Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/0163660X.2023.2223838
Adam Y. Liu
China’s historic 20 Party Congress in 2022 was principally noteworthy because Xi Jinping successfully secured a third term, but Beijing also tellingly postponed releasing GDP and other key economic statistics during the Congress. This deliberate obfuscation could not conceal that the Chinese economy has been in trouble for quite a while now. Media stories in recent years have increasingly reported on Chinese home buyers refusing to pay mortgages, depositors lining up to retrieve savings, central authorities cracking down on large private firms, and local governments becoming constrained by debt and shrinking revenue. The list goes on. What has gone wrong? While worsening ties with Washington have exacerbated the situation, they’re hardly the underlying reason for China’s economic woes. Nor are President Xi’s policies solely to blame. The root cause, at the deep structural level, lies in what I call the “state-owned market” system that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has built—or ended up with—in the reform era. In this system, the visible hand of the state seeks to both create and hold the invisible hand of the market, a dynamic that has made China’s rapid growth possible, but also sown the seeds of its current economic troubles. Nowhere is this market system more clearly at work than in the country’s gigantic banking sector, which is now the world’s largest. We know that the banking system remains a key pillar of the CCP’s political power. Little known, however, is how the party-state has profoundly transformed it in the reform era. Yet, understanding this transformation is imperative for grasping
{"title":"Beijing’s Banking Balloon: China’s Core Economic Challenge in the New Era","authors":"Adam Y. Liu","doi":"10.1080/0163660X.2023.2223838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2023.2223838","url":null,"abstract":"China’s historic 20 Party Congress in 2022 was principally noteworthy because Xi Jinping successfully secured a third term, but Beijing also tellingly postponed releasing GDP and other key economic statistics during the Congress. This deliberate obfuscation could not conceal that the Chinese economy has been in trouble for quite a while now. Media stories in recent years have increasingly reported on Chinese home buyers refusing to pay mortgages, depositors lining up to retrieve savings, central authorities cracking down on large private firms, and local governments becoming constrained by debt and shrinking revenue. The list goes on. What has gone wrong? While worsening ties with Washington have exacerbated the situation, they’re hardly the underlying reason for China’s economic woes. Nor are President Xi’s policies solely to blame. The root cause, at the deep structural level, lies in what I call the “state-owned market” system that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has built—or ended up with—in the reform era. In this system, the visible hand of the state seeks to both create and hold the invisible hand of the market, a dynamic that has made China’s rapid growth possible, but also sown the seeds of its current economic troubles. Nowhere is this market system more clearly at work than in the country’s gigantic banking sector, which is now the world’s largest. We know that the banking system remains a key pillar of the CCP’s political power. Little known, however, is how the party-state has profoundly transformed it in the reform era. Yet, understanding this transformation is imperative for grasping","PeriodicalId":46957,"journal":{"name":"Washington Quarterly","volume":"46 1","pages":"69 - 86"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45645674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/0163660X.2023.2225910
Š. Ganguly, S. Paul Kapur
In recent years, US-Pakistan relations seemed to have been one of the many casualties of the Global War on Terror. The two countries had developed an extremely close strategic relationship following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, with the United States going so far as to make Pakistan a major non-NATO ally in return for its counterterrorism (CT) support and assistance with stabilization efforts in Afghanistan. But Pakistani double-dealing— which included continuing aid to the Taliban and associated militant groups in Afghanistan as well as extensive use of terrorists to promote Pakistani interests in South Asia—badly damaged the relationship. The United States became convinced that it had been duped into supporting a country that, for decades, had been working against it. Bitter public statements and substantial cuts in US aid ensued during the Trump administration, followed by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan after President Biden took office in 2021. By this point, US-Pakistan relations were at an all-time low, and appeared unlikely to recover in the foreseeable future. Yet today, the US-Pakistan strategic relationship is enjoying something of a renaissance. Its centerpiece is a USD $450 million sustainment package for Pakistani F-16 fighter planes, announced in September 2022. Recent months have also seen the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff visit Washington for the first time in over three years, and the United States and Pakistan discussing a wide range of potential collaboration including a return to substantial counterterrorism cooperation.
