Diplomacy & Crisis News

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told Member States on Monday that efforts to tackle climate change and poverty had been set back by a lack of global unity since major agreements were struck five years ago, and welcomed the chance to work with the presumptive new US administration of president-elect Joe Biden.

Trump is still president for the next 71 days. And he has begun making it harder for a President Biden to undo his Iran policies.

The United Nations and humanitarian partners in the Philippines launched, on Monday, a response plan for $45.5 million to bring life-saving assistance and protection to hundreds of thousands of people affected by Typhoon Goni. 

From Cairo to Riyadh, autocrats are nervous about what a Biden administration might mean for their relationship with Washington.

In today’s Democratic Party, inheriting Obama’s economic legacy may be a burden, not a benefit.

Some 13 million people in the central Sahel region of north Africa require urgent humanitarian assistance, due to violence, insecurity and extreme weather events. Behind these stark figures lie personal stories of tragedy, resilience and hope.

The country is treating the outcome of the U.S. election as an opportunity—and a potential threat.

Biden will shift focus in the Middle East, but Israeli-Arab normalization will continue.

Trump’s brand of populist conservatism had little appeal north of the border, but leaves a legacy of U.S.-style race politics.

Michael Peck

Security, Asia

What do we know about China’s big bomb?

Here's What You Need to Know: China has joined the “Mother of All Bombs” club.

A Chinese arms maker back in 2019 unveiled a weapon similar to America’s GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, or MOAB (hence the nickname “Mother of All Bombs”). The Chinese version was dropped from an H-6K bomber, the Chinese version of the 1950s Soviet Tu-16 aircraft.

Photographs on China’s state-owned Global Times news site showed earlier in the year what appeared to be a large bomb falling from a bomb bay, and then a large explosion. Chinese military analyst Wei Dongxu told Global Times that based on photographic evidence and the size of the H-6K’s bomb bay, the bomb was five to six meters long (16.4 to 19.7 feet long). Chinese media also suggested that the bomb weighed several tons, and was so big that the H-6K could only carry one.

“The massive blast can easily and completely wipe out fortified ground targets such as reinforced buildings, bastions and defense shelters," or knock down trees so troops can rappel down from helicopters, Wei said.

According to Global Times, military observers claimed that “the weapon will also spread fear among enemies if a weapon of this caliber is deployed.”

If any weapon can inspire, it’s giant bombs like these. The MOAB is the biggest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal, and the biggest non-nuclear bomb that America has ever dropped. The MOAB is 30 feet long, weighs 21,600 pounds, and is so big that it isn’t dropped by bombers, but rather is shoved out the back of a C-130 transport (the Air Force wants to equip the B-52 to carry them on its wings). Guided by GPS to its target, the MOAB works not by hitting the ground and exploding like a regular bomb, but explodes a few feet above the target in an airburst that destroys everything in the surrounding area with a massive overpressure. This means the force of the bomb isn’t wasted burying itself in the ground, but spreads through the air.

While the United States has giant bunker-buster bombs like the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the MOAB can also destroy cave and tunnel complexes through overpressure that slams through the openings. In fact, the MOAB’s combat debut was in April 2017 in Afghanistan, where it reportedly destroyed three tunnel complexes and killed ninety-four Taliban fighters.

Not to be outdone, Russia has its FOAB (“Father of All Bombs”), which Moscow claims is four times more powerful than America’s MOAB. It is a thermobaric weapon, a fuel-air explosive that releases and detonates an explosive vapor of devastating power (NORINCO denies reports that China’s weapon is thermobaric).

So, what do we know about China’s big bomb? Not much, and what there is may be mere hype. Chinese analyst Wei told Global Times that “the Chinese bomb is smaller and lighter than the US one, enabling it to be deployed on the H-6K bomber. The US bomb is so large that it has to be carried by a larger transport aircraft rather than a bomber, Wei said, noting that a bomber can fly faster and is better at targeting than a transport aircraft, and the Chinese bomb's designer must have had this in mind when it produced the bomb to fit the H-6K.”

But nothing comes for free, and if China has devised a smaller and lighter bomb than MOAB, the drawback may be less explosive power. And to be fair to history, all of these giant twenty-first-century bombs trace their lineage back to Britain’s “Dam Busters” of World War II, and legendary bomb designer Barnes Wallis, who devised the six-ton Tallboy and ten-ton Grand Slam bombs.

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Democrats on the continent are eager to have a U.S. ally again, but the new administration will have to deliver at home as well.

Robert Farley

History, Asia

These warships were incredibly large and were rightly respected for their might.

Key point: Japan industrialized quickly and rose to become a great power. Here is how it hoped its large battleships would prevail in World War II.

Japan withdrew from the London Naval Treaty in 1936. The chief Japanese negotiator, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, feared that concessions on the part of his negotiating team would lead directly to his assassination upon return to Japan. Japanese nationalists believed that the Washington Naval Treaty system was holding Japan back and preventing it from becoming a first-rate power. Freed from the constraints of international treaties, they believed that Japan could build a world-beating fleet that would push the Western powers out of Asia and help usher in a new era of Japanese dominance.

This first appeared earlier and is being republished due to reader interest.

Musashi was the second ship of the Yamato class, the first of this new generation of battleships. The Imperial Japanese Navy believed that the United States would never build battleships too large to move through the Panama Canal, and calculated that the maximum displacement of such ships would amount to about sixty thousand tons. Ships of that size could not, it was thought, carry guns larger than sixteen inches. The IJN’s engineering problem was thus to design and build battleships that could destroy the largest ships the Americans were likely to build. The Japanese ships were to have a speed of at least thirty knots, carry eighteen-inch or larger guns, and have a long range with good fuel economy. With three triple 18.1-inch gun turrets, the Yamato class met one of the three conditions. Initially designed with diesel engines for economical cruising, problems with the diesels led to the use of a standard, fuel-intensive power plant. A well-armored thirty-one-knot version was rejected as too large (the Yamatos displaced sixty-five thousand tons), and the IJN unwisely decided to sacrifice speed for armor, settling on twenty-seven knots. As it was, its armor weighed more than an entire World War I dreadnought, and could absorb enormous damage. Musashi and its sister were immensely powerful ships, but the sacrifice of operational mobility for surface tactical effectiveness would limit the impact that they would have on the war.

The IJN ordered five ships of the Yamato class, but only Musashi and its elder sister were completed as intended. Shinano, the third sister, was completed as an aircraft carrier support vessel. Japan took elaborate precautions to prevent details of the ships’ construction from reaching the United States. Indeed, the United States only acquired good intelligence as to the size and armament of the battleships in 1944. When Japan surrendered, the IJN attempted to destroy all photographic and technical data on Yamato and Musashi, leaving Western analysts guessing as to its exact characteristics well into the Cold War.

