The Ides of March
Happy Monday Ladies and Gentlemen! I hope wherever you are, your week is off to an excellent start. Last week was news-heavy, all across the globe, so, preferably with a hot mug of tea or coffee in hand, lets get into it.
The cost of War and the end of the Peace Dividend:
The peace dividend is the idea that after the end of the Cold War, the lack of large scale violent conflict and increasing globalization would allow for heretofore unseen economic growth. While that thesis widely played out throughout the 1990s, the return of great power competition has put weaponized economic interdependence back in the spotlight.
In 2023, global GDP was roughly $105 Trillion. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is estimated to have set the global economy back about $1T, due to factors such as sanctions on Russia leading to higher energy prices and reduced agricultural output from Ukraine contributing to a global food crisis.
A People’s Republic of China (PRC) invasion of Taiwan would incur even greater challenges to the global economy, costing around $10T. This is mostly due to the value of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, which supplies giants such as Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Intel.
Many Americans see conflicts abroad and ask “what does this have to do with my life?” It’s a reasonable question, and security decision makers and policy makers need to develop a strategy for communicating the stakes of these conflicts to the average citizen.
The stage is set for the American Presidential Election:
Trump cleared out the Republican primary when Niki Haley dropped out after a dominant Trump performance on Super Tuesday that saw him capture 93% of available delegates.
The moderate wing of the Republican party no longer exists. Trump’s performance in the primary should put to bed any notion that the Republican party will adopt more moderate positions on most popular issues in the near or medium term future. Trump has completely captured the Republican party and MAGA is the name of the game on the right side of the aisle.
Meanwhile, Biden delivered a combative, progressive State of the Union that was broadly well received. Readers who work on European security issues are likely heartened by the speech as the President couched the moment in history, drawing parallels to 1941 and the American Civil War, while warning “Putin will not stop in Ukraine.”
On American domestic political issues, Biden previewed the issues likely to be at the center of his re-election campaign, including:
Security - from Europe, to the Middle East, to the Southern Border.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson attended the speech after meeting with Secretary Blinken to deposit Sweden’s NATO accession documents and formally welcome the country as the alliance’s 32nd member.
Shifting Plates In Europe:
Putin has repeatedly asserted that part of the logic behind the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine was to prevent NATO from expanding too close to Russia’s border. While narratives surrounding the invasion change constantly, if we are to take Putin at his word, then Sweden joining the alliance, quick on the heels of Finland joining last April, represent a major strategic failure for Russian foreign policy.
Sweden abandoned a 200 year old tradition of neutrality in violent conflicts.
In spite of a small overall number of warfighters, Sweden is a highly capable security actor, with a technologically advanced defense industrial base and a geographic position crucial to securing the Baltic Sea.
The geographic advantage of having Sweden in NATO is made all the more clear by the ongoing Steadfast Defender 2024 exercises in Europe. In the largest NATO training operation since the Cold War, over 90,000 NATO troops are drilling across Eastern Europe to simulate an emerging conflict scenario with a near peer power.
This includes Dragon 24, where NATO forces are practicing securing the Sulwalki Gap, a strategic chokepoint between Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, and Poland.
In the case of a theoretical conflict between Russia and NATO, Russian control of the Gap would cut off Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from the rest of NATO, while simultaneously guaranteeing the ability to resupply Kaliningrad, which hosts significant Russian military forces.
However, with Sweden now holding NATO membership, the island of Gotland becomes much more strategically significant.
Now, in the case of a similar conflict, even Russian control of the Sulwalki Gap would not be able to prevent a NATO resupply to it’s Baltic members.
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as former Soviet states, are likely in Putin’s crosshairs and indeed are already facing hybrid warfare operations conducted by the Russian state.
In China, the National People’s Congress Convenes:
For unfamiliar readers, the National People’s Congress is a giant, single party legislative body that meets annually for about two weeks to pass Xi Jinping’s government priorities. Amid a bevy of business, a few wave-top items stand out:
China will increase their defense spending by about 7% in 2024.
They will maintain their GDP growth goal of 5% in the face of modest economic headwinds, especially within real estate and foreign direct investment.
They dropped the word “peaceful” from their language regarding re-unification with Taiwan.
Technology & Defense:
Anduril Industries and Palantir Technologies win a joint contract from the US Army to develop and manufacture the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN), a new ground based capability intended to help warfighters parse through massive amounts of data generated by the 21st century battlefield.
It’s both fascinating and troubling that technology disruption that arrived in national security market, roughly two decades after it upended the consumer media market, is overwhelmingly characterized by the rise of new defense prime contractors. It’s a dynamic I hope to explore in the future with some long-form research, but broader market competition seems like it could lead to better defense capabilities.
Concepts & Frameworks:
Transforming in Contact is a new way the US Army is thinking about re-fitting their combat units while deployed to account for the rapidly changing nature of conflict. Rather than deploy, execute a mission, and then re-deploy to garrison and make adjustments to the unit’s fighting kit based on how well it worked on mission, the Army is looking at ways to transform units while forward deployed in order to create a more responsive, dynamic fighting force.
More Interesting Reading:
The Emerging Competitive Paradigm - RAND Corporation
Winning the Irregular World War - RAND Corporation
The Threat from Russia’s Unconventional Warfare Beyond Ukraine - Royal United Services Institute
The tech that helps these herders navigate drought, war, and extremists - MIT Technology Review
Beyond The Hype: How Generative AI Could Help Democracy - Pioneering Oversight
Teaching Innovative Entrepreneurship - What’s New Under The Sun
This was really easy to understand. Thank you for the hard work put into this.