{"title":"Reframing the US-Pakistan Strategic Renaissance","authors":"Š. Ganguly, S. Paul Kapur","doi":"10.1080/0163660X.2023.2225910","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2023.2225910","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, US-Pakistan relations seemed to have been one of the many casualties of the Global War on Terror. The two countries had developed an extremely close strategic relationship following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, with the United States going so far as to make Pakistan a major non-NATO ally in return for its counterterrorism (CT) support and assistance with stabilization efforts in Afghanistan. But Pakistani double-dealing— which included continuing aid to the Taliban and associated militant groups in Afghanistan as well as extensive use of terrorists to promote Pakistani interests in South Asia—badly damaged the relationship. The United States became convinced that it had been duped into supporting a country that, for decades, had been working against it. Bitter public statements and substantial cuts in US aid ensued during the Trump administration, followed by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan after President Biden took office in 2021. By this point, US-Pakistan relations were at an all-time low, and appeared unlikely to recover in the foreseeable future. Yet today, the US-Pakistan strategic relationship is enjoying something of a renaissance. Its centerpiece is a USD $450 million sustainment package for Pakistani F-16 fighter planes, announced in September 2022. Recent months have also seen the Pakistani Chief of Army Staff visit Washington for the first time in over three years, and the United States and Pakistan discussing a wide range of potential collaboration including a return to substantial counterterrorism cooperation.","PeriodicalId":46957,"journal":{"name":"Washington Quarterly","volume":"46 1","pages":"183 - 199"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45966110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/0163660X.2023.2223839
A. Matovski
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984—which has become a bestseller among Russians after their country invaded Ukraine in February 2022— a dictatorship wages war not to achieve any foreign policy objective nor grand utopian vision, but to distract the population and break its desire to resist oppression and injustice at home. “[T]he consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger,” as Orwell put it, “makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.” Hijacked by a self-serving governing class, war is a callous hoax, its sole purpose to keep society in check and autocratic rule intact. In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, aggression against Ukraine has served this Orwellian purpose since 2014. The annexation of Crimea defused the growing discontent and opposition to Russia’s dictatorship, raising Putin’s sagging approval ratings to stratospheric levels for four years, even as the Russian economy suffered. And the much larger conflict in 2022 still rallied Russian society behind its authoritarian ruler, despite inflicting crushing defeats, horrific casualties, and far more economic damage. But was tapping into the tremendous power of conflict to boost Russian authoritarianism the Kremlin’s primary motive to invade Ukraine? Many analyses of the causes of Russian aggression have ignored this explanation, preferring to focus on traditional realpolitik explanations that assume away the influence of
{"title":"How Putin’s Regime Survivalism Drives Russian Aggression","authors":"A. Matovski","doi":"10.1080/0163660X.2023.2223839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2023.2223839","url":null,"abstract":"In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984—which has become a bestseller among Russians after their country invaded Ukraine in February 2022— a dictatorship wages war not to achieve any foreign policy objective nor grand utopian vision, but to distract the population and break its desire to resist oppression and injustice at home. “[T]he consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger,” as Orwell put it, “makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.” Hijacked by a self-serving governing class, war is a callous hoax, its sole purpose to keep society in check and autocratic rule intact. In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, aggression against Ukraine has served this Orwellian purpose since 2014. The annexation of Crimea defused the growing discontent and opposition to Russia’s dictatorship, raising Putin’s sagging approval ratings to stratospheric levels for four years, even as the Russian economy suffered. And the much larger conflict in 2022 still rallied Russian society behind its authoritarian ruler, despite inflicting crushing defeats, horrific casualties, and far more economic damage. But was tapping into the tremendous power of conflict to boost Russian authoritarianism the Kremlin’s primary motive to invade Ukraine? Many analyses of the causes of Russian aggression have ignored this explanation, preferring to focus on traditional realpolitik explanations that assume away the influence of","PeriodicalId":46957,"journal":{"name":"Washington Quarterly","volume":"46 1","pages":"7 - 25"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44159490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226531
Andrew Yeo
In meetings with their US counterparts, South Korean policymakers have repeatedly raised the same question: can South Korea trust the United States? The answer is a resounding and increasingly exasperated “yes” fromAmerican officials and experts. However, doubts have surfaced over the past year on the Korean side regarding US commitments to the US-Republic of Korea (ROK) alliance, despite Seoul and Washington publicly reaffirming the ironclad nature of their 70-year alliance. President Yoon Suk Yeol’s April 2023 state visit to Washington DC and his summit meeting with President Joseph Biden, their second in as many years, was aimed at demonstrating the importance of the US-ROK alliance to both Americans and South Koreans, while also acknowledging South Korea’s growing role in the Indo-Pacific. Although the Yoon-Biden summit may have been meaningful in helping the two governments and their respective domestic audiences think about the future value of the alliance, it did not necessarily resolve some of the underlying bilateral tensions. Two specific issues have driven rising South Korean angst over the past year. The first is a small provision found in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden that eliminates up to $7,500 in tax credits for electric vehicles (EVs) produced outside of the United States to encourage US consumers to buy American goods. The legislation excluded South