Named after an ancient province on Honshu, Musashi was laid down in March 1938, and commissioned in August 1942. It arrived in Truk in January 1943, and became Admiral Yamamoto’s flagship in February. Because of its speed and enormous fuel requirements, the IJN had not used Yamato in the Guadalcanal campaign, and was similarly reticent about Musashi. While Japanese caution in context of oil shortages is understandable, the course of the war in 1942 and 1943 demanded a more risk-acceptant posture; this was not a time at which the IJN should have emphasized fuel economy. Musashi sortied three times in efforts to intercept U.S. naval movements, but never engaged the enemy. In February 1944 it was withdrawn from Truk out of concerns over U.S. carrier raids. In March, it received light damage from a U.S. submarine attack.

Musashi served at both the battles of Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf. At the latter it, Yamato, and three other battleships served as the core of Adm. Takeo Kurita’s strike force, intended to destroy U.S. landing craft off Leyte. Before that could happen, however, Kurita’s task force needed to run a gauntlet of submarine and carrier aircraft attacks. During the latter, Musashi became the focus of U.S. naval aviators. Despite withering antiaircraft fire, it received enormous punishment from American pilots. Over five hours of attacks, Musashi took nearly twenty bomb and torpedo hits each, slowing its speed and causing extensive flooding. No other battleship could have survived half that, but eventually the flooding got the best of damage control crews, and at 19:36 on October 24, 1944, Musashi rolled over and sank. Nearly a thousand of its 2,400-man crew sank with it.

Its loss was in vain; although an elaborate sacrifice of carriers decoyed American battleships away from Leyte, Kurita’s attack on U.S. transports and escort carriers was foiled by the extraordinary courage of a few American destroyer captains. In 2015, Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft and owner of the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers, led a team of researchers who discovered Musashi’s wreck. It lies in several pieces at the bottom of Sibuyan Sea.

Over the years, a variety of reports of turned up on the expected successor classes to Yamato. The next iteration would have been slightly larger, slightly more heavily armored, and would have carried six twenty-inch guns in three twin turrets, probably with roughly the same speed and range as Yamato. Designs for these ships were finalized, but wartime demands meant that they were never laid down. Indeed, the effort that went into Musashi’s construction would better have been spent on aircraft carriers and other ships. Expectations of a further follow-on class, with a speed above thirty knots and four twin twenty-inch guns, have emerged over the years, although the construction of such ships would have been purely notional.

The Yamatos were the zenith of the Japanese battleship aesthetic, with a beautiful swept-back pagoda mast that managed to convey speed, grace and power. This, undoubtedly, is one of the reasons why the ships have continued to hold a place in the public imagination, even seventy years on. However, Musashi has never earned the popular cultural attention of its sister, HIJMS Yamato. The latter took the starring role in the animated television show (and later film) Space Battleship Yamato, known in the United States as Star Blazers. Yamato also served as the subject of a live-action film in 2005.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. This first appeared earlier and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Wikipedia.

Steve Weintz

Security,

The first-ever hydrogen bomb blast, Ivy Mike, required American weaponeers to create an vast new industrial capacity for manufacturing liquid hydrogen in its "heavy" form of liquid deuterium.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Really huge nuclear weapons fell out of favor in America as missile accuracy increased. More accurate delivery platforms mean less need for big explosions to kill a target (and smaller delivery vehicles—a big warhead needs a big missile or plane or sub). But historian Alex Wellerstein notes that American bombs could have gotten much, much more powerful without growing bigger.

(This is a combination of two previous articles posted last year. They are reposted here for your reading pleasure.)

Russia: 

The Bomb represents the ultimate expression of might, so the biggest bombs express that power to its extremes. The United States and the Soviet Union built bigger and bigger bombs to deter each other. Eventually, Washington stopped testing such large weapons due to improved accuracy of their delivery methods. Only 3 percent of the superpowers' stockpiles consisted of nuclear weapons with yields greater than four megatons, but those weapons more than any others symbolize the terror of nuclear war.

The Soviet Union's swift strides towards nuclear arms alarmed American officials in the 1950’s. "First Lightning" (called "Joe-1" in the West)—the first Soviet nuclear test—announced the Moscow's new military power less than three months after lifting the Berlin Blockade in May 1949. The twenty-two-kiloton shot copied the U.S. Trinity test as closely as possible to achieve early success; the rushed development actually stalled the Soviet program for over a year, with the second test occurring in September 1951.

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This phase of the Cold War went hot on the Korean Peninsula and President Truman gave the go-ahead for the "Super," as it was called. Edward Teller—a brilliant, vain and pugnacious physicist who fled Hungary for the United States to join the Manhattan Project—was smitten by the idea of thermonuclear fusion and argued forcefully for U.S. research into bigger bombs. Pursuit of the "Super" alarmed Soviet leaders and scientists. As they explored the possibility, however, the Soviets had an advantage over the Americans: lithium.

The first-ever hydrogen bomb blast, Ivy Mike, required American weaponeers to create an vast new industrial capacity for manufacturing liquid hydrogen in its "heavy" form of liquid deuterium. The Ivy Mike device was liquid-fueled and a handful of emergency-capability (EC) liquid-fuel bombs were later built; several B-36 bombers were modified to top off the liquid hydrogen in flight en route to their targets.

But the Soviets dispensed with liquid fuel for dry powdered lithium deuteride, a chemical compound of lithium metal and hydrogen gas. Lithium comes in two "flavors" or isotopes: Lithium-6 and Lithium-7. Lithium-7 was thought by both sides to be inert and unsuitable as bomb fuel. The Soviet Union had plentiful sources of Lithium-7, but the United States did not. As a result, Soviet weaponeers worked on dry-fuel bombs from the start. The fourth Soviet nuclear test in 1953 registered an impressive 400 kilotons from the "Sloika" design.

America’s disastrous Castle Bravo H-bomb test in 1954 revealed Lithium-6's fusion potential and provided the Soviet Union with needed information; a mere eighteen months elapsed between the Castle Bravo test and the Soviet test of November 1955: an air drop of a fully weaponized hydrogen bomb. At 1.6 megatons, the yield of RDS-37 was impressive—but it would be dwarfed by the monsters to come.

In 1958 the Soviet Union matched the America’s voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing; in September 1961, after raising the Berlin Wall, Nikita Khrushchev ordered testing resumed. On October 23, a 12.5-megaton airdrop pounded the high Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya. The resulting blast was nearly as large as Castle Yankee—America's second biggest test—but only the Soviet Union’s fifth-biggest.

The biggest bomb ever built or tested—the RDS-220 ("Big Ivan" or "Tsar Bomba")—rattled the planet one week later on October 30, 1961. The result of a crash program directed by Andrei Sahkarov, the Tsar Bomba was a conservative design accomplished with astonishing speed: in only four months. The 100-megaton (possibly 150-megaton) design was an impractical weapon—only a single modified Bear bomber could carry it, slowly—but a billy-hell of a propaganda show.

