Diplomacy & Crisis News

Western powers are divided on how to deal with a possible refugee exodus as the Taliban regain control.

James Holmes

World War I, History

They don't call it the "Great War" for nothing.

Here's What You Need to Know: False lessons of history could beget bad decisions in the here and now.

November 11, 2018—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—marked the centennial of the armistice concluding the First World War. Your humble correspondent traveled to Kansas City, Missouri, to offer remarks as part of “1918: Crucible of Conflict,” the centennial symposium at the National World War I Museum and Memorial. After two days of listening to learned commentators hold forth about sundry dimensions of the war, the armistice, and the interregnum between the world wars, it’s clear the Great War still casts a long cultural shadow.

Bottom line: history matters. A partial or garbled understanding of history means any guidance we distill from it is partial or garbled as well.

Faulty guidance is a real prospect. Ask the man on the street what the war was about, and in all likelihood he’ll reply with something about trench warfare. Soldiers huddled in muddy, miserable trenches under constant artillery bombardment represent the dominant image of World War I. And that comprises a major part of the story for sure. But why does our cultural memory obsess over trench warfare in France? The obvious reason for Americans is because that’s where American doughboys fought from 1917–1918. That was our war.

We tend to stress the combined bomber offensive against Nazi Germany, the landings in North Africa, Italy, and Normandy, and other American spheres of endeavor in World War II while scanting the horrific and arguably decisive fighting between German and Soviet armies. In the same vein it’s natural to remember what our soldiers, sailors, and airmen did in the Great War. These were sons and daughters of America.

It also makes sense to concentrate on France because the West is where the guns of August rang out in 1914 and where the Great War ended in November 1918. The German Army’s “Schlieffen Plan“ sent legions careening through Belgium into France before the offensive stagnated under stiffer-than-expected French and British resistance. The static fighting that constitutes the lore of World War I ensued. During the spring of 1918 the German Army launched a series of titanic offensives in hopes of breaking a French Army that verged on mutiny or driving the British Expeditionary Force into the sea before the United States could intervene in force. And France is where the Allies at last amassed enough combat power to puncture German lines at multiple points at the same time—letting them break through and compel Berlin to consent to the armistice we remember today. Beginnings and endings imprint themselves on the popular mind.

And then there’s the cultural dimension. France witnessed feats of heroism that helped forge the U.S. Army and Marine Corps into what they are today. Legendary figures such as General John J. Pershing made their names on the Western Front. Legendary figures from subsequent U.S. history—Harry S. Truman, George S. Patton, Douglas MacArthur—made their debuts as junior officers. At the Battle of Belleau Wood in May-June 1918, American soldiers and marines blunted a German spearhead aimed at Paris—and helped prepare the ground for the Allied counteroffensive and victory. “Retreat, hell! We just got here,” proclaimed one ornery marine when urged to retreat before the German onslaught. Try not pumping your fist at that show of bravado.

Furthermore, think about all the marvelous cultural artifacts that came out of the Great War. The poetry of British soldiers Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen ranks among the finest war poetry—heck, the finest poetry, full stop—ever written. There’s an elegiac quality to the life stories of Brooke and Owen: both fell in military service, Brooke toward the war’s beginning and Owen near its end. In a sense their stories make literary bookends for the war in France. In 1915 Canadian officer Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae composed “In Flanders Fields,” a poem that remains a staple of Veterans’ Day observances a century hence, after presiding over the funeral of a fallen comrade. Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a testimonial from a German perspective to the horrors seen in France. Such relics convey drama—and drama makes lasting popular memories.

Powerful testaments to trench combat obscure accounts of other theaters. Even contemporary pop culture—think the early seasons of Downton Abbey—reinforces the Western bias in our memories of World War I. Not even the eloquence of Ernest Hemingway, whose A Farewell to Arms is set in Italy rather than France, can fully counteract that bias. There’s something melancholy about hurling men against fire—sending soldiers over the top into murderous machine-gun and artillery fire and barbed wire—that continues to beguile.

Without taking anything away from the monumental literature, visual arts, and music commemorating the fighting in France, though, it’s crucial to remember that entrenched combat in the West is far from the whole story of the Great War. The war of movement that German commanders hoped to stage in France actually happened to the East, for example. Why? Because the sheer physical scale of western Russia rendered heavily armed perimeter defense impractical. In the West the Allies and Central Powers could dig in because France is a relatively compact country bracketed by the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Pyrenees Mountains. It was a closed system by contrast to the open system that is Russia. Had armies attempted perimeter defense in the East, their lines would have been so long that no army could field enough troops or weaponry to guard them.

Germany’s defeat of the Russian Army coupled with revolution in Russia prompted that country to conclude an armistice and leave the war via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Its departure liberated German commanders to transfer troops westward, mounting their spring 1918 offensives with heavy numerical superiority over demoralized French and British armies. (U.S. forces in Europe remained in training until that summer.) The Allies tried opening a southerly maritime route at Gallipoli in 1915, with disastrous results. The Great War saw bitter mountain warfare between Italy and Austria-Hungary. British and French forces campaigned in the Middle East, where the open, flat terrain sometimes permitted cavalry charges to succeed. The desert theater made Englishman T. E. Lawrence “Lawrence of Arabia”—and spurred Lawrence to write one of the great treatises on irregular warfare. Japan scooped up German colonies in the Pacific and China, helping set the stage for the Pacific theater of World War II.

And on and on. Do these non-Western theaters matter today? Yes. Contemporary endeavors lie downstream of culture, and the Great War has become part of the cultural memory for all of the erstwhile combatant states. How they understand their past shapes how they conduct themselves now. For instance, try asking an Australian about the Great War; you’re more likely to find yourself regaled with tales of the “ANZAC”—Australia/New Zealand—expeditionary force at Gallipoli than stories about trenches spanning France. This is Australia’s founding legend. A Russian or Italian would take a different view from an American, Briton, or Frenchman.

Supposed lessons from a conflict are graven on the minds of the generation that fought it, on the children of the combatants, and to lesser extent on their grandchildren. After that they pass into common memory, helping comprise a set of axioms about the world and how the society should help manage it. Historical lessons foreclose certain political and strategic options in future controversies while prodding a society and its leadership toward others. Ergo, it behooves posterity to compile as comprehensive an understanding of bygone events as possible—helping us learn accurate lessons from those events.

False lessons of history could beget bad decisions in the here and now, while wise lessons bolster our chances to excel. History isn’t just of antiquarian interest. It’s essential to executing foreign policy and strategy well.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. The views voiced here are his alone.

This article first appeared in November 2018.

Image: Imperial War Museum / Wikimedia Commons

At minimum, Biden owed our allies in Afghanistan a plan.

Calli Obern

China, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Asia

For a notoriously opaque governing body, paying attention to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank could offer a better understanding of where the Chinese government is headed in the future.

For a young and scrappy institution, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) sure gets a lot of attention. With a sliver of the World Bank’s human and capital resources, the AIIB ought to be a minor blip on the radar compared to other international institutions. Yet, the 2021 Aspen Security Forum—a prominent event on the annual calendar for the national security community—dedicated an entire session last Wednesday, August 4, to interviewing Jin Liqun, president of the AIIB. The rising prominence of Jin and the AIIB is less about the bank’s spending power and more about how the AIIB foreshadows China’s positioning as a player dedicated to multilateralism and climate action.

The AIIB is often viewed as a mechanism for China to finance its global infrastructure plan, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But if that were the AIIB’s purpose, the Bank would be of little note given the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China, both of which pre-date the AIIB and have channeled robust resources into BRI projects. Instead, the AIIB’s primary value to the Chinese government is to promote an image of China as a beacon of multilateralism and allows China to make up for its relatively minor role in international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

That expanded power is evident in the success with which the AIIB has gotten European countries, along with Canada and Australia, to flout U.S. warnings and join the ranks of its one-hundred-plus member countries. With U.S. allies on board, the AIIB signaled to the world that the bank and China are multilateral players, ready to fill the gap left by the United States and (as China argues) its outdated institutions. Building support from a broad coalition of countries was crucial to “convince the rest of the world that this bank works by the same high standards, exactly like that of the World Bank,” Jin described at the Security Forum. The AIIB became a public diplomacy tool to enhance China’s reputation. In the AIIB, China gets a public diplomacy tool to enhance its reputation while also wielding veto power over an ostensibly independent multilateral institution.

Whether the AIIB is actually independent is a question increasingly worth asking, as it seems like the AIIB has made moves that closely foreshadow steps taken by the Chinese government—particularly regarding China’s climate policy.

When the AIIB launched with the slogan “lean, clean, and green,” the notion of “green” meant the bank would promote the economy (think, green for money), a stance in line with China’s policy on climate at the time. But in June 2015, a day before the Chinese government announced a surprising climate action plan leading up to the Paris Agreement, Jin changed the meaning of “green” to eco-friendly. The bank pivoted to promote environmentally friendly technology and green finance as central to its mission.

This was not the only time the bank has indicated China’s climate policies. In his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2020, China’s President Xi Jinping declared China would be carbon neutral by 2060, a lofty goal requiring China to switch from coal for the majority of its power. Only weeks before this speech, Jin announced the AIIB would not invest in coal or related infrastructure. While the AIIB may stress its independence from China, it is difficult to view the close alignment between the bank and China as a mere coincidence.

