Geopolitical Futures

For decades, the United States has been able to project military power across the Pacific through regional bases, carrier strike groups, long-range aircraft and alliances. That posture helped sustain the regional balance of power and reinforced the assumption that Washington could intervene in a Taiwan crisis if it chose to do so. Today, China’s growing ability to strike the regional infrastructure needed for U.S. operations is making distant power projection costlier, more vulnerable and less reliable.

To overcome the U.S. in a conflict over Taiwan, China does not need to defeat the United States globally or replicate its worldwide military network. It would be operating near its own infrastructure and supply lines, while the United States would depend on a limited number of airfields, ports, fuel depots and access agreements spread across the Pacific. At a time when long-range precision strike is becoming more widespread, distance and mobility are increasingly consequential. Ships and aircraft can move, but the bases, ports, fuel depots and command nodes required to support them are harder to disperse, protect and replace. - Andrew Davidson

Economic warfare today is waged by nation-states through tariffs and sanctions, export controls, investment screening, payment restrictions, cyber-enabled espionage, financial coercion and control over strategic chokepoints. Unlike conventional military operations, these measures unfold through opaque supply chains, private intermediaries, fragmented legal systems and delayed market reactions. Governments rarely have a full picture of how pressure will emerge in global networks. Markets react before facts are fully known. Firms hedge against risks that may never materialize. Allies interpret signals differently. In this environment, economic conflict is defined by strategic ambiguity.

If the current international environment is understood as a form of economic war, then the conditions for the fog of this war are already in place. - Antonia Colibassanu

Yesterday we published the new June issue of GeoEconomic Lens covering current critical topics such as the dilemma of reopening Venezuela, energy coordination in ASEAN and inflation and its impact on business and investors.

If you run a business or have investment decisions to make, or just enjoy a deeper knowledge of the impact of geopolitics on a nation’s economy and its components, our goal is to provide a lens through which to focus and better understand the most important connections.

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Geographically, Israel is in a profoundly weak strategic position. At its widest point, it is only 71 miles (114 kilometers) across; at its narrowest point, it is only nine miles across. Israel has no defensive space. It has little ability to withdraw, regroup and counterattack. Defensive depth is essential to national security. It determines how much time there is to recover from an initial attack. Space and time are essential to war.

Ignoring the emergence of drones, Israel cannot tolerate a defeat at its border, because a defeat would give it, at most, 71 miles in which to retreat. From this flows a specific military logic. Israel has to prevent attacks by initiating combat, and it has to be able to defeat its enemy early in a war. For Israeli leaders, it follows that the Israel Defense Forces always have to be significantly more powerful than potential enemies. The idea that Israel would never face a force more powerful than its own has always been improbable. During the 1973 attack by Egypt and Syria (which were armed and coordinated by the Soviet Union), Israel came perilously close to disaster. It was saved by the fact that Egyptian, Syrian and Soviet planners had failed to anticipate their dramatic early successes and had no plans to fully defeat Israel and seize its land.

My full analysis of Israel's strategic problem is at Geopolitical Futures. Please read and share: https://geopoliticalfutures.com/israels-strategic-problem/