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Indo-Asia-Pacific

Cold War and Strategic Competition with China

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By LCDR Robert “Jake” Bebber, USN, and Dr. John Hemmings

The most significant foreign policy debate in Washington at the moment is how to frame the emerging strategic competition with People’s Republic China (PRC), with foreign policy elites arguing whether we are in a “cold war” with China or something entirely different. The stakes of the debate are considerable because it will decide how the United States develops policies for competing with the PRC and how it frames that competition with allies and partners.      

On the “against” side (those who disagree with framing the competition as a “cold war”), there are two basic approaches. The first is to argue that the United States should not engage in a cold war with the PRC – a prescriptive argument – based on the argument that the U.S. and PRC are too deeply intertwined to have a cold war and must cooperate across a range of international issues, including climate change, non-proliferation, North Korea, and COVID-19. 

The second argument is that although the U.S. and PRC are engaged in a strategic competition, it should not be framed as a “cold war.” This is a “historical fallacy” argument based on differences between the current state of competition and that which existed between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Most recently, Richard Fontaine and Ely Ratner made this argument in the Washington Post, writing that the essential features that made the Cold War what it was – two coherent blocs arrayed against each other, with little or no economic integration – are missing. 

While the positions laid out above have merit and although the current competition between Washington and Beijing has marked differences from the Cold War, we believe we can still learn from historic frameworks like the Cold War and that it provides a number of benefits for the U.S. in doing so. 

Four Arguments in favor of a Cold War Framework

In this essay, we make four arguments for calling the U.S.-China competition a “cold war”:

  1. The Cold War template provides Western political elites with a compelling narrative on why Western publics must bear the burdens imposed by a competition that may occur over many decades. It also shapes a “common approach” towards our adversaries within society at large.
  2. There is a structural similarity between the Cold War and the current competition, as a potential hegemonic transition takes place between two nuclear powers, thus diffusing competition horizontally, below the threshold of war into other areas of competition.
  3. The United States and the PRC have different political and economic ideologies with different approaches toward state power. Under China’s president, Xi Jinping, these have become more pronounced rather than less, causing friction between the two powers. What’s more, Chinese leaders view themselves to be in a competition with the West. A Cold War analogy acknowledges Chinese claims about the ideological competition.
  4. The Cold War template provides Western policymakers with both a toolset and point of comparison for constructing policies that will allow the West to weather long-term competition across multiple sectors, socialize allies, counter all-pervasive political warfare, and develop the military-industrial strategies for long-term competition.

We argue that the debate over whether the Cold War framework should apply to the U.S.-China competition is missing key components, and that once applied, they support the utility of the framework. 

Policy makers must engage the American population to once again take up the burden of leading its friends, allies, and partners in a global, ideological struggle for an indeterminate amount of time. Instead, policy elites remain fixated on whether to label this emerging competition as a “cold war” or not. But in that debate, neither side seems to consider that it is not the elites, but the taxpayers who will be crucial in supporting this competition. To that end, elites must meet taxpayers where they are.

Meeting Them Where They Are

As Michael J. Green discusses at the outset of By More than Providence (2017), there is even a debate whether democracies like the U.S. can ‘do’ grand strategy.1 This argument has been leveled against U.S. foreign and defense policy2 a number of times and has much to do with the pluralistic style of governance, required consensus-building, and weak power of the executive over the economy and other tools of statecraft. However, for democratic states to compete well, they need to frame their competitions well with their constituencies. The strategic competition with the PRC will require a reorganization – at the very least – of a great many of the tools of U.S. statecraft, in the bureaucracy, in society, in education, and in the media. 

While the previous Administration restricted U.S. technology companies and businesses in their dealings with the PRC, the need for a compelling and overarching national narrative is increasing. Much of the national debate around supply chain security, leading to “decoupling” or “partial disengagement” from the PRC has suffered because it is not clear to what extent the state requires those who seek the nation’s fortune to make way to those who seek its security. Critics of decoupling or of restrictions on PRC tech companies continue to make counter-arguments based on costs, revealing a stark lack of understanding of the extent of the forthcoming competition. If the United States is going to expect its finance, tech, and innovation sectors to restrict their dealings with the PRC, they must do more than simply pass regulatory measures and legislation. 

There is also the issue of paying for the strategic competition and the growing alarm among many on both sides of the political spectrum over the structural fiscal challenges America faces. At the same time that these challenges must be addressed, policy makers must justify to taxpayers why in a time of recovery from the pandemic, several hundred billion dollars, or perhaps more, must be devoted toward defense, the intelligence community, public diplomacy, strategic communication, research and development, and other efforts critical to national security.

The U.S. policy community must explain to U.S. taxpayers why they are expected to pay a larger proportion of their taxes toward defense. U.S. defense spending between 1949 and 1990 (between five and ten percent of GDP) was at historically high levels for nearly five decades. Today, even though defense spending barely constitutes three percent of GDP, it would be absurd to expect the public to be willing to shoulder this type of burden for anything less than a war, “cold” though it might be. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, the U.S.-Soviet Cold War is replete with examples of bureaucratic, education-funding, and departmental organization that helped the United States compete. 

