The items listed below represent potential emerging issues that our analysts are tracking. These can be long term or short term, but will be updated daily. If an item on our Watch List becomes critical, we will email you a full analysis explaining its significance.
Each Saturday, we will follow up our daily Watch List for each week with our conclusions on these issues.
- Germany: The German government will reportedly introduce new rules that will give Berlin more power to veto company takeovers – a move that which would limit foreign investment into Germany. This is just one example of increased protectionism in Europe. We will be looking into how European countries are increasingly using protectionist policies and why.
- China: On July 11, Chinese military personnel set sail for Djibouti, where they will set up a Chinese naval support base. This will be China’s first overseas military base. It will be extremely difficult for China to maintain, and it is unlikely to enable Beijing to project power into this region. We need to determine the number of people stationed at this facility as well as the type of equipment being used there in order to measure China’s capabilities and the significance of this development.
- Japan: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s support has plummeted into the mid-30s following a string of scandals and the defeat of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party in Tokyo elections last month. The slide has put his agenda to reform the constitution’s war-renouncing Article 9 in doubt. Our long-term forecast regarding Japan’s military re-emergence is not contingent on the strength of Abe or the LDP. And Japan has already reinterpreted Article 9 to allow it to take initial steps to build up its defenses and project power abroad. But political instability in Japan could affect the pace of this trend, particularly given the sharp divides in the country over remilitarization. We need to gauge whether the geopolitical imperatives driving remilitarization are being embraced across the Japanese political spectrum. We should also clarify what, if any, steps in the development of the Japanese military are currently being held back by Article 9.