Even though Sakharov had the third-stage fission tampers replaced with inert lead due to concerns about fallout, the Tsar Bomba still yielded fifty-six megatons, enough to blow a hole in the atmosphere and cause damage hundreds of miles away. Had the third stage tampers been uranium this one bomb would have raised global fallout levels by 25 percent. Every person born before October 1961 has bits of the Tsar Bomba (and other bombs) in their bodies to this day.

If the Tsar Bomba explosion was a stunt, the other biggest Soviet tests weren't. 1962 was the last year of atmospheric nuclear tests for the Soviet Union and the United States, and both sides rushed to prove weapon designs. The fourth, third and second largest Soviet nuclear tests all seem related to ICBM-warhead development: Test 147 on August 5, 1962 yielded over twenty-one megatons; Test 173 nineteen megatons; and Test 219 a whopping 24.2 megatons—nearly half the Tsar Bomba's yield.

This city-busting warhead wound up on R-36 ICBMs (NATO designation SS-18 "Satan"), huge missiles capable of obliterating deeply buried targets or entire metro areas. Although photos and data from Test 219 are not publicly available, Alex Wellerstein's NUKEMAP drives home the power of such a bomb. Dropped on downtown Los Angeles, the air blast would level the Coliseum (four miles away) and burn down all of Beverly Hills (nine miles away).

America: 

Recent reports of collapse at the North Korean nuclear test site under Mt. Mantap provide a sobering reminder of the sheer power of nuclear weapons. North Korea’s sixth (and final?) test had a likely yield well above one hundred kilotons, enough to corroborate the regime's claim of thermonuclear capability.

Really big nuclear explosions require the lightest elements rather than the heaviest. Fission explosions rely on the energy released by splitting heavy atoms of uranium or plutonium into lighter elements, and require lots of fissionable material. Fusion explosions release vastly more energy than fission blasts by fusing together lightweight hydrogen nuclei into slightly heavier helium. However, getting hydrogen to fuse requires immense temperatures and pressures, which only a fission explosion can readily generate.

Thus fusion (“H-bomb”) weapons rely on fission (“A-bomb”) triggers or primaries to heat and compress fusion fuel enough for thermonuclear fusion. In the fractions of a second between the primary's detonation and the bomb's explosion the primary's immense energy gets channeled into the fusion fuel. Hydrogen bombs are thus two-stage weapons: first a small fission explosion drives a much bigger fusion explosion.

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Both the United States and the Soviet Union saw fusion or thermonuclear weapons as the vital next step in trumping each other's nuclear arsenals. In pursuit of weaponizing the power of the sun both nations created the largest artificial explosions yet witnessed by humans. Edward Teller, who along with Stanislaw Ulam conceived the successful H-bomb concept, began thinking about “the Super,” as it became known, even as the Manhattan Project struggled to build a working fission bomb.

As the Korean War flared both the United States and USSR accelerated their nuclear programs. Despite serious reservation by some in the nuclear weapons community, President Truman launched the U.S. thermonuclear effort in 1950. Soviet scientists pursuing a different design had access to ideal fusion fuel—the chemical compound of the lightest metal, lithium, and a heavy form of the lightest gas, hydrogen. This powdery substance, lithium deuteride, itself came in two "flavors," one incorporating the Lithium-6 isotope and another incorporating Lithium-7. The Soviets swiftly built facilities for manufacturing Li-7 deuteride while the Americans, lacking sources of Li-7 focussed on liquid deuterium.

By late 1952 the Soviets had tested their first fusion-driven device with limited success. After an immense investment the Americans succeeded in producing abundant liquid heavy hydrogen (deuterium) and an eighty-ton science experiment to use it. Not in any sense a weapon, the Mike (for "megaton") shot of Operation Ivy yielded 10.8 megatons of explosive force when detonated November 1, 1952. Ivy Mike proved the Teller-Ulam design by leaving a mile-wide hole in Eniewetak Atoll.

And yet, Ivy Mike was only the fourth biggest U.S. nuclear test.

Operation Ivy’s other test puts Mike in perspective. Weapons designer Ted Taylor thought the H-bomb to be overkill and to prove his point designed the biggest pure-fission bomb ever tested. Ivy King (for “kiloton”) yielded five hundred kilotons at the cost of four critical masses of uranium alloy—so much fissile material that the weapon had to be transported with chains of neutron-absorbing boron and aluminum to prevent a premature chain-reaction. Ivy King worked, but wasn't the future.

By early 1954, hot on the heels of the Korean conflict, the United States had new H-bomb designs ready to test. The six-shot series of Operation Castle would prove these new designs at Bikini Atoll. As with Operation Ivy, an armada of ships and an army of people shipped out the Central Pacific to dredge islands, build test equipment and ready bunkers.

The bombs prepared included a weaponized version of the Ivy Mike device—the liquid-fueled EC-16 hydrogen bomb, along with others trying out the new American dry fuel made of mixed Li-6 and Li-7 hydride. Scientist thought Lithium-6 was far less reactive to neutrons thrown from fission primaries and thus expected yields of six to ten megatons.

Nature (only partly) surprised them on the first test. The Castle Bravo shot yielded fifteen megatons—the biggest American nuclear test ever—and the worst radiological disaster in American history. It was two hundred and fifty times bigger than Hiroshima, Castle Bravo vaporized an island, contaminated three atolls and hundreds of people, caused major diplomatic incidents and introduced the word “fallout” into public discourse.

The size of the explosion resulted from Li-6's previously-unknown affinity for neutrons; the supposedly regular-gas bomb fuel turned out to be premium hi-test. Nature wasn't involved in another factor, the wind: despite warnings from meteorologists Test Director Alvin Graves ordered the shot fired. Graves, who had survived near-lethal radiation exposure, had little patience with those urging caution.

Despite the disaster the U.S. military carried on with Operation Castle, and conducted two of the other three biggest American tests. Unlike the land-based and heavily instrumented Castle Bravo test, Castle Romeo tested a weapon in its bomb casing mounted aboard a barge afloat in Bikini’s lagoon. The first test destroyed most of the test equipment on Bikini, and big test were blowing holes in Bikini’s reef. Because it used pure Li-6 hydride the Romeo shot was almost canceled; it became the third biggest American test at eleven megatons yield.

Castle Yankee was the second biggest American test at 13.5 megatons. As the fifth test of Operation Castle, Yankee again used a bomb casing on a barge, and again used the Li-6/Li-7 mixed fuel used in Castle Bravo. The 13.5 megaton blast produced a fireball four miles wide; 2.5 megatons of the 13.5 came from pure fusion alone.

The Castle Bravo, Romeo and Yankee tests proved the H-bomb design that became the first U.S. “city-killers”: high-yield thermonuclear weapons capable of completely destroying a target even if the weapon missed by miles. These Mk17 and Mk 24 bombs looked the part—nineteen feet long, five feet wide, ten tons heavy—big enough for a cowboy to ride into Armageddon.