Preparing the American people for a long-term competition and potential conflict will come against the backdrop of formidable social, economic, and domestic obstacles not easily overcome. They include income disparity and labor issues in an economy that has been offshoring its “middle” skill manufacturing jobs for decades. In addition, the United States is undergoing an opioid crisis that creates pressure on already-wide social disparities in health coverage and access to public resources. Finally, social and political divisions between the conservative and liberal wings of U.S. society, media, and political elites have begun to widen, creating tension points across a range of issues including immigration, policing and society, race-based politics, and religion. These are the daily realities of the general population. In a crisis, these social and domestic tensions will only be exacerbated.

These social, economic, and health conditions are the backdrop to a well-documented fiscal challenge that Congress faces. Recent policy decisions on taxation and emergency spending as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic have added to the problem. This is not to say that they are insurmountable. The U.S. still has the world’s largest economy, and with more than $20 trillion in gross domestic product annually, the resources are available, even if the political will remains elusive. The fiscal burden of creating and sustaining American power is likely to grow. This burden will come at a time when it will be incumbent on decision makers to address the entire scope of national taxation and spending. Hard trade-offs will be required.

Yet fiscal constraints are only one piece of the puzzle. Even if the resources were readily available, it is not entirely clear that the population of 2020 is particularly interested in competing. The first Cold War was born out of the Second World War, and early system shocks caused a public reappraisal of U.S. efforts to rebuild the world order while being confronted with a global Communist movement that had other designs. That context is missing for today’s generations.

Part of this is due to the nature of how the Cold War ended and the brief, “unipolar moment” the United States and its Allies enjoyed. During the unipolar moment, little effort was given to recapitalizing the institutions necessary to meet a new, peer challenger. Even anti-communist stalwarts argued that it was time for America to become a “normal nation,” and shed the burden of global leadership. The lack of an existential threat made such calls more appealing.

Recent polling suggests that a smaller portion of younger generations consider America an “exceptional” nation. Significant gaps exist between generations on perceived threats to America, with Millennials pointing to “climate change” (62%) as a bigger threat than “the development of China as a world power” (35%), “North Korea’s nuclear program,” (55%) or the “rise of authoritarianism around the world” (42%). Now as one ages and experiences the world, the perception of threats changes. Generations are not monolithic and views do not remain etched in stone. Evidence suggests that the public is growing far more wary of China as a threat, and the recent global COVID-19 pandemic and the Chinese leadership’s complicity in covering up the danger may further incur the American public’s anger. Fortunately, the vast majority of Americans still believe that a future with U.S. leadership is far better than a world led by Beijing.

An Ideological and Existential Fight

Like the original Cold War, the ongoing competition between China and the United States is openly ideological in nature, and there will be a winner and a loser. Nadège Rolland notes that the implications of this struggle for “discourse power” and the significant resources that Beijing is pouring into expanding its media footprint and activities overseas, indicating “a yearning for a partial hegemony, loosely exercised over positions of the ‘Global South’ – a space that would be free from Western influence and purged of liberal ideals.”3 While it has been a long-cited trope that the PRC is “communist in name only,” there are abundant signs that Xi Jinping has sought to reassert the primacy of Marxist-Leninism, reinvigorate the centrality of the Chinese Communist Party, and hold up Socialism with Chinese characteristics and China’s unique development model as exports to the world.4 In addition to a string of campaign slogans, speeches, and policies meant to reinforce the importance of the Party’s Marxist heritage, it is clear from Xi’s internal speeches that he holds deep ideological convictions and began promoting them from the earliest days of his leadership. 

In one early speech, given to CCP cadres in 2012, he argued that Chinese socialism was not only in competition with western liberalism and capitalism, but was destined for eventual dominance: “We firmly believe that as socialism with Chinese characteristics develops further, our system will inevitably mature; it is likewise inevitable that the superiority of our system will be increasingly apparent; inevitably, our country’s road of development will have increasingly greater influence on the world.” He continued, “But the road is tortuous. The eventual demise of capitalism and the ultimate victory of socialism will require a long historical process to reach completion.”

That Xi and other senior leaders see themselves in an ideological struggle vis-à-vis the West is also evident in the infamous Party memorandum, known in the West as “Document 9,” circulated by the General Office in April 2013 around the time that a general crackdown of human rights lawyers, academics, and media outlets was taking place. The memorandum asserted that “the current situation [is] a complicated intense struggle”, naming seven “perils,” including Western constitutionalism, civil society, “nihilistic” views of history, universal values, and the promotion of “the West’s view of media.”

In recent years, PRC leadership has begun to talk about exporting China’s “unique development model,” with Xi stating in 2017, “[China] offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence.” As Elizabeth Economy and others have written, this takes place primarily in the supply of training of foreign officials on its development model and distinctly authoritarian techniques, such as guiding public opinion, at new leadership academies, such as the Baise Cadre Academy, based in Guangxi. Most recently, Beijing responded to the COVID-19 crisis by framing it as a battle of systems, between its own handling of the crisis, and the handling by democratic states. 

The Tools and Rules Still Apply

Historically, great powers competed for regional or global hegemony through conventional wars,5 such as the Napoleonic Wars, or the First and Second World Wars.6 In all three instances, rising powers sought to challenge the status quo power or order, and establish their own hegemonic orders, suited to their individual national preferences. The United States and USSR were not fated to have a cold war, but driven to it by the impossibility of using war as a matter of statecraft in resolving their hegemonic competition. The mutual possession of nuclear weapons caused a stalemate and as a result, the confrontation became ‘colder’, waged through what Rogers calls “a plethora of proxy conflicts and with an array of instruments, deliberately designed to get underneath the escalatory ladder.” Hegemonic competitions between nuclear powers or nuclear blocs cannot be resolved in the historic manner. As a result, competition is diffused horizontally in sectors like technology, political warfare, sports, intelligence, media & discourse, and of course in indirect proxy wars, such as the Vietnam War and the Soviet War in Afghanistan.

