Friday News Roundup — January 12, 2024

CSPC’s Friday News Roundup is back after a holiday break, and the same forces that so riled the geopolitical landscape at home and abroad at the end of 2023 have shifted into overdrive in the New Year.

The bloody war provoked by the Hamas terrorist group’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 continues to escalate dangerously. The United Nation’s top court began hearings this week on an allegation by South Africa that Israel’s military operations in the Gaza strip, which have reportedly resulted in the death of more than 22,000 Palestinians, amounts to genocide. Israel strongly denies the accusations, and continues to reject calls from many of its Arab neighbors for an immediate ceasefire.

After weeks of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea by Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, in protest of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, a U.S.-led military coalition this week struck more than 60 Houthi targets and 16 locations inside Yemen with more than 100 precision-guided munitions. This escalation follows earlier counter-strikes by Israel against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, and by U.S. military forces in recent weeks in response to attacks by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. The U.S.-led response this week in Yemen thus represented a dramatic escalation in a conflict that shows signs of spreading to the entire region.

In the Indo-Pacific, voters in Taiwan will head to the polls tomorrow to choose a new president in a three-party race that could impact regional and international security for years to come. With China continuing to use military threats and provocations to influence the election and coerce Taiwan’s 23 million inhabitants, some Taiwanese political commentators believe that democracy itself is on the ballot.

In Europe, Ukraine’s fight against invading Russian forces is at nearly the two-year mark, and has devolved into a costly war of attrition that has seen casualties on both sides exceed 200,000 troops killed and wounded. In the past week there have been reports that Ukrainian forces are running dangerously low on ammunition, largely as a result of political dysfunction in Washington, D.C. The Biden administration’s $44 billion supplemental security assistance package for Ukraine remains stymied by many weeks of partisan paralysis in Congress.

Speaking of dysfunction, Congress left Washington this week for a long holiday weekend with no plan to prevent yet another government shutdown crisis next week. As the result of an earlier deal to avoid a shutdown, funding for 20 percent of the government is set to expire on January 19, with the rest expiring on February 2nd. Recently House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., agreed on an overall $1.66 trillion spending deal for the 2024 fiscal year. Predictably, hardline conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus are once again pushing Johnson to renege on the budget deal and use a government shutdown as leverage to get their way despite representing only a small minority of lawmakers, or else.

CSPC Hosts Former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso at the U.S. Capitol

By James Kitfield

As part of its “geotech” program promoting economic security and increased coordination with allies, the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress (CSPC) hosted former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso for an important address on U.S.-Japan relations this week. Aso, vice president of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, was introduced by CSPC President Glenn Nye and Congresswoman Michelle Steel of California.

Former Prime Minister Aso’s comments amounted to a clarion call for closer U.S.-Japanese relations and increased regional security cooperation to deter an increasingly belligerent North Korea and coercive China in the Indo-Pacific. As Aso noted, “We are seeing dozens of missiles flying toward us every year. This was unthinkable 30 or 40 years ago, so we have to adapt to the situation.”

As a metaphor for the deteriorating security environment in the Indo-Pacific, Aso espoused the “broken window” theory which holds that allowing even small, visible signs of disorder or lawlessness to go unanswered invited further assaults on the rules-based international order.

Calling for stronger regional trade and security cooperation in the Indo-Pacific between allies such as the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan, Aso stressed the need to “firmly put international deterrence in place to prevent the number of broken windows from increasing, one after another,” he said, noting in particular China’s threats to the de facto independence of Taiwan. “Now we should pay attention to Taiwan as the next window to be broken.”

As an important step towards closer regional cooperation, Aso called on the United States to return to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade pact which the Trump administration abandoned in 2017. Current CPTPP members account for roughly 15 percent of the global economy, Aso noted, but if the United States and Great Britain were to join the CPTPP’s collective claim on global economic output would jump to 40 percent.

Such regional economic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, Aso said, would offer proof positive that security, trade and economic prosperity are “inextricably linked.”

James Kitfield is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress

The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC