thought of it as a victory because the last battle of the war—fought after the peace treaty had been signed on the other side of the ocean—was Jackson’s smashing victory at New Orleans.  The Mexican War was a big U.S. conquest, and the Spanish-American War was an even quicker and easier U.S. win.  In World War I, American doughboys were decisive in turning the tide of war and leading Germany to sue for peace.  Then World War II became a model war for many Americans, ending with what is usually described as an unconditional surrender by the hated Axis powers.

After World War II, there arose a different American strain of thinking, accentuated further when the Cold War ended, which was to view the United States as the indispensable superpower.  This led to near-continuous American involvement, including military involvement, around the world, from the “police action” in Korea to the “forever wars” of today.  This conception has now been around long enough and has influenced policy decisions enough that it has become as firmly entrenched in much American thinking as the Jacksonian conception. 

The basic problem has involved the resulting mash-up between the traditional and newer patterns of thinking.  American use of military force overseas has become far more frequent than under the Jacksonian idea of an infrequent resort to arms to eliminate only serious threats.  And yet the Jacksonian standard of achieving something that can be called “victory” continues.  The oxymoronic result is illustrated by Douglas MacArthur’s declaration during the police action in Korea that “in war, there is no substitute for victory”—an attitude that helped provoke Chinese intervention and extend that conflict for two more years. 

Several other ill consequences may ensue from the conceptual mash-up.  Sometimes the United States seems to pursue objectives that, although they might count as indicators of victory if they could be achieved, are unobtainable.  The North Vietnamese regime that was the adversary in the Vietnam War was never going to fall to its knees and cry uncle.  Afghanistan was never going to be made into a western-style liberal democracy.

Sometimes U.S. leaders, aware of what is unobtainable but still feeling obliged to pursue something that could be called a win, are uncertain about their objectives and as a result lack a clear strategy.  Such a lack is the number one conclusion of the lessons-learned report just issued by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Often there is blindness to the need for compromises, including even with loathed wartime enemies, in order to terminate a conflict or at least to terminate U.S. involvement in the conflict.  The Trump administration was correct to negotiate with the Taliban—notwithstanding the much-criticized subsequent history of the deal that was negotiated—because the Taliban represent a significant element, politically as well as militarily, that unavoidably is part of the future of Afghanistan.

And sometimes, looking for an elusive Jacksonian victory but unable to find it, U.S. leaders just keep a conflict going on and on.  That is what happened over twenty years in Afghanistan—until President Biden’s politically courageous decision to end what should have been ended long ago.

Clausewitz was right: war ought to be thought of not as an isolated phenomenon with its own standards of success and failure but instead as one more instrument for pursuing national objectives that also get pursued through diplomacy or other instruments.  As with any other political matter, the pursuit rarely involves absolutes of victory and defeat but rather compromises, negotiation, recognition of competing interests, calculations of costs versus benefits, course corrections, cutting of losses, and partial fulfillment of objectives.

Warfare, and terminating wars, always involves bargains.  Even what are described as unconditional surrenders are rarely unconditional.  The surrendering side bargains away its ability to resist with all its remaining strength.  Japan at the end of World War II had considerable such ability remaining, and an invasion of the home islands against a still-resisting Japan would have been extremely costly to the United States.  In the bargain that was struck, the Japanese laid down their arms in return for no more atomic bombs and a benevolent occupation in which they kept their emperor.

When the United States ends most wars, it is the dominant American patterns of thought rather than the wisdom of Clausewitz that prevails.  And so there will likely be, years into the future, cries of “who lost Afghanistan” even though Afghanistan was never America’s to lose.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He is also a Contributing Editor for this publication.  

Image: Reuters

Charlie Gao

Chinese Air Force,

Both of these planes put up a formidable fight 

Here's What You Need to Know: The Russian Su-33 is probably superior to the J-15 in reliability and engine power, the Chinese J-15 is simply a more modern aircraft. However, even Sputnik’s expert, Vasily Kashin, states at the end of the article: “By spending some more time and money, the Chinese will apparently solve the problems they now have and will get a fairly reliable and powerful carrier-based fighter.”

Back in 2018, Sputnik International put out a piece bashing China’s based J-15 carrier-based fighter jet, describing it as having problems with its flight-control system. But the J-15 is itself a derivative of the Russian Su-33 Flanker. Is the Chinese jet really that inferior to the Russian one? Or are the problems shared, and the article an attempt to distract from the Russian fighter’s own failings?

The beginning of the article begins with a criticism of the J-15’s weight and ski-jump launching mechanism. As the jet is heavier than its western counterparts and relies on a “ski-jump” at the end of the runway to get airborne, it can carry fewer armaments and fuel. But this was the original Soviet design concept for carrier operations.

The Liaoning (originally the Soviet Varyag) was designed with the ski-jump because it was designed to support the Su-33 and MiG-29K fighter aircraft, which weren’t designed to be catapulted off the deck. This made carrier operation simpler, albeit with the aforementioned disadvantages. Sputnik’s criticism rings hollow: the PLAN is simply utilizing the carrier as it was designed: by the Russians.

The PLAN is even planning to improve this aspect, and catapult-launched versions of the J-15 are reported to be in development. Photos have been seen of J-15s with modified nose gear that could be used with catapults.

The second, more valid criticism is that the J-15 is an underdeveloped version of the Su-33. Since China bought only the prototype of the Su-33, the T-10K3, they had to reverse-engineer this airframe. China then subsequently attempted to acquire Russian Su-33s in 2006 and 2009, but these negotiations appear to have fallen through, resulting in China pushing forwards with the indigenous J-15 program.

