Diplomacy & Crisis News

A model designer’s theoretical possible future Air Defence weapon for Ukraine, using a Ukrainian made BTR-4E married to a variant of the Skyshield modern air defence cannon. – image from the Panzerfux.de catalogue.

 

Much like the difficulty Russia had in defeating Ukraine’s defensive positions in 2022, Ukraine is now having to deal with similar problems being on offense. Like Ukraine, Russia is a military that spent much of the Soviet era practicing defensive positions after the German invasion during the Second World War. It should have been expected that in 2022 Ukraine would not have been easy to conquer as their entire military infrastructure, planning, and equipment was designed to be the first barrier to invasions from the West during the Cold War. Now that Ukraine has adopted an offensive posture, the difficulty in attacking Russian defensive positions has been met with great challenges. This may mean the war will drag on for some time, and a permanent and effective defense structure to modern threats should be top of mind for Ukraine and those assisting in their conflict.

One error that would make it very difficult for Ukraine’s allies to maintain their support for the defense of Ukraine is public sentiments within allied countries. It is extremely important not to diminish the needs of the local populations or put them in competition with aid policy in helping the war in Ukraine. It has been shown that allied populations are very willing to help Ukraine, even taking Ukrainians into their homes, breaking bread, and sharing their table among their family. What is a big error and is now apparent in my own city are that funds that were promised to compensate the city from their added Covid emergency spending is being intentionally stalled by the Federal Government while weekly announcements of military aid to help Ukraine are freely being promoted well over the amount promised for local safety, healthcare and basic needs. Putting citizen’s tax dollars in direct competition with foreign aid of any type is a horrible policy approach as it destroys good will and future aid projects for very noble causes.

A long term defensive plan must be tied to a cost efficient and effective defense. It has been demonstrated that using high cost and high tech missiles against low cost drones may be a strategy to bleed Ukraine of advanced weapons in the long term. Such missiles take a long time to produce and even longer to develop, and drone attacks are currently manipulating this situation. Anti-air systems like Gepard, that uses a dated radar system and two 35mm Oerlikon rapid fire cannons, has proven to be a Cold War solution to a modern problem. The cost effectiveness of using cannon shells against drones will enable a long term defense against such targets, and more such solutions need to be implemented if NATO seeks a long term victory for Ukraine.

The Shilka solution should become a major step in addressing the lack of a long term defense of Ukrainian civilians and military. The Gepard itself was the response to the Soviet 1960s era ZSU-23-4 Shilka, a radar based anti-air system using four 23mm cannons fixed in a special turret, married to a radar and tracking system. This systems was produced in very high numbers for most of the Cold War and it is likely the case that many are in storage, along with 23mm ammo, all over Eastern Europe and abroad.

The Shilka did have some variants upgraded with newer radar and tracking technology, as well as smaller anti-aircraft missiles. These projects were done by Ukraine and another independently by Poland in order to upgrade their military to more modern standards. This lower cost upgrade of the old system would be a project that could be applied to other Shilka units, along with new computers systems and radar upgrades. Shilkas would be greater in number than the Gepards and could defend many more locations from terror drones. Such projects could also be promoted by technical and engineering schools so that older technology radars could be used as a platform for new technology solutions, even perhaps making the radar and cannon used with AI as is used in many modern missile targeting systems. If no actions are to be taken to attack the drone manufacturing facilities, this might be the best option in the intermediate to long term.

A solution may also be possible with the assistance of diplomats and power politics. China does not want to seem like an overt threat as it would diminish trade with Western countries, and has recently been promoting itself as being a third party peace negotiator abroad. Current relations with China and the US are challenging, and a response by China has been to not openly support either Russia or Ukraine while seeking an image of mediator for conflicts well outside its own traditional realms of interest. China, like India, is in a unique position however as China is not being pressured to the same degree as smaller nations when dealing directly with Russia while under sanctions. China would serve itself well to either show it is not selling any equipment to Russia in its war, or tack in the other direction and offer weapons sales to both sides. Doing the latter should be done with regard to defensive weapons only. This would blunt heavy criticisms from Russia as those weapons would be used to save civilian lives and not cost Russian lives. Western criticism would be less effective as well as weapons sales would be benefitting Ukraine and its allies through low cost air defense implemented in rapid time.

China’s 2008 military parade demonstrated the new military strength of China, and some of that equipment had already been replaced by very modern systems. China’s newest anti-air cannon system, the PGZ09, is very closely related to the Gepard. Although a lot newer with a modern radar, it also carries two Oerlikon 35mm cannons and is active in the PLA. China would likely not sell active units of the PGZ09, but it would certain open an export market for future sales of the system if they decided to do so. An effective demonstration of the PGZ09 would likely displace many of Russia’s export sales of weapons as a bonus to China’s arms export industry. While this industry coped many Soviet systems in the past and exported them with great annoyance to Russia, China can now use their own designs with Western licensed technology to compete successfully in the weapons export market.

An older system that was presented in 2008 is the PGZ95, a modern system with a modern radar that uses four cannons like the Shilka, but also carries four smaller surface to air missiles as well. China replaced many of these fairly modern systems with their PGZ09, and considering the size of the PLA, there are likely many PGZ95 units available. PGZ95 would likely be obtained and put on the field to defend Ukraine a lot faster than even upgraded ZSU-23-4 Shilkas could be modernised to shoot down drones. If China wanted to sell weapons while putting on a neutral face, the sale of military equipment for defense would be an option with many sides taking interest. The PGZ95 would likely be a great drone killer and could be sold with armoured cars, helicopters, radars and other systems that could be used in a purely defensive manner.

Modern systems designed to detect and destroy drones are coming, but systems like Skyshield are still at great cost, limited in number, need time to be produced, and may be subject to export restrictions like the ammo for the Gepard. The economic costs to the public should be considered with every decision as they are the ones actually paying for weapons systems with no payment for their donations being returned back into their communities. Suggestions above would be implemented faster and save more lives, while creating a longer term defense strategy that does not alienate supporters in Western nations and is more cost effective. Everyone wants to save innocent lives and help defend Ukraine, but leaders need to always do this in concert with keeping their own country’s families safe, healthy and employed.

Azerbaijani journalist Elnur Enveroglu recently stated, “France’s colonial policy is the biggest disgrace of the 21st century.   The fact is that the French state, which acts as the leading party for the democratization policy in Europe, is carrying out racism, violation of human rights, discrimination of language, and religion, both in New Caledonia and within the country, along with the colonial policy.  For this reason, there is great strife and turmoil within France today.”  

According to him, “Instead of regulating what is happening inside the country, French President Emmanuel Macron intervenes in the affairs of countries near or far from this country.  For example, let us take a look at the South Caucasus or the unresolved negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.  Imagine that on the eve of the riots in France, he is looking for a remedy for the incurable pain of Armenia, which is 5,000 KM away, disrespecting the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and even making inappropriate statements.   Within these statements, France is on the verge of an economic recession.”

Enveroglu added: “I should note that serious protests against the French company Total Energy have started in Africa recently.   It spread rapidly to other countries like a wave.   Even France embraced Armenia so much that it seemed to want to say that it is willing to end cooperation with Azerbaijan, one of the leading countries in the South Caucuses in the economic field, for the sake of the Armenians.  This might bring about the end of France.”

According to him, “By doing this, President Macron acts as if he is reporting to the Armenians and he has a kind of commitment to support separatists in Karabakh.  This is probably the compensation of his debt to Armenian lobbyists after the presidential election.”  However, he highlighted how this is not a wise policy: “Recently, Azerbaijan hosted the ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Baku and France’s colonial policy was on the agenda of the conference.   A Baku Initiative Group was formed against French colonialism.    This decision was made following the event ‘towards the complete elimination of colonialism’ organized in Baku by the Center for Analysis of International Relations within the framework of the ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement.  A document was adopted on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the national leader Heydar Aliyev.”

Professor Nursin Guney noted that this meeting was held because “France in the 21st century continues to colonize certain African countries.   This is against human rights.   France is holding the third and fourth largest gold reserves in the world.  Even though it does not have gold mines, they were all obtained through a colonization strategy.”  

