If you’re interested in naval affairs and the U.S. naval force structure, Galrahn has some reflections for the New Fiscal Year that are well worth your time. I’d widen the lens a bit and argue that the idea of introducing incremental changes to shipbuilding during times of rapid technological change and uncertainty could be applied more generally to diplomacy and strategy. It’s become a trope to talk about the age of uncertainty that has emerged following the end of America’s unipolar moment. And part of the response has been a search for the IR equivalent of a unified field theory [...]
There’s a conventional wisdom forming that in releasing the detained Chinese trawler captain, Japan backed down to Chinese pressure and as a result “lost” the confrontation. This is probably true from a short-term perspective, but the proof of the pudding will be whether Japan, in future, concedes on both the issue at hand — sovereignty over the disputed islands — and the broader issue that is China’s reach for regional dominance. I don’t think either of those are likely. And I think John McCreary sums up nicely why that is: The Chinese have overreached in their dealings with Japan, Southeast [...]
It seems like only last year that we were hearing warnings about how the state-capitalist model made possible by power concentrated at the top in places like China and Russia would ultimately make liberal economies a quaint artifact of the past. Now, it seems, China is increasingly going from mono to surround sound, as a marketplace of ideas emerges in its highest decision-making levels, at least when it comes to foreign policy and national security. It’s hard to imagine that this sort of policy-jockeying won’t also begin to characterize domestic economic policy, especially as the need to develop the vast [...]