{"title":"Can South Korea Trust the United States?","authors":"Andrew Yeo","doi":"10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226531","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226531","url":null,"abstract":"In meetings with their US counterparts, South Korean policymakers have repeatedly raised the same question: can South Korea trust the United States? The answer is a resounding and increasingly exasperated “yes” fromAmerican officials and experts. However, doubts have surfaced over the past year on the Korean side regarding US commitments to the US-Republic of Korea (ROK) alliance, despite Seoul and Washington publicly reaffirming the ironclad nature of their 70-year alliance. President Yoon Suk Yeol’s April 2023 state visit to Washington DC and his summit meeting with President Joseph Biden, their second in as many years, was aimed at demonstrating the importance of the US-ROK alliance to both Americans and South Koreans, while also acknowledging South Korea’s growing role in the Indo-Pacific. Although the Yoon-Biden summit may have been meaningful in helping the two governments and their respective domestic audiences think about the future value of the alliance, it did not necessarily resolve some of the underlying bilateral tensions. Two specific issues have driven rising South Korean angst over the past year. The first is a small provision found in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden that eliminates up to $7,500 in tax credits for electric vehicles (EVs) produced outside of the United States to encourage US consumers to buy American goods. The legislation excluded South","PeriodicalId":46957,"journal":{"name":"Washington Quarterly","volume":"46 1","pages":"109 - 125"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45256818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226530
Min-hyung Kim
A nuclear armed-state enjoys enormous benefits in world politics including near-absolute security, security policymaking autonomy and independence, heightened international bargaining power, and a high probability of emerging victorious in disputes with non-nuclear states. Given the abundant benefits, it is understandable that non-nuclear states would desire to become nuclear. In particular, when a state is threatened by an enemy armed with nuclear weapons, the desire to be similarly nuclear-armed for the sake of its own survival increases substantially. Although it has not yet received (and will probably never receive) international recognition, North Korea has recently emerged as a de facto nuclearweapon state after multiple rounds of nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Despite these circumstances, South Korea has announced that it will remain nonnuclear and continue to rely on the nuclear umbrella provided by the United States for its security, a puzzling decision given the growing nuclear threat from the north. During the recent US-ROK (Republic of Korea) summit in April 2023, South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol “reaffirmed the ROK’s longstanding commitment to its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty” and “to the U.S.-ROK Agreement for Cooperation Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy.” Given high domestic demand for nuclear weapons in South Korea and the serious threat that Pyongyang poses, as well as the nuclear technology and resources that Seoul already possesses, its decision to remain
{"title":"Is Non-Nuclearization Sustainable? Explaining South Korea’s Strategic Choices","authors":"Min-hyung Kim","doi":"10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226530","url":null,"abstract":"A nuclear armed-state enjoys enormous benefits in world politics including near-absolute security, security policymaking autonomy and independence, heightened international bargaining power, and a high probability of emerging victorious in disputes with non-nuclear states. Given the abundant benefits, it is understandable that non-nuclear states would desire to become nuclear. In particular, when a state is threatened by an enemy armed with nuclear weapons, the desire to be similarly nuclear-armed for the sake of its own survival increases substantially. Although it has not yet received (and will probably never receive) international recognition, North Korea has recently emerged as a de facto nuclearweapon state after multiple rounds of nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Despite these circumstances, South Korea has announced that it will remain nonnuclear and continue to rely on the nuclear umbrella provided by the United States for its security, a puzzling decision given the growing nuclear threat from the north. During the recent US-ROK (Republic of Korea) summit in April 2023, South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol “reaffirmed the ROK’s longstanding commitment to its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty” and “to the U.S.-ROK Agreement for Cooperation Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy.” Given high domestic demand for nuclear weapons in South Korea and the serious threat that Pyongyang poses, as well as the nuclear technology and resources that Seoul already possesses, its decision to remain","PeriodicalId":46957,"journal":{"name":"Washington Quarterly","volume":"46 1","pages":"127 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49383083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226992
Eric Heginbotham, Samuel L. Leiter, Richard J. Samuels
At the 2022 Shangri-La Dialogue, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned defense ministers from across the Indo-Pacific region that “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow.” Russia’s war of aggression and China’s tacit support for the invasion have amplified the urgency of the threat posed by China’s economic and military rise and have informed material changes to Japanese defense policy. Though Japan is acting with new urgency, its actions reflect longstanding—but not uncontested—goals of conservative Japanese politicians, Ministry of Defense (MOD) bureaucrats, and alliance managers. Decades before the Ukraine War, Japanese strategists began working to supplant the economics-first “Yoshida Doctrine” (named after Shigeru Yoshida, Japan’s influential early postwar prime minister) with a form of military realism now being called the “Abe Doctrine” (named after Shinzō Abe, Japan’s longest serving prime minister, who left office in 2020).
