Diplomacy & Crisis News

For Jim Hoge, editing was a form of public service.

Containment didn’t win the Cold War—and it won’t defeat China.

The world is in turmoil. Only thirty years after the fall of the USSR and the collapse of its proxy network in Eastern Europe, a land war is being fought in Europe between a democracy and a dictatorship. 

When the Cold War ended, we could have scarcely imagined that in just three decades we would be where we are now. We know now that the collapse of the USSR in 1991 did not bring about “the end of history” as prophesied. Instead, it bred complacency among the leaders of the Western democracies, great complacency which has sowed the seeds for the current global anti-democratic reckoning. 

Across much of the world, the ideas of a democratic liberal political order, of multilateral international collaboration, and of liberal free-market capitalism are now in retreat. Challenged not by a socialism as an alternative global, and universalist vision, but by an atavistic retreat to nativist, nationalist, and populist politics. This has been affecting both mature democracies and those states that made tentative steps toward a liberal political order in the aftermath of the Cold War. The result has been both a rise of authoritarian regimes, often through the degeneration of what were previously more functional democracies, and the decline of multinational coordination among countries now more likely to stress the primacy of the nation-state as the focus for the formulation of practical policies.

It is thus that in India, Narendra Modi is taking his country closer to Hindu chauvinism. In China, the Chinese Communist Party is ruling with an iron fist and perpetuating a high-technological genocide against the Uyghur religious and ethnic minority. In Europe and its surrounds, Turkey is sliding into autocracy under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Poland removes guardrails to keep its Law and Justice rulers in constitutional check, and Hungary under Viktor Orbán becomes a backchannel for other dictatorships as they shape the continent, before the backdrop of media consolidation, executive corruption, and the destruction of ordinary civil society.

The perplexing development with this anti-liberal backlash, however, is that nation-first chauvinist autocrats are now working together remarkably effectively in order to sidestep or undermine international liberal norms and institutions. In my book, Authoritarian Century, I call this key concept “Multilateral Autocratisation.” The emergent dictatorial systems are more alike than they are different, and they are remarkably good at working together for mutual advantage. Tyrannies of a feather flock together. 

But this development is no accident. This propensity among the autocrats and aspiring autocrats to cooperate with each other has not emerged purely organically. This has been a development that has been cultivated, coordinated, and even often sponsored (in direct cash terms) by powers that have decided that the post-Cold War liberal international order is a strategic threat to their own interests—above all by Vladimir Putin’s regime in Moscow, and the Communist regime in Beijing. 

Now, the two powers are distinct, both in their mode of operation and in the nature of the threat they pose. Moscow’s methods are mostly subversion and destruction—and the most they can produce is chaos. They are no less dangerous for it, but Putin does not have a positive vision of the world to offer anyone else. 

Beijing, on the other hand, does offer a path to an alternative, relatively well-ordered international settlement. It wishes to create a “multipolar world” in which the democracies of the Western alliance are overmatched by the world’s tyrannies. Beijing’s plans to reorientate the global economy along the Belt and Road Initiative are part of this process of building up the economies of the tyrannies and deepening their interconnection. 

Beijing also puts special effort into wresting control of already existing international institutions, which give it authority over global rules and norms, as it seeks to mold these to fit its immediate interests and its vision of the future. It was thus that the World Trade Organization was not able to curb China’s unfair trade practices, that the World Health Organization could not censor China over false COVID data, and thus how the United Nations Law of the Sea could not stop China from expanding in the South China Sea.

The problem with the future offered by China is what it implies for the well-being of billions of people later this century: Beijing supports every kind of political repression that aligns with its interests and has no qualms about carrying out a genocide of its own in its western province in Xinjiang, at the same time as it has utterly crushed the democratic culture of Hong Kong, and it is planning the annexation of the democratic country of Taiwan. As the pressures of climate change will continue to mount as we proceed through this century, Beijing will be responding purely in terms of political advantage, with no regard for human rights or international justice—and this will have life or death repercussions for untold millions of people around the world. 