What other shifts might we expect from the AIIB, and what might they portend for China’s broader sustainability strategy? When asked about modifying the bank’s energy investment policy at the Security Forum, Jin stated it would be updated next year, adding that, “My view is that in a new energy strategy, an updated strategy, coal definitely will be out.” Officially changing the policy to ban coal investments at the AIIB could signal a move for China to disavow coal leading, at least publicly, leading up to the Climate Change Conference in Glasgow this year.

The AIIB is an institution worth watching because it provides a glimpse into the trends taking hold in the Chinese government, whether that means cozying up with U.S. allies or pledging to reduce carbon emissions. For a notoriously opaque governing body, paying attention to the AIIB could offer a better understanding of where the Chinese government is headed in the future.

Calli Obern is a master’s candidate in International Policy at Stanford University, specializing in energy, natural resources, and the environment and a research fellow at Ecospherics, an advisory firm on environmental and national security issues.

Image: Reuters.

Peter Suciu

NATO, Europe

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has repeatedly said that he expects that there will be pressure from the United States for other NATO members to contribute more towards defense. 

During the Trump administration, the White House strongly applied pressure on Germany to increase its military spending. Even as Germany had reported a record high in NATO defense spending for 2021—with a budget of €53 billion ($63.8 billion), a 3.2 percent increase over the prior year when spending was capped at an estimated €51.4 billion—a new report from research firm Global Data found that the budget growth is set to slow next year.

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Germany could see a negative compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of -0.04 percent by 2026. How the Biden administration, which may or may not still be in the White House by that point, as well other NATO members will feel is unclear. However, Global Data warned that a decline in Germany’s defense spending could add to ongoing ill feelings by some members, especially as Germany has the fourth-largest economy in the world, with a gross domestic product (GDP) that is ten times the size of fellow NATO state Estonia. 

Increasing the Pressure on Germany 

Even as President Joe Biden has vowed to boost ties with NATO, unlike his predecessor, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has repeatedly said that he expects that there will be pressure from the United States for other NATO members to contribute more towards defense. 

“All U.S. presidents over the past decades have advocated more defense spending by Europe's NATO partners,” Stoltenberg told German news agency dpa International per Deutsche Welle (DW). 

Biden’s stance hasn’t been as strong as former President Donald Trump, who even suggested that the United States would withdraw from the alliance if partner nations failed to immediately meet the goal of spending two percent of their GDP on defense.  

German defense spending in 2020 had been in line with NATO calculations, and it accounted for 1.57 percent of the GDP, which was up from 1.36 percent the previous year. 

DW also reported that an internal analysis for 2022 had shown that the goal of having Germany reach the two percent goal likely can’t be initiated or realized on time, under the current budget. The research from Global Data painted an even gloomier picture.

According to the “Germany Defense Market Attractiveness, Competitive Landscape and Forecast to 2026,” which was released this month, German defense expenditure will only see minute growth to $58 billion in 2026 from the current $57.5 billion of this year.

Battling the Coronavirus 

Germany’s greatest threat hasn't been an outside adversary, but like many other countries, it was hit especially hard by the coronavirus, impacting its economy and abilities to support its various government programs. 

“The reduced growth rate in 2021 is unsurprising when the domestic political arena and the financial impact of COVID-19 are considered,” explained Madeline Wild, associate defense analyst at GlobalData. 

“Germany’s economy shrunk by 1.65% in 2020, according to GlobalData research,” she added in an email to the National Interest. "Further, Germany has experienced delayed economic pressure, and government funds are being stretched beyond means exhibited in the years prior. Slow growth, levels have remained evident despite pressures from NATO (including Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg) pressing Germany to increase spending.” 

The situation has further been exacerbated by an overextended general budget.

“However, other NATO members such as France are increasing their defense spending despite the intense financial impact of COVID-19 and thus some ill-feeling may be fostered against Germany: it is one of the richest nations in Europe, yet consistently fails to meet its 2% of GDP on defense spending,” Wild said. “Issues with the Bundesamt für Ausrüstung, Informationstechnik und Nutzung der Bundeswehr, which oversees defense procurement, are well publicized and deep set. The department has been labeled inefficient and overly bureaucratic, which has meant that up to 10% of the acquisition budget was unable to be spent in some years. This has been largely attributed to a lack of trained staff causing hold-ups and funds getting trapped in bottlenecks.”

Even as the coronavirus has impacted spending, Germany's modernization efforts may require that it loosens the purse strings in the coming decade. 

“German defense spending is driven by needs to modernize the aging fleet of the Bundeswehr in line with its allies to operate successfully and coherently within NATO,” Wild said. “Several substantial contracts have been signed to push forward the process of modernization, including the funding of the European Future Air Combat System (FCAS), the procurement of over a thousand PUMA IFVs, additional A400M Atlas aircraft and investment into the modernization Eurofighter Typhoon fleet. Despite this, spending levels are still not high enough to placate other NATO members, which are pushing Germany to spend 2% of its GDP on defense.”

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

Thaer Ghandour

Lebanon, Middle East

The international community should act now to prevent starvation and prevent another generation from being lost to state failure.

Lebanon’s situation is dire. Queues of cars waiting to fill up a few gallons of gasoline stretch for hundreds of meters. The depth of the crisis becomes clear when we remember that Lebanon does not have a public transportation system. Although there are no rail or metro networks, there are employees in the railways and public transportation services. It does not stop at the borders of a severe transport crisis. Medicines have become a scarce commodity in the country. WhatsApp groups transmit daily requests to secure essential medication for patients. Lebanese expatriate networks seek to provide what can be provided. Store shelves are emptied of basic foodstuffs. Infant formula is not available. The list continues.

The World Bank painted a gloomy picture. In its Spring 2021 Economic Monitor, the organization ranked Lebanon’s financial and economic crisis in “the top 10, possibly top three, most severe crisis episodes globally since the mid-nineteenth century.”

Lebanon has finally received the attention of Western media, especially after the disastrous August 4, 2020, blast in Beirut port. The detonation of 550 tons of ammonium nitrate—the original shipment that arrived in 2014 was more than 2,700 tons; some experts believe that a significant portion of this shipment was smuggled out of the harbor and used by the Syrian regime to produce barrel bombs—killed more than 200 people and left 300,000 homeless.

Lebanese do not trust either the politicians or the judiciary system and for good reasons. The prime example is the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) request for an international, independent, and impartial investigative mission to investigate the August 4, 2020, blast in Beirut port -and the local investigation is facing political obstacles. The international aid after the August 4, 2020 explosion was “lost” in the corruption rings. A Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation found that at “least $250 million in U.N. humanitarian aid intended for refugees and poor communities in Lebanon has been lost to banks selling the local currency at highly unfavorable rates.”

What could be done?

The disastrous situation calls for urgent humanitarian intervention. France led an international video conference that raised $370 million on the anniversary of the Beirut port blast, without clearing how the aid will be disseminated. A similar effort has been undertaken by world powers, who promised in June 2021 to “support Lebanon’s army to prevent its collapse.” Lebanese Army Chief Joseph Aoun desperately told an international meeting, which France organized last June, that Lebanon might face dire consequences if the country’s crisis persisted and military salaries continued to tumble. “How can a soldier support a family with a salary that does not exceed $90?” he said. Bilal Saab, a senior fellow and the director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute, wrote in Foreign Policy that the Lebanese army “is a viable U.S. partner because it’s the only remaining institution that is representative of all Lebanese religious communities and able to function despite the national economic meltdown.” Although Saab admits that the United States should not “give the Lebanese army a blank check or not care about returns on its investment,” he argues that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) is the best option to support because of other alternatives, like civil society, are weak. But this argument is not adequately supported.

This rhetoric overlooks the fact that the LAF is mired in corruption and abuses the human rights of the Lebanese and Syrian refugees in Lebanon. A prime example is that the military court is still trying civilians, although many military officers do not even hold a law degree. The LAF, which received U.S. financial aid amounting to $2 billion since 2007, needs financial assistance to survive. Still, the LAF should not be responsible for channeling international humanitarian aid to civilians, since its delivery of humanitarian assistance could boost its domestic image, leading it to become another version of the military dictatorships that rule the region. The LAF is not immune to nepotism and clientelism. In 2017, LAF investigated a scandal that a $100k bribe is needed to pass the entry test to the military college.

On Sunday, August 15, twenty-eight people were killed and more than seventy-five injured in a fuel tank explosion in Akkar, northern Lebanon. According to Reuters, “The army had seized a fuel storage tank hidden by black marketeers and was handing out gasoline to residents when the explosion occurred.” The LAF Twitter account published several pictures and videos of soldiers giving out the gasoline from black marketeers’ depositories for free. Still, the army didn’t announce the names of the smugglers or bring charges against them. The way the army is handling this issue is closer to populist behavior rather than that of law enforcement.

