Search the archive.

Brock and Kaitlyn look to the word “should” in the phrase “in the event any of my children should predecease me” and claim the district court improperly found the word looked to the future. They claim the word should be interpreted as the past tense of “shall” to imply a duty or obligation. See Black's Law Dictionary 1379 (6th ed.1990). Looking at the phrase as a whole, however, rather than at a single word, we determine the phrase is considering possible future events. See In re Estate of Grulke, 546 N.W.2d 626, 627 (Iowa Ct.App.1996) (noting we must ascertain a testator's intent from the entire will).

A WTO dispute begins with a formal request for consultations. A complainant can only move to the next stage, which involves a request for the establishment of a panel, after 60 days have elapsed from the consultations request.1 When a party does request a panel, it must place its request on the agenda of a Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) meeting, which requires 10 days’ notice. The responding party is allowed to block the request at the first DSB meeting where it is on the agenda, but at the second meeting the panel will be established.2 Once the panel has been established, panelists must be appointed. The parties may be able to agree on panelists, but if they cannot do so after 20 days, either party may request that the WTO director-general compose the panel. Panel composition must take place 10 days after this request.3 After the panel has been composed, the litigation begins. As part of this process, there will generally be two rounds of written submissions, two panel meetings, and written questions from the panels to the parties.

Of course, governments are always free to consult in advance of litigation. However, it may be desirable to allow governments the option of going straight to a panel request, as there are many disputes where formal consultations are unlikely to produce a resolution.

The World Trade Organization's 164 member countries just received the text of a proposal that — if adopted — would discourage medical research and threaten global economic growth. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala recently presented member countries with a draft agreement — hashed out by negotiators from the United States, the European Union, India, and South Africa — that waives intellectual property protections on Covid vaccines. Rumors of the agreement had circulated for months, but now the text is publicly available for all to see. It's as bad as many international trade experts feared. The waiver would set a dangerous precedent — all in response to a "problem" that doesn't exist. Scientists, patients, and everyone who believes in the importance of international trade can only hope that the waiver is rejected when it is considered at the upcoming WTO Ministerial Conference in June. The agreement would waive protections provided by the WTO agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which has played an essential role in supporting innovation and the development of life-saving medicines, diagnostics, and therapies for more than 25 years. More recently, these IP protections have enabled researchers to safely share technology and data across borders in ways that helped power the development of multiple Covid vaccines in record time. Yet some WTO members — most notably India and South Africa — have insisted from the beginning of the pandemic that waiving the IP protections provided by TRIPS would be essential to ensure an adequate global supply of vaccines. Interestingly, these countries are two of the world's largest producers of generic drugs with a lot to gain from any precedent that weakens global IP protections. The entire premise of this waiver is simply wrong. Global supply of Covid vaccines is a non-issue today: More than 13 billion doses were manufactured as of March 2022, with billions more expected by year's end. In fact, many countries have destroyed expiring Covid vaccine supplies because of an inability to administer them in a timely fashion. In Nigeria, nearly 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine expired in November 2021 before they could be used. The Africa Centers for Disease Control has called for a pause in vaccine donations because of distributional roadblocks and vaccine hesitancy. What is hindering global access to Covid vaccines is not IP protection, but rather such factors as trade barriers and customs bottlenecks; lack of storage capability; last-mile distribution challenges, particularly in rural areas; a shortage of well-trained front-line health care workers; and, above all, high levels of vaccine hesitancy in both the developed and developing world. A TRIPS waiver would be fraught with negative unintended consequences, starting with the global proliferation of shoddy — and even counterfeit — Covid vaccines. The waiver is nominally restricted to developing nations, but China and Russia won't hesitate to steal whatever isn't nailed down. Already, South Africa and India have announced a partnership to research, develop, produce, and distribute vaccines with China and Russia, two of the world's biggest intellectual property scofflaws. One can only imagine what these nations have in mind. Perhaps worse, a weakening of TRIPS will discourage American and other innovators and manufacturers from stepping up when their efforts are needed during a future global health crisis.

It is for this reason, and the fact that damages are paid by economic and monetary means, that a solution might be to invoke the enforcement power of the WTO as a last resort forum if valid adjudicated claims go unpaid and diplomatic avenues fail. As all space-capable countries are reliant on world trade to support their economies, and as much of the space arena is morphing into commercial and commercial-like transactions, the WTO would be a familiar forum for imposing measurable economic trade sanctions to punish the liable state, and in part would compensate the damaged state.21 Enforcement under these conditions is not reliant on voluntary payment, but the sum can be extracted by the international community. As in all standing tribunals, precedent would provide clarity of what is considered a violation and what the likely consequences would be for offending actions. Intentional offenses can have a “punitive damages” approach to increase the economic impact to the offending states. Additionally, as expertise and experience grow, the costs for even large egregious actions such as the 2007 China antisatellite missile test debris field might be calculated and placed as an economic threat to any nation contemplating such action. Conclusion Nations have gone a long way to identify and deter the weaponization of space. In short, the concerns over weaponization involve the potentially destructive nature of space weapons. It is impossible to define what constitutes a space weapon, and controlling an arms race based on definitions of what constitutes a weapon is doomed to failure with the exception of those weapons clearly posing a substantial risk to humanity, such as nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. For all other concerns, we should attempt to regulate and control the destructive behavior of nations rather than attempting to limit their technology. It is how they use their technology that matters. We will never completely prevent countries from engaging in war. However, we can bolster peaceful dispute methodologies to prevent escalation of such conflicts and provide deterrence against aggressive or irresponsible behavior. Current international agreements do not offer an enforceable means of addressing claims for destructive activity, for while there is a forum for adjudication, participation and enforcement continue to rely heavily on diplomacy. A standing committee is needed to provide a credible, knowledgeable, and equitable forum for regulating, monitoring, and adjudicating claims and disputes relating to the damage caused by objects launched into space, whether they are designed for destruction or not. A logical place for this committee would be the United Nations. As current deterrence and enforcement of adjudicated claims currently rest solely in diplomatic, or in extreme cases military, channels, a third option is needed such as using the current economic deterrence and enforcement capability of the World Trade Organization to address and collect on unresolved adjudicated state liabilities.

Senior Fellow - Global Economy and Development. co-leads the Forum on Cooperation in Artificial Intelligence (FCAI). He holds an S.J.D. and LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor and law and commerce degrees from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on International Trade: Developing Trade Rules to Support AI”

In addition to the impact of AI on international trade patterns, trade rules as reflected in the WTO and in FTAs can also play a role in supporting the development of AI. The following outlines some key areas where trade rules will matter for AI development and deployment globally. The importance of data for AI Data localization measures that restrict the ability to move data globally will reduce the capacity to develop tailored AI capacities. Trade commitments on the free flow of data globally, as reflected in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and, more recently, in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will support the development of AI. As outlined above, access to large amounts of data is needed to train AI systems. Building AI systems that can respond to diverse challenges and different population groups requires access to global data. To take a relatively straightforward example, the development of speech-recognition AI requires access to large amounts of speech data that can capture local slang and intonation as well as less commonly used words. As a result, data localization measures that restrict the ability to move data globally will reduce the capacity to develop tailored AI capacities. Moreover, the development and use of AI builds on other digital technologies, the key ones being cloud computing, big data, and the internet-of-things.15 These digital technologies also rely on cross-border data flows. This means that data localization measures that restrict global data transfers will hit AI directly, by providing less training data, and indirectly, by undercutting the building blocks on which AI is built. Restrictions on cross-border data flows are likely to have the greatest impact on smaller (often developing) countries. The U.S. and China, with large internal populations, are less reliant on access to data from third countries to develop AI capabilities tailored to their domestic markets. However, to develop AI in areas such as health care, countries with smaller populations will require access to global health data. Limits on access to such data will reduce the accuracy and relevance of AI systems for developing countries.