But the fight over our future this century is not yet settled. Moscow has stumbled in its appalling invasion of Ukraine, and is already greatly diminished internationally. Putin himself may fall, if the circumstances align just right. And Xi has made a number of missteps both in domestic management and in international diplomacy which have set China’s rise back by at least a decade, giving liberal democrats around the world time to regroup. 

This then is the challenge that those of us who care about democracy and human rights have before us most acutely in the coming two decades, but really for the rest of this century: either we allow the international system to once again lapse into a state of complete anarchy, a state in which nations engage in a continuous “war of all against all” between empires and spheres of influence, with the notions of universal human rights and international law falling by the wayside; or we regroup and rebuild the postwar liberal international order which has enabled the most dramatic advancements in the human condition in our history as a species. As the threats of climate change and ecological collapse hang over us, the stakes could not be higher. 

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a Director at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington DC and Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute U.S. Army War College.

Image:  LEE SNIDER PHOTO IMAGES / Shutterstock.com

 

The potential for another border clash between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is becoming more likely as the two countries engage in an arms race. Territorial and water resource disputes characterized previous border clashes in 2021 and 2022. A renewed Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border conflict would be dangerous as North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies Turkey and the United States find themselves supporting countries on opposing sides.

Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington’s approach to security in Central Asia has become more modest as temporary U.S. military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have been closed. However, the United States is still involved in Central Asian security affairs as, since Tajikistan’s independence, Washington has provided Tajikistan with $330 million in security sector assistance. This sizable sum includes hundreds of vehicles, a comprehensive training center, and border management and customs control support. As a result, the United States has become one of Tajikistan’s top security donors despite Russia being Tajikistan’s most significant security and trading partner.

Meanwhile, pan-Turkic solidarity has prompted Ankara to support Kyrgyzstan in its conflict with Tajikistan by providing it with Bayraktar TB2, Aksungur, and Anka unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Turkey was the first country to recognize Bishkek’s independence and has since placed importance on maintaining stability and development in Kyrgyzstan. Additionally, Turkey can expand its influence among ethnically Turkic countries in Central Asia while Russia is tied up in its war in Ukraine.

With NATO allies supporting opposite sides of a conflict, tensions between Washington and Ankara will unnecessarily rise. Since the early 2000s, relations between the two countries have deteriorated, stemming from differences over the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Indirectly competing with Turkey by providing military support to Tajikistan will compromise a troubled but important diplomatic relationship for the United States.

The United States is not directly impacted by security matters in Central Asia, especially after withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Despite the withdrawal, the United States has been on a mission to preserve the sovereignty of the Central Asian states by working on security cooperation-related issues via the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, and the United Nations. Instead, security matters in Central Asia should be handled by countries more directly affected by unrest in the region.

Russia and China have much larger stakes in Central Asia, with Russia as the most prominent security provider and China as a significant economic investor. Moscow primarily aims to minimize the spillover of “radical Islam,” which it perceives was exacerbated by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Drug trading, human trafficking, illegal migration, and terrorism are Russia’s biggest security concerns in Central Asia. Russia’s security presence serves China as it protects its increasingly large investments in Central Asian transport and energy spheres.

With Russia’s security profile in Central Asia decreasing because of its focus on the war in Ukraine, China has become a more relevant security force in Central Asia. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have been responsive to the Chinese presence in the region, which includes military exercises, military equipment transfers, the construction of security infrastructure, and the deployment of private security companies. The United States risks unnecessarily raising tensions with Beijing by contributing to Tajikistan's security. 

U.S. support for Tajikistan’s defense capabilities is also awkward due to Tajikistan’s recent security cooperation efforts with Iran. Similar to Turkey and Kyrgyzstan, Iran and Tajikistan share ethnic and linguistic ties. In May 2022, Iran inaugurated its first drone production facility in Tajikistan, which will manufacture and export the multipurpose Ababil-2 drones. This year, Iran became a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Eurasian political, economic, international security, and defense organization established by China and Russia. As a result, Tehran and Dushanbe will likely engage in further security cooperation.