Yet some Lebanese politicians are pleading with the LAF’s leadership to take over the political process and lead the country. Among those is the deputy speaker of the parliament, Elie Ferzli. He asked the army to take power in Lebanon and suspend the constitution. It’s important to note that the LAF’s leadership has always been ambitious, and since 1998 three presidents in Lebanon came from the army. Two of them, Emile Lahoud (1998–2007) and Michel Soleiman (2008–2014), were elected while they were the commander of the army, and Soleiman’s successor, Michel Aoun, was the commander in the 1980s

Instead of looking to the LAF, the most effective option is to create an alliance between the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and Lebanese civil society organizations. Such an approach offers an interim solution for the crisis to control international aid and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Lebanon. After the August 4 explosion, UNIFIL deployed a multinational force to Beirut to “assist Lebanese authorities with their efforts to deal with the aftermath of the tragic 4 August explosions.” This deployment could be an example of how UNIFIL can assist with the distribution of humanitarian aid.

On the one hand, UNIFIL has been active in Lebanon since 1978 and has more than 11,000 military and civilian workforces from forty-six countries, with around 450 daily operational activities, seventeen hospitals, five military ships, and a $480 million budget. On the other hand, Lebanon’s civil society is “diverse and able to respond to the needs of various constituencies, ranging from the provision of humanitarian aid to advocacy,” according to the 2019 Civil Society Sustainability Index. There are between 8,500 and 14,000 civil society organizations (CSOs) working in Lebanon in 2019. The 2006 Israeli war with Lebanon and the Syrian refugee crisis empowered the Lebanese CSOs. UNIFIL can use its infrastructure to provide logistical assistance to humanitarian aid—food and health assistance rather than cash assistance—while Lebanese and international organizations working in Lebanon can assume the responsibility of disseminating the aid to the neediest Lebanese and refugees living in Lebanon.

In parallel to this aid alliance, there is a need to run several workshops among the Lebanese activists to help build the opposition’s trust and a political program and movements that lead to a long-term solution. The October 2019 protests created an open space where young people discovered their peers from different regions, political affiliations, and religious backgrounds after years of disconnection because of political and social divisions. However, this experiment was cut short due to the violent response from the Lebanese authorities and the pandemic. In the mid-1990s, the “Intezarat Shabab” conference (the literal translation is: Youth Expectations Conference) was an important initiative that brought the younger generation together after fifteen years of civil war. Such efforts should be repeated to build on the 2019 protests to overcome the lack of trust and organization among civil society and political activists that is so common in many Arab countries. As long as oppression reins, civil society and political parties will remain weak, and it will not be easy to overcome such systemic distrust.

Lebanon is in free-fall. All possible scenarios are dire. Very soon, thousands of Lebanese citizens and refugees alike will illegally smuggle themselves to Europe. The international community should act now to prevent starvation and prevent another generation from being lost to state failure.

Thaer Ghandour is a Lebanese journalist with experience writing on the Middle East-North Africa region’s politics. He holds a Master of International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Follow him @thaerghandour

Image: Reuters.

Ethen Kim Lieser

Health, Americas

America is currently witnessing nearly a hundred thirty thousand new cases per day, which is more than 700 percent higher compared to the beginning of July.

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has sounded the alarm that the rapid rise of coronavirus cases largely due to the highly transmissible Delta variant could return the United States to the worst days of the year-and-a-half-long pandemic.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation is currently witnessing nearly a hundred thirty thousand new cases per day, which is more than 700 percent higher compared to the beginning of July.

“I will be surprised if we don’t cross two hundred thousand cases a day in the next couple of weeks, and that’s heartbreaking considering we never thought we’d be back in that space again," Collins said in an interview on Fox News Sunday. 

“That was January-February, that shouldn’t be August,” he continued. “But here we are with Delta variant, which is so contagious, and this heartbreaking situation where ninety million people are still unvaccinated who are sitting ducks for this virus and that’s the mess we’re in. We’re in a world of hurt and it’s a critical juncture to try to do everything we can to turn that around.”

Warning to Unvaccinated 

Collins doubled down on his advice that unvaccinated Americans should quickly get inoculated.  

“The big message right now this morning (is) for the people who aren't vaccinated, this is the moment to absolutely get off the fence and take care of this. . . .  It’s looking for you,” he warned.  

Collins added that face masks are “a life-saving medical device” and that “it’s really unfortunate that politics and polarization have gotten in the way of a simple public health measure.”  

Endemic Virus  

Meanwhile, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, recently told CNBC that he expects the coronavirus to become an endemic virus here in the United States after the Delta surge eventually subsides later this year.  

“We’re transitioning from this being a pandemic to being more of an endemic virus, at least here in the United States and probably other Western markets,” he said.  

“I think after we get through this Delta wave, this is going to become more of an endemic illness where you just see sort of a persistent infection through the winter . . . but not at the levels that we’re experiencing certainly right now, and it’s not necessarily dependent upon the booster shots,” he continued.  

Like Collins, Gottlieb noted that he believes that case counts will only get worse in the weeks ahead.  

“You’re going to see the Delta wave course through probably between late September through October,” he said. 

“Hopefully we’ll be on the other side of it or coming on the other side of it sometime in November, and we won’t see a big surge of infection after this on the other side of this Delta wave,” he added.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.  

Image: Reuters

James Holmes

U.S. Navy, Asia

It's not a trivial or hypothetical question.

Here's What You Need to Know: Better to think ahead now than improvise later under hothouse conditions.

What would happen should a U.S. Navy warship collide with a Chinese vessel while demonstrating on behalf of freedom of the sea?

This hasn’t been a trivial or hypothetical question since at least April 2001, when a Chinese fighter jet hotdogging near a U.S. Navy EP-3 surveillance plane slammed into the American aircraft, kindling a diplomatic crisis between the Chinese Communist Party leadership and the newly installed administration of President George W. Bush. This aerial encounter furnished advance warning of what might happen on the surface below.

Last weekend the question took on new urgency. On Sunday morning a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 052C destroyer cut across the bow of the destroyer USS Decatur as Decatur made a close pass by Gaven Reef in the South China Sea. Estimates vary, but it appears the PLAN ship passed somewhere within 45 feet and 45 yards of its American counterpart—compelling the Decatur bridge crew to maneuver to avoid collision. The imagery is striking. Whatever the actual range, terming this conduct “unsafe and unprofessional”—in the U.S. Pacific Command’s anodyne phrasing—understates how close the vessels came to disaster.

Most such incidents involve the rules of the maritime road: who gets to steam and fly where, and what may seafarers and aviators do along their way? Think of the encounter off Gaven Reef as an exchange of point and counterpoint in an armed conversation about who makes the rules governing the use of sea and sky and who obeys them. And the point of this conversation isn’t merely to impress Chinese and American audiences. It’s to make an impression on foreign audiences able to influence the outcome of the U.S.-China struggle over freedom of the sea.

Audiences such as Vietnam and the Philippines, stakeholders in the maritime disputes roiling the region. Such as Australia and India, friends that incline to stand beside a resolute America but might stand aside should Beijing successfully brand Washington as vacillating and untrustworthy. And such as France and Great Britain, extraregional players whose governments are increasingly vocal about the common and whose navies increasingly share the burden of upholding nautical liberty. Europeans are speaking up—and showing up in embattled waters to back their words with steel.

China calls its opinion-shaping enterprise the “three warfares” and prosecutes it through legal, psychological, and media means on a 24/7/365 basis. Three-warfares efforts have a passive-aggressive cast to them: Beijing tries to depict itself as a put-upon Asian power facing a domineering United States and as a masterful defender of Chinese sovereignty and dignity vis-à-vis a hapless U.S. Navy. It flirts with doublethink.

This armed conversation evokes French soldier and counterinsurgency theorist David Galula’s dichotomy between incumbent governments and insurgent groups trying to overthrow them. Galula observes that the challenger is free to say anything to discredit the government and attract popular support, while the incumbent has a reputation to worry about along with a track record for judging whether its deeds match its words. Insurgent leaders harbor few qualms about propagating fake news if it advances the political narrative, while the government tries to get its facts straight before putting out an official version of events.

Insurgents typically get their message out first—and make the all-important first impression. China plays the part of the insurgents Galula describes, whereas the United States is the overseer of the system of maritime freedom. Washington is commonly a latecomer to propaganda battles. It has to set false first impressions straight—and that’s a hard thing to do. Now it’s worth looking at some past near misses and their diplomatic repercussions in order to peer ahead. Some basic questions to ask: what type of craft were involved, under what circumstances did the encounter take place, and who played the propaganda and blame games better? Such factors determine the victor.

The likeliest collision scenario would involve a U.S. Navy warship and a Chinese fishing boat or China Coast Guard cutter. Beijing uses fishing craft crewed by maritime militiamen and backed by cutters as the vanguard of its strategy in the South China Sea and East China Sea. It floods the zone with them to the tune of thousands of fishing craft. Trawlers ply their trade in expanses where China asserts sovereign rights to natural resources. China Coast Guard white hulls dash to the rescue if a rival navy or coast guard challenges the fishing fleet’s presence.

This is the paramilitary fleet that harassed the U.S. survey ship Impeccable in 2009 and has faced off against Philippine and Vietnamese maritime forces. There hasn’t been a collision yet—quite—but there have been close calls. Should non-military ships block the path of an American warship and a crash ensue, the optics—photos of a hulking destroyer mowing down a civilian vessel—would favor Chinese efforts to brand the U.S. Navy as overbearing, blundering, or both. The truth would take a backseat to messaging.

