“China’s massive military upgrade has emphasized countering the U.S. and other countries’ naval forces.
That includes the development of land, sea and air-launched missiles to repel and possibly sink opposing vessels, expressed most emphatically by the land-based DF-21D ballistic missile known as the “carrier killer.””
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“The Pentagon..issued a report saying China is expanding its nuclear force much faster than U.S. officials predicted just a year ago. That appears designed to enable Beijing to match or surpass U.S. global power by midcentury, the report said.”
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“China’s test of a hypersonic weapon capable of partially orbiting Earth before reentering the atmosphere and gliding on a maneuverable path to its target also surprised top U.S. military leaders. Beijing insisted it was testing a reusable space vehicle, not a missile, but the weapon system’s design is meant to evade U.S. missile defenses.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the test was “very close” to being a “Sputnik moment,” akin to the 1957 launching by the Soviet Union of the world’s first space satellite, which fed fears the United States had fallen behind technologically.”
“Under the Paris agreement, every country is required to publish a climate change target and a route for getting there, or what’s called a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). The first round of NDCs put forward in 2015 were clearly inadequate, putting the world on course for roughly 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century.
Climate leaders hoped that in the runup to COP26, countries would roll out new commitments for the coming decade, as well as long-term strategies for eliminating emissions by the middle of the century. As of October 21, 114 countries and the European Union have submitted new NDCs. Some major emitters like the US, United Kingdom, and China have proposed or submitted stronger targets. But others, like Russia, Brazil, and Australia, did not meaningfully ramp up their goals. Still others like India have yet to submit a new NDC.
The leaders at COP26 will try to create carrots and sticks to motivate the laggards and holdouts to take more aggressive action. Many countries are now adamant that the limit for warming this century should be 1.5°C, now that many countries have already suffered the tolls of disasters worsened by climate change — a sign that 2°C of warming would be far worse.”
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“The core injustice of climate change is that the people who contributed least to the problem stand to suffer the most.”
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“a key part of the discussion at COP26 will be around how to compensate countries facing the impacts of climate change today, from rising sea levels eroding shores to more devastating extreme weather.”
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“The US has the dubious distinction of being the only country to complete a 360-degree turn on the Paris agreement. It helped convene the accord in 2015, yet former President Trump withdrew the US in 2020. President Biden signed an executive order in January to rejoin and the US was formally back in the Paris accord in February.
Since the US is the wealthiest country in the world and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, it plays a prominent role in climate negotiations and has an even greater obligation to act on the crisis. At COP26, the US not only has to make up for lost time, it also has to rebuild trust with other countries and show that it’s willing to be more ambitious.”
“We’ve got a couple different signaling audiences.
There’s Chinese domestic politics. National Day was October 1. It’s often a day for the Chinese government to emphasize their nationalist credentials and project hope for the future about reunifying China, whether that means Taiwan or suppressing the Uyghurs or that kind of thing.
There’s a Taiwanese politics component, specifically an attempt to demoralize the public that China is stronger and you can’t win. The quote-unquote pragmatic choice is just to unify with us. Those tend to backfire. In 1996, China launched a couple missiles across the Taiwan Strait. It ended up — there was an election in Taiwan at the time — boosting the less pro-China candidate. And recently, with the protests and the crackdown in Hong Kong, going into this most recent election the current president, Tsai Ing-wen [of the pro-Taiwan independence Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP], was looking a little bit shaky, especially among youth. But when all that happened in Hong Kong, it was like, “Nope, we don’t want this to happen to Taiwan.”
It also feeds into Taiwanese party politics. The Kuomintang Party [Taiwan’s other major political party, which favors closer ties with mainland China] talking point is to say things like, “Well, the DPP can’t stabilize Taiwanese-Chinese relations. This is clearly an example of that — look at China’s belligerence, we’re better caretakers of the cross-strait relations.”
Then there’s international politics. The US, the UK, and four other countries are doing military exercises in the East Philippine Sea. So it’s partly as a demonstration of, “Stay out, we have a dog in this fight as well, we have the ability to strike too.””
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“I think recently — not just this October, but the previous few months — has been a response to the broader tightening of US alliances in the region. The Joe Biden administration has, kind of surprisingly to me, quickly coalesced a coalition against China and tightened those alliance relationships that have been atrophying a bit under the Trump administration.
A lot of the countries in the region — Japan, South Korea, Philippines probably — they look at Taiwan as a litmus test for US commitment and Chinese assertiveness, which just puts China’s back up.”
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“the US has a really tricky job here. It has to reassure Taiwan and take the lead in solidifying this coalition, but it has to do so in such a way that China doesn’t think “better strike now, or else we’re going to lose this thing forever.” And then the US has to kind of moderate its own policies toward China so it doesn’t jumpstart a war on its own for some other issue area, like the South China Sea. It’s a really tricky balancing act.”
