Friday News Roundup — January 28, 2022
Latest CSPC Geotech Report Released; US-China Startup Ecosystems; Historical Lessons on Allied Unity; Japan-Russia Relations; Russia’s Business Environment; and Anti-Vax, Anti-Mask Movements
Friday greetings to you from Washington, D.C., where we await a small taste of winter weather, though nothing like what is predicted for our friends further up the coast. This week saw major movement on legislation focused on innovation and competition, as the House unveiled the America COMPETES Act, its companion to the Senate-passed USICA. Unlike USICA, however, this has not been received with bipartisan support, which raises questions as conference looms and legislation must navigate narrowly-divided chambers. Supreme Court Justice David Breyer announced his retirement, allowing for President Biden to name a successor and adding a SCOTUS confirmation to an already packed 2022 calendar. While the economy grew at a breakneck 6.9% annualized rate, markets are spooked by harsher rhetoric from the Fed about inflation — and inflation continues to hold back consumer sentiment. All of these domestic developments take place with the drumbeat of war tensions growing ever higher as Russia threatens Ukraine and China continues aggressive maneuvers near Taiwan. We’re one month through 2022 — what a start…
This week featured a wide range of CSPC op-eds in the media. Dan raised questions about how we arrived at a crisis moment with 5G and aviation, and how these lessons can be applied to future tech policy. Joshua looked at the challenge Russia’s aggression in Ukraine represents to NATO’s unity and coherence. Ethan called for a more holistic approach to Russian power, one focused on the breadth of tools available and the strengthening of alliances.
Taking a break from geopolitics, Joshua reviewed “The Barcelona Complex” by the FT’s Simon Kuper, which looked at the rise and fall of FC Barcelona and how the club changed the way “the beautiful game” is played.
In this week’s roundup, we quickly highlight our latest Geotech report before moving to our usual analyses. Dan and CSPC Senior Advisor Samantha Clark analyze the ecosystems for strategic technology startups in China and the United States. Ethan looks at historical lessons of foreign policy to call for allied unity in the face of aggression. Hidetoshi provides his analysis of Japan’s policies towards Russia and unique dynamics in effect as tensions rise between Moscow and Japan’s allies. Wes evaluates the impact of tensions and current and potential sanctions on Russian business, and Evelyn covers the anti-mask, anti-vaccine divides on display.
CSPC Releases Geotech Report
Geotech: Accelerating the Race for Innovation Leadership
The latest CSPC Geotech report is now available on our website. With the shared, bipartisan recognition that the United States and its allies are engaged in a competition for the critical technologies and innovation leadership needed for economic prosperity and national security, this report calls for faster, bolder action, and better coordination of Geotech policies. The report looks at the latest developments in Chinese and Russian Geotech policies, as well as the growing focus on economic security from our Japanese allies. The report analyzes current U.S. executive and legislative efforts on Geotech policy. Looking to future technologies, the report covers how 5G policy decisions today affect the foundation for 6G leadership. Given that it is a race for innovation leadership, we examine the need for a holistic approach to intellectual property. It’s important to protect and value the breakthroughs of our innovators and entrepreneurs, and IP policies, especially those related to standards-essential patents, need to address concerns related to Geotech and national security. To learn about this and see timely recommendations for Geotech policymaking, read the report here.
Setting the Stage for Strategic Startups
Dan Mahaffee & Samantha Clark
In the global race for innovation leadership, a nation’s startup ecosystem is vital for economic prosperity — and, now, increasingly national security. As policymakers prioritize innovation breakthroughs in important fields, from artificial intelligence to biotech, quantum computing to data management, the divergence in U.S. and Chinese approaches to doing business with startups is worth considering.
This week, in Bloomberg, there was a deep dive into Beijing’s changing approach to startups, where startups in strategic sectors — known as “Little Giants” — receive significant government support with money from state-owned funds, heightened valuations, and an endorsement from the government that serves as a sign of political protection as well as technical acumen. The endorsement of technical acumen is important given Beijing’s strategic push for strategically critical technologies. From these startups, technologies can be applied in a dual-use continuum from civil purposes to military and security aims: semiconductor production, networked cities’ urban planning, continuous surveillance via facial recognition, artificial intelligence for advanced military platforms, and so forth.
