Defense Technology

Many agree that China is becoming a technology and science superpower. How it translates that advantage into military power is another story.

How the regulation of early balloon warfare can inform current debates about regulating cyber conflict.

The following is a guest post by Megan Roberts, associate director of the International Institutions and Global Governance program, and Kyle Evanoff, research associate, international economics and U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Autonomous weapons are on the agenda in Geneva this week. The Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, which has members and observers drawn from national governments, intergovernmental organizations and civil society, is holding its first meeting since it was established last year under the auspices of the U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, or CCW. On the table for discussion are the technical, legal, military and ethical dimensions of machines capable of making battlefield decisions without human oversight. The stakes are high. Autonomous weapons have, in recent years, catapulted into the defense and security strategies of the world’s leading powers. Top-ranking officials in Russia, China and the United States, recognizing the military potential of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence, have invested billions into developing the technologies. That has led a growing ensemble of civil society actors to voice concerns that automated warfare will jeopardize human rights, international law and global security. A litany of groups and individuals, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams, have advocated an international prohibition on autonomous weapons, pinning their hopes on the United Nations and the CCW. Can they succeed in their quest for a ban? You can find our thoughts in our World Politics Review article.

This post was coauthored with Sungtae (Jacky) Park, research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations. South Korea is in turmoil, with President Park Geun-hye having been suspended from office by the South Korean national assembly after being implicated as an accomplice in the criminal investigation of her close friend, Choi Soon-sil. Consequently, the South Korean conservatives have lost popularity among the public, and the center-left Minjoo Party’s Moon Jae-in has emerged as the front-runner in South Korea’s looming presidential election, which must be held within sixty days if Park’s impeachment is upheld at the South Korean constitutional court. This situation has led many Korea-watchers to be concerned about how Seoul might reorient its foreign policy, with the South Korean progressives poised to retake the Blue House. Unlike the conservatives, the progressives tend to be more skeptical of the planned deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on the Korean Peninsula, critical of the December 2015 comfort woman agreement with Japan, and have indicated desires to reengage in diplomacy with North Korea. But sometimes it is more useful to step back and examine the forest, rather than focusing on the trees. A careful evaluation of South Korea’s national interests, constraints, variables affecting its foreign policy, and strategic options, in a recent Council on Foreign Relations discussion paper, The Korean Pivot: Seoul’s Strategic Choices and Rising Rivalries in Northeast Asia, authored by Scott Snyder, Darcie Draudt, and Sungtae (Jacky) Park, reveals that South Korea’s future choices are constrained by many broader structural forces outside of Seoul’s control. To begin with, South Korea is dealing with an increasingly precarious regional environment. The reliability of the U.S.