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Tariffs are helping the U.S. steel industry.

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Tariffs are helping the U.S. steel industry.

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The Trump administration is preparing to add tariffs - or taxes - on virtually everything the U.S. buys from China. But the president offered reassurance that in some cases, waivers will be granted, so Chinese goods can be imported tax-free.

The administration has offered similar waivers from its steel and aluminum tariffs, putting the Commerce Department in the awkward position of literally picking winners and losers.

Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., called the process, " a master class in government inefficiency." Her district includes big steel and aluminum users, including RV manufacturers.

The administration has received more than 80,000 requests for relief from the steel and aluminum tariffs imposed last year. As of last week, more than 55% were still awaiting a decision.

"It is a nightmare, like dealing with a lawyer and the IRS at the same time," said Paul Everett, vice president of purchasing at Omega Steel.

The St. Louis company sells heavy-walled steel pipe, mostly to the oil and gas industry. Everett says there are only a handful of mills around the world that produce that kind of pipe, so Omega has asked the Commerce Department for tariff waivers for numerous specialty products.

"We filed approximately 300 exclusions," Everett said. "And we've got, I think, 19 accepted."

Most of the company's applications for tariff relief are either still in limbo or were rejected, usually because an American steel company said it could provide the same steel, duty-free.

"The good news from the steel producers' perspective is the tariffs, so far, are working," said Scott Paul, who represents U.S. steelmakers and steelworkers as president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

He points to data from the American Iron and Steel Institute showing steel imports fell 35% after the tariffs took effect last year. U.S. mills are now operating at more than 80% capacity for the first time in over a decade.

"There have been about 12,000 jobs added in steel and aluminum since the tariffs were first announced, and you've seen more product lines come on line," Paul said.

Domestic steelmakers are only supposed to object to an application for a tariff waiver if they can supply the same steel within eight weeks. But Rep. Walorski points to steelmakers who've filed objections while quoting delivery dates of up to 21 weeks. And Everett complains that U.S. mills have promised products they can't deliver at all.

"Some of the mills just can't produce the sizes they say that they can, and have not ever produced those sizes," Everett said. "Unfortunately, nobody's really checking the mills to make sure they're capable of producing the product."

American steelmakers have successfully blocked thousands of waiver applications, with more than half the objections coming from just a handful of big steel producers. Trade economist Christine McDaniel of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University says U.S. Steel, Nucor and AK Steel have each raised objections to duty-free imports totaling far more steel than they actually produce.

"They have a very good batting average," she said. "Because when they object to something, it either gets denied or it just goes into the pending pile."

Since the government has granted only a few of Omega Steel's requests for tariff waivers, the company has had no choice but to keep paying the 25% tariff. Some steel importers absorb that extra cost. But Everett said Omega largely passes the bill along to its oil and gas customers.

"Nobody wants to pay the additional 25%," he said. "The only people that have that kind of money are in the oil and gas business. And it's really a pass-through for them because you're paying for it at the pump."

That consumer tab is likely to increase, as new and increased tariffs on Chinese imports take effect.

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Tariff Waivers Let U.S. Government Pick Winners And Losers

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The Trump administration is preparing to add tariffs - or taxes - on virtually everything the U.S. buys from China. But the president offered reassurance that in some cases, waivers will be granted, so Chinese goods can be imported tax-free.

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President Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Japan next month amid an escalation of what author and national security expert Jim Sciutto calls a new type of warfare.

His new book, "The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America," highlights tactics he says both countries use to attack the U.S. and its allies, but fall below the threshold of starting a shooting war. Sciutto told "CBS This Morning" that the U.S. isn't doing enough about it.

"It's a war they're waging, Russia and China are waging on the U.S., and we're not fighting back. [I] only recently came to terms with it," Sciutto said. "I think Americans are aware of some of the fronts of the war, certainly election interference, which continues, but they're not aware of others ... Russia and China have both put weapons in space: Lasers, kamikaze satellites. Kidnapper satellites. China has developed a satellite that can grab other satellites out of orbit. These are satellites we depend on for the way we live every day of our lives, GPS, et cetera, but also the military does, crucially."

Sciutto, a CNN national security correspondent and anchor, also highlighted a "new great game" playing out under the waves with submarines.

"Submarines are quieter, they're getting closer to U.S. shores. That's a way to project nuclear power without warning right up to the U.S. homeland - multi-front war," he said.

China, Sciutto said, is trying to surpass the U.S. as a world superpower - and they're not shy about it. It's something they've made clear in both public speeches as well as in national security documents.

"They want to achieve what they view as their rightful place on top of the world, and almost invariably, national security folks will say China is the bigger of the two threats. But Russia, a very big threat. Theirs is more of a zero-sum game. Any opportunity to stick their finger in the eye of the United States they view as a win," he said.

FBI director Christopher Wray told "CBS This Morning" co-host Norah O'Donnell last year that his agency's top counterintelligence priority is China, namely stopping Chinese spies in America from committing economic espionage.

"Thousands [Chinese spies] here - I spoke to the FBI's former head of counterintelligence - and tens of thousands in China. He talked about it in terms of, they have a national service program almost for smart young people there to hack their way into U.S. public and private sector secrets and they do it with enormous success," Sciutto said.

The Chinese are stealing information on everything from seed and medical technology to artificial intelligence, Sciutto said. Most crucially though, they're spying on U.S. national security technology.

"Over the course of four years, before they were detected, a small team of four people stole secrets about the F-35, the C-17, and the F-22," Sciutto said. "Today, China is flying planes that look remarkably like those planes."

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China and Russia are waging a "shadow war" against U.S. and we're not fighting back, author says

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President Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Japan next month amid an escalation of what author and national security expert Jim Sciutto calls a new type of warfare.

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PEW Research Center - This site is great for seeing what Americans want and think about various issues.  Use the search box to look for topics like foreign policy, trade, nuclear weapons, climate change, etc.

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PEW Research Center - This site is great for seeing what Americans want and think about various issues.  Use the search box to look for topics like foreign policy, trade, nuclear weapons, climate change, etc.

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions.

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Public polling attitudes about U.S. foreign policy.  This article compares what Americans want in foreign policy compared to what the government prefers. There are differences between Democrats and Republicans.

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Public polling attitudes about U.S. foreign policy.  This article compares what Americans want in foreign policy compared to what the government prefers. There are differences between Democrats and Republicans.

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We're told liberals and conservatives are deeply and hopelessly divided. After a spate of overseas adventures propelled by ill-fated strategies with jargony names like "preventive war," "regime change" and "nation building," Americans of all political stripes are becoming disillusioned with the arguments supporting U.S. military intervention.

To be sure, there are plenty of real differences between the political parties right now. But on foreign policy, the real disconnect seems to be between members of the public and the leaders who represent them. There has long been an awkward consensus among neoconservative hawks, who argue preventive military action makes Americans safer and neoliberal interventionists, who argue that toppling tyrants is our moral obligation. Both views are the products of specialized knowledge, good intentions and creative theorizing. But neither has made a convincing case to the American people, especially not recently.

Perhaps the biggest test to the administration's commitment to restraint will be the showdown underway in Venezuela.

This is certainly supported by a new study just put out by my organization, the Eurasia Group Foundation (EGF), which found broad political agreement in the desire for a more restrained foreign policy. In fact, our national poll of more than 1,000 voting-age Americans found support for a more focused, foresighted and finite foreign policy crosses not just the usual party lines, but also generational boundaries, socioeconomic class and levels of foreign policy knowledge. In other words, we're not talking about the usual anti-globalist suspects here.
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President Donald Trump has channeled this feeling of war weariness. His calls for a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan, though since moderated, even received support from the Senate Democrats making a bid to run against him. But perhaps the biggest test to the administration's commitment to restraint will be the showdown underway in Venezuela.

Trump's special envoy to Venezuela, Elliot Abrams, failed to contain his contempt for a freshman Congresswoman who, in a testy exchange, attempted to hold him accountable for the reckless Latin America policies of past administrations. And in a stunning display highlighting the dearth of innovative foreign policy ideas, national security advisor John Bolton invoked the Monroe Doctrine from the 1820s to explain why intervention in Venezuela is warranted while other dictators elsewhere are tolerated. The Monroe Doctrine has been resurrected throughout the past century to aid disastrous interventions on the continent, including the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Guatemala and Chile which led to brutal dictatorships in both.

Proponents of American-led intervention interpret the public's embrace of American exceptionalism as license to insert ourselves into far-flung regional conflicts even if we would cry foul when other countries do as we do. They argue the United States is the " indispensable nation " - that America's national security requires global stability, which in turn requires American primacy.

But according to our EGF study, Americans are more likely to believe "America is exceptional because of what it represents" than to believe "America is exceptional because of what it has done for the world." In the context of foreign policy, respondents were nearly six times as likely to respond that "a great leader must lead by example" than "a great leader should try to change the world." These results suggest American exceptionalism should not be construed as support for interventionist policies - including those being proposed for Venezuela.

This is the sentiment Joe Biden likely channels when he says, "The ability to lead the world depends not just on the example of our power, but on the power of our example." But our survey respondents might chafe at Biden's premise: namely, that America must continue to "lead the world."

When asked how America could best achieve and sustain peace, Republicans surveyed were more likely to support "keeping a focus on domestic needs and the health of American democracy, while avoiding unnecessary intervention beyond the borders of the U.S." than "maintaining overwhelming military strength and deploying it only when America is attacked or our vital interests are compromised by another power."

Democrats were more likely to think peace is better achieved and sustained by "establishing, encouraging, and reinforcing global economic integration, as well as the growth of free trade" than by "promoting and defending democracy around the world."

These results upend the conventional idea of Republicans as the party of " peace through strength " - a common Ronald Reagan refrain. This might be because recent Republican presidents haven't used our strength primarily for deterrence or for keeping the peace (see: Bush, Iraq).

On the other side of the aisle, however, Democratic presidents have failed to anticipate how overseas democratic transitions - which typically must be prodded along with economic incentives - don't yield fabulous success stories in the longer-term (see: Clinton, Hungary).

When American foreign policy is pursued without significant public support, our country is perceived as a less reliable ally and a less resolute adversary.

A preference for restraint showed up when we asked people how America should respond to Iran's nuclear ambitions. When asked how America should respond if "Iran gets back on track with its nuclear weapons program" after Trump's withdrawal from the Obama-era nuclear deal, roughly 80 percent of respondents favor diplomatic options. Of the rest, significantly more people thought the U.S. should "not intervene [because] Iran has the right to defend itself even if it means developing nuclear weapons..." than thought we should attack Iran "to prevent its government from acquiring nuclear weapons..." Trump administration hawks take heed.

And when it came to policing human rights abuses, Americans were more than twice as likely to identify with statements which would effectively abstain from American military intervention rather than with statements that would support it. This preference transcended partisan affiliations and age groups.

Young people are often assumed to be supportive of humanitarian intervention, driven by feelings of idealism and invincibility. They certainly lean left politically. But this liberalism does not necessarily lead to support for interventionism, a theory supported by out by our study as well. Perhaps this is because the only American military adventures they've directly experienced in their lifetimes have been largely unsuccessful.

When American foreign policy is pursued without significant public support, our country is perceived as a less reliable ally and a less resolute adversary. Moreover, whenever groupthink afflicts policymaking, smart and valuable policy ideas can be dismissed as illegitimate. Finally, as our leaders advance the cause of democracy overseas - in Venezuela and elsewhere - they would better exercise the power of our example if they showed more regard for the popular will here at home.

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Opinion | The surprisingly bipartisan appeal of putting America first

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We're told liberals and conservatives are deeply and hopelessly divided. After a spate of overseas adventures propelled by ill-fated strategies with jargony names like "preventive war," "regime change" and "nation building," Americans of all political stripes are becoming disillusioned with the arguments supporting U.S. military intervention.

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Article evaluating current U.S. foreign policy and uncertainties as of May 2019.  This article also has a point of view, but it does consider the pros and cons of our current foreign policies.

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Article evaluating current U.S. foreign policy and uncertainties as of May 2019.  This article also has a point of view, but it does consider the pros and cons of our current foreign policies.

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WASHINGTON - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is deriding President Donald Trump as foolish for trying to oust him. Kim Jong Un is testing Trump's "love" - and his resolve - in the North Korea negotiations. And Iran's leaders are finding new ways to threaten the U.S. and to defy the president's "maximum pressure" campaign.

In short, Trump's foreign policy agenda is hitting the diplomatic rocks, with potentially disastrous results.

Some say it's by design - Trump doesn't mind sowing chaos and confusion, and he has. Others say it's a result of misguided policies and contradictory, undisciplined decision-making inside the White House.

Either way, the president has suffered a series of stunning foreign policy setbacks this week, raising fresh questions about his approach to military engagement and international affairs.

"What you see is a mismatch between means and ends across the board - whether it's in Venezuela, whether it's in North Korea, whether it's in Iran - where the end's always extremely ambitious and the diplomatic means tend to be quite de minimis," said Robert Malley, a senior White House adviser on the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf region in the Obama administration. "We're courting danger where there's no reason to."

Jon B. Alterman, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan think tank, said the series of foreign policy crises that have come to a head in recent days seem part of Trump's design.

"The president is a lot more comfortable with chaos than any president in recent memory," Alterman said. "The president doesn't see uncertainty and disorder as a liability. He sees it as an asset."

So escalating tensions in Iran and the stalemate in Venezuela, he said, are not necessarily an aberration but a feature of Trump's sometimes erratic and contradictory approach to world affairs.

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Photo: Alex Brandon, AP)

The result has been on full display in recent days:

On Tuesday, the Pentagon rushed B-52 bombers and a carrier strike group to the Middle East in response to intercepted intelligence indicating Iran or its proxies in the region might be preparing attacks on American military troops and facilities. A day later, Iran's president declared his country would pull back on its compliance with a sweeping, multilateral nuclear agreement aimed at preventing Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.

On Thursday, North Korea tested a suspected short-range missile, the second time in less than a week that Kim's regime has taken that kind of provocative step.

On Friday, Trump roiled markets and sowed confusion when he deleted and then reposted a Twitter thread in which he said Chinese trade talks were progressing in "a very congenial manner" and that there is "no need to rush" a new agreement - right after his administration imposed new U.S. tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods because the two sides were unable to reach a new trade deal.

Last week, top Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, touted the possibility of U.S. military action in Venezuela as a U.S.-backed uprising led by opposition leader Juan Guaido fizzled and Maduro mocked the failed effort as "foolishness by coup mongers" in the Trump White House.

For his part, Trump says he is cleaning up "the mess" left behind by predecessors, from bad trade deals across the globe to protracted military conflicts in Iran and Afghanistan.

"We have made a decisive break from the failed foreign policy establishment that sacrificed our sovereignty, surrendered our jobs and tied us down to endless foreign wars," Trump said during a political rally Wednesday in Florida.

Democrats scoff at Trump's efforts to blame his foreign policy troubles on previous presidents.

"Everything the president has touched internationally has gone to crap," Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said at a national security forum Friday sponsored by former Obama administration officials.

"We have split our alliances," said Murphy, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "We have engaged in a trade war that's cost Americans money. We have allowed Iran to restart their nuclear program. We have made no substantial progress in North Korea. The Middle East is more chaotic, not less chaotic. There's still 20,000 members of ISIS who are getting ready to regroup."

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the fundamental problem with Trump's approach to foreign policy is that he sets sky-high goals but is unwilling or unable to deliver on them.

"The president has articulated wildly ambitious goals that he almost certainly is going to fail to meet," he said.

For example, Trump says he wants North Korea to give up its entire nuclear arsenal and do it quickly. He wants Iran's regime to collapse or to radically alter its behavior across the Middle East. He wants fundamental changes in China trade policy.

All these are long shots at best, Haass said.

"In all three of those cases he will have to compromise, or he will fail," said Haass, author of the book "A World In Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order."

Others echoed that assessment but said Trump has exacerbated that disconnect with contradictory positions coming from within the White House.

Take the crisis in Venezuela, where Trump had forcefully backed Guaido's bid to oust Maduro, a socialist leader who had helped drive his country to the brink of economic collapse. Trump's position has been driven by hawks inside his administration, including Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton.

After Maduro's uprising floundered last week, Bolton and Pompeo went to the Pentagon to talk to Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan about possible U.S. military options. But such intervention would run directly counter to Trump's own instincts, and his campaign promises, to steer clear of military interventions.

Trump's advisers seem "more willing to bandy about the threat of the use of military force, whereas he is far less inclined to do so," said Malley, now the president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, a nonpartisan organization focused on preventing conflict. That split between Trump and his advisers creates one layer of confusion, Malley said, and a second one comes from "a tug of war within (Trump's) own mind."

While Trump says he wants to avoid messy military entanglements, he also wants "to project a sense not just of power but of a willingness to go the brink and to court confrontation," Malley said.

That has fed a sense of failure or stalemate in places like Venezuela, he added, where Bolton predicted Maduro's ouster was just a matter of time. And it has created whiplash on North Korea, where Trump went from threatening Kim with "fire and fury" to declaring that they "fell in love."

Alterman said economic pressure, like the sanctions that Trump has imposed on the Maduro government, almost never lead to regime change or a popular revolt against an authoritarian leader. But Trump doesn't seem to want to take the next step of military intervention in places like Venezuela.

The same is true with Iran, he said, where Trump has set himself up for failure by outlining a policy that shoots for the stars - complete transformation of the Iranian regime, or what Alterman called "self-regime change." But the president is relying on economic pressure and bellicose rhetoric to achieve that, which Alterman said will almost certainly not work.

Brian Hook, the State Department's special envoy for Iran, argues that Trump's approach to Iran has borne fruit. Exhibit A, Hook says, is that Iran appears to be cutting back its financial support for militant groups in Syria and Lebanon.

But he and others concede that Iran is not close to reopening talks with the U.S. on a broader agreement that would curb its ballistic missile program or halt its support for terrorism. And just days after the Pentagon rushed its bombers to the region in response to an Iranian threat, Trump told supporters he would like to sit-down with Iran's president and negotiate.

"I hope to be able at some point ... to sit down and work out a fair deal," he said in Wednesday's rally in Florida. "We're not looking to hurt anybody. ... We just don't want them to have nuclear weapons."
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'We're courting danger': Trump suffers foreign policy setbacks in Iran, North Korea

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CLOSE WASHINGTON - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is deriding President Donald Trump as foolish for trying to oust him. Kim Jong Un is testing Trump's "love" - and his resolve - in the North Korea negotiations. And Iran's leaders are finding new ways to threaten the U.S.

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Editorial by professor of national security at the Naval War College.  The editorial criticizes our recent foreign policy as of May 2019 and questions how long the post WWII international system can withstand recent pressures.  This editorial has a distinct point of view.

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Editorial by professor of national security at the Naval War College.  The editorial criticizes our recent foreign policy as of May 2019 and questions how long the post WWII international system can withstand recent pressures.  This editorial has a distinct point of view.

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Trump has blundered into conflict with competitors, insulted allies and made the US a laughingstock. No one is in charge, and it's frightening.

If we take a moment to pull ourselves away from the daily melodrama of President Donald Trump's efforts to suppress a report that he claims exonerates him, we might notice that American foreign policy has spiraled completely out of control.

Our trade war with China continues, for no other reason than that the president does not understand how the international economy works. After two splashy but vacuous summits that never should have happened, the North Koreans continue to press ahead with their nuclear program.

Meanwhile, Trump's clumsy ditching of the Iran deal has achieved the miracle of ceding the moral high ground to Tehran and making a terror-supporting regime seem like the aggrieved party. The Iranians are now threatening to resume parts of their nuclear program that would put them closer to potentially making a bomb - as the White House stares dumbfounded, with no second move for a contingency that anyone who can think more than 10 seconds ahead would have seen coming.

Trade war has resulted in the drop-off of US soybean exports to China. These at China's Nantong port on May 10, 2019, are from Ukraine. (Photo: STR, AFP/Getty Images)

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After a promise to restore America's standing in the world, Trump has blundered into conflict with our competitors, insulted our allies, and generally made the United States into a laughingstock.

Why is this happening? Who's in charge in Washington these days?

A frightening leadership vacuum

The easy answer is to blame all of this on national security adviser John Bolton. Bolton had to swallow almost every position he ever held to get the job in the White House, and it would be reasonable to assume that he is now trying to execute his own agenda while Trump is busy trying to avoid any number of humiliations, including impeachment.

But this is unfair. Bolton doesn't know what he's doing, either. From Iran to Venezuela, Bolton is indulging a set of atavistic reflexes - a predilection for confrontation, a belief in the utility of intervention, a disdain for negotiated solutions, a hatred of treaties and international institutions - rather than following any kind of strategy. There is no more a "Bolton Doctrine" than there is a "Trump Doctrine."

The more frightening answer is that no one is in charge. The president has no obvious interest in national security and foreign affairs, except insofar as such things affect him personally. Even if the president wanted to direct a more coherent foreign policy, there's not much of a team left to direct. A quick read of the rosters in the Departments of State and Defense leaves the impression that the most common last names in the higher echelons of government are "Vacant" and "Acting."

Putin and Russia keep humiliating Trump

This has left the foreign policy establishment on autopilot, with various offices and bureaucracies continuing along - fortunately for America - with policies from the Barack Obama and even George W. Bush eras in the absence of any other direction. In those few times when Trump gets involved in policy, it is mostly to contradict his own administration, whether on intervention in Venezuela, forces in Syria or sanctions on Russia.

Russia is a particularly galling example of the free-fall of American foreign policy. When Trump inexplicably felt the need to call Russian President Vladimir Putin and discuss the Mueller report, Putin - in a kind of reverse Monroe Doctrine - made sure to remind the president of the United States to keep his nose out of Venezuela. (This from the man who, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, persuaded Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro to stick around just as he was about to leave for Cuba.)

In any competent American administration, this would be a dire insult. Any other U.S. president would have then reminded Putin that his country has a gross domestic product somewhere between Florida and Brazil, that Venezuela is in Latin America, and that maybe the Russians should think about ceasing their aggression against their neighbors.

Instead, Putin made clear he wants the incoming president of Ukraine pressured to honor agreements with Russia - a brazen act of chutzpah (or, as the Russians call this level of nervy arrogance, naglost) with Russian troops occupying Ukrainian territory. The message to Trump: "Tell that guy that I want him to observe the accord I am violating."

Our adversaries are watching us self-destruct

Trump likes to claim that he has been tougher on Russia than any other U.S. president, though Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman might take issue with that. His supporters note, rightly, that many sanctions are still in place against Russia, but there has been no lack of effort by Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to dump them. Republicans brag about Trump's toughness while Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska pours millions of dollars into trying to make aluminum in McConnell's home state of Kentucky.

So much for "tough on Russia."

Meanwhile, the USS Abraham Lincoln is heading for the Persian Gulf. And Trump supporters would note with pride that North Korea, which in 2017 tested a long-range missile capable of hitting the United States, hasn't tested any other long-range missiles - yet.

Instead, Pyongyang has been firing off the type of short-range missiles "that will start the war," weapons expert Melissa Hanham told Reuters.

Trump has avoided a major conflict so far through a combination of luck and the opportunism of America's enemies. The Russians, Chinese, Iranians and others have not yet forced us into a crisis, remaining content instead to see the United States floundering about on its own. There is no need, after all, to destroy American power and prestige if the White House is willing to do all the same damage by itself.

But this will not last. The United States, and the international system it helped create, cannot continue indefinitely along a path of incoherence and ignorance. Trump might not even be in office when the reckoning comes. The question is whether we will be ready.
Tom Nichols is a national security professor at the Naval War College, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors and author of "The Death of Expertise." The views expressed here are solely his own. Follow him on Twitter: @RadioFreeTom
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US adversaries are watching us self-destruct as Trump foreign policy spins into chaos

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CLOSE Trump has blundered into conflict with competitors, insulted allies and made the US a laughingstock. No one is in charge, and it's frightening. If we take a moment to pull ourselves away from the daily melodrama of President Donald Trump's efforts to suppress a report that he claims exonerates him, we might notice that American foreign policy has spiraled completely out of control.

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*Updated 2019

President Trump was elected, in part, on his promise to avoid military engagements overseas. However, so far, his foreign policy has shown - with strikes against the Assad regime in Syria, tensions over North Korea's nuclear program, increased US troops in Afghanistan, and possible confrontation with Iran - that isolationism is not necessarily possible.

The debate over when the US should intervene militarily in foreign countries dates back more than a century, and the US will have to confront this question as long as it remains a world superpower. Here are three reasons for intervention and three against, focusing on cases in which there is no direct and immediate threat to US security.
Intervention rarely benefits the US
The last large-scale US intervention came in 2003, when American forces overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and began an eight-year occupation. That war cost the US more than $2 trillion and the lives of nearly 4,500 American soldiers.

When it comes to American wars of choice, the Iraq experience is no outlier. Though the US is capable of defeating any enemy, the cost of doing so in both human lives and money is usually far greater than anticipated. Wars like Iraq and Vietnam, the latter of which saw nearly 60,000 American soldiers killed, are a case in point. But even smaller scale interventions, like President Clinton's 1993 mission in Somalia or the overthrow of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi in 2011, have had unintended consequences.

When core US interests, such as the security of its citizens, are at stake, Americans may have no choice but to bear these consequences. But more often, the consequences of military action outweigh the benefits.
And it rarely benefits the country of the intervention
From the invasion of Hawaii in 1893 to the bombing of Syria in 2017, it is the norm for US intervention to be justified on humanitarian grounds. In some cases, this may truly be the motive. But rarely does military action improve the lives of ordinary citizens.

