Russia and China: The real threat to U.S. power

After the debate on Monday, as I was still pondering on the issues of climate change, global terrorism, cyber terrorism and internal discord, I came to the conclusion that although, all four issues are a threat to the U.S. power, they are not the biggest threat. While the media has forced the Obama Administration to shift attention to the Middle East, and forced the President to make the fight against ISIL U.S. number one national security priority, East Asian powerful nations like Russia and China are slowing but surely advancing their agenda. Both Great Powers have shifted their Foreign Policy towards capturing the emergent African continent and Latin America. Recently, Russia and China in collaboration with three other emergent countries, Brazil, South Africa and India formed, a financial institution with the acronym BRICS to compete with the giant Western-dominated IMF and World Bank institutions.

Today, China has become by far Africa’s biggest trading partner with investments throughout Sub-Sahara Africa. Russia, on the other hand, has undermined the U.S. Foreign Policy in Africa whenever possible. This has been the case last year amid the U.S. threat to impose further sanctions on Zimbabwe over its inappropriate land reform policy. Russia grabbed the opportunity tie economic relations with Russia by investing in a $3 Billion mine project that are expected to create thousands of jobs and produce hundreds of thousands of platinum.

There are other actors in the Middle East with a vested interest in combating the ISIL group, so clearly, the U.S. focus should now be turned towards building its economic power if America wishes to keep its rank as a powerful nation.

Sources:

[1] New Zimbabwe: US warns Zimbabwe over US$3bln Russia deal

[2] http://www.globalsherpa.org/bric-countries-brics

Option E

What is the biggest threat to US power?

1. Climate Change
2. Global extremism
3. Cyber terrorism
4. Internal discord

5. All of the above

The above is the question that I was pondering as we wrapped up our final class. Global extremism? Terrifying. Cyber terrorism? Intimidating. Climate change? Petrifying. Internal discord? Infuriating. Yet as we were sitting there bickering over which was more urgent or insidious, I was encroached upon by a realization: Are we all gonna die?!

We are facing an international atmosphere that is rife with all of these challenges. It is easy to become a doomsday prophet when you are part of a hegemon on the downswing (yes, Ben, we all know you disagree with this statement, but shhh). Yet we have to ask ourselves if the political climate is something historically exceptional.

My biggest beef with the "internal discord" argument was that we have faced moments of divisiveness before. The agility of democracy allows us self-adjust when one party or the other becomes more powerful, and its consistency has been very impressive. We could always hope that our system will also adjust to eliminate the undue influence of the two-party dichotomy. However, self-adjustment may not be the most likely outcome of extreme political discord in this instance. The last time our political climate was this polarized, a protracted Civil War was the outcome. Hardly a peaceful self-adjustment.

I think that the severity of internal discord kind of magnifies the other fears on this list. Terrorism both physically and digitally cannot be combatted with a stymied legislative system. Climate change cannot be agreed upon, much less reacted to, in this political atmosphere (about 1 in 4 Americans still refuses to acknowledge climate change as a reality rather than a scheme). Despite the fact that I was part of the "global terrorism" debate group, I do believe that internal discord is a serious liability, since it prevents us from being able to effectively address all of the other dangerous political realities of the 21st century.

Threats to Power

I have to admit that I really do think that our own political system's dysfunction is the greatest threat to power. Political infighting which leads to a lack of broader prospective limits our ability as a nation to innovate and meet challenges. The big issues we face take a long time to address. If they are used for political fodder we risk losing focus on the problem and therefore the solution.

I really think that we have the money to address the problems that we have. What we lack is leadership that can set aside their personal interests for the greater good. Leaders who can cut wasteful spending and budget efficiently. In the military I can tell you that our budgeting works like this: throughout the fiscal year we are in the dark about how much money we really have and are given random little chunks of money to tide over needs like printer paper and postage. Then around August we are told we have some absurd amount of money that we have to spend in a matter of hours or we lose it. This leads to crazy purchasing of things we might not need but might. We never submit our own budgets at office levels and are never held accountable to them. If we were given a budget at the beginning of the  fiscal year and told to make it work that would be much more responsible. But our government can't pass a budget and our bureaucracy is so complicated in how we distribute money that that never happens. In short our over spending is a product of our bloated bureaucracy that is never really held accountable. If we don't get our federal budget system in control we will never have the funding to tackle the biggest problems like climate change.