{"title":"Pushing on an Open Door: Japan’s Evolutionary Security Posture","authors":"Eric Heginbotham, Samuel L. Leiter, Richard J. Samuels","doi":"10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226992","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226992","url":null,"abstract":"At the 2022 Shangri-La Dialogue, Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned defense ministers from across the Indo-Pacific region that “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow.” Russia’s war of aggression and China’s tacit support for the invasion have amplified the urgency of the threat posed by China’s economic and military rise and have informed material changes to Japanese defense policy. Though Japan is acting with new urgency, its actions reflect longstanding—but not uncontested—goals of conservative Japanese politicians, Ministry of Defense (MOD) bureaucrats, and alliance managers. Decades before the Ukraine War, Japanese strategists began working to supplant the economics-first “Yoshida Doctrine” (named after Shigeru Yoshida, Japan’s influential early postwar prime minister) with a form of military realism now being called the “Abe Doctrine” (named after Shinzō Abe, Japan’s longest serving prime minister, who left office in 2020).","PeriodicalId":46957,"journal":{"name":"Washington Quarterly","volume":"46 1","pages":"47 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47286092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226529
Eric Brewer, T. Dalton, Kylie Jones
South Korea has long been on the list of potential over-the-horizon proliferation challenges, but growing debates in Seoul about its nuclear options are quickly moving it toward the front of the US nonproliferation agenda. Indeed, proliferation concerns featured prominently at the April 2023 Republic of Korea (ROK)-US summit, where Washington sought South Korean reaffirmation of its “longstanding commitment to its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty” in return for efforts to bolster extended nuclear deterrence. For decades, calls in South Korea for nuclear armament remained relegated to the political fringes and did not receive serious policy attention. That has begun to change in recent years. South Korean nuclear weapons advocates and those sympathetic to the idea are becoming more numerous, louder, and are increasingly drawn from a broader cross-section of the national security community. In January 2023, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol publicly stated that if threats continue to worsen, South Korea might develop nuclear weapons. This is the first time a South Korean president has made such comments. Perhaps most importantly, there has been a subtle evolution of the public discourse, from basic arguments about why nuclear weapons may be desirable to
{"title":"Mind the Gaps: Reading South Korea’s Emergent Proliferation Strategy","authors":"Eric Brewer, T. Dalton, Kylie Jones","doi":"10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2023.2226529","url":null,"abstract":"South Korea has long been on the list of potential over-the-horizon proliferation challenges, but growing debates in Seoul about its nuclear options are quickly moving it toward the front of the US nonproliferation agenda. Indeed, proliferation concerns featured prominently at the April 2023 Republic of Korea (ROK)-US summit, where Washington sought South Korean reaffirmation of its “longstanding commitment to its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty” in return for efforts to bolster extended nuclear deterrence. For decades, calls in South Korea for nuclear armament remained relegated to the political fringes and did not receive serious policy attention. That has begun to change in recent years. South Korean nuclear weapons advocates and those sympathetic to the idea are becoming more numerous, louder, and are increasingly drawn from a broader cross-section of the national security community. In January 2023, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol publicly stated that if threats continue to worsen, South Korea might develop nuclear weapons. This is the first time a South Korean president has made such comments. Perhaps most importantly, there has been a subtle evolution of the public discourse, from basic arguments about why nuclear weapons may be desirable to","PeriodicalId":46957,"journal":{"name":"Washington Quarterly","volume":"46 1","pages":"141 - 160"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47112735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/0163660X.2023.2190633
Daniel Kimmage
