Diplomacy & Crisis News

Elles ont fait un tabac. En 1887, une grève de cigarières démarre à la Manufacture des tabacs de Marseille à la Belle de Mai — quartier dont Jules Guesde disait qu'il était le « boulevard de la révolution ». On n'y est pas trop mal payé mais le contremaître est de ceux qui profitent de leur pouvoir. Il (...) / Ville, Mouvement de contestation, Femmes, Travail - 2025/01

Los Angeles’ Historic 2025 Fire

The new year is one that will give change to how conflicts are conducted on the world stage. As discussed previously, the War in Ukraine over the last few years has created a deficit in military equipment. The old Soviet arsenal has been sourced to such a great degree that Cold War stocks are being dwindled down to storage parts. With a deficit in complex equipment, new threats will come from new methods. While the last of the regimes fall, threats will surely not cease.

The ability for a society to defend itself comes from the idea that the society first needs to be defended. Recognizing future threats comes with the narrative that a threat may occur, and that resources will need to be designed to counter the future threat. Recent history shows that ignoring or legitimizing regimes that are clearly challenging democratic norms will never lead to a peaceful resolution. Repeating these errors weakens allies of democracies, and produces a situation where a larger conflict is inevitable, if not already in progress. National leaders need to defend their communities first, as all other viable nations would operate in a similar manner.

A society cannot function if a Constitution is applied via the political will of a few powerful individuals in society. Justice applied acts as a release valve for tensions in a society, so violence does not become the only last option. When there are those in power in a society that do not have the best interests of their community in mind, or are outwardly reticent to acting in good faith for the betterment of others, those communities rapidly deteriorate. When justice is reserved for others and laws are created to discourage good will among neighbours, the end result is an intentional corruption of stability and equality. A simple equation comes when you try and apply basic rights of safety, order, and proper Government to some groups above others, or even diminish those rights for one group beneath others, you have lost your democracy. The enormous push by some in society to deny those basic rights to punish those they dislike copies the worst regimes from a Milan Kundera novel, and is in no way a fair and just society.

A lost society is one that functions on the worst kept secrets of their community. The end result of the asymmetric eruption has been at the surface of some of the most horrendous acts of humanity, married to some of the most oppressive laws against freedom and liberty. Adjusting a society to one that reduces liberty for the sake for safety can often be avoided if the laws of the community are applied as they were designed to be used, and those in power have the honour and will to work for the betterment of their fellow community members. The degradation of a community does not simply come from an assault from abroad, but via decisions from within that betray the core values of a society in the most expressive of actions and the most meaningful of ways. Someone in their right just mind are always aware when their freedoms are neglected. It is often those who wish to degrade society who are the most vocal and aggressive to those who speak their mind openly when voicing their calls for justice. None of this is by accident or is a symptom of negligence, but is the end result of modern challenges to society, challenges that were known to those who created many democratic legacies.

Après la gloire des salons, l'Académie et le prix Nobel, Anatole France (1844-1924) connut l'opprobre posthume, et un long purgatoire. À sa mort, les surréalistes l'injurièrent sans vergogne dans leur pamphlet Un cadavre. Paul Valéry, lui succédant sous la Coupole, se refusa à prononcer son nom. (...) / Art, Littérature, Personnalités - 2025/01

It’s not Trump—it’s the EU’s weak defense policy and stagnant single market.

La postérité l'a assigné à une case unique : celle de l'auteur de L'Homme sans qualités. Robert Musil (1880-1942) est avant tout connu pour ce roman immense et intimidant, un pavé de presque deux mille pages, publié en deux volumes (1930, 1933), et qu'il n'aura pu achever. Avec ce récit situé dans la (...) / Littérature, Société, Psychanalyse - 2025/01

Il y a vingt millions d'années, « Dracaena cinnabari » peuplait les forêts d'Amérique et d'Europe du Nord. À de rares exceptions, cet étrange arbre fossile à la sève rouge n'existe plus que dans l'archipel yéménite de Socotra. Les légendes concernant son origine sont nombreuses, mais, dans un contexte (...) / Yémen, Spiritualité, Forêt - 2025/01

In an effort to throw away the carrots and invest in new sticks, the new American administration has decided to use the economic and political weight of the United States to address non-trade policies with many of its traditional economic allies. One of the most notable instances of this strategy was used to encourage NATO members to increase funding for security, pulling funding obligations away from the United States for security issues abroad. While this tactic was not taken seriously at the time, the coming war between Ukraine and Russia proved it to be a useful shift. With all of Ukraine’s allies now contributing in the billions of dollars, compounded with the United States’ own significant contributions, Ukraine has been able to put up a historic level of resistance against Russian aggression.