At the same time, as China changes how it does business, that political endorsement is equally important. Major players like Didi, Tencent, Bytedance, and Alibaba have each had their turn under Beijing’s harsh regulatory spotlight. These companies grew out of a far more open and freewheeling venture capital environment — one where there was also a greater outgrowth of social media, e-commerce, and app-based services. Now, Beijing’s government priorities are focused on more sectors seen as important for economic and national security — think semiconductors, automated vehicles, AI research — rather than ridesharing, e-commerce, TikTok videos, or gaming. For startups in these strategic sectors, there’s a clear path ahead for working with the government, free-flowing funding, and a green light to commercialize technologies in an increasingly-tightly-regulated real-world and digital domestic marketplace. However, once these startup firms become known as hand-in-glove entities with the Chinese government, what future is there in the international marketplace?
In contrast, the United States has a strong startup ecosystem, but one that continues to find it difficult to work with the government — and when they do succeed, it can often be despite government policies rather than because of them. The challenge for startups looking to do business with the U.S. Government, most often, lies in the “valley of death” between product development and government acquisition.
Too often, our government procurement mindset and policies exacerbate that valley of death, with plenty of support on the wrong side of the valley dedicated to nascent or small R&D projects while providing little in the pathway to large- or even medium-scale production contracts that would bridge the valley in a timely manner. Complex procurement policies, preferential set-asides, a severely backlogged security clearance process, and the dysfunction of the budget and funding processes discourage startups from working with the U.S. Government. For their investors, the process is too time consuming, bureaucratic, and unpredictable when seeking return on investment. Attempting to solve for the wrong side of the valley of death not only impairs the ability of startups to scale their offerings for the government, but it stifles the ability of America’s warfighters and national security professionals to get their hands on leading edge technology at the speed of relevance.
The extent of consolidation in the U.S. defense industry was noted with alarm this week as the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) sued to block defense company Lockheed Martin Corporation’s intended acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc. In its unanimous, bipartisan complaint and the first challenge to a defense merger in decades, the FTC noted that if the proposed acquisition were allowed to move forward the “combined firm could disadvantage rivals by affecting the price or quality of the product, the quality of the engineering support, and the schedule and contract terms for developing and supplying it or otherwise disadvantage its rivals.” The FTC further alleged that “post-acquisition, Lockheed would have an incentive to exploit its access to its rivals’ proprietary information to gain an advantage in competitions against them.” That the FTC and the Lockheed-Aerojet merger reached this impasse demonstrates how the incentives have shaped our defense industrial system into one that can frustrate entrepreneurial, agile startups. At a time when we need to bring technology and software solutions to the warfighter, and quickly, the table should not be tilted against our dual-use technology startups.
The advantages of U.S. startups and our innovations cannot be lost to overly bureaucratic policies that favor solely established large players that have the know-how and resources to navigate the wickets of working with Washington. Not every entrepreneur hopes to have his company acquired by a bigger player, and many are motivated by a sense of patriotism and drive to make our country more secure and prosperous. We also cannot forget that the lineages of many of these big corporations trace back to small startups — and that many of the policy fixes required would make it easier for businesses of all sizes to have an easier time doing business with the government. All of this can result in a better bang-for-the-buck for taxpayer dollars, the faster commercialization of the advanced technologies needed now, and a stronger foundation for future innovation leadership.
All of this is made even more important as the divergence in U.S. and Chinese startup ecosystems — and cross-Pacific venture capital and investment strategy also shifts. As we’ve covered before in our CSPC research, China’s model is becoming far more restricted in terms of data, technological details, and intellectual property, while channeling outside investment through channels under its control — mainly an under-the-cosh Hong Kong. At the same time, U.S. officials now have the tools to take a closer look at Chinese VC investment in the United States — especially where Chinese VCs have been used to gain access to sensitive technologies and strategic innovations in the United States. Potentially going a step further, policymakers are also considering outbound investment rules that would look at whether U.S. investment dollars are helping China’s military and intelligence interests.
