Re: Geopolitics / West Point Symposium on Great Power Competition with China.

Here are some high-level thoughts from my participation in West Point’s Symposium on “Order, Counterorder, Disorder,” February 9-10, 2023. Chatham House Rules apply.

The two-day symposium kicked off at West Point Military Academy in the historic Haig Room of Jefferson Hall, named after former Secretary of State and retired General Alexander Haig.

The choice of West Point itself, considered by George Washington to be “the most strategic location in America” during the War for Independence, was fitting for this symposium on the current Great Power Competition with China. The nature of the conflict and the face of the adversary may be different, but the symbolism of West Point was not lost on anyone.

This symposium was unlike any other panel/conference I’ve attended. The goal of this symposium was to cull actionable ideas from over 50 submitted papers from different disciplines on various national security issues facing America in today’s increasing disorder. There were 31 panels over 2 days on a myriad of topics including Alliance Management in the Indo-Pacific and NATO, Emerging Technologies and Irregular Warfare, to the topic near and dear to my heart -- Economic Warfare.

The output from these panel discussions then gets summarized and presented to the Chairman’s Action Group, which reports directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was very exciting to not only participate in closed sessions with top military strategists but to also present a policy paper with real-world adoption potential by our top brass.

The keynote stage was shared by a lieutenant colonel, a brigadier general, a former ambassador, and an advisor to Chairman’s Action Group (CAG) of the Joint Chiefs. They collectively set the stage for the strategic context of today.

The US is currently in the midst of one of the most historic Pivot Points of the last several decades:

The First Pivot was 11/9/89, when the Berlin Wall fell and ended the Cold War, giving rise to America’s unipolar decade.

The Second Pivot occurred 9/11/01, which gave rise to 20 years of “discontinuity” and the Global War on Terror (GWOT).

We are living through the Third Pivot now, which was kicked off 2/24/22 when Russia invaded Ukraine. The ramifications from this conflict will be far-reaching and are just now being felt: shifts in the international order, how China and India will respond, the emergence of regional poles, the re-engineering of energy markets and supply chains, and changes in European security.

It’s notable that although the global coalition against Russia comprises 60% of global GDP, it only comprises 16% of global population — the bulk of the world’s population is still officially sidelined. What will they do?

There are clear challenges to the existing Rules-Based Order (RBO), and National Security Strategy (NSS) will be defined by a couple of key rivalries. Topical issues for NSS include:

1. How to position in the early years of geostrategic competition (most assume the US is best-positioned for now)

2. How best to work with allies and partners

3. Balancing issues like climate, energy, and inflation

4. How best to ascertain the implications of emerging technologies in future warfare

Questions to ponder:

Think about the world as it was, as it currently is, and what it can be. How should the NSS evolve as a result and how should national defense change?

What are the potential black swans? Equally important: what are the “gray rhinos” (blurry threats that are highly probably and highly impactful yet often neglected)?

What follows will determine whether we live in an age of prosperity or continuous conflict.

After the keynote, we broke into individual panel sessions, where multiple papers were discussed. What was particularly noteworthy was the mixing of academia and military participants in these panels; there was less participation from the private sector than I would have liked to see (at least in the panels I attended), considering the importance of the Economic pillar of the US Army War College’s DIME Framework of National Power (DIME = Diplomatic/Informational/Military/Economic).

I distill key insights from the various papers that I found to be interesting below:

The first paper was about human-decision making and how it plays into strategic decisions, focusing in particular on Russian “Pavlovian conditioning” in terms of how they perceive the “US-led” world order. Russia clearly wants to build a multipolar world and views the current conflict as a “hybrid war against the collective West.” It should not be a surprise that Putin resorts to economic weapons of war, as his doctoral thesis promulgated the weaponizing of key industries including agriculture, raw materials, aerospace, defense, and energy.

The second paper was about financing military power with “unwitting lenders” of the population at large. The professor cited the typical “guns vs. butter” tradeoffs that countries make in times of war, typically financing conflicts through 4 avenues: 1. Taxes, 2. Spending cuts, 3. Monetary policy, 4. Borrowing. Regarding borrowing, he cited 3 historical examples in which governments redirected domestic savings by forcing banks to hold government debt. The mechanism for this “stealthy fiscal policy” might be through higher reserve requirements while holding deposits at zero rates and requiring pensions to hold government debt.

There was much discussion about the US Pivot to the Indo-Pacific away from the Middle East even as a war rages on in Europe. Although an IndoPac equivalent to NATO is unlikely, there exist many overlapping security mechanisms like AUKUS, the Quad, and Five Eyes that can be better coordinated and built upon. The UK and France in particular have large IndoPac interests and are expected to be active in the region besides the US and Japan.

There was also much discussion of the challenges facing Europe as Moscow actively tries to drive wedges between individual countries within the EU as well as broader Europe.  Smaller countries like Lithuania have vociferously self-declared themselves as “Super Atlanticists” in cozying up to the US. Others attempt to walk the geostrategic tightrope of “strategic autonomy” as they navigate the increasing divisions between US/China. Franco-German consensus has become a necessary but not necessarily sufficient condition for broader EU alignment on policies.

One of the most interesting discussions revolved around the topic of whether the “Napoleonic” rules of engagement stipulated by famed military theorist Carl von Clausewitz still pertain to modern warfare. It was fascinating to listen to a high-ranking European General agree with the US Colonels and military scholars on how modern wars have extended far beyond the Military dimension of DIME, with emphases on how post-kinetic outcomes like ideological and economic structures must often outlast military engagement.

For me, it was a fitting end to the conference to hear the General proclaim his love for metal music and Iron Maiden in particular, mentioning that their latest album Senjutsu literally means “strategy” in Japanese. As a metalhead myself, I could not resist a metal quip of my own, citing Metallica’s “Fight Fire With Fire” as the centerpiece of some of the Economic strategies laid out in the paper I co-authored and co-presented with Lieutenant Commander Michael St. Pierre of the Royal Canadian Navy. The good General laughed and proclaimed that although Kill ‘Em All is his favorite Metallica album, …And Justice For All might be a better framework for what he would like to see happen in Europe.

Our paper, entitled “US Dollar Primacy In An Era of Economic Warfare,” was very well-received and is currently being evaluated by a US Army General and his staff.

Next week, I will lay out our paper in its entirety on Substack. Stayed tuned!