More recently, President Trump has focused his energies on local issues within the United States connected to a poor border strategy. While trade has always been the focus of relations between NAFTA neighbours, the United States will use tariffs to enforce actions against drug trafficking and terror issues that are lacking on both sides of the Southern and Northern borders. With security issues being the main concern, it is likely the case that increased actions against Fentanyl and terror threats would benefit both the US, Mexico and Canada. The question then remains, whether the trade partners are aware of such benefits, and whether or not they will use local impressions of the US to bolster their own political fortunes?

Mexico, who had their own election fairly recently, had put back the same party in power with a new leader for the next six years. Despite the current party being of a left wing orientation, Mexico’s approach in re-signing the USMCA Agreement focused deeply on Mexican commercial interests. Mexico’s Government in the following years seemed to respond to US policy by mirroring the Biden Administration’s actions on the border. With very apparent border issues with US policy over the last four years, Mexico sought to limit the negative effects within Mexico itself during that period of time. The effect of record breaking migrations passing through Mexico put a great burden on Mexico’s social security system, encouraging Mexico to either prevent migrants on their own southern border, or allow them to reach the US border so they do not remain in Mexico. With the US border being the target of most migrants, Mexico chose the latter strategy in response to the lack of US border enforcement.

The eruption caused by abuses of the Maduro Government in Venezuela resulted in one of the largest refugee populations in modern times crossing through Latin America, Mexico, and the United States. While many Venezuelans have proper refugee claims due to their treatment under the Maduro regime, the chaos created by mass migrations out of Venezuela was used to transmit organised crime through the same routes used by many of these refugee claimants. These issues affected Mexico and many Latin American communities in the region, and were apparent in those communities in the United States months before it became the focus of the last US election. Spanish language news within the US would constantly put out reports of violence from those specific gangs that seemed to be frequent, coordinated, and ignored by most English language media, until it was no longer possible to ignore. Mexico clearly benefits in the US addressing their border issues and coordinated crime coming over the border as it has a negative effect on Mexico as well. Mexico is a net beneficiary to stable relations with the US, especially if it reduces its political ties with China in the process.

The Fentanyl Crisis has reached the point of inducing the tariff strategy on former NAFTA partners. US media has been detailing base ingredients being sent from China to Mexico for final production and export via cartel networks. Mexico and the US should immediately take a coordinated response to the imports from China and cartel control over the border. With many international companies Nearshoring their China based manufacturing to Mexico, the US-Mexico border can likely evolve into the manufacturing hub of the globe that was envisioned in 1994’s initial NAFTA agreement. Ever since China joined the WTO, Mexico had directly suffered from the loss of manufacturing to China, in 2025, this is no longer the case. With Mexico displacing part of China’s manufacturing base, Mexico may be entering its most successful period ever, if it can shrug off negative ties to China. Since the tariff is a security issue for President Trump, Mexico may find it easier to implement its own security with a strong US border in a win-win scenario.

Canada has often been able to avoid criticism, but has had many issues over the last few years that have raised the ire of the incoming US Administration. Fentanyl and drug issues on the Canadian border have risen dramatically, but the shocking statistics showing security issues related to terror threats as well and China’s influence over the current Canadian Government is shocking to both Americans and Canadians alike.

The response to the tariff threat has been absurd on the Canadian side, firstly concentrating it solely on trade when it was openly stated as a security issue, and now evolving into a near complete collapse of the Canadian Government in power. When communications from regional Provincial leaders toward the incoming US Administration displaced the Canadian Government’s own coordinated responses, the Premier of Quebec and the other Provinces collected themselves together to become Team Canada, without a proper Canadian Government spokesperson to respond to the security issues. With Justin Trudeau, it looks like he is planning to openly fight Trump to the detriment of all Canadians big and small, despite his Government creating one of the largest national deficit’s ever seen in Canada. Canada is considered quite dangerous for some cultural groups as well, more dangerous than it has been in generations, with security issues in Canada now famously being seen globally on a weekly basis. With a passive response by the Trudeau Government on the murder of Canadians on Flight 752 by Iran’s regime, Trudeau is now taking his less than 20% approval rating and choosing the opposite response against the Americans. Trudeau’s 2025 election strategy looks to use a Twitter fight with President Trump to garner local support. The first move however was against the US voter, ensuring his Government will incur tariffs in response. The error of being a foreign leader who makes public statements against all of those Americans who voted for their President is inappropriate on the best of days.