As a clearer line grows between these models, and augurs for a further decoupling in startup circles, it is important that we ensure the U.S. system remains as competitive as ever. The solution is not to create the startup nomenklatura that the Chinese are building, as political sclerosis can stifle a startup ecosystem. Instead, we need to make sure that we are providing the right policy and regulatory support for startups to make it easier to launch, easier to do business with the government, and easier to achieve commercial success. This problem set has been identified and discussed over the past several years; now is the time to take corrective action. Strengthening and streamlining our own system, rather than overreacting or imitating our competitors, is the best path to victory in this competition.
Samantha Clark serves as a senior advisor at CSPC. She is the General Counsel of Rebellion Defense, an AI/ML software product company focused on national security. Her background includes private practice as Of Counsel at Covington and several years serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee for Chairmen McCain and Inhofe, including as Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel.
The history of foreign policy on repeat
Ethan Brown
History has a funny way of repeating itself, despite anyone in the policy wonk community crying foul of not learning the lessons that history would teach. Ukraine strikes such a nerve for international power brokers, and indeed Eastern Europe as a whole has often been the source of great discord between great powers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The lede, which our esteemed editor regularly chides me to unbury every week in the column, is that I’m reading a fascinating book right now (spoiler for our Summer reading list roundup) by Lawrence Rees, titled “Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War”. The key premise of the book concentrates on the psyche of history’s two greatest monsters, and their respective authoritarian regimes. I bring it up in the context of history, Eastern Europe, and the Ukraine crisis because of comments emanating from the anti-Moscow collective of cooperative security. Notably, the U.K.’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’s warning to Vladimir Putin of the “massive cost” should Russia invade Ukraine; President Biden’s seeming gaff about scaled consequences in Ukraine has all of the headlines dithering about the continued chaos of American foreign policy; further, Germany’s break from NATO on the issue of supporting Kyiv with weapons exports highlights the fractured nature of the rules-based order coming together on a foreign policy issue that threatens the continued stability of that order. Everyone west of 25° E has individually determined the necessity to stand up to Russian aggression, but remains wholly disunited in their efforts to do so.
From Rees’ book, the leaders of the allied nations faced similar, albeit self-subversive divisions between America, Great Britain, and the USSR when facing a common threat — that of course being the Axis powers spreading their anti-semetic and ultra-nationalist rhetoric through violence and conquest. In Rees’ outstanding dissection of the key characters in these historical moments, the divide between U.S. President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill was such that the two sought separate, private audiences with Joseph Stalin in an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the Soviet Premier, often leading to incredible and scarcely known tensions between the two most prominent democracies on the globe at arguably the greatest time of crisis.
Now take these historical parallels — leaders of free nations against a common aggressor, who speak from different bases and with varying levels (at face value) of commitment to the issues of the hour. The issue today is made worse by President Biden making dramatic swings by public perception in reportedly weighing the option of forward staging thousands of U.S. troops in Europe. This sudden shift in policy is a reflection of the Cold War thinking that continues to dominate national security ideologues in the west when threats to the international, rules-based order of today are on a far more connected, complicated security paradigm. Today’s arena weighs hard power and hybrid options in equal value (ostensibly, here are my thoughts on competing in the hybrid domain, even though the answer remains blatantly obvious and somehow ambivalent in that same national security discourse). Simply deploying troops and threatening economic sanctions against Putin personally are scarcely the influencing move that decision makers of today seem to think they are.
History is unforgiving in this regard of failing to learn its lessons. I’m not touting some new or revolutionary thought here, and indeed, much of our work here at the CSPC when assessing these national security and global competition issues hangs around some simple, but strikingly difficult concepts: evolve the arenas/ways/means of how power is asserted to promote liberal values, and do not bow to tyrants. Those efforts to move limited forces, apply the same kind of sanctions, and widening degrees of public decrees won’t move the needle when the leader of the aggressor is willing to endure those same pressures regardless of their ‘costs’.