Weapons development moved fast during those years. Only four years after Operation Castle, Operation Hardtack came to Bikini and Eniewetak Atolls as American weaponeers raced to test refined H-bomb designs before an unofficial testing moratorium announced by President Eisenhower. Hardtack Poplar, the fifth biggest American nuclear test, yielded 9.3 megatons from a bomb that would become the biggest ever deployed by the United States: the Mk-41 twenty-five-megaton three-stage device.

Hardtack Poplar tested only the first two stages, resulting in a very “clean” explosion—one with far less fallout. The third stage of the operational weapon was a internal casing of fissile uranium containing the first two stages; the immense neutron flux from the second-stage fusion explosion causes the third stage to fission and produce huge amounts of energy and radioactive waste. In Poplar the uranium casing was replaced with an inert lead one.

After Operation Hardtack the moratorium on testing delayed new designs, and when US testing resumed in 1962 no tests greater than four megatons are conducted. The United States turned to underground tests at the Nevada Test Site which is unable to contain megaton-class shots. The last known U.S. multi-megaton shot was Cannikin—a five-megaton blast a mile beneath Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.

Really huge nuclear weapons fell out of favor in America as missile accuracy increased. More accurate delivery platforms mean less need for big explosions to kill a target (and smaller delivery vehicles—a big warhead needs a big missile or plane or sub). But historian Alex Wellerstein notes that American bombs could have gotten much, much more powerful without growing bigger:

“By 1962, after the Dominic series, they thought they might be able to pull off 50 Mt in only a 4,500 kg (10,000 lb) package—a kind of ridiculous 11 kt/kg ratio.”

Could there have been a five-ton fifty Megaton bomb? It’s just as well that it was never (knowingly) explored. After all, the genie, however great, never stays in the bottle.

Steve Weintz, a frequent contributor to many publications such as WarIsBoring, is a writer, filmmaker, artist and animator. This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Wikipedia.

Kyle Mizokami

Security, Asia

Today we’ll look at how the Type 99 stacks up to two important contemporaries, the American M1A2 Abrams and the Russian T-90A tank.

Here's What You Need To Remember: For a main battle tank, the Type 99 is light, maneuverable, and fast. It doesn't pack the firepower of the Abrams, but it has a much higher range with comparable armor.

China has a lot of tanks. Like, eight to nine thousand of them.

Who else would bother to maintain such a ridiculous number?

The United States. And Russia. (Note that such counts include vehicles in storage and reserve. The numbers for tanks in operational units are lower in every case).

However, the majority of Beijing’s tanks are old designs, particularly Type 59 and 69 tanks more or less directly copied from the 50s-era Soviet T-54 tank. Such is their profligacy that I once had the pleasure of bumping into one in a children’s playground in Tianjin serving the needs of the (young) people.

However, China’s top of the line tank, the Type 99, has commanded healthy respect from international observers, even though it has never been exported, nor used in combat. The reason is simple: the reported performance parameters are equal to many top Western designs, and the Type 99 also packs a few unique tricks of its own.

Today we’ll look at how the Type 99 stacks up to two important contemporaries, the American M1A2 Abrams and the Russian T-90A tank.

Before we get our hands greasy with the technical details, we should consider: does China even need tanks?

It’s a reasonable question to ask. China’s major military efforts have been directed towards the Pacific.

Some might ask, how likely are the U.S. Army’s M1 Abrams tanks ever to clash with the Type 99?

To which one should consider: can either vehicle swim across the Pacific Ocean and exchange shots over Scarborough Shoal?

Kidding aside, it seems a pretty unlikely except in amphibious invasions scenarios fit for Operation Flashpoint computer games. On the other hand, Taiwan has expressed interest in purchasing Abrams tanks, and Australia operates 60 as well, so never say never.

However, the question is more relevant when we consider the Russian T-90. Moscow currently maintains good relations with Beijing, with which it shares a border, but the two powers are not close allies, having nearly come to war during the late 1960s.

Most importantly, Russia is selling its weapons to India and Vietnam—including systems which are quite clearly earmarked to oppose the Chinese military, such as the Brahmos cruise missile, and, well…over 1,000 T-90 tanks, many of which are deployed along its Himalayan border.

China fought a war with India in 1962 over that border, and another with Vietnam in 1979 to punish the nation for opposing the Beijing-backed Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. (Vietnam would like to order T-90s as well.)

Today, the Chinese military persists in seeing India—a potential future superpower—as a threat, and has extensively militarized their shared border and built roads allowing heavy military vehicles to pass through the steep mountains. China is also allied with Pakistan, which has repeatedly warred with India, and occasionally transfers military technology to it.

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Lastly, one should consider the scenario of a potential civil war or government collapse in North Korea. What Beijing’s policy would actually be in such an event is the trillion dollar question, but one scenario would involve Chinese ground forces intervening to restore order in North Korea—leading to potential clashes with Korean troops.

So, even though an actual armed conflict would be unnecessary and vastly counterproductive for everyone involved—like most wars!—there are some contexts in which tank combat could occur on China’s borders, particularly verses Russian-made tanks.

Enough politics, onto the lumbering death machines!

First, to introduce the contenders…

The Abrams, of course, is the classic American design which devastated Soviet-made Iraqi armor in the 1991 Gulf War without losing a single tank to enemy fire. The Abrams isn’t exactly new, but the Army has continuously tweaked the ammunition, armor package, and sensors to keep it up to date.

The T-90 is Russia’s first post-Cold War tank. Though not quite a peer of the Abrams, it still boasts significant improvements in accuracy and protection, particularly in models equipped with later-generation explosive reactive armor. While Russia is introducing its revolutionary new T-14 tank, for now its 550 T-90As remain its frontline armored vehicle.

Moscow has developed the more advanced T-90AM but did not place it into full production.  However, 354 of the similar T-90MS export variant have been sold to India for deployment on its border with China. In total, India has over 1200 T-90s, while Algeria eventually intends to operate over 800.

China’s Type-99 combines a hull that closely resembles an elongated T-72 with a Western-style turret inspired in part by the German Leopard 2. First appearing as the Type 98 prototype tank in a National Day parade in a 1999, the vehicle was re-designated the Type 99 and entered service in 2001. At 57 tons, it comes in between the 70-ton Abrams and the 48-ton T-90 in terms of weight. Several upgrades, including the new Type 99A2 variant, boast advanced new technologies. Beijing fields nearly 500 Type 99s in sixteen armored battalions, and has produced 124 of the newer 99As so far. The type is not offered for export, though some of its technology is used in China’s VT4 export tank.

Firepower:

The Type 99 and the T-90 rely on a 125 millimeter cannons using carousel autoloaders descended from Soviet-era designs. This weapon proved underpowered verses Abrams and Challenger tanks in the Gulf War, but new improved tungsten ammunition leaves it capable of piercing the frontal armor of an Abrams at shorter combat ranges.