While Mexicans, Americans and Canadians benefit from increased border security, a lesson on consequences for voters is working rapidly in real time. The North American region can become the most economically successful region over the next few generations, if leaders in those countries can work towards benefitting their own communities and supporting each other’s economic growth over their own personal benefits. Without this basic level of awareness, tariffs will likely become a reality in 2025 for many in North America and abroad.

Parmi les nombreuses élections qui ont émaillé l'année 2024, il n'était pas écrit que le scrutin présidentiel roumain tiendrait une place particulière. Depuis 1989 et la chute du communisme, le Parti social-démocrate et le Parti national libéral, aussi atlantistes et proeuropéens l'un que l'autre, se (...) / Roumanie, Élections, Technologies de l'information - 2025/01

Why populists turn against their armed forces—and degrade national power.

Any just and lasting peace agreement to the Ukraine conflict must account for a Crimea free of Russian occupation for the sake of regional peace and security. Crimea, under Putin’s control, would likely turn the Black Sea into a Russian lake, severing the Caucasus and Central Asia from Europe and directly threatening NATO members Romania and Bulgaria and effectively precluding Baltic-Black Seas connectivity. 

A Russian Crimea mortally endangers Odesa and Ukraine’s entire southern coast, sowing the seeds for an enduring simmering Ukraine-Russia conflict fueled by concerns over national security, sovereignty, and pride. Russian control would return Crimea to its centuries-old violent history: a flashpoint of regional instability and power competition among all interested in accessing the Black Sea. Furthermore, Russian dominance in the area would significantly boost Chinese and Iranian influence across the Black and Caspian Seas and greater Central Asia more broadly, undermining American, European, and broader free-world interests.

Putin is a puppeteer who is quickly running out of puppets, strings, and stage space. His war economy is fueling unsustainable inflation at home and is unable to replace men and material on the battlefield. According to a recent article in Foreign Policy, Russia is producing twenty artillery and tank cannons a month to replace over 300 lost over the same period. The Russian army is losing over 40,000 soldiers per month and recruiting around 20,000–30,000 around the same period despite lucrative bonuses. As a result, North Korean soldiers are fighting in Kursk, and hapless migrant workers find themselves shanghaied to the frontlines. 

According to present indicators, Ukraine can hold out longer with stronger allied support than Russia can. Putin’s hope could be that American support for Ukraine dries up so Russia can consolidate its battleground gains under the guise of a ceasefire or peace agreement. Consequently, Putin is throwing the kitchen sink at Ukraine in anticipation of a ceasefire on existing lines soon after President Trump is sworn in. Any acknowledgment of a Russian Crimea as part of a (temporary) peace deal would be a big win for Putin and a greater loss for the United States, Europe, and the wider region. 

The Crimean Peninsula, located at the northern center of the Black Sea, dominates the region’s geography—hence Putin’s unlawful seizure in 2014. With Crimea, Russia effectively controls the northern half of the Black Sea, from Georgia to Romania. This strategic advantage allows Russia to reassert dominance across the region, consolidating its influence in Moldova, Georgia, and the Caucasus, strangling Ukraine’s maritime access and threatening Romania’s critical Danube transportation corridor stretching to southern Germany and connecting through the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal to northwest Europe. 

Romania, in partnership with American industry, is poised to develop its significant offshore natural gas fields. By 2027, Romania is projected to become Europe’s largest natural gas producer. Bulgaria and Turkey are also progressing with their offshore gas developments. All of these projects face serious jeopardy if Crimea is officially handed to Putin.