So long as we (the collected states of that rules-based order) are divided on how we face threats to those efforts, which stems from a lack of unity and a simple failure to define unacceptable behaviors and determined responses to such, we will remain vulnerable to the precise interference in hybrid warfare and hard power maneuverings that augment the aims of Moscow and Beijing.
Can NATO prove it is capable of mobilizing? That is a key question, but Ukraine, if you weren’t aware, isn’t part of NATO. So what does Russian aggression achieve while on the edge of a purported invasion? I say purported, because…look at the above images I took in the office this week while drafting the column; at the early section of the segment: *impending doom*. A few scant seconds later, the Ukrainian foreign minister is trying to argue for patience. The point, while remembering that state leaders are largely of the same mind in terms of any Ukraine intervention, if disunited (German abstinence notwithstanding) on the crisis in Ukraine, is that this whole scenario is much more complicated than Russian military forces crossing the border or sewing strife to legitimize a limited Russian intervention for ‘stability’ a la Kazakhstan. The west does not have a comprehensive, multifaceted capacity right now to face those activities or offer power mechanisms to deter the possibility of aggression.
The great issue here, and one that repeats from history, is that the adversary knows precisely what it is doing, with ambitions we don’t fully understand, while the rules-based order is frayed and disunited — precisely where Moscow wants it. Whether Ukraine needs to be rescued from its Russian neighbor is a different debate entirely, and one which, like so many other problems facing the world, has become a partisan line in media circles. However, Moscow is achieving precisely what it aims to achieve, and it may not even include territorial gains, but political outcomes, while the west is struggling with an identity crisis.
Japan’s Quixotic Faith in Russia
Hidetoshi Azuma
As the world braces for another potential invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Japan has so far been sending mixed signals on the looming crisis in Europe. Indeed, during his annual speech to the Diet on January 17, the Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida made no reference to Ukraine while reaffirming his commitment to enhancing the Russo-Japanese relations toward the ultimate conclusion of a peace treaty and resolution of territorial issues over the four Kuril Islands. During his first summit with the US president Joe Biden just four days later, Kishida appeared to have reversed his earlier proclamation by condemning Russian aggression and even reportedly declaring his readiness to introduce additional economic sanctions, but this time did not touch upon the subject of peace talks with Moscow. In fact, Kishida’s ambivalence toward Russia betrays Tokyo’s questionable faith in engagement with Moscow for a possible breakthrough in its protracted peace negotiations. As the new Japanese prime minister looks to resume dialogue with the Kremlin, he may as well rethink the Japanese foreign policy dogma of engagement with Russia, especially in view of today’s brewing geopolitical crisis in Ukraine.
History abundantly demonstrates that engagement with Russia has invariably produced results of dubious strategic significance for Japan. In fact, Japan consistently viewed Russia as an adversary during much of its modern history and fought multiple wars and border conflicts between 1904 and 1945. Ironically, disengagement from Russia on the eve of the 1904–5 Russo-Japanese War led to Japan’s rise as Asia’s foremost sea power allied with Britain while reengagement gradually eroded the country’s triumphant grand strategy after the war, culminating in the 1941 Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact signed right before the attack on Pearl Harbor. After WWII, the Cold War immediately froze the Russo-Japanese relations, leading the two countries to remain to this day without a peace treaty. In other words, postwar Japan’s alliance with the US has served as the ultimate fail-safe mechanism checking the country’s engagement with Russia by default.
Despite this postwar reality, various Japanese leaders have attempted in vain to thaw the frozen relations with Russia, often risking their own political careers in the process. Their rationale for reengagement was that Russia would be a counterweight against the US in bolstering postwar Japan’s perceived independence from Washington’s influence. Moreover, resolving the unfinished business from WWII would be the ultimate foreign policy prize for Japanese leaders. Therefore, engagement with Russia has frequently surfaced as a highly personal agenda for idiosyncratic political leaders pursuing a radical shift in Tokyo’s postwar grand strategy. For example, the former prime minister Ichiro Hatoyama’s bid for a rapprochement with the Soviet Union in 1956 was one of such foreign policy gambles, which ironically incurred Washington’s ire and subsequently hastened his political demise. Hatoyama’s like-minded successors have subsequently emulated his efforts to no avail.