This week’s events also dredge up memories of the Cold War for those of us sufficiently, ahem, seasoned to remember that twilight conflict. Thirty years ago last February the cruiser Yorktown and destroyer Caron skirted through Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea. Their goal was the same as Decatur’s: to exercise the right of “innocent passage” through coastal seaways and thereby rebut Soviet claims to special prerogatives that contradict the law of the sea. The Soviet Navy frigate Bezzavetnyy converged with Yorktown at a shallow angle and struck the cruiser a glancing blow on her port quarter to telegraph Moscow’s displeasure.

It might seem as though the Reagan administration was picking a needless fight, but there’s a logic impelling U.S. demonstrations. It goes something like this: give those who exceed their legal mandate an inch—for instance, by acquiescing in the common demand for advance notice or permission before passing through territorial waters—and you encourage foes of maritime freedom to take a mile. Or in parlance currently in vogue, you allow “salami slicing” in hopes of amity. Fail to stand against small transgressions and you create the incentive to attempt new and more extravagant transgressions. Soon predators have devoured the salami.

The Black Sea bumping incident amounted to little as diplomatic fracases go. In part that’s because the setting differed markedly from the Western Pacific today. The U.S. task force cruised along mainland Soviet shores where no one disputed Moscow’s sovereignty. This was not contested turf like China’s South China islands—ground wrested from China’s neighbors or manufactured wholesale. That muted tempers. So did the slight damage to Yorktown. Nor was there any loss of life. There was little to fire a public outcry in either capital.

But more importantly, the Soviet Union was a superpower in terminal decay by 1988. The West had come to fear Soviet weakness more than Soviet might. Washington wanted to avoid doing anything that might collapse the regime in Moscow or encourage hardliners to attempt a coup (as they did in 1991). In effect the contenders struck a gentleman’s agreement: Moscow went silent about its excessive claims while the U.S. Navy executed no further overt challenges. Both sides got most of what they wanted.

By contrast, China is a power on the rise. It is asserting rulemaking authority in Asian waters and skies. No arrangement a la the Black Sea compact is on offer in Southeast Asia. Nor is there much reason to think Beijing would accept one were it offered. Quite the reverse. China is serious about making itself the suzerain of maritime Asia and is striving to lock in its status.

Hence this week’s operations. The pattern of Chinese actions magnifies the prospect for an actual catastrophe. The Decatur incident wasn’t the first in the genre. In 2013 a PLAN amphibious transport cut in front of the cruiser USS Cowpens to block Cowpens out of the vicinity of the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning, then plying the South China Sea. But the Chinese “gator” kept a relatively safe distance during that encounter. Think about what would ensue if a PLAN warship again cut across a U.S. Navy ship’s bow, if the American ship plunged into it, and if heavy damage and casualties resulted. This is the brave new world into which China is ushering the region.

The furor following such a pile-up would probably conjure up the EP-3 affair more than the Black Sea bumping incident. Death and loss of pricey hardware concentrate minds. The 2001 collision cost the Chinese airman his life and the PLA Air Force a warplane, inflaming passions within China. Beijing sought to recoup its dignity by demanding an apology from Washington, as though the lumbering propeller-driven U.S. plane had somehow rammed the nimble fighter. It ultimately wrung something out of the Bush administration that it could depict as contrition.

But China held a trump card in that showdown that it probably wouldn’t hold after a collision at sea, namely possession of the American craft and its crew. The stricken EP-3 landed on Hainan Island, bestowing leverage on Beijing. The parallel between 2001 and today is inexact at best—above and beyond the differences separating an aviation from a seaborne incident. Still, it’s fair to forecast that China would reprise its efforts to define what had transpired, fitting events to its preexisting tale about American aggression and Chinese ascendancy. And it would again seek to extract some confession of U.S. culpability. Such measures conform to Beijing’s three-warfares playbook.

But deeper-seated cultural factors may also be at work. The late Alan Wachman, a China hand at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, likened the EP-3 uproar to imperial China’s demand for a “kowtow” from the British Empire. In 1793 officials representing China’s Qing Dynasty insisted that a visiting British embassy headed by Lord Macartney make such a gesture of subservience to China as a condition of opening trade. Dynastic officials demanded a kowtow; Macartney protested that the British crown was the Qing emperor’s sovereign equal. Neither party bent. Irreconcilable differences set them on the pathway to eventual conflict.

Rival conceptions of world order could likewise shape the aftermath of a future high-seas collision—as Henry Kissinger might prophesy judging from his book World Order. Basic worldviews that clash amid impassioned circumstances and diplomatic one-upsmanship make for mercurial interactions.

In fact, it’s fair to prophesy that such an imbroglio would outdo past confrontations by most measures. The stakes would be high as each contender painted the other as a dastardly aggressor. Publicity would glare on the contestants—limiting their political freedom of maneuver. Beijing and Washington would stake out intractable positions, Black Sea-type formulas for deescalating the impasse would elude them, and options would narrow. It’s anyone’s guess what trajectory such a controversy would take.

Strategists are forever conducting wargames to project how armed conflicts might unfold. As they should. They could do worse than simulate a high-seas collision and its diplomatic fallout as part of their gaming repertoire. Better to think ahead now than improvise later under hothouse conditions.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and coauthor of Red Star over the Pacific. The views voiced here are his alone.

This article first appeared in October 2018.

Image: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Craig Z. Rodarte

Charlie Gao

S-400, Europe

The S-400 is such a controversial missile that the United States has imposed economic sanctions on countries simply for buying the system. 

Here's What You Need to Remember: The S-400 builds upon the existing strengths of the S-300 to make it an even more deadly threat; maintaining advanced features like interchangeable modular missiles, ballistic missile interception, and multichannel engagement. 

The S-400 is one of the most controversial missiles in the world currently. The United States has imposed economic sanctions on countries simply for buying the system, but many of the world’s powers are interested in it, with India signing deals in September 2018 and China in April 2018. But what exactly makes the S-400 such a hot ticket item in the world today? How did it evolve from the earlier S-300?

The S-300 began development in the 1960s as a follow-up to a multitude of prior surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems. The primary missile it planned to replace is the S-75 (SA-2) missile system, which was famously used against the U-2 spy plane and deployed in Cuba and Vietnam. The missile underwent testing in the 1970s and entered service in 1978.

The primary improvement of the S-300 compared to earlier systems would be the ability to be multichannel—to utilize multiple guidance beams to guide missiles to different targets simultaneously. The earlier S-25 system was also multichannel, but it was extremely heavy and only deployed in stationary mounts. The American SAM-D (which would become the MIM-104 Patriot) was the first American land-based SAM with multichannel technology; it entered service three years later in 1981.

The main customer for the new missile was the Soviet PVO or air defense forces. They adopted the first version of the S-300, the S-300PT. All “P” missiles were meant to be for the PVO. The S-300PT involved a towable TEL (Transporter, Erector, Launcher) and towable radar that relied on heavy trucks to reposition. The set also included a fire control system. This was good enough for relatively stationary PVO duties but was not an ideal solution.

The Soviet military looked at SAM usage in Vietnam and the Middle East and determined quicker repositioning was the key to maximizing the effectiveness of SAMs. The S-300PT took more than an hour to set up and become operational due to the towed nature of the launchers and radar. This was seen as an area that needed improvement. The original S-300PT utilized the 5V55 with a range of around 75 kilometers.

As a result, the S-300 came into the form that it is now known for: mounted on the heavy MAZ-7910 truck (though variants have been mounted on newer trucks as well in articulated platforms). The TEL, radar and fire control system were all mounted on these trucks. Additional support equipment, such as that to rectify differences between the radar and launcher height were mounted on lighter trucks. The complete system, now known as S-300PS, entered service in 1982. The slightly modified version for export is known as the S-300PMU. The PS utilized the longer 5V55R missile with a range of around 90 kilometers.

While the S-300P in both forms was under development, the S-300F for the Navy and S-300V for the Army were also in development. The S-300V was developed specifically to counter tactical ballistic missiles like the Lance and Pershing in addition to air threats.

One key feature of the S-300V system is that it has two TEL variants, a TEL with four shorter ranged (75 kilometers) 9M83 missiles and a TEL with two longer-ranged (100 kilometers) 9M82 missiles. The TEL, radar, and command post sets for the S-300V are mounted on a tracked chassis (the same as the 2S7 artillery piece) for better off-road mobility in contrast to the S-300PS. The S-300V was accepted into service in 1985.

Further development happened with both the V and P variants of the S-300. The S-300PM series of missiles was borne out of the desire to integrate the V’s functionality of intercepting ballistic missiles into the P series of missiles. Export versions of the S-300PM are called the S-300PMU, and one can track the more recent evolution of the S-300 in the listed capabilities of these missiles, leading up to the S-400.

Indeed, early versions of the S-400 were called S-300PMU-3, indicating a third modernization of the road-mobile version of the S-300 for air defense. When the system was first showcased at MAKS 2007, it was noted that most vehicles were externally similar to the S-300PMU-2 system.

However, advances in missile and radar technology make the ~2x advance “versus prior missile systems” likely possible in the S-400. The new radars used in the S-400 make it likely very capable versus almost all air targets.

Another key aspect of the S-400 is the ability to use four different types of missiles with different weights and capabilities, allowing the system by itself to form a large portion of layered air defense. This makes the S-400 a more flexible system. It also can utilize missiles employed by earlier S-300 variants.