The new Type 99A2 comes with a longer barrel main gun, which in theory should impart higher muzzle velocity to sabot shells and improve their armor penetration and accuracy.  It also boasts fancy new stabilizer technology.

Reportedly, China intends to eventually install a larger 140 millimeter gun on the Type 99, but early tests have cracked up the weapon. This, incidentally, mirrors Russia’s plans to up-gun its new T-14 Armata tank to a similar caliber weapon.

The Abram’s Rheinmetal 120 millimeter gun, equipped with politically-controversial M829 depleted-uranium rounds, can penetrate around 15-25% more armor. The U.S. now produces new generations of M829 rounds capable of piercing the advanced Kontakt and Relikt reactive armor systems developed by Russia (more on those below).

China has developed its own depleted uranium ammunition for its 125 millimeter gun, which it claims can penetrate the M1 up to ranges of 1.4 kilometers.

The Abrams uses a fourth crewmember to load the gun, which American tankers argue is more reliable, offers a higher rate of fire, and gives the tank a spare hand if one of the other crew members is incapacitated. However, the space needed to accommodate a fourth crew member makes the M1 larger and heavier.

The Type 99 and T-90 both can fire anti-tank missiles from the gun tube, while the Abrams cannot.  (The Type 99 uses AT-11 Refleks missiles licensed from Russia).  This could theoretically be useful for combat at very long ranges, or against low-flying helicopters.  However, tank-launched missiles have existed for fifty years without seeing much use.

Effective sensors for spotting and aiming are arguably as decisive in tank engagements as firepower. Russia has made some strides in tank sights and thermal imagers in recent years, though the general sentiment is that Western sights and sensors remain superior. The T-90A does not carry Russia’s best hardware (some have been upgraded with French Catherine thermal sights), while the T-90MS has an improved Kalina targeting system.

China is known for its excellent electronics, and the Type 99A2 supposedly carries a new infrared tracking system that enables it hunt enemy tanks efficiently and is believed to be superior to the systems on the T-90A.

Protection:

The Type 99 benefits both from composite armor, and Explosive Reactive Armor (ERA), bricks of explosives onto the tank that prematurely detonate incoming shells. The new Type 99A2 variant uses a multi-layered system thought to be similar to the Relikt ERA developed by Russia, which uses a radar to detonate the ERA before hostile shells impact. It is intended to defeat tandem-charge missiles capable of overcoming older-generation ERA.  

The T-90A uses the older Kontakt-5 ERA, while the new T-90MS tanks serving in India sport the Relikt system. Though most effective against anti-tank missiles, both systems also diminish the penetrating power of tank shells.

The Type 99 also comes with a Laser Warning Receiver which warns the tank commander if his vehicle is being painted with hostile targeting lasers, affording the driver a chance to back away out of danger. Given all the videos from Syria and Yemen of tanks sitting obliviously as anti-tank missiles meander towards them (often taking 20 seconds or more to impact), this could significantly improve survivability.

The Type 99 also is believed to come with its own unique high-powered ‘dazzler’ laser designed to jam laser- and infrared-guided missiles, damage enemy sights, and blind the eyes of hostile gunners, possibly with a permanent effect. Fortunately, high-power tank-mounted dazzlers have never been used in combat before, so we have no idea how well they would work.

The new A2 is also thought to have a laser-based communication system which can be used to identify friendly vehicles and transmit encrypted data.

The T-90 tank, on the other hand, relies on the Shtora “soft kill” Active Protection System, which not only jams lasers with its own emitters, but also deploys aerosol grenades to create a laser-obscuring cloud around the vehicle.

The M1 Abrams lacks its own Laser Warning Receiver, Active Protection Systems or Explosive Reactive Armor, though it is conceivable future upgrades will incorporate some of these features.

For now, the M1A2 relies on its excellent Chobham composite armor, which has been tweaked over the years and believed to be equivalent to 800 millimeters or more of rolled hardened armor (RHA) verses tank sabot shells, or 1300 millimeters versus the shaped charges used in rockets and missiles. For comparison, the T-90 is believed to have a maximum armor of around 650 RHA. The Abrams also benefit from having separately stowed ammunition, making its less likely to catastrophically detonate when hit by enemy fire.

The Type 99’s combination of composite and modular space armor is believed to offer armor protection close or equivalent to the Abrams.  One sources claims it offers protection equivalent to around 1100 RHA, though the actual effectiveness is classified.

Mobility:

The Type 99 is by far the most nimble of the bunch, able to sprint up to 50 miles per hour on roads. The M1 Abrams and the T-90MS used by India follow behind at 42 and 45 miles per hour respectively, while the T-90A trails at 35. However, the gas-guzzling turbine-powered M1A2 can only travel 240 miles before requiring refueling, while both the Type 99 and T-90 have ranges over 300 miles.  Furthermore, the M1’s greater weight makes it the hardest to transport and deploy.

A last note is the Type 99 features new digital maintenance systems similar to those entering into use in the latest upgrade of the M1 Abrams.

So all in all, while the Abrams arguably retains the best firepower of the three, the Type 99 seems likely to be better protected thanks to its multi-layered defensive systems. And it’s faster and has longer range.

The T-90A is generally outclassed by the other two, but the T-90MS, with its Relikt armor, improved sights and more powerful engines, can hold its own.

However, one should keep in mind the actual performance of the Type 99’s armor, gun and electronic systems is not certain, particularly as the vehicle has not been exported, whereas both the M1 and T-90 have been used in action by multiple operators. Beijing likes to keep the details of its technology close, and also has an incentive to talk up the capabilities of its hardware.

Nonetheless, the majority of the evidence available suggests that, despite its hordes of Type 59s, China is capable of designing and fielding a first-class main battle tank.  This fits in well with President Xi Jinping’s recent push to downsize in quantity, and improve in quality, its armed forces.

Sébastien Roblin holds a Master’s Degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared in 2016. 

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Stephen Silver

Economics, Americas

The company has been so successful, in fact, that there have been delays in the delivery of some products.

Bike maker Peloton, in quarterly earnings released this week, posted a profit of $69.3 million, based on sales that surged 232 percent over the year before, with their 20 cents earnings per share nearly doubling estimates from analysts, per CNBC.

As the coronavirus pandemic continued to keep people indoors and kept some gyms closed or restricted, Peloton continued to take advantage, with Connected Fitness Subscriptions growing 137 percent to 133 million Digital Subscriptions jumping 382 percent, to more than 510.000. There are also now 3.6 million Peloton members.

The company has been so successful, in fact, that there have been delays in the delivery of some products, as well as delays in tech support call volumes, for which Peloton apologized.

“We will continue to work diligently to address delivery and support issues, as we have long prided ourselves on providing superior customer service. With an understanding of what is required to return to our normal standards, we continue to invest in technology, manufacturing capabilities, and people to help us scale and meet the needs of all our customers,” the company said in its shareholders letter.