The US mission in Libya was aimed at stopping a civilian massacre by the government. It may have done just that, but Gaddafi's overthrow has led to civil war and chaos in the country, with ISIS previously gaining a foothold. Post-occupation Iraq looks no better, while Afghanistan remains unstable 16 years after the US invasion. And if we go back a generation, wars in Southeast Asia devastated the region while bringing little benefit to its people.
America should not be the world's police
Beyond weighing the pros and cons of each intervention, supporters of US action overseas must answer a broader question: When does a country have the right to intervene in another country?

The UN Charter, signed after World War II, requires authorization from the UN Security Council to use force. Respecting an internationalized body's authority to decide on such issues is preferable to allowing any one country to act alone. Also, American foreign adventures make it more difficult for the US to criticize aggression by other powers, such as Russia's invasions of Crimea and Georgia over the past decade or Iran's involvement in Syria and Lebanon.

America can be a force for good
Inaction also has consequences
Too often, US military action is judged against a perfect alternative. Yet, while intervention has its drawbacks and complications, failing to act often carries an even steeper price.

Avoiding confrontation sometimes puts American citizens at risk. President Clinton had the chance to kill Osama bin Laden several times but did not pull the trigger. A strike that killed al-Qaeda's leader but resulted in civilian casualties may have earned criticism - indeed, it may have ended up in the other half of this column - but could have prevented the 3,000 lives lost on 9/11 and avoided a wider war in Afghanistan.

Then, there are the humanitarian costs of inaction. Clinton called his failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda, where 800,000 people were killed in just two months, one of his biggest regrets. What do Presidents Obama and Trump think about Syria, where over half a million people have been killed since 2011.
Intervention sometimes helps
Opponents of US intervention often point to cases in which American forces arguably made the situation worse. But Americans have also fought to prevent genocides, dethrone brutal dictators and uphold global norms.

In 1991, Operation Desert Storm prevented Saddam's permanent annexation of Kuwait, an act that otherwise would have encouraged any dictator to snatch up smaller neighbors without fear of consequence. In 1995, NATO's campaign in Bosnia following massacres in Srebrenica and Markale brought Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table, leading to the Dayton Peace Accord. US forces left a decade later, without a single American killed by enemy fire. Even in Afghanistan, American intervention freed the population from the repressive rule of the Taliban.
The alternative is worse
It may be nice to imagine a world in which differences between nations are resolved only through diplomacy. But were the US to take a step down from the international stage, it would not be the UN that would fill the void. Russia and China, both countries than the US, would step in. We need only to look back at the last time another superpower - the Soviet Union - challenged the US for global supremacy; only because of US protection was Western Europe able to thrive without falling to the grasp of Soviet tentacles. Meanwhile, regional hegemons like less committed to humanitarian ideals Iran would be free to impose their will on smaller nations without the credible threat of sanctions and force from the US.

US intervention overseas is never ideal and rarely uncomplicated, but the alternatives could potentially be worse. If you had the job and were facing the current threats from North Korea, Syria and The Bottom Line: Iran, what would you do?

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America First? Should the US intervene militarily in foreign conflicts?

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Updated 2019 President Trump was elected, in part, on his promise to avoid military engagements overseas. However, so far, his foreign policy has shown - with strikes against the Assad regime in Syria, tensions over North Korea's nuclear program, increased US troops in Afghanistan, and possible confrontation with Iran - that isolationism is not necessarily possible.

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The United States seriously fears an imminent attack on its troops by Iran or its proxies. Iran signaled it may restart parts of its nuclear program in direct defiance of a landmark 2015 deal.

If tensions between Washington and Tehran were already high in the Trump era, they just increased substantially.

Starting on Sunday, the Trump administration indicated it had credible intelligence that Iran and groups it supports in the Middle East might attack US personnel based there. Two days later, reports of Iran's specific plans surfaced: They apparently intended to target US troops in Iraq and Syria, or use drones against Americans in a key waterway near Yemen.

A US defense official confirmed to me the existence of credible intelligence of specific Iranian threats, but wouldn't expand further.

As a result, the Trump administration has sent a US aircraft carrier and bombers to the region in an effort to deter an assault.

Meanwhile, Iran is poised to announce on Wednesday that it will resume small parts of its nuclear program. That's a big deal: The 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the US, as well as some European countries, put tight restrictions on Tehran's nuclear efforts in exchange for sanctions relief.But on May 8, 2018 - exactly one year ago this Wednesday - President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the agreement, saying it only paved Iran's path to the bomb.

Iran abided by the deal even after Trump's announcement, but now it seems the most predictable scenario has come true: Tehran wants to kick-start its nuclear program once again.

This a fraught, delicate, and dangerous situation that could easily spiral out of control if not carefully managed in Washington and Tehran. Some experts are worried that cooler heads won't prevail.

"Moments like these are when institutions should matter: leadership at the cabinet level, a serious policy-making process, intelligence standards, professional ethics. All those have been eroded by the Trump administration," Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, tweeted on Monday.

The US says it has intelligence that points to an imminent Iranian attack on Americans

In a stunning Sunday statement, National Security Adviser John Bolton announced a military move by the US in response to what it says are Iranian threats. It's worth reading his short message in its entirety:

In response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings, the United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the US Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force. The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or regular Iranian forces.

Acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan added his own warnings the next day, saying the decision to send those weapons to the Middle East "represents a prudent repositioning of assets in response to indications of a credible threat by Iranian regime forces. ... We call on the Iranian regime to cease all provocation."

Though it might seem sudden, an escalation like this was always possible.

US-Iranian relations, which have historically been pretty bad, tanked even further when America left the nuclear deal last year and reimposed tough sanctions on the country.

Last month, the Trump administration took things a step further when they decided to label the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps - Iran's hugely influential security and military organization responsible for the protection and survival of the regime - as a "foreign terrorist organization." That's the first time the US named any part of another government as terrorists.

It's therefore not a surprise to some analysts that Iran is apparently considering retaliating in a severe manner. "To counterattack in response to pressure is a standard part of the Iranian playbook," Maloney also tweeted on Monday.

Phillip Smyth, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me that major threats from Tehran's proxies have continued since early 2018. "There have been maneuvers in the past that sent a signal to the Americans" of a worsening regional situation, he said.

But he noted that just because there are indications that an attack could happen doesn't mean an Iranian proxy will launch one soon. "These guys are very smart and very patient with how they plan and execute," he continued.

Still, the intelligence is worrying. "There has definitely been an uptick in threat reporting directed at the US embassy in Iraq," an unnamed American official told Politico on Monday. "It's more than we've seen in a long time, and it suggests the de facto moratorium on attacks on US facilities by Iranian sponsored groups is fraying." The US currently has about 5,200 troops in the country.

This may explain why Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the top US military officer for the Middle East, requested additional military assets in the region after reading intelligence of Iranian provocations. Shanahan authorized the request, expediting the USS Abraham Lincoln's preplanned trip to the Middle East along with B-52 bombers.

If it seems like gunboat diplomacy, it's because it is. The hope is that the move - which brings the US and Iran closer to a military fight - isn't the opening salvo in a broader war.

Iran's nuclear announcement could make a bad situation worse

Iran is about to add more fuel to the fire.

On Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is expected to announce small steps to resume his country's nuclear program. According to the New York Times, that will include conducting research on centrifuges that can make nuclear fuel, and curbing nuclear inspections from observers.

Those moves by themselves don't really get the country closer to obtaining the bomb - but the timing is quite symbolic.

Rouhani's decree will come exactly one year after Trump withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal, which experts say blocked Tehran's path to the bomb for at least a decade - if not more. It also comes weeks after the US said it would impose sanctions on all countries that import Iranian oil, the regime's main source of income. That was a big blow to Iran and to European nations that previously received waivers for such transactions to soften the aftereffects of leaving the nuclear accord.

So there are likely two main reasons Iran decided to make this move. First, Tehran sees no real benefit in staying in the deal anymore, and Iran's leaders think they may as well restart their nuclear work. And second, it serves as a big middle finger to the Trump administration in the midst of its maximum pressure campaign.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran in reaction to the exit of America from the nuclear deal and the bad promises of European countries in carrying out their obligations will restart a part of the nuclear activities which were stopped under the framework of the nuclear deal," an Iranian official told the state-run IRIB news agency on Monday.

It's also possible that Iran will anger European governments that are participating in the deal if it restarts its nuclear work, thereby eroding any remaining trust in the accord.

All put together, it sure seems like the US and Iran won't diffuse the situation anytime soon. That means it could conceivably get worse - and quickly.

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The growing, dangerous US-Iran standoff, explained

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The United States seriously fears an imminent attack on its troops by Iran or its proxies. Iran signaled it may restart parts of its nuclear program in direct defiance of a landmark 2015 deal. If tensions between Washington and Tehran were already high in the Trump era, they just increased substantially.

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Iran is partially withdrawing from the nuclear deal.

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Iran is partially withdrawing from the nuclear deal.

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iran nuclear deal: president hassan rouhani announces partial withdrawal  - cnn

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Iranian leader announces partial withdrawal from nuclear deal

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Iran announced Wednesday it was partially withdrawing from a landmark nuclear deal, marking a serious escalation in Tehran's faceoff with the United States.

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This article explains the Iran Nuclear Deal which the US withdrew from in 2018.  

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This article explains the Iran Nuclear Deal which the US withdrew from in 2018.  

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This is what you need to know about the Iran nuclear deal

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Iran is threatening to pull out of an international agreement designed to stop it producing nuclear weapons. This may have wide-reaching global consequences.

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The impact of globalization and the extent to which automation not globalization has impacted jobs.

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The impact of globalization and the extent to which automation not globalization has impacted jobs.

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Globalization and its effects on national labor markets is one of the most pertinent issues of our day. Debates on globalization have dominated the political sphere of late, as shown by their role in both Brexit and the 2016 US presidential race. These debates have centered on globalization's effects on immigration, trade, and financial policy.

Some believe that the policies pursued by the U.S. government in these three areas have working class Americans by lowering their wages and bargaining power. However, globalization has produced widespread for the U.S. economy. Most of the negative economic outcomes commonly attributed to globalization are in fact caused by automation . In order to change the negative conditions that have arisen in its economy, the United States must retrain workers that have lost their jobs to automation with the help of both its public and private sectors instead of trying to reverse globalization. This responsibility for retraining is something the public and private sectors must take on.
Upsides of Globalization
In many cases, globalization has the choices of goods and services available to consumers while also their average price. As a result, American consumers spend on many goods than they did about a century ago. These changes have coincided with increasing long term worker productivity. Even between 2012 and 2014 worker productivity , due in part to changes in technology .

These increases in productivity have benefitted several sectors of the U.S. economy. In the domestic finance sector, for example, globalization has made the transfer of capital efficient. Even beyond this, the burgeoning of venture capital, or investments in business that have growth potential, has proven to have wide-reaching economic implications - it accounts for the resources devoted to about percent of all private sector research and development going back to 1979. This is simply due to the fact that globalization makes it easier to transfer capital across the globe.

The United States has also become an undisputed leader in global healthcare innovation in the last few decades even though it has seen healthcare costs during this time period. In fact, six of the largest 10 pharmaceutical companies based in the United States. The same trend for medical devices: as recently as 2014, the United States alone controlled of the global market share. Moreover, eight of the top 10 medical device manufacturers based domestically. In the technology industry, the United States also the globe, as over 30 percent of all global IT spending from technology products made in the United States.
Woes of Automation
While there is evidence to suggest that globalization and outsourcing contributed to the loss of manufacturing jobs in recent decades, most evidence that increased automation is the real culprit. For instance, the U.S. manufacturing labor force decreased by nearly a third while U.S. manufacturing output by 40 percent from 1970 to 2015. This trend is consistent with smart business practices, since manufacturing firms generally their efficiency by lowering their labor costs. It also makes sense that American firms would prefer automation to outsourcing given the relative strength and of the workforce in the United States.

This loss of manufacturing jobs has had an outsized on many cities in the Rust belt, which traditionally on the steel and automobile industries to power their economies. With the commercialization of self-driving cars , many truck drivers could also lose their jobs. This major reshaping of one of the single sectors of the U.S. labor force would be just the latest example of automation hurting working class Americans.
Retrain
To make automation work for the American masses, the United States must retrain the workers left unemployed. Despite claims to the contrary, there are indeed high paying blue collar jobs that workers can reasonably be retrained to do. These jobs include elevator pullmen, plumbers, and electricians. Giving workers these new skills will open jobs and therefore wage growth.

Both the public private sectors will need to take action in order to retrain these workers. The specific actions that must be taken will differ from case to case. For instance, in some situations retraining workers will require public-private partnerships at the local level. This can involve government funded skills training at community colleges or technical schools to give workers the skills necessary for private sector jobs. In the private sector, companies that dominate a certain geographical market may be best suited to retrain their own workers for necessary roles through apprenticeships .

Promoting skills training rather than trying to reverse globalization will help more Americans to succeed in the modern economy. This way, the United States can reap the benefits of globalization while shielding its workers from the pain that accompanies necessary economic transitions.

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Globalization: A U.S. Growth Opportunity

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Globalization and its effects on national labor markets is one of the most pertinent issues of our day. Debates on globalization have dominated the political sphere of late, as shown by their role in both Brexit and the 2016 US presidential race. These debates have centered on globalization's effects on immigration, trade, and financial policy.

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Free trade agreements are treaties that regulate the tariffs, taxes, and duties that countries impose on their imports and exports. The most well-known U.S. regional trade agreement is the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) which replaced the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) effective July 1, 2020.

The advantages and disadvantages of free trade agreements affect jobs, business growth, and living standards.

Key Takeaways

Advantages of Free Trade Agreements

Free trade agreements are designed to increase trade between two or more countries. Increased international trade has the following six main advantages.

Increased Economic Growth

In 2003, the U.S. International Trade Commission estimated that NAFTA could increase U.S. economic growth by 0.1% to 0.5% per year. The USMCA is a modern trade agreement that recognizes the influence of technology on economies. It changed many original NAFTA rules and processes but also kept others intact.

According to a 2019 report, USMCA is expected to raise GDP by $68.2 billion (0.35%) and employment by 176,000 jobs (0.12%), with a likely positive impact on all broad industry sectors in its first five years.

More Dynamic Business Climate

Without free trade agreements, countries often protected their domestic industries and businesses. This protection often made them stagnant and non-competitive on the global market. With the protection removed, they became motivated to become true global competitors.

Note

Lower Government Spending

Many governments subsidize local industries. After the trade agreement removes subsidies, those funds can be put to better use.

Industry Expertise

Global companies have more expertise than domestic companies to develop local resources. That's especially true in mining, oil drilling, and manufacturing. Free trade agreements allow global firms access to these business opportunities. When the multinationals partner with local firms to develop the resources, they train them in the best practices. That gives local firms access to these new methods.

Technology Transfer

Local companies also receive access to the latest technologies from their multinational partners. As local economies grow, so do job opportunities. Multinational companies provide job training to local employees.

Disadvantages of Free Trade Agreements

The biggest criticism of free trade agreements is that they are responsible for job outsourcing. Here are some of the primary disadvantages.

Increased Job Outsourcing

Why does this happen? Reducing tariffs on imports allows companies to expand to other countries. Without tariffs, imports from countries with a low cost of living cost less. It makes it difficult for U.S. companies in those same industries to compete, so they may reduce their workforce. Many U.S. manufacturing industries did lay off workers as a result of NAFTA. ​​​​One of the biggest criticisms of NAFTA is that it sent jobs to Mexico.

The USMCA sought to address and correct these criticisms, requiring-for the first time in a trade agreement-that 40% to 45% of North American auto content be made by workers earning at least $16 per hour.

Theft of Intellectual Property

Many developing countries don't have laws to protect patents, inventions, and new processes. The laws they do have aren't always strictly enforced. As a result, corporations often have their ideas stolen. They must then compete with lower-priced domestic knock-offs.

Crowding Out Domestic Industries

Many emerging markets are traditional economies that rely on farming for most employment. These small family farms can't compete with subsidized agri-businesses in developed countries. As a result, they lose their farms and must look for work in the cities. This aggravates unemployment, crime, and poverty.

Poor Working Conditions

Multinational companies may outsource jobs to emerging market countries without adequate labor protections. As a result, women and children are often subjected to grueling factory jobs in sub-standard conditions.

Reduced Tax Revenue

Many smaller countries struggle to replace revenue lost from import tariffs and fees.

Degradation of Natural Resources

Emerging market countries often don't have many environmental protections. Free trade leads to the depletion of timber, minerals, and other natural resources. Deforestation and strip mining reduce their jungles and fields to wastelands.

Note

How To Create Effective Trade Agreements

Free trade agreements are designed to combat trade protectionism, which has its own downsides. Trade protectionism produces high tariffs and only protects domestic industries in the short term. In the long term, global corporations will hire the cheapest workers wherever they are in the world to make higher profits.

A better solution than protectionism is the inclusion of regulations within trade agreements that protect against the disadvantages.

Note

Developed economies can reduce their agribusiness subsidies, keeping emerging market farmers in business. They can help local farmers develop sustainable practices. They can then market them as such to consumers who value that.

Countries can insist that foreign companies build local factories as part of the agreement. They can require these companies to share technology and train local workers.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What was the purpose of NAFTA?

What is the difference between free trade and fair trade?

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Free trade agreements are treaties that regulate the tariffs, taxes, and duties that countries impose on their imports and exports. The most well-known U.S. regional trade agreement is the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) which replaced the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) effective July 1, 2020.

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This short video explains why cyber warfare has the potential to be so disruptive.

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This short video explains why cyber warfare has the potential to be so disruptive.

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The Future of Cyberwarfare | Origins: The Journey of Humankind

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Russian hacking of voter databases and election machines.

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Russian hacking of voter databases and election machines.

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The Russian military intelligence unit known by its initials GRU targeted U.S. state election offices as well as U.S. makers of voting machines, according to Mueller's report.

Victims of the Russian hacking operation "included U.S. state and local entities, such as state boards of elections (SBOEs), secretaries of state, and county governments, as well as individuals who worked for those entities," the report said. "The GRU also targeted private technology firms responsible for manufacturing and administering election-related software and hardware, such as voter registration software and electronic polling stations."

The Russian intelligence officers at GRU exploited known vulnerabilities on websites of state and local election offices by injecting malicious SQL code on such websites that then ran commands on underlying databases to extract information.

Using those techniques in June 2016, "the GRU compromised the computer network of the Illinois State Board of Elections by exploiting a vulnerability in the SBOE's website," the report said. "The GRU then gained access to a database containing information on millions of registered Illinois voters, and extracted data related to thousands of U.S. voters before the malicious activity was identified."

In another operation, GRU officers sent spearphishing emails to election officials and executives of companies that make voting machines, the report said.

In August 2016, GRU targeted employees of a company that develops software to manage voter rolls and installed malware on the company's network, the report said without naming the company.

"Similarly, in November 2016, the GRU sent spearphishing emails to over 120 email accounts used by Florida county officials responsible for administering the 2016 U.S. election," the report said. "The spearphishing emails contained an attached Word document coded with malicious software (commonly referred to as a Trojan) that permitted the GRU to access the infected computer."

The Orlando Sentinel reported last week that Volusia County was affected by the GRU attack. The paper said county officials received emails purporting to be from Tallahassee-based VR Systems, the company that likely fell victim to the attack.

Last year, then Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., both warned Florida election systems were susceptible to Russian cyberattacks. Nelson, who lost the election to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, said Russians had gained access to Florida voter data but didn't offer any details.

The Mueller report said, "FBI believes that this operation enabled the GRU to gain access to the network of at least one Florida county government."

In July 2018, Mueller indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers from the GRU for breaking into the Democratic National Committee's email servers, stealing information and leaking it through special online sites as well as through WikiLeaks. The Justice Department said the Russian military officers also hacked the website of a state election board and stole information on 500,000 voters.

Mueller's report said the GRU's Unit 26165 targeted Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton 's personal email server in July 2016 soon after candidate Trump announced at a rally, "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing." The emails were stored on Clinton's personal email server.

The attack on Clinton's email server occurred within five hours of Trump's call and targeted 15 email accounts at the domain, the report said. "The investigation did not find evidence of earlier GRU attempts to compromise accounts on this domain. It is unclear how the GRU was able to identify these email accounts, which were not public," the report said.

Separately the GRU unit responsible for attacking the Clinton server also hacked into a Democratic National Committee cloud server and stole 300 gigabytes of data from the computers, the report said.
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Mueller report: Russia hacked state databases and voting machine companies

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The Russian military intelligence unit known by its initials GRU targeted U.S. state election offices as well as U.S. makers of voting machines, according to Mueller's report. Victims of the Russian hacking operation "included U.S. state and local entities, such as state boards of elections (SBOEs), secretaries of state, and county governments, as well as individuals who worked for those entities," the report said.

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What to know about cyber attacks on the power grid.   As you read this consider the impacts of an attack on banks and nuclear power plants - just two other types of infrastructure that has come under attack.  This short article contains links to the longer report it is based on.

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What to know about cyber attacks on the power grid.   As you read this consider the impacts of an attack on banks and nuclear power plants - just two other types of infrastructure that has come under attack.  This short article contains links to the longer report it is based on.

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>> Read more trending news

Over the past several years, hackers have targeted a Vermont utility, power grids in Ukraine and Ireland, a nuclear power plant in the U.S. and U.S. energy companies, according to news reports.

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority reported Monday that it was hacked.

Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority reports that it was hacked.
- Frances Robles (@FrancesRobles) March 19, 2018

>> Related: Researchers: Hackers develop highly customizable cyberweapon aimed at electric grids

The U.S. electrical grid is highly complex with some 3,300 utility companies that work together to deliver power through 200,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines. The nation also has 55,000 electrical substations and 5.5 million miles of distribution lines that power millions of homes and businesses, according to a report last year.

Just how vulnerable is the U.S. to a cyberattack on its critical infrastructure, like the power grid?

>> Related: The 2017 Russian sanctions bill: What does it do; what is Russia's response; will Trump sign it?

In April of 2017, the Council on Foreign Relations released a report on the vulnerability of the U.S. power grid. Because of the importance of electricity to the smooth functioning of society and because of the critical nature of power to the 16 sectors of the U.S economy that make up what's considered critical infrastructure, a significant attack on the grid could cause serious damage in the U.S., if it were to happen. "Any of the system's principal elements - power generation, transmission or distribution - could be targeted for a cyberattack," the agency said.

Here are 5 things to know:

1- The U.S. power grid has long been considered a target for a major cyberattack; however "carrying out a cyberattack that successfully disrupts grid operations would be extremely difficult, but not impossible," according to the Council on Foreign Relations' report.

2- The U.S. power grid was built for "reliability and safety" and is fairly easy to defend. During winter weather or a hurricane for example, U.S. power crews are good at anticipating problems and can generally move away from computers to manual operations, cyber security expert Robert M. Lee said in an interview with Scientific American magazine.

>> Related: Hackers target European businesses, banks, services in new cyberattacks

3- Because of computer technology and the growing interconnectedness of the digital landscape, and because returning to manual operations is growing more difficult, Lee said that there is cause for concern. "Our adversaries are getting much more aggressive. They're learning a lot about our industrial systems, not just from a computer technology standpoint but from an industrial engineering standpoint, thinking about how to disrupt or maybe even destroy equipment. That's where you start reaching some particularly alarming scenarios," Lee told Scientific American.

4- The director of the National Security Agency, Adm. Michael Rogers, in testimony before Congress in 2014, said that China and a few other countries likely had the capability to shut down the U.S. power grid. "Rapid digitization combined with low levels of investment in cybersecurity and a weak regulatory regime suggest that the U.S. power system is as vulnerable - if not more vulnerable - to a cyberattack as systems in other parts of the world," officials with the Council on Foreign Relations said.

>> Related: Homeland Security investigating after massive cyber attacks take down sites across the internet

5- A cyberattack on the U.S. electric grid could cause power losses in large parts of the United States that could last days or up to several weeks in some places, and it would cause a substantial economic impact, the Council on Foreign Relations reported. The report found the U.S. needs to work to put in place measures to prevent a cyberattack on the power grid, and to find ways to lessen the potentially catastrophic impact should one occur.

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How vulnerable is the U.S. power grid to a cyberattack? 5 things to know

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Read more trending news Over the past several years, hackers have targeted a Vermont utility, power grids in Ukraine and Ireland, a nuclear power plant in the U.S. and U.S. energy companies, according to news reports. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority reported Monday that it was hacked.

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Last week, the U.S. power sector marked a sober milestone: an anonymous Western utility became the first to report a malicious "cyber event" that disrupted grid operations.

The hack itself occurred two months ago, on March 5, when a "denial-of-service" attack disabled Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance devices ringing power grid control systems in Utah, Wyoming and California, according to multiple sources and a vague summary of a Department of Energy filing.

There were no blackouts, no harm to power generation and evidently very little effect on the Western transmission grid, according to multiple sources and officials. The most direct impact was likely a temporary loss of visibility to certain parts of the utility's supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, though all major transmission operators in the regions affected denied having been hit by the denial-of-service attack.

The "cyber event that causes interruptions of electrical system operations," as the attack was categorized in the jargon of DOE electric disturbance forms, made waves in critical infrastructure security circles as a first-of-its-kind case study.

No U.S. electrical utility is known to have experienced any disruptive cyberattack in the past, a surprising fact given that utilities routinely find themselves in the crosshairs of the world's most sophisticated hackers and can face millions of more run-of-the-mill hacking attempts every day (Energywire, July 20, 2018).