A Russian Crimea jeopardizes European energy independence, threatening not only Black Sea energy development and transit pipelines from the Caucasus and Central Asia but also the connectivity of the Baltic and Black Seas. The Three Seas Initiative, championed by thirteen eastern European nations and President Trump, calls for improved digital, energy, and transport connectivity between the Adriatic, Baltic, and Black Seas. The initiative’s robust implementation holds the key to the economic prosperity and resilience of Eastern Europe, NATO mobility readiness, and Ukraine’s integration into Europe. A Russian stranglehold on the Black Sea from Crimea presents an insurmountable barrier to the fulfillment of the Three Seas Initiative. 

Russian dominance over Crimea also jeopardizes transatlantic initiatives to establish digital and physical infrastructure connecting Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia through the Black and Caspian Seas. The EU’s subsea fiber-optic and energy cables across the Black Sea would be vulnerable to industrial sabotage, similar to the threats in the Baltic Sea.

From its Crimean stronghold, Putin can veto any economic activities across the Black Sea (like the Middle Corridor) that contradict Russian interests. This de facto blockade would suffocate Ukraine’s maritime economy and slowly strangle Odesa. It would exponentially heighten pressure on Moldova with the possibility of a reinvigorated Russian presence in Transnistria and fulfill Russia’s goal to turn the republic into a vassal state.

A Crimea under Russian control poses a grave threat to Romania, the United States’ closest Black Sea ally and NATO member. Accepting Putin’s annexation would enable further territorial aggression, following the pattern of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. With Crimea secured, Putin would likely push across the Dnipro River toward Odesa, energizing Russian-backed forces in Transnistria and prompting calls from Moldova’s Gagauz minority for Russian intervention. The Russian playbook of fabricated “patriotic” interventions, seen in Donbas and elsewhere, would likely be repeated in Moldova, bringing Russian troops to Romania’s border. This would make Romania’s 420-mile frontier the second-longest NATO-Russia border after Finland.

The strategically vital Snake Island at the mouth of the Danube Delta would also be endangered. Although Ukrainian resistance has thus far kept Russian naval forces at bay, a hasty peace would reopen the path for a renewed Russian effort to seize the island. This would allow Russia to choke the Danube River gateway, the second-largest maritime route into the Black Sea after the Dardanelles. This would effectively blockade Ukraine, Moldova, and much of Romania, provoking sustained harassment and instability in the region. Currently, 4,500 U.S. troops are stationed at the Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base, only 100 miles from Snake Island.

Turkey, the dominant Black Sea power, stands to lose the most if the sea becomes a Russian lake. Unfortunately, despite its public support for Ukraine in solidarity with Crimean Tatars, Ankara has been complicit in Russia’s creeping dominance by insisting on a rigid interpretation of the Montreux Convention, which restricts NATO’s naval presence in the Black Sea. As a NATO member, Turkey must recognize that Russian hegemony poses a far greater threat than NATO presence in the region.

Any peace agreement that leaves Crimea under Russian control would be a victory for Putin’s expansionist ambitions to reconstitute the Russian imperial sphere of influence. History suggests such an agreement would only lead to bloodier and more expansive conflicts in the near future, substantially increasing the likelihood of direct NATO involvement.

For the United States, allowing a peace deal that leaves Crimea with Putin would constitute a strategic blunder comparable to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. History might judge such an agreement alongside the infamous Munich Pact of 1938, which attempted to appease Hitler by ceding Sudetenland, with disastrous consequences. Munich defined and tarnished British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s legacy for appeasing Hitler. History will be equally unkind to those who appease Putin.

President-elect Trump, by many accounts, is more akin to Churchill than Chamberlain. He should reject any short-sighted peace deal that leaves Crimea in Russian hands and instead make a free Crimea central to a just and lasting peace. With his focus on business and infrastructure and making America great again, Trump could leverage a free Crimea to transform the region into a future of peace and prosperity backed by American industry and ingenuity. Like President Harry Truman and General George Marshall before him, Trump could leave a legacy of reshaping Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Those who underestimate him—and the potential for such a vision—do so at their peril.

Kaush Arha is president of the Free & Open Indo-Pacific Forum and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue.

George Scutaru is the CEO of the New Strategy Center and a former national security advisor to the President of Romania.

Justina Budginaite-Froehly is a security and defense policy expert focusing on defense industrial developments, military mobility, and energy security in Europe.

Image: NickolayV / Shutterstock.com.