In the past, European countries, including France, were mainly in pursuit of colonies – the Dutch, the Germans, the British, the Spanish and the French also did this. In the past, the main goal of most European countries was to conquer as much territory as possible and turn it into a colony. This is how the Europeans used the natural treasures and labor force of those colonies and from that they got rich and obtained cheap labor. The colonies supplied the European countries with spices, different types of food, gold, metals, diamonds and more. It was quite profitable to own a colony at that time; you could say it was like a status symbol.

But during the world wars, both the first and second, the colonial industry was destroyed. The occupied nations began to demand independence and to separate from the European rule that was imposed on them by force. But the struggles for freedom were not easy or simple. France, for example, was very attached to its colonies and saw the colonial industry as a mission, because thanks to the colonies, the French could teach the “primitive ignorant people” over whom they controlled some culture. France did not give up the nations she controlled easily.

France did not give up Syria after the First World War, even though the founders of the Kingdom of Syria (the Hashem family from the Hejaz region of the Arabian Peninsula) helped the countries of the agreement to conquer Syria and Israel. France saw Syria as her private property and conquered it by force from the Arabs without mercy and without showing mercy to anyone.

And of course, there was Algeria, whose citizens took eight years to successfully remove French rule from their country. Algeria was an old and important French colony, it is actually the last colony that France liberated and gave independence. The French colonies are called overseas territories. For the French, the colonies were their way of spreading the values of the French Revolution and their worldview. According to them, they held the correct view of the world; they are the ones who became disillusioned and they wanted to pass on their new knowledge to other peoples.

These days, France still owns several overseas territories, including Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Reunion, Mayotte and a few others. The aforementioned countries met in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to discuss France’s attitude towards them. Among the delegations there were also representatives of New Caledonia, whose situation in relation to France is slightly different, it ranges between a province of France overseas and a sovereign state. The representative of New Caledonia claimed at the conference in Baku that France has controlled Caledonia for over 170 years and stated that the country’s history is written in blood.

The president of the parliament of New Caledonia said at the conference that “France calls itself a democratic republic of unity, equality and fraternity, but this is just a façade, this is all a lie.” He went on to say that “by participating in today’s event in Baku, we call not to repeat this bloody colonial history. The policy of colonization must stop.” The French government must allow a referendum to be held in New Caledonia to see if the New Caledonian people support separation from French rule or actually prefer to remain under the French. In the first referendum in 2018, the results decided that New Caledonia would remain under the French government. The supporters of the French government got 56.4% of the votes.

After the referendum, French President Emmanuel Macron visited the island and noted that the results of the referendum showed “confidence in the French Republic”. On the other side, a politician from the side of those who want to break away from the French government optimistically claimed that “we are one step before victory”. The second referendum took place in 2020, but also in it the supporters of independence for New Caledonia lost the elections. The supporters of the French government won 53.26% of the votes. Macron called for dialogue between the parties and hinted that France wants to say goodbye to its colonial past.

Macron added that there is a possibility of a third referendum. The third referendum, the president of the Parliament of New Caledonia claimed at a conference in Baku, happened during the Corona period. Although this referendum was illegal, France accepted its results anyway. The opponents of the French government wanted to decide in a way that was not a referendum, but this was the only option that France allowed them and it sent 2000 soldiers to enforce it. He calls the French conduct neocolonialism and demands from the UN to allow his country to say goodbye to its history and set out on an independent path.

Representatives of French Guiana were also present at the conference in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The country’s representatives claimed that France appropriated the assets of French Guiana for itself and looted its natural treasures. French settlement in French Guiana began in 1604, the French used the area as a prison. Since French Guiana has been under French rule, its citizens have never experienced independence and never known what it’s like to be under a government that truly represents them. According to the representatives at the committee in Baku, French Guiana is in a state of colonization, with a 30% unemployment rate. Like the other countries that came to the conference in Baku, both French Guiana and New Caledonia demanded to say goodbye to France and start the path of an independent country, to say goodbye to their history and leave it in the past.

It may be that the disease of colonialism affects each nation in a different way and it takes each nation a different amount of time to heal from it in its own unique way. France is among the few countries in our time that still has colonies overseas that have almost no connection between them and France and between themselves (geographic connection, ethnic connection, cultural connection) at the base. Those French provinces overseas want to become independent countries, something they have never experienced in the flesh. It seems that they still need to work on this, both to prepare the opponents of separation from France for the day after and to work on a stronger France that will free them from its grip.

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How America should adapt to China’s growing influence in the region.

The United States’ foreign policy toward the Middle East is a contradictory one. The United States maintains a system of strategic partnerships aimed at countering mutual threats and maintains a robust naval presence in the region that not only protects trade routes vital to the U.S. and global economy but routinely holds multi-partner exercises. At the same time, the United States seeks to pivot towards the Indo-Pacific. 

This has created a void that China seeks to fill by using its non-alliance policy with regional partners that are U.S. allies and foes alike. Initially, China fosters pragmatic economic ties with nations on a purely transactional basis to achieve security via development. This was epitomized by the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum’s Ambassador Li Chengwen, who in 2016 declared, “The root problems in the Middle East lie in development and the only solution is also development.” As these economic bonds deepen, China will seek to cement them with security ties that inevitably contradict U.S. interests. 

China’s attempts to displace the United States in the Middle East are likely to attract the latter’s long-term assets back into the region. In a testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, asserted in March 2023 that the United States was “in a race to integrate with our partners before China can fully penetrate the region.” Thus, trade ties or the tech race cannot be treated in a siloed manner and distinct from broader security concerns due to the direct spill-over from technology to security. Noting the organic nature of China’s economic, political, and strategic concerns, Kurilla declared, “The People’s Republic of China has chosen to compete in the region. The PRC is aggressively expanding its diplomatic, informational, military and economic outreach across the region.” 

China perceives development and trade as synonymous. In turn, China’s Belt Road Initiative (BRI) is committed to investing in both physical and digital infrastructure that includes connecting ports and facilities and adopting e-government platforms. By expanding Gulf digital sectors with advanced technologies, Huawei and Alibaba are actively contributing to the Gulf’s digital transformation that underpins the Digital Silk Road. The U.S. response has been to conduct a “clean network” campaign that dissuaded third countries from buying Huawei and ZTE 5G equipment. Furthermore, in July 2022, President Joe Biden signed a 5G and 6G memorandum of cooperation with Saudi Arabia. Yet, this is only a start, as China is Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner and Riyadh is seeking to invest $50 billion into China.  The United States must explore the range of next-generation technologies to serve as a counterweight to China’s Digital Silk Road. This would prevent Chinese telecommunications and information technology from posing a security threat to U.S. forces and allies operating in the region.

In the absence of advanced U.S. technologies, China’s BRI is aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 which is committed to developing trade and technical hubs, manufacturing and logistics facilities, artificial intelligence, digital industries, and smart-city infrastructure. Saudi Arabia is diversifying its economy to attract foreign investments and enable it to be a central node that connects continents. This positions the Saudi kingdom as the BRI’s crown jewel due to its critical location on a pathway that allows China to access Europe and Africa via Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Algeria. This serves as the foundation for China to seek to establish comprehensive strategic partnerships with the Middle East.

China’s involvement in the region has evolved from being purely economic to engaging on regional political and security issues. In December 2021, it was reported that China was assisting Saudi Arabia with its ballistic missile program and manufacturing its own armed drones. China sought to build a military base in Abu Dhabi as well, but the venture was abandoned due to U.S. pressure. The risk exists that as China continues to deepen its economic and strategic ties, it may be in the position to advance its security interests to the extent that U.S. allies are less likely to succumb to U.S. pressure. This is due to U.S. inconsistency in its application of pressure and being perceived as non-committal toward the region’s security. According to one Iranian official, China oversaw the formation of a regional naval coalition that includes Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others to reinforce maritime navigation and the security of shipping lanes, which directly confronts the mission of U.S. CENTCOM.

