Abstract
This article provides a critical discussion of Okinawa’s role in serving American and Japanese strategic interests. Since the end of World War II Okinawa has been a mostly unhappy host of American military bases, and the issue has been prominent at times on the agenda of the Japanese peace movement. The interplay of overseas bases and U.S. foreign policy is a crucial and often hidden dimension of the global projection of American power, which gives rise to friction with and opposition from the peoples living in the vicinity of the bases. This has certainly been the case in relation to Okinawa. This essay offers reflections on this underlying reality, as well as the linkage between the network of foreign military bases and the emergence of the first global state in history, a new political phenomenon that distinguishes it from ‘empires’ of the past.
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Country or Region: United States
Chen, Xiaoguang, and Hayri Önal
Abstract
We use a mathematical programming model to examine the impacts of simultaneous implementation of two US biofuel and bioenergy policies on commodity markets and spatial distribution of future cellulosic biorefineries. The key findings based on our numerical simulation are: (1) the number and average annual production capacity of cellulosic biofuel refineries depend on the total renewable fuels mandate; (2) the mix of cellulosic biomass feedstock depends on the assumptions about the production costs of energy crops and the amount of cropland that can be used for energy crops, but regardless of the assumptions crop residues are the primary biomass source to meet the demand for biomass for biofuel production and electricity generation; and (3) the biomass production areas would surround either future cellulosic biorefineries or the existing coal-based power plants to reduce the costs of biomass transportation. These findings have important implications for biorefinery investors and provide valuable policy insights for the selection of Biomass Crop Assistance Program project areas.
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Canes, Michael E
Abstract
US federal agency energy managers face different constraints than do comparable private sector managers. They are faced with energy consumption goals mandated via legislation or directed via Presidential Executive Order that encourage if not compel them to invest more in energy efficiency or renewables than would be cost effective from a private sector perspective. To make such investments, they also are provided access to private capital that is additional to their agency budgets. The encouragement to invest beyond what is cost effective may be a source of waste in some instances, and the financing mechanisms appear more expensive than necessary. A rough estimate of the magnitude of the waste is offered, as well as a mechanism to reduce the costs of agency access to capital.
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Akbarzadeh, Shahram
Abstract
President Barack Obama has inherited an unenviable legacy in relation to Iran. Relations between Iran and the United States have suffered blow after blow in the last three decades. The Iranian revolution of 1979 deposed a close US ally and brought to power a religious regime with the rallying cry of ‘Down with America’. Soon after, the US Embassy in Tehran was raided, resulting in 444 days of hostage taking. The damage caused by this episode was severe; it delivered shock waves of disbelief and indignation to the political elite in the United States and turned US public opinion against Iran. Tehran’s attempts at instigating a regional shake-up were a serious concern for Washington. In the meantime, Tehran developed close ties with the Shi’a community in Lebanon; helping form and train Hizbullah. This move threw Iran onto the centre stage of Arab–Israeli conflict – a position it has maintained and cherished ever since. In short, Iran’s relations with the international community, and the United States in particular, have been under severe strains for the last 30 years. This is what President Obama has inherited.
Barack Obama came to office with a promise of change. In terms of US policy towards the Middle East, change cannot be case-specific. Given the interwoven nature of politics in the region, policy change needs to be all-encompassing and universal. The Obama Administration appears attuned to this need and views its Iran policy as a component of a larger Middle East policy that includes the protracted Arab–Israeli tension, the Palestinian issue, pervasive authoritarian practices in the region, terrorism and, most pressing of all, the extraction of US combat troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a refreshing change, allowing the US Administration to examine and deal with Iran in proportion to its significance.
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Thornberry, Mac, and Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr
Abstract
The next U.S. president will inherit a security environment in which the United States confronts mounting threats with increasingly constrained resources, diminished stature, and growing uncertainty both at home and abroad over its willingness to protect its friends and its interests. Revisionist powers in Europe, the western Pacific, and the Persian Gulf—three regions long considered by both Democratic and Republican administrations to be vital to U.S. national security—are seeking to overturn the rules-based international order. In Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin has seized Crimea, waged proxy warfare in eastern Ukraine, and threatened NATO allies on Russia’s periphery. Further demonstrating its newfound assertiveness, Russia has dispatched forces to Syria and strengthened its nuclear arsenal. After a failed attempt to “reset” relations with Moscow, U.S. President Barack Obama has issued stern warnings and imposed economic sanctions, but these have done little to deter Putin.