-Korea alliance has been thrown into question. Moreover, North Korea’s nuclear and missile development continues, and the country may be capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on its medium-range Nodong missiles to threaten Japan and South Korea. South Korea also faces the risk of being caught in conflicts involving the United States, China, and Japan, while South Korea’s trade-dependent economy means the country’s economic prospects rely on international market forces, limiting its own ability to manage economic affairs. These external variables will matter more in shaping Seoul’s strategic choices than policy positions taken by a newly-elected South Korean president, who must navigate these treacherous issues with limited margin for error. Given that Northeast Asia’s security environment is deteriorating, Seoul will no doubt continue to seek a strong alliance with Washington and is unlikely to pursue a foreign policy of neutrality, independence, or alignment with China. At the same time, South Korea will likely pursue a combination of hedging, regionalism, and networking to mitigate regional tensions and to avoid entrapment in great power conflicts, although Seoul could choose to balance against China at a later stage. Effective hedging would require South Korea to not only pursue friendly relations with China, but also make a clear assessment of issues critical to the maintenance of the U.S.-ROK alliance, those that affect U.S.-ROK relations but may not be critical, and decisions that can be deferred. Moreover, South Korea needs to pursue serious economic reforms to maintain its status as a middle power and improve relations with Japan. For its part, Washington should avoid overreacting to every South Korean move that seems to be “tilting toward Beijing”; South Korea is not about to become a Chinese tributary state. Moreover, a loosening of the alliance would undercut Seoul’s leverage with Beijing and is not in South Korea’s interest. South Korea is also unlikely to unilaterally call for the removal of U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula under current conditions. The United States should recognize that a positive Sino-South Korean relationship, if it can be achieved, will contribute to stability in Northeast Asia by mitigating Chinese concerns that the U.S.-ROK alliance might be directed against China. South Korea ultimately shares with the United States an interest in the freedom of navigation and in maintaining the liberal world order. Given that the Korean Peninsula is geographically closer to China than to the United States or Japan, South Korea would be the first to suffer if the Chinese modify the regional order in their favor. In such a case, South Korea would naturally increase U.S.-Japan-ROK trilateral security cooperation and take a tougher stance against Chinese revisionism. Until then, Washington can afford to be patient. The United States should also support South Korea’s attempts at network diplomacy and the creation of regional security mechanisms. Seoul’s pursuit of such initiatives will not fundamentally alter the overall regional dynamics, but such initiatives could be tension-mitigating mechanisms that help to delay and manage crises. As a country sensitive to both U.S. and Chinese interests, South Korea could be in a good position to push regional mechanisms and network diplomacy with U.S. backing. Washington has yet to enthusiastically endorse Seoul’s initiatives such as the erstwhile Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI), but Northeast Asian stability could benefit from better U.S.-ROK coordination on regionalism and networking. Despite the rising uncertainty that South Korea has to deal with, in the face of both its own domestic political crisis and the election of Donald Trump, the North Korean threat is becoming ever more dangerous and is a common challenge for both the United States and South Korea. Both countries also have to deal with an increasingly complex regional environment in Northeast Asia. Given the costs and stakes involved, no American president can afford to step away from the Korean Peninsula, and South Korea’s next president will inherit the same problems and constraints that the Park administration has faced in its efforts to solve what she termed the “Asian Paradox.” For more information on the themes discussed above, please download the CFR discussion paper, The Korean Pivot: Seoul’s Strategic Choices and Rising Rivalries in Northeast Asia.