Yet China’s strategy of establishing economic ties as the foundation for security ties while maintaining a policy of non-alignment is unsustainable. It is not possible for China to advance its nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia and the UAE without raising the ire of the Iranian regime.

U.S. strategic partners across the region will continue to mirror the behavior of the United States. If the United States is perceived as strategically engaged in the region and willing to shore up the defenses of Gulf Cooperation Council states with advanced technologies to counter China’s Digital Silk Road, they are unlikely to hedge and orientate themselves toward Chinese naval and security coalitions. This is inextricably tied to the United States’ bid to prevent China from embedding itself in the region’s infrastructure and investing in advanced technologies such as clean energy that could be incorporated into Gulf economic diversification efforts. Just as China perceives economic and security ties as building blocks toward an overarching security architecture, the United States must follow suit.

Harley Lippman is a board member of the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Partnership for Peace Fund.

Image: Shutterstock.

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Bookending Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent fence-mending trip to Beijing were two largely overlooked, but nonetheless ominous, developments which demonstrated unambiguously China’s dominance over global supply chains for critical minerals needed for the energy transition because of their use is essential in various applications—including electric vehicles (EVs), wind turbines, and solar panels. Unless the United States and its allies can escape the pincer, their ambitions for net-zero carbon emissions—to say nothing of those for other future technological innovations—may well be stillborn.

China’s Rare Earth Metals Monopoly

On July 3, citing national security interests, Chinese authorities announced export restrictions beginning next month on gallium and germanium, two metals that are key to high-speed computer chips and fiber optic cables as well as some sensitive military uses like night-vision and satellite imagery. China produces 80 percent of the world’s supply of gallium and 60 percent of that of germanium. Beyond the implications for chipmakers and other manufacturers, the move sparked concern about supply chains for rare earth elements (REEs)—the group of seventeen metals with strategic applications in defense, aerospace, energy, and transportation technologies—over which China has an even tighter grip, controlling more than 90 percent of global output. After the Independence Day holiday, even President Joseph Biden tweeted, “China has dominated the production of raw materials needed for critical products for too long.”

But what is even more telling is what has happened with REEs, prized for their strong magnetic properties allowing for energy efficiencies in EVs and other electric devices as well as military uses, including lasers, missile guidance systems, aircraft, and satellites. Instead of rising as watchers might have expected given the export curbs on the gallium and germanium, the price of praseodymium neodymium alloy, for example, subsequently sunk to its lowest level since 2020, down more than two-thirds since January of last year. While part of this is attributable to a slackening of demand—new wind power installations are down globally—a significant part of this appears to be intentional policy. As one analyst told Reuters, “If you’ve got 90 percent market share of magnet processing capacity, there’s a goldilocks price where you earn a return but you don’t encourage anyone else in the rest of the world to build capacity.”

This market dominance is the greater challenge to efforts to secure reliable access to critical minerals like REEs because it remains an economic barrier to entry, even if geological resources are located elsewhere. China’s own natural resources endowment allowed the country to cultivate the mining and processing of rare earths, but it was the Communist regime that dictated the late 2021 merger of three of its biggest state-owned REE mining firms—China Minmetals Rare Earth, Chinalco Rare Earth & Metals, and China Southern Rare Earth Group—to form the China Rare Earth Group. This consolidation permits the regime to control the global market more easily by facilitating synergies to lower overall production costs even further (the new juggernaut controls almost two-thirds of China’s heavy rare earths production), thus deterring any potential foreign competitors from even entering the business and eventually competing with it.

The strategic implications of this de facto monopoly are not hypothetical. In 2010, in response to the detention of the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that provocatively rammed two Japanese coast guard vessels off the Senkaku Islands, Beijing blocked export to Japan of REEs. As I noted in a study last year for the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy, that embargo, while short-lived, underscored both the risks of dependence on China as a single supplier and China’s willingness to exploit its supply chain dominance for political leverage. Realizing the need to secure an alternative REE supply chain, the Japanese government teamed up with Japanese businesses to support rare earths mining at western Australia’s Mount Weld by Lynas, an Australian company that has subsequently become what is currently the only significant producer of separated rare earth materials outside of China. (Such is the Chinese comparative advantage in REE processing that the largest single rare earth mine in the world, the open pit at Mountain Pass, California, just southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, has been sending its raw ore to China for processing before the metal returns to the United States as finished magnets used in EVs and other applications.)

A Three-Prong Plan

To escape this veritable trap of dependency, the United States—and, of course, its allies, including the European Union, which is currently elaborating its own critical minerals strategy—should adopt a three-pronged approach:

First, an “all-of-the-above” mindset is required to deal with the supply side of the equation. Where it makes geological and economic sense, domestic production should not only be cheered on politically but actually enabled by a rational and timely permitting process. The Biden administration, for example, has used a variety of existing federal programs and legal authorities to support the establishment of a facility by MP Materials to separate the heavy REEs from its Mountain Pass mine and manufacture permanent magnets without first exporting them to China for ore processing and mineral refining.

Where domestic supply chains are impractical or insufficient, new partnerships have to be developed to secure access to vital resources, such as a “buyers’ club” like the nascent State Department-led Mineral Security Partnership, which includes Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Commission.

In other instances, the answer might be found in innovative approaches like the Lobito Corridor, championed by White House senior advisor Amos Hochstein, which aims to link Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Zambia—three African countries with significant reserves of critical minerals and other strategic materiel—to global markets and catalyzing the African nations’ value chains with improved energy and other interconnections, supported by the G7’s flagship infrastructure initiative, the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII).

Moreover, as I have argued here previously, given that the single most significant challenge is that any one country or entity so dominates supply chains that it is able, at will, to block others’ access to critical minerals, diversification of supply is the overriding priority and key to de-risking, even if it might entail having to do business at times with countries or firms that might otherwise not be viewed as preferred, or even desirable, partners.

Second, the United States and other countries should continue to facilitate the growth of new ventures with the potential to compete and even supplant the current Chinese monopoly, whether by bringing new sources of raw materials online or developing technologies to bypass the midstream processing (refining, alloying), both presently dominated by a Chinese firm.

Notwithstanding the political and diplomatic controversies over the enactment and implementation of America’s Inflation Reduction Act, the legislation not only provided numerous tax credits and other incentives for companies to invest in critical minerals and EV supply chains, but bolstered existing programs like the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office. Other existing agencies, like the Defense Logistics Agency and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) also have roles to play. While not all of these experiments will succeed, some will; a few might even prove transformative. (Full disclosure: I am a non-executive director of Rainbow Rare Earths which, with a modest indirect investment from the DFC via Ireland-based TechMet, has a pilot plant in South Africa to produce mixed rare earth sulfate from waste gypsum stacks that, in turn, at a second facility under construction in Florida, will be separated into rare earth oxides for eventual sale to permanent magnet manufacturers.)

Third, given that the sustainability of supply chains is dependent upon demand and the demonstrated power of the current Chinese monopoly over the global market for REEs, it is imperative that the United States and like-minded countries help level the playing field for emerging alternative suppliers via instruments like off-take agreements linked to national strategic reserves or incentives to private companies to enter into similar deals. Without this basic lifeline, it would be almost inconceivable for new entrants into the market to survive the cut-throat and uneven competition. The fate of the French firm Rhône-Poulenc, whose now closed La Rochelle factory at one time processed half of the purified REEs in the world, should be a sobering reminder of the raw power that Chinese state-owned enterprises can bring to bear in a yearslong price war to take down a rival.

Better Late than Never

For the moment, there is no denying that China has built a formidable position in the global quest for critical minerals in general and for very strategic rare earths in particular. But Beijing’s decision to lash out against U.S. curbs on advanced technology sales by both export restrictions of its own on select materials and a preemptive price war on others may have inadvertently alerted the world to the risks that its effective monopoly poses to vital supply chains. Late as it may be in the game, there is still an opportunity to shift the play.

Ambassador J. Peter Pham, a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Senior Advisor at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy, is former U.S. Special Envoy for the Sahel and Great Lakes Regions of Africa.