The Iraq War transformed America’s role in the Middle East and North Africa in three ways. The first two are well-known. The conflict exposed the limits of US hegemony by engaging its military in a winless occupation, and it unleashed an emboldened Iran to pursue an expansionist agenda that has destabilized parts of the region. The third effect was equally consequential, but often overlooked. The Iraq conflict sullied the image of Western democracy promotion, because it tied the universal issue of freedom to the particular violence of an American conquest. Since then, advocates of democratization across the region—grassroots movements, civic activists, professional associations, youth groups, and others—have not trusted the United States and its Western allies to serve as credible sponsors for democracy. Even today, amidst an era of revolutionary challenges against authoritarian rule, the United States carries little moral weight as a beacon of democracy. This ugly legacy demands closer scrutiny. Within the Middle East and North Africa, the Iraq War embodied what the Bush administration then called its “Freedom Agenda.” In the post-Cold War era, the United States enjoyed an extraordinary, if brief, period of geopolitical primacy. The Middle East had become a unipolar arena under American hegemony, with Russian interests and Chinese financing not even a glimmer upon the strategic horizon. After 9/11, the region morphed into the logical frontier by which Washington could enforce its vision of global order. In addition to the broader war against al Qaeda, the extermination of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship served as a test of this resolve. Yet for all the chimera of finding Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction, it was the clarion call of implanting freedom—of spreading Western liberalism and democracy into dark corners of a distant Muslim land—that punctuated public justifications of the war long after Baghdad fell. At the time, the cause of democracy seemed worth it. The push for war masked a deeper bipartisan consensus that despotism in the Middle East represented an existential threat to US national interests. Dictatorships bred dissatisfied citizens that could be seduced by the propaganda of terrorist organizations; and friendly democracies, not rapacious autocracies, could be better entrusted with protecting Israel and safeguarding regional oil. Thus, a simplistic logic reigned. If the United States could engender a wave of Middle East democratization, then grateful peoples and the new governments they elected would gladly help satisfy its long-term goals. Such democracy promotion required new diplomatic and economic commitments, such as pressuring governments to curtail repression, ramping up assistance to civil society, and conditioning aid on democratic reforms. But the keystone was always war. The invasion of Iraq enshrined not just America’s coercive firepower but also the credibility of its liberal commitment. If a post-Saddam Iraq became a shining exemplar of US-built democracy, then every future call for freedom would carry an interminable clause: Democratize, or else we will do it for you. Of course, the Freedom Agenda ended with a whimper. By the end of the Bush administration, the previous appetite to remake regional order on a grandiose scale had been replaced with resigned acceptance that Iraq was mired in carnage and corruption.

despite the recent escalation there remain critical constraints on the ability of both Iran and Israel to escalate further to a level of conflict which might qualify as all-out war. These constraints are determined not only by political and geostrategic considerations but by the military balance between the two states. While both sides have relatively large defence establishments, they are structurally offset (with each force emphasising different capabilities) and neither side possesses adequate military capabilities to fight a sustained and direct conflict with the other. Excluding Israel’s undeclared nuclear capability, both sides arguably lack the ability to overwhelm militarily the other. Iran’s physical size, the dispersal of its assets and its arsenal of asymmetric proxies give it a resilience which compensates for it being outgunned by Israel. The latter has shown that it has not only sophisticated defences but also partners willing to supplement them with critical capabilities. The two states have primarily configured their armed forces not to fight a war against each other but to serve broader strategic objectives: Israel’s are to defend its territory and borders from hostile neighbours, including through forward operations, while Iran’s are to protect its government and to project into asymmetric conflicts. But their force structures have been determined by wars of survival rather than of conquest. The Iranian government’s distrust of the imperial army led to it sidelining the conventional armed forces in favour of its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and volunteer paramilitary group, the Basij, both charged with defending the Islamic Republic. Iran has also invested heavily in its external asymmetric capability, creating and maintaining a network of regional partners with which it shares strategic aims, ideological affinity (to varying degrees) and, critically, weapons systems. Israel has historically geared its armed forces to defending against state-level aggression from well-armed neighbouring states (Syria and Egypt) and latterly from asymmetric non-state armed groups (NSAGs), leaving it with a powerful mix of domain-dominance and intelligence-based capabilities. But while it has powerful strike capabilities, it has not designed its armed forces to fight expeditionary wars beyond its immediate periphery. The two states have differing levels of battle-readiness in personnel and equipment. Iran has a mass-recruitment policy for its domestic security apparatus, of which only a small percentage have combat experience, although the number rises within the elite Quds Force unit and amongst members of its proxy, Hizbullah. This contrasts with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whose reservists, professional soldiers and weapons systems have accumulated experience in multiple conflicts. But the IDF, despite its record of power projection, has not yet tested its ability to project into Iran other than through aerial and intelligence means. Iranian equipment, particularly uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) and missile systems, is in use both with state actors (Russia, Sudan and Syria) and NSAGs. Iran’s indigenous research and development cycle is well developed, as the production and export of its Shahed-series UAVs and ballistic and cruise missiles has shown. This and the state’s own military-industrial complex will give some of its weapons systems readiness and resilience. But its production and research facilities will also present Israel with high-value targets. A further determinant of the military balance is each side’s ability to leverage their partnerships and alliances. Iran’s partners are geared towards asymmetric conflict with Israel and can be relied on to defend Iran and, to varying degrees, supplement its offensive actions. That stands in contrast to Israel’s partners, who will be cautious if not openly opposed to Israel undertaking direct operations against Iran. Israel can, however, be confident in United States President Joe Biden’s recent statements that the US will defend it against any further Iranian attacks, and in the strong showing of Israel’s partners in actively defending it against Iranian missiles.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared the United States does not support Taiwanese independence during a press conference held in Beijing on Monday. Status quo on Taiwan: While Blinken mentioned China’s escalating aggression towards Taiwan, he assured the Chinese government that the US opposes any change in the country’s current stance, emphasizing the various agreements and acts that support the “One-China” policy. I raised U.S. concerns, shared by a growing number of countries, about the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] provocative actions in the Taiwan Strait as well as in the East and South China Seas. On Taiwan, I reiterated the longstanding U.S. One China policy. That policy has not changed. It’s guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiques, the Six Assurances. We do not support Taiwan independence, we remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side. We continue to expect the peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences. We remain committed to meeting our responsibilities under the Taiwan Relations Act, including making sure that Taiwan has the ability to defend itself.