The Russian experts' criticism of the J-15 as being immature in development are mostly valid. Most of the problems with the J-15 stem from its underdeveloped indigenous WS-10 engines. The inability to produce satisfactory domestic engines has been a perennial thorn in the side of the Chinese aerospace industry, which has been reliant on Russia for engines for its Flankers.

That being said, the criticism often cites the many crashes of the J-15 as evidence of the fighter's deficiencies. Operating fighters from a carrier isn’t easy even in ideal conditions, and the original Su-33 design also crashed multiple times in 2016 when Admiral Kuznetsov was deployed to support Russian troops in Syria.

The Su-33 itself hasn’t even seen that many upgrades since the early 1990s, only undergoing light upgrades. Russian naval aviation appears to be more focused on procuring the newer MiG-29KR, a lighter airframe. The Su-33 only has one semi-multifunctional display in its cockpit, limiting its ability to employ precision-guided munitions and use modern navigation techniques. Upgrades have not changed this, only adding new bombing systems and giving the pilot a digital kneepad in lieu of a cockpit refit.

China, on the other hand, has built the J-15 to its latest standards of cockpit design and ergonomics. A picture of the J-15’s cockpit shows multiple MFDs in the cockpit and a F/A-18-inspired control panel under the hold.

They also have been more aggressive in developing improved variants of the J-15 for other roles, including the J-15D electronic-warfare aircraft to match the US Navy’s EA-18G “Growler”. Dual cockpit variants of the J-15 have also been developed.

Overall, while the Su-33 is probably superior to the J-15 in reliability and engine power, the J-15 is simply a more modern aircraft and is integrated with modern ergonomic design concepts. China’s effort in tearing down the airframe and (even imperfectly) understanding how it works has allowed them to thoroughly modernize it and develop new variants of it. This has allowed them to build a modern carrier-based fighter, while Russia’s Su-33 remains stuck in the 1990s with analog instruments and a simple HUD.

Even Sputnik’s expert, Vasily Kashin, states at the end of the article: “By spending some more time and money, the Chinese will apparently solve the problems they now have and will get a fairly reliable and powerful carrier-based fighter.”

Charlie Gao studied Political and Computer Science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national security issues.

This article first appeared in 2018.

Image: Creative Commons "PLA Navy J-15 552 landing trial moment before hooking up the second arresting cable" by simonyang126 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Trevor Filseth

Social Programs,

While many activists have hailed the changes as a considerable improvement for the well-being of poorer Americans, some have emphasized several areas of ongoing shortcomings.

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted an enormous amount of government spending, both under President Donald Trump and his successor, Joe Biden. However, most of the economic assistance programs created during the pandemic–three stimulus checks, increased unemployment benefits, and an expanded Child Tax Credit–have been framed as temporary relief measures that will be ended after the pandemic has abated.

However, starting on October 1, all beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)–mostly known as “food stamps”–will receive a twenty-five percent increase in their monthly benefits, the single largest increase in the program’s history. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced the changes on Monday, issuing a statement that laid out the increases and attempted to justify their financial cost.

Forty-two million Americans, the number of SNAP recipients, are expected to benefit from the increases. The twenty-five percent increase brings the average SNAP benefit in the United States to $157 per month, up from $121 per month.

According to Vilsack, the change was brought about by a re-evaluation of the Thrifty Food Plan, the benchmark by which the USDA determines what the level of SNAP benefits should be. This analysis was conducted with four factors in consideration: the cost of food, the amount of nutrients in the food, the average American’s diet, and nutrition guidance provided by the USDA. The twenty-five percent increase is expected to translate to a seven percent increase in daily caloric intake, but a substantial increase in the quality of the food with regard to health. Vilsack described the changes as “an investment in our nation’s health, economy, and security,” hailing the positive economic impacts of a healthier society and possible job gains from the program.

While many activists have hailed the changes as a considerable improvement for the well-being of poorer Americans, some have emphasized several areas of ongoing shortcomings that they argue should be addressed. For instance, SNAP benefits are not adjusted by region, despite some areas of the United States having substantially higher food costs than others.

As with other assistance programs, SNAP benefits were first increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, when extra benefits were approved by President Donald Trump in April 2020. However, Trump’s upgrades to the SNAP program were regarded as a temporary measure in response to the demands of the pandemic. The increase under Biden is slated to be permanent.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters

A review of John Mueller's "The Stupidity of War", which argues that the U.S. should adopt a military strategy of restraint.

The Taliban pledge an orderly transition, but many residents are bracing for retribution.

Charlie Gao

Russia,

The Struna-1 bistatic radar could pose a significant threat to stealth NATO aircraft and America's F-22s and F-35s in a future conflict.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Struna-1 is different than most radars, in that it is a bistatic radar. Meaning the Struna-1 relies on the receiver and transmitter of the radar to be in two different locations as opposed to conventional radar technology where the receiver and transmitter are located in the same location.

Ever since the development of stealth technology for aircraft, many different systems have been advertised as “stealth killing.” One of the more innovative solutions is the Russian Struna-1/Barrier-E bistatic radar system developed by NNIIRT, a division of the Almaz-Antey Joint Stock Company. Almaz-Antey is the premier air-defense and radar manufacturer in Russia; they make the Tor, Buk and S-400 anti-aircraft systems, as well as their respective search radars. The Struna-1 was originally developed in 1999. A further evolution of Struna-1, the Barrier-E system was later showcased for export at MAKS 2007. While it is not part of Almaz-Antey’s online catalog, it was shown alongside other radars at MAKS 2017. The system is rumored to be deployed around Moscow.