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Two metallic elements, tucked deep within the periodic table, have emerged as key drivers of world politics. On July 3, China’s Ministry of Commerce and China Customs announced export controls on gallium and germanium products (including compounds), effective August 1. This action, aimed at “safeguarding national security and interests,” according to Chinese officials, has stirred global panic within various industries, governments, and media outlets.

Although these two rare metals only account for several hundred million dollars in global trade—a figure that pales in comparison with the chipmaking industry’s value of over $600 billion—they are critical strategic resources in the defense and high-tech sectors. Infrared optics, fiberoptic communications, solar cells, and compound semiconductors are useless without them. Any disruption in the supply of these metals would therefore unsettle downstream markets valued in the trillions of dollars.

Further exacerbating the anxiety is China’s dominance in the global supply of these metals. In 2022 alone, China manufactured 90 percent of gallium-related products and 68 percent of germanium-related products. Chinese authorities argue that export restrictions on products involving these metals are standard international practice and not targeted at any specific country.

Weaponizing Critical Minerals

China’s role in the technological competition with the United States bears similarities to an apprentice learning from its master by leveraging its dominance in critical technologies or resources. China appears to be employing a “chokepoint strategy”—weaponizing its stronghold over these critical rare metals.

China’s strategic use of these minerals conveys a compelling narrative. Despite the chokepoints it faces in its chipmaking supply chain—stemming from limited access to critical technologies, a gap it might close independently over the next five to eight years—the potential disruption in the supply of these essential metals could stymie the United States and its allies’ progress in defense-related and high-tech manufacturing.

Although the United States commands a leading role in upstream chip design, intellectual property, manufacturing technology, as well as downstream branding and marketing, its reliance on allies is critical in implementing a chokepoint strategy against China. Unilateral sanctions would push China to alternative suppliers, almost all allies of the US, triggering potential losses in the Chinese market for the United States and rendering its attempts to contain China ineffective. America’s regional partners are therefore crucial for impeding China’s access to advanced chipmaking technologies and mitigating threats to U.S. national security, albeit at a substantial cost to the United States and its allies.

At its core, the chokepoint strategy leverages monopoly. It allows those who control a critical technology, resource, or transport route to influence their adversaries without warfare. With a monopoly over the gallium and germanium supply chains, China can enforce export controls without incurring substantial economic backlash.

The Chinese government’s export restrictions on these rare metals are unlikely to inflict significant domestic economic damage. First, China’s economy consumes a substantial portion of these products. Second, the total export revenue from these metals—240 million yuan from gallium and 360 million yuan from germanium in 2022 (in total less than $100 million)—is insignificant compared to China’s semiconductor expenditure. Lastly, given these rare metal products’ unique and non-renewable nature, surplus production can be subsidized and stockpiled indefinitely, preventing significant economic losses for China.

On the flip side, the effects of China’s export controls are likely to vary across the countries in the U.S.-led chip alliances, which could challenge the dynamics of the alliances. Intermediate players in the value chain may bear the brunt. Japan, in particular, is at risk, given its high concentration of firms producing chemical compounds from these elements—largely imported in their primary form from China. As a global leader in advanced semiconductor materials and a significant consumer, Japan could face more significant long-term impacts from China’s export restrictions on these rare metals.

Short-Term Solutions and Long-Term Considerations

Refining technologies and facilities for processing gallium and germanium cannot be built overnight, particularly considering the environmental implications of their extraction and mining. As such, for the United States and its allies, constructing an independent supply chain for gallium and germanium processing could require a staggering investment of over $20 billion—considerably more significant than the total trade revenue of the products of these two elements—and potentially years, if not decades, of development. Even then, achieving cost advantages comparable to China’s might prove challenging.

One scenario could unfold as follows: China may decide to ease its export controls after significant investments in building infrastructure, such as electricity, and facilities for extracting and processing gallium and germanium. In such a scenario, and given China’s efforts to refine its technology and improve the processing efficiency of these metals, businesses may find it financially prudent to revert to sourcing from Chinese suppliers.

Although some might argue that firms from the United States and its allies would opt against reverting to sourcing gallium and germanium from China, even in the face of a more compelling value proposition, we must not discount the sway of economic realities. These factors often shape decision-making in international trade. While shared values can contribute to forming alliances, shared interests—often economic and security-related—primarily drive international cooperation. The relationship between international trade and geopolitics is complex, with economic factors, political alignments, and strategic considerations all playing pivotal roles.

Economic and Environmental Reality

Towards the end of the twentieth century, Western multinational corporations started manufacturing operations in China, attracted by its low-cost and abundant labor, land, and raw materials. With the advent of internet and communication technologies, the United States spearheaded an industrial revolution, transforming its economy into an “innovation economy”—a model that can be described as “Wall Street + Silicon Valley.” This shift involved channeling more resources into research and development, design, branding, and marketing while outsourcing lower-value-added manufacturing jobs to less developed nations, predominantly China. This shift also marked China’s entry into global production networks.

Although China has benefited significantly from this wave of globalization, these benefits have come at a considerable cost, particularly regarding environmental impact. Also, China’s restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the late 1990s resulted in millions of job losses, sparking social unrest and challenging the ruling party’s legitimacy. At the same time, China embarked on the most significant urbanization endeavor in human history. The Western trend of outsourcing production to China solved these urgent issues. During these industrial shifts, China assumed many lower-value-added tasks and many resource-intensive and environmentally damaging aspects of manufacturing. One area where China has assumed a significant role in the global production network is the extraction and refining of many vital minerals, including rare earth and rare metals. This integration into the global production network provided employment opportunities for displaced SOEs and migrant workers, bolstering China’s lower-tier supply chains and strengthening its manufacturing capabilities.

Over the past decades, China has refined its abilities in extracting and processing these rare metals, often on a massive scale. This progress was facilitated by industrial policies and subsidies and driven by a trial-and-error innovation process powered by intense internal competition among domestic firms. While China’s operations in gallium and germanium processing might sit at the lower end of the value chain, their advantages lie in the sheer scale of production, resulting in unrivaled cost benefits for products related to these metals.

Another critical advantage worth noting is China’s command over the natural reserves of these metals. China produces 80 percent of the world’s gallium reserves—the highest share globally—and 60 percent of the world’s germanium reserves.

Both gallium and germanium are classified as dispersed metals that occur in deficient concentrations in the Earth’s crust, rendering extraction highly uneconomical. For instance, gallium primarily exists as a secondary element in bauxite ore, with its production primarily being a by-product of aluminum refining. Likewise, germanium rarely forms independent ores and is typically found within minerals composed of other elements. In China, germanium primarily comes from by-products of germanium-rich coal. As the world’s largest producer and consumer of aluminum and coal, China can economically justify the production of gallium and germanium chemical compounds. In fact, the country’s leading gallium and germanium producers are industrial mineral corporations, such as Chinalco, the world’s largest aluminum producer, which also derives profits from selling other metal products.

Although the United States has extensive natural germanium reserves, the element is mainly found in zinc ores. Extracting heavy metals like lead and zinc can lead to substantial environmental damage. Plus, large-scale mining operations are not financially viable if there is no market for the derived lead and zinc products. Notably, as far back as 1984, the United States halted its own production of germanium for these reasons.

Globalization at a Crossroads

Recognizing the risks of overreliance on China for critical minerals, Western countries have adopted a “de-risking” strategy to reduce their dependence on China’s supply through a U.S.-led Minerals Security Partnership, which excludes China. However, challenging China’s dominance is proving daunting, not merely due to China’s stronghold on the supply of these elements but also the rising competition involving chokepoint strategies that threaten the very fabric of globalization.

China has established substantial advantages across thirty-six critical minerals, including rare earth elements and metals. These elements are essential for defense and pivotal for emerging technologies in next-generation semiconductors and clean energy transitions—two arenas where Washington and Beijing vie for supremacy. While China’s critics point to the unfairness of its industrial policy and fiscal subsidies, other nations are mimicking China’s strategy, engaging in policy competition and subsidies to bolster their advantages in critical minerals, prioritizing national security over economic efficiency.