“Beijing is heading for global dominance because of its advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and cyber capabilities, he said. Compared to China’s advancement, US cyber defences in some government departments were at the kindergarten level.
Chaillan blamed the reluctance of Goggle to work with the US defence department on AI. Chinese companies, on the other hand, are obliged to work with Beijing, and were making “massive investment” into AI without regard to ethics, he said to Financial Times.”
“In response to a question from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), Austin acknowledged that while there were “a range of possibilities” for what could have happened with a theoretical continued presence, “if you stayed there at force posture of 2,500, certainly, you’d be in a fight with the Taliban. And you’d have to reinforce yourself.”
This is the crux of the matter: There is no plausible scenario in which the U.S. could leave behind a permanent, or even indefinite, force of soldiers without incurring further casualties. The Doha Agreement negotiated under Trump set an end date by which all American forces would have left Afghanistan, barring any future Taliban violence; a new administration reneging on that deal would certainly have invited renewed bloodshed. And a force of 2,500 facing the entirety of a renewed Taliban would have necessitated further reinforcement. At that point, we would be right back to October 2001, facing an uncertain future and an even more uncertain end goal.”
“The U.S. government’s investigation into the mysterious illnesses impacting American personnel overseas and at home is turning up new evidence that the symptoms are the result of directed-energy attacks, according to five lawmakers and officials briefed on the matter.
Behind closed doors, lawmakers are also growing increasingly confident that Russia or another hostile foreign government is behind the suspected attacks, based on regular briefings from administration officials — although there is still no smoking gun linking the incidents to Moscow.”
“The Commerce Department’s role and responsibilities have grown in size and complexity, while its capabilities and resources have not. This shift reflects the nature of the competition with China (and one of the reasons the analogy to a “new Cold War” is flawed): Economic security and advantages in non-military technology have outsize importance compared to traditional military strength. That’s still crucial, of course, but much of the day-to-day contest happens in the arena of commerce. Just as other departments, like Treasury and Homeland Security, have been revamped and restructured as their relevance to national security grew, the Biden administration needs to reform the Commerce Department’s resources, structure and authorities if its China strategy is to succeed.”
“The US has a singular responsibility to lead: It is second in global climate pollution after China, but far and away responsible for the largest share of cumulative emissions. Since 1850, the US has released a fifth of all carbon emissions, far ahead of every other country, according to an analysis by the research group Carbon Brief.
But US political polarization remains one of the biggest obstacles to global action. The US has never come to an international conference with a comprehensive climate agenda backed by Congress, mostly because Republican lawmakers have refused to negotiate on a serious action plan. So Democrats have banked on passing Biden’s climate plans in the Build Back Better agenda with a simple Senate majority. Their bet on reconciliation has put a good portion of Biden’s climate agenda in the hands of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who is personally invested in the coal industry.
Biden brings a mixed bag of promises to Glasgow. The administration does not have a signed, final law from Congress that backs up his words with billions of dollars in funding. What he has are ambitious promises of slashing pollution in half by 2030, quadrupling international aid, and helping countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. Most of that will depend on Congress following through, and a successful regulatory agenda that survives Supreme Court scrutiny.”
“As commander in chief, Biden is still operating under the authority of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which, on paper, grants the president only authority to bring the military to bear against those responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but in reality has been used by multiple U.S. presidents to authorize very broad military interventions throughout the world.
Furthermore, the 2002 AUMF, which directly authorized the military invasion of Iraq, is still in force. The House voted in June to repeal the 2002 AUMF, but that repeal hasn’t passed the Senate yet. We still have thousands of troops in Iraq and are currently planning to keep them there indefinitely. The plan is that these troops will serve as logistics and advisory help for Iraq’s government, but they will most definitely still be involved in fights against the Islamic State.
We may have pulled troops out of Somalia, but we’re still performing airstrikes there against Al Qaida affiliate al-Shabab. In June, the Pentagon announced that it is considering putting troops right back in there.
And none of that gets into the countless—well, not countless, but the numbers are deliberately concealed from the American public—drone strikes in places like Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan, and Libya. We don’t really have data on drone use under the Biden administration yet, save the disastrous one from late August in Kabul that killed 10 civilians, including 7 children. Biden has reportedly quietly implemented stricter rules on the use of drones outside of war zones and the White House is evaluating the legal and policy “frameworks” for continuing to use them.
Biden might not see all of this piecemeal military intervention as “war,” but let’s be clear here: We’re talking about thousands of U.S. troops overseas involved in potentially killing armed combatants. And Biden currently still has congressional permission to wage war.”