The current competition between the United States and the PRC occurs across multiple sectors. It takes place in the military sphere, albeit at the gray zone level, or in planning and tactics – such anti-access/area denial. Competition also occurs at the level of international governance as the PRC begins to amass more influence among United Nations agencies (it leads four agencies, more than any other nation), leading to criticism from the United States that Beijing uses such agencies for its own national or geostrategic objectives.

Conflict also occurs in the media sector as Xi Jinping consolidated editorial control over most of China’s media outlets through changes made between 2013 and 2019.7 A massive outward push to those same media outlets to “tell China stories well” (jianghao zhongguo gushi) overseas, in conjunction with Beijing’s greater strategic goals has resulted in a growing bifurcation between Chinese and Western media.8 In response to the PRC’s drive to create positive external propaganda (waixuam), the U.S. ordered Chinese state propaganda organs inside the United States to register as foreign agents. In response, three major U.S. news outlets were banned from China.9

There is also a growing competition in the sectors that constitute civil society, cultural exchange, and education. The most recent evidence of this has been the American decision to restrict Chinese graduate students who have proven links to military institutions in the wake of a revival of China’s Thousand Talents program. It has also impacted the media, as policies under Xi Jinping began to promote a “discourse power” in a battle between Western media and Chinese state media.     

The “character” of a cold war may have changed, but its “nature” has not. 

As Mahnken has argued, many of the tools used by the United States during the Cold War still apply today as they are enduring sources of national statecraft and power. Alliance management, defense policy, arms control and competition, economic relations, political warfare, and internal security remain central concerns. He notes that the range of instruments of power the U.S. used was broad, and that today’s debate over competition seems to lack the scope of the Cold War. He writes “there has been much less debate over the role that arms control, industrial policy, industrial mobilization and internal security may play” compared to the Cold War.     

Blanchette further articulates that a central feature of the Cold War was the protection and promotion of our American values and living up to the standards upon which the Republic was founded. He notes that early architects of America’s Cold War strategy, George Kennan and Paul Nitze, pointed to building “a successfully functioning political and economic system,” one that gives America the “courage and self-confidence to cling to our own methods and conceptions of human society.”     

In this respect, the usefulness of the Cold War framing becomes more apparent. Half of the American population was alive for some or all of the Cold War, though that memory is growing distant. Yet there remains a residual notion among them of the gravity of the competition, its existential nature, and its costs.

Conclusion: The Cold War Frame Works, But You Have to Make the Case

In laying out our argument on why we believe the cold war framework is not only useful but necessary for the future of U.S. policy toward China, we have made certain key assumptions. The first of those is that the two powers will remain on a par for some decades to come. This is because Chinese advantages – excellent infrastructure, many more graduates in engineering, computing, and centralized planning – are balanced out by their disadvantages of an ageing and shrinking workforce, a growing tendency towards political control of the economy, and a costly internal security system. By that measure, U.S. social and political disarray at home is balanced out by the American advantages of a much-better educated and international workforce, access to two seas, and continental resources. For this reason, both states are likely to remain peer competitors for some time, with their ideological and geopolitical differences promoting a decades-long state of competition.

With these basic assumptions, it follows that it would be the most profound failure of policy for the United States to execute a grand strategy designed to compete with the People’s Republic China without popular consensus and support. Indeed, it would be disastrous. This is more important for younger generations as it is they who will largely face most of the sacrifice. The underlying assumption behind competing with China is that the American people are invested in the cause. If that assumption is misplaced, then the strategy will not be resourced adequately.

This will require not only public debate, but also public accountability, and the willingness to craft policy and strategy around the constraints of public opinion. While public opinion can be moved, the case must be made. This must be central to American strategy to compete and win this new cold war. The current complacency regarding the public’s declining trust in institutions and America’s role in the world is dangerous. Foreign powers are actively engaged in strategies to undermine political legitimacy and resiliency, but they need only accentuate the trends that were already present. 

Jonathan Ward explains how the leaders of the People’s Republic of China have used economic engagement with the United States to bring it to the brink of the end of American power. Victory in their eyes is “the building of a superpower, and the restoration, as China’s leaders see it, of China’s position of supremacy among all nations.”10 Like the first Cold War, this one is also a conflict in which there will be a winner and a loser. It will be existential in nature, as the PRC challenges fundamental liberalism, respect for free markets, and democratic ideals within China and in the international system. The decade of the 2020s – much like the early years of the first Cold War – will shape the contours of this new Cold War. The window of opportunity is fast closing on America’s ability to organize its society to prepare to defend its interests and the cause of freedom. This is worth fighting for. But it cannot be defended without the support of the American people and the support of its allies abroad. It is a political case that must be made at all levels of government and society. It will require a renewed effort toward public education, and frank, honest debate about the sacrifice required. To best make the case, policy makers have to meet the American public where they are, using terms that convey the gravity of the situation and the stakes involved.

LCDR Bebber is a Cryptologic Warfare officer currently assigned to Information Warfare Training Command Corry Station, located in Pensacola Florida. He welcomes your comments at [email protected].