The U.S.-China relationship is now characterized mainly by competition and confrontation, overshadowing the potential for cooperation and collaboration. While a direct conflict between a rising power and an established hegemon—Graham Allison’s “Thucydides Trap”—may be unlikely, a period of great power rivalry, especially in the tech domain, will persist and perhaps escalate. Fears of one’s adversary gaining the upper hand encourage the use of chokepoint strategies. The outcome of this great power tech war hinges on who holds more “chips,” the costs involved, and the impacted parties.

How the issues surrounding gallium and germanium are handled could very well dictate the future balance of technological power.

Dr. Marina Yue Zhang is an associate professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney. Marina’s research interests cover China’s innovation policy and practice, emerging technologies, and network effects in digital transformation. She is the author of three books, including Demystifying China’s Innovation Machine: Chaotic Order, co-authored with Mark Dodgson and David Gann (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Changes to the platform have systematically amplified authoritarian state propaganda.

Modi’s party is intent on demonizing Nehru, the country’s first prime minister. A new book adds nuance to the debate.

Thousands of people worldwide were forced from their homes this week to escape deadly environmental disasters.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, President Obama’s first Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, famously said the quiet part out loud: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” More recently, self-appointed masters of the universe, such as World Economic Forum chairman Klaus Schwab used the COVID pandemic to justify a so-called “Great Reset” of capitalism “to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies.”

Also sensing a moment to capitalize on a crisis, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has proposed his own plan to enhance the power of the United Nations greatly and, not so coincidentally, the power of the secretary-general.

As Guterres argues, recent crises “have challenged our international institutions,” and the Summit of the Future, where he will present the details of his plan to world governments, is a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to enhance cooperation on critical challenges and address gaps in global governance.”

Guterres unveiled the contours of his plan in a series of meetings and policy briefs, some still forthcoming. There are eleven such briefs underway, covering topics ranging from “Future Generations” to “Outer Space” to “Beyond Gross Domestic Product” to a “Global Digital Compact” to “Transforming Education” to “United Nations 2.0.”

This so-called “Pact of the Future” represents a stunning attempted power grab by the secretary-general. These proposals raise serious concerns and objections from the U.S. and other governments that value their sovereignty and that question the wisdom of granting more authority to international bureaucrats and establishing new supra-national rules and institutions that might dramatically impact the U.S. and its future interests.

Among the most concerning policy briefs is one that would grant Guterres authority to “convene and operate an Emergency Platform in the event of complex global crises,” whether that be another pandemic, an environmental crisis, disruptions in global flows of goods, people, or finance, or some other “black swan” event.

Under the proposal, Guterres would be granted “standing authority to convene and operationalize automatically an Emergency Platform” with minimal consultation from governments. Specifically, he would consult in advance the President of the General Assembly, the President of the Security Council, relevant national authorities, regional organizations, and other relevant UN agencies and other multilateral institutions “that have been mandated by Member States to respond to sector-specific crises.” There is no requirement to consult with all governments. In other words, the UN could take important decisions without input from the U.S.

The purpose of the Emergency Platform is to “overcome obstacles and bottlenecks to an effective response”—i.e., the reluctance of governments to heed the dictates of the UN Unsurprisingly, the proposal specifies that “Any response mechanism must ensure that participating actors make clear commitments [such as financial or technical resources or a significant policy shift] that directly and immediately support the global response to a complex shock... Participants would need to accept accountability for delivering on these commitments.”

Indeed, the structure—where Guterres would invite international organizations, experts, academics, and non-governmental organizations to participate alongside governments—seems designed to diminish the authority of national governments and pressure them into cooperation with their decrees.

Rest assured that Guterres and future UN secretaries-general will utilize this authority. If you take the UN's word, the migrant, climate, poverty, and debt crises demand urgent attention. Although the “Emergency Platform should initially be convened for a finite period to respond to a specific shock... the Secretary-General could extend the work of an Emergency Platform if required.” Emergency powers are hard to give up once grasped.

But the policy briefs also proffer ideas beyond this that should trouble Americans.

For instance, the policy brief on information integrity calls for developing a “United Nations Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms that would provide a blueprint for bolstering information integrity while vigorously upholding human rights.” Examples cited of information where integrity has faltered include misinformation and disinformation during the COVID pandemic, “climate denialist content,” and hate speech.

Of course, Americans have seen firsthand how efforts to repress “disinformation” and “misinformation” instead are misused to silence opposing opinions and repress inconvenient evidence, as seen with the Chinese lab leak theory on the origin of COVID. Moreover, countries like China and Russia are eager to censor content and will be delighted to use the UN to extend domestic repression internationally. It is hard to see any UN Code that would not run roughshod over the First Amendment.

Another policy brief suggests reshaping the international financial architecture to increase investment in “global public goods” like climate action, update the international tax architecture, and make the system more “inclusive, representative and, ultimately, more effective global economic governance.” Developing countries have long clamored for developed nations to provide more assistance, and liberals have long desired global taxes to finance their environmental efforts. This policy brief seems designed to facilitate those objectives.

These are still notional proposals by the secretary-general. The granular details have not been fleshed out. While the Pact will not possess legal force, it will create political pressures on future U.S. presidential administrations. The overarching goal is to aggregate power to the UN and the secretary-general and away from the Member States. If all goes according to plan, this effort will culminate with all the world’s governments endorsing the “Pact of the Future” in September 2024.

As reported by The Federalist, the Biden administration has expressed support for the effort, apparently content to subject the American people to the whims of the secretary-general. This is entirely misguided. The President should instead be defending their sovereignty from this naked power grab.

Brett D. Schaefer is the Heritage Foundation’s Jay Kingham Senior Research Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs.

Steven Groves is the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Fellow, concentrating on issues that threaten to undermine American sovereignty, self-governance, and independence.

Image: Shutterstock. 

This article expresses my understanding of the viewpoints regarding the U.S. deterrence strategy over potential Taiwan Strait conflicts, made by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, Mark Milley, on June 30, 2023. By examining the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) principle of unification with Taiwan in the context of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and explaining why the continuation of implementing this historical mission is unstoppable in the new era, I attempt to argue that relying solely on deterrence to stop Xi Jinping’s ambition would be imprudent and could even jeopardize U.S. national security although the deterrence strategy influences China’s decision-making process. I hope that the three parties, the PRC, Taiwan, and the United States, will reevaluate their strategies and adopt the right approach to promote peaceful triangular relations.

When Milley gave a speech at a National Press Club event in Washington on June 30, 2023, he commented on Xi’s stance on Taiwan. According to Milley, there is no concrete evidence suggesting that Xi has made a firm decision on ordering a military unification with Taiwan by 2027, but the decisionmaking process is still underway. Milley suggested the United States and its allies build up deterrence to ensure that every single day Xi wakes up and says today is not that day, and that decision never comes.

It is understandable when Milley emphasizes the significance of a deterrence strategy in influencing China’s decision-making process based on the historical experience of U.S. foreign policy and implementation. However, it would be imprudent and could even jeopardize U.S. national security if the policymakers believe that the deterrence strategy alone could change Xi’s determination to fulfill China’s historical mission of reunification of Taiwan in the context of China and the vision of the CCP.

The reunification of Taiwan is not Xi’s personal idea, but a longstanding principle upheld by all top leaders of the CCP. The founding father of the PRC, Mao Zedong, made it clear that Taiwan is part of China and pointed out that “Taiwan is ours, and we will never compromise on this issue, which is an issue of internal affairs.” Mao declared that the Chinese people will not tolerate foreign aggression or interference in our internal affairs because China does not fear its enemies. According to him, enemies are like flies: “On this tiny globe, a few flies dash themselves against the wall.” Mao tried to take over Taiwan several times by force, but unfortunately, he failed due to various factors, such as the ripple effects of the Cold War, the failure experience during the Taiwan Strait crises during 1954 and 1958, the interruption of the Cultural Revolution, the changing attitudes of the Taiwanese people and the U.S. intervention.