The United States has little control over how its military resources are used once they are handed over to a foreign government. While the United States does not intend to support Tajikistan in its conflict with Kyrgyzstan, much of its equipment, such as night-vision goggles, has been utilized in the Kyrgyz-Tajik hot zone. Instead of needlessly contributing to escalating tensions in Central Asia, the United States should work with Turkey to encourage diplomatic talks between Bishkek and Dushanbe. As mutual NATO members, the United States and Turkey have the opportunity to avoid a plummet in relations by putting to rest a minor conflict of little strategic importance to Washington. 

Lastly, the United States should work to reduce and ultimately eliminate programs to send military equipment to Central Asian countries, including Tajikistan. With significant Russian and Chinese security presence and military assets in Tajikistan, Dushanbe has the means to defend itself. The United States has no justified reason to do Russia and China’s job by providing for Tajikistan’s defense. 

The United States should leave security matters in Central Asia to regional great powers, namely Russia and China. While the United States has been involved militarily in Central Asia, now is the time to recharacterize its engagement in the region by further distancing itself from this militaristic past.

Alex Little is an MS graduate of Georgia Tech and specializes in Russian and Central Asian affairs.

Image: Shutterstock.

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What the diplomat got right about Russia and the West.

How America can win over the continent.

Repairing military equipment in a high-intensity conflict against a great power competitor should be identified as a gray rhino—a high impact, high probability event that, unaddressed, will lead to dire consequences. U.S. warfighters need a plan to tame this beast, or at least divert it, since the ability to repair equipment in the field will be a significant friction point in any mass great power competition for American ground forces.

The U.S. military’s system was for uncontested logistics, with the ability to conduct depot-level maintenance after evacuating vehicles from the front lines and heavy reliance on a contractor workforce for highly technical repairs. It also relies upon air superiority on the battlefield, which is not a given in combat against a peer competitor. While the Marine Corps published an updated doctrine for logistics in a contested environment in March of this year, it will continue to face the problem of sustaining Marines serving far forward as Stand-in Forces (SIF) or conducting Expeditionary Advanced Basing Operations (EABO) in a conflict versus China. Former Commandant Gen. David Berger stated that in a great power war in the Pacific, “It’s just fuel and bullets, that’s what I’m going to resupply. The rest you’re going to have to forage.” These logistical limitations will be acute when repairing damaged military equipment. Absent repairs, it may be impossible for Marines to get back into the fight. Fielding simple and easily repairable weapons and equipment should be a priority for outfitting Marine forces operating within the East Asian first island chain.

Despite disadvantages in size and ammunition supplies compared to the Russian invaders, the Ukrainian military has put up a vigorous defense—and is now on the offensive—through a culture of grit and improvisation widespread throughout the society and its military. One example is Ukraine’s ability to repair in the field by sending mechanics forward, which has proved a combat multiplier. They have successfully repaired donated NATO equipment using parts supplied by the West and leftover Soviet gear by cannibalizing vehicles and using scavenged parts from so-called “boneyards” built up from wrecked equipment. In contrast, a primary problem for U.S. forces is the complexity of the vehicles, weapon systems, and equipment we rely on, frequently making field-expedient repairs impossible. While 3D printing and rapid manufacturing technology may allow for the fabrication of numerous spare parts, even in an expeditionary environment, it cannot facilitate repairs of sophisticated armor nor fabricate semiconductor chips for complicated electronics in devices such as radios, onboard ballistic computers, or guidance systems.

Besides the astronomical costs of many of America’s boutique and exquisite systems, the trade-off between the price of these systems and the systems that can kill them is becoming unsustainable. The Ukrainians have repeatedly demonstrated how cheaper weapons, like the two Neptune anti-ship missiles that sank the flagship Moskva, can destroy top Russian equipment. Russian anti-tank weapons have also made quick work of German Leopards and American-provided Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles. Sophisticated Russian electronic warfare has limited the effectiveness of precision-guided weapons. Adversaries are developing various methods of targeting the U.S. military’s high-tech vulnerabilities, from attacking satellites to eliminating GPS use for navigation or precision guidance to preemptive electromagnetic or cyber-attacks and even malicious code implanted in systems through susceptible supply chains.

