Follow the link for a full transcript of "Global Threats: What's at Stake and What We Can Do About It."

Reform the Electoral College |  Didi Kuo

One of the major problems people feel right now in American politics is that their voices aren’t heard. We live in what my colleague Francis Fukuyama calls a "vetocracy," meaning there are a lot of veto points in our system.

In a lot of other democratic institutional configurations, you have rule by the majority. But in the United States, we have an institutional configuration that allows a very small group — for example, 15 people in the House of Representatives — to hold up government in various ways. We see this in dramatic examples on the national level, but it also trickles down to the local level where you see it in issues like permitting hold-ups.

Reforming the Electoral College would be a very direct way of changing that vetocracy. The United States is one of the only advanced democracies that has this indirect system of elections. If all the votes counted equally and all the presidential candidates had to treat all of us the same and respond to us equally in all 50 states, it would do a lot to show the power of the popular vote and realign us more closely to the principle of majoritarianism that we should seek in our institutions.

Allow Taiwan to License Weapons Production |  Larry Diamond

My recommendation is deterrence, deterrence, deterrence. It is not inevitable that the People's Republic of China is going to launch an all-out military assault on Taiwan. But if the United States does not do more to make that a costly decision, the likelihood it will happen are exponentially higher.

Deterrence works. The United States deterred the Soviet Union from moving against West Berlin and much of Europe for decades. But it only works if you have a superior force.

To that end, the United States needs to pre-position more military force in the region. There's now a $12 billion backlog of weapons that Taiwan has ordered and paid for but hasn't received yet. That’s because the American defense production system is completely broken. This is the same reason why we can’t get weapons to Ukraine at the pace we need there.

This issue could be fixed, at least in part, if we licensed the production of some of these weapon systems directly to Taiwan. Their ability to build plants and produce these systems is much more agile than our own, and so licensing the rights to production would dramatically increase the deterrence factor against China, in addition to deepening our cooperation with allies throughout the region.

Pursue Climate Mitigation AND Adaptation |  Marshall Burke

There are three things we can do in response to climate change: we can mitigate, we can adapt, or we can suffer. We’re off to a good start, but we have decades of long slog ahead of us to get that right. And it's not just us; even if we do a good job, we depend on other countries to also do a good job. The Biden administration has already been engaged on some of that front, but there’s more work to do there.

And even with our best efforts, we are not going to be able to move as fast as we want or mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as we need to avoid climate change. So, we're going to have to live with some climate change, which means adaptation. And if we can't adapt, then we're going to suffer. 

The key point is that we are very poorly adapted to today's climate, much less the climate we're going to have 30 or 50 years from now. The West Coast and California are prime examples of this. There have been monumental wildfire seasons there the last few years, and there are significant negative health impacts from smoke exposure. I see it in my own home, even as someone who studies this and should know better and do more to reduce those risks.

The point is, we're really poorly adapted to the current climate, and things are going to get a lot worse. We need to focus on mitigation; it’s still really important and we need to get it done. But at the same time, we need to figure out how to adapt and live with the changing climate that we're going to experience.

Weapons for Ukraine, Sanctions on Russia |  Michael McFaul

When I was in Kyiv this September, I had a chance to meet with President Zelenskyy, and he pointed out an absolutely crazy reality. Companies in the United States and Europe are still making tens of thousands of dollars in profits from selling various technologies that ultimately end up in Russia. It’s getting in through places like Hong Kong and Kazakhstan and Belarus and Georgia, and it allows Russia to keep waging its horrific war.

At the same time, the United States is spending millions of dollars to arm Ukraine with systems to shoot down the Russian rockets that were built using the components they got from the West. That’s completely illogical, bad policy. I know it’s hard to control technology, but we have to find a better way than what we’re doing right now. If you're an American taxpayer, that is your money being wasted.

That means more and better weapons for Ukraine, faster. And that means more and better sanctions on Russia, faster. That is the way to speed the end of this war.