Abe’s seven years of diplomatic waltz with the Russian President Vladimir Putin was one of such failed bids for peace with Russia. His approach to Russia consisted of direct engagement with Putin backed by economic largesse from Japan. His assumption was that such a strategy would induce Moscow into the negotiating table for eventual compromise on the territorial issue and a potential split in the Sino-Russian relations. The upshot of Abe’s twenty-seven summits with Putin was a far cry from what he had originally envisioned with Tokyo even having de facto forgone its claims to two of the disputed islands in 2018. After pouring billions of dollars in Siberia and the Russian Far East and even yielding on the question of sovereignty, the former Japanese leader failed to achieve peace, let alone a territorial resolution, with his Russian counterpart. In fact, Russia’s military activities continued to expand unabated around the frozen conflict over the Kuril Islands, directly threatening Japan’s northern flank. Worse, Abe’s protracted engagement with Putin provided the Russian leader with an opportunity to drive a wedge in the US-Japan alliance while simultaneously deepening Moscow’s engagement with Beijing.
Kishida therefore finds himself overshadowed by Abe’s Russia legacy. Indeed, the new Japanese prime minister has already sought advice on Russia from his predecessor as well as Senator Muneo Suzuki, one of Japan’s top Russia hands with suspicious ties to the Kremlin. As if to echo Abe’s thinking, Kishida has repeatedly emphasized the importance of the bilateral achievements from the 2018 summit in Singapore where the then-Japanese leader essentially withdrew Japan’s territorial claims to two of the disputed islands. Meanwhile, Kishida has also made references to other bilateral agreements, such as the 1993 Tokyo Declaration, which recognized the territorial question surrounding all four islands. This suggests that Kishida is still in the process of consolidating his own Russia policy with the possibility of a major course correction in Russo-Japanese relations.
As Kishida looks to cement his Russia policy, he may as well heed the wisdom of the former prime minister Shigeru Yoshida, whose eponymous Yoshida Doctrine has guided postwar Japan’s grand strategy. At the height of the US-Soviet Cold War in 1951, Yoshida made the fateful decision to pursue non-engagement with Moscow by excluding the Soviet Union from the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Absent bilateral dialogue and even the Kremlin’s diplomatic representation in Japan, Yoshida successfully protected the consolidation of postwar Japan’s nascent pro-US grand strategy from Moscow’s multi-pronged offensives including active measures. While the geopolitical environments in 1951 and 2022 are fundamentally different, the nature of the Russian threat to the free world remains largely unchanged and admonishes against any wishful thinking on the Kremlin’s perceived goodwill at the negotiating table.
Ukraine’s ongoing plight presents a sober admonition on Russia for Japan’s political leadership. In fact, Japan’s years of conciliatory approach to Russia has emboldened Moscow to even relocate some of its military assets in the Russian Far East away to the Ukrainian border. The assumption in Moscow is that Japan would not pose a military threat to Russia’s eastern flank, even leading the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov to recently unveil his plan to visit Tokyo for peace talks with the new Japanese administration. In other words, Japan’s Russia policy directly affects Putin’s military calculus vis-a-vis Ukraine. As Washington struggles to contain Moscow’s newfound jingoism, Tokyo must recognize Japan’s place in the global US alliance system and its unique position to address the Russian elephant in the room in the Far East. Boosting US-Japan military cooperation on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido would disrupt Putin’s strategy while simultaneously bolstering the bilateral alliance. Without addressing Japan’s military role in the current Ukrainian crisis, Kishida’s latest pledge to shore up international solidarity against Russia would likely end up being an empty promise.