Professor John Hemmings is an associate professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies. He writes in his own personal capacity. 

Endnotes

1. Green, Michael J., By More than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific since 1783, (New York, Columbia University Press, 2017), pp.2-5.

2. For examples, see: Betts, Richard K. “Is Strategy an Illusion?” International Security, 25, no.2 (Autumn 2000), p.40., Friedberg, Aaron, “Strengthening US Strategic Planning,” in Avoiding Trivia: The Role of Strategic Planning in American Foreign Policy, ed. Daniel W. Drezner (Washington DC, Brookings Institutional Press, 2010).

3. Rolland, “China’s Vision for a New World Order”, NBR Special Report 83, 27 January, 2020.

4. Economy, “Yes Virginia, China is exporting its model”, Council of Foreign Affairs Blog, 11 December, 2019.

5. For examples, see: Modelski, George, Long Cycles in World Politics, (Basingstoke, Hampshire, Macmillan Press, 1987); Wittkoph, Eugene R. World Politics: Trend and Transformation, 12th Edition (Belmont, Ca., Wadsworth Publishing, 2008).

6. For examples, see: Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, (New York, Vintage Books, 1989); Mead, Walter Russell, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World.

7. Brady, Anne-Marie, “Plus la Change?: Media Control Under Xi Jinping”, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 64, Issue 3-4, 2017, pp.128-140.

8. Huang, Zhao Alexander, Wang Rui, “Building a Network to “Tell China Stories Well”: Chinese Diplomatic Strategies on Twitter”, International Journal of Communication, Vol. 13 (2019).

9. “China to restrict journalists from three major newspapers” BBC, 18 March, 2020.

10. Jonathan D. T. Ward, China’s Vision of Victory (Atlas Publishing and Media Company, 2019).

Featured Image: People’s Republic of China, People’s Liberation Army (Navy) frigate PLA(N) Yueyang (FF 575) steams in formation with 42 other ships and submarines representing 15 international partner nations during Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) Exercise 2014. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Shannon Renfroe/Released)

Force Development

The Training Mandate

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This article originally published on the Marine Corps Gazette and is republished with permission.

By Captain William Bradley, USMC

“If a unit is not well trained, its men know it. This fact adversely affects their confidence, especially if they anticipate there is a possibility of using that training in a critical situation. Every soldier likes to feel that he is playing on a winning team—he knows he can’t win if he isn’t well trained.” —Gen. Bruce C. Clarke, U.S. Army

It is through training—through constant realistic and repetitious training of individuals and units—that military organizations acquire the skills they need to succeed on the battlefield. Nothing peacetime leaders do is more important.

Gen. Clarke had a very clear picture of the crucial role individual and unit training played in determining the outcome of an armed conflict. The hallmark of the Marine is his superior preparedness for battle, and the proud heritage of our Corps rests on this very foundation of superior training and discipline. As the din of battle becomes more unknown to a “peacetime” generation of Marine officers, it becomes even more crucial that leaders produce realistic training evolutions that will ensure success on the battlefield and the survival of the young Marines in their charge.

Every Marine officer is by now familiar with FMFM 1, Warfighting and the move to dispel the “zero-defect” mentality from our training and daily operations. But in an increasingly competitive promotion environment, glowing after-action reports often become the ultimate objective of our training evolutions, and our tolerance for risky experimentation is dictated largely by our concern for our own career patterns. Is this an exaggerated description of our current philosophy toward unit training? Perhaps. But who among us can honestly say that our major training evolutions are not heavily influenced to ensure a “successful” outcome? If the Marine Corps is to continue to win on the modern battlefield, we must reexamine our definition of “successful” training and determine to what degree we are really preparing for war as opposed to only ensuring our next promotion. FMFM 1 has this to say about training:

“Exercises should approximate the conditions of battle as much as possible; that is, they should introduce friction in the form of uncertainty, stress, disorder and opposing wills…Dictated or canned scenarios eliminate the element of independent, opposing wills that is the essence of combat.”

While we would wholeheartedly agree with this basic tenet of preparation for war, again, who among us can say he has participated in major exercises where “success” was not artificially preordained?

On a larger scale, our major operations serve more as political vehicles than realistic simulations of conflicts we are likely to face. Year after year, we assault the same riverbed in the same locale during Exercise TEAM SPIRIT, with the ground combat element (GCE) headquarters already established ashore and dignitaries lining the beach. The Marine air-ground task force commander enjoys perfect command and control, for his communication battalion arrives 60 days beforehand to ensure it. Exercise GALLANT EAGLE kicks off in a similar manner, with I Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters comfortably nestled into Bear Mountain well before the start of “hostilities.”

On the infantry battalion level, how many times do we “lose” a Combined Arms Exercise? How many times has an infantry battalion been decisively engaged with electronic warfare assets during the crucial phases of our perennial assaults up the Delta Corridor?

While recent conflicts have proven the willingness of Third World nations (and the Soviets) to conduct chemical warfare, for how long has any Marine unit trained realistically in a simulated chemical environment? It can be argued that certain artificialities must be maintained on a large scale to provide training for subordinate leaders. Will tomorrow’s adversary, however, be so accommodating as to allow us to comfortably establish our major headquarters and perfect our command and control systems before the advent of hostilities? Will Third World nations shelve their electronic warfare assets because we have not trained in an electronic warfare environment?