U.S. adversaries will not allow it to build up the proverbial iron mountain of logistics, nor will it be easy to evacuate vehicles or bring forward parts via “just in time” (JIT) delivery by ship or aircraft. Both the Air Force and Navy will be fighting their own existential battles versus Chinese advanced ballistic and hypersonic missiles, cyberattacks, and counter-space weapons. Designing rugged, reliable, and simple-to-repair weapons can help keep the Army and the Marines in the fight longer. Weapons design and procurement should take that into account going forward.

One of the reasons that the Afghan air force collapsed was the withdrawal of U.S. contractors. With the air force collapsing, ground units also gave up as they were no longer assured of resupply, medevac, or close air support. The U.S. military made the situation worse by having the Afghans move away from Soviet-era helicopters such as the Mi-17 and transition to the more technical and maintenance-heavy U.S. airframes. The U.S. military may face its own issues in high-intensity conflict, as defense contractors have withheld the intellectual property behind some of the newest systems, such as the F-35, effectively turning them into black boxes that only the contractors themselves can fully understand. American farmers can tell horror stories of the problems encountered with high-tech tractors and their fights with manufacturers such as John Deere over the “right to repair.”

The new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JTLV), which weighs 20,000 lbs, is too big and heavy to be easily deployed by the Marines amphibiously in the Pacific and can only be air transported by C-130 or larger aircraft. It has also suffered from issues of reliability and maintainability. A major issue that the Pentagon detailed in a 2019 report on the performance of the JLTV is that military mechanics cannot adequately maintain them without field service representatives from the manufacturer. As of mid-2023, the trucks were still not meeting maintenance goals in testing conducted by Marine and Army units.

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. automobile production declined by 93 percent. Shortfalls in the supply of semiconductors to auto manufacturers caused production to lag for years. In reality, U.S. car companies initially decreased their orders, assuming consumer demand would plummet. However, by the time they tried to increase their orders, other industries had already replaced them in the queue for chips. 90 percent of the world’s most sophisticated chips are manufactured by one company (TSMC) in Taiwan, which makes TSMC a critical choke point for modern products, including America’s most advanced weapon systems. The U.S. military should hedge against an over-reliance on microchip-powered equipment to minimize scenarios in which it would find itself in the position of Detroit’s “Big Three” or held hostage by whoever controls Taiwan and TSMC. This further highlights the risks of high-tech weapon systems requiring high-tech repair in high-intensity conflict scenarios.

In World War II, the Soviet T-34 boasted a simple design and was easy to build and maintain. Nonetheless, it had excellent armor, maneuverability, and a powerful gun. The tanks the Wehrmacht constructed to counter the Soviets’ main battle tank were in many cases superior but suffered from excessive degrees of complexity—Tiger tanks took one hundred times as long as T-34s to manufacture—and a resulting need for frequent repairs. Therefore, They were unreliable in the existential fighting across the Eastern Front. Quantity is at times preferable over quantity, and adopting a “high-low” strategy, as Admiral Elmo Zumwalt did in the early 1970s because of budget constraints, could not only reduce costs for weapons lost in combat but may also allow greater redundancy with simple systems easy to repair.

Ultimately, it is unlikely that the Army or Marine Corps will move to less sophisticated weapons and equipment predating the semiconductor revolution. Nevertheless, consideration of decreasing systemic complexity, increasing robustness, and reducing the necessity for repairs in likely austere and minimally supported logistical environments should all be given greater attention for procurement efforts going forward.

Christopher D. Booth is a national security professional, served on active duty as a US Army armor and cavalry officer, and was a fellow in the General Robert H. Barrow Fellowship for Strategic Competition and the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Creativity. He is a distinguished graduate of Command and Staff College–Marine Corps University and graduated from Vanderbilt University Law School and the College of William and Mary.