Be Confident in America |  Amichai Magen

Just a few short years ago, we were all talking about the decline of the United States. I think that is far from inevitable. People speak about the 20th century as the “American Century.” The 21st century can also be the American Century. It's in our hands.

Be bullish on America. Be confident in America. Rediscover the spirit of America for adaptation and innovation and entrepreneurship. We need to wake up from the break we’ve taken from history in the post-Cold War era and rally once again in our spirit, our research, and our intellect.

We need to find new solution structures to the great challenges of our era: environmental challenges, AI, biotechnological challenges, nuclear challenges. And we can do it. China is on the verge of demographic decline and economic decline. Russia is a very dangerous international actor, but it is not a global superpower. We must reinvent the institutions and the alliances that we need for the 21st century in order to make sure that we continue a journey towards greater peace and prosperity for all of mankind.

The entire discussion, including the audience Q&A, is available to watch on FSI's YouTube channel. To stay up to date on our content, be sure to like, subscribe, and turn on notifications.

Amidst evolving geopolitical shifts, the foundation of U.S. nuclear deterrence, forged in the crucible of the Cold War, faces a new set of challenges. The principle of mutually assured destruction (MAD), once the bedrock of deterrence, is now being tested by Russia's aggressive posturing and China's strategic advancements. In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and signals of a willingness to employ tactical nuclear weapons, questions arise about the efficacy of traditional deterrence strategies. Concurrently, China's expanding nuclear arsenal adds complexity to the equation. Do these developments mean America needs to rethink its deterrence strategy? 

In a new paper, “China’s Nuclear Enterprise: Trends, Developments, and Implications for the United States and Its Allies,” FSI Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro focuses on the Chinese perspective of the equation and examines recent trends in Chinese military doctrine and their implications for U.S. deterrence strategy. Mastro’s contribution is part of a new report, Project Atom 2023: A Competitive Strategies Approach for U.S. Nuclear Posture through 2035, produced by the CSIS Project on Nuclear Issues.

A fundamental premise underlying Mastro’s analysis is that China merits distinct scrutiny differently from Russia, and that the two countries should not be considered  “nuclear peers.” Although China is indeed engaging in nuclear force modernization, Mastro contends that the nation is still adhering to its fundamental nuclear policy: minimal retaliation capability and a no-use-first pledge.

While some have been troubled by China’s turn to regional nuclear options like the DF-26, an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads, Mastro asserts that this is because “they are regional weapons lower on the escalation ladder.” Rather than trying to achieve parity with the United States, she contends that Beijing’s objective is to preserve a credible second-strike capability, which is essential to the concept of deterrence.

Instead of prescribing specific alterations to U.S. force posture or nuclear modernization, Mastro suggests that any changes in U.S. defense strategies carefully consider the impact on Chinese nuclear strategy. The key is to preserve China’s minimal retaliation capability and its pledge to refrain from initiating nuclear warfare: “the most important goal for U.S. deterrence policy should be to ensure it does not encourage a change in China’s nuclear policy and in posture.”

Other steps the United States should take, according to Castro, include preventing the “co-mingling” of nuclear and conventional weapons on vessels apart from ballistic missile submarines. This precaution aims to eliminate ambiguity and mitigate the risk of possible conflict escalation. She also believes that there may be “more costs than benefits” in the proliferation of nuclear weapons among Asian allies — South Korea, Japan, and Australia. These threaten the non-proliferation regime and increase the possibility of accidents. The answer, Mastro holds, is not deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons on foreign soil, but rather increased consultations and joint planning with allies. Such collaborative efforts could reassure allies and partners of U.S. intentions even as they have minimal impact on Chinese contingency planning. 
 

In 2018, the South Korean Supreme Court passed a series of rulings requiring Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel of Japan to compensate 14 Korean citizens for their unpaid labor. As of yet, neither company has agreed to comply with the ruling. The South Korean government has since announced plans to compensate survivors who were forced to work in Japanese mines and factories during the wartime period, but this remains a unilateral decision on the part of the Yoon administration, not a bilateral position between South Korea and Japan.