The new missiles for the S-400 predictably extend the range even further, out to 240 kilometers versus aerial targets, an incremental upgrade from the S-300PMU-1 which could go out to 150 kilometers, and the S-300PMU-2 which could go out to 200 kilometers. Newer missiles like the 40N6 can even boost the range out to 400 kilometers for the S-400.

What does this mean about the S-400? At its heart, it’s still a relatively road-mobile system designed for air-defense forces. While it represents a significant capability leap (especially compared to fielding first-gen S-300PT/PS systems) and is significantly more flexible than earlier variants of the S-300, the evolution of the S-300 into a more flexible, capable system was already going with the various sub-variants of the S-300PMU.

In contrast, the Russian Army has continued developing the S-300V into the S-300V4 and S-300VM (Antey 2500 for export), which incorporates more modern missile and radar technology to give it the increased (200 kilometers) range of the later S-300PMUs. It also adds a new TEL which has a small missile guidance radar built into the vehicle, possibly reducing the number of vehicles on the field.

While the capabilities of the S-400 may appear to be a significant leap, they got there through the slow evolution of earlier S-300 missiles. Many of the advanced features, such as ballistic missile interception, interchangeable, modular missiles, and multichannel engagement have been present in the system for a long time, and the S-400 just builds upon the existing strengths of the S-300 to make it an even more deadly threat.

Charlie Gao studied Political and Computer Science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national security issues. This first appeared in October 2018.

Image: Creative Commons "S-400" by Dmitriy Fomin is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Charlie Gao

Tu-95, Europe

The plane might still be propeller-driven, but it packs a punch. 

Here's What You Need to Know: The current backbone of the Russian strategic bomber force is the Tu-95MS and packs a nuclear punch. 

The Tu-95 is one of the oldest designs in active service in the Russian Air Force. Driven by eight contra-rotating turboprop engines, it is the only propeller-powered bomber that remains in service today. It shows no signs of leaving service either, with the Russian Air Force rolling out the Tu-95MSM modernization that adds significant capability to the Tu-95, far beyond its original role of dropping unguided bombs.

The current backbone of the Russian strategic bomber force is the Tu-95MS. While the main purpose of the Tu-95MS variant was to integrate new air-to-surface missiles into the Tu-95, this was a continuation of an existing trend. The Soviet Union experimented with air-to-surface missiles on Tu-95s starting in the 1950s, with the Tu-95K. This continued throughout the Cold War, culminating in the Tu-95MS series in 1981. The Tu-95MS series was a deep modernization of earlier versions of the Tu-95, replacing a myriad of equipment: everything from the defensive guns to the radars. The purpose was to create a new strike variant of the Tu-95 that could be used to launch new longer ranged air-to-surface cruise missiles. Due to the older Tu-95 airframes not being suitable for modernization, production lines for the Tu-95 were actually restarted in the 1980s to produce the new Tu-95MS variants, so those flying today are relatively young compared to some NATO aircraft.

The Tu-95MS’s primary armament is the Kh-55 air launched cruise missile (ALCM). The Kh-55 is a subsonic missile with a range of around 2500 km. The current fielded nuclear armed missile is the Kh-55SM, which increases the range of the Kh-55 to 3500 km. Its conventionally armed counterpart is the Kh-555, with a range of 2000 km. The Kh-555 has seen use in Syria fired from Tu-95MS. The regular Tu-95MS6 carries these six of these internally in a KMU-6-5 rotary launcher. The modernized Tu-95MS16 adds external pylons for an additional ten missiles, bringing the total up to sixteen. According to the 2018 Nuclear Notebook report by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the Russian Air Force currently fields 25 Tu-95MS6 and thirty Tu-95MS16. The report doesn’t list any numbers for the new Tu-95MSM modernization, but estimates that only a “few dozen . . . perhaps around 44” will be modernized.

The primary purpose of the Tu-95MSM modernization is to give the Tu-95MS the ability to fire the Kh-101 and Kh-102 cruise missiles that are carried by the newer Tu-160 bomber. Because of the increased length of the missile, the Kh-10(X) cannot be carried on the internal rotary launcher of the Tu-95MS. As such, the Tu-95MSM adds four additional external pylons which can carry two missiles each. Two pylons are placed to either side between the fuselage and the innermost engine. The other two are placed between on either side between the innermost and outermost engines. These pylons are compatible with the new missiles and all prior Kh-55 missiles. The Kh-101 and Kh-102 represent a significant increase in capability as they are longer ranged (up to 5000km), and are less detectable on radar. The Kh-101 was also launched at targets in Syria on November 17, 2015, from a Tu-160 carrier aircraft. It has seen continued use in that theater since then.

In addition to the ability to carry Kh-10(X) missiles, the Tu-95MSM has frame improvements, strengthening the wing so the new missiles can be carried safely. Other sources report that revised engines and propellers are also part of the upgrade, granting increased flight performance. As the current engines that are used in the Tu-95MS are no longer in production, this would enhance the ability for the fleet to get spare parts and maintenance. New radars and data display systems are also included in the modernization.

What’s interesting about the Tu-95MSM modernization is that it represents a slow downsizing of the Russian strategic bomber fleet. Both the BAS and popular Russian sources have suggested that the MSM upgrade will not be applied to the entire current Tu-95MS fleet. Along with the slow-but-limited production of Tu-160s, the Russian bomber fleet is looking to shrink up until the introduction of the new PAK-DA bomber. This is occurring concurrently with an apparent emphasis on land-based ICBMs, as recently various programs to provide Active-Protection Systems for ICBM silos have been receiving attention. The MSM upgrade can also be seen as conventionally focused, as the Tu-95 fleet has been seen training for that role and the Kh-101 will add significant amounts of additional standoff range and accuracy for use in conventional conflict.

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 2019.

Image: Reuters

Ethen Kim Lieser

economy, Americas

Despite timely checks entering the bank accounts of tens of millions of financially struggling Americans, both Congress and the president are still being bombarded with questions regarding another round or two of stimulus checks.  

Throughout this ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Congress has approved the delivery of three stimulus payments to most Americans—a $1,200 check in April 2020, $600 in December, and the current $1,400 payments under President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan.  

Despite these timely checks entering the bank accounts of tens of millions of financially struggling Americans, both Congress and the president are still being bombarded with questions regarding another round or two of stimulus checks.  

Ordinary Citizens Speak Out 

There are more than five online petitions that are demanding recurring monthly stimulus checks of $2,000 until the health crisis ends—the most well-known being the Change.org petition that was launched by Denver-area restaurant owner Stephanie Bonin. And over this past weekend, it eclipsed 2.8 million signatures—putting it just two hundred thousand short of its target.  

“My name is Stephanie, and I am one of millions of Americans who fear for my financial future because of this coronavirus crisis. . . . I’m calling on Congress to support families with a $2,000 payment for adults and a $1,000 payment for kids immediately, and continuing regular checks for the duration of the crisis," Bonin stated in the petition. “Otherwise, laid-off workers, furloughed workers, the self-employed, and workers dealing with reduced hours will struggle to pay their rent or put food on the table. Our country is still deeply struggling.”

“Our restaurant community is wrestling with seeing everything we all have worked so hard for irrevocably changed,” she continued. “Our hearts were breaking as we watched our staff divide the ingredients in our kitchen to bring to their homes: a dismal token for employees who worked tirelessly every day. Our talented and cherished team, some of whom have been with us since we opened our doors fifteen years ago, are now without an income. Like our team, my family has lost all of the income from our restaurant, and business owners and the self-employed can't claim unemployment. This is the story of America right now.”

Bonin’s petition has received so much support that the Change.org platform has recognized it as one of the top ten petitions that changed the year 2020.  

Stimulus Coming? 

However, whether or not this popular petition will have any actual impact on passing another round of stimulus remains to be seen. The Biden administration has yet to hint at any real plan for such an endeavor, but it appears that it is open to ideas.  

During a press briefing earlier this summer with reporters, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki noted that “(President Biden) is happy to hear from a range of ideas on what would be most effective and what’s most important to the economy moving forward.”  

Moreover, several members of the influential House Ways and Means Committee stated in a letter to Biden that the “pandemic has served as a stark reminder that families and workers need certainty in a crisis. They deserve to know they can put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads.” 

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.  

Image: Reuters

Peter Suciu

Coronavirus, Europe

Europe has decided that if you can't beat it, live with it instead.

Even as the United States faces renewed mask mandates and some schools may once again opt for virtual learning due to the increase in the Delta variant of the coronavirus, some European nations have announced efforts to live with it. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the governments of France, Germany and Italy are looking to draw up efforts for campaigns for booster shots, the wearing of masks, limited social-distancing measures and notably frequent testing to keep the virus in check.

Given that the world is unlikely to reach herd immunity, Europe has decided that if you can't beat it, live with it instead. 

Germany had never fully lifted pandemic restrictions, the paper or record reported, and only now are bars and restaurants beginning to reopen. In France and Italy, there are great efforts to increase making vaccinations or a recent negative test a prerequisite for daily activities. As restaurants reopen, they are required to ensure customers are vaccinated or otherwise coronavirus free—and failure to check could result in fines of up to nine thousand euros or even a year in jail. 