Deux parutions récentes projettent un éclairage oblique sur le contexte insurrectionnel propre à la Nouvelle-Calédonie. En mai 1989, Djubelly Wéa (1945-1989) assassine le leader indépendantiste Jean-Marie Tjibaou et son bras droit Yeiwéné Yeiwéné. Avant d'être abattu par leur garde du corps, il s'écrie : (...) / Fiction, Nouvelle-Calédonie, Mouvement de contestation, Littérature - 2025/01

En 1978, « Voyage au bout de l'enfer », de Michael Cimino, mettait en scène trois ouvriers de retour du « 'Nam » en proie à des troubles physiques et, surtout, psychologiques. Si, dans ce film de Cimino, le personnage joué par Robert De Niro semble enclin à renoncer à la violence lors de son retour au (...) / Conflit, Santé, Cinéma - 2025/01

In a wintry Ottawa, the Canadian prime minister contemplated his political future. Much had changed since he was first elected. The excitement around his youthful vigor, avowed multiculturalism, and sex appeal that had propelled him to office—“Trudeaumania,” the press had dubbed it—was gone. Critics called him arrogant and out-of-touch. The sheen had even worn off his personal life, with he and his glamorous wife in the midst of a divorce.

His political fortunes had fallen for substantive reasons, too. Canadians were fed up with the high inflation and growing government deficits that had characterized his economic stewardship. Many disliked his energy policy, especially in Western Canada. Many worried about bad relations with the United States under a Republican president.

Within his Liberal Party, the knives were coming out; conservatives, for their part, were reenergized under their younger leader. Indeed, around the world, conservatives seemed to have the momentum, with liberals facing backlash for their unpopular policies. The times had moved past Trudeau. And so, after a tenure that spanned multiple decades, he decided: it was time to step down.

This is not just the story of Justin Trudeau, who announced Monday that he is resigning as leader of the Liberal Party, paving the way for Canada’s first new prime minister in nearly a decade. It is also the story of his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who stepped down in 1984 after having been in power, apart from a nine-month period in opposition, since 1968. Ultimately, both prime ministers were felled by global trends they struggled to respond to.

There are differences, of course. On immigration, both Trudeaus made a point of welcoming refugees, especially from non-white-majority countries, but compared with his son’s, Pierre’s immigration policy was miserly. The number of immigrants actually fell in each of his final three years in office, ending at 89,000 in 1983—or 3.5 per 1,000 people. In 2024, some 485,000 immigrants moved to Canada—or 12 per 1,000 people.

On energy, Trudeau père’s undoing was his National Energy Program, a statist plan entailing price controls that alienated Canada’s Western provinces. Trudeau fils tried nothing so radical or unpopular, although his carbon tax has divided Canadians. The specific economic ailments also differ: inflation and unemployment were much higher when the elder Trudeau resigned, while today, GDP growth is in worse shape.

Yet in both cases, shocks to employment, prices, and growth generated a fierce backlash against incumbents the world over. In the 1980s, it manifested in the Reagan-Thatcher free-market revolution, a wave that swept far beyond the United States and the United Kingdom—provoking France’s socialist president, François Mitterrand, to embrace austerity, and sending the leader of Canada’s conservative party, Brian Mulroney, into the prime minister’s office after Trudeau.

The current anti-incumbent backlash is even more powerful, and Justin Trudeau is merely its latest victim. Add his name to the list of democratic leaders who have suffered electoral setbacks or outright defeats in the last year: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the United States, Rishi Sunak in the United Kingdom, Emmanuel Macron in France, Olaf Scholz in Germany, Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Narendra Modi in India, Yoon Suk Yeol in South Korea, and Fumio Kishida in Japan. Like voters in the rest of the world, Canadians punished their political elites for COVID-19 policies they considered too restrictive and fiscal policies they considered inflationary (and in many, though not all, cases, immigration policies they considered too permissive).

Canada is a progressive country, one where socialized medicine, abortion, gun control, and gay rights are not hot-button issues but questions settled long ago. Yet this is not an unalloyed progressivism. As Trudeau discovered, there are limits to Canadians’ liberal inclinations. On immigration, it turned out that the median voter held more conservative views than he did (a lesson Harris also learned). His policy was decidedly unpopular, particularly for the way that the growing population was raising housing prices and straining the healthcare system. In October, he made a U-turn, announcing that he was dropping the annual targets for the number of new permanent residents by more than 100,000.