In the quarter, Peloton announced both the new Bike+ and its new Tread treadmill, while also cutting the prices of its older products. The new Tread is set to launch in early 2021.

Despite the good news, per CNBC, the company’s shares slumped after the earnings announcement, on the concerns raised by supply constraints. They did gain back ground on Friday, however.

“We see Peloton increasingly capitalizing from a secular shift in consumer behavior amid extended social distancing, with elevated demand we're seeing for at-home fitness (longer order to delivery for ‘couple more quarters’) and reflected in sustained low churn levels (0.65 percent vs. 0.90 percent year ago),” analyst Camilla Yanushevsky wrote in a note to clients, as cited by Yahoo Finance. “With over $2 billion of liquidity, we believe Peloton has significant resources to continue investing in product and platform to drive growth.”

“As we’ve said previously, our goal is to become the leading connected fitness and wellness platform. In order to do that we have focused on complementing our incredibly effective and immersive cardio offering with world-class strength and wellness content. We are continuously investing in hardware, software, and content to maintain our leadership position,” the company added in the investor letter.

On the lighter side, Peloton banned all hashtags associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory, and a company called Echelon this fall introduced a new bike it called “The Prime Bike” that it claimed was developed in collaboration with Amazon, leading the tech press to speculate that Amazon was making a move into direct competition with Peloton. However, Amazon later distanced themselves from the product.

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

Image: Reuters

Warfare History Network, Brooke C. Stoddard

History, Europe

Oster had long loathed the Nazi regime.

Key point: There were multiple Germany assassination plots to kill Hitler.

Adolf Hitler won victory after victory in the late 1930s: the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, the incorporation of Austria into the Reich in 1938, the acquisition of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in 1938 followed by the control over much of the remainder of Czechoslovakia six months later, and then the conquest of Poland in September 1939. These astonishing successes glorified him in the eyes of millions of Germans and humbled the generals of the German Army, a number of whom thought his recklessness would lead to a crushing German military defeat.

Soon after the victory in Poland, when some Army generals believed Hitler would be satisfied with territorial possessions and come to some accommodation with Poland’s latecomer allies France and Britain, the Führer summoned the cream of the high commanders. Not a few of them believed he would call for a demobilization. Instead, what they got was a shock: Hitler told them he was determined to launch an offensive against France and Britain, and the sooner the better.

German Opposition to the Nazi Regime

Some of these Army generals—Commander in Chief of the Army Walther von Brauchitsch and Chief of the Army General Staff Franz Halder among them—as well as men of lesser rank in military intelligence, plus civilians and politicians, had long opposed or came to oppose the Nazi regime that controlled Germany. They had conspired to overthrow the Nazi leadership, most notably as the Sudetenland issue rose to a crisis. They believed their best chance at overthrowing the Nazi leaders was when the Nazis recklessly hurled Germany into a general European war.

Hitler was willing to risk such a war by invading Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland, and the conspirators were waiting for the right moment when Hitler seemed mad enough to do it. But it was precisely then that Neville Chamberlain engineered an appeasement granting the Sudetenland to Germany. The conspiracy collapsed. The buildup to the invasion of Poland offered another opportunity for revolt, but movement to a coup d’etat never got far, in part because the generals believed that a war against Poland would be brief and contained.

Colonel Hans Oster

Now, suddenly there was another opportunity. Some of the highest ranking Army generals believed an attack on the West (that is, against France and Britain, although also likely involving Holland and Belgium) would only end in a crushing defeat of their country. When Colonel Hans Oster of the Abwehr (military intelligence for the armed services) sounded out generals whom he considered sympathetic to a revolt, he discovered lukewarm support at best. Unlike the opportunity during the Sudetenland crisis, key German troops were not in Berlin where they might be used in a coup, but rather in battle zones or potential battle zones. Moreover, Germany was now at war; a general’s—and every soldier’s—duty lay to his country, no matter how offensive the civilian leadership.

Oster, however, did not give up. He felt that if the invasion of the West—Case Yellow—met with disaster for Germany, then military men as well as the German people would welcome a coup that would throw the mad Nazis out of power. A new German government could negotiate with the country’s enemies and a catastrophic war would be avoided. In Oster’s view, the way to make an invasion fail was to give the invasion plans to the Western Allies.

A Later Change of Heart

Oster had long loathed the Nazi regime. He was a career Army officer, son of a Saxon parson, born in 1887. An artillerist, he won the Iron Cross First and Second Class and the Knight’s Cross with Swords during World War I. He joined the Imperial General Staff in 1917 and, like many of the officer class, was devastated by the German defeat of 1918, which he believed was undeserved. He considered the Weimar Republic decadent and weak, but, having survived as an officer in the much-reduced Army after the armistice, served it loyally. He is said to have at first welcomed the Nazi government because it reinstated some of the principles of the old imperial rule and made the Army and Germany again a source of pride. In his private time, Oster loved riding and playing the ‘cello (oddly, a good many of the Nazi resistors were musically gifted).

In 1933, Oster accepted a job with the Abwehr. In 1934, he turned against the Nazis when the SS murdered his good friend and former Abwehr chief Maj. Gen. Ferdinand von Bredow during the purges of the SS’s rival organization, the SA. In the years that followed, Oster helped to recruit to the coup d’etat cause General Ludwig Beck, Chief of the Army General Staff until he resigned in 1938, turning over his position to Halder.

This article by Brooke C. Stoddard originally appeared on the Warfare History Network and first appeared on TNI in 2018.

Image: Wikipedia.

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

In 2011, a two-ton bomb was discovered in a riverbank in Koblenz; 45,000 people were temporarily evacuated. A year later, a 550-pound bomb was detonated in Munich after an EOD unit was unable to defuse it; windows for blocks around were blown out. It’s estimated that another 2,500 bombs are still buried around Munich.

Here's What You Need To Remember: The astonishing quantity of bombs dropped in Europe during the Second World War - especially in Germany - has guaranteed that many continue to pop up every year.

For the most part, World War II left the U.S. and Canadian homelands physically untouched. There were a few incidents of sabotage and a few small-scale attacks, such as a Japanese submarine’s shelling of an oil refinery in southern California and balloon bombs launched from Japan that floated over the Pacific and set fires in the western United States and Canada.

But there was nothing to equal the millions of tons of bombs dropped on Britain, Europe, and Japan.

During the war, the United States and its allies dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on European targets. Some bombs were armed with a delayed fuse so that they would explode hours or even days after they were dropped.

“It was a terror tactic,” one news source said, “designed to hinder the cities’ recovery. Half ended up in Germany, and what’s left today buried in German soil makes up the roughly 10 percent of bombs that never went off.”

This fact came to light with a recent news item from northern Germany that said the A-2 autobahn near Hannover had to be shut down while explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) crews blew up two bombs dropped more than 70 years ago and were discovered during a construction project.