The alarming possibility of a major conflict between the US and China has been framed as a likely consequence of a pattern of great power behaviour first identified by the fifth-century BCE historian Thucydides. In his study of the Peloponnesian War, the Greek wrote: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” This argument is now most associated with the Harvard academic Graham Allison, who claims to have identified 16 instances in which a dominant power has sought to suppress an emerging rival before they became too strong. He notes, disconcertingly, that 12 of these ended in war. Allison first presented his thesis of the “Thucydides Trap” in the Atlantic in 2015, and developed it in a book, Destined for War, in 2017. Since then, Allison’s argument that the relationship between the US and China is growing increasingly volatile has gained even more credibility with tensions over trade, the South China Sea and Taiwan. But Allison’s notion of the Thucydides Trap – the tendency towards war when a rising power threatens to displace an existing one – fails to address the risks involved in conflict and the reasons why wars occur. The story told by Thucydides is much more complicated than the “Trap” suggests. The notion of inevitable conflict between Athens and Sparta elides the fact that the Athenian leader Pericles made poor strategic calls. Different decisions would have avoided war. These choices were largely about the cohesion of the respective Athenian and Spartan alliances, and the possibility of a smaller state defecting because it did not feel protected. A major difference now is that there are asymmetrical alliances: China is far more isolated geopolitically than the US. If lessons are to be drawn from past power struggles the most relevant among them is the Cold War. The avoidance of armed conflict between the US and the Soviet Union was to a great extent owing to the presence of nuclear weapons. This is a threat that both Beijing and Washington must consider and in that respect, the Cold War is a better comparison than the rivalries between Portugal and Spain in the 15th century or those between England and the Dutch Republic in the 17th. China is also involved in a complex set of power relationships. Russia was once China’s senior partner; now it is China that is the stronger. Fifty years ago they almost came to blows; now they enjoy an uneasy cordiality. Meanwhile, there has been tension on China’s border with India (another rising power?), while in 2014, the Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe noted disturbing similarities between Europe in 1914 and his country’s dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands (claimed by China as the Diaoyu Islands). China must consider possible conflicts with all the major players in the region, and not just the US. To Beijing’s consternation new security pacts have emerged, such as the Quad, consisting of the US, Australia, Japan and India, and the Aukus agreement between Australia, the UK and the US. As China has become more powerful it has grown more assertive, which is why its neighbours have become anxious about its intentions. But contrary to the logic of the Thucydides Trap, in the past China went to war –with Korea in 1950, India in 1962, and Vietnam in 1979 – when it was in a position of weakness, not strength. Its military and economic power is now second only to the US, but that also means China has much more to lose in any kind of protracted, multi-front conflict. The “Trap” argument is also undermined when you consider the view held by many experts that China’s power may have already peaked. The nation is facing a series of system problems that may halt its rise, including an unbalanced economy, an ageing population, environmental degradation and political dysfunction resulting from President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian turn. Indeed, recent war scares start from the assumption that the leadership in Beijing might want to invade Taiwan before China’s power wanes. The risk of war in the Indo-Pacific region cannot usefully be understood as the result of an upstart power challenging the established global hegemon for supremacy. Issues of interest and alliances are as important as power balances, and all need to be watched carefully if conflict between the world’s preponderant forces are to be addressed and, hopefully, avoided.

Jelena Belic- lecturer in political theory at the Institute of Political Science, with a PhD in political philosophy from the Central European University (Budapest, Hungary); and Zoltan Miklosi, Critical Review of Interntaional and Political Philosophy, Vol 26, No.2, 181-203, “Cosmopolitanism and unipolarity : the theory of hegemonic transition” , ; [TMS—GK]

Given the meteoric rise of China, the emergence of other important powers, and major redistributions in the global balance of power, power transition theory (PTT) has become an important intellectual factor again. Many observers are anxious about China’s ascendance (and that of other powers) and expect serious conflict between Washington and Beijing in the years to come. Many of them ground their skeptical expectations in PTT or at least a much curtailed under- standing of it. To give just two examples, former US official Susan Shirk claims in her book about China that “history teaches us that rising powers are likely to provoke war,” and political scientist Christopher Layne echoes that “throughout the history of the modern international state system, ascending powers have always challenged the position of the dominant (hegemonic) power in the international system—and these challenges have usually culminated in war.”1 Such skepticism, however, is problematic for three rea- sons. First, it is false theoretically; PTT does not claim that all rising powers will resort to war or that all power transitions will result in war. While highlighting the inherent dangers of power transitions, PTT actually acknowledges that they might result in peace as well as in war. Satisfaction with the existing status quo is the key factor here. Second, it is false empirically; not all power transitions in history have resulted in great-power wars. Third, it leads to flawed policy advice; if rising powers are always aggressive and always challenge the international order, then it makes sense to attempt to contain or oppose them. If, however, rising powers are not always dissatisfied and do not always challenge the status quo, then policies meant to oppose them might breed dangerous dissatisfaction in the first place. Recognizing that even traditional PTT allows for “peaceful power transitions” as well as for “power transition wars” is a useful antidote against such self-defeating policy choices.

That was the theory, anyway. What happened, unfortunately, was that a few people – by and large based in Western nations, but by no means representative of their fellow citizens – took this opportunity to “take it all”, or at least as much of it as they could swallow without choking. Historically, this type of behavior has been de rigeur in international relations and old habits die hard. This “take it while it’s going” attitude meant using all the old institutions (the UN, the IMF) and the new ones (like the International Criminal Court) purely in pursuit of their own self-interests. These were quite narrow, as the people in charge of Western nations at this point were by and large corporate-friendly types who didn’t harbor too much sympathy for the unwashed masses. As a result, the post-War Keynesian economic framework was systematically dismantled, whole new nations entered the bond-servitude of IMF debt, and the new International Criminal Court was wielded effectively against recalcitrant third world leaders (Laurent Gbagbo, Muammar Gaddafi), while intervention-happy first world countries like Britain and the United States disingenuously claimed that over the 70 years since the Second World War they had been unable to come up with a definition of “aggression” (a feat all the more amazing, when one considers that the whole realm of international criminal law was kicked off by exactly these nations prosecuting leading Nazis for precisely this crime). Through all of these short-sighted policies, the message came through loud and clear: my way or the highway. Nothing’s changed. The multipolar world as an answer? International law practitioners could not fail to notice that in some respects our world was getting worse. In particular, inequality was increasing and control of our political and economic framework was rapidly devolving on fewer and fewer individuals, who made decisions that very few people could even understand, much less partake in. We were less well-off than our parents were and shut out from the very political processes that we had been trained to participate in. Money and connections were fast becoming the only qualifications one needed to get any job involving public responsibility, and ideas of economic and political equality that had once been mainstream were dismissed as “radical” and “naïve” with a vehemence that increased with each passing year. And this is why, for at least the past ten years, the multipolar world is a vision that has gained increasing traction in the international relations realm as possibly a fairly decent alternative to rule by the 1 percent. In this particular scenario, the world is again carved up, but this time four or five superpowers are in play. Who are these superpowers? Certainly, the USA and the EU, which work in tandem on many issues. The EU is, of course, still the lesser partner, but the more human and economic resources at its disposal, the more powerful the EU is going to be ten or twenty years down the line; hence, the impetus for rapid eastward expansion. China is also a certainty. With a billion people at its disposal, it is already the world’s second largest economy and has managed to translate this into spot number three in voting power at the World Bank. In this global chess game, Russia (the fourth power here) has adopted a position that has thus far mainly been defensive, not because of any inherent goodness, but merely because that’s where the chips are lying. Traditional client-States, like Syria and Iran, are firmly in Western crosshairs and the EU has already snapped up much of its former sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. While the EU is expanding as far as possible, Russia is trying to double down on what has traditionally been its sphere of influence in order to stay in the game. These familiar actors may eventually be rounded out by India and/or a more integrated South America spearheaded by Brazil. The current wrangling over the Ukraine has really only exposed some of the ways great powers do business with each other, i.e. testing where the boundaries lie. Will the boundary between the EU and Russia be on the eastern border of the Ukraine, the western border of the Ukraine, or smack down the middle? It’s hardly the type of question where you just sit back and see how things shake out when you are literally responsible for the fate of your nation (especially when military facilities are at stake), and it is a bland truism to point out that when two powerful nations set sights on each other, anyone in between them is in for a rough ride. This painful process is deeply rooted in an international system which shows no mercy for losers and very little for the hapless bystander. As this indicates, the multipolar world is in many respects regressive and nationally-oriented, but it does present a sea change from what we have been experiencing over the past twenty years, which is rule by an unchecked 1 percent and a world descending into modern feudalism. Russia before Putin was run by oligarchs with many a conservative Western analyst openly proposing emulating them. Had that continued and had China’s thousands of billionaires and millionaires gotten onboard, we might be looking at a much worse picture. Now I admit that a choice between Cold War Version 2.0 with new and improved superpowers, or global serfdom is hardly inspiring stuff. But if we want to avoid making that choice, we’re going to have to consider some deep changes. When I talk about the slow-grinding mills of God, I’m not primarily referring to Eastern or Western powers’ ability to call “humanitarian intervention”, “minority rights” or “propaganda black ops” on each other, terms which after decades of misuse retain a legal meaning, but have lost much currency in the broader area of public consumption. I’m referring to us as citizens, citizens primarily in the Western world, because we are still, despite everything, in the strongest position to affect international relations. As citizens we haven’t demanded a great deal of accountability from our governments over the past two decades and have turned a blind eye to policies that have not only served to virtually dispossess us, but also to alienate us from other people whom we, at the end of the day, have no choice but to get along with, given as we’re all inhabiting the same rock. Years of sitting back and hoping that someone else will take care of this mess is all catching up on us now. The good news is that it is perfectly possible to have an international system which does a far better job of providing a principled framework for dispute resolution than the current one does, but only if we all ditch the “my way or the highway” attitude, which has prevented the World Trade Organization, International Criminal Court, International Monetary Fund and United Nations from fulfilling their roles by putting short-term gains for the few ahead of long-term sustainability for everyone. It does require some effort though. Time to ditch reality TV in favor of tracking your MP’s voting record, and replace general complaint hour at the pub with volunteering for any of the myriad causes that don’t just talk about change, but actually do it. Rolling Jubilee which buys up and then writes off debt is a good example, but there are literally thousands of others. Demanding a (truly) independent investigation into sniper attacks on protesters in the Ukraine also comes to mind. Considering EU Foreign Policy Coordinator Catherine Ashton’s lukewarm response when this point was raised with her by the Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, that might well be necessary. Then there are all the legacy issues: drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq… the usual. They’ve blurred the lines of international law – in public perception – and if we want to move forward, those lines need to get sharp again; it means dealing with those issues head on and owning up to what went wrong. The bottom line is that we have worked ourselves into a corner over the past twenty years by dismantling the very international legal system that would have enabled us to achieve our hopes of peace and prosperity. Trust is at an all-time low. We need to start rebuilding confidence in our international system and international law. Together!