History of Long Pandemics 

American patience for a return to normal ran thin even as the country was only going into lockdown in the early spring of 2020—and by last summer the pandemic fatigue had set in quickly. Many Americans resumed vacations last summer, which further increased in scale this year.

One factor could be that Americans lack the historical perspective of their European counterparts who endured great hardships from plagues and pestilence. The Black Death, which was the bubonic plague pandemic, lasted from 1346 to 1353 CE and resulted in the deaths of some seventy-five to two hundred million people.  

That pandemic, like the coronavirus, may have originated in East Asia, but it made it arrived from trade routes in Crimea in 1347 and quickly spread throughout Europe—as it was carried by fleas living on the black rats that often traveled on Geonese slave ships. The Black Death wasn't the first major pandemic to strike Europe, as the Plague of Justinian some eight hundred years earlier also was spread via rats. It decimated the great city of Constantinople and spread across Europe, Asia, North Africa and the Middle East eventually killing some fifty million. 

The truth is that the plague never really went away. Rather it is believed that many people simply built up a resistance, but flare-ups continued over the centuries until the plague hit again. While the Black Death was far worse than the Plague of Justinian, it could have been even deadlier. However, in the eight-hundred-year gap, Europe learned to adapt and the Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa began to isolate newly arrived sailors to ensure that they weren't sick. 

At first, the sailors had to remain on their ships for thirty days, which became known in Venetian law as the trentino—and when it was increased to forty days, it became the quarantino. That in turn became what we know today as a "quarantine." 

This policy of isolating the sick slowed the spread of the disease. One city that didn't escape from it was rat-ridden London, which saw regular flareups between 1348 and 1665. Each of the forty-some-odd outbreaks killed upwards of 20 percent of the city's population, and it wasn't until the Great Fire of London, which killed or drove out the rats, that the plague was finally defeated. 

It may not take great fires to end the coronavirus, but the practices of isolation and quarantine might remain the new normal in Europe for decades to come.  

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

Doug Bandow

Korean Security,

Instead of responding to threats from Pyongyang, the Biden administration should look beyond and propose actions to counteract claims of American antagonism.

After a relative calm period of U.S.-North Korea relations, the rhetoric again is flying. Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, denounced “the ever-increasingly hateful U.S military threats.” The North would act, she said: “We are spurred to further strengthen our national defense and strong preemptive strike abilities to swiftly respond to any military action that is aimed at us.”

Then the United States would have only itself to blame for the consequences. Speaking for an isolated and starving nation, she warned: “The U.S. and South Korea, after ignoring our repeated warnings and pushing ahead with the dangerous war practices, have certainly brought severe national security threats upon themselves.”

The rhetoric is typically excessive, and could be followed with some form of provocation. However, the odds are that the North, uniquely vulnerable after cutting itself off from the world in response to COVID-19, will have to temper its reaction to retain Chinese assistance thought to be keeping Pyongyang afloat. Hence nuclear or Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) tests are unlikely.

Although the performance of Kim soeur was theater, the Biden administration responded seriously. State Department spokesman Ned Price insisted: “First, let me reiterate that the joint military exercises are purely defensive in nature. We have made that point repeatedly and it’s a very important one.” He added that “the United States harbors no hostile intent toward the” Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Which is complete nonsense, as he surely knows. Seventy years ago Washington intervened in war and almost extinguished the DPRK’s ruling dynasty before it began. Only the entry of hundreds of thousands of Chinese “volunteers” saved the North Korean regime. Since then abundant American men and materiel have been arrayed against Pyongyang’s forces, protecting the South in case fighting resumes. In recent years Washington has become actively revisionist around the world, overthrowing recalcitrant regimes and engaging in nation-building (though with less than stellar success, as is evident in Afghanistan).

Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump seriously considered taking military action against the North. The missions were called off not out of consideration for the inevitable death and destruction that would result in North Korea, but fear of the harm that would likely occur to the United States and South Korea. Presidents Barack Obama and Trump greatly strengthened economic sanctions, which were certainly unfriendly acts. Although Trump ended up sending Kim Jong-un “love letters,” the former retained sanctions on North Korea and U.S. troops in the South. If Price genuinely has no animosity toward the South, he is about the only Washington policymaker thus inclined.

Of course, the DPRK is responsible for the fear that it inspires. However, moral responsibility does not change practical reality. It would be foolish for Kim to trust the word of Price or anyone else in the administration. After all, the United States has embarked upon a spate of regime change operations dating back to Ronald Reagan and Grenada. They have grown more common since the end of the Cold War. Most ominous for Pyongyang was the support offered rebels against the same Libyan government which gave up its missile and nuclear programs. Muammar el-Qaddafi met a gruesome fate, which serves as a warning to any future dictator naïve or foolish enough to yield his potentially regime-saving weapons. 

To reach an agreement requires a North Korean willingness to denuclearize, or at least limit its nuclear ambitions. For good reason, most analysts doubt the regime will ever abandon its nuclear capability entirely. Even if it is theoretically willing to do so, agreement would require that Pyongyang also trust that doing so will not lead to a Libyan-style outcome. And that would necessitate more than Price’s verbal assurance that America bears no animus toward Kim & Co.

If the Biden administration is serious about pushing for denuclearization, it should focus on actions rather than promises. In the Singapore summit declaration the two governments agreed to improve bilateral relations and the regional security environment. The United States should move ahead unilaterally in ways that demonstrate the possibility of a less “hostile” relationship even if there is little practical impact at the moment.

For instance, the administration should drop the ban on travel to North Korea. Thousands of Americans went to the North before the Trump prohibition without incident, despite a score of cases over the years when visitors got into trouble, some knowingly (by, for instance, evangelizing). And the relationship established between Kim and Donald Trump make future incidents less likely. In any case, Washington does not ban travel to other more dangerous places—Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Nigeria, Libya, Haiti, and more.

The United States. should widen and make permanent humanitarian exemptions from both bilateral and international sanctions. Most work by Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) is at a standstill because of Pyongyang’s closure to the outside world, but Washington could prepare for a better future. Then humanitarian operations could immediately resume when the borders eventually open.

Moreover, the Biden administration should suggest establishing formal diplomatic ties. The two governments could begin with a DPRK office in Washington if the former didn’t want to allow Americans entry because of COVID-19. Or proxy offices could be established in another country—Singapore or Vietnam, perhaps, or Mongolia, which long has had good relations with both Koreas. Even if little direct contact occurred, the offer would help rebut North Korean complaints about America’s “hostile policy.” And would allow the quick establishment of more regular contact when Pyongyang chooses to reenter the world.

Finally, the United States. should propose a joint declaration of peace with Seoul which the North would be invited to join. After which Washington should indicate that a peace treaty would be one of many subjects to be negotiated when relations are formalized. Such an agreement would offer another symbolic argument against North Korean claims of America’s “hostile policy.”

The objections to such a step are curious. The peninsula is at peace, despite occasional DPRK provocations. If there is an impetus for removing U.S. troops, it would be the lack of ongoing combat, not a generic statement recognizing this geopolitical reality, as well as the South’s dramatic move past North Korea on most measures of national power. Why shouldn’t Seoul defend itself? Add to that America’s perilous overstretch, sure to be worsened by ongoing fiscal irresponsibility in Washington.

U.S.-North Korean relations appear stuck. Kim Yo-jong’s latest tirade deserves to be ignored. Instead of responding to her threats, the Biden administration should look beyond and propose actions to counteract claims of American antagonism. Then Washington would be ready if the North decides to again seriously engage the United States.

Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is author of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World and co-author of The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea.

Image: Reuters

For two decades, contractors provided key maintenance and military support.

Peter Suciu

military, Americas

Earlier this year, third-party game development studio IndiaFoxEcho announced that it would bring the F-35 Lightning II to the long-running franchise.

Roughly five hundred trained pilots were qualified to fly F-35 Lightning II jets as of 2017. Given that there are now nearly 650 operational jets, that number of pilots has certainly gone up. Still, there are well under one thousand of them.  

For many aviation buffs, flying the F-35 Lightning II will remain a dream, but soon there might be the next best thing. A third-party video game developer has been working to incorporate the fifth-generation combat aircraft into the popular Microsoft Flight Simulator. While still essentially a video game, even experienced pilots have praised the realism of the program.

Long Time in the Simulated Air 

First developed in the late 1970s, the Microsoft Flight Simulator is actually the software giant’s longest-running software product line, predating Windows by three years. Moreover, it is now the longest-running personal computer video game series of all time. 

The latest version was released last August with three different versions available including “standard,” “deluxe” and “premium.” Each provides an incremental set of gameplay features that include airports and airplanes for players to choose from. 

What also sets this franchise apart is that Microsoft has long encouraged community engagement, which has included commercial and volunteer ventures, including the development of aircraft "add-ons." 

The F-35 Takes Off 

Microsoft Flight Simulator is not a combat game but earlier this year third-party game development studio IndiaFoxEcho announced that it would bring the F-35 Lightning II to the long-running franchise. At the beginning of the month, the developer provided the latest images of the simulated version of the F-35B, the short takeoff and vertical landing variant of the Joint Strike Fighter. 