Nor has the administration’s “pivot” to Asia, now five years on, been matched by effective action. China continues to ramp up its military spending, investing heavily in weapons systems designed to threaten U.S. forces in the western Pacific. As a result, it is proving increasingly willing and able to advance its expansive territorial claims in the East China and South China Seas. Not content to resolve its disputes through diplomacy, Beijing has militarized them, building bases on natural and artificially created islands. The United States has failed to respond vigorously to these provocations, causing allies to question its willingness to meet its long-standing security commitments.
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Rapp-Hooper, Mira
Abstract
July 12, 2016, marked a turning point in the long-standing disputes over the South China Sea. After more than three years of proceedings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, an international body in The Hague, a tribunal constituted under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) issued a widely anticipated decision in a case the Philippines brought in 2013 to challenge China’s maritime claims to most of the contested waterway.
Many observers had expected the tribunal to rule in Manila’s favor. They’d also expected China to reject the tribunal’s decision, since Beijing, a signatory to the convention, has long opposed the proceedings and had warned that it would not abide by the judgment. But few anticipated a ruling as definitive as the one ultimately handed down. The tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines on almost every count, declaring nearly all of China’s maritime claims in the region invalid under international law.
In so doing, the tribunal has brought a substantial amount of new clarity to a number of contentious legal issues and has set precedents that will affect the law of the sea for years to come. But it has also created an immediate problem: China’s defeat was so crushing that it has left Beijing few ways to save face. Chinese officials may feel that the tribunal has backed them into a corner—and respond by lashing out. That’s especially problematic because international law has no simple enforcement mechanism, so if China decides to defy the tribunal, neither it, nor the Philippines, nor any other interested states will be able to do much to induce China to cooperate. Washington and its local partners can still avoid a dangerous escalation, but only if they encourage China to abide by the ruling while making clear to Beijing that it has not been trapped by it.
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Luft, Gal
Abstract
Over the past three millennia, China has made three attempts to project its economic power westward. The first began in the second century BC, during the Han dynasty, when China’s imperial rulers developed the ancient Silk Road to trade with the far-off residents of Central Asia and the Mediterranean basin; the fall of the Mongol empire and the rise of European maritime trading eventually rendered that route obsolete. In the fifteenth century AD, the maritime expeditions of Admiral Zheng He connected Ming-dynasty China to the littoral states of the Indian Ocean. But China’s rulers recalled Zheng’s fleet less than three decades after it set out, and for the rest of imperial history, they devoted most of their attention to China’s neighbors to the east and south.
Today, China is undertaking a third turn to the west—its most ambitious one yet. In 2013, Beijing unveiled a plan to connect dozens of economies across Eurasia and East Africa through a series of infrastructure investments known as the Belt and Road Initiative. The goal of the B&R, Chinese officials say, is to bring prosperity to the many developing Asian countries that lack the capacity to undertake major infrastructure projects on their own by connecting them through a web of airports, deep-water ports, fiber-optic networks, highways, railways, and oil and gas pipelines. The B&R’s unstated goal is equally ambitious: to save China from the economic decline that its slowing growth rate and high debt levels seem to portend. The infrastructure initiative, China’s leaders believe, could create new markets for Chinese companies and at the same time provide a shot in the arm to the struggling banks and state-owned enterprises whose disgruntled bosses might otherwise trouble the current leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
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Kaplan, Fred
Abstract
Four months into his presidency, at a summit in Prague, Barack Obama pledged to take “concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons.” Yet nearly eight years later, he presides over a program to modernize the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal at a cost of $35 billion a year through the next decade and beyond. To those who accuse him of hypocrisy, Obama has said that he always regarded a nuclear-free world as a long-term goal, unlikely to be met in his lifetime, much less his time in office—and that his modernization program is designed not to build more or more deadly nuclear weapons but rather to maintain and secure the arsenal the United States has now.