Aswift end to the Ukraine war on Russian terms would fill many governments with a sense of loss. In much of western Europe and beyond, a deal that rewarded Russia for its aggression—exchanging a ceasefire for vast swathes of Ukrainian territory, for instance, or a pledge that Ukraine will never join nato or any other Western alliance—would feel like appeasement, not peacemaking. A pillar of the post-second-world-war order, involving a refusal to see borders redrawn by force, would have fallen. China disagrees. For Communist Party bosses in Beijing, a quick Russia-friendly end to the fighting in Ukraine would be grounds for celebration. Most simply, it would humiliate the Biden administration and every power that backs Ukraine, while vindicating China’s confidence that Western unity cannot last. More important, it would offer a glimpse of a future world order which, according to Chinese officials and scholars, already enjoys the support of most governments, notably in the developing world. In effect, China’s coldly realist version of international relations sees no meaningful distinction between appeasement and peacemaking. In such a world, conflict is avoided by balancing and respecting the interests of large and powerful countries, while lesser nations do what they must to accommodate them. This order has no patience with hand-wringing talk about values or freedom, or about individual rights and wrongs. What counts is preserving stability, order and economic opportunity for the many. Increasingly, China is proud to promote this ultra-pragmatic global order. Officials in Beijing appear unembarrassed that Western governments have charged Chinese companies with propping up Vladimir Putin’s war machine with vast flows of microelectronics, drone parts and other components vital for making Russian arms and ammunition. Since America went public with intelligence about Chinese sales of dual-use items to Russia’s defence industry, “we have not seen any diminution” of the trade, says Nicholas Burns, America’s ambassador in Beijing. Instead, Chinese officials blandly say that China has too many companies to track all they sell. Chinese diplomats continue to blame the conflict on nato enlargement into eastern and central Europe, which they say pushed Mr Putin into a corner. In private, they have told Western counterparts that China favours an early peace in Ukraine but has few hopes of one, and is not greatly fussed about where Ukraine’s borders end up. China’s public messaging is equally unabashed. “China has been actively promoting peace talks in its own way,” the country’s president and party chief, Xi Jinping, assured one of his (and Mr Putin’s) closest allies in Europe, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, on July 8th. A political agreement and early end to the war in Ukraine is “in the interests of all parties”, but will require major powers to play a “positive” not a “negative” role, Mr Xi told Mr Orban, whose brief visit to Beijing followed stops in Kyiv and Moscow. Helpfully, the Hungarian leader spelled out the meaning of Mr Xi’s veiled rebuke of America’s role as a supplier of arms and aid to Ukraine. “China has a peace plan. America runs a war policy,” said Mr Orban. China is standing by a Russian leader seen in Beijing as a valued (if unpredictable) partner in a larger struggle with the American-led West. But this age of spiralling conflicts also offers China a chance to portray itself as a peacemaker—even if its version of peace involves cutting deals with aggressors, bullies and despots. In June Mr Xi hosted a celebration in Beijing of a live-and-let-live diplomatic doctrine, the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-Existence. The young People’s Republic of China endorsed the principles 70 years ago to soothe Asian neighbours alarmed by China’s new revolutionary rulers. Seven decades later China’s behaviour, starting with its bullying of maritime neighbours and land-grabs in the South China Sea, tramples the first of those principles, which pledges respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of others. Still, Chinese leaders praise the five principles as a system for resolving conflicts through the non-judgmental pursuit of shared interests. They say this approach is welcomed by developing countries sick of Western politicians delivering colonial-style lectures about democracy and human rights. At the anniversary gathering Mr Xi hailed China’s “distinctive approach to resolving hotspot issues” and its “constructive role” from Ukraine to the Middle East and the Korean peninsula. He chided countries that try to achieve “absolute security and exclusive security”: a coded attack on American-led defence alliances in Europe and Asia. Talk of equality, swagger like a great power Chinese officials and scholars elaborated on Mr Xi’s pitch at the World Peace Forum, a geopolitics talkfest held each summer at Tsinghua University in Beijing. China’s vice-president, Han Zheng, praised his country’s “practical” proposals for a more just and equal multipolar world order. Speakers accused America of double standards over Ukraine and Gaza. They compared Europe’s confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, unfavourably, with the consensus-based approach of asean. That South-East Asian organisation and its ten member countries rarely confront China over its bullying of maritime neighbours, preferring to accommodate the region’s hegemon and dominant trade partner. Strikingly, invited Asian speakers made no mention of Chinese coastguard ships currently harassing Philippine troops and sailors guarding a disputed reef near the Philippines. Nor was mention made of America’s decades-long role as a security guarantor in the Pacific and as a hedge against Chinese aggression. Instead, the “asean way” was called the key to regional peace and prosperity. The praise was revealing. If all multilateral organisations were like asean, China would have the world order it wants.

In my presentation I will argue that US-hegemony is not endangered by the economic rise of China as long as Washington maintains its central role in the international financial order. First of all, I provide some historical background by living a comprehensive illustration of both countries’ analogous development since the end of WWII, which over time resulted in the formation of bilateral interdependencies and imbalances that eventually reached its climax during/after the financial crisis in 2008/09. Hence, in a more theoretical analysis I subsequently present key arguments of the ‘world-system’-approach whose scholars either turning the exploitive nature of centre-periphery-relations upside down (e.g. Wallerstein) or contrariwise believe that it will bring forth a totally new and peaceful kind of hegemony which will stand in stark contrast to the former US-rule (e.g. Arrighi). Yet, both academic factions share a (Neo-)Marxist/ Braudelian line of argument and conceptualize hegemonic succession as an historic inevitability which is dominated by finance-capital and the interest to keep the worldwide accumulation-process profitable. Hereafter, I am contesting the assumptions of China’s forthcoming hegemony by considering counter-arguments based on Susan Strange influential concept of ‘structural power’. I particularly show that - even though a shift in (economic) power may take place - a hegemonic transition to China is strongly limited due to America’s centrality in the international economic/monetary order (e.g. role of the dollar as an international reserve currency) and given the fact that Beijing followed a tremendously export-based developmental model in order to maintain high growth rates and avoid domestic social strive.

Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun has said the country’s military was ready to “forcefully” stop Taiwan’s independence, in a fiery speech at a Singapore security forum. Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue conference in Singapore on Sunday, Dong said the self-ruled democracy of Taiwan was the “core of core issues” for China, but claimed Taiwan’s governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was incrementally pursuing separatism and bent on erasing Chinese identity. China views Taiwan as its own territory and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve unification. Last month it staged two days of war games around the island after the May 20 inauguration of President William Lai Ching-te. Lai and the DPP say it is up to the people of Taiwan to decide their future. Beijing calls him a “separatist”. “Those separatists recently made fanatical statements that show their betrayal of the Chinese nation and their ancestors. They will be nailed to the pillar of shame in history,” Dong said. “The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has always been an indestructible and powerful force in defence of the unification of the motherland, and it will act resolutely and forcefully at all times to curb the independence of Taiwan and to ensure that it never succeeds in its attempts,” Dong told the forum on Sunday. “Whoever dares to split Taiwan from China will be crushed to pieces and suffer his own destruction.” Reacting to the Chinese minister’s statements, Taiwan’s government said it deeply regretted the “provocative and irrational” remarks. Dong’s comments in Singapore followed the first substantive face-to-face talks in 18 months between the defence chiefs of China and the US. Dong and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met for more than an hour at the luxury hotel hosting the forum.

Any battle over Taiwan will not just be a question of territorial aggression but a fight over the core conception of modern China’s soul. And for the leaders who launch such an endeavor, their political futures will hinge on the outcome, as will, possibly, their physical safety and that of their families in the event of failure. Under such circumstances, nuclear use might not be palatable, but it could seem far more plausible if military defeat were to equate to loss of domestic power and possible death anyway.5 It has become conventional wisdom among China watchers that if China’s leaders decide to invade Taiwan, there is nothing anyone can do to change their minds. If true, this provides another reason to consider potential Chinese nuclear threats, since the “stop at nothing” narrative logically entails escalation if conventional means fail to achieve success. China’s DF-17 solid-fuel, road-mobile ballistic missile (above, on parade in Beijing) can be conventionally or nuclear armed. In a Taiwan scenario, the United States must be prepared to deal with nuclear threats to its allies in the Indo-Pacific area. These considerations raise the question of how China might use nuclear threats in a Taiwan invasion. Notably, there is evidence that not all Chinese military theorists believe using nuclear weapons on their own soil (which they consider Taiwan to be) would constitute a violation of the NFU policy.6 That said, it is difficult to imagine circumstances in which China might be tempted to use nuclear weapons on the island itself. It is more plausible to imagine Beijing launching an electromagnetic pulse attack over Taiwan.7 In theory, such a weapon could paralyze the island’s communication networks. Inflicting such a sudden and massive psychological blow might, in turn, shock Taipei’s political leaders into capitulation. China also could use nuclear threats to dissuade the United States from rendering military assistance to Taiwan during a crisis. Here, it is worth recalling that senior Chinese officials have already issued such threats against the United States, as happened during the Taiwan crisis in 1996 and again in 2005.8 What is more, Chinese military publications and journals have mentioned—on multiple occasions—the potential for nuclear first strikes against the United States as part of various Taiwan invasion scenarios.9 China might seek to leverage its nuclear weapons in a future Taiwan crisis without resorting to explicit nuclear threats. Since a good portion of the PLA’s nuclear forces are based on mobile platforms, it could disperse them during a crisis to assume a more threatening posture.10 It also could adjust nuclear alert levels to signal intent. If these measures did not deter third-party intervention, China could resort to more dramatic action, such as firing a nuclear demonstration shot near Taiwan, Okinawa, Guam, or even Hawaii during an invasion crisis. One might counter that China is unlikely to cross the nuclear threshold in a Taiwan conflict for fear of international condemnation. This may well be the case, at least initially. But China could reconsider its position, especially if third-party intervention threatened to derail its invasion plans. It is worth remembering that China did not intend to issue nuclear threats when it instigated its 1969 border war with the Soviet Union. But eventually Beijing did exactly that after it feared the Soviets might escalate the conflict.11 China’s Growing Nuclear Arsenal. The growth of China’s nuclear arsenal may increase its willingness to issue nuclear threats in the future. To understand why, it is important to recall China’s nuclear history. At the dawn of the Nuclear Age, China sought to diminish the importance of nuclear weapons. In 1946, CCP Chairman Mao Zedong famously denigrated the bomb as nothing more than a “paper tiger.” Mao made a virtue of necessity because China did not have the technological means to develop nuclear weapons until 1964. For decades afterward, China appeared content with a small nuclear arsenal, confident it could deter the United States—and later the Soviet Union—with an assured second-strike capability. But the discovery of China’s new missile fields in 2021 suggests Beijing’s nuclear doctrine is changing. China’s decision to dramatically expand its nuclear capabilities is the most consequential development in the PLA’s ongoing modernization efforts. As the Pentagon’s 2023 annual report put it, “Over the next decade, the PRC will continue to rapidly modernize, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces. Compared to the PLA’s nuclear modernization efforts a decade ago, current efforts dwarf previous attempts in both scale and complexity [emphasis added].”12 Over time, China’s nuclear arsenal expansion may embolden its behavior—including the propensity to issue nuclear threats.13 As the 2021 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report asserts, “It could also be intended to support a new strategy of limited nuclear first use. Such a strategy would enable Chinese leaders to leverage their nuclear forces to accomplish Chinese political objectives beyond survival, such as coercing another state or deterring U.S. intervention in a war over Taiwan.”14 The United States still maintains an advantage in terms of strategic warheads, but the PLA is closing the gap. In its 2023 report on Chinese military power, the Pentagon estimates China “will probably have over 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030.”15 The fact that the U.S. nuclear arsenal will remain larger than China’s for at least the next few years provides no guarantee that Beijing will refrain from nuclear threats in the near term. Historically, China has demonstrated a willingness to instigate crises, even against stronger military powers, to achieve political aims.16 Moreover, Chinese writings have long focused on the political nature of nuclear weapons, especially their potential to inflict psychological shock. All this should be front of mind when considering the potential for China to resort to nuclear threats during a Taiwan invasion, whether in the near or distant future. The nature of the PLA’s force structure also increases the odds that the next major crisis over Taiwan will include a nuclear dimension. The dual-use capability of selected Chinese missiles, such as the DF-26 “carrier killer,” means the PLA can exchange conventional warheads for nuclear ones in short order. This would present special intelligence and operational challenges for the U.S. Navy during a conflict over Taiwan. In addition, the PLA’s commingling of conventional and nuclear weapons raises the risk of inadvertent nuclear escalation since the Pentagon’s playbook normally involves precision strikes deep into enemy territory.17 Nuclear Threats Extend to U.S. Allies The United States also must consider the possibility that China may issue nuclear threats against one (or more) U.S. allies in a Taiwan scenario. Washington’s greatest strength in the Indo-Pacific theater is its extensive web of allies and partners. China understands this full well, which explains its relentless efforts to sow discord among them. In the event of a Taiwan crisis, China will intensify these efforts. China knows that Japan is the most important U.S. ally when it comes to Taiwan, because Washington depends on Japan for military basing and diplomatic support. It should come as no surprise that Chinese officials already have sanctioned a crude nuclear threat against Tokyo. In July 2021, a video surfaced on a CCP-approved channel linked to the PLA that declared, “We are warning Japan and informing the world that if Japan interferes militarily in our domestic affairs—including the unification of Taiwan with the mainland—nuclear weapons will surely be used against them.”18 Japan is not the only U.S. ally that China has threatened with nuclear weapons. China also has threatened Australia over its participation in a nuclear submarine deal with the United States and the United Kingdom. In 2021, an article in the CCP mouthpiece Global Times asserted that such developments “will potentially make Australia a target of a nuclear strike.”19 These examples highlight the need for Washington to coordinate with key allies to neuter the potential impact of Chinese nuclear saber rattling. Washington’s interest in counterproliferation is another reason to take the growth of China’s nuclear arsenal seriously. In this vein, recall that Taiwan pursued a nuclear weapons program for decades before relinquishing its nuclear ambitions in the 1980s. Taipei’s leaders may be tempted to restart the island’s long-defunct nuclear program if they conclude no other course of action can deter a Chinese invasion. Then-President Lee Teng-hui declared Taiwan was reconsidering its nuclear option during the July 1995 crisis with China, though he walked back his statement a few days later. Taiwan has given no indication it is presently reconsidering its nonnuclear status, but its calculus could change over time.20Renewed interest in China’s nuclear program spiked after the 2021 discovery of three new missile fields in north central China. Captured above are satellite images of silo construction at one such site—the missile field near Hami in Xinjiang Province. What is to be Done?Clearly, the safest way to deal with a potential nuclear crisis is to prevent it from arising in the first place. For this reason, the United States must redouble its efforts to make Taiwan an indigestible porcupine from China’s perspective. This means ensuring Taiwan’s defensive quills are long, sharp, and numerous.

