For this week’s geopolitical look, we examine the conflicts shaping the trajectory of the 21st century. The first is the US-China rivalry, which is quickly coalescing around the sovereignty of Taiwan. The second is the struggle for authority in global institutions as autocratic nations circumvent multipolar institutions in an attempt to seize the levers of power. The third is the ongoing climate battle, which has created stark dividing lines between developed and undeveloped, and between believers and deniers. The final conflict is the continuing war in Ukraine, which has obfuscated the true depth of impact of the economic sanctions leveled against Moscow. In a world destabilized by the old ways of power and influence, we must look forward to the Day After – holding on to hope in the midst of seemingly out-of-control forces – and cling to virtue to bring about a better future.

Dangerous Straits: Wargaming a Future Conflict over Taiwan

Stacie Pettyjohn, Becca Wasser, and Chris Dougherty, Center for a New American Society

Would We Really Defend Taiwan?

Jacquelyn Schneider, Hoover Institution 

US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi landed in Taiwan on Tuesday morning, sparking renewed conversations around the island’s contested relationship with China and the US’ “strategic ambiguity” on its defense. For years, the “silicon shield” of Taiwan’s massive semiconductor industry has served as a deterrent to Chinese invasion and a bargaining chip to secure defensive capabilities from the West. With that shield weakening as China’s domestic chip industry develops, and Putin’s war in Ukraine testing the resolve of Western leaders, strategists believe Chinese president Xi Jinping’s timetable for “reunification” of the island nation has accelerated. The prospects of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan prompts two questions: would the US get involved in such a conflict, and who would win? While President Biden has remarked that the US would defend Taiwan, official policy is intentionally ambiguous on the extent of US commitments. If the US were to come to Taiwan’s defense, the costs would be massive in both monetary and human terms. In spite of this, support for Taiwanese autonomy is at its highest level in decades among the US public, likely due to perceptions of the US’ overwhelming military superiority (a gap which the Chinese are rapidly closing, if indeed it still exists at all). Further obscuring the situation is the asymmetry of US and Chinese capabilities, with different “rungs” on the ladder of escalation likely to fuel a spiral of increasingly destructive responses in the event of an outright conflict. Strategists at the Center for a New American Society (CNAS) conducted a wargame to assess the potential outcomes of a Chinese invasion. Their analysis concluded that a swift victory for either party is highly unlikely, and that nuclear weapons could quickly become elements of the conflict despite commitments to avoid their use on both sides. The best course of action, then, is to strengthen the measures used to prevent China from invading in the first place. The US can help accomplish this by expanding their Indo-Pacific capabilities to enhance its ability to combat an aggressive China on its home court, strengthening its relationships with Taiwan, and supplying the island with military capabilities to shift the calculus of war in its favor.

The New Geopolitics

Bruno Maçães, Project Syndicate

Read the full article here 

Recent crises, such as the war in Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic, have revealed an error in the way Western democracies think about technology: modern development does not bring an end to state conflict, but rather raises the stakes. Maçães argues we have entered a new period of geopolitical rivalry. Whereas the global system was supposed to be a neutral framework of rules, it has become a tool of power that global actors are fighting to control: “There is a great contest underway to determine which rules will govern the world and which superpower will be in a position to set them.” As autocracies like Russia and China repeatedly break the rules, it has become less important what the rules are and much more important who has the power to make the rules. The role of “global system administrator” has become a coveted position. This actor has root access to the global system, can modify it, and has the responsibility to crack down on intruders. Moscow believed it had a back door to the existing global system and could reprogram it with its invasion of Ukraine. However, the West adopted a set of targeted economic tools to reduce Russia’s threat to the system, but it has not been successful at totally kicking it out due to the world’s hunger for Russian hydrocarbons. Unlike the previous universalist global order where common rules governing trade were said to have created a neutral playing field, the global system is now open to change and choices made by different actors reshape the rules.

As the World Burns

Richard Haass, Project Syndicate

Read the full article here 

The war in Ukraine, and the resulting energy squeeze, has become an international priority for policymakers. European countries reliant on Russian energy are scrambling to find the quickest and easiest substitutes for Russian oil and gas, and it has become evident that greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuels are the cheapest and most ready alternative. The battle against climate change has quickly lost its urgency and record-high temperatures, droughts, wildfires, and increased migration have yet to change policy makers’ perceptions. There is a view in some countries that fighting climate change on their own will not matter because others will continue to ignore it and all will suffer. Similarly, developing nations are asking themselves why they should be doing the right thing in putting resources towards climate change initiatives when they believe the industrialization of the developed nations caused the problem. Additionally, climate change efforts are hampered by the perception that they come at the expense of employment and economic growth. Finally, the US has failed to be a leader in the global fight against climate change for various reasons including a polarized political environment and little political support for taxing emissions or entering trade agreements that discourage the use of fossil fuels. Despite the pessimistic outlook, Richard Haass says we do have cause for hope. He believes there are three main sources of hope: corporations that have financial incentives to introduce fuel-efficient products, infrastructure adaptation, and technologies that enable us to stop or even reverse climate change. When it comes to climate change, Haass believes “we will have to rely more on physical science than political science to save us from ourselves.”

Actually, the Russian Economy is Imploding

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Steven Tian, Foreign Policy

Read the full article here 

The state of Russia’s economy is largely misunderstood due to faulty economic analyses, forecasts, and projections that rely on data offered up by the Russian government itself. The Kremlin’s economic releases are being “cherry picked” as the Russian government broadcasts favorable economic statistics while withholding the gloomy data. Unfavorable information has not been released over the past months since the war in Ukraine began, forcing analysts to use pre-sanction statistics as the basis of their forecasts. These forecasts attempt to conceal the truth that business retreats and sanctions are causing the Russian economy to severely contract. Here are several myths that have come about from these faulty analyst speculations: 

Myth 1: Russia can redirect its gas exports and sell to Asia in lieu of Europe.

Myth 2: Since oil is more fungible than gas, Putin can just sell more to Asia.

Myth 3: Russia is making up for lost Western businesses and imports by replacing them with imports from Asia.

Myth 4: Russian domestic consumption and consumer health remain strong.

Myth 5: Global businesses have not really pulled out of Russia, and business, capital, and talent flight from Russia are overstated.

Myth 6: Putin is running a budget surplus thanks to high energy prices.

Myth 7: Putin has hundreds of billions of dollars in rainy day funds, so the Kremlin’s finances are unlikely to be strained anytime soon.

Myth 8: The ruble is the world’s strongest-performing currency this year.

Myth 9: The implementation of sanctions and business retreats are now largely done, and no more economic pressure is needed. 

Sonnenfeld and Tian remind us that “the facts are that, by any metric and on any level, the Russian economy is reeling, and now is not the time to step on the brakes.”