Charles W. King

The recent outbreak of Ebola in a remote part of Congo prompted a rapid and comprehensive response from the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) including the first time in its seventy year history that its Director has traveled into the midst of an active hotzone. The response from the United States has been decidedly muted, unlike the previous outbreak in West Africa that began in 2013 where thousands of U.S. Army troops were deployed to construct field hospitals and support aid efforts. In the years since the West African outbreak the Trump Administration has requested Congress roll back funding that had been allocated for addressing Ebola and other virulent outbreaks. While costly, the expenditures by the United States between 2014 and 2016 to combat Ebola in West Africa, primarily through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) and U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S.A.I.D.), represent an important strategic deployment of American resources to address a national interest.

Like food aid, medical aid to foreign countries, especially to address potential epidemics, is not solely altruistic. Infectious diseases like Ebola and Marburg are easiest to contain when populations of infected are localized. The the outbreaks of SARS and Avian Flu, which are much less lethal to humans than Ebola or Marburg, demonstrate how difficult fighting a disease that has penetrated the international travel network. If the United States was attempting to prevent Ebola or a similar disease from making it through American border posts, seaports, and airports it would be significantly more costly and dangerous than the billions spent in the West African campaign. American support for the fight against Ebola in West Africa between 2014 and 2016 was ultimately a single-digit billions line item in a trillions of dollar budget. A medical quarantine of the United States would not only be a major federal expense, but would have a significant effect on gross domestic product and economic growth.

The relatively contained outbreaks close to their origin are also important for the development of medical remedies and vaccines. The WHO is now deploying a vaccine for Ebola that was first tested in the last months of the West African outbreak in the thousands of doses in Congo. Without international funds for fighting in West Africa or Congo Merck, the pharmaceutical giant who developed the vaccine, would not have been able to incentivized to do so, which would hamstring future responses whether the outbreak was in the developed world or the undeveloped world.

It is also in the long term interest of the United States that the developing be stable and prosperous world. Stable developing states are markets for American goods and services. Unstable ones are sources of not only misery and death, but dangerous pressures on the United States and its allies, the Syrian Refugee crisis being only the largest and most recent example. Civil strife has been simmering in Congo and among its neighbors for decades, the return of major conflict at the same time as an outbreak could be orders of magnitude deadlier than the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa which killed approximately eleven thousand people. Epidemics cause their own refugee crises, but combined with flight from conflict such an outbreak could be un-containable by current measures. Policy-makers in the United States and Europe have a good case for supporting medical aid to the rest of the world, both in crises and in times of relative calm. They simply need to make it.

Charles W. King

The tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration on steel and aluminum have kicked off a series of tit for tat retaliation between the United States and the tariffs stated target; the People’s Republic of China. The most recent Chinese tariffs on over a hundred American imports to China will amount to roughly $50 billion as a response to tariffs of a similar size directed specifically at China. The Administration, and President Trump in particular, contend that the trade deficit with China is a dire situation and that a trade war with the People’s Republic will be easy to win. The history of trade wars suggest that this conclusion may be dangerous.

The desire to have exports exceed imports as a key drive of economic growth is a key principle not of twentieth century capitalism, but of the mercantilist policies that dominated Europe throughout the Renaissance and Early Modern period. The British, Spanish, French, and Dutch Empires strictly regulated whom their colonial subjects could trade with, and prohibited the production of finished goods in their colonies to preserve them as markets for goods from the imperial core. While this was profitable for the imperial crowns and those companies granted monopolies by royal charter, it was the colonies that were able to skirt these laws, like the Thirteen American Colonies, that ultimately flourished economically. By the dawn of the twentieth century mercantilism was all but dead, slain by a hundred years of Freedom of the Seas and Trade imposed by the Royal Navy after the Napoleonic wars. Free trade allowed not only the British Isles to flourish, but the Empire’s colonies and trading partners abroad flourished as well.

Regardless of the trend towards greater free trade fostered by the British Empire and the United States, tariffs and other forms of economic warfare remained a tool of twentieth century geopolitics. During the 1970s the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries embargoed the United States and other nations that supported Israel during the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. Saudi Arabia and by extension O.P.E.C. learned lessons from the mixed results of these embargoes and in recent years have let the price of oil plummet to price American and other producers out of the market to preserve O.P.E.C.’s global market share. Russia regularly uses its control of natural gas resources important to Europe as a tool to extract diplomatic concessions, and the United States is tightening the effectiveness of oil embargoes on North Korea. Economic restrictions can be a useful tool for foreign policy, but they are not without their dangers.

During the Great Depression American exports dropped by nearly half. The consensus of economists and historians is that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 and the tariffs imposed by America’s trading partners in retaliation were a major contributing factor to this drop, and the severity of the Depression. While tariffs protect the domestic industries whose goods they target, any consumer or company who relies on those goods will pay a higher price, usually for inferior goods. Tariffs decrease competition in the domestic economy, one of the drivers of health in consumer driven economies. The cycle of retaliation that tariffs start shrinks market access.

