Accounting for the Count: COVID and the Vote

Posted on November 15, 2020 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 11, November 2020

President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence and members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, announces a national emergency to further battle the Coronavirus outbreak, at a news conference Friday, March 13, 2020, in the Rose Garden of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)

S.C.M. Paine
U.S. Naval War College

Republicans argue that the presidential vote numbers are so close that they should be reconfirmed. Yet the much reviled Hilary Clinton conceded with even closer margins and with less secure voting machines. These are the wrong numbers to track.

In contrast, the numbers are not close concerning American deaths on Donald Trump’s watch. He is scheduled to lose more Americans in a single calendar year than all American deaths in World War II. Very shortly we may be losing each day, the number of Americans we lost on 9/11. China is a threat, but it is not killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. Trump’s incompetence is.

As a China specialist, it was obvious that there was an ongoing epidemiological disaster in Wuhan by late December or early January, when we should have shut down all travel to and from China, called on our allies to do likewise, invoked emergency measures to produce protective gear, and educated Americans about the rationale for the restrictions to come. One would think that the U.S. consulate in Wuhan provided information at least a month earlier unless it was asleep at the switch. Imagine the difference if we had shut our borders in November and put the full-court press on virus containment. Hundreds of thousands of Americans might have survived 2020. Yet Bob Woodward has Trump on record minimizing the problem in April. Continue reading →

China Celebrates The Anniversary Of Its “Victory” In The Korean War

Posted on November 12, 2020 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 11, November 2020

A black and white image depicts Forces of the Korean People's Army celebrate victory on the battlefield. They all have their arms raised on a hill top.

Forces of the Korean People’s Army celebrate victory on the battlefield, 1953. Source: U.S. Korean Military Advisory Group.

William R. Hawkins
Former U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee member

On October 23, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech at a major gathering in Beijing to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) entering the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1950. He claimed the purpose of military intervention was to help North Korea resist U.S. aggression. The speech is representative of the kind of propaganda Beijing creates to send messages to audiences both at home and abroad at a time of rising tensions across the Indo-Pacific.

Xi’s speech is not the only event staged to celebrate China’s role in the Korean War. Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of a new exhibit dedicated to the war on October 19. According to state media, Wang’s history ran as follows. On October 19, 1950, as requested by the DPRK, CPV forces crossed the Yalu River to aid the DPRK’s fight in the “War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea” (Beijing’s official name for the conflict). The war lasted until a truce was signed in 1953. A total of 2.9 million CPV soldiers entered the battlefield, and 197,653 died. New films and books are also being released pushing the theme that China was acting to defend Korea from an American invasion, motivated only by a desire to regain peace and stability. Continue reading →

China’s Rise and the Weaponization of Soft and Hard Power: How the U.S., Japan, India and Australia are Responding

Posted on October 12, 2020 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 9, September 2020

A cartoon depicts Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in face masks. Their noses are touching and pink hearts can be seen in the background.

Detail from mural of Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in Berlin, Germany in 2020. Source: Yan Bennett.

John Garrick
Charles Darwin University

Yan Bennett
Princeton University

China has now fully weaponized its entire soft power repertoire and dramatically upgraded its military arsenal. The Middle Kingdom is no longer unwilling to openly challenge U.S. global hegemonic supremacy or coerce less powerful nations that do not accede to its will. The shocks caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have unmasked the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ambition to be at the centre of global power, but at the same time, the CCP also faces uncertainty over China’s chances of achieving its 2017 strategic targets set by General Secretary Xi to ‘comprehensively build a moderately prosperous society’ by 2021.

Continue reading →

China: The Struggle for Territory Eclipses Trade

Posted on August 10, 2020 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 6, June 2020

Military trucks drive along a closed-off 10-lane highway. Sky scrapers and trees can be seen in the background.

Military parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Chinese people’s victory in the Japanese Resistance War and the end of World War II, 2015. The number of tanks in China’s armored forces ranks third in the world. The main battle tanks have the ability to fight under nuclear and night conditions. Source: Press Service of the President of Russia.

William R. Hawkins
Former U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee member

In February 1999, President Bill Clinton opened a major foreign policy speech by claiming, “Perhaps for the first time in history, the world’s leading nations are not engaged in a struggle with each other for security or territory. The world clearly is coming together.” This was the height of the post-Cold War delusion that history had come to an end and that a new world order had dawned based on a global partnership for economic development. Yet, Clinton knew that this was still a work in progress. In the same San Francisco speech he talked about conflicts in the Middle East, Southwest Asia and the Balkans, the threat of nuclear proliferation, and the need to bring Russia and China “into the international system as open, prosperous, stable nations.” The emphasis, however, was always on economics, a peaceful way to rise within classical liberal theory, transcending political issues and separating wealth from power in an interdependent world.

Continue reading →

Revisiting Grand Strategy

Posted on May 7, 2020 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 5, May 2020

A black and white image depicts the General Board of the U.S. Navy meeting in 1932 in Washington D.C. Seven men are depicted sitting around table in suits.

The General Board of the U.S. Navy meets in 1932 in Washington D.C. This board existed as an advisory body to the Secretary of the Navy from 1900-1950, and was involved in long range strategic planning focused on the maritime security component of U.S. grand strategy. Its members included the Chief of Naval Operations, President of the Naval War College, Commandant of the Marine Corps and head of naval intelligence. Source: Naval Historical Center.

John T. Kuehn, Ph.D.
Professor of Military History
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

A recent article in Foreign Affairs by Daniel W. Drezner, Ronald R. Krebs, and Randall Schweller hoisted the white flag: “The End of Grand Strategy: America Must Think Small.” The article implies that an American attempt to develop a grand strategy, or to support the current grand strategy in vogue, are both vain pursuits.

One reaction to prescriptions of this sort, or rather proscriptions, is to examine what the authors mean exactly by “grand strategy,” what is their definition?

Perhaps their definition is so different from other accepted definitions of this concept that there is no need to worry, maybe they are talking about something else.
After all, this author wrote on the topic ten years ago, bemoaning that the problem was rooted in, although not limited to, a general lack of understanding of the meaning of the term, especially by military professionals in the nation’s service and war colleges. It might be useful to compare my definition with that consigned to the dust bin by the FA authors.

Carl von Clausewitz has written that as military campaigns proceed, the war as a whole replaces the campaign, and the whole country the theater of operations. In other words, grand strategy is “the next stage,” which encompasses the strategic considerations for “the whole country.”

But the authors argue that, “A grand strategy is a road map for how to match means with ends.”

Continue reading →