Can we be sure that our real enemies in the world will not employ nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons against us, particularly when we know they have used these weapons extensively within the past decade?

While on the surface these questions may seem only rhetorical, we as leaders have failed in many ways to train and test ourselves and our Marines against some of the very obstacles we are almost certain to face. Regardless of our military occupational specialty (MOS), we can all reflect upon instances where we enjoyed artificial handicaps that ensured the right outcome for our exercises. George Allen, one of the most successful coaches in National Football League history, did not attain this distinction by constraining his defensive line during practice to ensure the success of his quarterback. Known for his grueling team training, Allen confronted his team with challenges during practice; this paid obvious dividends on the playing field. Is our training of Marines as rigorous and realistic as it could be, or do our exercises smack of “zero-defect” artificiality in the name of overall “success”? This is an important thought to consider, as our success on tomorrow’s battlefield will be measured not on a scoreboard but with the number of casualties we suffer.

Realistic training is just as vital on an individual scale as it is to the grandest of armies. The training of our Marines in individual combat skills is far superior to that received in most armies of the world, yet we must remember that the title “Marine” must be earned every day through continual training for combat. Two significant factors come into play here. First, the individual Marine must have the mental and physical toughness necessary to withstand the horrors of war. Second, the Marine must be so skilled in his MOS that his job will be second nature when it counts. FMFM 1 states that:

“any view of the nature of war would hardly be accurate or complete without consideration of the effects of danger, fear, exhaustion and privation on the men who must do the fighting…”

Although we must provide a safe training environment for our Marines, to what extent do we simulate environments of “danger, fear, exhaustion, and privation” to train in? Recent initiatives by the Commandant, such as Basic Warrior Training and the reinstitution of the School of Infantry for all new recruits, have done much to improve the training of Marines. But all too often we as leaders accept platitudes such as “You don’t have to practice being miserable” to rationalize making our training as painless as possible. But misery is guaranteed in combat, and the more a combatant is accustomed to it, the less it will affect him when his life is on the line.

Of course, training should not be sadistic, but dealing with cold, exhaustion, and adverse elements are skills just as valuable as marksmanship and MOS proficiency. While our defeat in Vietnam was largely due to political constraints, let us not forget the formidability of an enemy whose idea of rest and relaxation was a bowl of rice. Mental toughness cannot be developed in an environment of complacency, where those responsible for training are able to rationalize easing requirements. It is our mandate as leaders to give our young Marines the best chance to come home alive from combat. Coddling them with overly comfortable surroundings in training will not prepare them for the mental and physical challenges they must face.

In his classic Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi says, “It is a strength of [the warrior] to be able to fight on as usual because of day in, day out practice.” MOS proficiency, like any other learned skill, is a product of continual repetition. Yet how many times have we encountered Marines who were unable to perform rudimentary functions within their area of expertise? Is this their fault or have we failed as leaders?

It is incumbent on us to drill our Marines repeatedly; to have them perform the rudiments of their MOS again and again until all facets of their jobs become second nature. This is a lofty goal, yet one we must strive for. Going back to George Allen, his success rested on the superior training of the individual members of his team. We must all train our team of Marines with that same demand for constant drill and repetition; we pay a much heavier toll for defeat than does a football team.

To subject a unit to repetitious training under difficult conditions would do little to enhance our popularity within our own unit and would probably generate discontent within the ranks of the less disciplined. If world tensions lessen and the prospect of major conflict dims, it will become even more crucial that we as leaders prepare our Marines to fight and win under all kinds of adverse conditions.

Many nations throughout history have suffered terrible defeat because of the poor state of readiness they possessed on both the unit and individual combatant level. It may be difficult to equate the readiness of small units with the fate of a nation, but history has shown us time and again the cost of complacency. Let us not waste the lives of our Marines needlessly because of the political difficulties associated with training them for the realities they are almost certain to encounter in combat.

This article is not intended as an indictment of Marine Corps training as a whole, for our proud heritage continues whenever we are called upon. Nevertheless, we must always ask ourselves if we are really preparing Marines for the challenges they will face. Or do we become complacent, finding it easy to allow ourselves training artificialities that will make us “look good” in the eyes of our seniors? Who among us is willing to risk “failure” in a training environment full of the obstacles we are sure to face in real combat? Those of us who are willing to take that risk may not fare as well at promotion time, but we are more likely to bring our Marines home alive from the next war. 

This article originally published in 1990, and won the 1990 CG MCCDC Leadership Writing Award under the title “To Keep Our Powder Dry.”

Captain Bradley recently completed the Command and Control Systems Course, MCCDC and is currently stationed with 2d MAW Cherry Point.

Featured Image: Students of Martial Arts Instructor Course 2-14 grapple against each other during their final exercise on Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif., April 17, 2014. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Ali Azimi/Released)

Ocean Governance

Distinguishing Rice from Wrong: Important Lessons from the Hamburg Port Drug Bust of 2020

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By Dr. Ian Ralby

In the summer of 2020, the Port of Hamburg, Germany, had one of the largest drug busts in its history. On June 26, a container arrived in Hamburg carrying 1.5 tons of cocaine worth roughly $353 million USD. German authorities discovered the large quantity of trafficked narcotics hidden in sacks of rice destined for Poland. Almost every media report to date has talked about the fact that the vessel that carried these drugs into Hamburg was the Malta-flagged, French-owned CMA CGM Jean Gabriel, and almost every media report to date has noted that the sacks of rice containing the cocaine came from Guyana. Oddly, however, the Jean Gabriel had not been to Guyana in 2020. In fact, since its construction in 2017, it has never been to Guyana. Furthermore, the vessel was already on another voyage to South America by the time the drugs were discovered in Hamburg. This begs the question: what is going on here? 