The Struna-1 is different than most radars in that it is a bistatic radar, meaning it relies on the receiver and transmitter of the radar to be in two different locations as opposed to conventional radar technology where the receiver and transmitter are located in the same location. Normal radar systems are limited by the inverse fourth power law. As the radar target goes further away from the transmission source, the strength of the radar signal decays as per the regular inverse square law. However, radar detection works by receiving reflections of the radar signal. With a conventional radar, this results in the received signal being four times weaker than that put out. Stealth works because at a distance, an aircraft can mitigate its radar returns to be small by scattering them and absorbing them using radiation-absorbent materials. This degrades the quality of the radar track so it is harder to distinguish precise information about an aircraft.

The Struna-1 solves this problem by positioning the transmitter in a different location than the receiver. The link between the transmitter and receiver has increased power relative to a conventional radar, as it falls off according to the inverse square law as opposed to the inverse fourth power law. This allows the radar to be more sensitive, as it is effectively acting as a radar tripwire. According to Russian sources, this setup increases the effective radar cross-section (RCS) of a target by nearly threefold and ignores any anti-radar coatings that can scatter the radio waves. This allows the detection of not only stealth aircraft, but other objects with low RCS such as hang gliders and cruise missiles. As many of ten receiver/transmitter tower pairs—each tower is called Priyomno-Peredayushchiy Post (PPP) in Russian publications—can be placed. Sources vary in potential configurations of the towers, but the maximum span between two single towers is 50km. This leads to a maximum theoretical perimeter of 500km.

These individual towers have relatively low power consumption, and they do not emit as much energy as traditional radars, making them less vulnerable to anti-radiation weapons. The towers are mobile, allowing for forward deployment in times of conflict. They rely on microwave data links to communicate with each other and a centralized monitoring station, which can be located at a significant distance from the system. The distributed nature also allows the system to keep operating if one node goes down, albeit with less precision. The low height of the transmitter and receiver towers (only 25m off the ground) make Struna-1 very good at detecting low altitude targets, a target set that conventional radars often have trouble with.

Limitations of the Struna-1 include a low detection altitude. The nature of the system results in the detection range being a rough biased parabola between the receiver and transmitter. This limits the detection altitude to around 7km at the tallest point, with the maximum detection range going down as one gets closer to the transmitter/receiver towers. The transverse size of the detection zone is likewise limited, being around 1.5km close to the towers to 12km at the optimal point between the towers. The small size of the detection zone limits the use of the Struna-1 system as a tripwire, it cannot replace traditional radars as an overall search mechanism. However, with its high precision tracks of stealthy aircraft, it would serve as a good counterpart to other longer-band radar systems such as Sunflower, which provide less precise tracks of planes. The Struna-1 cannot act as a targeting radar due to its inability to provide constant radar illumination tracking a target, so it cannot be used to guide in semi-active surface-to-air missiles.

While the Struna-1 bistatic radar is not a be-all-end-all detection solution for stealth aircraft, it could pose a significant threat to stealth NATO aircraft in a future conflict. Strike aircraft with stealth features are particularly vulnerable, the strike role tends to favor flight profiles that might cause aircraft to fly into the Struna-1’s detection range. In tandem with other modern “stealth-defeating” radar systems, the Struna-1 could provide critical information to an adversary on the position and movement of stealth aircraft.

Charlie Gao studied Political and Computer Science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national security issues.

This article first appeared in October 2017.

Image: Creative Commons "Lockheed Martin F-22 'Raptor's'" by aeroman3 is marked with CC PDM 1.0

Peter Suciu

Afghanistan, Asia

There is a sense of dread about what the future will be like for Afghanistan’s women and young girls. 

There are many places around the globe that aren’t welcoming for western women, and while that remains true for much of the Islamic world, Afghanistan has quickly reverted to its old ways as the Taliban have retaken control of the central Asian nation. As a result, there are reports that CNN reporter Clarissa Ward was told to stand aside – simply because she is female. 

“They’ve just told me to stand to the side because I’m a woman,” Ward said while reporting from the Afghan capital of Kabul, which has fallen to the insurgent forces.  

Instead of a prolonged siege or violent house-to-house fighting, the Taliban's takeover of the city was largely unopposed. Ward, who had worn a head covering while pointing her head downward, said that even as some of the Taliban fighters were friendly, the mood has shifted quickly. 

“The welcoming spirit only extends so far, and my presence soon creates tension,” she added.

A Taliban commander had told the CNN chief international correspondent that “everything is under control, everything will be fine.” However, as CNN and other media outlets have reported, already women had begun to dress far more conservatively than they had just days earlier.  

The Old Normal 

There is a sense of dread about what the future will be like for Afghanistan’s women and young girls. 

For many young women, they were too young to remember what life was like under the Taliban, while today most high-school-age girls were born after the Taliban was driven from power. A return of the Taliban could be a complete shock to them. While in power, the Taliban had become notorious throughout the world for their misogyny as well as their violence against women. 

In what had been called gender apartheid, women weren’t allowed to work, and they were not allowed to be educated after the age of eight, and then were largely only allowed to study the Koran.  

During the Taliban’s previous regime, 80 percent of Afghan marriages were forced, with many girls under the age of sixteen subjected to arranged marriages.  

It isn’t just women that could suffer under the Taliban again, warned Amnesty International. On social media on Monday, the human rights watchdog posted, “Thousands of Afghans at serious risk of Taliban reprisals - from academics and journalists to civil society activists and women human rights defenders - are in danger of being abandoned to a deeply uncertain future.” 