After Abe’s decade-long summitry with Putin, Japan finds itself once again at a fresh starting point of relations with Russia under a new leader. The 19th-century Russian statesman Fyodor Tyutchev famously declared that Russia could be appreciated not with the mind, but only by faith alone. Ironically, Abe and his like-minded predecessors in Japan appeared to have heeded Tyutchev’s wisdom and indefatigably maintained unrequited faith in engagement with Russia for imaginary peace ultimately to no avail. Indeed, history questions their abiding faith in Russia, let alone their abysmal track record of engagement with Moscow. Perhaps, placing faith in Russia itself is a misguided proposition in the realm of foreign policy. After all, Japan is an important member of the free world and shares its fate with Ukraine as a country with a lingering frozen conflict with Russia. Therefore, Japan’s actions vis-a-vis Russia are inextricable from the fate of democracies around the globe. If anything, peace with Russia can wait and is certainly not worth risking the US-Japan alliance and Japan’s place in the free world. Yoshida would have thought thus, and Kishida may as well reflect on his predecessor’s discernment especially considering the ongoing geopolitical crisis threatening the free world in Europe and beyond.
Russian Business Already Suffering from Putin’s Foreign Aggression, But Will it Matter?
Wes Culp
As Russian military formations and equipment mass on the country’s border with Ukraine, observers in the West have focused on the role of decision-makers in shaping events and deemphasizing the stakes that domestic groups and citizens have in this historic moment. Russian business interests, which are significantly intertwined with the Russian regime, are quietly bearing the consequences of the Kremlin’s aggression toward Ukraine. In addition, the Russian public’s anxiety about the prospect of armed conflict continues to build, although it remains divided on what parties are to blame for the present situation. An open question remains whether the Russian government is willing to override the significant impact on Russia’s people and business interests alike to pursue aggressive action against Ukraine.
While much more functional than it was in the transition period between a planned economy and a free market system, the Russian economy is deeply dependent on the export of natural resources while also being subject to sometimes unpredictable edicts from Russian economic institutions. As of 2019, around 60% of Russian exports were natural resource products. As a result, the Russian government is particularly vulnerable to hydrocarbon price fluctuations, with revenues from crude oil and gas exports alone averaging 43% of the government’s annual revenue between 2011 and 2020. Russia ranks 136th out of the 180 countries surveyed in Transparency International’s “Corruption Perception Index.” Factors such as these do not promote the degree of economic nimbleness necessary to effectively shake off the effects of Western sanctions.
The Russian Central Bank’s decision to halt foreign currency purchases after the ruble slid to a 14-month nadir against the dollar represents one of the first moments where the Russian government was forced to insulate its economy from the fallout of its recent aggressive posturing towards Ukraine. On Tuesday, JP Morgan strategists began to advise against long term ruble holds as fears of a Russian incursion into Ukraine began to spread. While the ruble regained some of its value against the dollar after American diplomats delivered their response to Russian security demands regarding NATO and Ukraine on Wednesday, investor confidence remains shaky. While the ruble began its nose-dive, the Moscow Stock Exchange correspondingly fell below 3,200 points for the first time since December 2020 as investors began to sell off Russian stock out of the fear that tensions could spiral further.
Russia’s largest banks have seen their share prices slump in value significantly since the start of the year, with Sberbank seeing the value of its shares fall by 20% to date in 2022 and VTB bank shares dipping by 10% in the same period. Sberbank and VTB are Russia’s two largest banks and are both majority-owned by the Russian government. While some bankers have quietly expressed frustration with the challenges brought on by Russia’s pressure campaign towards Ukraine, the leadership of Russian’s banks and other business leaders have largely remained silent about any grievances they may have about the difficult position their businesses have found themselves in.