This identity crisis is most evident in economic policy. The nature of the Canadian economy has always tugged the country rightward. While not quite Saudi Arabia with snow and elections, Canada depends heavily on oil and gas production, along with mining, which explains why its environmental policies have long been more industry-friendly than one might otherwise expect, and why Trudeau’s climate policies were less popular than they might have been in, say, Denmark. Canada is also a major manufacturing exporter, which explains why Canadian prime ministers of all political stripes have been avowed free traders.

Yet unlike other fallen leaders, Trudeau faced a particular second-order effect of the anti-incumbent wave: the change of government it produced in Canada’s neighbor, closest ally, and biggest trading partner. Pierre Trudeau once quipped that living next to the United States was like “sleeping with an elephant: no matter how friendly or temperate the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” And in November, Americans reelected a leader whom most Canadians considered neither friendly nor temperate.

Pursuing Canada’s interests without offending the United States is hard in the best of times, but that task became impossible for Trudeau with Donald Trump’s second electoral victory. The two leaders had a poor relationship during Trump’s first term: in 2018, after Trudeau promised that Canada would “not be pushed around” on tariffs, Trump called him “weak” and “dishonest,” and at a 2019 NATO summit, Trudeau was caught on camera joking with other leaders about Trump’s erratic ways. And relations were on track to be even worse during Trump’s second term.

In November, after Trump pledged to slap a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian goods, Trudeau made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, promising enhanced border security to appease the incoming president. It didn’t work: the following month, Trump belittled Trudeau on social media, calling him the “governor” of the “state” of Canada. Any Canadian prime minister was destined to have a strained relationship with Trump, given his protectionist impulses, but none more so than Trudeau, given their history, a reality that even his supporters recognized. Trudeau probably wouldn’t have lasted long during a Harris administration, but Trump’s election sealed his fate.

Historically, relations between Canada and the United States have been frosty when their leaders hail from opposing political tribes. Richard Nixon called Pierre Trudeau “a pompous egghead” and a “son of a bitch.” (Trudeau responded in his memoirs by saying he had “been called worse things by better people.”) Trudeau got along better with Ronald Reagan, although the American president later recalled being “horrified by his rudeness” at a G-7 summit in London.

Mulroney came to office promising to “refurbish relationships with the United States, our best and closest friend” and ended up becoming a personal friend of Reagan’s. There has perhaps never been a greater display of warmth between the two countries’ leaders than the “Shamrock Summit,” which began on St. Patrick’s Day of 1985 and ended with the two leaders, both of Irish heritage, singing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” (Fittingly, Mulroney delivered a eulogy at Reagan’s funeral.)

Mulroney’s eventual Liberal successor, Jean Chrétien, got along famously with Bill Clinton, spending hours with him on the golf course. But Chrétien and his successor, Paul Martin, also a Liberal, clashed with George W. Bush over Iraq and a U.S. missile defense plan. And so the hot-and-cold pattern continued, through the elections of Stephen Harper, Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau, Trump, and Biden. If Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative Party, is elected prime minister this year, as polls suggest he has a good shot of doing, then one can expect a measure of cross-border calm to prevail. In a podcast interview with the psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson, he pitched Trump on the “great deal” the two leaders could make on trade.

With Trudeau’s resignation, Trump may now imagine that just as he has the power to tip GOP primaries and kill Congressional legislation, he can bring about the downfall of foreign leaders. In this way, by treating the leader of a close ally as a subservient political opponent deserving of mockery, Trump was acting out the fantasy he relayed to Trudeau at Mar-a-Lago and repeated Monday: that Canada is “the 51st state.” But for the most part, Trudeau was swept out of the prime minister’s office by the same global wave that Trump rode back into the White House.

Stuart A. Reid is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Lumumba Plot.

Image: Shutterstock.

Il y a un an, les agriculteurs se soulevaient. Notamment après que l'abolition des droits de douane sur les denrées ukrainiennes s'était traduite par une chute des prix en Europe. Le 6 décembre, la Commission a pourtant fait aboutir la négociation d'un accord de libre-échange avec plusieurs États (...) / Agriculture, Commerce international, Inégalités - 2025/01

The United States Navy has protected commercial shipping in the Middle East from Houthi attacks for more than 15 months, but in that time, Chinese vessels haven't come under attack. That is because the Iran-back proxy group, which controls vast swaths of Yemen, has been backed by Beijing.