Market access as been a major principle of American foreign policy since the American Revolution, and trade conflicts may sacrifice these gains. As the United States gets deeper and deeper into the cycle of trade restrictions with the People’s Republic of China and other major economic powers it is important for policy makers to recognize that the economy of the United States has always benefited from competitive advantage and eschewed self-sufficiency and autarky as an objective. Trade wars, even victorious ones, pose a serious threat to the health of such economies. Moving to a autarkic mercantilist economy would be costly and counter to long standing American capitalist principles.

Charles W. King

Recent sovereign debt crises in Europe, the Trump Administration’s vociferous objections to trade deficits have, and the growing American national debt have many in Congress and the public increasingly concerned about debt as an instrument of national policy. More and more American states are passing balanced budget amendments forcing them to pass revenue neutral budgets each fiscal year, and some are pushing for the adoption of a federal balanced budget amendment. While this sounds like fiscal responsibility, the issuance of debt by governments is a tremendously important tool of domestic and foreign policy. The former is illustrated by the importance of bond programs to the New Deal and World War 2, the latter is less obvious.

The First Bank of the United States, established by Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, in 1791 was created not only to raise revenue for the new federal government and standardize currency across the new country, but also as an important tool of foreign policy. During the course of the American Revolution the Colonies built up a significant amount of debt to European creditors, France among others. The First Bank of the United States took ownership of these debts, meaning that if the new government failed, those European creditors would never recieve payment. This gave France and other European nations a reason to continue to support the fledgeling United States, and to permit the open trading relationships that the United States needed to prosper in order to service the debt. The nationalization of the colonies war debts made those creditors invested in the success of the United States, an effect that the issuance of government debt continues to have today.

Debt forgiveness is also an important foreign policy tool. After World War Two the United States owned a considerable amount of European debt that the post-war European nations were incapable of paying back. The State Department’s Office of Foreign Building Operations (now the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations) convinced Congress to turn the debt over to them. The F.B.O. would write off the foreign debt in exchange for goods and services from the debtor countries. The F.B.O. purchased the historical palaces that are now the U.S. Ambassador’s residences in Paris and Rome with this debt. It filled American embassies all over the world with cutting edge Knoll furniture made in Europe by paying for the furniture with debt write offs. European countries were ecstatic to write off their war debts in this way because it put money into their national economies and industries rather than sending it abroad to the United States. The F.B.O.’s creative use of debt facilitated a blossoming of American diplomacy around the world and helped the European economic recovery.

The United States and other major backers of the Bretton Woods system that includes the World Bank and International Monetary Fund regularly use access to credit, as well as debt forgiveness and restructuring as leverage to get developing nations to implement specific economic or political policies. Japan and China both own large stockpiles of American national debt in the form of Treasury Bonds. These stockpiles make Japan and China investors in American prosperity. While the Chinese owned debt is considered to be a danger, they also provide an early warning system, as China would have to either call those debts in—damaging both the Chinese and American economies—or write them off in a conflict. American and European sanctions regimes against the Russian Federation do not currently include Russian sovereign bonds, but they could and this would be a significant increase in the pressure on the Russian State. National debt is only a millstone when other policies put a nation’s ability to service that debt in danger, the ability to issue debt is an important strategic policy tool for the United States and all national governments.

Charles W. King

Perhaps the most famous peace-time shipbuilding program in modern history was the Royal Navy’s ‘Two-Power Standard’. While it has been the informal objective of the Royal Navy since the 1850’s, the Naval Defense Act 1889 enshrined the standard in official policy and committed £21,500,000 over five years for the Royal Navy’s expansion. From 1889 onward it was the official policy of the United Kingdom that the Royal Navy would maintain a fleet of battleships at least equal the combined number of battleships to the next two largest navies, France and Russia in 1889.

However the Two-Power Standard raises an important issue, how would an organization like the Royal Navy know how many ships of what kinds the French, Germans, Russians, or Japanese were constructing? The answer was an organized system of Naval Attachés at embassies abroad reporting on the construction and movements of foreign flagged vessels. The United Kingdom created the Foreign Intelligence Committee in 1882, which was renamed the Naval Intelligence Department in 1887. The NID was responsible not only for gathering intelligence on foreign navies through naval attachés and the reports of British merchant marine captains and other sources, but also for strategic planning. By giving the NID these responsibilities the British Admiralty directly linked the both long term shipbuilding planning, and strategic war planning to the intelligence gathered by the NID on foreign naval assets and movements.

The late nineteenth century saw the creation of a number of the forerunners of NATO’s current foreign intelligence services, many of them directly associated with naval affairs. The United States’ first intelligence service was also founded in 1882. Like its Royal Navy counterpart the Office of Naval Intelligence was created alongside a new shipbuilding program and had its responsibilities including the monitoring of foreign naval construction and movements. Imperial Germany’s Nachrichten-Abteilung, known as ‘N’, was not created until 1901 due to the internal politics of the Imperial Navy, but it would also have the remit to monitor foreign shipbuilding and naval movements, focusing on the Royal Navy. Prior to the World War One despite a public hysteria about German spies there were very few German agents working in the U.K.. This is in part because Imperial Germany’s intelligence operations remained split between the Army and Navy. Those German agents that did operate in the U.K. prior to and during World War One were almost exclusively operatives of N, responsible for monitoring naval construction.