Message to America 

The fall of Afghanistan came just weeks after the United States began to pull its forces out of the nation, following nearly 20 years of continued conflict that began after the 9/11 attacks.  

Ward asked the Taliban commander leader if he had a message for the United States. 

“America already spent enough time in Afghanistan,” he replied. “They need to leave, they already lost lots of time and lots of money.” 

Time may now be running out for those who the United States may have left behind. 

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military small arms, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com. 

Image: Reuters

Charlie Gao

M2 Heavy Machine Gun,

The M2 machine gun that started serving in the 1920s is still in action today. 

Here's What You Need to Know: The ruggedness and versatility of the M2 Browning keep it a favorite of soldiers in practically every conflict since its inception. 

The M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun is one of the most famous American weapons. Serving since the 1920s, the gun has been a favorite of soldiers in practically every conflict since. It remained the same throughout most of the Cold War, retaining the iron sights, simple pintle mounts, and tripods that were designed for it many decades prior.

But as the United States has stepped up its military commitments around the globe and embarked on a program of modernizing its weapons, the M2 has also had to change. Since 2003 a myriad of improvements have come out for the M2 machine gun to improve its usability, accuracy, and reliability. But even with these upgrades, will they be enough to keep the M2 in service?

The biggest upgrade to the M2 was the transition to the M2A1 model in the 2000s. The standard model for most purposes was the M2HB, an air cooled version with a heavy barrel. Changing the barrel on the M2HB was an involved process that required adjusting the “headspace” (the distance between the bolt face and the cartridge) and the timing of the machine gun for every new barrel.

During sustained fire, this was never ideal, as the process would always take a significant amount of time, but changing barrels is a necessity during sustained fire to avoid overheating. The adjustable headspace and timing were necessary at the time, as parts could not be built to the consistent enough tolerances to have a fixed headspace.

However, a few decades later, quick-change barrels were becoming the norm. The German MG34 and MG42 that the M2HB faced in World War II both used quick change barrels that could be swapped extremely rapidly. During the Cold War, the Soviets used .50 caliber machine guns (in their own 12.7 x 108 millimeter caliber). The Soviet NSV was lighter than the M2HB, and featured a quick change barrel.

Despite innovation elsewhere, M2HB’s design was not revised to incorporate these new features. The same design, tripods and mounts continued serving up until the 2000s. At that point, the U.S. military held a competition to develop a quick change barrel kit for existing M2s. General Dynamics won the competition for the kit, and it was adopted as the M2A1.

While the primary change was the addition of a quick change barrel kit, the M2A1 also added a four-pronged flash hider to the barrel, reducing the flash of firing, which especially improves the ability to shoot at night with the weapon, as it makes it less prone to washing out NVGs. The barrel extension is also made of a harder steel.

The Army has replaced all of its M2HBs with M2A1s, and the Marines are looking to do the same. A similar setup is being offered as a whole new machine gun as the M2HB QCB by FN Herstal. Some countries have adopted it under that name.

Another upgrade that’s common recently is the attachment of optical sights to the M2. While Carlos Hathcock famously made an optic mount for a M2HB during his service in Vietnam, optic mounts were not standardized until much later. In comparison, the Soviet NSV came with a standard optic rail, which was commonly used with a 4x to 6x sight.

But nowadays there is a lot of interest for optic mounts for the M2. The Korean company DI Optical is one of the leaders in this space, producing red dots for the M2HB that have seen use with foreign militaries. Trijicon, who makes the ACOG which has seen wide use also makes a machine gun red dot.

The tripod has also seen improvements. The old M3 tripod of World War II vintage is on the way out in the U.S. Army, being replaced by the new M205 lightweight tripod. The new tripod is sixteen pounds lighter, and has increased traverse and depression range relative to the old tripod.

Charlie Gao studied Political and Computer Science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national security issues.

This article first appeared in September 2018.

Image: Creative Commons "A Soldier spots targets downrange as two of his Soldiers fire an M2 machine gun" by #PACOM is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Stephen Silver

Taiwan Military, Americas

Chinese state media has been having a bit of fun at Cornyn’s expense.  

There have been quite a few instances in recent years of well-known people having to apologize for incorrect or imprecise statements about Taiwan. Earlier this year, actor John Cena apologized—in Mandarin—after he had referred to Taiwan as a country while promoting the latest Fast and the Furious movie.  

“I’m really sorry. You have to understand that I love and respect China,” Cena, the professional wrestler-turned-movie star, said in the video, which was posted to the Chinese social network Weibo. Then heavy implication was that Cena was seeking to maintain his and his movie’s box office clout in China, which has emerged as an important market for the movie business.  

Now, there has been another kerfuffle involving a tweet about Taiwan and this time it comes from a United States senator.  

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Monday sent a tweet, which was meant to react to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, and the subsequent takeover of that country by the Taliban. Implicitly arguing that the United States should have kept a troop presence there, Cornyn listed the number of U.S. troops currently in several countries and territories. He said that there were twenty-eight thousand troops in South Korea, a little more than thirty-five thousand troops in Germany, fifty thousand troops in Japan, thirty thousand troops in Taiwan, seven thousand troops in Africa, and twenty-five hundred troops in  Afghanistan. 

As many pointed out, that is wrong. The United States does not have thirty thousand troops in Taiwan. That would imply that the United States has a military base in Taiwan, which it does not. Defense Department officials recently that the United States had thirty personnel in the territory, but Cornyn appears to have multiplied that number. 