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Fears that a bona fide cyberattack would be blown out of proportion among the general public have fueled a culture of secrecy around anything filed under "cyber" in the electricity sector.

At the most recent GridEx security exercise in 2017, utilities practiced how word would get out about a blitz of simulated cyber and physical attacks. The exercise modeled how misinformation about the incident could spread quickly over social media.

"The grid runs everything. Forget how robust it is. How many other critical infrastructure sectors rely on electricity?" said John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc.

"It's the best way to cause cascading effects across society - the public knows that. They don't know anything about how hard that would be."

Utility executives have pointed to the bulk power grid's complexity - the United States really has three separate "interconnections" linked up to thousands of utilities - as contributing to its defense against new hacking threats. Large power companies practice what it would take to run the grid in "manual mode" if hackers succeeded in blinding operations centers or hijacking digitized equipment, according to Scott Aaronson, vice president of security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute, in congressional testimony this February.

"Our companies take a 'defense-in-depth' approach with several layers of security strategies, which are designed to eliminate single points of failure," he said, less than one week before the anonymous Western grid operator was hit by the denial of service.

'That's scary'

U.S. grid operators picked up on the importance of manual backstops in the wake of a December 2015 cyberattack on Ukraine's power grid. In that event, hackers briefly knocked out power to customers of three distribution utilities in western Ukraine for several hours - the first time a cyberattack is known to have caused a blackout anywhere in the world.

The three utilities targeted by the attack - Prykarpattyaoblenergo, Kyivoblenergo and Chernivtsioblenergo - were able to bring the lights back on quickly by sending workers to flip high-voltage circuit breakers by hand.

In the Ukraine hack, the utilities not only lost their visibility but also ceded control of their networks to remote attackers later linked to Russia. The hackers knew whom they were hitting and paired their grid hijacking with a flood of telephone calls to overwhelm the utilities' phone networks and hamper restoration.

The more recent "denial of service" on U.S. Cisco equipment isn't known to have involved any hostile takeover of operational networks. It's possible the hacker or hackers in that case didn't even realize they were interfering with power grid equipment, sources said, perhaps having found the Cisco firewalls exposed online via specialized internet search tools.

While the incident marked a first in the annals of DOE grid cyber events, loss of view into utilities' control systems is a frequent hazard, whether from power outages or communications glitches.

The danger "depends on how much SCADA visibility is lost," noted Patrick Miller, managing partner at Archer Energy Solutions. "The system is more like an ecosystem where you can infer what is happening in one area by the way another reacts."

DOE electric disturbance reports are littered with reports of "complete loss of monitoring or control capability" at utility control centers, the vast majority of which never led to any power outages.

It's not even clear the March 5 event led to a complete loss of visibility during its 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. duration. As Miller pointed out, many utilities maintain alternative means of control system communications in case of emergency.

The Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are both restructuring rules for utilities to report grid cyberattacks to regulators. FERC commissioners, frustrated by years of radio silence from utilities despite a stream of warnings about growing cyberthreats, moved last year to broaden the definition of what constitutes a reportable incident.

The March 5 event is listed publicly because it cleared a certain bar of severity, said Sam Feinburg, executive director of Helena, which is working on a "Shield Project" to boost U.S. grid defenses. "There are undoubtedly many more such events that don't breach that bar and therefore don't become public knowledge."

Feinburg said such events, even when carried out by unsophisticated hackers, don't get enough attention.

"[Grid] infrastructure is getting more complicated, and because of that, it's getting harder and harder to defend each part of it," he said. "The ability to conduct these attacks is only being distributed across a wider and wider set of folks."

"It does not take a sophisticated attacker to deal damage to critical electrical infrastructure, and that's scary," Feinburg said.
Want insightful, digestible cybersecurity coverage from a trusted source? Sign up for the free weekly cyber news brief from the E&E News reporting team of Blake Sobczak and Peter Behr.

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SECURITY: Experts assess damage after first cyberattack on U.S. grid

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The U.S. power sector marked a sober milestone last week as an anonymous Western utility became the first to report a malicious "cyber event" disrupting grid operations. As details of the attack emerge, experts are divided about the long-term threat to electricity networks.

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This article explores the dangers to national security of having Huawei, a Chinese company, develop 5G in countries outside China.  

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This article explores the dangers to national security of having Huawei, a Chinese company, develop 5G in countries outside China.  

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TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. There's good news about the future of the Internet. A new 5G network is being created now, which will not only offer faster downloading on cell phones. It will provide the kind of connectivity we need in the era of the Internet of Things - driverless cars, Internet-connected medical devices, smart TVs and virtual assistants. But there are dangers that could be lurking in the equipment needed to build the new network. The Chinese telecommunications equipment giant Huawei is dominating the creation of 5G networks around the world. For years, classified intelligence reports from the U.S. have warned that China would one day use Huawei to penetrate American networks for cyber-espionage or cyberattacks.

In the U.S., the National Security Agency has banned AT&T and Verizon from using Huawei products in America's 5G network. And last month, the U.S. had a top executive from Huawei arrested in Canada so she could be extradited to the U.S. The growing cyberthreat posed by China was stressed in the Worldwide Threat Assessment - a report from the U.S. intelligence community - that was released this week. And all this is part of the backdrop for this week's trade negotiations between the U.S. and China. My guest David Sanger is the author of a book about cyberwar and cyber-sabotage called "The Perfect Weapon." He's a national security correspondent for The New York Times.

David Sanger, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Let's start with the 5G network. What is it? And how will it affect our phones, our devices and all our interconnectivity?

DAVID SANGER: Well, at its simplest, the 5G network is an increase in speed and range for what you see on your cell phone. So 5G means just fifth generation. But it's actually much more than that. The hope is that when you're using your phone or some other device over Wi-Fi, you'll get no lag time and that you'll get near instantaneous download of data, webpages and so forth. But as 5G was being rolled out, there was a recognition that the Internet had fundamentally changed, that this was a moment to roll out something that could accommodate a world in which the Internet of Things was connecting up to all of these other wireless devices. And so that's autonomous cars, which, of course, need to constantly get data back and forth from the cloud, constant connectivity so that they know where they are in addition to their sensors helping you drive. It's for every other Internet-connected device that you have.

And, you know, when you think about it, Terry, it was just about 10 years ago that in your own house, you probably only had one or two Internet-connected devices - a laptop computer and a desktop computer, maybe. But today you walk into your house and, you know, you've got your Fitbit. And you're waking up Alexa and getting it to play you music. And you've got a smart TV. And you probably have an Internet-connected car parked outside. Even if it isn't a fancy car, most basic cars have some Internet connectivity to them. You might have an Internet-connected refrigerator. You have all of these different devices. And right now worldwide - at the end of last year, we think that there were about 14 billion Internet of Things devices around the world. And by the end of next year, 2020, the estimate is there will be 20 billion.

So that gives you a sense of how rapidly we're changing the environment. And the next network has to be able to handle all of that and, of course, handle the GPS needs for navigation, handle greater government and military needs. So this next 5G network is more than just something that'll make your phone faster. It's actually going to be the central nervous system, the backbone of the next generation of the Internet.

GROSS: And that's exactly the concern about the Chinese telecom giant Huawei because they're building some of these 5G networks around the world. So what is the concern about this Chinese telecom giant and the 5G network?

SANGER: Well, the first thing about Huawei is that while most Americans haven't come in direct contact with it because Huawei phones are not sold that widely in the United States, they are sold nearly universally when you're in Asia and very widely in Europe, in Africa, in Latin America. In fact, at the end of last year, Huawei actually just edged out Apple as the second-largest provider of cell phones in the world. The only one ahead of it is Samsung. But the other part of their business and the part that we really worry about the most is the construction of the giant switches that make up these 5G networks.

Now, in the old days of switching, you would think of switches as big, physical devices. What's happened and what is particularly notable about 5G is that the network itself, while it has some hardware to it and, obviously, there are cell phone towers and sort of a radio part of it, the switches are almost entirely software. And they constantly reconfigure themselves. And they are enormously complex. So the old days of doing what the defense department and the National Security Agency and others used to do - which is take a piece of foreign equipment, put it in a laboratory, poke around it, try to figure out if there are flaws or back doors or something that could help an adversary - that's virtually impossible to do when the product is an ever-evolving piece of software. It gets updated as often as your iPhone gets updated when you have it sitting on your bedside table and Apple sends a new, updated operating system to it overnight. So that's what will happen with this 5G network.

The concern is that for the first time in our history, we would be reliant on a foreign manufacturer - in this case, a foreign manufacturer of a potential adversary that's also the world's second largest economy - building the highway, backbone, central nervous system of a system that we rely on for everything from our financial transactions to our - many of our military operations to, of course, our communications. And the question is, can you trust a foreign actor to be responsible for that? And what happens when Huawei gets that command under Chinese law from the Chinese government to either grab a piece of information or close down part of the network?

GROSS: So describe some more of the kind of trouble that China could create with Huawei building 5G networks in countries around the world where China is becoming increasingly powerful.

SANGER: If China is in command of the network itself and has sort of end end control from phones for which it makes its own chips to the software on the switch to all of the other tentacles of the central nervous system, that it, basically, can do whatever it wants. And the chances that you would see it are relatively diminished. Big network operators like AT&T and Verizon, if they bought Huawei equipment - and it's pretty clear the government is not going to allow them to do that - would have some visibility into the system.

But it's also possible that Huawei might be able to reach back from China directly into the equipment and software it's put in to go manipulate data. What could you do with that? Well, in the Worldwide Threat Assessment that came out earlier this week, the nation's intelligence chiefs mentioned, in particular, that China already has the capability to shut down, at least briefly, the natural gas network. They also said the Russians could do the same briefly with the electric grid.

If you had a country that was in full control of your networks, they could shut it down. They could siphon the traffic off to a place you didn't want it to go. They could siphon it back to China. And they would probably have a easier time intercepting it. Now, of course, a lot of that traffic is going to run encrypted. It's not as if the Chinese would be able to look at everything or would want to. But the more network equipment they put in, the more control they would have. And, of course, the Chinese government reserves the right to tell them what to go do with it.

GROSS: So is Huawei involved in any aspect of the construction of the 5G network in the U.S.?

SANGER: Not anything notable in the United States now - there were a number of classified meetings that took place between the intelligence agencies, the executives of the big telecom firms - AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, so forth. And there was a lot of discussion about letting - whether or not to let Huawei bid on the construction of some parts of this 5G network as they are doing around the world. And, in fact, some of the telecom companies argued to Congress and to the intelligence agencies that it would make sense to let Huawei bid.

And the reason is that if they wanted to bid, they would have to provide their software, their equipment to a test facility in the United States. And the National Security Agency, which is the nation's largest electronic spy agency, and the telecom providers would all be able to crawl around in that software and see if there were any backdoors, see how it was designed. But in the end, the intelligence community didn't even want to take that risk.

GROSS: The founder of Huawei is a former engineer with the People's Liberation Army in China, and some people think he's still connected to the People's Liberation Army. And some people also argue that private companies like Huawei are still under the control of Chinese - of China's authoritarian government. So what's your assessment of how much control the Chinese government has over Huawei and how much control Chinese intelligence has over Huawei and has access to whatever data Huawei gets or can tell Huawei, collect data from this country; collect this data from that country?

SANGER: Well, the founder who you're describing, Ren Zhengfei, is, as you said, a former PLA officer. He then, when he left the PLA, built Huawei initially in the - wiring up the rural parts of China. And he's become obviously one of the most powerful businessmen in China. He's a member of the Communist Party. He's enormously influential there. He has insisted that the Chinese military, the PLA, which has done much of the hacking against the United States, has no role in his company and no continuing control. I've never found any evidence that the United States could prove that the PLA has operative control over Huawei. And of course, Mr. Zheng (ph) has denied it.

Now, that issue consumed the U.S. government for years and years until about two years ago when the Chinese government issued a new set of laws under President Xi, Xi Jinping, that basically said any Chinese company - but particularly the telecom companies - would have to participate in Chinese intelligence operations if they are so instructed, that they would have to turn over data that they had. It's not clear, of course, in China what the legal process would be. And so now people say to me, you know, it doesn't make any difference, David, whether or not the PLA has control over Huawei because the law means that the Chinese government has turned the company into its agent.

GROSS: Well, let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is David Sanger. He's a national security correspondent for The New York Times, and his latest book is called "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, And Fear In The Cyber Age." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF ALEXANDRE DESPLAT'S "SPY MEETING")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with David Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times. We're talking about the 5G network that is being created now and will soon become the central nervous system of the Internet. The Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei is dominating the creation of 5G networks around the world. For years, classified U.S. intelligence reports have warned that China would one day use Huawei to penetrate American networks for cyber espionage or cyberattacks.

So we were talking about the founder of Huawei and his connections to the Chinese military and Huawei's connections to the Chinese government. The founder of Huawei - his daughter was arrested in Canada at the request of the U.S. and indicted last week. So what are those charges? And what are their significance?

SANGER: Well, the first thing we know about the daughter is, in her own right, she's a very powerful figure within Huawei. She's the chief financial officer. But she's also been the architect of a lot of Huawei's spread around the world. When she was arrested in Canada in December at the request of the United States, it was not for any charges that Huawei had participated in espionage against the U.S. It was not for - on any charges that it had participated in cyberattacks on the United States. Instead, it was based on a charge that she had been behind a giant fraud in which Huawei used a cut-out company to violate the sanctions that the United States had against Iran and that this company was in fact a Huawei - secretly a Huawei subsidiary and was doing business with Iran in violation of those sanctions.

So the U.S. is using the Iran sanctions violation to go after the company. Now, the other interesting part about this is that President Trump at one point in December after she was arrested but before she was indicted publicly mused about the fact that he might trade her away in the course of the trade negotiations. Thus the president was politicizing what until then had been a legal action going through normal legal channels. And one of the interesting questions is whether the Canadians are going to extradite her because there have been several Canadians now arrested in China so that they have counter-hostages. And it's possible that the Canadians may determine that this case is more political than criminal.

GROSS: President Trump has said that he knows more about technology than anyone. What's your understanding of how much he understands the issue of Huawei and its potential ability to hack America, to spy on America?

SANGER: Well, I have a couple of concerns. The first is the president's mind turns, as he has said himself many times, to things you can build. And so issues around software networks and so forth just don't come naturally to him. He hasn't shown much of an inclination to learn about it during the time he's president according to people who used to be in the administration, including in the national security field. The president has a somewhat hazy understanding about the risks of cyber-escalation. So when you think about our cyber-risk, one concern is one we've discussed already today, which is surveillance. Basically, you can use these networks to steal data.

But the coming concerns, Terry, have to do more with data manipulation - what happens if you change the data? That's the problem of deep fakes. Something that would look like a politician was speaking, but it wasn't really the words coming out of his mouth. It's been faked. It could be substituting numbers and financial transactions. It could be substituting the targeting information in nuclear or non-nuclear weapons. It could be changing the blood types of every soldier and sailor in the United States if you got into the databases of the military. So there's data manipulation that's a concern. And if any country that had access to the networks, you would worry about that.

And then the third is cyberattack, and that is that if we went to war or were conducting covert operations, every country in the world now has cyber in its battle plans, and usually in the first 24 hours of its battle plans. In "The Perfect Weapon," I describe a plan the United States had if we went to war with Iran, called Nitro Zeus, to basically unplug Iran's communications and electricity grids. Well, imagine that that's in the Chinese plans for the United States. If they're in control of the communications grid of the U.S. or its allies, you can imagine how much easier that is to do.

Now, there is a concern here that we could get into a world of Red Scare, and the president himself might be fueling that some. And I have concerns that we're blaming too much on the Chinese. But the fact of the matter is, these are all major, complex vulnerabilities that, as Henry Kissinger said to me as I was working on the book, are so much more complex than the issues that came up with China in the Cold War.

GROSS: And you're concerned that our president doesn't really comprehend those issues and therefore can't adequately address them.

SANGER: That's right. And, you know, there are escalation issues here, as well. I mean, there's still a big debate in the United States government about how you respond to a cyberattack. When the Chinese got into Google and other companies in 2009, there were Google engineers who wanted to retaliate directly against the servers where the attack was coming from. Fortunately, they were stopped. But had that gone ahead, or had it gone ahead with another company, the question would be to the Chinese, is this attack, this counterattack, coming from a private company, coming from some hackers, has it been commanded by the United States? Is a company operating on behalf of the U.S.? And then they would escalate.

So you get all the same kind of escalation issues that we worried about in the nuclear age, but you get them in this technology world in which shutting down or diverting data becomes your new weapon. And we don't really understand that escalatory response. Now, the president, in August of last year, issued a new classified order to the National Security Agency that basically gave the director of the National Security Agency more leeway to go respond to offensive cyberactions and to initiate some without presidential approval. But still we don't understand who's in control of the escalation.

GROSS: My guest is David Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times who is also the author of the book, "The Perfect Weapon," about cyberwar and cyber-espionage. We'll talk more after we take a short break. And our jazz critic Kevin Whitehead will review a reissue featuring pianist Oscar Peterson and a studio orchestra playing 1960s pop covers. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with David Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times and author of "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, And Fear In The Cyber Age." We're talking about the new 5G network that will soon become the central nervous system of the Internet, providing faster speeds and greater interconnectivity for the era we're entering where nearly everything, from cars to medical devices, connects to the Internet. The Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei is dominating the creation of 5G networks around the world. For years, classified U.S. intelligence reports have warned that China would one day use Huawei to penetrate American networks for cyber-espionage or cyberattacks.

The Worldwide Threat Assessment that was released by intelligence agencies this week said that there's a growing cyberthreat from Russia and China, and that Russia and China are now more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s. So what does that say to you about the cyberthreat posed by this alignment of Russia and China?

SANGER: Well, it was a fascinating assertion that they made, And I think it was accurate. We have not seen Russia and China cooperate this way since the mid-'50s. And, of course, China only came into being as the People's Republic in 1949. So it was very early in its history, and it was an extremely poor country. It's worth remembering today that Russia and China have very different objectives. Russia's main objective is one of disruption. It does not have much economic power. Its economy is basically the size of Italy's. It does not have the ability to go build these networks. It does not have much economic power. Its economy is basically the size of Italy's. It does not have the ability to go build these networks around the world the way China is doing. It does not have the technology to do it, but it can be a huge disruptor.

And of course, we saw them act to disrupt networks and voting systems in Ukraine. We saw their interference in the 2016 election here in the United States, and we've seen them take cyber action elsewhere in the world. We've seen their submarines go out and track where the fiber optic cables are laid around the world. They're only, you know, less than 200 major fiber optic undersea cables. And the Russians have the ability to cut those cables deep undersea. That would be a huge disruption. That could black out communications in the United States. So that's the Russian side.

The Chinese have a much different set of objectives. If the world gets disrupted, no one's going to suffer more than they will because their economy is so interdependent with ours and with other major economies around the world. So they're less likely to disrupt, but they're much more likely to want control and subtle ability to divert traffic in those networks. And that's the concern about Huawei.

GROSS: But with Russia and China being in closer cooperation than at any other time since the 1950s, what's the combination of those two countries looking like? Like, if Russia's about disruption and China is about control, when you put the two together, what's the new formula?

SANGER: Well, the new formula is a diminished role for the United States. That's part of the concern about the degree to which we have alienated our allies. And this issue about Huawei intersects with the alienation of the allies very closely because what's going on now is the United States is going around the world to allies and say, hey, we're living in a new world. The Russians and the Chinese are cooperating more than we've ever seen. We're trying to keep everybody from spinning into a new form of a cold war - Cold War 2.0. And while the Russians and the Chinese have very different strategic objectives, there may be moments - there will be moments when they will have a common objective in diminishing the power of the United States. That's the one area where they both have great common interests.

And so it's important that the United States be able to go work with its allies to figure out how you both contain this threat and respond to it, but also how you retain control of your own networks. So what the U.S. is doing right now is it's going around to its allies, particularly the NATO allies, and saying, don't build Huawei into your systems. And there's some urgency to this because the big decisions about contracts to build the 5G networks will be made in the next six months or so. The U.S. has been in Poland, where they have rather unsubtly suggested that if the Poles really want a new, small military - American military base in Poland - it's been referred to sort of informally as Fort Trump by the Polish leadership - they better build a network that does not use Huawei.

There's been pressure on the Canadians, the British. And of course, in Latin America and in Africa, the Chinese have been mounting their own counteroffensive where they're coming in offering very low-cost building of the networks, frequently with Chinese government loans to go do it. What's that remind you of? It's a lot like what the United States did in the 1950s and '60s when we tried to use our foreign aid to go build up close allies by building up their technology and their industry. But now the Chinese are doing it, and they're doing it with the networking technology.

GROSS: So our unilateral approach to world affairs, our alienation of our allies is really working against us when it comes to this new technological era of the 5G network.

SANGER: You know, Terry, the most interesting observation in that worldwide threat assessment was the assertion that the unilateralism of the United States - they didn't use the phrase America first, but they could've - has made American allies and partners - meaning people who were not necessarily full allies - reassess their relationship with the U.S. and look for power relationships and protection elsewhere. And of course, that means they're looking mostly to the Chinese because they're the only other ones who have a market big enough and have an economy big enough to actually be of significant help to them.

You've seen this happen in the Philippines - a country that used to be, at one point, an American colony - where the leadership of the Philippines, a great American ally, is getting closer and closer to the Chinese leadership. You're seeing it happen to some degree in South Korea where - by the way, in Seoul, Huawei was a big player in the competition to rebuild the cell network for Seoul, which is used by American forces who are based around Seoul. You're seeing this happen throughout Africa, where the United States has put a whole lot less money into rebuilding infrastructure, helping countries along than the Chinese have.

GROSS: Some of the things you've described about China's capabilities of spying on us and hacking data and interfering with cyberwar, even - I mean, that's - it's some pretty terrifying stuff. At the same time, the U.S. has done similar things to China and other countries. Would you describe an operation that was named Shotgiant?

SANGER: Terry, Shotgiant was a National Security Agency operation that happened around 2010. We know about it because some of the details were leaked out in the Snowden documents. It was an effort by the NSA to do to Huawei exactly what we have accused Huawei of doing to us, which is breaking into networks, figuring out how they operate and setting ourselves up to either steal information from those networks or cripple them in the future.

What did the NSA do? It got into Huawei's corporate systems in Shenzhen, the Chinese industrial city. It looked for any evidence that the Chinese PLA was actually secretly controlling the company - doesn't appear they found any. It looked to understand how Huawei's equipment operated, how the software worked so that if Huawei sold a network switching system to an American adversary - say, Venezuela or Cuba or someplace that clearly wouldn't buy American equipment - then the NSA would have an easier time breaking into that equipment. The - this is not unusual. This is what the United States government created the NSA to go do. This is the kind of offensive cyber activity that the NSA conducts not only against China but against Russia, Iran, North Korea and so forth.

But what it gets at - and the Chinese use it for these purposes - is that the United States is not above any of these kind of network manipulation issues that we've been worrying about in regard to Huawei. We do it ourselves. And Huawei's argument is, why would you be any safer in the world if you're a foreign country with an American or European-built network than with a Chinese-built network? - because they make the argument that the NSA is going to get into an American-built network or a network in Europe. And, certainly, the Snowden docs are full of examples of cases where we have done that.

SANGER: Well, let's take a short break here. And then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is David Sanger. He's a national security correspondent for The New York Times. And his latest book is called "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage And Fear In The Cyber Age." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF AMANDA GARDIER'S "FJORD")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with David Sanger, a national security correspondent for The New York Times. We've been talking about how the deep involvement of the Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei in the development of the new 5G network in many countries could threaten our cybersecurity.

If you're negotiating an arms control deal, there are ways that you can verify or come close to verifying whether a nuclear program is continuing, how many weapons the country has, where they're being stored. You can have inspectors go to observe facilities that you know exist. When it comes to, like, cyber issues, it's so much harder to verify what's going on. So what kind of treaty is even possible when it comes to something that is invisible like cyber-control, cyberattack, cyber-espionage, cyber-sabotage?

SANGER: Terry, you've raised the fundamental question that has been haunting us in the cyber age. And it's one of the reasons I went to write "The Perfect Weapon" because this is so much more of a vexing problem than we had in the days of the 1950s, when we had nuclear weapons, the Russians did and the Chinese were about to. They first got theirs in the 1960s. You could do treaties in the nuclear age because there was a very limited number of players. First, it was just us and the Soviets, then the Chinese, of course, some other NATO players, later on, Israel, India, Pakistan. And you can count the weapons. And more importantly, you can count missiles. You can send inspectors just as you described. None of this is true in the cyber age.

In the cyber age, the aggressor could be a state - might be Russia or China or Iran or North Korea. But it could be a criminal group. It could be a terrorist group. It could be teenagers. And none of those groups sign treaties, particularly teenagers, right? So the first problem is there's just too many players. The second is the technology is so inexpensive. This is what makes it the perfect weapon because it's so cheap that you don't need to be a China or a Russia to play in the cyber arena. By my count, there are probably around 35 countries today that have sophisticated cybercapability and could mount a sophisticated cyberattack, not just a denial of service attack that turned out the lights but something more sophisticated. So treaties will not work here. So what are the other options?

Well, there are a lot of other ideas. But most of them circulate around codes of conduct - a sort of digital Geneva Convention. And it's an interesting concept because the real Geneva Conventions were not created by governments. The Geneva Convention meetings were organized by the Red Cross. And the idea was to protect civilians. So if you and I, Terry, were trying to come up with a list of things to protect, I think we'd probably sit down and say, OK. Electric grid should be off-limits because if you turn those off, you hurt the most vulnerable people. Communication systems and especially emergency communications - and that's where Huawei intersects with this. You'd want those to be off-limits from cyberattack. You'd probably want election systems to be off-limits.

