Tokyo Prepares for November

While Americans are focused on the upcoming election, the November vote looms especially large for Japan. In The National Interest, Patrick Cronin outlines how the election of Vice President Joe Biden, or a continuation of the Trump administration, would impact Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s priorities and China-related policies. Creating an effective and sustainable counterweight to Chinese power will take patience, persistence, and pragmatism.

Crisis in the Caucasus

A resurgence of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan reveals how Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is solidifying his power while the great powers are distracted, notes Walter Russell Mead in The Wall Street Journal. In recent weeks Azerbaijan, with direct support from Turkey, launched an offensive that could ultimately create a nightmare scenario for Russia if ethnic tensions spread throughout the region.

A Smarter Use of Artificial Intelligence

The U.S. military is rolling out artificial intelligence-enabled projects like the Army’s Project Convergence. But the novelty of these demonstrations and the effort required to pull them off suggest that the DoD is struggling to incorporate AI into its combat systems, write Bryan Clark and Dan Patt in Breaking Defense. The DoD's initiatives treat AI as a tool, when warfighters should treat AI as just another form of intelligence. 

Ceasefire Tanked by the Taliban

Even after the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners and the U.S. adhering to its withdrawal timetable, the Taliban still refuses to commit to its ceasefire. In The Hill, Amb. Husain Haqqani argues that suspending the peace talks would prompt Pakistan to play a more active role in holding the Taliban accountable to ceasefire terms, and make it clear that the U.S. desire to withdraw forces is not an act of desperation.

McMaster Shares His "Battlegrounds"

Newly released by Harper, “Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World,” is the latest book written by Lt. General H.R. McMaster (U.S. Army, ret.). As Hudson’s Japan Chair and former National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen McMaster offers a bold re-examination of the national security challenges that face the United States. The book describes new major arenas of competition—from space and cyberspace to emerging technologies—and how the U.S. can prevail in complex competitions with authoritarian powers, transnational terrorist organizations, and hostile states.

BEFORE YOU GO...

• In light of California's mandate to be emission-free by 2035, Mike Watson takes a closer look at electric cars and their impact on American manufacturing in the National Review. Switching to electric cars will make Americans more dependent on foreign energy supplies, Watson notes, as the minerals needed for electric vehicles (and renewable energy) are mined in China.