This claim is true, by and large, but it leaves open a bigger question: Does the United States need the arsenal it has now? Obama seems to be mulling this very question as his tenure winds down. In a June 6 speech to the Arms Control Association, his deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, noted that “the modernization plan was put together in a different budget environment, with a different Congress,” and that the president “will continue to review these plans as he considers how to hand the baton off to his successor.” In one sense, Rhodes was merely repeating the concern that Robert Work, the deputy secretary of defense, had expressed back in February—that the nuclear plan’s price tag would force tradeoffs in an era of budget constraints and that if this meant cuts in conventional forces, then that would be “very, very, very problematic.” But other officials have said that the review Rhodes mentioned is propelled not only by budgetary dilemmas but by questions of strategy and history, too.
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Carter, Ash
Abstract
In April, I laid a wreath at the Manila American Cemetery, in the Philippines, where some 17,000 Americans are buried. Looking up at the mosaic maps of battles whose names still echo throughout the U.S. Department of Defense—Guadalcanal, Midway, Leyte Gulf, and more—it is hard not to appreciate the essential role that the U.S. military has long played in the Asia-Pacific. Many of the individuals buried in the cemetery helped win World War II. For the people and nations of the region, they also won the opportunity to realize a brighter future.
Since World War II, America’s men and women in uniform have worked day in and day out to help ensure the security of the Asia-Pacific. Forward-deployed U.S. personnel in the region—serving at Camp Humphreys and Osan Air Base in South Korea, at the Yokosuka naval base and Yokota Air Base in Japan, and elsewhere—have helped the United States deter aggression and develop deeper relationships with regional militaries. The thousands upon thousands of sailors and marines aboard the USS John C. Stennis, the USS Blue Ridge, the USS Lassen, and other ships have sailed millions of miles, made countless port calls, and helped secure the world’s sea-lanes, including in the South China Sea. And American personnel have assisted with training for decades, including holding increasingly complex exercises with the Philippines over more than 30 years.
Every port call, flight hour, exercise, and operation has added a stitch to the fabric of the Asia-Pacific’s stability. And every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine has helped defend important principles—such as the peaceful resolution of disputes, the right of countries to make their own security and economic choices free from coercion, and the freedom of overflight and navigation guaranteed by international law.
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Brooks, Stephen G., and William C. Wohlforth
Abstract
After two and a half decades, is the United States’ run as the world’s sole superpower coming to an end? Many say yes, seeing a rising China ready to catch up to or even surpass the United States in the near future. By many measures, after all, China’s economy is on track to become the world’s biggest, and even if its growth slows, it will still outpace that of the United States for many years. For many, the question is not whether China will become a superpower but just how soon.
But this is wishful, or fearful, thinking. Economic growth no longer translates as directly into military power as it did in the past, which means that it is now harder than ever for rising powers to rise and established ones to fall. And China—the only country with the raw potential to become a true global peer of the United States—also faces a more daunting challenge than previous rising states because of how far it lags behind technologically. Even though the United States’ economic dominance has eroded from its peak, the country’s military superiority is not going anywhere, nor is the globe-spanning alliance structure that constitutes the core of the existing liberal international order. Rather than expecting a power transition in international politics, everyone should start getting used to a world in which the United States remains the sole superpower for decades to come.
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Brands, Hal, Peter D. Feaver, John J. Mearsheimer, and Stephen M. Walt
Introduction
A quarter century after the Cold War ended, critics have renewed their calls for the United States to abandon its existing grand strategy, which they contend has both cost too much in blood and treasure and delivered too little in terms of peace, prosperity, and security. Under the preferred strategy of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the United States would significantly roll back the system of alliances, the forward deployments, and the onshore presence that have characterized its security posture for decades. Instead, it would husband its strength by relying on other countries to maintain the balance of power in regions crucial to U.S. interests—namely, Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Persian Gulf—and step in militarily only when absolutely necessary, to prevent the emergence of a regional hegemon.