Rachel Brown, Sherry Cho, Larry Hong, Gabriella Meltzer, and Gabriel Walker look at five stories from Asia this week. 1. India kicks off state elections. Political contests in five Indian states over the next two months will offer insight into citizens’ attitudes toward Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s agenda. Last weekend, voters took to the polls in Goa and Punjab. Turnouts in the two states were unusually high with roughly 83 percent of eligible voters taking part in Goa, and 75 percent in Punjab. The relatively new Aam Aadmi party, which focuses on fighting corruption, is expected to excel in Punjab. Voting in Uttar Pradesh, which boasts a whopping 138 million registered voters, begins this weekend and will take place over the course of seven days this month and next. Elections are also being held in the states of Uttarakhand and Manipur. Among the hot campaign topics are unemployment rates and demonetization. The Modi government’s decision to ban 86 percent of all bills in circulation as part of  an effort to fight corruption produced considerable turmoil this fall, and could be a decisive issue for voters, particularly those in rural areas. Major wins for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will demonstrate popular support for his initiatives, while losses could weaken the BJP government. The election results for all five states will be announced in March; until then expect a flurry of campaign rhetoric. 2. South Korean companies feel pinch over THAAD. Chinese displeasure with South Korea’s decision to deploy the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system has manifested recently in economic troubles for South Korean companies. While South Korean Finance Minister Yoo Il Ho has stated that China has not taken any retaliatory measures over THAAD that warrant official state action, companies like Hyundai are experiencing fallout from Beijing’s dissatisfaction. Hyundai Motor Company recently announced the deferment of the Chinese launch of its Sonata plug-in hybrid due to a recent revision of Chinese qualifications for government subsidies, which now conveniently exclude the Hyundai Sonata hybrid. Lotte’s construction on a theme park in Shenyang, China has also been postponed after Beijing took issue with procedural matters following a fire inspection. The company has also been subject to an increasing number of regulatory probes in China. South Korea’s popular culture and tourism sectors are also feeling the THAAD backlash; music concerts and other performances by South Korean artists have been mysteriously cancelled or postponed, while reports of increasing restrictions on Chinese tourism to South Korea during peak travel seasons have led to a slump in stocks reliant on Chinese tourism. 3. Six Red Cross workers killed in Afghanistan. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported on Wednesday that six of its employees were killed and two went missing in northern Afghanistan’s Jowzjan province while they were en route to deliver livestock materials to remote communities hit by avalanches. Lutfallah Azizi, the provincial governor, said that “unknown gunmen” carried out the attack and claimed they were affiliates of the Islamic State. Although the Taliban has carried out the greatest proportion of the violence in Afghanistan’s fifteen-year war, the group swiftly denied involvement in this particular incident. Peter Maurer, the president of ICRC, tweeted that he was “devastated by this news out of #Afghanistan. My deepest condolences to the families of those killed – and those still unaccounted for.” 4. Booming Chinese overseas deals still face obstacles. In 2016, Chinese acquisitions of foreign companies—about 16 percent of the worldwide total of cross-border deals—skyrocketed to more than twice their 2015 volume. But according to new figures, the amount in cancelled deals grew even faster. In the United States and Europe alone, overseas acquisitions worth $75 billion were scrapped because of regulatory issues, a sevenfold increase from 2015. Because of increased capital outflow controls that can block Chinese companies from making investments abroad, as well as regulatory scrutiny from government actors such as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), thirty Chinese deals fell through. Some important acquisitions are still on the table for 2017, despite the opposition: Midea just completed its purchase of Kuka, a German robotics company, for $5 billion, and ChemChina will likely take over Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta for $43 billion later this year. Despite the hurdles for Chinese investors, the sheer volume of their deal-making is an achievement in itself, given that a decade ago it amounted to less than $3 billion a year. 5. New terms for U.S. studios in China. Hollywood will soon be able to renegotiate the terms of agreement on film releases in China, amidst a slowdown in China’s box office growth. The current agreement was announced in February 2012, during a tour of the United States by Xi Jinping, then China’s vice president and now its president. The agreement raised the number of blockbusters permitted in the Chinese market and allowed foreign filmmakers to receive a larger share of box office revenues. The two countries also decided to renegotiate the agreement in five years. Hollywood has a high stake in seeking better business terms in the new negotiations as China is on track to surpass the United States as the world’s largest movie market. According to several executives, U.S. studios’ top priority in the talks is increasing their share of Chinese box-office receipts from the current 25 percent. While there have been some preliminary negotiations, many observers worry that President Donald J. Trump’s harsh rhetoric on China’s trade practices will have an adverse effect on future discussions. Geetha Ranganathan, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, says that the Trump administration is “making everybody very, very nervous"; the renegotiation “could be a casualty if he really wants to come down hard on it.” It remains unclear whether President Trump’s phone call with President Xi will help smooth the process for these negotiations and others. Bonus: Abe tees off a new era of golf-course diplomacy. After visiting Washington, DC, this Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will hitch a ride on Air Force One to spend an overnight at Mar a Lago, President Trump’s luxurious Florida resort. There, the two leaders will share meals and engage in a classic test of strategy and skill—the game of golf. At their first meeting, in November, Abe and Trump established their common interest in the game through an exchange of golf-themed gifts. This weekend’s encounter will echo an earlier moment in golf-course diplomacy, when, in 1957, then Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, Abe’s grandfather, played a round with then U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Trump has praised the game as a diplomatic tool, and once said that former U.S. President Barack Obama “should play with people who can help the country... if he played more with maybe foreign leaders, it would be a wonderful thing.” Will Chinese President Xi Jinping be next on the green?