As a major target for U.S. and RAF bombers, Hannover was hit hard; on one raid alone, more than a quarter-million bombs were dropped on the city.

Almost every year similar reports come out. This past July, a Berlin neighborhood had to be evacuated when a 500-pound American bomb was unearthed by construction workers.

In Wolfsburg, a city about 150 miles west of Berlin, a 550-pound bomb was found beneath the Volkswagen factory in July 2016. In 2011, a two-ton bomb was discovered in a riverbank in Koblenz; 45,000 people were temporarily evacuated. A year later, a 550-pound bomb was detonated in Munich after an EOD unit was unable to defuse it; windows for blocks around were blown out. It’s estimated that another 2,500 bombs are still buried around Munich.

A news source says that every year at least one or two leftover bombs in Germany explode without warning. And farmers sometimes die when their plows strike buried bombs or artillery shells.

So commonplace are the incidents, in fact, that Germans are rarely surprised by the news. In fact, the KMBD (Kampfmittelbeseitigungsdienst, or War Ordnance Disposal Service, a division of the Brandenburg state government) estimates that more than 2,000 tons of unexploded bombs are uncovered each year.

Britain, too, has its own unexploded bomb problem. In the city of Bath, a 500-pound German bomb was found under a school playground this past May.

No one knows exactly how many bombs are still out there or where they may be lurking, and that’s the problem. Any place that, during the war, was home to an armaments factory, transit hub, depot, or airport is likely to still be sitting on these rusting time bombs.

The deadly legacy of World War II goes on and on.

This first appeared in Warfare History Network here and first appeared on TNI in 2019.

Image: Reuters.

Stephen Silver

Security, Americas

The company, per Zacks Equity Research, beat estimates of analysts with their financial performance. This means the company has beaten consensus EPS estimates four quarters in a row.

Device maker Roku announced its third-quarter earnings after the bell Thursday, and the company posted surging revenue and profit. According to the company’s quarterly shareholder’s letter, the company posted revenue of $452 million in the third quarter, a 73 percent increase. Roku also posted an operating profit of $12 million, compared to a loss of $26.5 million in the same quarter the year before.

The company, per Zacks Equity Research, beat estimates of analysts with their financial performance. This means the company has beaten consensus EPS estimates four quarters in a row.

The huge amount of pandemic-related streaming continued in the third quarter as Roku added 2.9 million active accounts, to bring its total to 46 million. And total streaming hours increased by about 200 million hours from the second quarter to 14.8 billion.

“In Q3, Roku delivered outstanding financial and operational results led by robust demand for TV streaming products, strong growth in advertising and the expansion of content distribution partnerships,” The company said in its shareholder letter.

“As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continued to accelerate the shift of viewing away from traditional linear and pay TV, we continued to invest in competitive differentiation and execute well against our strategic plan.”

Roku also said that its player unit sales over 57 percent year over year, and also touted the products it introduced in the quarter, such as the Roku Ultra, as well as its agreement with NBC Universal to allow the Peacock streaming service on the Roku platform, which still does not carry the HBO Max streaming service.

And the company said its partners had “very strong sales” of Roku TV models during the quarter, and that some of their newer partners “achieved substantial year-over-year unit share gains in the U.S.”

In the earnings call, founder and CEO Anthony Wood was asked a question from an analyst about the future of sports and streaming.

“If I could wave my hand, I would – sure, I think, the best thing for sports would be for them to start selling [subscription video on demand] services like for regional sports networks as an SVOD service or the NFL as an SVOD service. I mean that’s what – that’s, I think, the way consumers want to sign up and consume sports in a streaming world. That’s how they sign up and see other streaming products on à la carte basis.”

“Despite continued uncertainties caused by the pandemic, we are pleased with the trajectory of our business and believe that Roku remains well-positioned to help shape the future of television – including TV advertising – around the world,” Wood added in the shareholder letter.

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

Image: Reuters

Desmond Lachman

economy, EU

At a time that U.S. health experts are warning of a dark U.S. coronavirus winter, one has to hope that U.S. economic policymakers are taking note of the gathering of European economic storm clouds and of the implications that this might have for the global economic outlook.

The last thing that a highly indebted and weak European economy now needs is another supply-side shock that could tip it into a double-dip recession and a prolonged period of price deflation.

Yet that is precisely what a renewed wave of the coronavirus pandemic is now threatening to do to Europe. This does not bode well for the European economy nor for the rest of the global economic recovery. This is especially the case given Europe’s large share in the world economy and the real risk that there could be another round of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis.

Even before the latest wave in the pandemic, the European economy was not in good shape. While the economy did experience a strong bounce from its earlier spring collapse, it still remains well below its pre-pandemic level. As a result, it has now lapsed into deflation. 

At the same time, European budget deficits have ballooned as a result of bold fiscal measures taken to fight the pandemic as well as of a collapse in tax collections in a weaker economy. As budget deficits have widened, the public debt levels in highly indebted countries like Italy, Portugal, and Spain have skyrocketed to postwar records. This is now raising questions anew about the ability of those countries to repay their debts.

The pandemic’s renewed wave now threatens to cause a double-dip in the European economic recession, which would exacerbate the Eurozone’s deflation problem. This would seem to be especially the case considering that France,  Germany, Italy, and Spain have all already been forced to substantially roll back the earlier easing in their lockdown restrictions. In the same way that the earlier lifting of the lockdown caused the economies of those countries to bounce, the world must now expect that the reimposition of coronavirus restrictions will cause the European economy to relapse into recession.

Another leg down in the European economy and a prolonged period of price deflation will increase the Eurozone’s debt servicing burden and make it all the more difficult for Italy, Portugal, and Spain to grow their way out of their debt problems. As underlined by their 2010 experience with budget austerity during the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, any attempt by those countries to improve their public finances by budget belt-tightening would only deepen their economic recessions. Stuck within a Euro straitjacket that has deprived them of their own currencies, those countries would not be in a position to cushion the economic blow of fiscal austerity by reducing interest rates or by resorting to currency depreciation.

A double-dip economic recession would also highly complicate the European Central Bank’s (ECB) fight against deflation, never mind allow it to meet its “close to but below 2 percent” inflation target. With European interest rates already in negative territory, any attempt at interest rate reduction would run the risk of putting further stress on Europe’s already shaky banking sector. At the same time, any effort to substantially increase the size of the ECB’s bond-buying program would run the risk of inviting a strong political backlash against such activities especially in Germany, the ECB’s largest shareholder.

In principle, the Eurozone does have a way out of its present dismal economic predicament. It would be to move rapidly to a fully-fledged fiscal union.  Such a move would allow a large region-wide fiscal stimulus package for Europe of the sort in which the United States periodically engages. That would provide a way of getting around the present constraints on a further budget stimulus that very high debt levels place on those countries in the Eurozone’s periphery.