So I could imagine a digital Geneva Convention in which you gathered countries together and they agree to this. And it's not enforceable or inspectable, but you're beginning to set some global standards. One of the difficulties with this idea - even though I think it's sort of the best of the bad ideas that are out there - is that I'm not sure the United States would sign on to that.

GROSS: Why not?

SANGER: Imagine the intelligence leaders gathering in the situation room, saying, do we really want to limit the next president of the United States or this president from interfering in an election if it would be a way to get Maduro out of office? Do you really want to stop us from turning off electric power grids if we might be able to bring a country to its knees without firing a shot? After all, we had a plan - Nitro Zeus - to turn off all the power in Iran if we got into a conflict with them. So I don't even think the U.S. would sign on to this.

GROSS: You know, the power equation, when it comes to cyber, has really changed because there was a period when the U.S. was the kind of ruler of cyberweapons and cyber potential. And that's just, like, no longer true. So if we do anything like that, there will be a cyber-counterattack and vice versa. So the stakes are really higher than they've ever been, I think.

SANGER: And our control of the technology, as you point out, is less than it's ever been. Look. The Internet was first invented in the United States - you know, the ARPANET - what became the Internet later on - only 35 years ago. And then, of course, it's Silicon Valley companies that have dominated the technology that's come out of that. That era is ending, just as the era in which Britain and Portugal and a few other major naval powers could rule the world because they had the best. That era is ending, just as the era in which Britain and Portugal and a few other major naval powers could rule the world because they had the best ships. And we're not going to get this back. It's not as if we're going to go back to an era when we were the ones who dominated all of this technology.

And now, for the first time in our modern history, we are facing a peer adversary in China that has an economy that will sooner or later overtake the United States in size and that is investing heavily in the major technologies on which 5G will allow big progress - artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, quantum computing. And, you know, you go into that worldwide threat assessment, I thought one of the most interesting points on it was that our absence of big strategy in many of these technologies is allowing adversaries to close the gap very quickly.

Now, if you wanted to declare a national emergency about something, that threat assessment would suggest that's the issue on which the president might want to go declare a national emergency and come up with a strategy, rather than just focusing on the wall.

GROSS: Is there anyone in the Trump administration who you look to as being, like, the foremost expert on cyber issues?

SANGER: You know, there were, Terry. I thought that the president got off to a pretty good start on this. He hired a homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, who had had some fairly good experience in cyber issues in the Bush administration and had spent time on it when he was out of office. There was also a White House coordinator for cyber issues, a man named Rob Joyce, who had spent his entire career at the National Security Agency. And he ran something called the Tailored Access Operations unit. That's sort of the special forces of the NSA that breaks into foreign computing systems.

And the job of the White House cybersecurity coordinator was to try to bring together all of these complex defensive and offensive issues and the policy issues together. They were focused on it. So what happened? John Bolton came in in the spring as the new national security adviser after the firing of H.R. McMaster. Mr. Bolton, in his first week, got rid of the homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, and replaced him with a Coast Guard admiral who is, by his own admission, not very familiar with cyber issues.

Then Mr. Bolton eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator. I guess he must have concluded we were over-coordinated in this government, I suspect because he didn't like the fact that the cybersecurity coordinator had a sort of direct line to the president. In eliminating the position, he has downgraded the number of people within the White House who deal with this.

And it doesn't seem to me that the policy is being debated at the level at which it needs to be or coordinated between the Pentagon, the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Commerce Department and so many others who need to work on this. They have gotten policies out on Huawei. They may get this executive order out. But I'm afraid there's no big strategic thinking going on at the White House level.

GROSS: Well, David Sanger, thank you so much for talking with us.

SANGER: Great to be with you again.

GROSS: David Sanger is a national security correspondent for The New York Times and author of "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, And Fear In The Cyber Age." After we take a short break, our jazz critic, Kevin Whitehead, will review a reissue featuring pianist Oscar Peterson and a studio orchestra playing 1960s pop covers. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF AARON PARKS' "SMALL PLANET")

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Could Chinese Telecom Giant Huawei Put U.S. Cyber-Security At Risk?

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TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. There's good news about the future of the Internet. A new 5G network is being created now, which will not only offer faster downloading on cell phones.

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Analysis of how we need to think about and create cyber warfare policies.

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Analysis of how we need to think about and create cyber warfare policies.

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Cyber Warfare: The New Front | Bush Center

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An Essay by Marie O'Neill Sciarrone, Co-founder and President of Trinity Cyber LLC and Former Special Assistant to the President for Homeland Security

As war has advanced, the battlefield has expanded from land to sea to air. Now, battles are engaged in a new arena: cyber space.

Warfare has traditionally been executed within easily-defined periods of time and geographic boundaries. Wars are declared and when objectives are achieved or abandoned, the parties return home. These conflicts have been fought on identifiable terrain in the air, on the ground, under the sea, and as of the last 20 years, in space.

Even the changing tools of war have been easily defined: the rifle, bomb, aircraft, tank, ship, et al. Some of the newer tools, such as the improvised explosive device, are equally tangible and identifiable.

But the internet and its expansionary nature have opened a whole new domain for attacks and warfare. There are no geographical boundaries and the domains are beyond the reach of traditional norms such as the Geneva Convention.

This evolution, referred to as cyber warfare, is a game-changer. It changes how we assess our enemies, meet their challenges, and enact policies that match the growth of the cyber domain. To determine the best policies and plans of action, government and civilian entities must cooperate to develop common definitions and goals and implement responses.

[Cyber warfare] changes how we assess our enemies, meet their challenges, and enact policies that match the growth of the cyber domain.

Those affected by the threat include officials who specialize in this area and everyday citizens, whose protection from cyber warfare must be at the forefront of any policy. The cooperation of citizens also is necessary for a successful policy to take root. Technology will always outpace policy, but policymakers can reduce the gap through engaging the public. After all, the internet touches millions of lives each day.

What exactly is cyber warfare?

We need a clear understanding of what the term means and how cyber warfare differs from traditional warfare. Otherwise, it will be impossible to discuss and understand - let alone address - the challenges that the Department of Defense specifically faces as the government responds to warfare in the new digital domain. Those tests involve finding the right policies, technologies, and staffing.

Unfortunately, no universal definition of cyber warfare exists. Even agreement on a single way to spell the term has proven elusive. Is it "cyber warfare," "Cyber-Warfare," "Cyberwarfare," or "Cyber warfare"?

The subtle differences reflect a large difference in the word's connotation. Is the emphasis on "cyber"? Is the emphasis on "war" to reflect an focus versus a more conventional positioning usually associated with "cybersecurity"? Or, is the term meant to reflect a select type of warfare? Also, is cyber warfare using digital weapons? Is it only limited to actions taken on a computer? Is it advanced warfare using ever-more intelligent and autonomous weapon systems? It also is important to differentiate a cyber attack from cyber warfare. Calling it "war" implies a wider scope and longevity. An attack is understood to be a singular event, while war is a series of attacks.

For this piece, the emphasis will be on using a digital means to attack an opponent - what constitutes an attack and the warranted response.

Cyber warfare should not be thought of as computer against computer, but a much broader concept. It is an effort through cyber space or using a digital means to attack an opponent. These attacks could range from state-sponsored infiltration with the objective of disrupting information systems, to individual hackers trying to make a political statement or influence outcomes.

With the advent of non-state-sponsored terrorist organizations and the ubiquity of internet access, offensive cyber attacks have become frequent occurrences at all levels. Reaching agreement on terms and meanings will be critical to achieving and determining how to best deal with this new type of warfare.

Cyber warfare should not be thought of as computer against computer, but a much broader concept. It is an effort through cyber space or using a digital means to attack an opponent.

Changing a traditional view of war

Cyber warfare stands apart from warfare found in history books or movies of the 1950s and 1960s, where the "good-guys" could see or touch the enemy. In cyber warfare, a sniper does not pull the trigger of a gun; a unit cannot take a hill or invade an island. Cyber warfare is fought on keyboards with armies of ones and zeros acting like the soldiers executing orders.

It follows that any policy must stand apart from more traditional methods. Yet the Department of Defense and others have spent billions viewing cyber space and accompanying solutions in more traditional physical terms - likely because that is what is familiar to them.

A new paradigm must be developed that reflects the realities of cyberspace, which expands the battlefield anywhere to which the internet extends, particularly past the supposedly-safe borders of our homeland and into almost every aspect of our lives. That so much of business, political, and social activity relies almost exclusively on this technology means escaping the impact of cyber warfare is unlikely. The capacity for a single solution is equally unlikely.

What's more, definitive attribution of the adversarial act(s) can be difficult or even impossible. A single person can control an army of usually-unwitting computers, making it even more difficult to identify who is behind the actions.

This makes it challenging to establish traditional defense policies. It is unclear who has what authority to respond in a significant cyber attack, when they respond, and what options leadership can enact. These variables make it necessary to reach agreement on terminology, actions, and responses. A common understanding of them will ensure we have the political will to address these challenges.

Cyber warfare is also not always surgically-targeted, so the potential of harming those not even involved is great. Once an attack tool is used, it is not spent like a round of ammunition. It can be reused and even aimed against the entity that released it.

Definitive attribution of the adversarial act(s) can be difficult or even impossible. A single person can control an army of usually-unwitting computers, making it even more difficult to identify who is behind the actions. This makes it challenging to establish traditional defense policies.

Many cyber weapons are based on software vulnerabilities and those vulnerabilities exist on numerous systems. They can affect networks that drive health care, manufacturing, power generation and distribution, and transportation, among others.

As a result, it is hard to safeguard the systems used to secure and identify people, especially our military in times of conflict. Biometrics are no longer a fingerprint with ink. They have moved to digital versions and are stored in a digital database.

These modern challenges impact the intelligence our national security and war fighters depend upon. Fortunately, encryption technology mitigates the threats to this information. Yet we must remain vigilant when new advancements threaten to compromise security.

Is a disruption intelligence gathering or cyber warfare?

There is also an important distinction between cyber warfare and intelligence activities. The United States was aware of spying activities on our soil during the Cold War. The intelligence community tried to observe "dead drops" and other acts of espionage. Those efforts were not seen as an act of war in the same way an attack on U.S. submarines or missiles pointed at American soil would have been.

Intelligence gathering will continue and even expand as the digital world pervades almost every sphere of influence. Yet digital intrusions are hard to distinguish between intelligence collection and attempts to intercept (or interrupt) planning for an attack.

For example, an enemy may disrupt a defense system while inserting malicious code to collect information from our systems as part of traditional espionage information-gathering. But the malware also could be intentionally inserted to disrupt and take down the system for more nefarious purposes.

The capacity to determine the difference -- or where an exploitation ends and an attack begins -- does not exist. Intent is one of the hardest things to know, but how we define these events matters enormously. The definition will determine the response. If digital events are considered conventional espionage, they may trigger political or legal reviews and approvals. But a digital attack response aimed at disrupting an enemy's capabilities fall more along traditional military lines.

The focus of cyber warfare will likely remain on disrupting the opponent, as opposed to creating a lethal situation. And it will focus on providing the U.S. an advantage. Cyber warfare also will evolve as the internet evolves, including with the growth of digitally-enabled appliances and everyday items, known as the "internet of things."

Similarly, the "internet of military things," which arises from the increasing connectivity in aircraft, weapons, air defense and communications systems, and personal protective equipment, dictates that we address the offensive and defensive warfare aspects of the evolving cyber struggle. The internet of military things opens the U.S. military up to a new range of weapons, opponents, and threats.

So, what do we do?

All of these developments present the Department of Defense with a new challenge and beg the question: What will "traditional warfare" mean in 2025 or 2030?

Warfighters will be operating - and when necessary fighting - seamlessly from undersea, surface, land, air, and space. They will be working with both manned and unmanned systems that perform autonomous operations across land, air, space, and sea. They will be working together to identify and defeat an enemy at the speed of light or in "digital speed."

The American military does not possess sufficient numbers of skilled operators to counter this growing threat, much less obtain superiority in the cyberspace domain. We will need to train for a different set of skills and knowledge.

The American military does not possess sufficient numbers of skilled operators to counter this growing threat, much less obtain superiority in the cyber space domain. We will need to train for a different set of skills and knowledge.

The tools that will advance U.S. military capabilities are also creating vulnerabilities since they operate on the same internet that is under attack. As U.S. policies evolve and incorporate innovative technologies into defense systems, they need to be designed with an eye towards security. Developing a strong military without protecting the electrical grids, airports, and railroads at home is short-sighted and will hinder longer-term success. These critical infrastructure components, while not owned by the military, must be part of the planning. They will be a vital part of protecting the U.S. in this era of cyber warfare.

A proactive planning approach will prove the most effective way to move forward. Now, when the military contemplates responding to a cyber attack, success is largely defined by destroying the physical hard drive or power supply, items which can be easily replaced by attackers. Instead, the focus must be on finding solutions within the network. This will neutralize the adversary more effectively than short-term solutions.

As history has shown, military strategy must adapt to new domains. Cyber space is that next domain. While traditional warfare will continue to exist, technology and cyber operations will aid its methods.

Cyber warfare could make conventional warfare systems that employ computers and electronics operationally ineffective or obsolete. A traditional system that cannot respond in "digital time" to a multi-pronged threat or that cannot provide protection while attacking others may be of little use in the future. It would be the equivalent of the Polish Army attempting to use their horse cavalry team against the German armored brigades at the beginning of World War II. Society and warfare have evolved from horses against metal to metal against the matrix.

Going forward, many political and military questions will need to be addressed as we determine how to conduct and respond to cyber warfare. Unanimous agreement is unlikely, but an informed dialogue with the public on these issues is essential. That will pave the way for the compromise and support necessary to establish new policies and principles for this complicated subject of cyber warfare.

As history has shown, military strategy must adapt to new domains. Cyber space is that next domain. While traditional warfare will continue to exist, technology and cyber operations will aid its methods.

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Cyber Warfare: The New Front | Bush Center

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An Essay by Marie O'Neill Sciarrone, Co-founder and President of Trinity Cyber LLC and Former Special Assistant to the President for Homeland Security As war has advanced, the battlefield has expanded from land to sea to air. Now, battles are engaged in a new arena: cyber space.

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In depth look at how cyber warfare works and how the U.S. is working to protect itself from cyber attacks.

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Special feature

Cyberwar and the Future of Cybersecurity

Today's security threats have expanded in scope and seriousness. There can now be millions -- or even billions -- of dollars at risk when information security isn't handled properly.

Cyberwarfare refers to the use of digital attacks -- like computer viruses and hacking -- by one country to disrupt the vital computer systems of another, with the aim of creating damage, death and destruction. Future wars will see hackers using computer code to attack an enemy's infrastructure, fighting alongside troops using conventional weapons like guns and missiles.

A shadowy world that is still filled with spies, hackers and top secret digital weapons projects, cyberwarfare is an increasingly common -- and dangerous -- feature of international conflicts. But right now the combination of an ongoing cyberwarfare arms race and a lack of clear rules governing online conflict means there is a real risk that incidents could rapidly escalate out of control.

What does cyberwarfare look like?

Just like normal warfare which can range from limited skirmishes to full-on battles, the impact of cyberwarfare will vary by target and severity. In many cases the computer systems are not the final target -- they are being targeted because of their role in managing real-world infrastructure like airports or power grids. Knock out the computers and you can shut down the airport or the power station as a result.

There are plenty of grim cyberwarfare scenarios available. Perhaps attackers start with the banks: one day your bank balance drops to zero and then suddenly leaps up, showing you've got millions in your account. Then stock prices start going crazy as hackers alter data flowing into the stock exchange. The next day the trains aren't running because the signalling stops working, and you can't drive anywhere because the traffic lights are all stuck on red, and the shops in big cities start running out of food. Pretty soon a country could be reduced to gridlock and chaos, even without the doomsday scenarios of hackers disabling power stations or opening dams.

One worst-case cyberattack scenario on the US sees attackers combining outright destructive attacks focused on critical US infrastructure with data manipulation on a massive scale.

Still, there are -- thankfully -- vanishingly few examples of real-world cyberwarfare, at least for now.

Nearly every system we use is underpinned in some way by computers, which means pretty much every aspect of our lives could be vulnerable to cyberwarfare at some point, and some experts warn it's a case of when, not if.
Download all the Cyberwar and the Future of Cybersecurity articles as a free PDF ebook (free TechRepublic registration required) Why are governments investing in cyberwarfare right now?
Governments are increasingly aware that modern societies are so reliant on computer systems to run everything from financial services to transport networks that using hackers armed with viruses or other tools to shut down those systems could be just as effective and damaging as traditional military campaign using troops armed with guns and missiles.

Unlike traditional military attacks, a cyberattack can be launched instantaneously from any distance, with little obvious evidence of any build-up, unlike a traditional military operation. Such as attack would be extremely hard to trace back with any certainty to its perpetrators, making retaliation harder.

As a result governments and intelligence agencies worry that digital attacks against vital infrastructure -- like banking systems or power grids -- will give attackers a way of bypassing a country's traditional defences, and are racing to improve their computer security.

However, they also see the opportunity that cyberwarfare capabilities bring, offering a new way to exert influence on rival states without having to put soldiers at risk. The fear of being vulnerable to the cyberweapons of their rivals plus a desire to harness these tools to bolster their own standing in the world is leading many countries into a cyber arms race.

What is -- and what is not -- cyberwarfare?

Whether an attack should be considered as an act of cyberwarfare depends on a number of factors. These include the identity of the attacker, what they are doing, how they do it -- and how much damage they inflict.

Like other forms of warfare, cyberwarfare in its purest sense is usually defined as a conflict between states, not individuals. To qualify the attacks really should be of significant scale and severity.

If cyberwar is best understood as serious conflict between nations, that excludes a lot of the attacks that are regularly and incorrectly described as cyberwarfare.

Attacks by individual hackers, or even groups of hackers, would not usually be considered to be cyberwarfare, unless they are being aided and directed by a state. Still, in the murky world of cyberwarfare there are plenty of blurred lines: states providing support to hackers in order to create plausible deniability for their own actions is, however, a dangerously common trend.

Getty Images/iStockphoto

One example: cyber crooks who crash a bank's computer systems while trying to steal money would not be considered to be perpetrating an act of cyberwarfare, even if they come from a rival nation. But state-backed hackers doing the same thing to destabilise a rival state's economy might well be considered so.

The nature and scale of the targets attacked is another indicator: defacing an individual company's website is unlikely to be considered an act of cyberwarfare, but disabling the missile defence system at an airbase would certainly come at least close.

The weapons used are important, too -- cyberwar refers to digital attacks on computer systems: firing a missile at a data center would not be considered cyberwarfare, even if the data center contained government records. And using hackers to spy or even to steal data would not in itself be considered an act of cyberwarfare, and would instead come under the heading cyber espionage, something which is done by nearly all governments.

For sure there are many grey areas here (cyberwarfare is basically one big grey area anyway), but calling every hack an act of cyberwar is at best unhelpful and at its worst is scaremongering that could lead to dangerous escalation.

Cyberwarfare and the use of force

Why the who, what and how of cyberwarfare matters is because how these factors combine will help determine what kind of response a country can make to a cyberattack.

There is one key formal definition of cyberwarfare, which is a digital attack that is so serious it can be seen as the equivalent of a physical attack.

To reach this threshold, an attack on computer systems would have to lead to significant destruction or disruption, even loss of life. This is the significant threshold because under international law, countries are allowed to use force to defend themselves against an armed attack.

It follows then that, if a country were hit by a cyberattack of significant scale, the government is within its rights to strike back using the force of their standard military arsenal: to respond to hacking with missile strikes perhaps.

So far this has never happened -- indeed it's not entirely clear if any attack has ever reached that threshold. Even if such an attack occurred it wouldn't be assumed that the victim would necessarily strike back in such a way, but international law would not stand in the way of such a response.

That doesn't mean attacks that fail to reach that level are irrelevant or should be ignored: it just means that the country under attack can't justify resorting to military force to defend itself. There are plenty of other ways of responding to a cyberattack, from sanctions and expelling diplomats, to responding in kind, although calibrating the right response to an attack is often hard (see cyber deterrence, below).

What is the Tallinn Manual?

One reason that the legal status of cyberwarfare has been blurred is that there is no international law that refers to cyberwar, because it is such a new concept. But this doesn't mean that cyberwarfare isn't covered by law, it's just that the relevant law is piecemeal, scattered, and often open to interpretation.

This lack of legal framework has resulted in a grey area that some states are very willing to exploit, using the opportunity to test out cyberwar techniques in the knowledge that other states are uncertain about how they could react under international law.

More recently that grey area has begun to shrink. A group of law scholars has spent years working to explain how international law can be applied to digital warfare. This work has formed the basis of the Tallinn Manual, a textbook prepared by the group and backed by the NATO-affiliated Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCoE) based in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, from which the manual takes its name.

The first version of the manual looked at the rare but most serious cyberattacks, the ones at the level of the use of force; the second edition released tried to build a legal framework around cyberattacks that do not reach the threshold of the use of force.

Aimed at legal advisers to governments, military, and intelligence agencies, the Tallinn Manual sets out when an attack is a violation of international law in cyberspace, and when and how states can respond to such assaults.

The manual consists of a set of guidelines -- 154 rules -- which set out how the lawyers think international law can be applied to cyberwarfare, covering everything from the use of cyber mercenaries to the targeting of medical units' computer systems.

The idea is that by making the law around cyberwarfare clearer, there is less risk of an attack escalating, because escalation often occurs when the rules are not clear and leaders overreact.

The second version of the manual, know as Tallinn 2.0, looks at the legal status of the various types of hacking and other digital attacks that occur on a daily basis during peacetime and looks at when a digital attack becomes a a violation of international law in cyberspace.

Which countries are preparing for cyberwar?

Pretty much every single nation with the money and the skills is investing in cyberwarfare and cyberdefence capabilities. According to US intelligence chiefs, more than 30 countries are developing offensive cyber attack capabilities, although most of these government hacking programmes are shrouded in secrecy. This has lead to concerns that a secret cyber arms race has already begun.

US intelligence briefings regularly list Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea as the major cyber threat actors to worry about. The US has long warned that Russia has a " highly advanced offensive cyber program" and has "conducted damaging and/or disruptive cyber attacks, including attacks on critical infrastructure networks".

The Pentagon has said that China is looking to narrow the gap with the US in terms of cyberwarfare capabilities, and has warned that China has attempted to probe US networks for data useful in any future crisis: "Targeted information could enable PLA [People's Liberation Army] cyber forces to build an operational picture of US defense networks, military disposition, logistics, and related military capabilities that could be exploited prior to or during a crisis," it warned.

US cyberwarfare capabilities

However, it's likely that the US still has the most significant cyberdefence and cyberattack capabilities. Speaking in 2016, President Obama said: "we're moving into a new era here, where a number of countries have significant capacities. And frankly we've got more capacity than anybody, both offensively and defensively."

Much of this capability comes from US Cyber Command, which has a dual mission: to protect US Department of Defence networks but also to conduct "full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries".

Image: Siim Teder/Estonian Defence Forces

Cyber Command is made up of a number of what it calls Cyber Mission Force teams.

The Cyber National Mission Force teams defend the US by monitoring adversary activity, blocking attacks, and manoeuvring to defeat them.

Cyber Combat Mission Force teams conduct military cyber operations to support military commanders, while the Cyber Protection Force teams defend the Department of Defense information networks.

By the end of fiscal year 2018, the goal is for the force to grow to nearly 6,200 and for all 133 teams to be fully operational. The US is believed to have used various forms of cyber weapons against the Iranian nuclear programme, the North Korean missile tests and the so-called Islamic State, with mixed results.

Reflecting the increased priority the US is putting on cyberwarfare capabilities in August 2017, President Donald Trump upgraded Cyber Command to the status of a Unified Combatant Command, which puts on the same level as groups such as the US Pacific Command and US Central Command. Other US agencies like the CIA and NSA have cyber espionage capabilities and have in the past been involved with building cyberweapons -- such as the famous Stuxnet worm (see below).

The UK has also publicly stated that it is working on cyber defence and offence projects, and has vowed to strike back if attacked in this manner. In April 2018 the director of GCHQ confirmed that cyberattacks by British intelligence services supported operations against the terror group ISIS.
What do cyberweapons look like?
Imaging the smartest hackers with the biggest budgets aiming to break the biggest systems they can; that's what the high end of cyber weapons can look like -- projects involving teams of developers and millions of dollars. But there are very, very few of these. In general the tools of cyberwarfare can vary from the incredibly sophisticated to the utterly basic. It depends on the effect the attacker is trying to create.

Many are part of the standard hacker toolkit, and a series of different tools could be used in concert as part of a cyberattack. For example, a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack was at the core of the attacks on Estonia in 2007.

Other standard hacker techniques are likely to form part of a cyberattack; phishing emails to trick users into handing over passwords or other data which can allow attackers further access to networks, for example. Malware and viruses could form part of an attack like the Shamoon virus, which wiped the hard drives of 30,000 PCs at Saudi Aramco in 2012.

