Friday News Roundup - September 15, 2023
It has been another historic week in Washington, D.C., as for the third time in four years, the U.S. House of Representatives has begun impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States. The announcement from Speaker McCarthy had been expected, but drawn forward by what are reported to be significant and growing tensions in the House GOP caucus over legislative priorities, impeachment, and the increasingly-likely prospects for an end-of-month government shutdown. Measures such as the defense bill, FAA reauthorization, the farm bill, and others remain stalled. The move to impeach does empower the House investigators at a time when the president’s son is facing increased legal jeopardy, but without a vote to even open impeachment, the numbers for impeachment or a Senate trial are long-off considerations. While some ink has been spilled on whether the founders intended impeachment to be used this way, we would be curious for their thoughts on an impeachment where the prospects for the speaker seemed more perilous than the president’s.
What reportedly has the White House more concerned about their political prospects, and likely rightly so, is the looming UAW strike. With impacts not only to the big automakers but also the constellation of suppliers and communities around the auto industry, pressures from business, labor, and environmentalists will weigh on how the administration navigates this strike. A tenuous economic picture remains, with inflation numbers remaining somewhat stubborn, a murky path ahead for interest rates, and Americans’ wage growth (and sense of economic well-being) still lagging.
Despite the domestic and economic concerns, President Biden returned from the G20 summit in India and meetings in Vietnam, highlighting the successes at the summit and the elevation of ties with Hanoi. Conventional political wisdom, however, tells us that foreign policy does little to change the kitchen table discussion.
This week, the National Defense University’s PRISM Journal published Joshua C. Huminski’s–the Director of the Mike Rogers Center for Intelligence & Global Affairs–article on the U.S.’s use of strategic intelligence in advance of Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine. Huminski argues that this latest campaign reflected lessons of past intelligence failures, and also holds insights for the future.
Huminski also published a piece in the Hill in response to presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s arguments that supporting Ukraine is not in America’s national interest. Rather than dismiss his claims, Huminski suggests it is better to make the case why seeing Kyiv achieve victory is in America’s domestic and international strategic interests.
On Saturday, the Diplomatic Courier released Huminski’s dual review of “Korea” by Victor D. Cha and Ramon Pacheco Pardo, and “The SIster” by Sung-Yoon Lee, which offer a fresh look at the shared past and divergent futures of North and South Korea.
In this week’s roundup, Dan Mahaffee talks about the importance of right-sizing our perceptions of China and thus the policy response, with a particular eye to their economy and our policy responses. Ethan covers the measures being undertaken by allies to improve their defenses as well as the industrial and logistical foundations underpinning them. Hidetoshi Azuma provides an analysis of the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s new cabinet following the latest cabinet reshuffle on September 13.
Right-Sizing China Expectations
Dan Mahaffee
In geopolitics or business, there tends to be a “goldilocks problem” with evaluating the risk or opportunity when dealing with foreign countries—is our perception of their threat too big, too small, or just right? If not the security balance, then what of the economic opportunity? Part of this is our own perceptions, or or even jockeying in favor or against say defense spending or economic engagement, and part of this is of course the whipsawing between various extremes, with equilibrium somewhere in the middle. Nowadays, this is most often apparent in the rhetoric we hear about China, both in terms of the military balance as well as the nation’s economic outlook. While the former is something that we can dive into in terms of China’s evolving and strengthening military (albeit one that has never carried out a joint operation), the latter is worth considering in terms of the U.S.-China economic relationship, the future of China’s growth, and the economic foundation for the aforementioned military power.
First, it is clear that China is changing its economic trajectory under the leadership of Xi Jinping and his like-minded cadres in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As we have chronicled in this roundup, this has been marked by a crackdown on the private sector, pressure on high-profile entrepreneurs, and reorientation of the economy for China to dominate in future green tech industries while competing with the United States and the west for leadership in advanced, strategic technologies. Xi has also continued to crackdown even the highest levels in the party, with stories now indicating that the defense minister may have been the latest to be detained. Purging the inner circle of other viewpoints can be self-defeating, and questions about the economic expertise of the inner circle are growing. The impact is what we see in China’s economic slowdown, falling consumer, business, and investor confidence, and a shift away from policies that brought growth and prosperity, albeit debt and environmental degradation.