Although Deng Xiaoping prioritized the development of the Chinese economy in the post-Mao era and set forth a low-profile strategy, he still felt urgent to fulfill unification so he developed a roadmap toward the reunification of Taiwan by proposing the framework of “one country, two systems.” Jiang Zemin insisted that One China is the fundamental principle of reunification which is an inevitable trend of Chinese history by proposing an eight-point proposition for China’s reunification of Taiwan. Hu Jintao confirmed that China will continue to adhere to the One-China principle and firmly opposed any form of Taiwan independence and any attempts to create “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan.” Meanwhile, he urged unification with Taiwan. Despite that the PRC firmly insisted on the reunification of Taiwan, it still adopted a more pragmatic and flexible approach to the Taiwan issue under before the Xi administration.

It is not surprising that Xi has been taking a tougher stance on Taiwan as China has become the world’s second-largest economy because foreign policy always reflects national comprehensive power. Xi has promised that China must be and will be reunified and asserted that the problem of Taiwan cannot be passed on from generation to generation. He also warned that China makes no promise to renounce the use of force and reserves the option of taking all necessary measures to achieve the reunification of China. Yet, Xi’s view on unification with Taiwan is essentially the same as all his predecessors. Since the inception of the PRC, all of the five top CCP leaders uphold the One-China Principle as they believe that Taiwan is an integral part of China; they firmly reject any form of Taiwan independence; they vow to safeguard national sovereignty including Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan; they believe the reunification of Taiwan is an inevitable outcome and a historical trend; and they express a commitment to achieving reunification as an important aspect of maintaining national unity.

Each leader’s viewpoints have unavoidably been influenced by their respective historical contexts and the evolving circumstances of the global community, so their viewpoints toward Taiwan’s reunification have varied over time in their emphasis, approach, and specific policies. While all five top CCP leaders express the goal of reunification, Deng, Jiang, and Hu, placed a stronger emphasis on peaceful means of achieving reunification, highlighting the importance of maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. Mao and Xi, on the other hand, have a more assertive policy and practice, and they do not explicitly prioritize peaceful reunification. Each leader has pursued their own approach toward Taiwan’s reunification. Deng and Jiang advocated for the framework of “One Country, Two Systems,” which was implemented in Hong Kong and Macau, as a model for future reunification with Taiwan. Hu emphasized the importance of deepening exchanges and cooperation between the mainland and Taiwan, particularly in economic and cultural areas. Xi has emphasized the concept of the “China Dream“ as a broader framework for reunification. However, none of the five leaders explicitly renounced the option of unification by force.

Therefore, the unification task is the PRC’s consistent ideology and has become the untouchable foundation of the PRC’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The CCP won’t change its historical mission of unification with Taiwan. The CCP sees unification as a matter of national pride and a symbol of China’s unity, an opportunity for increased economic integration and development, and a means to preserve and strengthen the Chinese nation’s unity and cultural heritage. If the CCP gave up the principle, it would lose its ruling party’s legitimacy and authority of governance.

Undoubtedly, Xi’s tougher stance on Taiwan is not only driven by the CCP principle but also motivated by his personal ambition. He must have had a specific plan when he revised China’s constitution to make it possible for him to stay in power without term limits. Evidently, as Mao’s faithful disciple, he hopes to achieve what his predecessors failed to do—the unification with Taiwan and cement his place as a remarkable person in China’s history. The catchword “China dream” is the iconic mark of Xi’s worldview and reflects his ambition to make China a global power that can rival and surpass the United States. According to Xi, the China Dream is the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation that requires the reunification of greater China.

China’s global expansion is the external aspect of the China Dream. Xi envisions that the goal of unification with Taiwan could inspire the Chinese people, leading toward the future under the sole leadership of the CCP. A unified China would bolster China’s international standing and fortify its geopolitical position in the Asia-Pacific region, specifically by overcoming the obstacles posed by the first island chain—an area within which Taiwan holds immense strategic significance. Unification would help China improve its access to the Pacific Ocean, heighten its control over this crucial maritime zone, advance its ability to extend its military influence beyond the first island chain, secure its influence over vital resources and trade routes, safeguard its economic interests, and minimize potential vulnerabilities within the first island chain. Ultimately, China will attain a balanced distribution of power with the United States in both the Eastern and Western spheres.

It is noteworthy that the determination of unification with Taiwan does not only represent the interests of the CCP but also represents the will of the Chinese people. First of all, the common will of unification is due not only to patriotic nationalism but also arises from traditional Chinese culture—the idea of great harmony between individuals, nature, and human society. Mencius said that harmonious human relations are more important than good opportunities granted by Heaven and favorable geographic position (天时不如地利，地利不如人和). From Mencius’s idea to Dong Zhongzhu’s theory of the “interaction of heaven and People” (天人感应) to Zhu Xi’s theory of “unity of heaven and man unity” (天人合一), and to Sun Yat-sen’s harmonious world, 大同世界, the idea of the union of heaven and individuals is one of the basic principles of Confucianism-based Chinese traditional culture—traditional Chinese concept of all-under-heaven. The objective of a harmonious China and a harmonious world (大同世界) has been pursued by Chinese philosophers and politicians from ancient to communist China. The Chinese people believe that unification with Taiwan is the implementation of traditional Chinese culture, so the majority of the Chinese people will not relinquish this mission under any circumstance. Xi’s blueprint for building a community of shared future for mankind (建立人类命运共同体) or China Dream (中国梦) is a continuation of the concept of all-under-heaven.

Second, public opinion in China supports the idea of unification. According to a study conducted by Adam Y. Liu and Xiaojun Li, although public opinions toward the unification with Taiwan are mixed, 55 percent of the respondents supported “launching a unification war to take back Taiwan entirely,” while 33 percent opposed it and 12 percent were unsure. According to another online survey in China published in ThinkChina and Taiwan Inside, 53.1 percent supported armed unification with Taiwan, while 39.19 percent opposed it among Chinese elites. This shows that the CCP’s principle of unification with Taiwan has a broad popular base.

Apparently, unification with Taiwan has been an established goal for the CCP and the Chinese people. If Xi gave up this objective, he would be seen as abandoning his core mission and betraying his own promise. In addition, he would likely face serious political consequences within the CCP and among the Chinese people, lose credibility and legitimacy as a leader who can defend China’s national interests and dignity against external pressures and challenges, and face criticism, opposition, or even a coup from within the party or the military. More seriously, he would also risk provoking social unrest or nationalist backlash from the public, who have been indoctrinated with patriotic education and propaganda for decades. Xi’s legitimacy has been largely based on the unification with Taiwan since the 20th National Congress of the CCP. Therefore, he cannot afford to give up his historical unification task voluntarily.

While U.S. deterrence strategy may cause the CCP to reconsider its actions and carefully evaluate its approach to unification, it won’t halt China’s progression in that direction.

The CCP may postpone the implementation of the unification mission under certain circumstances: Significant shifts in the regional or global landscape might prompt a reassessment of priorities. Substantial domestic opposition to the unification task or mounting international pressure could compel a leader to reconsider their top priority. The potential Chinese domestic political fallout may lead to backlash from factions or interest groups within China. A change in the CCP’s political ideology can also influence a leader’s position on the unification task. A significant shift in public attitudes toward the unification task has the potential to influence a leader’s decisionmaking process and could also create opportunities for alternative arrangements and potentially reduce the urgency of pursuing reunification through military force. Nevertheless, all these hypothetical conditions are highly unlikely to occur under any CCP administration.

Therefore, the CCP’s mission to take over Taiwan is inevitable sooner or later. While Xi has not ruled out the use of force, he has also expressed his preference for peaceful reunification based on the One-China principle and the 1992 Consensus. Is it possible for the PRC to reach the goal of peaceful unification with Taiwan based on the 1992 Consensus? Reality shows that since Taiwan transitioned to democracy in the 1980s, Taiwanese people’s minds are getting farther and farther away from the PRC.