The case for offshore balancing has superficial appeal. Its advocates claim that under the prevailing U.S. grand strategy, Washington has intervened too often in faraway conflicts of dubious importance to U.S. interests, with adverse consequences for U.S. security and international stability. According to this camp, most of what the United States has accomplished in the post–Cold War era—or, at least, most of what was worth accomplishing—could have been achieved at far lower cost, simply by letting other states fend for themselves. Offshore balancers thus promise a rare win-win: better outcomes at lower cost.
It sounds too good to be true, and indeed, it is. Once the historically dubious claims and flawed strategic assumptions are corrected, the case for offshore balancing collapses. The concept may remain popular in certain academic circles, but it is no wonder senior policymakers have consistently rejected it in practice.
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Bellany, Ian
Abstract
In the past, terrorists have tended to eschew acts of extreme violence for fear of alienating those whom they wish to persuade and attract to their cause. The first to discard this philosophy was the Aum group in Japan, which sought to use anthrax and acquire a nuclear weapon. Since then, attitudes have changed, spurred on by the impact on public perception of the successful Al Qaeda 9/11 attack on New York and Washington. By crossing the line between moderation and extreme violence, terrorist groups retain one valuable capability: they are much less easily deterred and have few inhibitions. This article considers the three nuclear options open to terrorists – produce a radiological contaminant bomb; build a nuclear bomb; or steal or get given a nuclear device. It examines the possibilities and probabilities of each option and considers how the implementation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) provisions might impose some constraints on terrorists’ nuclear ambitions. By examining the doubtful nuclear security practices of different states and providing statistical evidence of an increase in levels of international terrorist violence, this article points to determined terrorists in time acquiring the means to acquire one or other variants of a nuclear weapon. It concludes that it is not a matter of “if” but “when.”
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Shin, Gi-Wook, Hilary Izatt, and Rennie J. Moon
Abstract
While power asymmetry typically defines security relationships between allies, there exist other forms of asymmetry that influence alliance politics. In order to illustrate how they can shape policy outcomes that cannot be explained solely through the lens of power capabilities, the authors examine the role of relative attention that each side pays to the alliance. It is their central argument that since the client state has a greater vested interest in the alliance and given that attention depends on interest/need, the client state can leverage attention to get its way. By analysing two specific cases, the 2002 South Korean schoolgirls tragedy and the 2008 beef protests—instances where the South Koreans succeeded in compelling US concessions—the authors show that because the alliance was more central to the client state’s agendas, there existed an asymmetry of attention that offered leveraging opportunities for the weaker ally. In this study, the authors emphasise the role of media attention as a key variable, and seek to contribute to debates on weaker party leverage in asymmetrical alliances.
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Scheber, Thomas K., and John R. Harvey
Abstract
This report provides an assessment of the U.S. readiness posture to be able to design, develop, and produce new nuclear warheads or warheads with new military capabilities. Such a readiness posture is important to reduce risk over the long term for the United States and its allies. This report does not advocate any specific new nuclear capability. The focus is on a readiness capability and the steps needed to remediate a critical element of the U.S. security posture that, over the past two decades, has been documented repeatedly as being deficient. The report examines the policies of post-Cold War presidential administrations regarding maintaining a nuclear warhead design capability. In addition, it identifies capability shortfalls of the current U.S. nuclear enterprise and offers recommendations to address shortfalls—in particular, the intellectual capital on which the health of the current and future U.S. nuclear deterrent depends. Finally, it provides concrete recommendations to improve and preserve a U.S. nuclear readiness capability for the long term.
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Ohtsuki, Kazuto
Abstract
This article demonstrates that donors seek the optimal allocation of foreign aid by matching specific recipients with specific concessions. A formal model shows that aid encourages more democratic recipients to participate in costly collective actions to produce transnational public goods. Democratic political institutions mitigate recipient leaders’ perverse incentives to divert aid from collective effort to pork-barrel spending when aid is tied to an opportunity to produce such goods. This commitment to effort in turn incentivizes other participants to cooperate, which is required for the operation to succeed. In contrast, donor-specific concessions are bought from less democratic recipients. I test the above claims against data on US multilateral coalitions providing regional security and data on United Nations (UN)-voting alignment. The results confirm that the US faces a tradeoff between the two concessions and that it buys cooperation in peacekeeping operations from more democratic recipients, while buying off predominantly autocratic recipients in the UN General Assembly.
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