It is important to remember that for Xi Jinping and those in his inner circle, the economic growth of the past decades that has young Chinese yearning to work for Google or Goldman Sachs—or create the Chinese version—is a nightmare to their Communist psyche. Xi, the princeling of Cultural Revolution era politics, has reportedly said that the hardships of the period built character and resilience in the Chinese people. Eschewing what he has described as “welfarism”, Xi has steered stimulus to state-owned industries. Clearly the education in the Soviet Union is showing its dividends in Xi’s economic policies, but his politics are not easily mapped to ours. His rhetoric against welfare handouts and stimulus to the private sector would fit in on right-wing talk radio, while his attitudes towards business, tech, and entrepreneurialism sound right at home in a patchouli-scented Berkeley drum circle.
As a result of this, the Chinese economy and its engagement with the world are changing from the model that we have known—with its considerable benefits and drawbacks—to one that has business leaders looking for alternatives as well as many Chinese wondering about their economic future. In some industries, there is significant interdependence with China that will continue, but for many others that had long assumed that business growth (and shareholder happiness and executive raises) would come from access to the China market. Separate from the off-balance-sheet costs of IP theft, forced technology transfer, joint-venture arrangements, and increasing CCP organizing in the private sector workforce, Beijing’s policies are either pushing your business elsewhere, aiming to build a Chinese competitor to your company, or both.
The example this week of the EU and its shift to investigate China’s support for the EV industry, with possible tariffs on EVs imported into Europe as a result, reflects the already changed political firmament, with business moving behind it as well. For the past decades, the giant European automakers have seen Chinese joint ventures as their pathway to growth, but now they face the surge of Chinese EVs and manufacturing capacity. With Brussels moving to potentially counter China’s model, European automakers are at the intersection of past planning and the fight for their future. The same looms for U.S. and Asian automakers, though safety rules as well as customers’ skepticism over Chinese autos have provided a temporary delay. Hollywood, of course, provides another well-documented example of companies catering to Beijing’s demands, and often finding more demands rather than more profit.
For policymakers, it is important that they right-size the perceptions of China and its trajectory. It is not an insurmountable juggernaut, nor is it facing imminent collapse. Our measures responding to this change in China’s economic path need not be self-defeating or seek to exacerbate the already significant complexities of supply chain alternatives, derisking, decoupling, or whatever term-du-jour you wish to apply. The security situation could grow more dire if the CCP needs to distract from economic pain and blame outsiders, yet we need not be provocateurs to tip China towards this path. While we can protect our critical technologies, overly onerous investment regimes or trade restrictions pull America away from the global economy in which it needs to compete with China in terms of superior political and economic system, not a race to implement economic controls. Since I feel like I often spend a paragraph concluding my columns with this message, I have decided to simplify it for this column, and the future, with this Simpsons meme:
Stockpiles for deterrence value
Ethan Brown
This week across the pond, Britain is hosting the Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) 2023 conference, where defense contractors, security leaders, commercial manufacturers and state representatives coalesce to exchange information, pitches, requirements and other defense-related bits. The biennial event is, of course, focused primarily on the ongoing Ukraine war and the security needs for European actors contending with the perpetually-evolving threat emanating from Russia and throughout the continent.
The enduring narrative emanating from this conference has been stockpiles of defense capabilities, serving as a key deterrent against outside aggression, a la Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As Lithuania’s Deputy Economic and Innovation Minister Erika Kuročkina noted at the onset of the event: “Ammunition is the lifeblood of any military operation…but a nation with a robust stockpile can also support its allies.” As proof positive, Lithuania has provided over a million units of ammunition to Ukraine as the latter contends with the Russian invader, but one of many European states who have supported the endeavor.
Other European partners, while continuing to support Ukraine, have exemplified this mindset in recent months. Poland, arguably Ukraine’s strongest European-continental supporter since the war began, has more than doubled-down on its efforts to bolster its defense capabilities and deterrent power through stockpiling defense systems. 486 HIMARS missile launchers worth upwards of $10 billion were ordered from Lockheed Martin just this week, after months of expansive and robust acquisitions of US-built weapons systems and command-and-control architecture to support those systems.