Even before the advent of dedicated naval intelligence operations beginning in the 1880s, such information was deemed of critical importance during both peace and war time. The Union carefully monitored British shipyards during the American Civil War for the construction of potential warships for the Confederacy. Members of nation’s merchant marine were relied upon to report when and where they saw foreign vessels in port and who had purchased a hull being laid down in dry-dock was prized information.

Today the intelligence operations of the United States and others are focusing more and more on direct action and covert operations, but historically the origins foreign intelligence services is strategic rather than operational. Naval intelligence efforts remain essential to both current naval operations and planning for future construction and potential conflicts. Human and signals intelligence about foreign military movements and capabilities are of immense strategic value and should remain a major focus of intelligence operations.

Charles W. King

The two iconic weapons of the conflicts of the Cold War and decolonization in the twentieth century are the American M-16 and the Russian AK-47. All over the world the AK and its derivatives are the weapon of choice of freedom fighters and terrorists, exported and licensed freely by the Soviet Union. The M-16 has been an icon of American military technology since the Vietnam War, and it has been the weapon of choice for governments across the developing world. While the United States’ allies like German, the United Kingdom, and France may not employ the M-16, their service rifles use the same NATO 5.56mm cartridge.

The ubiquity of these two rifles is nothing short of miraculous. Since the advent of reliable firearms to Europe the militaries and governments have prized the domestic production of military weapons, frequently choosing to adopt inferior weapons that were designed and made in their own countries. The plight of Serbia and Greece in World War One demonstrate why this was so important. Weapons technology changed rapidly at the turn of the twentieth century; smokeless powder, new firing mechanisms, innovative magazines. As the nations of Europe adopted new service weapons in the heat of this rapid change those nations without the ability to invent and produce these new magazine fed, bolt action, smokeless powder-firing rifles had to choose where they would purchase their from. Serbia and Greece both selected a number of Austrian designed rifles and pistols, primarily from the manufacturer Steyr. Both had good reasons to do this, the weapons were cutting edge technology, well designed and well made, and lucrative contracts with an Austrian arms manufacturer softened diplomatic relations with the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Both Serbia and Greece suffered greatly for their choice. With Serbia being the target of Austria’s war aims, and Greece neutral but effectively a battleground until it joined France and the United Kingdom, both were cut off from supplies of ammunition, replacements, and spare parts. For the duration of the war keeping the Serbian and Greek armies supplied would be a constant problem for both governments. Both would field a variety of incompatible weapons and cartridges as they cast around for arms, frequently signing contracts for weapons that the French, British, or Russians had deemed unsatisfactorily inferior. Supplies were so limited that for Greece the iconic weapon of World War One and their partisan fight against Nazi Germany would ultimately be a single shot black powder rifle.

This is what makes the popularity of NATO compatible weapons in particular so startling. The Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact satellites manufactured AK-47’s and it’s variants by the truckload and shipped them all over the world. The countries of NATO on the other hand made the decision less than a year after its creation that they needed to standardize their equipment to insure interoperability, particularly of ammunition. Ultimately the Alliance adopted the NATO 7.62mm cartridge which continues to be in use today. Most of the other members of the Alliance wanted an intermediate cartridge more like the NATO 5.56mm that would be adopted in the following decade, but the U.S. insisted upon the 7.62mm. The U.S. got the cartridge it wanted, and the rest of the alliance got the rifle they wanted, the Belgian designed FN FAL, known during the Cold War as, “The Right Arm of the Free World.” Today NATO has approximately 1300 different Standardization Agreements (STANAG) that dictate the requirements for compatible equipment. They are so ubiquitous that the thirty round magazine that all NATO service rifles are required to fit is known as the STANAG Magazine.

Nonetheless the nations of the Alliance continue to field domestically designed and produced weapons; the British L85, French FAMAS, German G36, Czech Brens, and American M-16’s and M-4’s. Standardization has proven to be a boon not only to the militaries of the alliance, but also the arms manufacturers who produce weapons for export who have benefited the market share of NATO 5.56mm weapons for foreign militaries and individual collectors. However, the multilateral nature of the alliance has given rise to some complications recently. For the last twenty-five years NATO has been attempting to move away from its current standard 9mm pistol round, and the United States Army and Marines have been trying to find replacements for their M-16’s. Both have been unsuccessful. While the armies of NATO agree that they need a pistol round that performs better against body armor than the 9mm parabellum, which was designed in 1902. Competition between Belgian, German, and American designers has led to a road block that had yet to be resolved. Designed for the twenty inch barrel of the M-16, the NATO 5.56mm round possesses too much powder for the carbine length barrels of the M-4 and other carbines that are now the standard issue service rifle of militaries worldwide. This leads to a multitude of issues, primarily an increase in maintenance and training costs. Arms procurement, including cartridge selection, is an important strategic decision that can cripple militaries or be a great boon.