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Getting Serious About Strategy in the South China Sea
America is suffering from a strategy deficit in the South China Sea. For nearly a decade—and at accelerated speed since 2014—Beijing has been salami slicing its way to a position of primacy in that critical international waterway, while eroding the norms and interests Washington long has sought to defend. To date, however, Washington has struggled to articulate an effective response. The Obama administration opposed Chinese maritime expansion rhetorically and worked to improve the overall American military and geopolitical posture in the Asia-Pacific. Yet the administration only occasionally mustered the leverage necessary to check China’s quest for dominance of the South China Sea, and often it was unable even to impose substantial long-term costs on Beijing for its short-term assertiveness. For its part, the Trump administration has yet to formulate or implement a coherent South China Sea strategy, and it has swung from suggesting that America might deny Chinese access to islands in the South China Sea physically—something approaching an act of war—to appearing subsequently to deprioritize the issue.
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Is China Helping North Korea Build Ballistic Missile Submarines?
Bryan Clark, a retired U.S. Navy undersea warfare officer and analyst the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, suggested that while the requisite missile ejection technologies are difficult to master, it is probably not beyond the capabilities of North Korean engineers.
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U.S. wargame highlights role of commercial space imagery in military conflicts
The research concluded that Russia’s and China’s sophisticated long-range sensor and weapon networks along their borders and in occupied lands create a “strategic problem” for the United States, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments who participated in the wargame.
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North Korea hasn’t been cowed by Trump Washington Post
Trump truthfully argues he was dealt a bad hand on North Korea. “North Korea is one of the most difficult national security problems. In all honesty, no administration dating back to Bush 41 has handled it particularly well,” said Eric Edelman, former ambassador to Turkey and a veteran State Department official. “Having said all that, it is a very dangerous situation that requires persistent alliance management, clear objectives and follow-through, not overheated rhetoric from the commander in chief, constantly shifting red lines, taunting tweets, and meaningless bravado that undercuts deterrence and the credibility of our alliance commitments.” In other words, Trump is arguably making a bad situation much worse.
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Face It, The Mighty U.S. Aircraft Carrier is Finished
A great example comes from a 2011 report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary [Assessments], which shows it wouldn’t take much strategic sophistication to beat U.S. missile defenses—just some basic math
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Tankers and similar assets vulnerable to modern air warfare
Former Air Force pilot Mark Gunzinger and Bryan Clark of the Center of Strategic and Budgetary Assessment wrote in a 2015 report, “96% of all American Precision Guided Munitions (PGM) are direct attack weapons with ranges under 50 nm.”