Poland is not alone in these efforts. Romania and Slovenia are well on their way towards revamping entire military vehicle fleets sourced from a variety of NATO states’ defense manufacturers. Both nations are currently conducting national defense with fleets of tactical vehicles hailing from the 1980s primarily, and the myriad investments in upgrading each are in excess of billions of dollars. In the Nordic region, where Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland have already moved into deeper airpower integration, forming a “Nordic Air Force” of integrated air fleets earlier this year, Sweden has solicited defense production for significant upgrades to both its maritime, amphibious capabilities and maritime missile defense capabilities. Maritime deterrence is certainly no less important than land fleets, and Sweden's increasing influence as a NATO partner is pivotal in terms of maritime security.
The thrust of this analysis is the pivot from European dependence on outsourced US security postures to a holistic, home-field approach. One which is quite simply overdue, but timely amidst the ongoing threat posed by Moscow. Not only is it encouraging to see the state-level and defense industrial base adapting to the clear need for diverse and modernized capabilities, but the initiative to pursue deterrence by on-hand capabilities is an important departure in the strategic mindset of many European states. Of course, the underpinning of European defense rests with cooperative defense, mostly provided by US overmatch in most categories, but this move to make targets less vulnerable from the onset is a positive change.
Ukraine became a viable target for Russian aggression for a host of reasons far too complex to summarize in a single analysis, but one of the factors that proved to be pivotal in Moscow’s fateful decision to begin its special military operation in February of 2022 was the perception of Kiev's flagging capacity for defense. And with the rapid territorial gains those Russian forces made early on, it’s not too fantastical to say their strategic assessments may not have been too far off the mark.
Ukraine’s vulnerability before February of 2022 has prompted this pivot for European states to make themselves hardened, capable deterrent forces that will discourage future aggression. But it also has compounding effects which benefits the North Atlantic alliance writ large as regional issues like the Middle East and African security remain at the near periphery of European affairs. The Ukraine war has seen many of these states transfer fighting vehicles and resources to enable Ukraine’s defenders, meaning that a revamping of defense stockpiles and inventories is now more critical than ever.
But getting to that point of modernized readiness, while clearly understood as a necessity, is not yet a fully coherent goal across the alliance. Though the host of European states are in agreement and accord on modernization and rapid bolstering of fleets, there is no consensus on synergizing these efforts between the myriad states’ militaries. It’s an issue that has plagued actors in this phase across the alliance, and made worse by the fact that those European stockpiles reached dangerously low points when the conflict in Ukraine had reached a fever pitch last year.
These concerns were in place before the war in Ukraine began, owing to a relative peace-time posture for European defense industries who were too reliant on US support, both militarily and for defense technology. And the vulnerability on the economic and industrial front remains intact, despite NATO members moving to rapidly advance their defense investment. Therein lies the critical takeaway from recent months, and the positive narrative coming from a major defense conference focused on such matters: defense posturing and continued integration is critical, but advancing the industrial base in tandem is no less important, and doing so must continue to be a key initiative for states engaged in collective defense.
Fumio Kishida’s Long Game
Hidetoshi Azuma
The Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his cabinet convene for a commemorative photo shoot at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence in Tokyo, Japan 9’ September 13, 2023. (Photo Credit: The Office of the Prime Minister of Japan)
The Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his cabinet convene for a commemorative photo shoot at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence in Tokyo, Japan 9’ September 13, 2023. (Photo Credit: The Office of the Prime Minister of Japan)
The Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida executed a cabinet reshuffle on September 13. It occurred against the backdrop of his dwindling popularity exacerbated by the ceaseless onslaught of embarrassing scandals surrounding his administration ever since his premiership began in September 2021. While the latest cabinet reshuffle may be his another desperate attempt to salvage his plummeting support rate, it, in fact, reflected his long-term vision for his beleaguered premiership. Indeed, Kishdia essentially executed a quiet purge designed to ensure a stable administration needed for what many in Tokyo increasingly recognize these days as the imperative of wartime leadership.
Kishida’s new cabinet emerged largely as an anticlimax given his perceived imperative of restoring public faith in his premiership. Indeed, the public support for the Kishida administration remained unchanged at 35% according to the polls by Yomiuri Shimbun and Nikkei. This was mostly due to the public perception of political inertia as represented by the many familiar faces continuing to hold the same cabinet posts. Such a public sentiment was most evident in the widespread public backlash against Kishida’s decision to retain the Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki and the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura in light of the coming tax hike in Japan’s uncertain economic future. In the end, six out of twenty cabinet posts have remained unchanged.