OnMarch 18, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin strode into the Kremlin’s gold-drenched Georgievsky reception hall to announce the annexation of Crimea. Kyiv was aghast, and western capitals spluttered with indignation, but the applause in Moscow was as thunderous as anything anyone had heard in decades. The takeover of Crimea relied more on influence than brute force. The Kremlin had spent years subjugating domestic media, honing its prowess at cyber operations, dispatching armies of bots to manipulate discourse on the internet, and putting a friendly spin on the news outside Russia with well-produced television broadcasts. In February 2014, Russia used its manipulation machine to pull off the largest land grab in Europe since the Second World War without losing a single soldier. Two years later, American voters went to the polls to choose a president. As they mulled their decision, some of them saw politically polarizing content amplified by troll farms on social media. Others absorbed press coverage of leaks that cast aspersions on Hillary Clinton. Unbeknownst to American voters, online operators employed by a friend of President Putin had cooked up the content, while the leaks were the handiwork of Russian military intelligence. These two operations marked the culmination of an extraordinary effort of reconstruction. For two decades, a motley crew answering ultimately to the Kremlin had painstakingly rebuilt their country’s institutional infrastructure for projecting influence. They had vivid memories of the 1980s when Soviet
{"title":"Befuddled: How America Can Get Its Voice Back","authors":"Daniel Kimmage","doi":"10.1080/0163660X.2023.2190633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2023.2190633","url":null,"abstract":"OnMarch 18, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin strode into the Kremlin’s gold-drenched Georgievsky reception hall to announce the annexation of Crimea. Kyiv was aghast, and western capitals spluttered with indignation, but the applause in Moscow was as thunderous as anything anyone had heard in decades. The takeover of Crimea relied more on influence than brute force. The Kremlin had spent years subjugating domestic media, honing its prowess at cyber operations, dispatching armies of bots to manipulate discourse on the internet, and putting a friendly spin on the news outside Russia with well-produced television broadcasts. In February 2014, Russia used its manipulation machine to pull off the largest land grab in Europe since the Second World War without losing a single soldier. Two years later, American voters went to the polls to choose a president. As they mulled their decision, some of them saw politically polarizing content amplified by troll farms on social media. Others absorbed press coverage of leaks that cast aspersions on Hillary Clinton. Unbeknownst to American voters, online operators employed by a friend of President Putin had cooked up the content, while the leaks were the handiwork of Russian military intelligence. These two operations marked the culmination of an extraordinary effort of reconstruction. For two decades, a motley crew answering ultimately to the Kremlin had painstakingly rebuilt their country’s institutional infrastructure for projecting influence. They had vivid memories of the 1980s when Soviet","PeriodicalId":46957,"journal":{"name":"Washington Quarterly","volume":"46 1","pages":"87 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43103008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/0163660X.2023.2225909
Tricia Bacon
It makes sense that the United States has significantly downgraded relations with Pakistan since the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The anger in Washington toward Islamabad for its support of the Afghan Taliban during the US war was palpable and justified. Absent a need to rely on Pakistan to access Afghanistan to prosecute the war, and with the broader decline of counterterrorism as a priority, the US only sees the need for a minimum viable bilateral relationship. The US shift to near peer competition has exacerbated the distance as Pakistan’s close relationship with China—now the preeminent US national security concern—is juxtaposed with US efforts to foster closer ties with Pakistan’s rival, India, as a regional counterweight to China. But that calculation misses the mark. The United States actually needs to maintain a more robust relationship with Pakistan than it would currently like. And perhaps counter-intuitively, India needs the US to do so as well. Why? Since 2008, Pakistan has undertaken an overlooked shift in how it uses militant groups against India, constraining the scope and frequency of their attacks. Because the shift has been largely overlooked, there has been insufficient analysis of what has caused it and what is required to reinforce the change in both Washington and New Delhi. This change is tactical, and it is reversible. US pressure is critical to reinforcing Pakistan’s restraint and pressing for more change. If Pakistan returns to sponsoring or even simply permitting major terrorist attacks in India, it will distract India from its increasing focus on China and is
{"title":"A Fragile Equilibrium: Incentivizing Pakistan’s Regional Recalibration","authors":"Tricia Bacon","doi":"10.1080/0163660X.2023.2225909","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2023.2225909","url":null,"abstract":"It makes sense that the United States has significantly downgraded relations with Pakistan since the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The anger in Washington toward Islamabad for its support of the Afghan Taliban during the US war was palpable and justified. Absent a need to rely on Pakistan to access Afghanistan to prosecute the war, and with the broader decline of counterterrorism as a priority, the US only sees the need for a minimum viable bilateral relationship. The US shift to near peer competition has exacerbated the distance as Pakistan’s close relationship with China—now the preeminent US national security concern—is juxtaposed with US efforts