Global environmental degradation is the greatest threat humanity has every faced. I say environmental degradation instead of climate change because I feel the real issue is that we are using up all the resource of the Earth and filling the globe with deadly pollution. We are using up what we need to survive while we grow our population to unsustainable levels. In addition we are exacerbating our problems by poisoning what soil, air and water we do have left. At some point the math doesn't add up and we run out of what we need to survive. To over come this we need to drastically change how we operate not only as a nation but as a species. We cannot start to do that without listening to each other and taking a broad perspective.

Makers of Our Own Fate

During Monday’s debate the four issues discussed were counterterrorism, global extremism, climate change and domestic dysfunction. These threats affect different representations of America’s power: military, infrastructure and even civilization. I found myself agreeing with most of the points made by the team who presented domestic dysfunction as the United States’ biggest threat. 

One key point made is that there are different forms of power. Some view it as coercive and hard, much like our military or our reliance on economic sanctions. Others see power as persuasive and emulative, represented by our culture and ideologies. Because power can manifest in different forms, this can cause a divide among people. While our debate was amicable for the most part, even we couldn’t come to a unanimous agreement on which issue was the most dangerous. Among the population, there are demands to focus more on the environment, human rights, foreign policy – the list continues on, and the U.S. is neither strong enough, nor rich enough to focus on every issue. Furthermore, our elected officials cannot seem to put aside political differences long enough to resolve an issue. This became especially evident during the furlough in 2013. 

Domestic dysfunction tears us apart first internally, and then reveals our shortcomings to the world. We present ourselves as a united front to the world, when in reality we are fractured. We preach equality, and try to hide our still present racism towards other ethnicities. While we come together in times of crises, these ultimately do not hold our attention, and we move on to the next current trend. The world will no longer wish to emulate us, and we will be responsible for our own demise.

We speak on social media forums of how it is time for a new political system, one that doesn’t rely on a bipartisan rule, while we challenge others to vote and change America, we fail to take action. Voter turnout dropped to 58 percent in the 2012 elections, and only 41 percent of the 18-24 year olds actually voted. Many of my peers have become disenchanted with the voting process, and don’t believe things will change. Maybe it is our youth and our lack of experience in the world, but I doubt that our generation will become inflamed enough to become active and change our current system (and officials) for the better. Hopefully 2016 proves me wrong.  

[1] Michael P. McDonald, "Turnout in the 2012 Presidential Election," www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-p-mcdonald/turnout-in-the-2012-presi_b_2663122.html
[2] "Voting and Registration," http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/socdemo/voting/publications/p20/2012/tables.html

An e-Act of War?

This week's debate had me thinking a lot about what constitutes a threat or an attack, particularly when discussing these in an online context.  Just about anyone can identify an act of war on land or sea, but what does this look like in cyberspace?  Some would say that cyberattacks are merely a form of vandalism with malicious intent, while others say that online threats should be addressed in the same manner that a physical threat would be. 

Cyber warfare exists beyond the realm of traditional rules of armed conflict and it is difficult to establish legal groundwork for dealing with cyberattacks.  The Pentagon released their first formal cyber strategy in 2011, which concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war.  The term can be applied to any attack which threatens widespread civilian casualties, such as bringing down a hospital or emergency responder network.  This finding gives the military the grounds to launch a military response in the case of a cyberattack. 

This raises a whole host of issues, such as the struggle to establish clear origins of any attack and determining the correct "proportional response".  In addition, I struggle with the idea of whether it is truly an attack if it takes place online.  In my mind, there must be a physical aspect for this to be considered an attack, but, in this case, any physical effects seem to be a by-product of the cyberattack.  Not to mention, many cyberattacks these days are focused on commercial theft which are outside of the bound of normal military engagement. 