According to the Washington Post, after revelations about Russian meddling in the run up to the 2016 US Presidential elections, President Obama authorised the planting of cyber weapons in Russia's infrastructure. "The implants were developed by the NSA and designed so that they could be triggered remotely as part of retaliatory cyber-strike in the face of Russian aggression, whether an attack on a power grid or interference in a future presidential race," the report said.
Ransomware and cyberwarfare
Ransomware, which has been a constant source of trouble for businesses and consumers, may also have been used not just to raise money but also to cause chaos. Perhaps one of the most unexpected twists recently has been the use of weaponised ransomware to destroy data. The US, UK and a number of other governments blamed Russia for the NotPetya ransomware outbreak which caused havoc in mid-2017, with the White House describing the incident as 'the most destructive and costly cyberattack in history.' While the attack was most likely aimed at doing damage to computer systems in Ukraine it rapidly spread further and caused billions of dollars of damage, reflecting how easily cyber weapons can get beyond the control of their makers.

Cyberwarfare and zero-day attack stockpiles
Zero-day vulnerabilities are bugs or flaws in code that can give attackers access to or control over systems, but which have not yet been discovered and fixed by software companies. These flaws are particularly prized because there will likely be no way to stop hackers exploiting them. There is a thriving trade in zero-day exploits that allow hackers to sidestep security: very handy for nations looking to build unstoppable cyber weapons. It is believed that many nations have stock piles of zero day exploits to use for either cyber espionage or as part of elaborate cyber weapons. Zero day exploits formed a key part of the Stuxnet cyberweapon (see below).

One issue with cyber weapons, particularly those using zero-day exploits is that -- unlike a conventional bomb or missile -- a cyber weapon can be analysed and even potentially repurposed and re-used by the country or group it was used against.

One good example of this is shown by the WannaCry ransomware attack, which caused chaos in May 2017. The ransomware proved so virulent because it was supercharged with a zero-day vulnerability that had been stockpiled by the NSA, presumably to use in cyber espionage. But the tool was somehow acquired by the Shadow Brokers hacking group (quite how is extremely unclear) which then leaked it online. Once this happened other ransomware writers incorporated it into their software, making it vastly more powerful.

This risk of unexpected consequences mean that cyber weapons and tools have to be handled -- and deployed -- with great care. There is also the further risk that thanks to the hyper-connected world we live in that these weapons can spread and also cause much greater chaos than planned, which is what may have happened in the case of the Ukrainian NotPetya ransomware attack.

Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto

What is Stuxnet?

Stuxnet is a computer worm that targets industrial control systems, but is most famous for most likely being the first genuine cyber weapon, in that it was designed to inflict physical damage.

It was developed by the US and Israel (although they have never confirmed this) to target the Iranian nuclear programme. The worm, first spotted in 2010, targeted specific Siemens industrial control systems, and seemed to be targeting the systems controlling the centrifuges in the Iranian uranium enrichment project -- apparently damaging 1,000 of these centrifuges and delaying the project, although the overall impact on the programme is not clear.

Stuxnet was a complicated worm, using four different zero-day exploits and likely took millions of dollars of research and months or years of work to create.

Is cyberwarfare escalation a concern?

There is a definite risk that we are at the early stages of a cyberwar arms race: as countries realise that having a cyberwarfare strategy is necessary they will increase spending and start to stockpile weapons, just like any other arms race. That means there could be more nations stockpiling zero-day attacks, which means more holes in software not being patched, which makes us all less secure. And countries with stockpiles of cyber weapons may mean cyber conflicts are able to escalate quicker. One of the big problems is that these programmes tend to be developed in secret with very little oversight and accountability and with mirky rules of engagement.

What are the targets in cyberwar?

Military systems are an obvious target: preventing commanders from communicating with their troops or seeing where the enemy is would give an attacker a major advantage.

However, because most developed economies rely on computerised systems for everything from power to food and transport, many governments are very worried that rival states may target critical national infrastructure. Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, or industrial control systems -- which run factories, power stations and other industrial processes -- are a big target, as Stuxnet showed.

These systems can be decades old and were rarely designed with security as a priority, but are increasingly being connected to the internet to make them more efficient or easy to monitor. But this also makes these systems more vulnerable to attack, and security is rarely upgraded because the organisations operating them do not consider themselves to be a target.

A short history of cyberwar

For many people, 2007 was when cyberwar went from the theoretical to the actual.

When the government of the eastern European state of Estonia announced plans to move a Soviet war memorial, it found itself under a furious digital bombardment that knocked banks and government services offline (the attack is generally considered to have been Russian hackers; Russian authorities denied any knowledge). However, the DDoS attacks on Estonia did not create physical damage and, while a significant event, were not considered to have risen to the level of actual cyberwarfare.

Another cyberwarfare milestone was hit the same year, however, when the Idaho National Laboratory proved, via the Aurora Generator Test, that a digital attack could be used to destroy physical objects -- in this case a generator.

The Stuxnet malware attack took place in 2010, which proved that malware could impact the physical world.

Since then there has been a steady stream of stories: in 2013, the NSA said it had stopped a plot by an unnamed nation -- believed to be China -- to attack the BIOS chip in PCs, rendering them unusable. In 2014, there was the attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, blamed by many on North Korea, which showed that it was not just government systems and data that could be targeted by state-backed hackers.

Perhaps most seriously, just before Christmas in 2015, hackers managed to disrupt the power supply in parts of Ukraine, by using a well-known Trojan called BlackEnergy. In March 2016, seven Iranian hackers were accused of trying to shut down a New York dam in a federal grand jury indictment.

Nations are rapidly building cyber defence and offence capabilities and NATO in 2014 took the important step of confirming that a cyberattack on one of its members would be enough to allow them to invoke Article 5, the collective defence mechanism at the heart of the alliance. In 2016, it then defined cyberspace as an "operational domain" -- an area in which conflict can occur: the internet had officially become a battlefield.

Cyberwar and the Internet of Things

Big industrial control systems or military networks are often considered the main targets in cyberwarfare but one consequence of the rise of the Internet of Things may be to bring the battlefield into our homes.

"Our adversaries have capabilities to hold at risk US critical infrastructure as well as the broader ecosystem of connected consumer and industrial devices known as the Internet of Things," said a US intelligence community briefing from January 2017. Connected thermostats, cameras, and cookers could all be used either to spy on citizens of another country, or to cause havoc if they were hacked. Not all IoT devices are in homes; hospitals and factories and smart cities are now filled with sensors and other devices which means that the real-world impact of an IoT outage could be widely felt.

How do you defend against cyberwarfare?

The same cybersecurity practices that will protect against everyday hackers and cyber crooks will provide some protection against state-backed cyberattackers, who use many of the same techniques.

That means covering the basics: changing default passwords and making passwords hard to crack, not using the same password for different systems, making sure that all systems are patched and up-to-date (including the use of antivirus software), ensuring that systems are only connected to the internet if necessary and making sure that essential data is backed up securely. This may be enough to stop some attackers or at least give them enough extra work to do that they switch to an easier target.

Recognising that your organisation can be a target is an important step: even if your organisation is not an obvious target for hackers motivated by greed (who would hack a sewage works for money?), you may be a priority for hackers looking to create chaos.

However, for particularly high-value targets this is unlikely to be enough: these attacks are called 'advanced and persistent'. In this case it may be hard to stop them at the boundary and additional cybersecurity investments will be needed: strong encryption, multi-factor authentication, and advanced network monitoring. It may well be that you cannot stop them penetrating your network, but you may be able to stop them doing any damage.

At a higher level, nations and groups of states are developing their own cyber defence strategies. The European Union recently announced plans to work on a cyber defence plan which it will invoke if it faces a major, cross-border cyberattack, and plans to work with NATO on cyber defence exercises. However, not all nations consider such planning to be a particularly high priority.
What is cyber deterrence?
More broadly, to prevent cyberwar incidents, countries need to talk more: to understand where the boundaries lie and which kinds of behaviour are acceptable. Until that is done there is always the risk of misunderstanding and escalation.

Just as nations attempt to deter rivals from attacking in conventional weapons, so countries are developing the concept of cyber deterrence to help to prevent digital attacks from occurring in the first place -- by making the cost of the attack too high for any potential assailant.

One way of doing that is securing and hardening their own computer systems so that is becomes very hard -- and very expensive -- for any attacker to find weaknesses. Thanks to the swiss-cheese nature of so many computer systems the attackers will still have the advantage here.
What is cyber espionage?
The other option is to impose costs on the attackers through sanctions, criminal investigations or even the threat of striking back. Most recently the US in particular has been attempting to create deterrence through a policy of naming-and-shaming, in particular using indictments to name particular individuals it believes are responsible for carrying out state-backed cyber attacks.However, as hackers (from all nations) continue to poke and pry at the computer systems of their rivals, it would seem that cyber deterrence is at best a work in progress.

Closely related but separate to cyberwarfare is cyber espionage, whereby hackers infiltrate computer systems and networks to steal data and often intellectual property. There have been plenty of examples of this in recent years: for example the hack on the US Office of Personnel Management, which saw the records of 21 million US citizens stolen, including five million sets of fingerprints, was most likely carried out by Chinese state-backed hackers.

Perhaps even more infamous: the hacking attacks in the run up to the 2016 US Presidential elections and the theft of emails from the Democratic National Committee: US intelligence said that Russia was behind the attacks.

The aim of cyber espionage is to steal, not to do damage, but it's arguable that such attacks can also have a bigger impact. Law scholars are, for example, split on whether the hacks on the DNC and the subsequent leaking of the emails could be illegal under international law.

Some argue that it mounts up to meddling in the affairs of another state and therefore some kind of response, such as hacking back, would have been justified; others argue that it was just below the threshold required.

As such the line between cyberwarfare and cyber espionage is a blurred one: certainly the behaviour necessary is similar for both -- sneaking into networks, looking for flaws in software -- but only the outcome is different; stealing rather than destroying. For defenders it's especially hard to tell the difference between an enemy probing a network looking for flaws to exploit and an enemy probing a network to find secrets.

"Infiltrations in US critical infrastructure -- when viewed in the light of incidents like these -- can look like preparations for future attacks that could be intended to harm Americans, or at least to deter the United States and other countries from protecting and defending our vital interests," then- NSA chief Rogers said in testimony to the US Senate.

Cyberwarfare and information warfare

Closely related to cyberwarfare is the concept of information warfare; that is, the use of disinformation and propaganda in order to influence others -- like the citizens of another state.

This disinformation might use documents stolen by hackers and published -- either complete or modified by the attackers to suit their purpose. It may also see the use of social media (and broader media) to share incorrect stories.

While Western strategists tend to see cyberwarfare and hybrid information warfare as separate entities, some analysts say that Chinese and Russia military theorists see the two as closely linked. Indeed it is possible that Western military strategists have been planning for the wrong type of cyberwar as a result.

Image: NATO​

What are cyber wargames?

One of the ways countries are preparing to defend against cyberwarfare is with giant cyber defence wargames, which pit a 'red team' of attackers against a 'blue team' of defenders.

Some of biggest international cyber defence exercises, like the NATO-backed Locked Shields event, can see as many as 900 cybersecurity experts sharpening their skills. In Locked Shields, the defending teams have to protect small, fictional, NATO member state Berylia from mounting cyberattacks by rival nation Crimsonia.
When will cyberwar take place?
It's not just the technical aspects of cyberwarfare that are tested out; in September 2017 European Union defence ministers also took place in a table-top exercise called EU Cybrid, designed to test their strategy and decision making in the face of a major cyberattack on the European Union military organisations. The game aimed to help develop guidelines to be used in such a real-life crisis, and was the first exercise to involve politicians at such a senior level.

Some argue cyberwar will never take place; others argue cyberwar is taking place right now. The truth is of course somewhere in the middle.

Beyond the famous example of Stuxnet pure cyberwar operations will remain extremely rare, but already the concept has become absorbed into the broader set of military options that exist, just like other new technologies, such as submarines and aircraft, in the past.

It's possible that cyber weapons may also become a more common feature of low intensity skirmishes between nations because they are capable of causing confusion and chaos but not (too) much damage. But it's unlikely that a war would ever be fought purely with digital weapons because they are too expensive and hard to control and of limited impact.

That doesn't mean cyberwarfare is irrelevant -- rather that some kind of cyberwarfare capability will be part of pretty much every military engagement from now on.

Read more on cyberwarfare

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What is cyberwar? Everything you need to know about the frightening future of digital conflict | ZDNet

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Cyberwar and the Future of Cybersecurity Today's security threats have expanded in scope and seriousness. There can now be millions -- or even billions -- of dollars at risk when information security isn't handled properly.

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An overview of some of the recent attacks and potential threats.

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An overview of some of the recent attacks and potential threats.

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The nature of warfare has shifted from physical to online, seeing a deluge of state-sponsored cyber assaults on the West. The issue was put under the global spotlight last month (April), when the UK and US made an unprecedented joint statement blaming Russia for cyber-attacks on businesses and consumers.

The announcement - which is the first time two nations have come together to show solidarity in this area - saw the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), US Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warn businesses and citizens that Russia is exploiting network infrastructure devices such as routers around the world. The aim: To lay the groundwork for future attacks on critical infrastructure such as power stations and energy grids.

It is widely agreed that Russia is one of the most - if not the most - accomplished nations in the world in its ability to perform state sponsored attacks, disinformation and espionage. But China, North Korea and Iran are known to have dedicated cyber arsenals that are of increasing threat to the West.

In April, the US and UK governments hit out at state owned Chinese telecoms firm ZTE, with the NCSC writing to UK telecoms providers to warn that using the firm's equipment and services could pose a national security risk.

There have also been multiple reports of cyber-attacks targeting the power stations and electrical grids. The US blamed Russia for a recent strike on its electrical grid, while the NCSC held the Kremlin responsible for several attempts to disrupt UK infrastructure.

The physical damage possible as a result of these types of attacks is already clear. In August last year, a petrochemical company with a plant in Saudi Arabia was hit by an assault designed to trigger an explosion.

A similar attack, and one of the most famous examples, is the Stuxnet worm which was discovered 10 years ago after it ravaged an Iranian nuclear facility. The result of the ambush was a toolkit designed to specifically target the supervisory control and data acquisition ( SCADA) systems that power critical infrastructure. "Stuxnet created an entire family of weaponised malware," says Greg Sim, CEO at Glasswall.

Adding to complexity, threats such as this can lurk in industrial systems for years without being spotted, says Emily Orton, Co-founder at Darktrace. "We need to have a better, more sophisticated defense strategy protecting industrial networks from cyber-threats that manage to infiltrate these critical systems - and we must catch them early."

'Critical' services at risk from a cyber-assault also include the health sector and financial institutions. Last year, the WannaCry cryptoworm that tore through the UK's NHS was another warning of the damage possible from a nation state attack, when hundreds of machines were taken offline and operations cancelled.

At the same time, if an adversary succeeded in manipulating the stock exchange, a nation's economy could be devastated, Daniel Faraci, director of Grassroots Political Consulting says.

The damage can be considerable, but not all cyber-assaults focus on attacking systems directly. Many, especially those from Russia, aim to disrupt other nations for political gain through disinformation campaigns such as fake news.

Nations are aware of this and are finding ways to fight back, says Dr Jessica Barker, co-founder of Redacted Firm. For example, during the 2017 French election, lessons were learnt from the US presidential race that saw a spike in fake news and disinformation. "Emmanuel Macron's team were concerned about being hacked, and about fake news, so they put defenses in place including honeypots and fake data to confuse attackers," Barker says.

Businesses are also making an effort, but sometimes attackers are able to access systems due to simple mistakes. Many cyber-assaults start with employees, who are targeted via so-called phishing emails including a download or link to a malicious site.

" Attacks targeting Government, nuclear, water, energy, aviation and defence CNI are achieved by sending spear-phishing emails to employees or infecting websites in what is called a 'waterhole attack'," says Alicia Kearns, independent counter-disinformation and hybrid warfare consultant.

Adding to the risk in critical sectors, she points out: "A great deal of CNI sits in private hands, and attacks are more likely to be successful when targeting CNI supply chains, particularly those based offshore or held by small companies with less developed or sophisticated cyber security policies."

Kearns advises businesses to train their employees to identify dubious emails, invest in first-class cyber security systems and incorporate air gaps to protect from unsecured networks.

To strengthen the overall resilience of European critical infrastructure, multi-stakeholder collaboration bringing together governments, private sector operators and industry regulators is essential, says Elisabetta Zaccaria, chairman, Secure Chorus.

"This approach would accelerate the development of the required strategies, regulatory frameworks, common standards and tangible capabilities all aimed at achieving a harmonised regime across the relevant sectors."

It is also helpful for governments and businesses to look to other nations already applying best practice approaches to cyber security. Barker cites the example of Estonia, which has built up robust cyber defenses after a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks hit the country a decade ago. "They have put their efforts into cyber security and defense, setting up 'digital embassies' around the world with data mirrored and backed up."

Action is being taken but hackers are constantly improving their techniques, so it is important to stay one step ahead. State sponsored cyber assaults will continue and it is likely the threat will elevate further as world super powers continue to develop their war chests.

Faraci says it is only a matter of time before a major attack on the West. "I'm shocked that it hasn't happened already. I always recommend that people are prepared."

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Cyber Warfare: The Threat From Nation States

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The nature of warfare has shifted from physical to online, seeing a deluge of state-sponsored cyber assaults on the West. The issue was put under the global spotlight last month (April), when the UK and US made an unprecedented joint statement blaming Russia for cyber-attacks on businesses and consumers.

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This article outlines some of the tensions in Congress over U.S. nuclear spending and policies as of May 2019.

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This article outlines some of the tensions in Congress over U.S. nuclear spending and policies as of May 2019.

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On issues ranging from the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to whether to leave open the possibility of launching a nuclear first strike, leading Democrats in the House and Republicans in the Senate have been meticulously laying out their cases. Those debates will come to a head soon, as the Senate Armed Services Committee begins to consider its version of the defense policy bill in two weeks.

The Trump administration's nuclear posture review, released February 2018, largely follows the Obama administration's nuclear modernization plans, but also calls for new weapons such as a so-called low-yield warhead and a new sea-launched cruise missile.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated modernizing the nuclear arsenal will cost more than $1 trillion over the next 30 years.

One of the first hearings Smith held as chairman was on outside experts' views on U.S. nuclear policy, and two of his major public addresses since the midterm elections have been at nuclear conferences.

In the hearing and speeches, he questioned the need for the nuclear triad, said he wants to "kill" the low-yield warhead and blasted Trump for casting aside nuclear treaties.

In late January, Smith also re-introduced his "No First Use Act" - with backing from presidential candidate Sen. (D-Mass.) - that would make it U.S. policy not to strike first with nuclear weapons.

Smith told The Hill this week he is not yet sure what exactly he'll put in his version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), saying he is still getting a feel for where his members are on the issue.

His committee isn't scheduled to begin considering the bill until June. Generally, he said, he is eying three areas to address: new weapons such the low-yield warhead, the triad and nuclear dialogue with Russia and China.

"We're still in that laying out the case mode," he said. "My overarching goal here is to try to make nuclear war less likely. And there's a lot of different pieces to it, but awareness that we're stumbling into another nuclear arms race, trying to figure out what we can do to increase dialogue with Russia and China and renew arms control discussions so we don't put ourselves in that positions - all of those things are part of it."

One thing Smith did say is likely to be in the bill is language supporting the New START Treaty, which caps the number of deployed nuclear warheads allowed to the United States and Russia. The treaty is up for extension in 2021, and Trump has indicated he wants China to join the pact as a condition for renewal - something supporters of the treaty describe as a "poison pill."

"I think we'll probably have some statement on New START, an expression that we need to stay in it," Smith said. "If we need to update it fine, but let's not abandon arms control discussions."

At the nuclear hearing, Smith said he did not think intercontinental ballistic missiles - the ground component of the triad - are necessary for U.S. nuclear deterrence because of the air and sea components.

Smith later walked the comment back, saying at one of his speeches he wasn't sure if the best approach to reduce the size of the arsenal is to eliminate a leg of the triad or cut the number of warheads from each, but not before he got fierce backlash from Senate Republicans.

Fischer issued a statement in March saying Smith's comments were "dangerous" and "misguided."

At a hearing with the U.S. general in charge of the nuclear arsenal, Inhofe noted that "some are saying that is an area where we could be making cuts at this time" and asked about the significance of nuclear modernization and keeping all three legs of the triad.

"It is the most important element of our national defense," U.S. Strategic Command chief Gen. John Hyten replied on modernization. On the triad, he added, "because of the capabilities of each leg of the triad, I have the ability to respond to any threat."

Asked recently about his line of questioning at hearings and his plans for the defense bill, Inhofe said he hopes to address the "slight disagreement" between him and the House on the issue.

"All of the witnesses have been and said that's the great single threat that we are facing today," he said. "I think that we could put to bed the idea that we're not going to continue with or re-enact our modernization program to put ourselves ahead of our opposition that's out there being very busy, both Russia and China."

"I think the main thing is we have the triad," he added. "That means three, and we got to keep all three defenses out there and in a position that we can use them hoping that it will not be necessary. But if we don't have them, it would be necessary."

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Congress readies for battle over nuclear policy

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On issues ranging from the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to whether to leave open the possibility of launching a nuclear first strike, leading Democrats in the House and Republicans in the Senate have been meticulously laying out their cases.

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This article explains the pros and cons surrounding the recent production of new low yield nuclear warheads by the U.S.

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This article explains the pros and cons surrounding the recent production of new low yield nuclear warheads by the U.S.

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The US has begun making a new, low-yield nuclear warhead for its Trident missiles that arms control advocates warn could lower the threshold for a nuclear conflict.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced in an email it had started manufacturing the weapon at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Texas, as ordered by Donald Trump's nuclear posture review (NPR) last year.

The NNSA said the first of the new warheads had come off the production line and that it was on schedule to deliver the first batch - an unspecified number referred to as "initial operational capability" - before the end of September, according to the email, first sent in response to an enquiry from Exchange Monitor, which covers the nuclear weapons complex.
US to loosen nuclear weapons constraints and develop more 'usable' warheads
The new weapon, the W76-2, is a modification of the existing Trident warhead. Stephen Young, a senior Washington representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said its yield had most likely been cut by taking away one stage from the original two-stage, W76 thermonuclear device.

"As best we can tell, the only requirement is to replace the existing secondary, or second stage, with a dummy version, which is what they do every time they test fly a missile," Young said, adding that the amount of tritium, a hydrogen isotope, may also be adjusted. The result would be to reduce its explosive power from 100 kilotons of TNT, to about five - approximately a third of the force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The Trump administration has argued the development of a low-yield weapon would make nuclear war less likely, by giving the US a more flexible deterrent. It would counter any enemy (particularly Russian) perception that the US would balk at using its own fearsome arsenal in response to a limited nuclear attack because its missiles were all in the hundreds of kilotons range and "too big to use", because they would cause untold civilian casualties.

Low-yield weapons "help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely", the 2018 nuclear posture review said.

To what extent does this signal a new willingness on the part of the US to start using strategic nuclear weapons?

Hans Kristensen, Federation of American Scientists

Many critics say that is an optimistic scenario that assumes there will be no miscalculation on the US side.

"There are many other scenarios, especially with a president who takes pride in his unpredictability and has literally asked: ' Why can't we use our nuclear weapons? '", Young said.

Melissa Hanham of the One Earth Future foundation pointed out that adversaries would have no way of knowing if a full-force Trident was being fired at them, or its low-yield cousin.

"Hey all you nuclear powers out there. We're just going to trust that you recognize this is "just a little nuclear weapon" and won't retaliate with all you've got," Hanham wrote in a tweet. "Remember! The US only intends to nuke you "a little bit.""

Hans Kristensen, the director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists said the new warhead marked a sharp break from the Obama administration policy of making no new weapons or capabilities. He said it risked starting an arms race with Russia involving smaller nuclear weapons.

"To what extent does this signal a new willingness on the part of the US to start using strategic nuclear weapons in a tactical and very limited way early in a potential conflict?" Kristensen asked. "Frankly, mission creep is my greatest worry about this."

There has been a spate of developments signalling that a new arms race is gathering pace. Vladimir Putin has unveiled a new generation of Russian weapons, and Russia's suspected development of an cruise missile banned under the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.

Trump has declared he will take the US out of the treaty, and the administration is expected to suspend compliance and serve six months' notice of withdrawal on Saturday.

The Trump nuclear weapons review expanded an ambitious modernisation plan already underway. It ordered work to start on a new sea-launched cruise missile and blurred the line between the use of conventional and nuclear weapons.

The NPR said the US could respond with nuclear weapons against "significant non-nuclear strategic attacks," including attacks on "civilian population or infrastructure". It also said the US would "strengthen the integration of nuclear and non-nuclear military planning".

It is not inevitable that all of Trump's nuclear weapons plans will be pursued. Since the funds for the initial batch of warheads was approved, Democrats have taken over Congress, and are sceptical about their cost and purposes.

Last week, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report projecting the nuclear weapons costs over the next decade as nearly a half trillion dollars, up 23% from the last estimate two years ago.

"I don't think we need as many as they're talking about," Adam Smith, the new head of the House armed services committee, said in a C-Span interview. "I just don't think we can afford what the NPR is calling for and I don't think it is necessary."

The nuclear weapons budget is likely to be an important battlefield in the struggle between Trump and congressional Democrats. The president is increasingly surrounding himself with Reagan-era nuclear hawks, including John Bolton, his national security adviser and who pushed for the INF to be jettisoned. Bolton's new deputy, Charles Kupperman, once argued a nuclear war could be won "in the classical sense" if one side emerged the stronger, even if there were tens of millions of casualties.

Speaking to reporters last week, former defence secretary William Perry, an arms control advocate, said he was less worried about the number of nuclear warheads left in the world than by the return of cold war talk about such weapons being "usable".