In a poll conducted by Pew Research Center in 2020, the majority of Taiwanese hold a negative view of China, and about 66 percent of Taiwanese people identify solely as Taiwanese. The numbers of Taiwanese who hold a negative view of China continue to grow and about 90 percent of Taiwanese identify themselves as “Taiwanese” according to a survey in 2021. Although more than 90 percent of Taiwanese originally came from mainland China, they are now embracing an identity that is distinct from the PRC. The Taiwanese people’s desire for unification with China fell further to a near-record low in 2022, and only 1.3 percent of respondents wanted unification with China as soon as possible.

Taiwanese public opinions will drive the Taiwanese government to make tougher policies toward the PRC, but it could also drive nationalism in the mainland to run higher and create more difficulties for the PRC to fulfill a peaceful reunification. This suggests that the window of peaceful reunification is closing. Twenty years ago, in my book Remaking China’s Public Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century, I posited that reshaping China’s political institutions through the transformation of its public philosophy would be the most effective means to address the potential conflict in the Taiwan Straits. However, it has now become a distant possibility.

Thus, a critical question remains: is it more advantageous for China to achieve early reunification with Taiwan? Or is it more advantageous for China to achieve reunification with Taiwan later? With the intensification of competition between China and the United States and the gradual deterioration of China’s international situation, it is increasingly preferable for China to unify Taiwan earlier rather than later.

Under Xi’s regime, China has been promoting the process of military modernization at unprecedented speed and preparing for an armed occupation of Taiwan on a massive scale. China has upgraded its missile bases and deployed a new hypersonic missile along the mainland’s eastern coast, which could target Taiwan and U.S. bases in the region. China has been conducting large military exercises near Taiwan, simulating amphibious landings, air assaults, and missile attacks, as well as crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which had been a tacit boundary for decades. The United States has recognized that China’s military has reached or is approaching the ability to take over Taiwan.

Most recently, the People’s Liberation Army has expanded testing and evaluation of its weapons systems to simulate a total war waged on a global scale, especially with the United States. This is another example indicating that China is speedily preparing for the worst-case scenario—reunification with Taiwan by military force. On July 6, 2023, the same day that the U.S. secretary of treasury, Janet Yellen, arrived in Beijing, Xi inspected Eastern Theatre Command, the branch central to keeping up cross-strait pressure on Taiwan, saying that the PLA must deepen its planning on war and combat and improve its ability to win any war. This sent a signal to the United States that the reunification of Taiwan is China’s core interest. The PRC is approaching the verge of reunifying Taiwan by military force to fulfill the CCP’s historical mission of the reunification of Taiwan and Xi’s global ambitions.

For now, it is hard to precisely assess if China could win a war with Taiwan; yet, it is certain that U.S. deterrence strategy is based on the idea that the United States can prevent China from using military force against Taiwan by making the costs of such action outweigh the benefits, and by signaling the U.S. commitment and capability to defend its interests and allies in the region. It is also clear that U.S. deterrence strategy is built upon assumptions that underestimate China’s resolve and ambition to achieve its national goal of unification with Taiwan.

Even assuming that the United States did not overestimate its ability and willingness to intervene in a cross-strait conflict, the Taiwan Relations Act does not explicitly guarantee U.S. military intervention in the event of a Chinese takeover of Taiwan by force. Even if the United States ends up getting involved in a possible war across the Taiwan Strait, the initial defense will rely on Taiwan’s own military capabilities and the Taiwanese people’s determination to counter Chinese military actions. However, the Taiwanese government and its people are far from fully prepared to defend the island. According to a survey conducted by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation in 2022, about 51.5 percent of Taiwanese lack confidence in the country’s defense capacity and their government’s ability to deter possible Chinese military action. Taiwan’s politics are divided along pro-independence and pro-unification lines, making it difficult for the government to mobilize public support and allocate resources for island defense. Most Taiwanese prefer to maintain the current status quo to avoid provoking China or engaging in a military conflict over sovereignty. Instead of making a commitment to defend their territory, most Taiwanese people have a huge hope to rely on external support, particularly from the United States in the event of a war in the Taiwan Strait.

As a result, Taiwan’s military lags behind China’s military buildup and faces shortages in personnel and equipment, along with low availability rates and obsolescence of certain platforms, which adversely affect training and readiness. Under the current conscription system, all qualified male citizens of military age are only required to perform either 1 year of active-duty military service or receive 4 months of military training. Clearly, this system does not meet the needs of the Taiwanese defense. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen announced a plan to extend the compulsory conscription program but received backlash from younger Taiwanese. U.S. deterrence strategy without sufficient Taiwanese military capability and determination of Taiwanese people would lose its solid foundation.

Conclusion

After tracing the historical context and evolution of the CCP’s stance on Taiwan, exploring the consistent ideology and principles of the CCP, delving into Xi’s personal ambition and plan, and discussing the differences of people’s attitudes in Taiwan and the PRC toward the “unification,” it is apparent that peaceful reunification is increasingly unlikely. Considering Xi’s efforts to maintain his legitimacy for a possible life-long tenure, the reasons stated above, and the current domestic problems and international pressures facing China, it is likely that Beijing will act early against Taiwan. The secret meetings held between former senior U.S. national security officials and prominent Russians, allegedly aiming to lay “the groundwork for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine,” could even further encourage China to speed up the unification of Taiwan. The PRC will use force to ultimately solve the Taiwan issue if it does not have any other feasible options. It is wishful thinking if the United States believes it can only rely on a deterrence strategy to stop the process of the PRC’s unification with Taiwan. In fact, U.S. deterrence strategy lacks solid ground based on the reality of Taiwan’s preparation regardless of the actual preparation of the U.S. side. While developing a comprehensive strategy toward China, it is imperative to understand the CCP’s intentions and objectives in the Chinese way in the Chinese context.

Dr. Jinghao Zhou is an associate professor of Asian studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. His research focuses on Chinese ideology, politics, religion, and U.S.- China relations. He has published dozens of journal and news articles and six books. His latest book is Great Power Competition as the New Normal of China-U.S. Relations (2023).

Image: Shutterstock.

At the recent NATO summit in Vilnius, world leaders expressed concern over Russia’s nuclear posture and the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, given the ongoing conflict between Russia and Western-backed Ukraine. Yet the international community also ought to pay attention to equally-as-important developments in the Indian subcontinent. A recent speech by Pakistan’s Lt. General Khalid Kidwai has sent shockwaves across the region, potentially signaling that Islamabad may have just changed its own nuclear doctrine, and not for the better.

If implemented, these changes could be highly destabilizing not just for the region, but also for the rest of the world. Washington ought to take notice and consider this development will affect its Indo-Pacific strategy.

The Nuclear “Horizontal” and “Vertical”

Kidwai’s speech, delivered on the 25th anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests, matters for two major reasons.

The first reason is that it came from Kidwai himself. As the former head of the Strategic Plans Division—which administers all policies and strategies regarding Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programs—and an adviser to the country’s National Command Authority, Kidwai is one of Pakistan’s most senior and decorated generals. He has been described as the mastermind behind Pakistan’s nuclear policy and deterrence doctrines, and “the architect” of the country’s nuclear energy program. He is, in effect, the foremost author and authority on Pakistan’s nuclear strategy.

The second reason is what Kidwai actually said in his speech. In reiterating Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence strategy, Kidwai described the country’s ongoing efforts to ensure “full spectrum deterrence” (FSD), supported by a nuclear triad of land, air, and sea-based capabilities. This, in short, is Pakistan’s policy of having sufficient capabilities to able to respond to a wide range of threats—presumably originating from India.

Yet Kidwai went further, describing two dimensions of FSD: “horizontal,” which comprises of a robust tri-services inventory of a variety of nuclear weapons, and “vertical,” which encapsulates adequate range coverage of its vectors from “zero meters to 2,750 kilometers,” encapsulating “destructive yields suited for strategic, operational, and tactical levels.” Such an elaborate arsenal, he argued, provides Pakistan with a “strategic shield”, blunting the extant conventional asymmetry with India.