These tensions have ripple effects far outside of East Asia. Writing for Toyo Keizai, Daniel Sneider, an FSI Lecturer in International Policy with a focus on Asia, explains the broader geopolitical implications of these issues:

“The Americans have been urging the two countries to settle these problems in order to ease the way to the kind of security cooperation that has become visible in recent months. Joint military exercises for missile defense and other small steps to intensify trilateral coordination are taking place and a resolution of the history of problems may be key to moving ahead.”

Steps Forward

The last year has seen increased efforts to restore more functionality to the South Korea-Japan relationship. President Yoon and Prime Minister Kishida met briefly on the sidelines of the September 2022 UN General Assembly meeting in New York, which was followed by respective visits of Yoon to Tokyo in March 2023 and Kishida to Seoul two months later in May, the first such visits in over 11 years.

The Camp David summit, which brought the U.S., South Korea, and Japan together as strategic partners, is the latest step on the hoped-for road to institutionalized security cooperation between the three nations.

Speaking to NBC, Shorenstein Fellow Thomas Fingar explained the significance of the weekend.

“The importance of this [summit] is that it was a genuine trilateral meeting, which means the Japanese and the Koreans are talking to one another as opposed to the U.S. dealing separately with each of them.”

In contrast to the idyllic Camp David setting, the three leaders are faced with a weighty set of issues, noted Sneider, including the crisis triggered by the Ukraine war, North Korea’s aggressive posture, as well as growing concerns about China.

Oriana Skylar Mastro, an FSI Center Fellow and an expert on security, conflict resolution, and the Chinese military elaborated further on the mutual pressures South Korea, Japan, and the United States face:

“Since President Biden came into office, he’s really stressed strengthening alliances and partnerships as a way of protecting U.S. interests abroad. I'm sure there has been much work behind the scenes to try to get these two countries to come together. In terms of the timing [of this summit], it's of course partially because of the accumulation of these concerns over China. I think also the war in Ukraine has done a lot to really open up leaders' eyes to the dangers of having neighbors with territorial hopes and claims that also have strong militaries that could potentially be undeterred from using force. I think it's fair to say that this has also pushed these two countries to rethink their own strategies for security.”

An Uncertain Future

The official summit documents outline both a vision of partnership and offer a variety of practical agreements on everything from annual leadership summits to meetings on economic and cyber security, and a proposal for how to move forward with joint military exercises. Notably, the two-paragraph ‘commitment to consult’ on responses to ‘regional challenges, provocations, and threats affecting our collective interests and security’ — while not a fully embodied collective security agreement — is nonetheless a “stunning achievement,” says Daniel Sneider.

Despite agreeing on a hefty laundry list of shared concerns and security goals, the way forward for additional trilateralization between the United States, Japan, and South Korea is not necessarily clear. Oriana Mastro explained: 

“Even though they might have shared threat perceptions, there is still a lot of trust that has to happen between nations for them to take coordinated military approaches. If two countries, for example, exercise together — and that's one of the things that the Biden administration is hoping to get out of this summit: more routine trilateral exercises — you get to learn a lot about another country's military, and that only really happens between friends. That’s also true of intel sharing. When you share intelligence, you’re not only sharing information, you're sharing how you get intelligence, which can also be sensitive. So while they've shared these threats for a while, it hasn't really gotten to the level in which they were willing to take risks in terms of the relationship between South Korea and Japan to become closer in the security space in a way that would help them combat these issues together.”

Besides the challenges of international diplomacy, Yoon, Kishida, and Biden also face domestic hurdles that could hinder further cooperation.

In a comment to the Wall Street Journal, Gi-Wook Shin noted that, “Yoon only entered politics a few years ago. If his party loses the election, I don’t know who will stay with him.” Improving South Korea-Japan relations was a major platform of the Yoon campaign, and backlash against his administration could yield disinterest or even renewed hostility toward continuing his efforts. 