The short answer is: though the media reports did not clarify this, the container of Guyanese rice was actually transshipped in the Dominican Republic, where it embarked the Jean Gabriel before ending up in Germany, where it was being stored for a time before heading to Poland. A closer look at this case and the confused reporting on it shines a light on three key takeaways that will be important for addressing new trends in drug trafficking. 

The Vessel

Though the CMA CGM Jean Gabriel arrived in Hamburg on June 26, the German newspaper Hamburger Abendblatt broke the story of the bust on August 10. In the days following, many other papers and commentators retold what happened, the most in-depth reporting indicating that the rice came from the Berbice Mill in Guyana, where it left port on May 26. None of the initial stories, however, particularly in the international media, clarified that Jean Gabriel was not the vessel that had picked up the rice from Guyana. Indeed, the media largely made it seem that Jean Gabriel had, perhaps knowingly, taken the drugs from Guyana to Hamburg, and a number misreported that the drugs were found on the ship itself. A closer look at the movements of the vessel, however, helps clarify some of the confusion in this reporting.

This Windward image of the Jean Gabriel’s path between May 26, when the cocaine-filled rice shipment left Guyana, and June 27, a day after the vessel arrived in Hamburg, shows that the ship did not go near Guyana (visible between Venezuela and Suriname on the map): 

Track of CMA CGM Jean Gabriel from May 26 to June 27, 2020. (Image from Windward Predictive Maritime Intelligence, wnwd.com. Click to expand.)

Furthermore, examining the port calls during that time, we can see the vessel stopped at the following ports on the following dates, none of which are remotely close to Guyana: 

Date: Port: Duration: 
May 27, 2020 Puerto San Antonio, Chile 2 Days
June 1, 2020 Callao, Peru 1 Day
June 8, 2020 Colon, Panama 11 Hours
June 10, 2020 Cartagena, Colombia 20 Hours
June 12, 2020 Caucedo Andres, Dominican Republic 1 Day
June 23, 2020 Rotterdam, Netherlands 2 Days
June 25, 2020 London, United Kingdom 1 Day
June 26, 2020 Hamburg, Germany 1 Day

Before trying to resolve the uncertainty concerning where the drugs were embarked on the ship, it is worth looking at what happened after Jean Gabriel called in Hamburg. As noted, some media reports, including industry journals, indicated that the drugs were “found onboard a containership docked in the port.” Looking at the movement of the vessel after arrival, however, suggests this was not the case. A day after arriving in Hamburg, the Jean Gabriel was already underway, heading to repeat the route to South America. The following Windward image is of the vessel’s path from June 24, just before it arrived in Hamburg, until August 10 when the story of the drug interdiction broke: 

Path of the CMA CGM Jean Gabriel from June 24 to August 10, 2020. (Image from Windward Predictive maritime Intelligence, wnwd.com. Click to expand.)

These two images, plus the list of port calls, cast serious questions about the accuracy of the reporting on this incident. Even the reports themselves are contradictory, some suggesting the drugs were found on the ship, others once it was in storage. By looking at the ship data on Windward, though, we can tell that the container with the cocaine-filled rice sacks was definitely not embarked in Guyana, and it is highly unlikely that the drugs were discovered while the container was still onboard. The vessel does not appear to have been delayed at all, indicating that the container came off as planned, validating the news stories detailing that the container had been in storage awaiting transshipment to its final destination of Poland before the drugs were discovered.

Drug trafficking in containerized cargo has increased in recent years. A third of all drug trafficking is now estimated to be transported in this fashion, but that comes with a difficult question. Given the volume of the cargo being moved – 90 percent of world trade moves by sea – do the ships have any awareness they are carrying drugs? In many cases the answer has been “no,” as the cargo was loaded and unloaded like any legitimate container. This brings up the first key takeaway: As containerized drug trafficking increases, reporting on it needs to be careful not to accuse or make false and misleading claims about vessels and shipping lines. 

The reporting on this matter made it sound like the CMA CGM Jean Gabriel was involved or somehow responsible. Confused reporting can inadvertently cast aspersions on innocent parties. To date, there has been no indication that the Jean Gabriel, its crew, or CMA CGM was involved in this drug trafficking enterprise – the cartel simply took advantage of the infrastructure of global maritime commerce.

That infrastructure is crucial to our economy and our way of life – goods of all sorts, including basic necessities, flow constantly around the world. Therefore, we must be cautious not to assume connections between what is found in a container and the vessel or line on which it is found. Denigrating shipping lines for inadvertently carrying drugs, rather than assisting them in countering the movement of narcotics, serves only to diminish the free flow of maritime commerce and provide exploitable opportunities for drug cartels. We tread that path to our own detriment.