In other words, Kidwai is seemingly suggesting that Pakistan could or ought to develop short-range, potentially even front-line, nuclear weapons. These could include anything from nuclear artillery to even nuclear land mines.

“Zero Meters”

On one level, this proposed shift in nuclear doctrine, brazen as it may sound, is not out of the ordinary. Pakistan’s current doctrinal thinking and capability development are a result of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which it lost. The conflict casts a long shadow over the psyche of the Pakistan’s military, resulting in a mindset that perceives nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantor for the security of the country. Thus, the Pakistani military aims to undermine India’s military superiority through rapid nuclear weapons deployment and posturing of shallow thresholds.

Yet an obvious and significant problem arises when Pakistan doctrinally attempts to leverage nuclear weapons, especially its battlefield nuclear weapons, to support a policy of cross border terrorism.

Kidwai first explained the value of tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) when the country’s very short-range ballistic missile, Nasr, was first tested in April 2011. He said that it would “pour cold water over Cold Start”—a reference to India’s own punitive response doctrine. Though it has since been dismissed by Indian military leaders, New Delhi has nevertheless developed a carefully curated punitive retaliation strategy against Pakistani-sponsored terror attacks. This, in effect, has shown up the inefficacy of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. After all, of what use are TNWs as a deterrent if India can conduct careful retaliation attacks, far below the nuclear threshold, against Pakistani-supported terrorist attacks?

Nonetheless, Pakistan’s attraction for TNWs, or tactical nuclear responses in general, continues as a preventive deterrence measure, despite the growing asymmetry in conventional military capabilities between the two countries. In fact, Kidwai has now coined a new term called “zero meters.” While he has not explained its meaning, it has been interpreted to mean nuclear artillery shells, atomic demolition munitions, or nuclear land mines. Indeed, such TNWs—including naval cruise missiles carried on conventional submarines/ships, or shorter-range missiles—have generally existed since NATO deployed these weapons in Europe to deter the Soviet Union. Aping their strategy, Pakistan’s military command seems to believe that it can adroitly sequence warfighting into three neat levels, and that its variety of warheads and ranges of delivery systems would counter each move by India.

Yet as British historian and master strategist Lawrence David Freedman pointed out in the context of the NATO strategy, such matters would never unfold neatly, and TNWs could pose several substantial challenges. All this has been corroborated time and again via many wargames and exercises.

Courting Madness

India, for its part, has never accepted a step-by-step nuclear escalation ladder and instead pursues a doctrine of massive retaliation against any nuclear use, irrespective of how the first user describes the weapon or undertakes its use. It is astounding that Pakistani strategists believe that anything they do will be exempted from this doctrine.

The folly of this new Pakistani strategy is also being called out by Pakistani analysts. In a hard-hitting piece in Pakistan’s weekly Friday Times, Ejaz Haider, a prominent Pakistani journalist and commentator on defense issues, recounts classic nuclear deterrence literature to question how Kidwai’s “illogic of instability to create the logic of strategic stability” could even work. Sitara Noor, a prominent Pakistani nuclear analyst, enquired in Foreign Policy magazine that if the “strategic objective” of zero-range weapons is to deter a “newly perceived gap” after the conduct of surgical strikes by India, then how could they be used to country’s advantage? Irrespective of the logic driving such a strategy, she rightly finds it problematic for reasons of operational execution and regional stability.

It is heartening that Pakistani nuclear analysts are holding up a mirror to their misperceived nuclear doctrinal thinking anchored in the idea of “graduated warfighting.” Given the many unknowns that arise once a nuclear weapon, whatever it may be called, is used, the neat schema of nuclear use at every level that Kidwai seems to suggest is unlikely to play out as intended. This is dangerous and wholly destabilizing thinking in the extreme that could result in miscalculation and escalation.

It is worth considering the potential consequences of a deterrence breakdown and the resulting responses. “What” happens after a breakdown?

Not only would such a move prove suicidal for the first user, but it also would wreak widespread havoc on the region and beyond. It is the unconstrained effects of nuclear weapons that set them apart from even the greatest of all conventional bombs, and loose talk about them has been as much a taboo as their use or threat of use. Pakistan’s irresponsibility with its nuclear strategy could prove problematic well beyond its prime adversary.

In fact, it is ironic that Kidwai invoked Youm-e-Takbir, the day of greatness, to glorify the willingness of the Pakistani populace to accept deprivation for the sake of its nuclear weapons program. Even as his country is going through a period of unprecedented political and economic turmoil, even by its own standard, Kidwai seems to be, like Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal response, exhorting his countrymen to not despair for their lack of naans, but rejoice at the existence of nukes.

Concerns to Remember

Pakistan’s continued strategy of sub-conventional provocations and nuclear brinkmanship, to say nothing of its broader societal turmoil, are a shared concern for both India and the United States. In fact, the heavy military hand in Pakistan’s decisionmaking apparatus not only warps the democratic process but also tends to lean towards “first resort,” as highlighted by Ejaz Haider.

There are at least four major concerns regarding Pakistan that could have regional and even global implications, and should be viewed seriously.

First is the highly unstable political-economic environment within the country, including the possibility of social unrest spiraling out of control.

Second is the deep fissures within the Pakistan Army, as seen in the emergence of rival cliques of senior officers, which has with ripple effects through junior ranks. The tendency of the Army to periodically “rescue” the country from incapable democratic government was supported by a united military leadership. That does not seem to be the case any longer, which only grows as a cause for concern as the number of warheads grow, with a wide range of newer type of smaller and even more dispersed “nukes” joining the arsenal.

Third, current public outrage, especially in the Pakistani “heartland,” is unusual even for the seemingly Teflon-coated Pakistan Army. Consider the attack on May 9 on the Corps Commander’s house in the highly-protected Lahore garrison—this seems much more like a targeted attack than spontaneous outrage leading to more than a symbolic breaching of the walls.

Fourth, there is the role and influence of China in the proposed “0 to 2,750 km” nuclear strategy and arsenal. It is entirely possible that low-yield nuclear weapons for Pakistan’s naval platforms, especially the Chinese Yuan class submarines, are being produced. Technically, the challenge of warheads that fit into 533mm (21 inch) torpedo tubes is not insurmountable, and Beijing may have already helped resolve this. The plans and intent for a naval leg of nuclear deterrence are not new. But potentially nuclear naval cruise missiles carried in conventional submarines/ships/patrol aircraft could be highly destabilizing, since India does not see them as merely “tactical” or “operational.”

Pakistan Alone

With the kind of nuclear strategy Pakistan seems to be following, it is choosing to stand on the edge of the nuclear cliff. The “zero range” pronouncement may be perceived in the Strategic Plans Division as a major doctrinal shift, but it changes little for India. It remains important for New Delhi to assiduously continue to improve the efficacy and the survivability of its own triad. With a stated Indian strategy of retaliation to cause unacceptable damage, the trigger could be called anything by the adversary. The response, unfortunately, would be far more than zero for that country, the environment, the region, and the world.

Pakistan needs to reflect deeply on this misperceived notion of deterrence. As Haider wrote, such decisions “cannot be left to a few in a closed club.” Meanwhile, the words of U.S. president Joe Biden resonate: “I think (Pakistan) is maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world…with nuclear weapons without any cohesion.”

Formulations like full-spectrum deterrence, buoyed by new weaponry, may seem cohesive to Rawalpindi. But that is not the case in either New Delhi nor Washington. Policymakers from both ought to make this clear to Pakistan’s military leadership.

Dr. Manpreet Sethi is a Distinguished Fellow at Centre for Air Power Studies in New Delhi, India.

Radm Sudarshan Shrikhande is a former head of Indian naval intelligence and is an adjunct professor at India’s Naval War College. He is also editor-in-chief of The Naval Dispatch.

Brig. Arun Sahgal is a retired brigadier of the Indian Army and a senior fellow at the Delhi Policy Group. He is also the Founding Director of the Office of Net Assessment, Indian Integrated Defense Staff.

Image: Shutterstock.

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