Daniel Sneider sees similar challenges for Biden and Kishida. Writing in East Asia Forum, he cautioned:

“President Joe Biden is already embroiled in an election campaign that threatens to bring Donald Trump and his isolationist views back to power. The Camp David summit was barely noticed amid the constant flow of domestic political news, though it mostly received welcome praise in the media. . . Imprisoned by domestic politics, the White House will likely be unable to give substance to this emergent partnership.”

In the case of Kishida, the decision to release wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear site, which came just days after the conclusion of the summit, has been particularly counterproductive. Sneider continued:

“Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has been waiting for a bump from the Camp David summit. But he is experiencing a deepening slide in opinion polls. The Fukushima release faces opposition within Japan, including from fishermen and others worried about boycotts of Japanese products in China and South Korea. Talk of an early parliamentary election in Japan, intended to consolidate Kishida’s claim to long-term leadership, is now on hold.”

Where is the trilateral U.S.-Japan-South Korea relationship headed next? Follow FSI scholars to stay informed about the latest developments. Register to receive alerts to your inbox either weekly or monthly.   

Kahl’s research focuses on the resurgence of geopolitical competition, American grand strategy, and the international security implications of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Prior to joining the Freeman Spogli Institute, Kahl was Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President. In that position, he served as a senior advisor to President Obama and Vice President Biden on all matters related to U.S. foreign policy and national security affairs, and represented the Office of the Vice President as a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee. 

Kahl is the co-author of Aftershocks: Pandemic Politics and the End of the Old International Order (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2021) and States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), and he has published widely on international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy, including in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Middle East Policy, the National Interest, the New Republic, the New York Times, Politico, War on the Rocks, and the Washington Post, among others. 

At CISAC, he will return his focus to research and teaching CISAC undergraduate courses and graduate courses in FSI's Master's in International Policy program.

 “The world is more complex and dangerous than at any time since the end of the Cold War, and the scholars and students at FSI have much to contribute to addressing this rapidly evolving security environment,” said Professor Kahl. “I’m thrilled to return to FSI to contribute to this vital work.”

Impacts on Russia, Ukraine, and Beyond

Michael McFaul

The implications of the 72-hour mutiny will last much longer and extend much further beyond Rostov and Moscow, says FSI Director and former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.

Speaking with Madeline Brand of KRCW, McFaul outlined the difficult situation Putin now finds himself in.

“This whole series of events has made Putin look a lot weaker than he looked three or four days ago. The very fact that the Wagner group exists is a sign of weakness. Putin needs them because he couldn’t rely on his armed forces.”

Elaborating further on Putin’s dilemma, McFaul says:

“As those mercenaries were getting closer to Moscow, Putin went on TV and sounded very macho, calling Prigozhin’s men traitors and promising to crush them, but then four hours later, he capitulates and starts to negotiate. And now he’s given another speech where it sounds like he’s pleading with these mercenaries to lay down their weapons and join the Russian forces. That clearly shows he hasn’t resolved this Wagner crisis yet.”

McFaul predicts that Putin’s remaining partners are also taking note of his fumbled reaction to the rebellion.

“​​If you’re Xi Jinping watching this, the big bet you made on Putin as a partner in opposing the West is looking really problematic right now.”

What Chinese officials fear most, McFaul explained to MSNBC’s Jonathn Capehart, is instability and dissolution, both internally and amongst their neighbors. Historically, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophic event for Chinese Communist Party officials, and a lesson the current leadership is loath to repeat.

McFaul asserts that, “The longer Putin’s war in Ukraine goes, the more probable it becomes that Russia becomes more unstable. The longer this war goes on, the more likely it is we could see something like this play out over and over again. So I would hope that Xi Jinping understands that putting pressure on Putin to end the war in Ukraine is the best way to prevent chaos on China's borders.”

There are also important lessons the United States and its allies need to consider when evaluating the kind of support they are willing to give Ukraine as the war wears on.