Cornyn, or his staff, has since deleted the tweet, but it has been screengrabbed by many, including CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale. Dale also noted that the U.S. had a force of thirty thousand troops in Taiwan between the 1950s and 1970s, and speculated that Cornyn “mistakenly added the 000 or mistakenly pulled from a Wiki page about the situation decades ago.” 

Dale also wrote that Chinese state media has been “having some fun with Cornyn’s tweet.”  

“As a senior senator from Texas, who was once a Republican Senate Majority Whip for the 114th and 115th Congresses, and now a member of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Cornyn should be aware of the US government’s military intelligence,” according to the Global Times.

“Thus, the possibility that the US is hiding 30,000 troops in China’s Taiwan island cannot be ruled out, and there is a probability the secret was accidentally spilled out by this senior US politician,” the Chinese-backed news organization observed said. “As we know, the US has maintained military communications with China’s Taiwan including weapon sales and military trainings.”  

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for the National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver. 

Image: Reuters

Even if Washington can’t provide a guarantee that future administrations will maintain the deal, there are other ways to bridge the gap.

Farhang Faraydoon Namdar

Afghanistan, Asia

Although the United States is ostensibly on the losing side of the story in Afghanistan, it has much to gain from the Taliban take over.

The United States removed the Taliban in 2001 due to its nurturing of terror groups that threatened world security. The new Taliban in control of Afghanistan has changed and has turned pragmatic, especially in foreign policy. Could this new Taliban become the government the United States worked to build in Afghanistan?

Previously, the Taliban militant group was dominated by ideologues, and it strictly adhered to Islamic principles. However, during its exhaustive war with the United States, it has become more pragmatic. It has begun negotiating with parties it once eschewed on a religious basis. It extracts revenues from drugs and smuggling that are strictly prohibited in Islam. These practices indicate a paradigm shift in the Taliban or the “New Taliban.” Moreover, for the Taliban to stay in power it has to modernize. When the Taliban entered Kabul, they did not vandalize the city as many expected.

These changes suggest a change in the Taliban’s values and politics, but the people of Afghanistan have also transformed over the past twenty years. Afghanistan is now more educated and connected, making it a harder redux for some of the Taliban’s previous practices. Sirajuddin Haqqani, deputy leader of the Taliban, and other Taliban leaders have voiced their commitment to work with other parties to agree on “an inclusive political system in which the voice of every Afghan is reflected.” In some Taliban-controlled regions, women are allowed to go to school. In a surprising statement, the Taliban urged women to join the government and declared amnesty across Afghanistan. Later, a woman interviewed a Taliban leader on Afghan National TV.

Even if these changes are mild in the groups’ domestic affairs, its foreign policy resembles any other political entity. Visiting and forming relations with China, a state that is officially atheist, and negotiating with countries such as the United States and Russia, which the Taliban once considered infidels are conspicuous indications of a dramatic change. For instance, the Taliban has called China a friend and promised not to provoke the Uyghurs living in Xinjiang.

China represses its Muslim population, but the Taliban looks the other way. Yet the Taliban justified its war on the basis of Muslim oppression by the West and defended its harboring of terror groups such as Al Qaeda on a similar basis. Traditionally, the United States has relied on non-democratic allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, in its global rivalries, including during the Cold War when many of its allies were dictatorial regimes that suppressed their own populations. That the Afghan Taliban is not on the U.S. foreign terrorist list is revealing; The Taliban’s recent actions show a pragmatic, realist entity that could follow the United States’ geopolitical code. Hence, the costly American and NATO presence was an ill-advised strategy. Further, the group has learned that international cooperation is the key to remaining in power.

The presence of Western forces in Afghanistan mobilized millions of Muslims in Afghanistan. It justified Al Qaeda and the Taliban’s claims that Muslim lands have been invaded by infidels, and Jihadist groups began a lengthy battle against the West. With the United States and NATO out, the Taliban could sell its people on the notion that there are no longer non-Muslim forces in their Islamic state, depriving Jihadists of their motivation for conflict.

The rationale for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was to eradicate terrorism from the country. Eradicating terror requires uniting, stabilizing, and delivering economic prosperity. For the past twenty years, the United States has chaperoned the Afghan government that failed to unite and stabilize the country. Nevertheless, the Taliban has united the country for the first time in decades and it seems to be the only entity capable of that grave task.

The vacuum created by U.S. withdrawal was not filled by various forces which could have turned Afghanistan into a nest of terrorism, drug trafficking, and criminal activities. The Taliban controls almost all of the country, has deeply penetrated Afghan society, and could prevent any jihadist group from emerging. Moreover, in its peace deal with the United States, the Taliban promised to cut ties with terrorist organizations. The group has also claimed that it has no external agenda.

As a multi-ethnic country with many languages and dialects, not to mention its rugged mountain geography, tribalized society, and loosely connected roads, Afghanistan’s sole uniting factor is Sunni Islam. The Taliban has employed Sunni Islam to rally most of the Afghanis behind it, conquering the country in a rapid blitz not through sheer force but through popular support and claims such as offering long-awaited Afghan freedom and a promise to eradicate corruption. Most of the Afghan army surrendered to the Taliban; ostensibly they had more confidence in the group than the Afghan government.