Additionally, it wasn’t just the aircraft that would be added to the mix but also a platform for virtual pilots to takeoff from. Instead of an airport (airports are regularly added to the game), the developers at IndiaFoxEcho are including a digital version of the amphibious assault ship USS America, which they said was “based on the ship we published for P3D in the past, and will either be included in the F-35B package or released as freeware.” 

IndiaFoxEcho isn’t just working on the F-35B simulation model. The developer also announced, “F-35A external model is now finished (except the emergency tailhook), F-35 is 80 percent finished (cockpit and weapon bay doors missing) and while we have just started the conversion/improvement of the F-35C model.”  

“The virtual cockpit is experiencing some delays . . . as we had to remodel a number of parts to achieve the level of detail we wanted,” the developer announced publicly. “We cannot show it yet, but we are very happy with it.” 

Because the game isn’t combat-based, players won’t be able to utilize some of the advanced sensors or fire the weapons, but for those who ever dreamt of flying the most-advanced aircraft in the world, this might be as close as they can get to it. And even that could be very cool. 

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

Ethen Kim Lieser

Child Tax Credit,

There was, however, a noticeable wrinkle that has the potential to confuse many cash-strapped parents who are waiting to receive the funds.

Last Friday, the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department confirmed that the second batch of advance monthly payments worth approximately $15 billion from the expanded Child Tax Credits (CTC) were disbursed to about thirty-six million American families.

There was, however, a noticeable wrinkle that has the potential to confuse many cash-strapped parents who are waiting to receive the funds. Apparently, due to an unspecified issue, the tax agency announced that up to fifteen percent of families who received the cash payment in July via direct deposit now will be getting a paper check this month.

“Like the first payments, the vast majority of families will receive these payments by direct deposit,” the IRS said in a release.

“For those affected, no additional action is needed for the September payment to be issued by direct deposit. Families can visit the Child Tax Credit Update Portal to see if they’re receiving a direct deposit or paper check this month,” it continued.

Staying Patient

The tax agency also mentioned that for those who are receiving their credits via the post office, “be sure to allow extra time for delivery by mail through the end of August.”

Future payments from the child tax credits are slated to head out on the fifteenth of each month through December.

Approved under President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, the federal government is now allowing eligible parents to collect as much as $3,600 per year for a child under the age of six and up to $3,000 for children between ages six and seventeen—meaning that a $250 or a $300 payment for each child will be deposited each month through the end of 2021.

Benefits of CTC

Recent polls and studies also strongly support the fact that the Credits are already offering timely support to low-income households amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The latest Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey showed that parents who have received the funds reported less trouble paying for food and basic household expenses. It further revealed that about ten percent of households with children sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat over the past week—the lowest percentage registered since the health crisis started in early 2020.

According to a separate analysis released by the Niskanen Center, it contended that the recurring monthly checks will help propel $27.6 billion in new household spending and support more than half a million new jobs.

“While only enacted for one year, the expanded CTC is expected to reduce child poverty by forty percent and support investments in children that promote family stability,” the think tank stated in a release.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Reuters

Mark Episkopos

Belarus,

Though the commercial wisdom seems dubious at best, the strategic benefits of this deal are much more readily apparent.

Belarus is set to join the growing ranks of S-400 importers, enhancing the Russian missile network’s performance against Ukraine and NATO’s eastern fringes.

During an eight-hour long press conference earlier this month, Belarusian President Lukashenko revealed that Minsk is in an advanced stage of negotiations with the Kremlin to purchase an unspecified number of S-400 “Triumf” missile defense systems.

“We are in a dialogue with Russia in order to get S-400 systems delivered to Belarus. President of Russia Vladimir Putin has been asked to allow us to buy them at a bulk price, on credit,” he said.

“[The] S-300 systems are good and we've learned how to upgrade them and restore them,” Lukashenko added. “However, we have a strong interest in S-400 systems. I am convinced we will get these systems.” The Belarusian military is believed to currently operate as many as one dozen upgraded S-300PS systems. It is unclear if Minsk is seeking the additional S-400 regiments from Russia as a replacement, or a complement, to its active S-300 roster.

Lukashenko’s remarks follow Belarusian air chief Igor Golub's announcement earlier this year that the Belarus military is in pre-contract talks over a potential S-400 procurement deal.

Belarus has lobbied for years to secure an S-400 contract with Russia, but was passed up in favor of more lucrative export deals with China and then Turkey. Belarus has not gotten any richer in recent months, with Lukashenko himself admitting that his military still lacks the budget to purchase the missile systems outright. "This issue was raised before the president of Russia so that the S-400s can be delivered to the Republic of Belarus at a reasonable price on a loan because we do not have such money," he said. The Belarusian President was referring to the $1 billion loan to Minsk, split into two $500 million tranches, that was approved by Moscow in December 2020. Lukashenko appeared to suggest that the loan was conditioned, whether explicitly or implicitly, on Belarus’ procurement of a certain number of S-400 units. He noted that Belarus will purchase the S-400 at “internal Russian prices”—that is, the same price that would have been paid by Russia’s own military.

In sum, the Kremlin is giving Minsk the money to buy its S-400 systems at a subsidized rate reserved for Russia’s domestic forces. Though the commercial wisdom seems dubious at best, the strategic benefits of this deal are much more readily apparent. S-400 systems fielded in westernmost Belarus will give Russian-aligned missile defense forces (Russia and Belarus are a Union State with partially overlapping military infrastructure) coverage over large swathes of southern Poland that are out of range of the S-400 regiments currently stationed in Russia’s Central European enclave of Kaliningrad. By the same token, S-400’s deployed along Belarus’s southern periphery will offer sweeping coverage over the parts of Northern and Western Ukraine that are out of range of the S-400 systems being kept in Russian-annexed Crimea. Proliferating the S-400 to Belarus will help to plug several large holes in Russia’s western missile defense network, enhancing Moscow’s deterrent and offensive capabilities against NATO’s eastern flank as well as Ukraine. 

Mark Episkopos is a national security reporter for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters

Trevor Filseth

Afghanistan,

After it became clear that the Afghan government was sinking, Biden was faced with a choice: letting it go under, or making an effort to rescue it. He chose the wrong option.

In 2011, in accordance with a Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by the George W. Bush administration, President Barack Obama withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq.

At the time, the war’s few remaining advocates pushed for Obama to negotiate an extension to the agreement, allowing U.S. forces to remain for a longer period of time. Obama demurred. A combination of the 2007 “surge” of U.S. troops and the influence of the “Sunni Awakening” movement, in which Iraq’s western tribes came together to oppose the insurgency, had buried the nascent Islamic State of Iraq and restored a period of relative calm. While tensions remained between the Sunni minority and the Shi’a-dominated government, Baghdad maintained essentially unchallenged control over the country’s territory for the first time since the 2003 invasion. For the past seven years, it had been a seemingly inescapable quagmire. With the Status of Forces Agreement, Bush presented Obama with a chance to exit at an opportune time, and Obama took it.

“Iraq is not a perfect place,” Obama admitted during the withdrawal. “It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.”

Over the next two years, the “sovereign, stable, and self-reliant” country fell apart. The protests of the Arab Spring weakened the central government; the Shi’a administration of Nouri al-Maliki continued to oppress the country’s Sunnis, extinguishing the Awakening movement; and the sectarian civil war in neighboring Syria gave a second wind to the insurgency, whose surviving leadership formed the core of the better-known Islamic State (ISIL).

In the summer of 2014, then-Vice President Joe Biden watched from the Oval Office as the U.S.-equipped Iraqi Army collapsed in the face of ISIL militants that it routinely outnumbered fifteen-to-one. The ensuing carnage, broadcast around the world by the terror group’s social media-savvy zealots, ultimately brought about a return of U.S. troops to the country. Although they are now being withdrawn, there is little doubt that, with the benefit of another decade of training and advice, Iraq’s military is far better equipped to defend itself. The country as a whole is also better off for America’s return; civilian deaths in Iraq today are the lowest they have been since the 2003 invasion.

Obama had a compelling list of reasons to leave Iraq in 2011. The war was highly unpopular in the United States. As the scheduled withdrawal approached, Iraq enjoyed a period of relative stability. Most importantly, the United States was obliged to leave by the bilateral agreement it had signed in 2008. Obama’s decision had its critics, but it was based on optimism, respect for America’s commitments, and hope for Iraq’s independent future.

None of this can be said of Afghanistan, or of Biden’s disastrous April decision to withdraw U.S. forces from the country by September. The war, while not explicitly popular, never engendered the same level of controversy and opposition as America’s invasion of Iraq did. Before Biden’s announcement of the withdrawal, the situation in Afghanistan was actively deteriorating. Unlike in Iraq, where the Maliki government blithely showed Obama the door, the administration of Afghan president Ashraf Ghani actively encouraged Biden to stay. To the extent that the United States had an obligation to leave Afghanistan, it was based on the February 2020 agreement that the Taliban negotiated with the United States—an agreement that the militant group began to openly violate before the ink had dried.

Consequently, Biden’s commitment to withdraw the U.S. from Afghanistan provoked vigorous opposition from experts and commentators in Kabul and Washington. The president’s detractors noted that, while he touted the number strength of the Afghan security forces in his remarks, his administration had been no more successful in addressing the corruption and morale problems that sapped the security forces’ ability to fight than his predecessors had. Some also pointed out the poor timing of the move: the April decision to pull U.S. troops from Afghanistan coincided with the beginning of the country’s traditional fighting season, in which hostilities resumed after a winter lull in previous years.