"The belief that there might be tactical advantage using nuclear weapons - which I haven't heard that being openly discussed in the United States or in Russia for a good many years - is happening now in those countries which I think is extremely distressing," Perry said.

" That's a very dangerous belief."
Topics

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US nuclear weapons: first low-yield warheads roll off the production line

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The US has begun making a new, low-yield nuclear warhead for its Trident missiles that arms control advocates warn could lower the threshold for a nuclear conflict. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced in an email it had started manufacturing the weapon at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Texas, as ordered by Donald Trump's nuclear posture review (NPR) last year.

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The is the Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review Report for 2018.

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The is the Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review Report for 2018.

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Editorial arguing that the US should reduce its support for NATO.

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Editorial arguing that the US should reduce its support for NATO.

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In our personal lives, we know that many important ties are not necessarily permanent. Friendships end; marriages break up; once-loyal consumers stop shopping at one store in favor of a different one. If a relationship no longer serves the needs of one or more parties, it usually makes sense to move on.

That logic holds for partnerships among nations. The 19th-century British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston said, "Nations have no permanent friends or allies; they only have permanent interests." But the United States government has often behaved as though our membership in NATO should be eternal.

There is no reason it should be. Well, maybe one reason: that President Donald Trump has the urge to get out. Because his motives are rooted in ignorance, petulance and a desire to appease Russian President Vladimir Putin, it's easy to miss that there is a legitimate case for a gradual and orderly American withdrawal from the alliance.

Formed in the aftermath of two world wars that began in Europe, NATO was created for two basic purposes: deterring communist aggression and preserving peace. It performed that function well, despite many disagreements among the members, which now number 29 in Europe and North America. The postwar military alliance enabled Western Europe to build freedom and prosperity, in vivid contrast with the brute misery on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

But the original purposes have gone the way of the Habsburg empire. The regime left by Lenin and Stalin collapsed. Eastern European nations gained their independence from Moscow. Germany grew into a model democracy that bothers no one.

Today, Russia has a dictatorial president who jails and kills dissidents, occupies a chunk of Ukraine and plots to undermine Western systems - most notably ours. But the military threat that the Kremlin once represented has shriveled.

Putin's chief focus is preserving his own power. Whatever military power he can command pales next to the combined might of the European nations in NATO - which together spend four times more on defense than Russia does. Britain and France also have their own nuclear weapons.

Harvard international relations scholar Stephen Walt notes that the European Union has three times the population of Russia and eight times the gross domestic product. "Russia's long-term prospects are gloomy as its population shrinks and ages and as oil and gas become less and less important in the global economy," he wrote in Foreign Policy. "Russia can cause trouble of various kinds in nearby areas, but there is no chance that it could expand significantly (or effectively rule any territories it seized)."

NATO also served to keep Germany, the source of so much trouble in the first half of the 20th century, from going rogue once again. But Germans have become addicted to multilateralism. Over the past couple of decades, Berlin has more often felt the need to restrain Washington than the other way around.

The end of the Cold War left NATO searching for a reason to exist. It expanded to include countries on Russia's doorstep, without any sound strategic rationale. The enlargement fostered anxiety and resentment in the Kremlin while committing the U.S. to defend countries that most Americans would not want their sons and daughters to die for.

Trump has often griped that our allies expect us to carry too much of the load. That complaint has a distinguished pedigree. In 2011, Robert Gates, who was defense secretary under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, castigated allies "who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership but don't want to share the risks and the costs."

Eight years later, not much has changed. The U.S. spends 3.6 percent of its GDP on defense. According to NATO, just five European countries spend as much as 2 percent, and Germany spends just 1.2 percent. If our allies were obliged to provide for their own defense without us, they could easily afford to do so.

But a long-standing and valuable relationship should be ended only for defensible motives, under a rational plan and at an opportune time. If Trump abandons NATO, though, it's not likely these conditions will be met.

Under a serious president with a serious approach to foreign relations, it would be possible to have a serious debate about how to phase out America's military role in Europe in a prudent, responsible way. Under Trump, even good ideas can become bad policies.

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So Trump wants to leave NATO? It's not really a bad idea.

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In our personal lives, we know that many important ties are not necessarily permanent. Friendships end; marriages break up; once-loyal consumers stop shopping at one store in favor of a different one. If a relationship no longer serves the needs of one or more parties, it usually makes sense to move on.

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Editorial explaining why the US should continue to support NATO.

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Editorial explaining why the US should continue to support NATO.

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AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization saw its 70th anniversary on April 4th, and may very well be the most successful alliance in history. Despite a record of successfully deterring a third world war and supporting European integration, Americans can be dismissive of the Alliance and discount its utility. The United States regularly complains their NATO allies do not contribute enough to their own security in Europe-whether measured in meeting the two percent of gross domestic product commitment or having sufficient forces equipped and ready for operations.[1]

These complaints have merit, but they are not worth discounting the Alliance or moving away from it. NATO has enabled and supported U.S. foreign policy since the early days of the Cold War and continues to do so today. Given the 2018 National Defense Strategy's emphasis on the return of great power competition, NATO's importance to the United States will grow as competition intensifies.[2] The United States should consider reinforcing NATO and reassuring its NATO allies of continued American commitment. This would maintain NATO as a resource for implementing U.S. foreign policy.

NATO was a primary mechanism for the United States to balance against the Soviet Union and prevent them from strengthening their hand in Europe, which was central to the policy of containment. For the United States, NATO was a way to deter Soviet aggression and deny Soviet expansion into Western Europe. Early on, it became clear the Soviet Union and its former allies would find themselves on opposing ideological sides. Winston Churchill expressed the West's trepidation toward Soviet intent when he described an "iron curtain" descending across Europe, dividing free and liberal Europe from European capitals under Soviet control.[3] In the emerging bipolar structure of the international system, the United States looked to secure its position and national interests against the world's other superpower. This was one of the factors for early U.S. support for NATO.[4]

NATO and the Soviet Union (Ganna Naronina)

Even before the Korean War and United States Objectives and Programs for National Security 68 (better known as NSC 68), which established the policy of containment, the United States had already begun looking for ways to limit the expansion of communism.[5] Soviet actions against self-determination in Eastern Europe was taken as evidence of malign intent, and U.S. support for Greece and Turkey was an early opportunity for the United States to counter Soviet machinations. In a 1947 speech, President Harry Truman defined U.S. support for Greece and Turkey and outlined a U.S. policy that sought to protect the fragile liberal regimes of Western Europe from Soviet expansion as they rebuilt physically, socially, and politically. This policy, the Truman Doctrine, directly tied European and U.S. national security.

As this and other early Cold War crises defined the bipolar U.S.-Soviet relationship, the United States used NATO to bolster its policy of containment. Extending containment led the United States to support accession of Greece and Turkey into NATO during the first round of expansion in 1952. This protected the southern flank of Europe by extending the alliance's collective security agreement to the Balkans and denied Soviet further access to Europe and the Middle East.[6] This early use of NATO would become the blueprint for enacting the policy of containment through the expansion of the alliance.

The "unipolar moment" that ensued after the fall of the Soviet Union saw the United States wield unrivaled power.[7] The bipolar structure of the international system that largely defined the Cold War's geo-strategic environment no longer existed. Instead of U.S. policy containing communism and the Soviet Union, it looked to use American power to promote democracy and liberal values many saw as universal, and NATO lent legitimacy to the use of American force in the aftermath of the Cold War.[8]

NATO was a willing partner in the Balkans during the 1990s, and the Alliance followed a familiar pattern throughout the decade. The United States led numerous international interventions centered around collective action in concert with its NATO allies. The first Gulf War and interventions in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo all fit this pattern. Kosovo exemplifies the U.S. approach to NATO at that time.

U.S. Marines from the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion pass flags of the NATO nations and messages of thanks painted on the retaining wall of a road in a village in Kosovo on July 5, 1999. (SGT Craig/DOD Photo)

Kosovo was NATO's first war and a vehicle to apply American power after the Cold War. With no overarching threat focusing U.S. foreign policy, American interests expanded. The United States again saw its security intertwined with that of Europe's and sought to maintain regional security in Europe while protecting human rights and values.[9] The new twist was the protection of human rights, and the genocide in the Balkans threatened both.[10] The decision to use force in Kosovo was controversial, and the United States faced opposition at home and internationally. Still, the United States led NATO operations in Kosovo, providing the architecture for the military campaign and conducting most of NATO's airstrikes.[11] NATO provided legitimacy for the American use of force in the unipolar moment.[12] When the United States was unable to secure a United Nations authorization to use force in Kosovo, NATO became the best avenue to employ force with international legitimacy. Through NATO's interventions in Kosovo and Bosnia in the 1990s, the United States was able to pursue its foreign policy interests while giving NATO a raison d'être in the absence of the Soviet threat. Al-Qaeda's attacks on 9/11 changed that and led NATO to return to its original collective defense mandate.

Al-Qaeda's attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, led much of the world to rally with the United States in support. This included the only time in NATO's history when it invoked Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty-that an attack on one is an attack on all. NATO members Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, and Norway joined the United States and Australia in the early offensive operations in Afghanistan.[13] These initial NATO elements eventually expanded into the International Security Assistance Force and supported Operation Enduring Freedom across Afghanistan. The expansion of NATO support helped to mitigate the lack of U.S. forces due to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. At its height, over 130,000 troops supported the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force mission, which included security force assistance, reconstruction, and counter-terrorism operations.

NATO and ISAF (Deutsche Welle)

These were missions central to the U.S. approach during Operation Enduring Freedom. The International Security Assistance Force, in and of itself, was not decisive in Afghanistan, but it did buy strategic space for the United States to fight two simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq simultaneously as part of the Freedom Agenda.[14] Americans should keep these events in mind and look to strengthen the Alliance in this emerging period of great power competition. Doing so would assure America's NATO allies, help deter Russia, and preserve a vehicle to further American interests.

The United States can strengthen the Alliance by demonstrating a renewed commitment to regional security. No one suggests a return to the U.S. military footprint of the Cold War or the 1990s, but augmenting the rotational forces in Europe with permanently stationed capabilities may serve this purpose. Increasing the capability to expand the U.S. presence is a sound option to strengthen U.S. ties to NATO. Returning a land command and control capability, like that of the Army's V Corps, which inactivated in 2012, would signal greater U.S. capacity for contingency operations in Europe.[15] The United States maintains a similar capability for air assets in Europe, and restoring a land capability would be a reassuring step.[16] Additional land-based fires capability would support deterrence.

A land-based fires capability would speak to the potential for a greater U.S. military presence, if necessary, in Europe. Russia has a significant artillery capability that would challenge NATO forces in a crisis, and a U.S. artillery capability in Europe to counter Russia's tactical advantage would further reassure U.S. allies and support deterrence.[17] Stationing a fires capability in Europe also enables the U.S. military to have an intermediate-range fires capability on the ground once the United States completes withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.[18] This is important, because, in a crisis, the United States may not be able to deploy adequate forces to Europe without increasing the risk of miscalculation and inadvertent escalation given the danger of these weapons and the fear they instilled prior to the INF Treaty in 1987.[19] U.S. allies in Europe may also balk at the option to deploy a missile deployment during a period of increased tensions.[20] Placing these capabilities forward is a way to reinforce NATO and posture the United States to compete in the latest period of great power competition.

The NATO alliance has been a key element of U.S. foreign policy since its founding in 1949 and has enabled U.S. foreign policy throughout its 70 years of existence. Given a return to great power competition, a strengthened NATO can be a decisive advantage for the United States in Europe and elsewhere. Neither Russia nor China have an alliance or partnership that rivals NATO, which has been a decisive advantage for the United States in pursuit of foreign policy ends. NATO has been key to U.S. national security and self-interest suggests the United States should strengthen and enhance the Alliance. Facing great power competition, NATO may just be the strategic advantage the United States needs to be successful in this emerging period of competition.

Irvin Oliver is a U.S. Army officer and strategist. The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not represent the views of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

This article appeared originally at Strategy Bridge.

Notes:

[1] Stephen Collinson, "Trump Is Not the First US President to Bemoan NATO Spending... But No One Did It Like This," CNN.com, July 4, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/04/politics/trump-us-presidents-nato-defense-spending/index.html (Accessed March 10, 2018).

[2] U.S. Department of Defense, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf (Accessed March 16, 2019).

[3] Winston Churchill, "The Sinews of Peace ('Iron Curtain Speech')," March 5, 1946, https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/the-sinews-of-peace/ (Accessed February 15, 2019).

[4] P. 29, John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment,

[5] Ibid., p. 88.

[6] Hamilton Fish Armstrong, "Eisenhower's Right Flank," Foreign Affairs, July 1951, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/southeastern-europe/1951-07-01/eisenhowers-right-flank (Accessed February 15, 2019).

[7] Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment," Foreign Affairs, 1990, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1991-02-01/unipolar-moment (Accessed March 4, 2019).

[8] P. 173, Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776, 1997, Houghton Mifflin, New York.

[9] P. 12, Ivo H. Daalder and Michael E. O'Hanlon, Winning Ugly: NATO's War to Save Kosovo, 2000, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, D.C.

[10] Walter Isaacson, "Madeline's War," Time, May 9, 1999, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,24446,00.html (Accessed February 9, 2019).

[11] P. 14, Daniel L. Haulman, "The U.S. Air Force in the Air War Over Serbia, 1999," Air Power History, Summer 2015, https://media.defense.gov/2016/Mar/17/2001481638/-1/-1/0/PAGES%20FROM%20AIR_POWER_HISTORY_SUMMER-2015.PDF (Accessed March 4, 2019).

[12] Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne, "The Case Against Intervention in Kosovo," The Nation, April 1, 1999, https://www.thenation.com/article/case-against-intervention-kosovo/ (Accessed March 16, 2019).

[13] P. 90, Seth G. Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, Norton Press, NY, 2010.

[14] Paul R. Pillar, "Breaking Down the Freedom Agenda," National Interest, January 5, 2014, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/backhanded-democratization-the-middle-east-9669 (Accessed April 2, 2019).

[15] U.S. Army Press Release, "V Corps Inactivates After Nearly a Century of Service to the U.S. Army," Army.mil, June 12, 2013, https://www.army.mil/article/105339/v_corps_inactivates_after_nearly_a_century_of_service_to_us_army (Accessed April 2, 2019).

[16] U.S. Air Force Press Release, "603rd Open Doors to New AOC," Af.mil, October 13, 2011, https://www.ramstein.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/304313/603rd-opens-doors-to-new-aoc/ (Accessed April 2, 2019).

[17] Dan Gouré, "The Artillery Systems That Could Be Future Command's First Big Success," Real Clear Defense, January 28, 2019, https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/01/28/the_artillery_systems_that_could_be_futures_commands_first_big_success_114144.html (Accessed April 2, 2019).

[18] U.S. Department of State Press Release, "U.S. Intent to Withdraw From the INF Treaty," State.gov, February 2, 2019, https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2019/02/288722.htm (Accessed April 2, 2019).

[19] Andrew E. Kramer and Megan Specia, "What Is the INF Treaty and Why Does It Matter?" New York Times, February 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/world/europe/inf-treaty.html (Accessed April 2, 2019).

[20] Gustav Gressel, "Russia, Germany, and the INF: Will Berlin Break Its Silence?" European Council on Foreign Relations, February 6, 2019, https://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_russia_germany_and_the_inf_will_berlin_break_its_silence (Accessed April 2, 2019).

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north atlantic treaty organization (nato)

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Reconsidering NATO and U.S. Foreign Policy | RealClearDefense

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AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File The North Atlantic Treaty Organization saw its 70th anniversary on April 4th, and may very well be the most successful alliance in history. Despite a record of successfully deterring a third world war and supporting European integration, Americans can be dismissive of the Alliance and discount its utility.

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The history and present day goals of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the WB (World Bank) explained in 4 minutes.  This is a clear and useful video.

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The history and present day goals of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the WB (World Bank) explained in 4 minutes.  This is a clear and useful video.

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What's the difference between the IMF and the World Bank? | CNBC Explains

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An editorial about why the US. has to maintain a hard stance in its trade war with China.

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An editorial about why the US. has to maintain a hard stance in its trade war with China.

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Beijing persecutes minorities, threatens neighbors, and shows no signs of curtailing its unfair trade practices.

The U.S.-China trade spat is set to escalate this Friday, as Beijing has walked back some of its prior commitments to the Trump administration during negotiations between the two countries. In response, President Trump has promised to up the ante by increasing tariffs against Chinese products, a move sure to send a shiver down Beijing's spine.

For decades, the political establishment allowed China's unfair trade practices and hegemonic ambitions to go unchecked. But those failed policies of the past are no more. Trump is correct to stay resilient and hold Beijing's feet to the fire.

Trump's aggressive posture toward Beijing is consistent with his longtime concern that China poses a serious threat to American global dominance. "There are people who wish I wouldn't refer to China as our enemy," Trump noted in his 2015 book Crippled America. "But that's exactly what they are."

This tough-on-China mantra is in stark contrast to Trump's Democratic opponents on the 2020 campaign trail. At a recent political rally, Democratic frontrunner and former vice president Joe Biden negged those who consider China to be a serious geopolitical threat to the U.S.

"China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man!" noted Biden said to the crowd. "Guess what, they're not competition for us." As out of touch as Biden's statements may sound, his positions are fairly consistent with Washington's old consensus on China. Repeatedly, political elites have argued that through trade and integration into the U.S. economic order, China would democratize, liberalize, and open for business.

It is clear that these long-held assumptions haven't panned out. Rather than liberalize as its economy vastly expanded thanks to trade with the West, China has become more repressive and despotic and its markets have remained closed.

Nowhere is the fallacy better illustrated in than Beijing's crackdown on its religious minorities, which the Communist Party sees as a legitimate threat to its hold on political power. Arrests of Christians in China skyrocketed from 3,700 in 2017 to 100,000 in 2018. Churches are frequently destroyed by the government, and the Communist Party has taken a hand in rewriting certain passages of the Bible it deems unacceptable. Persecution is likely to worsen as China's Christian population continues to grow to an estimated 250 million believers by 2030.

Facing even more horrendous circumstances are China's Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group located largely in Xinjiang province. Approximately 1 million Uyghurs are being detained in state-run labor camps, according to a report from the United Nations. The prisoners are forced to work for little to no pay in brutal conditions while being constantly harassed and indoctrinated. To reporters touring one such facility, a group of imprisoned Uyghurs was forced to sing "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands."

As China's grip has tightened at home, its influence abroad has expanded. In accordance with President Xi Jinping's "great rejuvenation" of the country, China has undergone a massive military buildup while applying pressure on its former vassal states. Chinese officials have announced their intention to confront U.S. military assets across Asia while flexing its muscles against old rivals.

Beijing hopes to use its newfound military strength to coerce its former vassals back into its sphere of influence. During a meeting with other Asian nations in 2010, China made that intention crystal clear. "China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact," China's former foreign minister noted, looking directly at Singapore's top foreign diplomat.

Considering the serious upper hand that U.S. policymakers have given to China, did American businesses and workers at least come out ahead too? Not exactly. American companies still face serious challenges in gaining access to Chinese markets and conducting business in China.

Beijing deploys tariffs and heavy subsidies to boost state-owned enterprises to beat out American firms. It uses extensive red tape and technology transfers against American businesses to upend fair competition. And one can't forget Rust Belt communities that have seen massive numbers of manufacturing jobs move to China.

Given these challenges, it is imperative that Trump stays the course. Biden and company are still living in the same alternative reality that allowed Beijing to capitalize on American weakness to a point of no return. Trump is restoring balance to the relationship and recognizes the serious threat that China poses to the U.S.-led order.

Trump deserves credit for avoiding the mistakes of his predecessors and pushing back against China for its malign activities and empty promises.

Alex Titus is a policy adviser at America First Policies in Washington, D.C. @Atitus7

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America Must Take a Hard Line against China | National Review

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Beijing persecutes minorities, threatens neighbors, and shows no signs of curtailing its unfair trade practices. The U.S.-China trade spat is set to escalate this Friday, as Beijing has walked back some of its prior commitments to the Trump administration during negotiations between the two countries.

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A libertarian view of the costs of tariffs.

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A libertarian view of the costs of tariffs.

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Tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump during 2018 cost the U.S. economy $6.9 billion last year-above and beyond the $12.3 billion paid by American consumers and importers to the federal government.

That's the conclusion of a new economic analysis of the Trump trade war published this week by Centre for Economic Policy Research, a London-based think tank, by a trio of economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Princeton University, and Columbia University. The paper draws an important but sometimes ignored distinction between the cost of the tariffs as a form of taxation and the broader economic effects of raising barriers to trade. Americans are paying both those "seen" costs in the form of higher taxes, as well as the "unseen" spillover costs-known as "deadweight loss" in economist lingo -created by the tariffs.

By the end of last year, after ramping up tariffs over the course of several months, the deadweight loss of Trump's tariffs totaled $1.4 billion each month, according to Mary Amiti, Stephen J. Redding, and David Weinstein, the three researchers.

"We find that the U.S. tariffs were almost completely passed through into U.S. domestic prices, so that the entire incidence of the tariffs fell on domestic consumers and importers," they concluded.

Evidence of broader, negative economic consequences of the tariffs blows a major hole in the Trump administration's big three economic arguments for its protectionist trade policies.

First, Trump has argued that the tariffs benefit the U.S. government because they are generating revenue that could be used to close the budget deficit. This is technically correct because tariff revenue does flow into the U.S. Treasury, but the billions generated by the trade war has not slowed the growth of the federal budget defict. In any case, if the tariffs are draining $1.4 billion out of the economy every month beyond the cost of the taxes paid by U.S. importers, it becomes even more of a stretch for Trump to claim that the tariffs are benefiting the country, its economy, or the federal government.

"Our results imply that the tariff revenue the U.S. is now collecting is insufficient to compensate the losses being born by the consumers of imports," the researchers conclude.

The second argument Trump has made for the tariffs is that they are needed to create leverage on other nations in order to negotiate better trade deals. Trump has explicitly credited the tariffs with helping negotiate the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a more protectionist replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and has made it obvious that he believes tariffs on Chinese goods will pave the way to a new trade deal with China.

But Amiti, Redding, and Weinstein found "little evidence of such an improvement in the terms of trade." One of the main points of contention in the Trump administration's efforts to reach a trade deal with China has been the supposed theft of U.S. intellectual property by Chinese firms, but even if a future trade deal resulted in the Chinese paying an additional 25 percent in royalties for U.S. intellectual property, it would take three years of payments to make up for the damage inflicted on U.S. companies by the first 11 months of Trump's trade war.

Finally, Trump has claimed that tariffs will help resurrect American manufacturing jobs and prevent further offshoring of blue collar work to cheaper labor markets in Mexico, China, and elsewhere.

But even if the trade war could bring back 35,400 manufacturing jobs-equal to the number of American steel- and aluminum-producing jobs lost in the past decade-the deadweight loss to the economy would be about $195,000 per job, "which is almost four times more than the annual wage of a steel worker," the trio concludes.

An economic white paper is unlikely to sway Trump's opinion about tariffs-he's the Tariff Man, after all-but this analysis is the most comprehensive summary yet of the ongoing costs of the White House's misguided protectionism. More than a year after Trump assured Americans that his trade war would be "good, and easy to win," the data strongly suggest otherwise.

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Trump's Tariffs Cost the U.S. Economy $1.4 Billion Every Month

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Tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump during 2018 cost the U.S. economy $6.9 billion last year-above and beyond the $12.3 billion paid by American consumers and importers to the federal government.

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Summary of the Implications of the U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

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Summary of the Implications of the U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

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Surprising Leadership by the U.S. on Climate Change 

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Surprising Leadership by the U.S. on Climate Change 

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Hint - it connects to coal use.

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How the U.S. Became the Top Climate Leader - Despite Trump's Denialism

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President Trump announced the US would be pulling out of the Paris Accord it is still leading climate change efforts slashing CO2 emissions

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The U.N. is gearing up for a major summit on climate change. The U.S. representative to the U.N. has stated that she believes "both sides" of the climate debate.

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The U.N. is gearing up for a major summit on climate change. The U.S. representative to the U.N. has stated that she believes "both sides" of the climate debate.

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Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has kicked off a major United Nations push for progress on what he calls the defining issue of our time: climate change.

Guterres travelled to New Zealand on Sunday, from where he is set to visit several Pacific islands where rising sea levels are threatening the very existence of those small countries.

The stepped-up diplomacy will culminate with a climate action summit at the UN in September, an event billed as a last chance to prevent irreversible climate change, three years after the Paris agreement went into force.

"We are seeing everywhere a clear demonstration that we are not on track to achieve the objectives defined in the Paris agreement," Guterres said on the failure to limit rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial revolution levels.

In a strong message for action on climate change, Guterres said international political resolve was fading and it was the small island nations that were "really in the front line" and would suffer most.

In Fiji, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, Guterres will meet with families whose lives have been upended by cyclones, flooding and other extreme weather events.

Pacific island countries face an especially dire risk from climate change because of sea level rise. In some cases, low-lying countries could disappear completely.

Fiji is working to build a coalition of more than 90 countries from the Caribbean, Africa and Asia facing climate crisis.

"We hope that the secretary-general will draw far more inspiration from his first visit to go further, faster and deeper with the climate summit," Fiji's UN Ambassador Satyendra Prasad told AFP.

"We are very hopeful that the climate summit will mark a turning point."

- China: climate power -

Guterres on Sunday praised New Zealand's "extremely important" leadership on climate change -- Wellington has introduced legislation to become carbon neutral by 2050 -- but warned that international political resolve was fading.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, speaking at the joint press conference in Auckland, called climate change "the biggest challenge" facing the global community and said it would be "gross negligence" to avoid the issue.