In the event of a renewed Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s business interests will likely face even steeper headwinds than they ever have before. One suggested measure which would have significant impact would be cutting Russia out of the SWIFT global payments network, a move under discussion between the United States and the United Kingdom. Some Western decision-makers are hesitant to disconnect Russia from the global payment system on the fear that it would negatively impact the global economy. Meanwhile, Vice Speaker of the Russian Federation Council Nikolai Zhuravlyov threatened that Russia would stop deliveries of gas, oil, and metals if such a step was taken. While Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov appeared to downplay or deny the prospect of the exclusion of Russia from SWIFT, Zhuravlyov’s reaction indicates that such a step would be a heavy cost for the Russian economy to absorb. In addition, a bipartisan group of Senators led by Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) met Monday to discuss Menendez’s bill which would impose heavy sanctions on significant Russian banks, Russia’s energy and mineral extraction industries, government decision-makers, and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would open another natural gas link between Russia and Western Europe.
The likely second-order effects of sanctions must be understood. Polling that suggests that 66% of Russians hold the United States responsible for current tensions appears to partially rest on a belief that Western countries tend to use the imposition of sanctions as a “provocation” against Russia. For this reason, it is possible that Russian frustration with sanctions would fail to produce disenchantment with President Vladimir Putin’s government while also damaging the Russian public’s perception of the Western countries. This phenomenon was observed by Russia expert Timothy Fry in the wake of the 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea.
If additional sanctions are placed on Russia, Russia will almost certainly accelerate the process of reorienting its economy towards China. Trade turnover between Moscow and Beijing rose by nearly 36% over 2021 to exceed $140 billion, which is part of a wider 167% increase in mutual trade observed since 2010. As prior Western sanctions imposed following Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its invasion of Donbas chilled foreign and domestic investment in Russia, the list of partners broadly available to the Russian economy began to dwindle. While Iran- or North Korea-style sanctions evasion through smuggling and other covert means may not be entirely viable as a standalone sanctions-relief mechanism due to the size of the Russian economy, such efforts might be pioneered if Russia is comprehensively shut off from the West by crushing sanctions. If Moscow is shut out of certain international mechanisms such as SWIFT in the event of renewed Russian aggression against Ukraine, it could attempt to build parallel replacement structures with friendly countries. This would institutionalize the split between Russia and the Western world and could weaken Western leverage in future moments of crisis.
In its pursuit of a pressure campaign against Ukraine and its Western orientation, Russia and its government risks pulling its banking sector and people into very difficult circumstances, but it has ways to mitigate the pain. Only time will tell if such a prospect deters Russian leadership from aggressive action towards Ukraine as intended by the United States and its Western partners.
Opposition to Mask and Vaccination Mandates Are Spreading Across the Country
Evelyn Jimenez
On January 23, 2022 thousands of Americans marched the streets of D.C. to protest mask and COVID 19 vaccination mandates. Protests and refusal to comply with mandates have risen more frequently than at the start of the pandemic. Almost two years into the pandemic, as all Americans grapple with the lingering pandemic, fear and paranoia have progressed and have created a separate “mini pandemic” of its own.
In 2019 when COVID 19 first made its presence known, it was a disease that was unheard of and scientists were conflicted on how to combat it. An abundance of uncertainty led many citizens to become susceptible to having “tunnel vision” and gravitate toward their personal beliefs to make sense of the virus; this has unfortunately led to more people refusing to wear masks and put their own health, and the health of others, at risk. Although we have come to learn more about the virus over a span of two years, this has not decreased public skepticism on research findings. When the virus was so new, fear motivated people complying with mask-wearing and properly disinfecting public spaces. Studies have shown that people were more careful to frequently wash their hands and avoid large groups of people at the beginning of the pandemic, in comparison to the present day.
But fear swings in both directions. The recent demonstration on Capitol Hill served as an example of a growing mistrust for science and the federal government. Protesters carried signs expressing their views on the mandates such as “No vax mandate,” “Vaccines kill,” and “Land of the free, you can’t mandate me.” Protesters felt so strongly about their cause, they began shouting at bystanders to take off their masks and join the protest. For several, this was the first protest they had ever participated in, and had driven countless miles from across the country to take a stand for what they believe in. The protest had a political tone: some protesters conveyed their support for former President Donald Trump, whose concern for COVID-19 was intermittent. In the face of countless studies, research, and information published by the CDC, protests, such as this past Sunday, continue to exhibit a lack of trust for science.