Kishida’s seemingly conservative approach to personnel reshuffle was also evident in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership changes. Most significantly, he has retained his foremost mentor and kingmaker, the former prime minister Taro Aso, as the LDP’s Vice President. Despite its ceremonial role, Aso’s vice presidency signifies his continued behind-the-scenes influence on Kishida’s decision making as well as the LDP’s internal power dynamics driven by factionalism. In fact, Kishida’s rise to premiership was inextricable from Aso’s towering, if not unrivaled, clout in Tokyo which only expanded after the untimely assassination of the former prime minister Shinzo Abe in July 2022. Kishida has been taking cues from Aso to guide many of his consequential decisions, including the one to double Japan’s defense budget in December 2022. Indeed, Kishida’s new cabinet now includes four ministers from the Aso faction, tying with the largest Abe faction, while the other groups more or less diminished in power.
As a result, Aso’s de facto lordship over Kishdia largely delineated the contours of the LDP’s leadership and his new cabinet. Aso has been consistently pursuing Japan’s security normalization ever since elected to the House of Representatives in 1979. Boasting unrivaled ancestry including the Meiji statesman Toshimichi Okubo and the architect of the US-Japan alliance, Shigeru Yoshida, Aso has both the will and the wherewithal to resurrect what he believes is Japan’s lost glory. Against this backdrop, he has been seeking the grand revival of the original mainstream conservative Kochikai faction which splintered into offshoots in 2001. Kishida is the Kochikai’s current leader, and guiding, if not controlling, the incumbent Japanese leader toward what Aso envisions as a “Greater Kochikai” faction is a key imperative for Aso’s agenda. It would also be conducive to a stable government needed for what the former prime minister recently called “Japan’s will to fight” while in Taiwan in August.
That said, Aso’s invisible hand is now leading Kishdia’s premiership toward wartime leadership. First, the latest changes in the LDP’s leadership effectively checked the ascendancy of the party’s Secretary-General, Toshimitsu Motegi. Motegi is widely considered to be the leading prime minister hopeful who could succeed Kishida and commands his own Motegi faction. Kishida selected another prominent member of the Motegi faction, Yuko Obuchi, to be the Chairwoman of the Election Strategy Committee. Obuchi is the daughter of the former prime minister Keizo Obuchi and is on track to becoming a leading contender for future premiership. Obuchi is supported by the former prime minister Yoshiro Mori, the de facto leader of the Abe faction and the prominent former member of the Motegi faction, the late Mikio Aoki, who ironically opposed Motegi’s political rise. In other words, Kishida handed Motegi a poisoned chalice to ensure the incumbent prime minister’s long tenure.
Second, the former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara has miraculously survived a crippling scandal threatening his political fate. Kihara is arguably Kishida’s right hand man supporting the prime minister‘s activities at home and abroad. He recently found himself besieged by inexorable media assaults on him, even leading to the possibility of his implication in an alleged murder case involving his wife. Thanks largely to Aso‘s backing, Kishida has decided to retain Kihara in his new cabinet and even appointed him as the Acting Secretary-General and the Acting Chairman of the Policy Research Council. His bizarre dual roles signify Kishida’s desire to use his top aide-de-camp as his own party commissar to check the political ambitions of Motegi and Koichi Hagiuda of the Abe faction. Kihara’s newfound role as the prime minister’s satrap would likely ensure stability of the Kishida administration by playing the Kochikai’s rival factions against each other.
Third, Kishdia looks to further solidify Japan’s grand strategic pivot implemented so far on his watch under Aso’s guidance. Since taking office in September 2021, Kishdia has effected a grand realignment of Japan’s grand strategy with those of the US and its key global allies, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), especially after the beginning of Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The upshot was the grand reorientation of Japan’s grand strategy increasingly checking the double great power threat of Russia and China in Asia. Yet, the previous Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi was widely considered to be pro-Chinese and even chaired the Sino-Japanese Friendship Caucus, which Washington views as Beijing’s front organization for clandestine political actions in Japan. Indeed, he has failed to negotiate the hostage release of suspected Japanese spies held in China. Hayashi has increasingly become a thorn in the flesh of Kishida’s indefatigable pursuit of Japan’s new grand strategy. In a surprise move, Kishida sacked Hayashi during his return flight to Tokyo from Ukraine earlier this week. In doing so, he effectively undermined Hayashi’s ascendancy within the Kochikai faction, which could have threatened the incumbent prime minister’s long tenure.