In Xi’s vision, a unified and resurgent China would be on par with or would surpass the United States. China is the preeminent power in Asia, and its maritime domain has expanded to include control over contested areas in the East China and South China Seas. The United States has retreated back across the Pacific to assume its rightful place as an Atlantic power. Moreover, the formidable network of U.S. alliances that has underpinned the international system for more than 70 years is dissolving in favor of a proposed Chinese framework of dialogue, negotiation, and cooperation. China’s influence also radiates through the world via infrastructure ranging from ports, railways, and bases to fiber-optic cables, e-payment systems, and satellites. In the same way that U.S., European, and Japanese companies led the development of the world’s twentieth-century infrastructure, Chinese companies compete to lead in the twenty-first century. Xi ably uses China’s economic power to induce and coerce compliance with his vision. This shift in the geostrategic landscape reflects and reinforces an even more profound transformation: the rise of a China-centric order with its own norms and values. However imperfectly, the post–World War II international order was shaped primarily by liberal democracies that were committed in principle to universal human rights, the rule of law, free markets, and limited state intervention in the political and social lives of their citizens. Multilateral institutions and international law were designed to advance these values and norms, and technology was often used to bolster them. Yet Xi seeks to flip a switch and replace those values with the primacy of the state. Institutions, laws, and technology in this new order reinforce state control, limit individual freedoms, and constrain open markets. It is a world in which the state controls the flow of information and capital both within its own borders and across international boundaries, and there is no independent check on its power. Chinese officials and scholars appear assured that the rest of the world is onboard with Xi’s vision, as they trumpet, “The East is rising, and the West is declining!” Yet many countries increasingly seem less enamored of Xi’s bold initiatives, as the full political and economic costs of embracing the Chinese model become clear. At the People’s Congress, Xi exuded the self-confidence of a leader convinced that the world is there for China’s taking. But his own certainty may be a liability, preventing him from recognizing the resistance Beijing is stoking through its actions abroad. Xi’s success depends on whether he can adjust and reckon with the blowback. Failing to do so could lead to further miscalculations that may end up reshaping the global order—just not in the way Xi imagines. REUNIFYING THE MOTHERLAND Xi’s path to a reordered world begins by redrawing the map of China. In an October 2021 speech, Xi asserted, “The historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland must be fulfilled and will definitely be fulfilled.” Asserting sovereignty over long-contested territories—particularly those Beijing terms its core interests: Hong Kong, the South China Sea, and Taiwan—is Xi’s number one priority. Beijing has already dealt with Hong Kong. In 2020, China imposed a national security law on the city that effectively ended its autonomy under the “one country, two systems” governance model that was put in place in 1997 at the time of Hong Kong’s handoff from London to Beijing. In a matter of months, Beijing undermined the city’s long-standing commitment to basic human rights and the rule of law and transformed Hong Kong into just another mainland Chinese city. Xi has also made progress in asserting Chinese sovereignty in the South China Sea. He has created and militarized seven artificial features in the sea and laid claim to scores of other islands and stretches of maritime territory. He increasingly deploys China’s powerful navy, newly armed coast guard, and vast fishing fleet to intimidate the five other nations with overlapping claims—Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam—and to assert control in disputed waters. Throughout the pandemic, Xi has also taken advantage of other countries’ distraction to press additional territorial claims: for more than 100 days in a row, Chinese vessels sailed into waters off Japan and around a number of contested islands there that China calls the Diaoyu Islands and Japan calls the Senkaku Islands; a Chinese coast guard vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat; Chinese military aircraft flew over disputed waters claimed by both China and Malaysia; and China and India engaged in their first deadly border conflict in four decades. Xi’s path to a reordered world begins by redrawing the map of China. No map of China would be acceptable to Xi, however, if it did not reflect mainland Chinese control over Taiwan. At the 19th Party Congress, in October 2017, Xi declared that unification with Taiwan was one of 14 must-do items necessary to achieve the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” He has further underscored the importance of unification with his vivid imagery: “People on both sides of the strait are one family, with shared blood. . . . No one can ever cut the veins that connect us.” Xi speaks about unification with Taiwan with increasing frequency and urgency. He remains convinced that Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen is advancing an independence agenda, claiming that the island nation’s “independence separatism” remains the “most serious hidden danger to national rejuvenation.” Since Tsai came to power, in 2016, Xi has cut off the long-established cross-strait dialogue; dramatically reduced the number of mainland tourists permitted to travel to Taiwan, from 4.2 million in 2015 to 2.7 million in 2017, contributing to a drop in the island’s annual tourism revenue from $44.5 billion to $24.4 billion; convinced seven of the 22 remaining states that formally recognize Taiwan as the Republic of China to abandon Taipei for Beijing; and prevented Taiwan from participating in the World Health Assembly briefings in the early months of the pandemic. During Tsai’s 2020 reelection campaign, CCP hackers also allegedly spread disinformation designed to undermine her. Beijing’s increasingly threatening military exercises along Taiwan’s coast provoke frequent talk of a possible Chinese military attack. Xi’s efforts to intimidate Taiwan have failed to convince the island nation to embrace unification. Instead, they have produced a backlash both within Taiwan and abroad. A greater percentage of Taiwanese than ever before—64 percent—favor independence, and few Taiwanese retain faith that a “one country, two systems” framework could ever work, particularly in the wake of the crackdown in Hong Kong. A growing number of countries have also stepped up to offer support to Taiwan. In an unprecedented policy shift, Japan asserted in 2021 that it had a direct stake in ensuring Taiwan’s status as a democracy. Several small European countries have also rallied to Taiwan’s diplomatic defense: the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Slovakia have all welcomed the Taiwanese foreign minister for a visit. For its part, the United States has supported a wide array of new legislation and diplomatic activity designed to strengthen the bilateral relationship and embed Taiwan in regional and international organizations. BYE-BYE, MISS AMERICAN PIE China is also busy trying to lay the foundation for the country to supersede the United States as the dominant force in the Asia-Pacific. Describing the Asia-Pacific as a “big family” and claiming that “the region cannot prosper without China” and “China cannot develop in isolation from the region,” China’s leaders portray the Asia-Pacific as seamlessly integrated through Chinese-powered trade, technology, infrastructure and shared cultural and civilizational ties. Xi has been particularly successful in cementing China’s position as the regional economic leader. China is the largest trading partner of virtually all the countries in Asia, and in 2021, the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations together ranked as China’s top trading partner. At the end of 2020, Xi concluded the negotiations over the Chinese-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which includes China, ten Southeast Asian countries, and Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. In a bold gambit, Xi has also advanced China for membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Japanese-led free-trade agreement. This would make China the dominant economic player in the two most important regional trade agreements in the most economically dynamic region of the world; the United States would remain sidelined. China has been less successful in its efforts to position itself as the region’s preeminent security actor, a role long played by the United States. In 2014, Beijing proposed a new Asian security order managed by Asian countries. China’s defense minister has crisscrossed the Asia-Pacific region with the message that countries there “should adhere to the principle that regional issues should be solved by the regional countries through consultation.” Chinese officials have also tried hard to paint U.S. alliances as anachronistic relics of the Cold War and as hostile to China. Yet Beijing’s military assertiveness in the region has directly undermined its push for leadership. A survey of Southeast Asian experts and businesspeople found that less than two percent believed that China was a benign and benevolent power, and less than 20 percent were confident or very confident that China would “do the right thing.” Nearly half of those polled believed that China was a “revisionist power” that intended to transform the region into its sphere of influence. (In contrast, over two-thirds of the interviewees were confident or very confident that Japan would “do the right thing” by contributing to global peace, security, prosperity, and governance.) China’s behavior has also reenergized the Quad partnership, which includes Australia, India, Japan, and the United States; spurred the establishment of a new trilateral security pact among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States; and prompted several European countries, including France, Germany, and the Netherlands, along with NATO, to deepen their security engagement in the Asia-Pacific. Even Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who earlier threatened to end his country’s alliance with the United States and called China “a good friend,” is now upgrading the Philippines’ defense relationship with Washington as he prepares to leave office.