In the long run, the Taliban has to deliver economic benefits to the Afghan people. An independent Islamic Afghanistan requires a strong state which comes only through modernization that needs foreign investment and an open market and society. Through their economic might, the United States and China could offer Afghanistan what it wants, gaining access to resources and geopolitical benefits in the process. As a landlocked country that sits upon trillions of dollars worth of natural resources but lacks the technology and personnel to extract them, Afghanistan needs foreign expertise and investment; This presents an opportunity to open up the Taliban to the international community.

Although the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was similar to its withdrawal from Vietnam, it can accomplish similar geopolitical objectives. Washington’s departure from Vietnam transformed its former enemy into a friendly nation towards the United States and paved the way for a new era of Sino-American relations that changed the dynamics of the Cold War.

The U.S.-Taliban Doha Agreement paved the way for the Taliban to capture Kabul as it caused morale among Afghan soldiers to collapse. The U.S. departure serves Washington’s core interests in Afghanistan, and it assists the United States in great power competition by making it easier for Washington to strategically pivot to Asia. Committing U.S. forces to Afghanistan and much of the Middle East only diverts resources and attention in its burgeoning rivalry with China and Russia. By developing possible friendly relations with the Taliban, occasioned by U.S. Sunni allies such as Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, Washington could bolster its position in Central Asia.

Although the United States is ostensibly on the losing side of the story in Afghanistan, it has much to gain from the Taliban take over. As Abraham Lincoln once stated, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” The new Taliban has so far embraced moderation in its domestic policies and realism in its foreign policy—resembling more of an Islamic state similar to Saudi Arabia than a kingdom from the Middle Ages. U.S. policymakers should take note.

Farhang Faraydoon Namdar is a researcher and journalist covering the Middle East. His work has been published in various printed publications and has been featured on TV and translated into other languages. Follow him on Twitter @farhangnamda.

Image: Reuters.

Rainer Zitelmann

American Politics,

If money alone could buy political power, Joe Biden would not be president today.

Many people claim that America’s wealthiest citizens set the country’s political agenda. All around the world, the USA is held up as a prime example of how, in capitalist countries, the rich not only dominate the economy but also politics. For many, the fact that Donald Trump, who is known for his wealth, became president seems to confirm this thesis. But if you look closer, Trump’s election actually proves the opposite. Even Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, the most prominent proponents of the thesis that politics is controlled by the rich, concede in their book Democracy in America? that “most of the big-money contributors—and most Republican think-tankers and officeholders—supported other candidates.” And, “Trump’s positions went directly contrary to the views of wealthy donors and wealthy Americans generally.”

And if the rich did really control American politics, Trump would never have won the 2017 election—Hillary Clinton would have. Page and Gilens concede: “The better-funded candidate sometimes loses, as Hillary Clinton.” Clinton and her allies, including her joint committees with the Democratic Party and the super PACs supporting her, raised more than $1.2 billion for the full cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission. Trump and his allies collected about $600 million. According to Edwards and Bourne: “Not one CEO in the Fortune 100 donated to Trump’s election campaign by September 2016. His victory did not stem from influence by the wealthy but more from grassroots opposition to wealthy coastal elites.”

And if money alone could buy political power, Joe Biden would not be president today. Perhaps it would be Michael Bloomberg, who at the time of his bid for the Democratic candidacy was the eighth richest man in the world, worth $61.9 billion, according to Forbes. Probably never before in history has a candidate spent so much money of his own money in such a short space of time on an election campaign, about a billion dollars in just over three months. This was revealed in a report by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on the financing of the campaign. Bloomberg financed his campaign himself, without accepting any donations.

Bloomberg is by no means the only candidate whose wealth didn’t help him get nominated in the primaries. The Republican Steve Forbes spent $69.2 million as he tried to win the 1996 and 2000 nominations, but he only managed to win a handful of delegates. In 2020, billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer spent $200 million of his own money without winning even a single delegate. In the 2008 GOP primaries, wealthy Mitt Romney spent more than twice as much as John McCain—including a sizable chunk of his own money—but McCain won the primary. The Koch brothers have always been portrayed by critics of capitalism as the most dangerous pro-capitalists, but David Koch learned just how hard it is to turn money into political power back in 1980 when he massively supported the Libertarian Party and stood as their candidate for vice president: he garnered just one percent of the vote.

In the history of American elections, some Democratic candidates have been supported primarily by large donors and others, such as Bernie Sanders, have relied far more on smaller donors. In the 2016 primaries, sixty percent of donations to Sanders came from people who gave less than $200. The same is, of course, also true for Republican candidates. Barry Goldwater and Patrick Buchanan, for example, both mobilized large numbers of small donors, whereas candidates like Jeb Bush were supported primarily by large donors.

In his book Unequal Democracy, Larry M. Bartels criticizes inequality and the influence of the wealthy in the United States. He examined the “estimated effect of unequal campaign spending” in sixteen U.S. presidential elections from 1952 to 2012, concluding that “Republican candidates outspent their Democratic opponents in thirteen of those elections.” But in only two elections, namely that of Richard Nixon in 1968 and that of George W. Bush in 2000 does Bartels conclude that “Republican candidates won close elections that they very likely would have lost had they been unable to outspend their Democratic opponents.” And with Hillary Clinton—as shown above—raising considerably more in donations than Donald Trump in the 2016 election, that there were just two out of seventeen elections over the last sixty-four years in which unequal campaign spending represented the decisive factor in an election.

In a 2016 op-ed for the New York Times under the headline “The Power of Political Money is Overrated,” Bradley A. Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission concluded: “But while money is critical to inform the public and give all views a hearing, this election proves once again that money can’t make voters like the views they hear. Jeb Bush is not the only lavishly funded candidate to drop out of the race … The evil of ‘money in politics’ is vastly overstated.”

