Daily News Brief

December 19, 2024

Top of the Agenda

China grew its arsenal of operational nuclear warheads from five hundred to six hundred in roughly the year until mid-2024, the Department of Defense said yesterday. Its annual report on Beijing’s military capabilities discussed recent corruption scandals in the armed forces, saying graft among senior ranks “may have disrupted” progress toward the country’s 2027 target for military modernization. A purge following graft scandals has reached every service of China’s military, the report said. China remains on track to have an arsenal of more than one thousand warheads by the end of the decade, per the report, though at present it has not shown the type of capabilities needed to invade Taiwan. 

This year’s report did not repeat a projection made in 2022 that China could have 1,500 warheads by the middle of the 2030s—which would bring it close to the amount deployed by the United States in Russia—though an unnamed U.S. defense official told the Financial Times that the Pentagon was being cautious with the latest forecast. The report cited the ongoing construction of new nuclear silos and the growing potential of attacks that could target the nearby U.S. territory of Guam. A Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington said Beijing opposes the “Cold War” thinking of the report but did not dispute any specific facts. (FT, Department of Defense, WaPo, NYT)

Analysis

“Fundamentally, this is everyone’s business because were there to be a crisis over Taiwan, the entire world would be affected by it. You’ve got 50 percent of commercial container traffic going through the strait every day. You’ve got 70 percent of the microelectronics of chips being fabricated in Taiwan,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a visit to CFR yesterday.

“To deter China’s aggression in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, the [Donald] Trump administration should build on the [Joe] Biden administration’s collaborative successes in the region,” CFR Senior Fellow Rushi Doshi writes for Foreign Affairs. “Deterrence… calls for providing allies and partners with asymmetric capabilities through arms sales and by positioning U.S. capabilities on their soil, as the United States recently did by deploying the Typhon missile system in the Philippines, in order to create costs for Chinese aggression.”

“[Disruptions from corruption probes] are fundamentally a speed bump, not a showstopper,” the U.S. Naval War College’s Andrew S. Erickson told the New York Times. “With some of the world’s greatest military resources at his command, [Chinese President Xi Jinping] is pressing ahead with determination.”

CFR’s China Strategy Initiative dives into the questions at the heart of U.S. strategy toward China.

Pacific Rim

The Philippines’ Mary Jane Veloso, who arrived in Manila yesterday, was the latest person to be repatriated under President Prabowo Subianto’s administration after being formerly jailed in Indonesia’s anti-drug crackdown. Subianto has sought to raise Indonesia’s profile on the world stage, and rights groups and foreign governments have long criticized its drug policy. (Nikkei)

South and Central Asia

The military government said it is on track to hold elections next year while at a meeting in Bangkok, its Thai hosts said. Senior officials from Bangladesh, China, India, and Laos also attended. The junta has delayed past pledges to hold a vote. (Bloomberg)

U.S./Pakistan: The United States sanctioned Pakistan’s aerospace agency and three private firms yesterday, saying they contributed to the country’s ballistic missile program. Pakistan’s foreign office called the sanctions “biased” and said they “endanger regional and international peace.” (PTI, Dawn)

Middle East and North Africa

Israel carried out air strikes on Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and its port city of Hodeida today after the Houthis launched a missile toward central Israel. A Houthi-controlled news channel said that power stations in Sanaa were hit and at least seven people had been killed in Hodeida. (AP) 

U.S./Syria: The White House gave the rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) a list of former officials who might have information about American journalist Austin Tice and potential locations where he could be, unnamed sources told the New York Times. The group said it would help search for Tice, who was abducted in Damascus in 2012. (NYT)

CFR Senior Fellow Bruce Hoffman explains what to know about HTS in Syria.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Morocco mediated the release of four French nationals detained in Burkina Faso, who France’s intelligence agency previously said were spies. France recently reconciled tensions with Morocco through steps that included recognizing its sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region. (Reuters)

Esther Sun explores what the Western Sahara conflict means for Africa.

Namibia: The government opened a probe into Chinese firm Xinfeng for suspected illegal mining in a lithium-rich region of the country, the energy ministry announced yesterday. Namibia has Africa’s fourth-richest lithium reserves, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. (Bloomberg) 

Europe

The command post in the city of Wiesbaden has begun its work, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) chief Mark Rutte said. It is taking over coordination from the United States on Western military aid to Ukraine. In the latest sign of the war’s global reach, South Korea’s spy agency said today that at least one hundred North Korean fighters have been killed in the war. (Reuters, Yonhap)   

France: A court in France convicted fifty-one people, including main defendant Dominique Pelicot, following a closely-watched rape trial. Doctors and social workers in France detected an increase in women reporting drug-facilitated sexual assaults in the wake of the trial, Reuters reported. (NYT, Reuters)

Americas

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and El Salvador reached a deal on a $1.4 billion loan following four years of negotiations. As part of the agreement, Salvadoran businesses will no longer be required to accept payments in bitcoin. (Bloomberg, WSJ)

Anshu Siripurapu and Noah Berman take a look at the dizzying rise of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Brazil: Lawmakers watered down a package of legislation to reduce the country’s deficit yesterday, even as concerns about the deficit prompted the Brazilian real to reach a record low in trading against the dollar. Further votes on budgetary measures are expected before the legislature’s end-of-year recess begins Friday. (Bloomberg, FT)

United States

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) negotiated a bipartisan bill to fund the government until March 14, but President-elect Donald Trump condemned it yesterday. Trump ally Elon Musk also heavily criticized the bill on social media. The uncertainty over a potential shutdown comes as Federal Reserve officials signaled yesterday that they believe inflation next year could be more persistent than previously expected. While they announced an interest rate cut, they said they would be “cautious” going forward. (CNN, NYT, WSJ)

Council on Foreign Relations

58 East 68th Street — New York, NY 10065

1777 F Street, NW — Washington, DC 20006

Shop the CFR Store

Manage Your Email Preferences