The Container

Having shown that the Jean Gabriel never went to Guyana, the question remains how the problematic container got on board. The answer can be found in the local coverage of the matter. Stabroek News, a Guyanese paper reporting on the response of the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) to the drug bust, went into depth on how the rice got from the Berbice Mill to the point when it left Guyana. The rice came to the port in several different trucks and was loaded into containers for a consignment to FHU Konpack, a Polish import company. GRDB claims to have followed standard operating procedures in checking the quality of the rice at the mill and then fumigating it at the port. It is not clearly stated, but it seems that there were multiple containers of rice, though the allegation is only one of them contained cocaine. As the report indicates, the containers were sealed and documented on May 21 and 22. They were then loaded onto the MV Asiatic Wind, a Singapore-flagged, German-owned vessel that does mostly intra-Caribbean container transfers. 

From following the movement of the vessel on Windward we can see, as was reported, that it left Guyana on May 26 and arrived in the Dominican Republic on June 7. 

Path of the MV Asiatic Wind from May 26 to June 7, 2020. (Image from Windward Predictive Maritime Intelligence, wnwd.com. Click to expand.)

On this voyage, it called at the following ports: 

Date: Port: Duration: 
May 25, 2020 Georgetown, Guyana 1 Day
May 27, 2020 Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago 1 Day
May 29, 2020 Bridgetown, Barbados 16 Hours
June 4, 2020 Kingston, Port Bustamente, Jamaica 19 Hours
June 7, 2020 Caucedo Andres, Dominican Republic 1 Day

Given that we also know the port calls for the CMA CGM Jean Gabriel, we can confirm the Stabroek News report that the container disembarked the Asiatic Wind for transshipment in the Port of Caucedo, Dominican Republic, on June 7. That report would also seem accurate, suggesting that the container was loaded onboard the Jean Gabriel on June 13 and set sail that same day for Europe. Once unloaded in Hamburg on June 27, it was stored for onward transshipment to Poland. According to the reports, an intelligence tip alerted German authorities to the possible presence of drugs. Otherwise, the container might have completed its journey without being interdicted. This brings us to the second takeaway from this case: It may be more important to watch the movement of containers than it is to watch the movement of vessels when tracking drug shipments, particularly as container transshipment creates confusion as to the actors who may be involved in the journey of the drugs. 

The news stories around this case, and even some criminology publications, all focused on the vessel that brought the container to Hamburg. The real story is the voyage of the container, as that is how we can determine how the drugs actually got from wherever they originated to Germany. Virtually every international media report mentioned Jean Gabriel. Only the local reports mentioned the MV Asiatic Wind. Even then, there is nothing conclusive to indicate any connection between the vessel and the drug operation, though an important concern is raised below about part of the latter vessel’s voyage. As drug cartels use containerization to move an increasing volume of narcotics, they cannot be allowed to take advantage of general sea blindness and confusion about maritime commerce to obscure their activities. 

Based on the publicly available information, it is impossible in this particular case to conclusively determine where the drugs entered the container. If the container was unsealed and resealed in the process of moving from Guyana to Hamburg – a process known as “rip-on, rip-off,” it would have required a sophisticated and likely quite noticeable operation, most likely in the Port of Caucedo. The container’s seal would have to be removed, the container opened and unpacked, the drugs inserted into the rice sacks, the container repacked, and a fraudulent seal fitted to avoid detection. There is also, as has been the case in other major busts, the possibility that the drugs were embarked and loaded while the vessel was at sea. The vessel tracks of the Jean Gabriel do not indicate any suspicious activity that could account for that. The only feature that Windward shows that could, in other circumstances, be considered suspicious is a change in draft from 11.7 meters to 12.1 meters that occurs between London and Hamburg. There is no anomalous activity to suggest the vessel slowed to pick up anything at sea, so this is almost certainly caused by the change in buoyancy from salt water to fresh water. Based on the movements of the vessel, therefore, it seems unlikely that the Jean Gabriel was engaged in any untoward activity that would indicate involvement in drug trafficking. 

The Asiatic Wind does have one anomaly, however, that bears noting. Before entering the Port of Kingston, the Asiatic Wind, on June 3, inside Jamaica’s territorial sea, made a sharp 90-degree turn and went dark for 12 hours and 36 minutes. This means the vessel was not transmitting on its Automated Information Systems (AIS) during that time, a violation of law unless documented in the master’s log book, and often an indicator – though inconclusive – of suspicious activity. Given the distance traveled from when the vessel went dark to where it reappeared, Windward calculates that 11 hours and 36 minutes cannot be accounted for during that dark period. While it is unclear what happened in that interval, if investigators are unable to find a land- or port-based point of embarkation for the drugs, embarkment at sea is another possibility that cannot be ruled out without further examination. 

Returning to the takeaway about following the container, accurately revealing the story of what happened is not about ignoring the vessels, but about watching their movements in relation to the container at issue. Ultimately, the tip to German authorities, together with the fact that the 1,277 packages of cocaine found in this container were stamped with different symbols, including a cat’s face, the Gallic rooster, and the Ampelmännchen – a red and green German pedestrian crossing symbol – should give ample indications to investigators as to potential sources, traffickers, and buyers. In the process, the full journey needs to be examined, and even this anomaly in Jamaica should be reviewed. And finally, the rice itself may be an important piece of the puzzle. 

The Rice

Using sacks of rice to convey and conceal drug shipments has become an increasingly common phenomenon in the illicit narcotics space. Incidents include the August 2014 discovery of 100 kilograms of ketamine in a container of rice entering Canada from India, the February 2018 interdiction of the MV Sunrise Glory in Indonesia with a ton of crystal methamphetamine in rice sacks, and the September 2020 interdiction of the Maersk Sembawang in the UK with a rice shipment containing over $160 million USD in heroin. 