I spoke with Matthew Fuhrmann, associate professor of political science at Texas A&M University, visiting associate professor at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and one of the  most innovative scholars of nuclear proliferation. We discussed Matt’s soon-to-be released book Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). The book was co-authored with University of Virginia associate professor of politics Todd Sechser, whom I spoke with earlier this year. Matt and I discussed his research on targeting and attacking nuclear programs, the risks of peaceful nuclear proliferation, and the effectiveness of arms control agreements. Matt also recently coauthored a fascinating article with Michael Horowitz and Sarah Kreps, “The Consequences of Drone Proliferation: Separating Fact from Fiction.” Hear Matt’s advice for young political science and international relations scholars, follow him @mcfuhrmann, and listen to my conversation with a policy-relevant international security scholar.

It is easy to become frustrated as one reviews the inventory of seemingly failed or inadequate policy recommendations for how the United States might more effectively deal with North Korea. But frustration cannot be allowed to turn into fatalism, and important interests should not fester unattended until they metastasize into an even larger problem that will inevitably require even more dramatic, bold, and costly responses. North Korea’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons capabilities continue unchecked and complicate both military and diplomatic options for pursuing denuclearization. Michel Wallerstein showcases a clear inventory of North Korea’s continued efforts and the limited policy options for the United States, as do a range of papers for the Johns Hopkins University SAIS U.S.-Korea Institute’s nuclear futures project. The inventory of possible measures for dealing with North Korea at this stage fall into four main categories: 1) The squeezers, who hope that tougher sanctions will force North Korea to give up its nuclear capabilities. For instance, Sue Terry, writing for the National Bureau of Asian Research, recommends that the United States “double down on sanctions by enforcing against North Korea the kind of sanctions that brought Iran to the negotiating table.” This approach mirrors the intent of several sanctions bills under consideration in the U.S. Congress. 2) The China firsters, who anticipate that private Chinese expressions of disgust and frustration with North Korea can be integrated into China’s official policy and be leveraged to achieve a grand bargain that results in the elimination of the North Korean threat, either through Chinese acceptance of Korean unification or replacement of the Kim Jong-un regime with a North Korean leadership that respects the boundaries imposed by China’s strategic interests. For instance, Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has advocated that Beijing and Washington reach strategic consensus on Korean reunification. There is a broad consensus on the need to work with China in the U.S. policy community, but there is disagreement on what could realistically be achieved with such an approach. 3) The saboteurs, who hope to take advantage of North Korea’s pursuit of provocations, nuclear tests, and human rights violations to undermine international and domestic support for the Kim regime. Harvard University’s Jieun Baek argues for a combination of covert information operations to collaborate with internal dissidents, strengthening of nongovernmental organizations that train North Korean refugees in information dissemination and business skills, and training of North Korean defectors in journalism, information technology, and social media. There is also the temptation to weaken North Korea’s legitimacy through naming and shaming regarding the country’s human rights failings as exposed by the UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korean human rights. 4) Re-engagers, who see continued dialogue with North Korea as an essential step in “probing North Korea’s intentions.” A variant of this view recognizes that in the face of the seemingly impossible dream of denuclearization, the United States should open up dialogue with North Korea on other issues where there is a chance of constructive dialogue. Doug Bandow at the Cato Institute wants the United States to withdraw and empower the South Koreans to take the lead in dealing with the North, while Adam Mount and Van Jackson support a U.S.-ROK alliance-backed “South Korea first” policy in pursuit of dialogue with North Korea. Most analysts pursue a combination strategy that employs all four levers to bring North Korea to denuclearize. In its policy of deterrence, pressure, and dialogue, the Barack Obama administration’s approach contains these elements, but thus far, not in a combination or weight that has been sufficient to make progress. My Policy Innovation Memorandum also seeks to strengthen both sanctions and engagement, but with a twist: why not take steps both to shape the environment so that North Korea recognizes that it must make a strategic choice and develop the benefits of such a choice with greater specificity, both through concrete studies of what North Korea can gain economically from integration and from development by the five parties in Six Party Talks (absent North Korea) of the tangible benefits that would accrue from a sincere return to the “action-for-action” approach that initially characterized the Six Party Process. Resuming Six Party Talks without North Korea would have two important effects. It would spell out publicly the tangible benefits that would accompany denuclearization so as to stimulate a more active debate over denuclearization among Pyongyang’s elites, and it would provide a benchmark by defining a reasonable consensus among North Korea’s neighbors on the benefits that should rightfully accrue from denuclearization. Some may argue that this proposal sounds like a last ditch strategy; others may prefer a different combination of the options outlined above. But one thing is sure: when North Korea’s nuclear weapons problem metastasizes from an important issue into an urgent issue, there will be even fewer feasible options available for consideration.