The U.S. military faces a serious challenge. While China and other threats to American interests are becoming more acute, the defense budget and the size of the overall military are relatively static. Plans to field greater numbers of new, more capable platforms, like next-generation ships and aircraft, will take years to materialize. We need a shortcut. Better software that is commercially available might be the answer.

The Pentagon’s Problems…

Acquisition problems have been a long-term bugaboo of the Pentagon, leaving it with fewer planes, ships, and other weapons platforms than commanders and Congress say are necessary for today’s threats. For example, the Navy would like 321 to 372 manned ships for its current responsibilities. At present, it only has around 300. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall looked back on the development of the F-35 fighter—over half a decade of development time and tens of billions of dollars—and characterized it as “acquisition malpractice,” promising to do better with a new bomber under development.

Additionally, the Pentagon faces these challenges during a period of major transition from a force geared toward the counterinsurgency campaigns of the 2010s to deterring major powers, especially China’s fast-growing military. Various officials predict that Beijing could attack Taiwan, likely drawing the United States into conflict, before the end of the decade.

The late Donald Rumsfeld caused controversy when he said “you go to war with the army you have.” He wasn’t actually lamenting the state of the U.S. military; rather, he was observing the fact that changing the composition of the military takes years, especially if change requires building new ships, planes, and other complex platforms.

…Require Digital Solutions

One way America can have a big impact in deterring China rapidly is in the realm of software, especially commercially available software that can be adapted to military needs within months, not years.

Collecting, processing, and securing information better is a way to squeeze additional utilization out of the finite number of weapons systems we have today. Nowhere has this been more evident recently than on the battlefield in Ukraine. Both sides have made far more use of sensors and commercial communications compared to prior conflicts. These have often taken the form of relatively low-tech, quick-to-build, unmanned aerial vehicles. The software to process this information and the design principles to keep it secure have been crucial.

The U.S. military’s leadership understands the need to exploit technology more. For example, Secretary Kendall prescribed seven operational imperatives that included matters like resilient space architectures, optimized command-and-control that works across the military’s branches, scaling up the ability to track and engage moving targets, and communicating in hostile environments where adversaries are poking holes in our networks.

While each of these requirements needs a critical mass of old-fashioned hardware and personnel to match an adversary’s military, they can all be improved quickly with software that is better and more secure than that of the militaries we oppose. Furthermore, the software can often be retrofitted into existing weapons systems quickly and with far less expense than the hardware it is improving. This is especially true if the software can be adapted from the private sector rather than built as a “boutique” product by the government.

Take space for example. Using better software to secure space networks, which soon will include tens of thousands of private satellites in addition to the government and commercial ones already in orbit, can be a way for the U.S. military to understand the battlefield and direct its forces. It can also be necessary to collaborate with less-sophisticated partners. This has also been demonstrated in Ukraine, where commercial satellite imagery has also been used by fighters in near real-time. Government-operated spy satellites may still be the gold standard, but private-sector options are not far behind.

The thousands of satellites that private operators like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper are placing into orbit, combined with government-owned satellites, will be a major force multiplier if exploited and secured properly with specialized software. Specifically, older satellites and new satellites need to be upgraded and designed to employ end-to-end encryption, zero-trust software design, and decentralized encryption-key management.

Software can also account for the fact that hardware in space will be disabled through enemy action in wartime, because software is what makes networks adaptable. Software that secures information at the data level means we don’t have to worry about relying on government-only networks. When an enemy inevitably breaches a network or takes out network nodes it won’t matter as much if the military can jump between multiple networks and nodes, whether they are military or commercial satellites, billion-dollar ships and submarines, or cheap drones.

A software revolution can help squeeze more capability out of our existing military force in a timeframe that can actually help deter war with China and other adversaries—and leave us better prepared to defeat cyber aggression that has also become the norm of peacetime. But the Pentagon needs to move fast and make greater use of existing commercial technology to keep an edge.

David Pearah, an MIT-trained computer engineer, is CEO of SpiderOak, a space cybersecurity company.

Image: Shutterstock.

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