The fly in the ointment, however, is that such a move is highly improbable anytime soon. It is not only that there is strong German political resistance to any notion of a European fiscal union. It is also that there is similar opposition to such an idea in the so-called frugal four countries of Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

At a time that U.S. health experts are warning of a dark U.S. coronavirus winter, one has to hope that U.S. economic policymakers are taking note of the gathering of European economic storm clouds and of the implications that this might have for the global economic outlook. Maybe then they will realize the urgency of finding an early compromise on a large second U.S. stimulus package to ensure that the United States, too, does not succumb to a double-dip economic recession.

Desmond Lachman is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was formerly a deputy director in the International Monetary Fund's Policy Development and Review Department and the chief emerging market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney. 

Image: Reuters

Sebastien Roblin

History, Asia

Japan bombed Pearl Harbor to strike back against a U.S. oil embargo.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Undeniably, the U.S. oil embargo had backed Imperial Japan into a corner. The Japanese military’s instincts, supported by a succession of victorious conflicts against numerically superior foes, was to strike out. Tokyo trusted in the valor and prowess of its soldiers and the incompetence of its enemies rather than deciding to back down before a superior correlation of forces.

The day after roughly 350 Japanese warplanes came screaming down over Pearl Harbor and sank or crippled eight of the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s battleships over a span of ninety minutes, Japanese newspapers published a statement by Emperor Hirohito declaring war with the United States and the United Kingdom and outlining its rationale for the attack.

“It has been truly unavoidable and far from Our wishes that Our Empire has been brought to cross swords with America and Britain… They have obstructed by every means Our peaceful commerce and finally resorted to a direct severance of economic relations, menacing gravely the existence of Our Empire. Patiently have We waited and long have We endured, in the hope that Our government might retrieve the situation in peace. But Our adversaries, showing not the least spirit of conciliation, have unduly delayed a settlement; and in the meantime they have intensified the economic and political pressure to compel thereby Our Empire to submission.”

Why exactly did Japan elect to attack a country with twice the population, five times the steel production and seventeen times the gross national income? The answer all came down to a U.S. embargo on imposed in response to Japan’s brutal invasion of China.

The fateful collision course between the United States and Japan was set ninety years earlier when in 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in a feudal, isolationist Japan and demanded it open itself to foreign trade. In the ensuing Meiji Restoration, the Japanese Emperor seized power from the feudal shogunate and implemented a policy of rapid modernization to avoid being exploited by Western imperialists as happened to China and India.

In practice, this meant Japan not only industrialized and modernized its armed forces, but also sought its share of colonial spoils. In 1894-95, the Japanese fleet defeated a beleaguered China, then effectively seized and colonized the “Hermit Kingdom” of Korea. Then in 1904-1905, the Imperial Japanese Navy defeated Tsarist Russia in the first major victory by an Asian country against a European power in modern times. Finally, early in World War I Japanese forces captured Germany’s colonial possession in China on behalf of the Franco-British Entente alliance. Tokyo was rewarded with permanent control of those territories post-war—much to the anger of the Chinese, who had also supported the Entente’s war effort.

The Japanese military had its sights set on grabbing more Chinese territory. Using the pretext of an attack on a Japanese railroad in Mukden (modern-day Shenyang) actually staged by a nationalistic Japanese officer, Japanese troops seized Manchuria, assaulted the Great Wall of China in 1933, and created the puppet state of Manchukuo. Then the absurd Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937 was used to justify a wider Japanese invasion in 1937 that seized most of China’s wealthy coastal cities.

Japan’s civilian government was not universally supportive of the military’s aggressive campaigns. However, several anti-war politicians were brazenly assassinated by Japanese officers, and the civilian government came to be completely marginalized by the military.

Tokyo eventually dubbed its rapidly growing empire the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Sphere was intended to rally nationalists across Asia opposing the depredations of Western imperialism. However, while the Sphere did attract some supporters such as Thai Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram, in practice the Co-Prosperity Sphere simply meant exchanging one form of foreign exploitation for another.

But the Japanese invasion of China caused relations with Washington to deteriorate. The United States was not entirely innocent of Asian colonialism—it too profited from the increased trade enabled by the Opium Wars, deployed soldiers to suppress the Boxer Rebellion, and effectively occupied the Philippines between 1898 and 1935. However, Washington had cultivated ties with the Chinese Nationalists and was alarmed by Japan’s military buildup. Moreover, America was ill-inclined towards Tokyo due to increasing reports of Japanese atrocities which included massacres such as the rape of Nanjing and the operational testing of biological weapons on Chinese civilians.

Finally, after Japanese forces invaded French Indochina (modern Vietnam and Cambodia) in June 1941, President Roosevelt implemented a ban on iron, steel and oil exports to Japan jointly with Australia and the United Kingdom.

Japan’s Pacific-spanning Empire depended on oil—and Japan had been importing 80 percent of it from the United States. Tokyo did have fifty-three million gallons of oil in reserve—a supply which could sustain its Empire for roughly a year.

Japan would have to withdraw from its Empire unless it could get more oil. There was a convenient supply of oil nearby at hand in the Dutch colonies of the East Indies. As the United Kingdom was tied down fighting Nazi Germany and the Netherlands was already occupied, Japan forces could likely use their existing oil reserve to capture the vital oil wells—but with the likely consequence of drawing the United States into war.

Thus, Tokyo began looking into a military option to cripple the U.S. military long enough to secure the Dutch oil wells and present a defeated U.S. public with a fait accompli.

Admiral Yamamoto warned Japanese militarists that he could only guarantee six months of victories—but he dutifully went ahead and planned the Pearl Harbor attack, which by any conventional military standard was an extraordinary success. Japan’s simultaneous invasions of the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, Burma, Hong Kong, Malaya and the Philippines likewise initially succeeded spectacularly.

But if the Pacific War were a board game, Japan had set up its pieces to pull off a series of killer movies early in the first few turns—but was still playing with a lot fewer pieces. Moreover, the Pearl Harbor raid failed to remove the most important U.S. pieces—its force of aircraft carriers, each carrying a hundred fighters and bombers that could attack targets hundreds of miles away.

After six months of Japanese victories, U.S. carriers sank four Japanese carriers in the Battle of Midway in June 1942—and subsequently embarked on an “island hopping” campaign that relentlessly dismantled the Japanese Empire over the next three years.

Undeniably, the U.S. oil embargo had backed Imperial Japan into a corner. The Japanese military’s instincts, supported by a succession of victorious conflicts against numerically superior foes, was to strike out. Tokyo trusted in the valor and prowess of its soldiers and the incompetence of its enemies rather than deciding to back down before a superior correlation of forces.

It follows that diplomatic compromises between Washington and Tokyo could have averted the Pacific War—but only with the consequence of enabling Japan’s brutal occupation of China, which is estimated to have caused the death of three to five million Chinese citizens.

Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared in December 2018.

Image: Wikimedia