In his book Affluence and Influence, Martin Gilens argues that wealthier voters influenced politics in the U.S. more than voters from lower-income groups. He examined 1,923 questions from opinion polls in the U.S. from 1981 to 2002, supplemented by data sets from 1964 to 1968 and 2005/2006. His method: he analyzed the political views of lower, middle, and upper-income households and then compared their responses in opinion polls with government policies in the years following the elections. He criticized a “representational inequality” that was evident in the fact that the opinions of the lower and, in some cases, middle-income groups had less chance of being implemented by the government than those of the upper-income groups. It is noteworthy, however, that while this applies to religious issues, foreign policy, and economic policy, it does not apply to social policies, as Gilens acknowledges: “The social welfare domain is the only policy domain examined in which the divergence of preferences across income groups does not lead to a substantial decline in responsiveness to the preferences of less-well-off Americans.” Gilens explains that this is largely because, “poor and middle-income Americans have powerful allies that tend to share their preferences on these issues,” such as the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), one of the most influential lobbying groups in the United States.

In terms of economic policy, in contrast, Gilens observed that the opinions of lower-income groups had less chance of being realized. What does Gilens think policies would have to look like to lead to “greater representational equality in the economic sphere” in this regard? Gilens suggests that to address this discrepancy, policies would have to “result in a higher minimum wage, more generous unemployment benefits, stricter corporate regulation … and a more progressive personal tax regime in general.”

But whether a higher minimum wage, higher taxes on the rich, and more regulation are really in the interests of blue-collar workers is questionable. The two American presidents who have been most admonished in recent decades for unilaterally representing the interests of the rich and for pursuing too much deregulation were Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Both have indeed pushed through substantial tax cuts for the rich and deregulated in some areas, but this has helped low-income earners more than many social policies.

If the rich in Western countries are guilty of anything, it is not that they are too politically active, but that they are not politically active enough—at least this is true for the pro-capitalist rich. While the voices of anti-capitalists such as George Soros and Tom Steyer, who vehemently argue for higher taxes on the rich, resonate loudly across the media echo chamber, supporters of capitalism rarely speak out in public. Page and Gilens refer to the “public silence of most billionaires.” David Koch, who provides funding for libertarian think tanks, personally spoke out publicly on tax policy just once in a ten-year period. “The public silence of most billionaires,” explain Page und Gilens, “contrasts markedly with the willingness of a small, unusual group of billionaires—including Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates—to speak out about specific politics … All three have favored a substantial social safety net, progressive taxes, and moderate regulation of the economy. An ordinary American who tried to judge what U.S. billionaires think and do about politics by listening to Bloomberg, Buffett, or Gates would be badly misled.”

This observation is correct and points to the core of the problem: Public pressure and the headwind of anti-capitalist opinion is so great that it even silences billionaires, while rich people who advocate higher taxes on the rich and support greater state regulation feel free to speak out publicly. The same approach should be adopted by wealthy people who are convinced that capitalism is the superior system and who are skeptical of big government: They should be bolder and play a far more active role in shaping the public debate.

Rainer Zitelmann is the author of The Power of Capitalism and The Rich in Public Opinion.

Image: Reuters

Reliable fuel and electricity supply are urgently needed in Lebanon to avert a potential “humanitarian catastrophe”, the top UN aid official in the country warned on Tuesday. 

Trevor Filseth

Social Secuirty,

While most Americans have set aside extra cash during their lifetimes, many rely deeply on Social Security to make ends meet during their retirement—and can benefit from a number of strategies designed to improve their amount.

The mechanism by which Social Security payments are provided is fairly simple. During one’s lifetime, one pays Social Security taxes, which are set aside from other taxes and placed in the Social Security Administration’s trust fund. Then, once a person reaches “full retirement age” (FRA), they are eligible to claim their benefits, which then last for the remainder of their life.

The transfer of wealth between taxes paid out while young and benefits received while old is essentially never one-to-one. Instead, the program amounts to a generational transfer of wealth, with young people paying for older Americans’ Social Security benefits during their careers and having theirs covered by the following generation.

While most Americans have set aside extra cash during their lifetimes, many rely deeply on Social Security to make ends meet during their retirement—and can benefit from a number of strategies designed to improve their amount.

One of the most significant of these methods is by waiting beyond one’s FRA age to cash in. Although the FRA is typically sixty-six or sixty-seven depending on one’s birth year, waiting an additional year to file for benefits will increase the monthly payments by around eight percent per year. For this reason, if one would normally cash out at age sixty-seven, waiting until seventy—the oldest possible age to file—will net one an extra twenty-five percent premium per month, which pays for itself over a period of roughly fifteen years.

Waiting to claim one’s benefits can often mean delaying one’s retirement, or retiring and using earlier savings to pay for the extra years. Although it amounts to extra work, this can also be a good decision for one’s post-retirement income. In addition to the extra income generated by a few years of additional work, a person’s Social Security benefits are tied to how much money they made in salary during their lifetimes. Because the benefits are calculated based on the thirty-five highest-income years of a person’s life, and because most people make more money after they have seniority, a few extra years can make a tangible increase to one’s Social Security benefit.

Finally, it must be said that Social Security alone is usually not enough to provide for a comfortable retirement. The payments are designed to provide around forty percent of a person’s pre-retirement income, but most people could not survive comfortably if sixty percent of their yearly income disappeared tomorrow. For this reason, it is usually important to supplement the Social Security payments with another source of money–often a nest egg saved up during one’s lifetime.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for The National Interest.