Protesters argued that their main goal was to abolish the mandates. The fear of change and the unknown have led to some groups believing that the mandates infringe on our civil rights and personal autonomy. Their demonstration reflected a spread of anxiety and distress among the American people over combating both COVID-19 and the mandates; these have become conflated in the minds of some Americans. Scientists have referred to this “mini pandemic” as an “infodemic” that has been exacerbated by rapidly spreading false information. Even though the “infodemic” has hidden in the shadows of the COVID-19 pandemic for almost two years, it continues to be just as prominent and has increased in severity.
Since COVID-19 first appeared, the United States has employed extensive resources to understand the virus and develop vaccines at a rapid rate to save lives from this fatal disease. Nevertheless, numerous people have refused to be vaccinated. Some states such as Texas, Arizona, and Ohio do not have a vaccine and/or mask mandate implemented. Because of various locations requiring proof of vaccination upon entering places of business, anxiety and paranoia have unfortunately increased. The protest taking place in D.C. was not only an attempt to grasp the attention of the federal government. Washington, D.C., and New York have issued a mandate to show proof of vaccination to enter public spaces such as restaurants, bars, museums, etc. Holding the anti-mask and vaccination mandate protest was a strategic gesture to demonstrate the protesters unwillingness to comply with the mandates while staying in D.C.
In an era where we depend on scientific innovation and research for public health, an anti-science and ani-government opposition from the public will have implications for national resilience and prosperity. Furthermore, the pandemic has demonstrated a division among the American people: the vaccinated vs. the unvaccinated, and/or the masked vs. the unmasked. This split and lack of address to the “infodemic” undermines United States ability to reach a threshold in terms of ending the pandemic and achieving “normal” again — which would benefit us all.
News You May Have Missed
United States & China Race to Reach Sunken F-35C
Following an incident onboard the USS Carl Vinson which injured seven, an F-35C ditched into the South China Sea after the pilot safely ejected. The Navy’s variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, the approximately $100 million F-35C is now resting on the seafloor, with salvage teams from the United States and China racing to be the first to recover the 5th generation fighter. While the Chinese have probably learned plenty about the F-35 program through conventional and cyber espionage, it would still be a prize for Beijing’s defense tech efforts, as they have previously been reported to have acquired wreckage from the F-117A stealth plane shot down in the 1999 Kosovo War as well as the crashed modified Blackhawk helicopter used in the 2011 Bin Laden raid. As defense consultant Abi Austen noted, “this is basically The Hunt For Red October meets The Abyss — it’s a brilliant three-act play.”
Irish Fishermen Intend to Protest Russian Navy Exercises
The head of the Irish South and West Fish Producers Organisation stated that Irish fishing vessels are planning on disrupting planned exercises by the Russian navy off the Southern Coast of Ireland. According to the fishermen, the exercises will take place in around fisheries which are critical to their operations. The Russian ambassador to Ireland, Yuri Filatov, has said that the exercises would involve three or four ships, and claimed that he did not have information on whether missiles would be fired over the course of the exercise. In particular, the Irish fishermen fear that a live-fire exercise could negatively impact the migration of tuna significantly. The Irish foreign ministry has expressed that the exercise off Ireland’s coast is “not welcome.”
Virginia Governor Youngkin Creates Education Tip-Line, Draws Pranksters and Criticism
Newly inaugurated Virginia GOP Governor Glenn Youngkin made education controversies a cornerstone of his successful campaign — and GOP strategists have seized on an issue that seems to have successfully struck a nerve among the electorate. Following up on this, Youngkin announced a state email hotline, where parents could report “divisive practices in their schools.” While many humorous comments were noted on social media — such as reporting schools for having Harry Potter instructors or for the teaching of “foreign concepts” such as “arabic numerals” — others have raised concern at a time when teachers and school boards find themselves in the crosshairs of heated debates. For observers of Virginia politics, this also is another data point in how Youngkin, already term-limited to one-term, will seek to stake his future in GOP politics.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.