In 2015, an Argentine case even demonstrated the efforts of drug cartels to fuse the cocaine with the rice to make it harder to detect. Just last year, Suriname – Guyana’s neighbor to the east – saw one of its biggest drug busts in history. A consignment of rice in the Jules Sedney Port in Paramaribo was discovered to have 2,300 kilograms of cocaine hidden inside it, divided among eight containers that were to be loaded on a ship and taken via Guadeloupe to mainland France. The rice merchant whose shipment it was – a 30 year old father of two girls – was arrested on January 8, 2019, and released shortly thereafter. A week later, however, he was found dead on a popular beach in Guyana, murdered by a gunshot to the forehead. 

Even with this catalogue of cases from other parts of the world, involving a variety of drugs, the nexus between rice and cocaine may be most acute in Guyana. On August 13, 2013, officials in the Dominican Republic found 70 kilograms of cocaine in a Guyanese rice shipment. On August 28, 2017, Jamaican officials found 78 parcels of cocaine worth nearly $700,000 USD in a Guyanese rice shipment. On October 30, 2017, Guyana officials found 67 kilograms of cocaine in a Guyanese rice shipment that was destined for Belgium, discovering it before it left their own port. These are just some of the more high-profile cases. 

This frequency of cocaine busts in rice shipments runs in parallel to a broader trend around the world where transnational crime groups and terrorist organizations are turning to benign, ubiquitous goods for income streams. Charcoal, fuel, honey, sugar, and fish are all being used by criminal groups to create income for nefarious operations. But they are also using these benign goods as direct cover for those operations. In the case of the rice, the connection between the rice producer and the cartels should be monitored, as the cartels may seek to buy up and directly own the supply chain, rather than simply control it through duress, manipulation, or payout. The death of the Suriname rice merchant in Guyana should be an indication of how serious this matter is. This brings us to the final takeaway of the incident: While the focus of the interdiction is on the cocaine and its supply chain, a wider law enforcement effort is needed to examine the relationship between benign goods and illicit activities to help ensure that, while drug cartels may use goods like rice to obscure cocaine shipments, they do not end up controlling both the legitimate and illegitimate markets at the same time. 

By creating invisible supply chains of illicit goods amid  supply chains of legitimate goods, cartels can make law enforcement detection and interdiction even more difficult. 

Conclusion

Even beyond the confused reporting and the various transportation dynamics reviewed, there is an overarching indication of criminal mindsets that should be considered extremely concerning when reviewing this case. Criminality is a risk-reward calculus. When the risk is low and reward is high, criminals are in their sweet spot of pursuing profit. The hope is that the interdiction of a shipment serves as a meaningful disruption of the illicit supply chain and deters criminality through a change in the risk-reward calculus. If Guyanese rice has been interdicted numerous times in the past with cocaine, yet it is still being used as a means of transporting cocaine, what does that say about how often it is successful? 

The fact that it is still being used to obscure such large quantities of drugs suggests that in this instance, the risk-reward calculus, or more accurately, the rice-reward calculus, remains in favor of the criminals. Either the cartels are futilely making repeat attempts and hoping for a different result, or law enforcement is blind to the majority of what is moving. Businesses that don’t maintain a bottom line do not survive, so if the drug cartels are still using this tactic after a decade of sporadic interdictions, we have to assume that the majority of the time the criminals are successful.

The November 4, 2020 bust of 11.5 tons of cocaine in a scrap metal shipment that went from Guyana to Belgium further reveals the extent to which cartels feel that stashing extremely large quantities of drugs amid benign cargoes serves their interests. This is a sobering conclusion and should inspire a redoubling of efforts to rethink and reimagine how we approach countering the movement of narcotics and illicit substances. 

Dr. Ian Ralby is a recognized expert in maritime law and security and serves as CEO of I.R. Consilium. He has worked on maritime security issues around the world, and has spent considerable time focused on and was previously based in the Caribbean. He spent four years as Adjunct Professor of Maritime Law and Security at the United States Department of Defense’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, and three years as a Maritime Crime Expert for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. I.R. Consilium is a family firm that specializes in maritime and resource security and focuses on problem-solving around the world.

Featured Image: Port of Hamburg, Germany. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Podcast

Bilge Pumps 36: The Long War and Valentines Tips!

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By Alex Clarke

After Episode 35, we decided to go full Long War and it has brought out the vocabulary in all of us…plus Valentines tips! (Posting after the fact of course due to the CIMSEC server migration).

#Bilgepumps is still a newish series and new avenue, which may no longer boast the new car smell, in fact decidedly more of pineapple/irn bru smell with a hint of mint cake and the faintest whiff of fried chicken. But we’re getting the impression it’s liked, so we’d very much like any comments, topic suggestions or ideas for artwork to be tweeted to us, the #Bilgepump crew (with #Bilgepumps), at Alex (@AC_NavalHistory), Drach (@Drachinifel), and Jamie (@Armouredcarrier). Or you can comment on our Youtube channels (listed down below).

Download Bilge Pumps 36: The Long War and Valentines Tips!

Links

1. Dr. Alex Clarke’s Youtube Channel
2. Drachinifel’s Youtube Channel
3. Jamie Seidel’s Youtube Channel

Alex Clarke is the producer of The Bilge Pumps podcast.

Contact the CIMSEC podcast team at [email protected].