But the UN push on climate change is shaping up amid geopolitical shifts: the United States under Donald Trump has decided to pull out of the Paris agreement to combat global warming, giving China more space to assert its views.

"The Trump administration's disdain for climate diplomacy has left China looking like the main guarantor of the Paris agreement," said Richard Gowan, UN director for the International Crisis Group.

"While China is increasingly active across the UN, other states are suspicious of its stances on human rights and development. But it is the indispensable power in climate talks now."

Trump announced in 2017 that the United States would exit the Paris agreement, but under the terms of the deal the withdrawal will only become effective in 2020.

The US administration is not taking part in summit preparations but has not said it will skip the event, according to UN officials.

Guterres' mission may also be further complicated by Trump's nomination of Kelly Knight Craft as UN ambassador.

Craft, who is married to a major coal magnate, raised eyebrows for declaring that she believed "both sides" of climate science, indicating she may well be out of sync with the UN on the issue.

- Plans, not speeches -

Guterres has told leaders to bring plans, not speeches, to the summit to be held in New York on September 23 during the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations.

The summit is seen as critical because of US resistance to discuss climate change at other forums including the G7 and G20, and again last week at a meeting of the Arctic Council in Finland.

"What people are looking for is countries to commit to major ambition increases in 2025 and 2030 at the summit or in 2020," said Nick Mabey, head of the E3G climate think tank.

This should include legally binding targets for countries to phase out coal, become climate neutral and invest in climate resilience, especially for the poorest countries, he added.

A string of apocalyptic reports on the state of the planet is bringing home the need for concrete steps.

One million species are on the brink of extinction. Carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, pushing targets from the Paris accord further out of reach.

UN climate envoy Luis Alfonso de Alba told AFP on Friday that he was optimistic about prospects for a breakthrough on climate, saying the dire predictions were having a galvanizing effect.

"The situation worldwide is quite different from what it was five to 10 years ago. Five to 10 years ago, countries were looking at their neighbours before acting," he said.

"Today, everybody has full conscience of the urgency to act, and they are not going to wait for their neighbours to act."

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UN kicks off major climate change effort

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Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has kicked off a major United Nations push for progress on what he calls the defining issue of our time: climate change. Guterres travelled to New Zealand on Sunday, from where he is set to visit several Pacific islands where rising sea levels are threatening the very existence of those small countries.

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Today, the 24 th conference of parties gathering - or COP 24 - of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has begun to conclude. As the biggest climate change meeting since the signing of the Paris Agreement, this is a significant moment in history, and one worth reflecting on, particularly as United States leadership continues to recede on this critical global issue.

In no uncertain terms, climate change is among the greatest international challenges of our time. It has truly strategic implications for the United States and its allies, and its effects and manifestations are rising in intensity and urgency by the day. The economic, social and security effects of a rapidly changing climate will be dramatic, and in managing this problem and mitigating its effects, the United States must showcase strong, dedicated leadership as the community of nations works towards credible and lasting solutions. Yet, what does "leadership" really mean for an issue as all-encompassing and international in nature as climate change?

Increasingly, and especially here in the U.S., there's developed an important distinction between the leadership that can be provided by a president or the federal government, and the wider values-based leadership that a country can deliver on major issues through the actions and efforts of businesses, state and local government, NGOs, and every-day citizens. Climate change is a leading example of this: where, through the collective leadership of "everyone else," the United States is continuing to act as a force for meaningful change despite the retrogressive thinking and recalcitrant behavior of the current Administration on this issue. That's what I call "American leadership" - or, leadership defined by the values and norms that have made America the greatest nation on the planet these many decades. And it doesn't require the U.S. government, or, "U.S. leadership," to be effective.

On climate change, U.S. leadership has been intermittent at best. President H.W. Bush and President Clinton both deeply embraced the climate challenge, before President George W. Bush famously walked away from the Kyoto Protocols in 2001. Towards the end of his Presidency, though, President Bush took important steps to generate international climate action, most importantly through the creation of what was then known as the Major Emitters Forum (now the Major Economies Forum) - a collection of the most important economies in the world. President Obama used this group to generate the first important steps towards what later became the Paris Climate Agreement. President Trump has reversed course, deciding that the United States will withdraw from the agreement in 2020 (absent major and highly unlikely re-negotiations).

As the global community gathered at the COP 24 climate summit, a meeting Brookings scholars such as Todd Stern, David Victor and Samantha Gross have tracked extensively, and something the current Administration has chosen to marginalize, this most recent shift in U.S. leadership is deeply troubling, both for the nation and the world.

This doesn't mean, however, that the U.S. is now irrelevant to the problem; in fact, it's essential - and this is where American leadership comes in. Though the absence of U.S. governmental leadership from climate change is deeply regrettable and the U.S. is, in fact, most impactful when its two forms of leadership are harmonized, it's not the same as saying that America is entirely absent from the picture. American carbon emissions have, in fact, declined steadily over the last several years. Indeed, America is the sixth fastest declining emitter in the world, ahead of countries like Germany, Canada and Japan. That's less because of governmental action than it is because of American leadership at work, to include the dynamism of the American private sector, the actions taken by city and state leaders, and the engaged efforts of philanthropies and civil society, as well as universities and think tanks. These groups represent the bedrock of American values and exceptionalism, and it's through them that America continues to lead in spite of the actions of current U.S. political leadership.

Despite its abdication of leadership on climate change, the Trump Administration's desire to claim any win as their own is resulting in senior officials trying and failing to claim credit for these limited successes from their fellow Americans. Recent Administration claims linking their decision on Paris to substantial carbon reduction successes are, in fact, specious. Indeed, the success in U.S. carbon reductions came explicitly from the momentum of the Obama and previous administrations' efforts and continued subnational efforts. Put differently, U.S. carbon reductions have occurred despite the current Administration, not because of it. And this, of course, says nothing about Trump Administration efforts to actively downplay key international climate reports, as well as those generated by the U.S. government itself.

That's a reflection of the new realities of American leadership in the world. Even if the U.S. federal government returns to a scientifically grounded view on climate change, government action alone will be insufficient to solve this problem. In fact, the same holds true for solving most of the pressing problems of the 21st century, and American leadership in this new era will have to adapt to be able to mobilize new centers of power and new dynamics of decision-making - especially as technology reshapes the boundaries of where governments can and cannot shape public opinion. American leadership will have to transcend bilateral reflexes and transactional relationships of 2018 to pull in as wide a subset of the world's major actors as is feasible.

Over the past quarter century, we've at times seen this dynamic already in action via the international coalitions that have emerged to tackle some of the world's toughest problems. These coalitions regularly involved a group of Western governments at their core, were mobilized in part through multilateral institutions, and were almost always forged, led, or ultimately shepherded to success by the transformational presence of the United States. When wielded with the right balance of ambition and self-restraint, U.S. power has proved again and again to be the most impactful guiding force in world affairs. In these special moments, our federal government was guided by its values - or to say it another way, U.S. and American leadership were indistinguishable.

The private sector, particularly the American one, has a critical role to play on this and other important issues, as well. Though businesses exist to make a profit, that does not mean they are without values. Indeed, the American private sector has a strong track record of making financial decisions based on the same values that have made our nation so competitive. This was clearly on display at COP 24 this past week, as the business community resoundingly stated that the private sector " should no longer be viewed solely as greenhouse gas emissions culprits, but more as indispensable partners for climate action." That couldn't be more correct - and is a perfect example of American leadership at work.

This dynamic should be the rule, not the exception, for both the mitigation of climate change - changing the energy mix, while retaining economic dynamism - and for adapting to a changing climate. Even a "crash program" to control emissions, something that no major country has even begun to implement, won't alter the reality that emissions are already accumulating in the atmosphere and heat is building up in the oceans. Sea level rise is perhaps the most important illustration - with direct risks to our economy, our society, and to our security. The American people cannot stand idle in such an environment, and, indeed, I believe they will not, regardless of the policy efforts being implemented by the federal government.

As we reflect upon the outcome of COP 24 and the important work the global community has continued to pursue, America - with the world's largest and most innovative economy, with its dynamic metropolitan areas and innovative state governments, with its academic and philanthropic sector - will continue to be a source of leadership in the vital effort to mitigate and adapt to climate change, with or without the direct support of the current Administration. The transformative leadership of the American people transcends government entirely, and just as I've dedicated my life to defending the American people, I believe the American people will ultimately be the deciding factor in defending the health of our planet.

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American climate leadership without American government

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As the biggest climate change meeting since the signing of the Paris Agreement has begun to conclude, this is a significant moment in history, and one worth reflecting on, particularly as United States leadership continues to recede on this critical global issue.

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Trump’s steel tariffs cost U.S. consumers $900,000 for every job created, experts say https://t.co/StOeD76IjR

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Trump’s steel tariffs cost U.S. consumers $900,000 for every job created, experts say https://t.co/StOeD76IjR

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Trump’s steel tariffs cost U.S. consumers $900,000 for every job created, experts say https://t.co/StOeD76IjR
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 7, 2019

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Trump’s steel tariffs cost U.S. consumers $900,000 for every job created, experts say https://t.co/StOeD76IjR

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Trump’s steel tariffs cost U.S. consumers $900,000 for every job created, experts say https://t.co/StOeD76IjR

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Trump’s steel tariffs cost U.S. consumers $900,000 for every job created, experts say https://t.co/StOeD76IjR

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- U.S. climate action was on full display during COP23, with over 100 prominent leaders from U.S. state and local governments, private sector and academia travelling to Bonn to voice support for the Paris Agreement and buoy confidence in the negotiations. American leaders used the flagship Bonn, Germany U.S. Climate Action Center - a first of its kind pavilion for American cities, states and businesses - as the base of their operations during the two weeks of negotiations.

The Action Center became a central landmark of the talks in Bonn, hosting governors, senators, a bipartisan group of 11 states, mayors and other elected officials, business leaders, and attendees from around the world. The We Are Still In network, in coordination with more than 30 organizations, operated the Action Center and hosted 44 events from its opening on November 9 to its closing on on November 16. At 27,000 square feet, the Action Center is ten times larger than any prior U.S. federal center at earlier UN climate talks.

Halfway through the COP, Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California Governor Jerry Brown unveiled the first phase of America's Pledge inside the Action Center, an effort to quantify the climate action of U.S. non-federal actors. Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama and UNFCCC Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa participated in the event to receive the pledge and gave applause to the bottom-up effort to fulfill and uphold America's targets under the Paris Agreement.

Key findings from the report include that U.S. leaders representing over half of all Americans and $6.2 trillion of the U.S. economy are working together to deliver on the promise of the Paris Agreement and ensure the U.S. remains a global leader in the fight against climate change. Taken together, these actors represent a bigger economy than any nation outside the U.S. and China.

The efforts of non-federal climate leaders in the U.S. come as countries pledge to deepen their climate commitments. Phasing out coal is a particular focal point of COP 23. Claire Perry, UK's Minister for Climate Change and Industry, and Catherine McKenna, Canada's Minister of Environment and Climate Change, launched the Powering Past Coal Alliance with 25 other countries, U.S. states and Canadian provinces.

Fostering International Cooperation
U.S. leaders established connections with countries from around the world as they work to drive action in the U.S. The U.S. Climate Alliance along with Mexico and Canada announced plans for the North American Climate Leadership Dialogue and Governor Brown discussed linking carbon markets with the European Union and China among other commitments.
Delivering on America's Pledge
The America's Pledge report, the first communication to the international community specifically addressing the scope and scale of non-federal climate action in the U.S., quantifies the outpouring of public support for the agreement since Trump's withdrawal announcement. The #IAmStillIn effort delivered a petition to the UNFCCC with over 1 million signatures of Americans pledging their support for the Paris Agreement.
Leading at the State and Local Level
Climate leaders made several commitments throughout COP, including an announcement by Virginia Governor,McAuliffe issuing a proposed climate rule that would pave the way for the state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and cities from across the globe agreed to the Bonn-Fiji Commitment to accelerate climate action. The release of Rocky Mountain Institute's Carbon-Free City Handbook highlights 22 actions cities can take to move toward carbon neutrality in one year and points to cities where this transformation is already taking place..
Deepening Business Commitments
Investment in green bonds passed $100 billion for 2017 this week, including $14 billion in the U.S. alone, according to a new report by ClimateBonds. The three top American issuers were Apple, Fannie Mae, and the New York MTA. Microsoft made a pledge to reduce its operational carbon emissions 75 percent by 2030, BMW committed transition its external electric power purchases to 100% renewable energy by 2020, and PG&E announced the creation of a new $1 million Climate Adaptation Fund. Multiple businesses highlighted the progress they have made in reducing emissions in their businesses, supply chains, and land use.
Strengthening Climate Alliances
Representation from several non-federal climate groups, including We Are Still In, U.S. Climate Alliance, Pacific Coast Collaborative, and Under 2, used COP 23 as a time to announce new members and outlined their plans to meet the Paris Agreement.
Transportation in the Headlights
Transportation pollution, which now outpaces power sector emissions, took the spotlight for multiple U.S. events, including a panel where Senators Whitehouse and Markey vowed to fight Trump's efforts to repeal American fuel standards. A coalition including the northeast and mid-Atlantic region formed to focus on clean transportation.
Returning Home Energized for Further Action
As American leaders return to the U.S., work turns to implementation of climate policies and preparing for announcements of even greater levels of climate action in the lead-up to the California Global Action Summit.
U.S. Climate Leaders Respond Businesses
"At Fetzer Vineyards, our business thrives while placing sustainable, climate-smart practices at the fore of our operations. We know that a low-carbon approach and growth aren't mutually exclusive, and in fact have seen our successes accelerate as we've become even more committed to regenerative practices that revitalize and regenerate ecosystems and communities, advance the health and well-being of employees, and produce sustainable growth for our shareholders." Cindy DeVries, Chief Operating Officer, Fetzer Vineyards

"Climate change is one of the most significant and urgent issues facing business and society today, and businesses must play a lead role in driving progress toward a circular, low-carbon economy. HP supports the Paris Agreement, and we are committed to working with governments, businesses, and organizations to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius." Nate Hurst, Chief Sustainability and Social Impact Officer, HP

"Now is the time for industry to transform how we look at our role in creating a more sustainable world. Sustainable businesses are more resilient, more relevant and, increasingly, they save money." Barry Parkin, Chief Sustainability Officer, Mars

"Microsoft has been a strong supporter of the Paris Agreement. This week, we took the next step in our journey towards meeting those targets and pledged to reduce our operational carbon emissions 75 percent by 2030. The business community plays an important role in scaling up climate action and we were excited to engage with so many corporate leaders that are taking bold steps to address climate change." Michelle Patron, Director of Sustainability Policy, Microsoft

"S&P Global are acting on climate because we recognize that financial services companies have an important role to play in enabling governments, companies and organisations to meet the goals that they adopt at conferences such as COP23. We have developed the tools to ensure that capital can be allocated efficiently and effectively and that the risks associated with climate change can be quantified and reflected in assessments of credit risk. These tools allow investors to understand the impact their investments will have on climate change and align their investments with their principles on climate issues." Michael Wilkins, Managing Director, Environmental & Climate Risk Research, S&P Global Ratings

"Through the years, we've seen that integrating sustainable practices into our operations improves business performance, spurs technological innovation, inspires brand loyalty, and boosts employee engagement. Our suppliers recognize the opportunity to realize those same benefits in their businesses. By working together we can accelerate progress within our respective companies and deep in our shared supply chains." Katherine Neebe, Director for Sustainability, Walmart
City and State Leaders
"The science is getting clearer, extreme weather events are getting more frequent and all of that leads to more understanding, more clarity and more action. Residents on the Pacific Coast know these impacts first hand - and we're not waiting to act." Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. of California

"We are in the fight of our lives against global climate change, and California has to lead if we are going to win. California has come a long way in cleaning our smoggy skies and creating green jobs. But as anyone who has ever fought for respect, basic rights, or better wages will tell you, progress isn't linear and victories aren't permanent. Now more than ever, we have to work to protect the victories we've earned and to ensure that everyone gets to benefit in the country we are trying to build." Ricardo Lara, California Senator

"The Trump Administration is forfeiting the United States' role as the global leader in the fight against climate change. Participation in the Paris Agreement means moving toward a sustainable economy that creates jobs while reducing greenhouse gases at the same time. Oregon joins with West Coast leaders to prepare for the clean energy economy of the future, not run away from it." Governor Kate Brown of Oregon

"The West Coast offers a blueprint: this is how you build a thriving, innovative economy that combats climate change and embraces a zero-emission future. We know it's possible because we're doing it." Governor Jay Inslee of Washington

"I came to Bonn because as a true conservative I hope for the best and I plan for the worst. A conservative should listen to the unassailable consensus reached by the world's scientists that climate change is a serious problem that we must meet with urgent action. Moreover, the President likes to talk about America's greatness but we are greatest when we keep our word. That is why I'm in Bonn to help America keep the promise it made to the world when it entered into the Paris Agreement. I believe that addressing climate change is in America's interest. It's in America's interest to stand with the global community. At this round of UN climate talks, we told the world that Americans from all fifty states are still in on the Paris Climate Agreement. That's the message I plan to take back to Carmel with me." Mayor James Brainard, Carmel, Indiana

"Our agricultural and manufacturing economies depend on the Mississippi River. International negotiations that impact our commodities trade must take into account our corridor if our agricultural exports are to remain competitive. - Mayor Frank Klipsch, Davenport, Iowa

"Most of the world's food and fresh water comes from river basins and those basins are being compromised by climate change. As representatives of the planet's largest food producing River, it is up to us to help ensure food and water security for the future." - Mayor Lionel Johnson, St. Gabriel, Louisiana
Colleges
There is no doubt that higher education must play a pivotal role in Climate Action in the United States now more than ever! We are educating the future global citizens and climate leaders. "We Are Still In" for the long haul." Dianne F. Harrison, President of California State University, Northridge

"It was a pleasure to join my fellow US college presidents for the Second Nature panel at COP23 sending the strong message that "We're still in" when it comes to higher education's commitment to tackling the challenges of climate change." David Finegold, President of Chatham University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

"It was powerful to discuss with my peer US College presidents how community colleges and universities can work together to combat climate change. Engaging our campuses in best practices, educating the clean tech workforce, raising awareness of sustainable practices across sectors and developing the next generation of leaders are ways we can demonstrate that we are still in." Mark Mitsui, President of Portland Community College
Civil Society
"With the backing of over one million people, communities across America are sending a clear signal that the fossil-fueled Trump administration does not represent us. As Trump and his billionaire cronies deliberately neglect the needs of communities, ignore global climate commitments, and continue with their divisive schemes, we are getting to work from the ground-up to create powerful and lasting change. With regression at the federal level, elected officials at all levels must stand with the people calling a world free of fossil fuels with 100% renewable energy for all. From Bonn to New York to Portland and beyond, we are rising united to demand a fast and just transition to a fossil free world that puts people and our planet first." Thanu Yakupitiyage, U.S. Communications Manager with 350.org and coordinator of the U.S. People's Delegation

"American mayors, governors, businesses and universities came to Bonn under a common banner to reassure the world that the United States is still in on climate action. Their message was received and helped give governments confidence to accelerate implementation of the Paris Agreement. Looking ahead, these real American leaders need to return from Bonn to lead a groundswell of new commitments from businesses, cities and states to keep the America's pledge under the Paris Agreement within reach." Lou Leonard, Senior Vice President, Climate Change and Energy, World Wildlife Fund

We Are Still In is a network of more than 2,500 mayors, governors, CEOs, and college presidents and leaders from a growing number of other sectors that are committed to supporting climate action to help meet the U.S. emission reduction targets under the Paris Agreement.

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Unprecedented Coalition of American Leaders Demonstrates United States is 'Still In' Paris Agreement

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U.S. climate action was on full display during COP23, with over 100 prominent leaders from U.S. state and local governments, private sector and academia travelling to Bonn to voice support for the Paris Agreement and buoy confidence in the negotiations. American leaders used the flagship Bonn, Germany U.S.

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A useful site that examines topics by discussing the pros and the cons in a concise manner.  You will need to enter search terms for the topics you want to explore.

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A useful site that examines topics by discussing the pros and the cons in a concise manner.  You will need to enter search terms for the topics you want to explore.

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A website designed to open your mind by showing you what you're missing due to echo chambers and filter bubbles. The site displays two sides of current events, historic and classic debates.

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*Updated 2018

Established in to prevent future world wars, the United Nations (UN) currently has 193 member-states. It works to develop and enforce international laws and policies to achieve peace, social progress and economic development worldwide. But is the UN a well-functioning contributor to international development, or is it ridden by bureaucracy and limited in its ability to help nations with ongoing conflicts?

Here are three reasons why the UN is effective and three more why it's failing.

Three reasons the UN is a failure
Human rights continue to be violated
The UN promotes and fights for human rights globally, yet these rights continue to be violated by many countries. It's not the UN's fault that international human rights are trampled on, but the organization seems powerless to stop it. Take the genocide in Rwanda, where the UN had an "Assistance Mission" established in 1994. Its members were aware of the impending genocide, but UN peacekeepers failed to stop the majority Hutus from murdering almost a million minority Tutsis. Another example is the 2005 rape and sexual abuse against Congolese children, perpetuated by UN peacekeepers themselves. Subsequent reports found similar allegations in other countries.
Peacekeepers' good intentions have led to fatal consequences
Despite its noble mission, the deployment of 125,000 peacekeepers in troubled nations has sometimes caused unintended negative side effects on host societies. Take peacekeepers fathering and abandoning babies: There is no exact number of abandoned children known, (a dozen paternity claims were received in 2014), but the phenomenon motivated the United Nations to initiate a DNA collection protocol. Additionally, a 2013 report also discussed the danger of corruption in peacekeepers' missions.

Also, the world's most recent outbreak of cholera in 2010, after an earthquake rocked Haiti, points to the United Nations. Genome testing demonstrated that the source of the plague, which infected over one million people and killed 10,000, was most likely a Nepali UN peacekeeping force. A UN- appointed panel of experts found that the cholera strain diagnosed in Haiti was "a perfect match" for a strain found in Nepal. Nepalese peacekeepers were staying at the UN camp in Haiti during the earthquake, and poor sanitation flooded local waterways with sewage from the camp. Such unintended consequences show that the UN has done more harm than good in parts of the world it has tried to help.
Lots of committees, little change
The United Nation's bodies and their committees and sub-committees, such as the General Assembly, Security Council and Human Rights Council, are plagued with bloated bureaucracy and an imbalance of power. These can cause important UN resolutions with widespread support and impact to be stymied by a single veto from one of the Security Council's permanent five-member states. The Human Rights Council has also faced repeated criticism over allowing member countries who themselves have a history of human rights abuses (such as China and Saudi Arabia) - a fact which prompted the US to recently withdraw from the committee, not for the first time. Or, take the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, which recently appointed Syria - a country well-known for using chemical weapons against its civilians - as its temporary president.The hypocrisy of such committees has led to little change regarding key human rights issues and general ineffectiveness overall.

Three reasons why the UN is effective
It has the greatest international authority of any organization
The United Nations is currently the only active and respected international forum with such widespread clout among the world's nations. One of the its s ix bodies, the Security Council, is charged with maintaining global peace and security. World leaders, even extremely disliked ones, are welcome to speak at the UN, making it a beacon of democracy. Countries who belittle the UN must still respond to its resolutions.

Its peacekeepers are deployed to sensitive regions to keep enemy armies apart and can impose sanctions against hostile countries. Its International Court of Justice, ("World Court"), is the main forum that helps resolve international conflicts, such as the trial of war criminal Charles Taylor, in accordance with international law. The United Nations also created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - the standard the world is supposed to follow. No other organization holds this much global authority.
It has succeeded in strides to eradicate world hunger
Intervention by the UN's World Food Programme, the Food and Agricultural Organization and UN-sponsored emergency aid management are credited with reducing the number of people dying from malnutrition annually. (Although world hunger has recently risen for the first time in the past decade, the UN is asserting efforts to curb the trend and stabilize the numbers.) Continuing its success of mitigating worldwide hunger, former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon set a further challenge of ending extreme poverty by 2030. Thanks to the UN's efforts, only 12.9% of the 23.3% of people suffering from malnutrition between 1990 and 1992 are still going hungry. Northern Africa has even cut local poverty in half. With its international resources and influence, the UN will continue to establish new targets that encourage sustainable development to end world hunger.
It has been instrumental in ridding some countries of 'The Bomb'
Thanks to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a number of countries, including South Africa and Kazakhstan, have willingly ended their nuclear weapons research programs and have submitted to regular IAEA inspections. And just last year, more than 120 countries adopted a UN treaty to ban nuclear weapons, requiring non-nuclear signatory nations to avoid pursuing atomic weapons in exchange for a commitment by the five powers to move toward nuclear disarmament. The treaty further seeks to guarantee non-nuclear states' access to peaceful, energy-producing nuclear technology.

Bottom line: The United Nations provides a great basis for international relationships and progress, but it is also a complex body that has experienced many failures. As former President Obama said, the UN is imperfect, but it is also indispensable. How do you feel about the it?

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Is the UN an effective organization or an incapable one?

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The United Nations (UN) works to develop and enforce international laws and policies to achieve peace, social progress and economic development worldwide. But is the UN a well-functioning contributor to international development, or does its bureaucracy limit its ability to help nations with ongoing conflicts?

