Category Archives: USA

Nuclear Deterrence and Four Types of Force: Definitive, Coercive, Catalytic, and Expressive

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 6, June 2017

Four soldiers are photographed standing and waving on a military tank holding a missile at a Victory Day military parade.

Victory Day military parade, North Korea, 2013. Source: Stefan Krasowski via Wikimedia Commons.

Captain Robert C. Rubel
USN (Ret)

North Korea’s drive to attain a nuclear warfare capability is currently on the front burner in the Pentagon, and is a driver of tensions in East Asia. This has precipitated plenty of dialogue in the national security community, including on the issue of extended deterrence, the policy of the US that threatens nuclear response if an ally is attacked with nuclear weapons. One input from a former colleague at the Naval War College was the final catalyst that got me tapping on the keys. First, he quoted one of his scholars as saying that the real question concerning nuclear weapons “… is whether strategic nuclear forces have any genuine relevance today in the context of deterrence and warfighting, or whether they’re troublesome legacy weapons of a bygone era.” In a subsequent email he said that he was “interested in deterrence stopping all wars, not just nuclear.” It may be that the general umbrella of nuclear deterrence did suppress some wars that might have otherwise taken place during the decades after 1945, but it is almost impossible to know. However, my colleague’s faith in the utility of the manifold uses of deterrence is not that distant from those who advocate tailored deterrence, which is a scaled or graduated deterrence structure that includes the option of preemptive strikes.[1] Tailored deterrence to some extent reflects the logic behind the DoD concept of flexible deterrent options (FDO), which are defined as “…a wide range of interrelated responses that begin with deterrent oriented actions carefully tailored to produce a desired effect.”[2] In my view, such policies would incur considerable risk, as they ascribe, in an a priori manner, effects on an opponent’s political decision making and strategic planning processes in lieu of any specific intelligence (frequently) and certainly without any historical track record, especially in the nuclear arena. In this short article I will discuss a different way to analyze deterrence and gain insight into the thought processes of my colleague.

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Death of Celebrated Conductor Yan Liangkun Marks End of Era in China

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 6, June 2017

Xian Xinghai is photographed in black and white. He is wearing a suit and is seated.

Shanghai, China. Xian Xinghai at about 23 years old in the 1920s. He composed the Yellow River Cantata, a classical work that uses a series of powerful Chinese melodies to evoke the beauty of China and the heroism of the war of resistance against Japan (1937-1945). Source: People’s Republic of China

Arthur Waldron, Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania

Yan Liangkun, last of the legendary conductors of The Yellow River Cantata (1939) the powerful classic composed by Xian Xinghai in wartime, is dead. With him dies a precious and authentic Chinese revolutionary tradition, that of those who once truly believed. Our house echoed with the music all morning. It filled with tears the eyes of me, a simple white boy from the Boston suburbs, still unable to distinguish the five grains, and prompting all sorts of reflections.

We are drawing very near to the end of an era, when people are still alive who remember the radiant vision of the New China that would arise, somehow from the good land and rivers themselves, of war ravaged China (Rana Mitter tells us 20 million dead). In their imaginations that vision still lives, under the layers of tragedy, personal suffering and disappointment, as what guided them and consumed their spirits when they were young and has never died.  Somehow we must capture this, for these were sincere people, whose love of country was simple and absolutely authentic (though few ever carried a gun: that was for the lower orders).

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Climate Change: Denialism, or Realism?

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 6, June 2017

Three men are photographed in suits standing in front of a large poster with the words "EU-China Summit/Brussels 02.06.2017".

EU-China Summit, Brussels, 2017. Source: European Council President via Flickr.

Dave Schroeder
University of Wisconsin-Madison/Naval Officer

Climate change.

This issue is a lot more complex than people suspect for many deemed to be denying the facts.

What many people disagree on in good faith with respect to climate change is not that it’s occurring, nor what the impacts are, or what they may be in the future. Rather, it is what the collective response of the United States should be, and what other concerns — economic, national security, energy policy, diplomatic, etc. — that response should rightly be weighed against.

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Scare of War with China in the Philippines:  Its Source and Implications to the Allied Nations

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 5, May 2017

A large, green rice field is photographed. Figures are visible in the field in the background.

Rice farm in Palawan. Source: Cedric Buffler via Flickr.

Sannie Evan Malala
Small Farmer in the Philippines

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte revealed on Friday, May 19, that Chinese President Xi Jinping had threatened war if the Philippines forced its claims in the South China Sea.  Duterte and Xi had a restricted meeting last May 15 during the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing.  There Duterte expressed his plan to drill oil in the South China Sea, as he claimed.  And he said the response was “we’re friends, we don’t want to quarrel with you, we want to maintain the presence of warm relationship, but if you force the issue, we’ll go to war.”  (I think I’m familiar with this pulling of words.) This is clear lawlessness.

Critical Comments On ‘US Policy Toward China: Recommendations For A New Administration’

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Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 5, No. 2, February 2017

President Xi Jinping flanked by Chinese soldiers. The President is walking down stairs on a red carpet.

President Xi Jinping flanked by Chinese soldiers. Source: Kremlin via Wikimedia Commons.

James E. Fanell
U.S. Navy (ret)

Below are the critical comments I provided to Dr. Orville Schell, the co-chair of the recent Asia Society and University of California, San Diego report US POLICY TOWARD CHINA: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A NEW ADMINISTRATION. While there are sections of the work that I agree with, I still fundamentally disagree with the overall foundation of the document’s recommendations which I believe are designed to sustain the past 40 year of a policy that promotes unconstrained “engagement” with the PRC.  As such, I’ve gone through the entire document and extracted several statements and paragraphs that I disagree with and a few that I agree with.  While I will provide comments for each specific reference issue, I can summarize my dissent of the report in the following major themes:

1.  Unconstrained Engagement.  Engagement with China is asserted to be the primary goal of US relations with China without providing evidence for that assertion.  Or worse, suggesting things are actually going well, contrary to all objective evidence.

2.  “The Relationship” is the #1 Priorty.  “The relationship” is prioritized as being equal to or more important than U.S national security.  There is no clear articulation that U.S. National security should be the #1 national security priority for the US and that our relationship with China should be judged through that lens, not through the lens of sustaining “the relationship” at all costs.

3.  Do Not Provoke.  America should not “provoke” China, but again, there is no evidence to support why this position will benefit U.S. national security interests.

4.  Dissent Not Welcome.  While I appreciate inclusion of Ambassador Lord’s dissenting opinion on North Korea, clearly the study did not value, or include, dissenting opinions, especially in the Asia-Pacific Regional Security and Maritime Dispute sections.

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