“Putin capitulated very fast, and I think that says a lot about how he’s going to fight in Ukraine and whether he needs an ‘off ramp’ like we’ve been saying. We’ve heard all of these arguments that if he’s backed into a corner he’ll never negotiate. Well, this weekend Putin was in a corner, and he didn't double down. He didn't escalate. He negotiated,” McFaul observes.

Continuing this thought on his Substack, McFaul emphasized that, “The lesson for the war in Ukraine is clear. Putin is more likely to negotiate and end his war if he is losing on the battlefield, not when there is a stalemate. Those who have argued that Ukraine must not attack Crimea for fear of triggering escalation must now reevaluate that hypothesis. The sooner Putin fears he is losing the war, the faster he will negotiate.”

Or, as McFaul writes in Journal on Democracy, “Anything that weakens Putin is good for Ukraine. It is as simple as that.”  

Fallout on Nuclear Security and Norms

Rose Gottemoeller

Throughout the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there have been concerns about nuclear sabre rattling by Putin and Kremlin-backed propagandists. Writing in the Financial Times, Rose Gottemoeller, the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at CISAC and former Deputy Secretary of NATO offered this insight:

“The fixation with nuclear apocalypse seems to be the symptom of a wider anxiety that the west is bent on Russian dismemberment because of its aspirations in Ukraine. The Kremlin argues that it only wanted to resume its ancestral right to a Slavic heartland, but that the U.S. and NATO are seeking as punishment Russia’s full and complete destruction as a nation state.”

Gottemoeller has been quick to condemn Putin’s casual threats of nuclear use and clear in her recommendations to the U.S. administration and its allies to find constructive ways to keep nuclear arms talks open despite the war in Ukraine and setbacks like Russia’s suspension of its participation in the New START Treaty.

The Wagner takeover of Rostov-on-Don adds a new layer to the security concerns surrounding Russia’s nuclear posture. Looking at the evolution of Putin’s nuclear rhetoric over the last 18 months, Gottemoeller writes:

“Putin embraced nuclear weapons to keep the United States and its NATO allies off his back and out of his way as he pursued his adventure in Ukraine. It did not work out that way. The United States and NATO were not ready to fight inside Ukraine, but they were willing to do everything else to support Kyiv’s cause — economic, political, security and military assistance to ensure Russia’s defeat. Nuclear weapons failed Putin as a guarantee against external meddling.”

Turning to the events of the last week, Gottemoeller continues:

“We learned on June 24 that they are no help to him internally, either. He could not brandish nuclear weapons in the face of the Wagner Group uprising . . . Nuclear weapons are not the authoritarian’s silver bullet when his power is strained to the breaking point — far from it. In fact, they represent a consummate threat to national and global security if they should fall into the wrong hands in the course of domestic unrest.”

In light of Prigozhin’s mutiny, she urges global leaders to “focus on the problem, stop loose nuclear talk, and put new measures in place to protect, control and account for nuclear weapons and the fissile material that go into them.” 

The Unknown Unknowns of the Settlement

Steven Pifer

Major questions remain about the deal struck between Putin, Prigozhin, and Lukashenko. While Lukashenko has confirmed that the Wagner boss is now in Belarusian territory, it is unclear — and many feel, unlikely — that he will stay there in quiet retirement. 

Weighing in on Twitter, Steven Pifer, an affiliate at the Center for International Cooperation and Security and The Europe Center, and a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, acknowledged, “We likely do not know all carrots and/or sticks that were in play to lead to Prigozhin’s decision to end his mutiny . . . Something does not add up.”

Following up in Politico, Pifer added:

“The ‘settlement’ supposedly brokered by President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus leaves Putin, who was invisible during the day except for a short morning TV broadcast, as damaged goods. It provided the impression that all was forgiven, likely because the Russian president feared the prospect of Prigozhin’s troops parading in Moscow — even if they lacked the numbers to take control of the capital. It is harder to understand Prigozhin. His demands went unmet, yet he ordered his troops back to garrison, accepted that they might join the Russian army that he detests, and meekly set off for Belarus. There clearly is more behind this ‘settlement’ than we understand.”