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The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln last week in the Persian Gulf. As a precaution, the Pentagon has moved an aircraft carrier and more naval firepower to the gulf region. Credit Credit U.S. Navy, via Associated Press

WASHINGTON - At a meeting of President Trump's top national security aides last Thursday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons, administration officials said.

[ To follow new military deployments to the Middle East, sign up for the weekly At War newsletter.]

The revisions were ordered by hard-liners led by John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump's national security adviser. They do not call for a land invasion of Iran, which would require vastly more troops, officials said.

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Tensions between the United States and Iran have sharply increased. John Bolton, the national security adviser, has long pushed for regime change in Iran. One of his chosen replacements is the dissident group Mujahedeen Khalq, known as M.E.K. Credit Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

The development reflects the influence of Mr. Bolton, one of the administration's most virulent Iran hawks, whose push for confrontation with Tehran was ignored more than a decade ago by President George W. Bush.

It is highly uncertain whether Mr. Trump, who has sought to disentangle the United States from Afghanistan and Syria, ultimately would send so many American forces back to the Middle East.

It is also unclear whether the president has been briefed on the number of troops or other details in the plans. On Monday, asked about if he was seeking regime change in Iran, Mr. Trump said: "We'll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake."

There are sharp divisions in the administration over how to respond to Iran at a time when tensions are rising about Iran's nuclear policy and its intentions in the Middle East.

Some senior American officials said the plans, even at a very preliminary stage, show how dangerous the threat from Iran has become. Others, who are urging a diplomatic resolution to the current tensions, said it amounts to a scare tactic to warn Iran against new aggressions.

European allies who met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday said that they worry that tensions between Washington and Tehran could boil over, possibly inadvertently.

More than a half-dozen American national security officials who have been briefed on details of the updated plans agreed to discuss them with The New York Times on the condition of anonymity. Spokesmen for Mr. Shanahan and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to comment.

The size of the force involved has shocked some who have been briefed on them. The 120,000 troops would approach the size of the American force that invaded Iraq in 2003.

Deploying such a robust air, land and naval force would give Tehran more targets to strike, and potentially more reason to do so, risking entangling the United States in a drawn out conflict. It also would reverse years of retrenching by the American military in the Middle East that began with President Barack Obama's withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011.

But two of the American national security officials said Mr. Trump's announced drawdown in December of American forces in Syria, and the diminished naval presence in the region, appear to have emboldened some leaders in Tehran and convinced the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that the United States has no appetite for a fight with Iran.

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Since John R. Bolton became the national security adviser in April 2018, he has intensified the Trump administration's policy of isolating and pressuring Iran. Credit Tom Brenner for The New York Times

Several oil tankers were reportedly attacked or sabotaged off the coast of the United Arab Emirates over the weekend, raising fears that shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf could become flash points. "It's going to be a bad problem for Iran if something happens," Mr. Trump said on Monday, asked about the episode.

Emirati officials are investigating the apparent sabotage, and American officials suspect that Iran was involved. Several officials cautioned, however, that there is not yet any definitive evidence linking Iran or its proxies to the reported attacks. An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman called it a "regretful incident," according to a state news agency.

In Brussels, Mr. Pompeo met with the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany, cosignatories of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as well as with the European Union's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini. He did not speak to the media, but the European officials said they had urged restraint upon Washington, fearing accidental escalation that could lead to conflict with Iran.

"We are very worried about the risk of a conflict happening by accident, with an escalation that is unintended really on either side," said Jeremy Hunt, the British foreign secretary.

The Iranian government has not threatened violence recently, but last week, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would walk away from parts of the 2015 nuclear deal it reached with world powers. Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement a year ago, but European nations have urged Iran to stick with the deal and ignore Mr. Trump's provocations.

The high-level review of the Pentagon's plans was presented during a meeting about broader Iran policy. It was held days after what the Trump administration described, without evidence, as new intelligence indicating that Iran was mobilizing proxy groups in Iraq and Syria to attack American forces.

As a precaution, the Pentagon has moved an aircraft carrier, B-52 bombers, a Patriot missile interceptor battery and more naval firepower to the gulf region.

At last week's meeting, Mr. Shanahan gave an overview of the Pentagon's planning, then turned to General Dunford to detail various force options, officials said. The uppermost option called for deploying 120,000 troops, which would take weeks or months to complete.

Among those attending Thursday's meeting were Mr. Shanahan; Mr. Bolton; General Dunford; Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director; and Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence.

"The president has been clear, the United States does not seek military conflict with Iran, and he is open to talks with Iranian leadership," Garrett Marquis, a National Security Council spokesman, said Monday in an email. "However, Iran's default option for 40 years has been violence, and we are ready to defend U.S. personnel and interests in the region."

The reduction of forces in the Middle East in recent years has been propelled by a new focus on China, Russia and a so-called Great Powers competition. The most recent National Defense Strategy - released before Mr. Bolton joined the Trump administration - concluded that while the Middle East remains important, and Iran is a threat to American allies, the United States must do more to ensure a rising China does not upend the world order.

As recently as late April, an American intelligence analysis indicated that Iran had no short-term desire to provoke a conflict. But new intelligence reports, including intercepts, imagery and other information, have since indicated that Iran was building up its proxy forces' readiness to fight and was preparing them to attack American forces in the region.

The new intelligence reports surfaced on the afternoon of May 3, Mr. Shanahan told Congress last week. On May 5, Mr. Bolton announced the first of new deployments to the Persian Gulf, including bombers and an aircraft carrier.

Members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which was designated a terrorist group by the Trump administration last month. Credit Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

It is not clear to American intelligence officials what changed Iran's posture. But intelligence and Defense Department officials said American sanctions have been working better than originally expected, proving far more crippling to the Iranian economy - especially after a clampdown on all oil exports that was announced last month.

Also in April, the State Department designated the Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organization over objections from Pentagon and intelligence officials who feared reprisals from the Iranian military.

While much of the new intelligence appears to have focused on Iran readying its proxy forces, officials said they believed the most likely cause of a conflict will follow a provocative act, or outright attack, by the Revolutionary Guards' navy. The Guards' fleet of small boats has a history of approaching American Navy ships at high speed. Revolutionary Guards commanders have precarious control over their ill-disciplined naval forces.

Part of the updated planning appears to focus on what military action the United States might take if Iran resumes its nuclear fuel production, which has been frozen under the 2015 agreement. It would be difficult for the Trump administration to make a case that the United States was under imminent nuclear peril; Iran shipped 97 percent of its fuel out of the country in 2016, and currently does not have enough to make a bomb.

That could change if Iran resumes enriching uranium. But it would take a year or more to build up a significant quantity of material, and longer to fashion it into a weapon. That would allow, at least in theory, plenty of time for the United States to develop a response - like a further cutoff of oil revenues, covert action or military strikes.

The previous version of the Pentagon's war plan included a classified subset code-named Nitro Zeus, a cyberoperation that called for unplugging Iran's major cities, its power grid and its military.

The idea was to use cyberweapons to paralyze Iran in the opening hours of any conflict, in hopes that it would obviate the need to drop any bombs or conduct a traditional attack. That plan required extensive presence inside Iran's networks - called "implants" or "beacons" - that would pave the way for injecting destabilizing malware into Iranian systems.

Two officials said those plans have been constantly updated in recent years.

But even a cyberattack, without dropping bombs, carries significant risk. Iran has built up a major corps of its own, one that successfully attacked financial markets in 2012, a casino in Las Vegas and a range of military targets. American intelligence officials told Congress in January that Iranian hackers are now considered sophisticated operators who are increasingly capable of striking United States targets.

Since Mr. Bolton became national security adviser in April 2018, he has intensified the Trump administration's policy of isolating and pressuring Iran. The animus against Iran's leaders dates back at least to his days as an official in the George W. Bush administration. Later, as a private citizen, Mr. Bolton called for military strikes on Iran, as well as regime change.

The newly updated plans were not the first time during the Trump administration that Mr. Bolton has sought military options to strike Iran.

This year, Defense Department and senior American officials said Mr. Bolton sought similar guidance from the Pentagon last year, after Iranian-backed militants fired three mortar rounds or rockets into an empty lot on the grounds of the United States Embassy in Baghdad in September.

In response to Mr. Bolton's request, which alarmed Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, the Pentagon offered some general options, including a cross-border airstrike on an Iranian military facility that would have been mostly symbolic.

But Mr. Mattis and other military leaders adamantly opposed retaliation for the Baghdad attack, successfully arguing that it was insignificant.

Edward Wong and David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington, and Steven Erlanger from Brussels.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: White House Reviews Iran Plan For 120,000 Troops if Attacked. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War

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WASHINGTON - At a meeting of President Trump's top national security aides last Thursday, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons, administration officials said.

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An analysis of what the U.S. should do to combat the growing threat from Russia and China.

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An analysis of what the U.S. should do to combat the growing threat from Russia and China.

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The era of untrammeled U.S. military superiority is over. If the United States delays implementing a new approach, it risks losing a war to China or Russia-or backing down in a crisis because it fears it would-with devastating consequences for America's interests.

The U.S. Defense Department's 2018 National Defense Strategy initiated a needed course correction to address this challenge. As then-Defense Secretary James Mattis put it in January that year, great-power competition-not terrorism-is now the Pentagon's priority. But while the strategy's summary provides a clear vision, it leaves much to be fleshed out. What should this shift toward great-power competition entail for the U.S. military?

To answer, we must first understand the current geopolitical landscape. As ever, the foremost concern of the United States is to maintain adequate levels of military power; without it, there would be nothing to protect Washington from the worst forms of coercion and every incentive for ambitious opponents to exploit the ensuing leverage. Largely for that reason, the United States has an enduring interest in open access to the world's key regions-primarily Asia and Europe-to ensure their latent power is not turned against it. The United States does so by maintaining favorable balances of power in these regions through a network of alliances. These partnerships are not ends in themselves but rather the way the United States makes sure that no state dominates these critical areas.

Russia and especially China are the only countries that could plausibly take over and hold the territory of Washington's allies and partners in the face of U.S. resistance. If they did so-or even if they merely convinced their neighbors that they could and then used that fear to suborn them-they could unravel U.S. alliances and shift in their favor the balances of power in Europe and Asia. If China did so in the Western Pacific, it could dominate the world's largest and most economically dynamic region. If Russia did so, it could fracture NATO and open Eastern Europe to Russian dominance.

Beijing and Moscow must therefore not be given such an opening, which is why Washington must focus not on abstract metrics of its military superiority-such as how many carriers it puts to sea or how much it spends in comparison to other countries-but on its and its allies' clear ability to defeat major aggression in specific, plausible scenarios against a vulnerable ally or established partner such as Taiwan.

In other words, the United States must prepare to fight and achieve its political aims in a war with a great power. Doing so will not be easy. The last time the United States prepared for such a conflict was in the 1980s, and the last time it fought one was in the 1940s. But that's all the more reason why Washington must immediately start readying itself if it wants to deter another great-power battle now.

The U.S. military will need to undergo dramatic change to prepare for possible attacks from China or Russia. For a generation, the Pentagon operated on what might be called the Desert Storm model, under which the United States exploited the enormous technical advantages it had developed starting in the 1970s to build a military capable of dominating any opponent in the 1990s and 2000s, a time when it lacked a peer competitor.

This approach was exemplified by the Persian Gulf War of 1990-1991. After Iraq seized Kuwait late in the summer of 1990, the United States first deployed forces to protect Saudi Arabia. Over the ensuing six months, Washington assembled a broad coalition and built an iron mountain of aircraft, tanks, warships, ammunition, and every other expression of military might. Once the United States was good and ready, it launched a withering air campaign that pummeled the Iraqi military and quickly established total dominance of Kuwaiti and Iraqi airspace. The subsequent ground invasion rapidly expelled the Iraqis from Kuwait, after which the United States quickly ended the war on its preferred terms.

The Gulf War operation was a stunning success-but the victory was owed in great part to the fact that the nature of the conflict was perfectly suited to the United States' advantages. Iraq had a formidable military, but it was well behind that of the United States and incapable of striking accurately beyond territory it owned or occupied. Meanwhile, the desert provided an optimal environment for U.S. surveillance and precision strikes, and Baghdad had no nuclear weapons to deter Washington from launching such a pulverizing assault.

The world took note of the awesome power of the U.S. military. Until today, no other country has dared to assault a U.S. ally. The point was only magnified by the prowess the United States showed in its wars against Serbia, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Iraq in 2003.

The problem today, however, is the approach that worked so well against these so-called rogue state adversaries will fail against China or Russia. That is because they have spent the last 10 to 20 years specifically figuring out how to undermine it. Victory, as the old saying goes, is never final, and it breeds its own frustration. Today that takes the form of two militaries that, while different, pose serious and intensifying threats to U.S. allies and established partners in Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific.

The approach that worked so well against these so-called rogue state adversaries will fail against China or Russia.

The core of both countries' challenge to the U.S. military lies in what are commonly called anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) systems: in more colloquial terms, a wide variety of missiles, air defenses, and electronic capabilities that could destroy or neutralize U.S. and allied bases, surface vessels, ground forces, satellites, and key logistics nodes within their reach. Both China and Russia have also developed rapidly deployable and fearsomely armed conventional forces that can exploit the openings that their A2/AD systems could create.

Despite these advances, both China and Russia still know that, for now, they would be defeated if their attacks triggered a full response by the United States. The key for them is to attack and fight in a way that Washington restrains itself enough for them to secure their gains. This means ensuring that the war is fought on limited terms such that the United States will not see fit to bring to bear its full weight. Focused attacks designed to pick off vulnerable members of Washington's alliance network are the ideal offensive strategy in the nuclear age, in which no one can countenance the consequences of total war.

The most pointed form of such a limited war strategy is the fait accompli. Such an approach involves an attacker seizing territory before the defender and its patron can react sufficiently and then making sure that the counterattack needed to eject it would be so risky, costly, and aggressive that the United States would balk at mounting it-not least because its allies might see it as unjustified and refuse to support it. Such a war plan, if skillfully carried out in the Baltics or Taiwan, could checkmate the United States.

China's Growing Power

An estimate of the expanding reach and capacity of Beijing's conventionally armed ballistic cruise missiles.

To sustain what Mattis calls Washington's constellation of alliances and partnerships, the U.S. armed forces need to adapt to deal with a potential great-power threat. This will require making significant changes in the way the U.S. military is sized, shaped, postured, employed, and developed-a change from a Desert Storm model to one designed to defeat contemporary Chinese and Russian theories of victory.

The U.S. military must shift from one that surges to battlefields well after the enemy has moved to one that can delay, degrade, and ideally deny an adversary's attempt to establish a fait accompli from the very beginning of hostilities and then defeat its invasion. This will require a military that, instead of methodically establishing overwhelming dominance in an active theater before pushing the enemy back, can immediately blunt the enemy's attacks and then defeat its strategy even without such dominance.

In doing so, the United States must demonstrate that its fight is reasonable and proportionate, leaving the terrible burden of major escalation on the opponent. Once their invasion has been blunted and then stopped, Beijing or Moscow will be forced to choose whether to escalate the war in ways that strengthen U.S. resolve and bring others to its side-or settle for a real, albeit limited, defeat.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon's force planning construct-the guidelines that determine how many and what kinds of forces it needs-has focused on the ability to fight two simultaneous wars against so-called rogue states. This standard has produced a force emphasizing the deployment of large numbers of troops optimized for beating the likes of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea-exactly the kind of force to which China and Russia have adapted.

In the near term, then, the Pentagon will need to make its existing forces more lethal, for instance by equipping U.S. aircraft and ships with more long-range missiles designed to sink enemy invasion ships. In the longer term, the military will need to go further, using artificial intelligence and autonomous systems in ways that can repel intense attacks by a China exploiting the same technologies.

But the U.S. military, even supplied with the best technology, can't expect to succeed against major powers unless it rethinks its posture. The model of the last generation was a surge-based force that, when needed to eject an opponent from allied territory, would gradually and securely flow from the United States to a small number of fixed hub bases that were essentially immune to enemy attack and then launch an overwhelming assault from there. Improvements in military technology have now made these logistic tracks and bases vulnerable to enemy attack at every step.

The new force needs to fight from the immediate outset of hostilities to blunt the enemy's attack and, together with arriving follow-on forces, deny the fait accompli. To make this strategy work will require a force posture that is much more lethal, agile, and ready. To get there, the U.S. military must make its bases and operating locations more defensible and resilient as well as more geographically dispersed.

Nor can these efforts be confined to U.S. bases. The entire apparatus of the U.S. military-including its logistics network and communications systems-must shift from assuming invulnerability to expecting to be under consistent attack or disruption while still performing effectively. No longer can U.S. forces rely on exquisite systems operating with little margin for failure.

Realizing these goals will also necessitate a new approach to the way the armed forces are employed. The National Defense Strategy provides an effective model, one that seeks to orient U.S. and allied forces toward denying China or Russia the ability to rapidly seize territory and then harden its gains in a fait accompli. The model calls, first, for small contingents of U.S. forces to work closer toward potential front lines alongside local partners in a so-called contact layer to build relationships, deny adversaries the ability to manipulate information, and set conditions for potential battle.

Second, a resilient and lethal blunt layer of U.S. and allied forces should be present in or near vulnerable allies or partners to delay, degrade, or deny enemy advances, thus frustrating the fait accompli. Their task will be to buy time and space for surge layer reinforcements coming from farther away that are trained to arrive, pick up their gear, integrate with friendly forces already in the field, and get quickly to the fight. Key forces that cannot quickly be deployed, such as air defense units and armored vehicles, would be based close to the potential fields of battle, while more flexible force elements-such as infantry and tactical aircraft-would be trained to arrive and engage the enemy before it can seal the fait accompli.

Russia's Missile Range

For the United States to focus its military on readying for great-power conflict, it needs to use it far less for secondary missions. Over the last generation and especially since 9/11, the operations tempo of the U.S. military has risen markedly. Not only have U.S. forces been continuously committed in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, but even many of those units that are not directly engaged in those wars have been constantly participating in operations such as ship cruises and exercises designed to deter adversaries and assure allies. These factors have significantly eroded the force's readiness for a high-end conflict. This must change. Beijing's or Moscow's calculations of whether to attack or precipitate crises over Washington's allies are going to be based on an assessment of how a war would likely unfold-and especially whether their theory of victory would pan out-not on the mere presence of U.S. ships. Moreover, assuring allies is not an end in itself-deterrence of attack is the proper aim. Allies should be sufficiently assured to prevent defeatism or buckling, but too much reassurance encourages free riding, which Washington can no longer afford to ignore.

As a result, much of the U.S. military is not as ready as it should be to fight Russia over the Baltics or China over Taiwan. To rectify this problem, Air Force and Navy pilots should spend more time at high-end exercises and training schools and less time in air patrols over the Middle East, and Army units should practice fighting Russians and spend less time on counterinsurgency operations. Exercises with European allies should focus more on honing their ability to defend NATO than political symbolism.

The final piece of U.S. defense strategy that needs to change is the relationship with allies and partners.

The final piece of U.S. defense strategy that needs to change is the relationship with allies and partners. Unlike in the post-Cold War era, the United States needs its allies to help blunt Russian or Chinese invasions but also respond to crises and manage secondary threats around the world. U.S. forces are simply not large enough to do all this themselves-and, given the necessity for the Pentagon to focus on competing with Beijing and Moscow, the U.S. military's future focus must be on quality rather than size.

Washington should encourage different allies to focus on different roles, depending on their military situation and development level. Front-line allies and partners such as Japan, Poland, Taiwan, and the Baltic states should concentrate on their ability to blunt Chinese or Russian attacks on their territory and to restrict Beijing's or Moscow's ability to maneuver through adjoining airspace and waterways by building their own A2/AD capabilities.

Higher-end allies farther from potential battlefields, such as Australia and Germany, should work on contributing, both through their forces and basing, to defeating Chinese or Russian aggression against nearby allies. Partners such as France, Italy, and Spain with established interests in places such as North Africa should allocate more forces to handling secondary threats there.

The strategy outlined in this essay is an ambitious one. But it is feasible at current spending levels-if the Pentagon and Congress make the hard choices needed. A serious strategy in challenging times should provide clarity on what is more important and what is less so and thus what to do and buy and what not to. Strategies that promiscuously enumerate threats, and call for equivalent vigilance between great powers that can change the world and rogue states and terrorists that cannot, will diffuse and squander Washington's scarce attention and resources. Such strategies call to mind the remark about ordinary critics, who, striving for balance, search for truth in the middle, between the extremes of right and wrong. Certain threats are simply more consequential than others and thus demand more attention.

A clarity in priority means hard choices but does not mean ignoring other threats to America's interests, including terrorists, North Korea, and Iran. It does, however, mean right-sizing the U.S. approach to these threats. The United States cannot afford to transform recalcitrant Middle Eastern societies or pursue an eliminationist vision of counterterrorism-but it does not need to. It needs to defend itself from a North Korean nuclear attack and help South Korea defend itself from invasion by Pyongyang. But it does not need to be able to invade and occupy the North. The United States needs to relentlessly pursue terrorists who can directly threaten it and its allies, but it does not need to strike at every extremist with a taste for violence or remake the societies in which they live. The United States needs to check Iran's aspirations for regional hegemony but not overthrow the Islamic Republic. Moreover, the United States does not need F-22s to attack terrorist havens nor whole brigade combat teams to advise Middle Eastern militaries; cheaper drones and tailored advise-and-assist units will do.

To quote Carl von Clausewitz's immortal line, "Nothing is more important ... than finding the right standpoint for seeing and judging events, and then adhering to it." The United States has found the right standpoint with the National Defense Strategy. Now it is a matter of realizing it.

This article appears in the Spring 2019 issue of Foreign Policy .
An earlier version of the web edition of this story incorrectly sourced the map on China's growing power. It came from a 2015 Rand Corp. report.

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The era of untrammeled U.S. military superiority is over. If the United States delays implementing a new approach, it risks losing a war to China or Russia-or backing down in a crisis because it fears it would-with devastating consequences for America's interests. The U.S.

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This article about President Trump's threats of additional tariffs on China show how interconnected global financial markets are.

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By Sinéad Carew

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's indexes and bond yields ended down but well above their session lows while oil futures settled higher as investors bet that U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to raise tariffs on China would not materialize.

Trump tweeted on Sunday that the United States would raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods this week, causing investors to seek safety and flee from risky assets. On Monday, Trump sharply criticized China.

But as Monday's session wore on, the initial shock from the threats appeared to wear off. U.S. Treasury yields pared some of their declines.

Oil futures reversed course to settle slightly higher after a volatile day as rising tensions between the United States and Iran helped buoy prices. The futures had earlier touched a one-month low due to Trump's tweets. [O/R]

In stocks, the S&P 500 closed down 0.4% after falling as much as 1.6% during the session.

"Investors are warming up to the idea that its more of a negotiation tactic than it is a petulant child screaming bloody murder," said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago.

Fears about trade war escalation were also calmed somewhat by a statement from China's foreign ministry on Monday that a Chinese delegation was still preparing to go to United States for trade talks.

"Right now the contingent from China is still coming. If that changes, then the market narrative and the market reaction might also change," said Nolte.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 66.47 points, or 0.25%, to 26,438.48, the S&P 500 lost 13.17 points, or 0.45%, to 2,932.47 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 40.71 points, or 0.5%, to 8,123.29.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index lost 0.88% and MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe shed 0.65%. In comparison, the Shanghai SE Composite had closed up 5.6% in its biggest one-day percentage drop since February 2016.

BOND PRICES, OIL FUTURES RISE

The U.S. dollar slipped to a five-week low against the yen and fell versus other currencies on Monday after Trump said he would sharply raise tariffs on Chinese goods this week, risking the derailment of the trade talks between Washington and Beijing.

Volume, though, was thin overall with London and Tokyo markets closed for holidays.

The dollar weakened 0.30% versus the yen to 110.89 per dollar. The dollar index rose 0.01%, with the euro unchanged at $1.12.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes last rose 9/32 in price to yield 2.4998%, from 2.53% late on Friday.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures settled up 31 cents, or 0.5%, at $62.25 a barrel. Brent crude futures settled up 39 cents, or 0.55%, at $71.24 a barrel.

(Graphic: World FX rates in 2019 - http://tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh)

(Additional reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss, Saqib Iqbal Ahmed, Richard Leong and Stephanie Kelly in New York, Amy Caren Daniel and Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru, Saikat Chatterjee and Virginia Furness in London; Editing by Larry King and Dan Grebler)

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Global stocks, yields ease losses on skepticism of Trump's China threats

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By Sinéad Carew NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's indexes and bond yields ended down but well above their session lows while oil futures settled higher as investors bet that U.S. President Donald Trump's threats to raise tariffs on China would not materialize. Trump tweeted on Sunday that the

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Vox Video - Why the U.S. Has 800 Military Bases around the World

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Vox Video - Why the U.S. Has 800 Military Bases around the World

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Why does the US have 800 military bases around the world?

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Vox Video - How the U.S. Became an Empire

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Vox Video - How the U.S. Became an Empire

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Interview with the author of the book, How to Hide an Empire in which he discusses U.S. territories.  We watched 11:40 to 13:43 and 23:52 to 25:00 and 26:19 to 29:16.

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“How to Hide an Empire”: Daniel Immerwahr on the History of the Greater United States

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President Obama states that while our actions have been imperfect, there is plenty to be proud of and that "if we weren't sitting at the table, nothing would get done." He does not discuss any of our actions that people, at home and abroad, have been critical of. Thinks about what you learned during our unit on the War on Terror.

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President Obama on America’s Empire | Real Time with Bill Maher (Web Exclusive)