Maintain technological superiority in warfighting equipment. Technological superiority underpins our national military strategy, allowing us to field the most potent military forces by making best use of our resources, both economic and human. It is essential for the United States to maintain superiority in those technologies of critical importance to our security. Provide technical solutions to achieve the Future Joint Warfighting Capabilities. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have identified the warfighting capabilities most needed by our military in the future (see Future Joint Warfighting Capabilities"). Our S&T investment must be aimed at securing these needed capabilities. Balance basic research and applied technology in pursuing technological advances. Today's basic research lays the foundation for tomorrow's innovative development. To make possible the greatest range of options and avoid technological surprise, we must apply resources broadly at the basic research level and make further investment decisions as emerging technologies reveal the most promising payoff areas. Incorporate affordability as a design parameter. The cost of advanced technology systems must not be allowed to spiral upward uncontrolled. Affordability must be integrated into the design of military systems from the beginning, and improvements must be incorporated throughout their life cycle with the integration of new technology. Defense Research and Engineering The Defense Department science and technology program is organized to support the missions described in the National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement. It is responsive to the warfighting requirements articulated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as to the mission requirements of the military departments. The Director of Defense Research and Engineering is responsible for the direction, overall quality, and content of the Department of Defense science and technology program. Basic Research Fields of Inquiry Atmospheric and Space Science Biological and Medical Sciences Cognitive and Neural Sciences Computer Sciences Electronics Materials Science Mathematics Mechanics Ocean Sciences Physics Terrestrial Sciences The Department of Defense S&T program is organized into three categories: basic research, exploratory development, and advanced technology development. Basic research is the element of the S&T program that seeks to increase knowledge and understanding of science. It is the foundation on which future technological superiority is based. Twelve fields of inquiry, listed in the box at top right, compose the Defense Department's basic research program. The two other components, exploratory development and advanced technology development, make up the Defense technology program. This program is centered around the 19 technology areas listed in the box at lower right. The exploratory development program provides proof-of-concept experiments and evaluations built around models and laboratory experiments, while the advanced technology development program evaluates the effectiveness of technological advances in providing required military capabilities. In total, the three components that make up the program are highly interrelated, as sharp distinctions between research and development phases no longer apply. Technology Areas for Exploratory Development and Advanced Technology Development Aerospace Propulsion and Power Air Vehicles and Space Vehicles Battlespace Environments Biomedical Applications Chemical and Biological Defense Individual Survivability and Sustainability Command, Control, and Communications Computing and Software Conventional Weapons Electronics Electronic Warfare and Directed Energy Weapons Environmental Quality and Civil Engineering Human Systems Interface Manufacturing Science and Technology Manpower, Personnel, and Training Materials, Processes, and Structures Modeling and Simulation Sensors Surface/Under Surface Vehicles and Ground Vehicles The defense science and technology program is planned and conducted by the military services and Defense agencies. The Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force train and equip the military forces and use the S&T program to provide warfighting options for their service components. The defense agencies are responsible for specified cross-service aspects of the overall program and execute designated programs in support of national security objectives. The Advanced Research Projects Agency is charged with seeking breakthrough technology and with investing in technologies that are referred to as "dual use" because they have both defense and commercial applications. The Director of Defense Research and Engineering, in collaboration with the military departments and other Defense agencies, prepares the Defense Science and Technology Strategy and a technology plan which describes the focus and content of the overall Defense technology effort, including goals, objectives, and schedules. Priorities of the Department of Defense S&T Program Information technology, sensors, and modeling and simulation are high priority S&T programs in the Department of Defense. Information technology and sensors have the potential to dramatically improve all aspects of future military capabilities, while modeling and simulation have already made major contributions to training, readiness, weapons design, and acquisition management. Together, these technologies can significantly reduce combat losses in lives and equipment. Counterproliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction In early 1995 the Counterproliferation Program Review Committee, chaired by the Secretary of Defense and composed of the Secretary of Energy (as Vice Chair), the Director of Central Intelligence, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conducted a comprehensive assessment of U.S. activities related to countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As a result of this assessment, the Secretary of Defense has taken measures to significantly strengthen Department of Defense science and technology efforts in counterproliferation to address shortfalls in U.S. operational capability. Counterproliferation spans the spectrum of diplomatic activities and military operations. As a Department of Defense mission, it includes support of proliferation prevention and intelligence activities; deterring the use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; defending against such weapons and their effects; and maintaining a robust ability to find and destroy delivery forces and infrastructure elements with minimum collateral effects, should this become necessary. In 1995, Congress provided $60 million to "jump-start" the counterproliferation program within the Department of Defense, and the Administration has requested $108 million for 1996. These funds are being used to accelerate development and deployment of essential military counterproliferation technologies and capabilities and to leverage existing Department of Defense investments relating to countering proliferation. The Defense Department has placed increased emphasis on detection technology, with a goal of accelerating by six years the deployment of biological and chemical agent remote detection and characterization systems. In addition, it is accelerating development of a new generation of hard target defeat and collateral effects prediction and mitigation capabilities, with the goal of demonstrating them within the next two years. The Department of Defense is also accelerating important proliferation prevention efforts such as initial 1996 fielding of enhanced capabilities to track nuclear, biological, and chemical related foreign shipments. The Administration's continuing efforts in counterproliferation will focus on the identification and development of the most promising technologies for the detection and characterization of proliferation threats and for developing and providing capabilities to counter the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; their infrastructure; and associated delivery systems. Information technologies have changed the battlefield. They enable better performance of current platforms, weapons, sensors, and people. Today, electronics and software add capability to almost every complex system. Information technologies are the basis for continual improvements in communications; intelligence gathering, analysis, and distribution; precision strike capability; platform control; sensor data processing; and human performance. Our troops depend on accurate and timely battlefield information. The ability to collect, integrate, analyze, and deliver this information efficiently and rapidly is critical to battlefield advantage. And because of the amount of tactical information available, a principal challenge is processing the data into meaningful forms for battlefield decisionmaking. Beyond the battlefield, the management of enormous amounts of data related to logistic support is an increasingly important and demanding requirement. There is often too much administrative overhead associated with ensuring that equipment and supplies are on hand. Information technology programs offer the means to significantly reduce overhead and enhance efficiency by accounting for supplies via automated sensor and computer links. We are applying advanced computer software and systems and communication technology to the task of rapidly sorting through large quantities of data and presenting logistic specialists with information in ways that permit efficient operations and reduced errors. Technology is also needed to help ensure that no enemy can disrupt the information systems on which we depend.

