A report to U.S. Congress says cyber espionage from China and Russia is happening on a massive scale. The report comes in response to growing complaints from the business community that their networks are coming under regular attack.
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Power is the ability to affect others to obtain preferred outcomes, and that can be done through coercion and payment or attraction and persuasion. Generally, people associate coercion with military power resources, but that is too reductive. After all, economic power resources can also be used for coercion. Even in terms of what is considered “normal” economic behavior, the boundaries are not always so clear. As Thomas Schelling has argued, “The difference between a threat and a promise, between coercion and compensation, sometimes depends on where the baseline is located.” After all, once compensation becomes an expectation, withholding it for […]
No credible international affairs specialist would contend that the 2012 presidential election will hinge on U.S. foreign policy, given the state of the U.S. economy and the widespread social anger that one sees bubbling up across the country. What’s more, Americans — if not Beltway partisan pundits — have achieved a certain sense of consensus on foreign policy under President Barack Obama, whose leadership has displayed a palpable “give them what they want” dynamic that reflects his desire to keep overseas issues on the back burner while he focuses on domestic ones. That last part should not be mistaken for […]
Proponents and opponents alike of defense budget cuts have spilled much ink lately. The debate will spike even further over the coming months as the actual budget is submitted to Congress for passage, and as Congress’ “super committee” for identifying long-term deficit-reduction measures gets closer to its deadline that, if missed, would mandate automatic defense cuts. As with other topics, however, the Washington defense budget debate seems to be occurring in a vacuum, not taking much account of the rest of the world, nor the implications of the spending decisions on potential adversaries’ strategies. In putting the debate into its […]
The recent arrival of a Chinese navy hospital ship carrying doctors and medical supplies to treat the needy in Jamaica flew mainly below the radar of mainstream American media. But the People’s Liberation Army’s “Peace Ark” mission highlights the delicate balance China is seeking to strike as it tries to show off its growing global military capability and boost its influence in regions once exclusively dominated by the U.S. military, without triggering suspicion and alarm in Washington and elsewhere. “In some sense this underscores that you can’t put China in just a regional category any longer,” says Jonathan D. Pollack, […]
As the leaders from the 20 largest developed and emerging economies gather this week in Cannes, France, observers will catalogue the difficulties in forging consensus around decisive steps to remedy global ills. To be sure, a roomful of the world’s most powerful leaders are bound to disagree about the causes and consequences of global economic instability and the arc of global order. But this G-20 summit will highlight another central challenge to coordinated international action: the rise of democratic powers that are ambivalent about the prevailing international order and have yet to decide whether to bolster it, replace it or […]
The sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan in March 2010 reignited global concerns over the proliferation of submarine technology. Although the total number of submarines in service worldwide has declined since the end of the Cold War, largely because of the disappearance of the Soviet navy and a reduction in U.S. forces, the number of countries operating relatively advanced submarines has increased. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in particular has expanded the size and sophistication of its undersea armada. At the same time, capabilities for fighting submarines have atrophied. Altogether, these trends suggest an alarming degree of uncertainty […]
After a campaign plagued by corruption allegations and violence — 41 candidates were murdered during recent months — the outcome of Colombia’s municipal elections last weekend paints the picture of a nation polarized between left-leaning pragmatists in urban centers and conservative elites clinging to countryside power. Perhaps most striking was the rise of Gustavo Petro, a former leftist guerilla, who was elected mayor of Bogota after running on an outspokenly “anti-corruption” platform. Petro’s victory, which comes on the heels of an intense public-works corruption scandal that landed the Colombian capital’s former mayor, Samuel Moreno, in jail in September, is particularly […]