to foster closer ties with Pakistan’s rival, India, as a regional counterweight to China. But that calculation misses the mark. The United States actually needs to maintain a more robust relationship with Pakistan than it would currently like. And perhaps counter-intuitively, India needs the US to do so as well. Why? Since 2008, Pakistan has undertaken an overlooked shift in how it uses militant groups against India, constraining the scope and frequency of their attacks. Because the shift has been largely overlooked, there has been insufficient analysis of what has caused it and what is required to reinforce the change in both Washington and New Delhi. This change is tactical, and it is reversible. US pressure is critical to reinforcing Pakistan’s restraint and pressing for more change. If Pakistan returns to sponsoring or even simply permitting major terrorist attacks in India, it will distract India from its increasing focus on China and is","PeriodicalId":46957,"journal":{"name":"Washington Quarterly","volume":"46 1","pages":"163 - 181"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41849072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-03DOI: 10.1080/0163660X.2023.2223828
Jacob Bronsther
The politics of multilateral emissions treaties are pathological. To succeed, such treaties must overcome: (1) the free-rider problem in the international sphere; (2) domestic constituencies that favor the production and sale of fossil fuels, the most important of which is often the general public; (3) resentment from developing nations asked to sacrifice their growth to mitigate the historic emissions of wealthy countries; (4) an increasingly hostile national security environment; and (5) a skeptical Republican Party, which often leads the most important country for global cooperation. It is no surprise, then, that a 2021 study of 36 countries representing 80 percent of the world’s emissions found that only one country—Gambia—had made commitments in line with the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That temperature is the accepted, if somewhat arbitrary, tipping point after which the most serious and likely irreversible effects of warming will emerge. We currently sit at 1.1 degrees above such levels, and every year the average atmospheric carbon dioxide level increases like clockwork. Tick tock. Indeed, despite the economic drag from the COVID-19 pandemic, we humans released 36.8 billion tons of carbon in 2022 due to energy combustion and industrial processes—the highest ever annual level. The global community should seek out and prioritize climate change policies with more feasible political foundations. One such solution may exist: capturing carbon directly out of the air. “Air capture” uses alkaline sorbents that bond naturally with the acidic carbon dioxide present in all air found anywhere on Earth. The carbon can then be stored safely by, for example, converting it into rock. Air capture is a carbon time machine. It can erase past emissions and turn back the clock. Tock tick. For this reason, the International Panel on Climate
{"title":"Carbon Time Machine","authors":"Jacob Bronsther","doi":"10.1080/0163660X.2023.2223828","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2023.2223828","url":null,"abstract":"The politics of multilateral emissions treaties are pathological. To succeed, such treaties must overcome: (1) the free-rider problem in the international sphere; (2) domestic constituencies that favor the production and sale of fossil fuels, the most important of which is often the general public; (3) resentment from developing nations asked to sacrifice their growth to mitigate the historic emissions of wealthy countries; (4) an increasingly hostile national security environment; and (5) a skeptical Republican Party, which often leads the most important country for global cooperation. It is no surprise, then, that a 2021 study of 36 countries representing 80 percent of the world’s emissions found that only one country—Gambia—had made commitments in line with the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That temperature is the accepted, if somewhat arbitrary, tipping point after which the most serious and likely irreversible effects of warming will emerge. We currently sit at 1.1 degrees above such levels, and every year the average atmospheric carbon dioxide level increases like clockwork. Tick tock. Indeed, despite the economic drag from the COVID-19 pandemic, we humans released 36.8 billion tons of carbon in 2022 due to energy combustion and industrial processes—the highest ever annual level. The global community should seek out and prioritize climate change policies with more feasible political foundations. One such solution may exist: capturing carbon directly out of the air. “Air capture” uses alkaline sorbents that bond naturally with the acidic carbon dioxide present in all air found anywhere on Earth. The carbon can then be stored safely by, for example, converting it into rock. Air capture is a carbon time machine. It can erase past emissions and turn back the clock. Tock tick. For this reason, the International Panel on Climate","PeriodicalId":46957,"journal":{"name":"Washington Quarterly","volume":"46 1","pages":"27 - 45"},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44608545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：