Image: Reuters

Charlie Gao

Chemical Weapons,

The legacy of Soviet preparation has not only survived but thrived and stocks of gas masks, decontamination sets, and other chemical and biological defense equipment are placed strategically around Russia.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Russia places great emphasis on CRBN threats. This is evident in the contents of their civil defense-first aid kits, which contain antibacterial agents, radioprotective agents, an agent to treat carbon monoxide poisoning, and antidotes against some chemical poisoning. There is far less focus on the CBRN threat in NATO nations, in both civil defense and military settings. 

The threat of chemical and nuclear warfare loomed large over most militaries during the Cold War. The development of new nerve agents during the 1940s, as well as advanced delivery systems later on meant that chemical weapons could be delivered with precision and deadly effect. As such, most militaries trained extensively for the chemical threat. However, those on the “Eastern” side, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact states developed a reputation for extensive preparation.

But how much of this remains today?

In the Russian CBRN (РХБЗ) troops, the legacy of Soviet preparation has not only survived but thrived. New CBRN defense vehicles and equipment continue to be procured, and CBRN equipment is often displayed prominently at large expositions, like Army 2019. The special battlefield role of the Russian CBRN troops is also probably a reason why their capabilities are exercised more. In addition to chemical attack and defense, CBRN troops are in charge of operating battlefield smoke generators and the powerful TOS-1 and TOS-1A heavy flamethrower systems which can fire incendiary and thermobaric rounds. CBRN troops are also armed with the powerful RPO-A thermobaric rocket launcher, which can level weak houses in a single shot.

The Russian military also undertakes more CBRN training as a whole. In addition to larger drills involving the CBRN troops, there are weekly drills in most combat units every Wednesday, which involve the use of CBRN protective equipment and the completion of tasks with it on. Gas masks are also carried regularly regardless of the situation. Training drills with full-body rubber suits also often occur, as well as practice decontamination washes of armored vehicles. Larger scale CBRN exercises are also common, with one occurring in August 2019. Comparatively, most NATO soldiers seem to only train occasionally with CBRN equipment, with monthly familiarization at most.

On the civil side, stocks of gas masks, decontamination sets, and other chemical and biological defense equipment are placed in strategic locations around Russia. Federal documents about the responsibilities of Russian civil defense specifically state that defense against CBRN threats is part of the civil defense mandate. The current civilian AI-4 individual first aid kit held in Russian civil defense stocks contains antibacterial agents, radioprotective agents, an agent to treat carbon monoxide poisoning, and antidotes against some chemical poisoning. Compared to regular first aid kits, most American or European civilians have, the AI-4 offers far better capability to treat victims of a CBRN threat.

However, in NATO, CBRN training has lapsed. While Czechia retains one of the only live-agent chemical weapons training facilities in NATO, there is far less focus on the CBRN threat in NATO nations, in both civil defense and military settings. While Russia has upgraded its CBRN reconnaissance vehicles twice since the 2000s, the United States last procured an upgrade for its German M93 Fox CBRN reconnaissance vehicles in 2007.

Charlie Gao studied political and computer science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national security issues.

Image: Creative Commons "Chernobyl Gas Mask" by Brook-Ward is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Stephen Silver

Social Security, Americas

The value of the program has been crystallized during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Social Security program goes back to 1935 when it was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the New Deal. Earlier this week, on August 14, the passage of the program marked its eighty-sixth anniversary. 

A recent op-ed argued for Social Security benefits to be expanded, on the occasion of the anniversary.

Nancy Altman, an opinion contributor, is calling for just such a benefits increase, although the current reconciliation package under consideration by Congress is not allowed to address Social Security, according to an op-ed published by The Hill.

“Because Social Security cannot be addressed through budget reconciliation, it is not part of that legislation,” Altman stated in her op-ed. “But given the overwhelming consensus among the American people in support of expanding Social Security’s modest benefits, Congress should make it the next priority immediately after the Build Back Better legislation passes.”

Altman cited a poll by Social Security Works, showing that “over half of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents rank preventing Social Security cuts as one of their top three voting priorities.”

She also blamed a “billionaire-funded campaign” for the lack of new Social Security benefits in recent years, while expressing hope that President Joe Biden will be the one to expand benefits.

“Expanding Social Security is both wise policy and smart politics. It is a solution to the nation’s looming retirement income crisis, when too many workers fear that they must work until they die,” Altman wrote. “It is a solution to immoral, destabilizing income and wealth inequality. It is a solution to the squeeze on working families, caught between the needs of the old and the young.” 

She also saw the pandemic as a good reason for such expansion.

“The COVID pandemic, which is hitting seniors hardest, has made the importance of Social Security even clearer. In the last year, many older workers lost their jobs or had to quit to stay safe,” Altman wrote. “The pandemic has underscored the value of Social Security’s survivor, disability, and old age benefits . . . after fifty years, many Social Security expansions are needed. There should be an across-the-board benefit increase so that every current and future beneficiary gets a raise. Social Security’s benefits are inadequately low by virtually any standard.”

Altman’s specific proposals for benefit increases include “across-the-board increases,” updating the program’s minimum benefit, switching to a more accurate cost-of-living increase, getting rid of the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset, and “ending the five-month waiting period for Social Security disability beneficiaries,” while also updating the Supplemental Security Income program. 

How would the benefits be paid for? 

“A robust expansion of Social Security benefits, funded by having millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share, is the best birthday present we could give the program—and ourselves,” Altman said in her op-ed.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for the National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver. 

Image: Reuters