Against this backdrop, Kishida appointed Yoko Kamikawa to succeed Hayashi. Kamikawa has earned the reputation as an “executioner” following the executions of thirteen convicts involved in the 1995 Aum Shinikyo terrorist attack on the Tokyo Subway during her tenure as the Minister of Justice under Abe in the 2010s. Kamikawa is therefore renowned for her ruthlessness in executing even the most unpopular political imperatives. Hailing from Kishida’s Kochikai faction, Kamikawa has also replaced Hayashi as de facto next in line of succession of premiership. Given the lack of her foreign policy track record, the new female foreign minister will have to prove herself on her path to the higher office, likely leading her to seamlessly execute Kishida’s foreign policy agendas. As if to corroborate his growing focus on foreign policy, the Japanese prime minister has also appointed Minoru Kihara to be the new Minister of Defense. Kihara has served as the Secretary-General of the Japan-Taiwan Caucus and is considered to be a prominent Taiwan hand well versed in defense issues.
The sweeping personnel changes in Kishida’s national security policy are ultimately his response to Aso’s clarion call for “Japan’s will to fight.” In fact, the latest cabinet reshuffle itself was essentially an attempt to lay the necessary groundwork for Kishida’s wartime leadership. When Aso called for “Japan’s will to fight” in Taiwan, his provocative remark was intended as a jab not only to Beijing but also to Washington as well due to perceived US retrenchment. Implicit in his controversial declaration was Tokyo’s new imperative of fighting alone in case of US isolationism. Indeed, the emerging consensus in Tokyo is that Japan could well be left alone fighting China over Taiwan without US boots on the ground depending on domestic U.S. politics. Demonstrating wartime leadership in such a hopeless environment toward triumph is exactly the Churchillian imperative increasingly confronting Kishida these days. He shot his first salvo earlier this week by consolidating his power with the careful manipulation of his administration’s power dynamics.
As a result, Kishida has emerged more powerful than ever following the latest cabinet reshuffle despite his seemingly dwindling support rate in recent months. Likewise, Aso has further expanded his unrivaled power in Tokyo, effectively perpetuating his de facto lordship over the Kishdia administration. The duo has done what was necessary to prepare for Japan’s wartime leadership by furnishing a new balance of power in Tokyo. Yet, Tokyo is only one dimension of Japanese politics after all. Indeed, while the LDP’s pro-Chinese faction, the Nikai faction led by Japan’s foremost China hand Toshihiro Nikai, has been seeking to undo Aso’s power in his home prefecture of Fukuoka by rallying support from the former prime minister Yoshihide Suga and his local allies. Ironically, the growing concentration of power in the hands of the Aso-Kishida matrix signifies the emergence of a new center of gravity of Japanese politics vulnerable to subversion from the least expected. Indeed, a new fight is already on across Japan in the wake of Kishdia’s quiet purge in Tokyo.
News you might have missed
Healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson changes logo—is cursive illiteracy to blame?
One of the oldest logos in American commerce is changing, as healthcare company Johnson & Johnson is ditching the red cursive logo for a modern, blocktype logo. While the company says that the logo change reflects the evolution of the company—and the spinoff of many consumer products under the “Kenvue” name—but other branding consultants noted a younger generation of Americans who had difficulty reading the Johnson & Johnson in cursive script.
Sweden ramps up defense spending
On Monday September 11, the government of NATO invitee Sweden announced its plans to increase its defense budget by a an impressive 28 percent. The increase would mean Sweden would be on track to reach the NATO 2 per cent spending target on defense. In the defense bill presented for 2024, spending would increase by a total of $2.4 billion. “We are in the most serious security policy situation since the end of the Second World War”, said Minister of Defence Pål Jonson. It is still unclear when the two outstanding NATO allies, Turkey and Hungary, will go forward with parliamentary ratification of Sweden’s NATO bid.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.