China’s central role in the global supply chain has prompted the United States to initiate a series of measures to de-risk its relationship with the world’s second largest economy as relations worsen. For the US defence industry, it seems inevitable that Washington will want to go further and seek to cut out China completely. Whether it will work is another question, though. China now plays a central role in the global economy as a leading producer of everything from the raw materials used to make basic equipment and rare earth metals to the hi-tech equipment that is vital to the production of some of America’s most advanced weapons. When it comes to global arms exports, China accounts for a relatively modest 6.6 per cent of the market, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. But because China accounts for 20 per cent of total global manufacturing trade, according to Beijing’s own figures, the picture is very different when looking at the components used to make weapons. If all made-in-China parts and components were removed from existing weapons as well as from the international arms industry’s supply chain, it would lead to chaotic consequences for arms manufacturers around the world. Precision-guided missile makers would struggle to find enough sensors, there might not be enough infrared lenses for night-vision goggles and shortages of bulletproof fibre would have a knock-on effect on supplies of body armour. It could also cause the war in Ukraine to suddenly stop. Much of the Western equipment supplied to Ukraine – from Javelin anti-tank missiles to Patriot air-defence systems – would stop working, and the same would apply to significant parts of Russia’s arsenal, from drones to armoured vehicles. Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II, the cornerstone stealth fighter for the US and its allies, would see production lines coming to a halt while the existing fleet would run out of replacement parts. The plane’s engines and flight control systems use critical high-performance magnets, made of rare earth materials such as neodymium, dysprosium and praseodymium – all sourced from China. As China also dominates the global rare earths processing industry there would be no immediate alternative source for these high-grade magnets. China also has “a near-total monopoly over gallium, a critical mineral used to produce high-performance microchips that power some of the US’ most advanced military technologies”, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, said in a report last July.

For almost forty-five years, since the 1972 publication of The Limits to Growth, a sliver of the environmental movement has struggled to frame unending economic growth as a core driver of environmental harm. They argue that an ever-expanding economy generates exponentially increasing pressures on environmental systems that will inevitably carry us beyond the “safe operating space” of the planet. From the depletion of forests and fisheries, to ocean plastic pollution and climate change, it is the staggering growth in the volume of materials extracted, products consumed, and waste produced that brings us to the doorstep of an environmental unraveling. Emergent “green” technologies—renewable energy, polyculture agriculture, decarbonized transportation systems, reduced product packaging, and the like—can blunt these impacts, but not for long, since their ameliorative effects are quickly swamped by the environmental penalty of additional growth. To reap lasting benefits from these technological innovations, we need a suite of parallel social innovations to release us from political and economic systems addicted to growth.2 These arguments have largely fallen on deaf ears. Rather than viewing economic growth as a source of environmental degradation, most see it as essential to sustainability. To them, an ever-expanding economy drives technological innovation while lifting billions out of environmentally destructive poverty. Growth also means more government revenue, which supports ambitious environmental initiatives at no cost to other programs, thus avoiding nasty political conflict. From this vantage point, growth is the solution, not the problem, so long as it is environmentally sound growth. The job of higher education is to train students and to conduct research that produces the technologies and practices that fuel this growth and turns it from “brown” to “green.” For the past few years, this pro-growth logic has been under especially fierce assault by scholars and activists. (See Chapter 20.) One is Boston College sociologist Julie Schor, who calls for a "slow consumption" movement inspired by the push toward "slow food" and writes persuasively about a "plentitude economy" divorced from the growth imperative. Another is economist Richard Norgaard, professor emeritus of energy and resources at the University of California at Berkeley, who likens today's obsession with growth to a modern-day religion built around a disastrous faith. "The economy," Norgaard suggests, "really is the world’s greatest faith-based organization." And Gus Speth, former dean of the prestigious Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, recently wrote that "it is time for Americans to move to a post-growth society, where our communities and families are no longer sacrificed for the sake of mere GDP growth."3 The rough outline of social innovations for this post-growth society is clear. As Speth explains: "[W]e already know the types of policies that move us toward a post-growth economy that sustains both human and natural communities .... [There is] a long list of public policies that would slow GDP growth, thus sparing the environment, while simultaneously improving social and individual well being." Speth's list, which draws on work by numerous scholars, includes shorter workweeks, longer vacations, and more investment in local, small-scale economic enterprises that prosper by staying small. A shift to worker cooperatives and community banking with a strong commitment to social equity and environmental limits also makes the list. So too do progressive taxation policies, seed grants to promote community entrepreneurship, and guarantees for part-time workers."4 Speth's recommendations could easily be dismissed by those unpersuaded by the post-growth argument, except for one glaring reality: for more than a decade, we have been living in the very low-growth world that many dismiss as impossible, hopelessly dismal, or a retreat to some dark age. "Economic growth," explains Neil Irwin of the New York Times, "has been weaker for longer than it has been in the lifetime of most people on Earth." Since 2001, U.S. economic growth per capita rose 0.9 percent a year, almost a 60 percent decline from the 2.2 percent annual increase between 1947 and 2000. Economic growth in Western Europe and Japan has been even lower. Because of a number of still-unclear factors—aging populations, slowing population growth, and the intermittency of economically transformative technologies, among others—there is good reason to expect this tepid growth to continue, with some ups and downs, for the foreseeable future. These will be turbulent times that call for a particular kind of education across colleges and universities. (See Box 16-1.)5 It is tempting to double-down on the economic growth machine by mobilizing multiple forces in society, including higher education, to get us back to the time of 2 percent-plus growth per year. In the short run, this might work, but it ultimately will heighten the conflict between exponential economic growth and the integrity of environmental systems upon which human prosperity rests. Much of this growth, after all, delivers ambiguous benefits, and some of it actively undermines human prosperity. In the end, we will still need to deal with the implications of persistent low- or no-growth—the material base of the economy cannot continue to grow exponentially—with an even more despoiled environment on our hands.6 More important, pining for the "good old days" of robust growth diverts us from the critical task of adjusting, now, to a low-growth world in ways that are just, equitable, democratic, and environmentally restorative. Even if we believed that a return to muscular growth was just a few years away, wouldn't we want to explore how to gracefully adapt to our current conditions, if only as an insurance policy against the possibility that the days of high growth are behind us? Few, if any, of the social innovations described by Speth are inherently anti-growth, so there is little to lose by assessing and spreading them as we are able. For reasons still opaque to economists, slow growth is no longer a fuzzy wish tossed about by environmental scholars. It is here, among us, in our communities, on the ground, affecting our pocketbooks and driving our politics. It is no longer just academic. Rather than treating tepid growth as a problem to be solved ("how do we get the economy growing again?"), higher education can reclaim its beacon of sustainability by attacking an altogether different but immediately relevant question: How do complex human societies thrive— environmentally, equitably, and justly—in a post-growth world?