As we enter the debate tonight, I am looking forward to debating what is or is not an attack.  While this post focuses on cybersecurity, I am interested in posing this question to the other groups and hearing the perspectives on what is actually a threat to the U.S.

References:
Gorman, Siobhan and Julian Barnes. "Cyber Combat: Act of War." 3 May 2011.  Wall Street Journal.

The Rise of China

As Chinese's economic, political and military power is on the rise, the hegemonic competition between China and the U.S. has intensified. In his article, “Hegemonic transition in East Asia, the dynamics of Chinese and American power”, Mark Beeson suggested “that American military might is less valuable than it once was, and this has given added significance to China’s growing economic power”. It is expected that the East Asia would generate rising power and become the site of a process of hegemonic transition. With that expectation in mind, the latest rise of China as a great power in East Asia with the incorporation of Taiwan, Hong Kong and millions of people in Southeast Asia is a concern in Washington because, according to observers, a powerful China would not be a status quo power but rather an aggressive state determined to achieve regional hegemony. In one of my blog entitled “is military a measure of power”, I discussed the increase in China’s defense budget as a strategy to position itself as a great power in the international system. For a long time, Japan, not China was thought to overtake the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy and assume a political status that matches its economic weight. Although, Japan has the economic capacity to play a prominent role in East Asia region, it miserably failed primarily because of its continuing subordination role to the U.S. past cold war.

The very first day he took office, President Obama's Administration has made it its priority to strategically adjust the U.S. Foreign Policy regarding China . The containment of a rising China is crucial if the U.S. wants to regain its hegemonic status in the world. As the West was losing interest in the African continent, China’s Foreign Policy shifted towards infiltrating the African market as a strategy to gain economic power. Today, China has become by far Africa’s biggest trading partner, exchanging $160 billion goods a year, promoting China's influence and understanding of the Chinese culture, teaching its language in the world by motivating Africans to study Chinese language. After taking Africa by storm, there are now talks about the Chinese growing interest in Latin America as the great power's latest venture is to capture Venezuela’s market. This is an alarming news to the West, and especially to America. I wonder if China’s move and interest in Venezuela prompted the U.S. to reconsider its relations with Cuba…

Sources:

1. MARK BEESON (2009). Hegemonic transition in East Asia? The dynamics of Chinese and American power. Review of  International Studies, 35, pp 95-­112  
2. http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21639554-china-has-become-big-africa-now-backlash-one-among-many
3. http://allafrica.com/stories/200406110677.html

Thoughts on Power

While formulating our debates I started thinking about what we mean by power. In our debates a confusion between power and security arose. We argued that threats to security are very different from threats to power. Security threats are more external and depending on how strong an actor's power is they can neutralize that threat relatively easily. Power seems much more an intrinsic characteristic (you have it or you don't) while security is a circumstance (things around your are or aren't secure).

For a long time power rested with those who won battles and could coerce others most  effectively-- very Hobbesian. I've been watching Vikings lately which demonstrates pretty clearly that the Vikings rose to power through their brutality and combat skills. This form of power, hard power, has been the ultimate currency in the state of anarchy. In an international political system where everyone has their own interests which could challenge someone else's coercion is the last fail-safe.

However, the modern world is changing. We are less willing to accept the brutal consequences of wielding hard power as the only form of influence. We are blood sickened by centuries of war and liberal thought now grants human life its greatest value in history. We have instead turned to soft power. Rather than perpetuating the idea of the other whom we must conquer with hard power. Soft power seeks to win hearts and minds and neutralize threats by bringing us ideologically closer. This sort of human project tenancy is still unsettling to realists who ultimately believe no one is to be trusted to act in the common good over himself.

We are currently somewhere in between. Arms treaties, the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements show that we are tending more and more to the restriction of hard power. However, we remain reticent to depend wholly on soft power. In order for soft power to work there needs to be long term commitment and follow through which has not consistent. As long as we use our massive military funding for hard power protection only we are missing out on opportunities. It would be interesting to see a military force that was trained and utilized in more humanitarian missions. Especially when conflicts are low we could be putting military power to use in soft power ways that train our troops in a way that gains power instead of wastes funding.