Most damningly, Biden never claimed that Afghanistan was “sovereign, stable, and self-reliant,” and never pretended that the Afghan government was prepared to take on the Taliban alone. The president simply decided that, after twenty years with no end in sight, it was time to leave, despite the concerns of generals and study groups which warned that an immediate U.S. withdrawal could cause the government to fall to the Taliban.

And fall it has. So far, more than eighteen of Afghanistan’s thirty-four provincial capitals, and sixteen of its provinces, have fallen to the group, as have Kabul, the nation’s capital, and Kandahar and Herat, its second- and third-largest cities. The Taliban now controls outright more than two-thirds of the country, including virtually all of the north, south, and west. The Afghan government has essentially ceased to exist; President Ghani has fled the country, and the remaining Afghan security forces are surrendering en masse. To the extent that there are any areas in Afghanistan that the Taliban does not yet control, they consist only of small patches of land in the country’s center and east – and in the absence of the central government, these areas are sure to give up as quickly as the militant group can arrive. It took Iraq two and a half years to collapse. In Afghanistan, the time elapsed from the first provincial capital’s surrender to the fall of Kabul was less than two and a half weeks.

Fundamentally, Biden’s decision to abandon Afghanistan was brought about by exhaustion. The president himself acknowledged that, while the conditions for his withdrawal were not ideal, there would never be a correct time: “‘Not now’—that’s how we got here.” In other words, Biden argued, the U.S. could never win, so the correct course of action was to cut America’s losses and leave post haste.

This frustration is easy to understand. As the War in Afghanistan entered its twentieth year, the U.S. had remarkably little to show for the thousands of lives and trillions of dollars it has poured into the country. Biden’s predecessors in the Oval Office employed a variety of approaches to solving the Afghan government’s problems and defeating the Taliban, and nothing worked. So Biden tried one final idea: pulling out and telling the Afghan government that it was time to sink or swim.

After it became clear that the Afghan government was sinking, however, Biden was faced with a choice: letting it go under, or making an effort to rescue it.

Biden chose the wrong option. The president’s decision to do nothing in the face of the Taliban’s advance, even after the inevitable result of U.S. inaction became clear, was as astonishing as it would have been if President Obama had coldly told Baghdad to fend for itself in the summer of 2014. The Taliban is not ISIL, but they are not altogether different; the restoration of their rule will prove catastrophic, both from a moral standpoint and from a security perspective. Setting aside the worst human implications of a Taliban takeover, the group’s overt and unyielding ties to Al-Qaeda will give the terrorist group an enduring sanctuary from which to plan further attacks against the United States.

Biden made this point in his speech announcing the withdrawal: “Our presence in Afghanistan should be focused on the reason we went in the first place: to ensure Afghanistan would not be used as a base from which to attack our homeland again.  We did that.  We accomplished that objective.” Now that the Taliban has taken over Afghanistan, America’s accomplishment in this regard is likely to be undone overnight. If it is a near-certainty that America will need to intervene in the future to target Al-Qaeda and roll back the Taliban, it would have been far easier to do so prior to Kabul’s fall, when the Afghan security forces were still largely intact within the city itself, than it will be now that the government has been defeated in detail.

In 2014, as ISIL rampaged through western and central Iraq, Obama dispatched thousands of U.S. troops to Iraq to train and advise the Iraqi Army, which remained cohesive in Baghdad even as it disintegrated elsewhere. Though Biden firmly ruled out such a course in Afghanistan, there were other actions that the administration could have taken to support the Afghan security forces—for instance, resuming and escalating its airstrikes on Taliban targets, which dropped precipitously during the U.S. withdrawal, in order to slow the group’s advance and restore psychological confidence in the country’s defenders.

Now the opportunity has passed. The country belongs to the Taliban, and the near-certain result is disaster. To say nothing of the thousands of reprisal killings that will follow their consolidation of power, and then a return to life as it was in the 1990s—music banned, girls’ schools closed, and public executions in soccer stadiums—the group has little to no experience in actually running a country. If its past misrule was any indication, Taliban officials will ignore their bureaucratic duties, and the country’s economy will enter freefall. More ominously, four-fifths of the Ghani administration’s budget was provided by the United States, which clearly will not underwrite the Taliban in the same way. To fund the difference, the group will likely turn to a traditional source of revenue: poppy cultivation in the country’s south, legitimizing Afghanistan’s transformation into the world’s premier narco-state.

Even as the Taliban solidifies its conquests, some have continued to suggest that the group is unlikely to conquer all of Afghanistan, given its historic hostility towards Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun minorities and the recent advent of regional militias loyal to local warlords rather than the central government. These militias would, in theory, be far less likely to flee from defending their homes than the Afghan security forces would. There has even been discussion of re-forming the historic “Northern Alliance,” the regional coalition in northern Afghanistan that opposed the Taliban from 1996 until 2001.

However, these efforts will almost certainly not succeed. The Taliban’s “northern strategy” has netted it control over many of the northern areas that historically opposed the group in its heyday, and the group has already steamrolled regional warlords that opposed it, notably Afghan strongmen Ismail Khan in Herat and Abdul Rashid Dostum in Mazar-i-Sharif. The Taliban has also evolved beyond its Pashtun roots, expanding its outreach to Afghanistan’s minorities and presenting itself as a religious group rather than an ethnic one. When the group captured border crossings with Tajikistan in June, it consciously and strategically chose to put ethnic Tajik militants at the forefront of its advance. Even if the Taliban never technically gains full control over Afghanistan’s territory, isolated pockets of resistance in peripheral areas will make little difference to its allies’ capacity to cause destruction abroad. The original Northern Alliance could not stop Osama bin Laden. A successor group is even less likely to stop Al-Qaeda’s current leaders.

This issue has not been addressed by the Biden administration, which emptily urged Afghan soldiers to defend their country even as it withdrew its own troops. But Kabul’s soldiers could hardly have been assured that they should fight when the tide was so clearly against them. By engaging in airstrikes or sending in additional troops, even if only as advisers, Biden could have played a role in reversing that perception—but he did not.

Certainly, it must be said that the skeptics of U.S. military involvement have correctly identified clear downsides to a U.S. intervention in the conflict. Returning to the country would have inevitably meant a re-commitment of the United States to its open-ended mission there. This would have involved substantial economic costs for the United States, and it would have resulted in deaths and injuries to U.S. military personnel. These are heavy burdens for any president to shoulder. But these costs, high as they are, must now be weighed against the cost of allowing that country to be taken over by the Taliban and their allies. History shows that jihadist activities in remote countries have a way of not remaining there, but escaping to Paris or to New York.

To contain ISIL’s looming apocalypse, Obama made the unpleasant and costly decision to return a limited force of U.S. troops to Iraq—and Iraq, the Middle East, and ultimately the United States were better off for it. Biden chose not to do the same in Afghanistan, and the consequences will be dire.

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

Image: Reuters

Thousands of boys and girls have been killed or injured over the past two years in Afghanistan, according to the latest UN report on Children and Armed Conflict, which was issued on Monday, a day after the Taliban consolidated control over the country. 

Trevor Filseth

economy, Americas

The decision on booster shots has been complicated by the rapid onset of the Delta variant, which has dramatically increased cases in the United States in the spring and summer of 2021.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, responsible for overseeing the approval of medications and vaccines in the United States, has authorized a third shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to select groups of Americans. These “booster shots,” as they are usually referred to, have been supported by the vaccine manufacturers as a way to ensure the immunity they provide through the winter when virus cases have historically increased. 

Dr. Janet Woodcock, the FDA’s acting commissioner, issued a statement on Thursday claiming that the FDA was “especially cognizant that immunocompromised people are particularly at risk” for the disease’s worst effects.  

“People who are immunocompromised . . . have a reduced ability to fight infections and other diseases, and they are especially vulnerable to infections, including COVID-19,” according to the statement. “The FDA evaluated information on the use of a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna Vaccines in these individuals and determined that the administration of third vaccine doses may increase protection in this population.” 

Crucially, the FDA did not approve booster shots for Americans who do not have existing issues with their immune systems, meaning that a mass booster shot campaign is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future—and, for most Americans, it remains unclear if such a campaign would even be necessary. 

The decision on booster shots has been complicated by the rapid onset of the Delta variant, which has dramatically increased cases in the United States in the spring and summer of 2021 and caused the 2020-era lockdowns, many of which were lifted in the spring, to be re-imposed. 

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a seven-day average of 113,000 new coronavirus cases per day for the first week of August, an increase of 24 percent from the previous week. Hospital admissions, according to the data, have increased more than 30 percent. The increases are concentrated in states with lower vaccination rates, most notably including Texas and Florida. 

The overwhelming majority of the new group—97 percent—have not received a single dose of the vaccine, leading booster shot skeptics to argue that the doses could be better used by vaccinating more Americans. The World Health Organization has also discouraged the use of booster shots, arguing that the vaccines should instead be distributed to developing countries with low vaccination rates. The intergovernmental agency has set a target for 10 percent of all countries to be vaccinated by September—a target which now seems unlikely to be met.  

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

Image: Reuters