As Maya Carlin reported for The National Interest, citing a report from Israeli-based i24 News, the Houthis have even been employing Chinese-designed weapons to carry out their attacks.

"In exchange, the terror group will cease attacks on ships flying the Chinese flag. With a shared mutual contempt for the West, Beijing and Tehran's collaboration in the region makes sense," Carlin wrote.

China's support for the militant group has ensured its vessels have been spared from Houthi attacks, although one Chinese-linked oil tanker did come under fire in March of last year. This is more than Beijing just paying off the Houthis.

"We now have credible reports that China's communist rulers are supplying arms to the Houthi Islamists in Yemen supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran," explained Clifford D. May, founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in a post earlier this month.

"By now it should be apparent that the West is literally under fire from an Axis of Aggressors: Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and its proxies, and Pyongyang," May added. "They are determined to establish a new international order based on their power and their rules. The United States and its European allies have not responded effectively to this reality. Perhaps the incoming administration will do a better job."

China's Great Game in the Middle East

The fact that the PRC may have taken such a position on Houthis should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone closely watching the unfolding events for a few reasons, geopolitical analyst Irina Tsukerman, president of Scarab Rising, told The National Interest.

"China has been assisting Houthis in the past for pragmatic business reasons, such as selling their drones considered inferior to Western and Turkish variants, which were allegedly paid for by Qatar – without ever being held accountable," she explained.

She noted that Beijing already has a long history of doing business with all sides in the Middle East. This is in part to secure as broad an economic influence as possible and in part to fund its domestic and international priorities through such trade schemes.

"Over time, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been increasingly gravitating towards closer cooperation with Iran and Russia, which colored all aspects of domestic and international priorities," Tsukerman warned. "The CCP has been using TikTok and other government-linked platforms, for instance, to spread outright antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda and to provide open political backing to Hamas, Iranian, Hezbollah, and Russian propaganda."

For those reasons, it absolutely should come as no surprise that it would be part of a broader network among these countries that would favor the proxies of one of its top oil suppliers and anti-Western counterparts.

China's self-interests are also at stake.

"Part of the reasons for the expanded cooperation with the Houthis is the need to protect Chinese vessels in the Red Sea from attacks, and this level of backing is part of the self-serving agenda at the cost to everyone else," Tsukerman said candidly.

Moreover, the PRC remains dedicated to countering Western interests whenever possible and an increased Red Sea presence and coordination with the Houthis provides an opportunity to put pressure on the U.S., UK, and Israeli shipping industry, militarily and financially, to gather valuable intelligence about its competitors and adversaries, to take advantage of the problems facing Western insurance companies, flagging companies, and the shipping sector to do business in those areas, and to position itself as a new naval power in the Middle East, Tsukerman further acknowledged.

This is the first part in a three-part series on China's growing influence in the Middle East. Thank you to Irina Tsukerman for her insight.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

How Biden internationalized “middle-out economics.”

Uncle Sam is getting his rear-end kicked by the Russians and Chinese (heck, even the North Koreans are starting to outdo the Americans) in the all-important realm of hypersonic weapons. Indeed, it’s possible that China is even already creating working defenses against hypersonic weapons (meaning that Beijing is doubling up on success whereas the Americans are still languishing in the design phase).

But a new U.S. defense project between the Department of Defense and contractor Kratos is desperately trying to change that with a new project. Given how key hypersonic weapons are, and will continue to be, the Kratos effort must be assessed. 

Kratos Saves the Day?

Under the rubric of “MACH TB 2.0,” Kratos is attempting to “enhance the United States’ capabilities in hypersonic technology through rapid, affordable testing,” according to Kalif Shaikh at Interesting Engineering, a trade publication. 

Both the Kratos leadership and the top brass at the Pentagon believe that one of the key reasons that the Russians and Chinese have surpassed the Americans in developing a reliable, real-world hypersonic weapons capacity has to do with the extreme costs of hypersonic weapons development and testing. 

In fact, when it comes to testing hypersonic systems, the United States is far behind the curve. Wind tunnels are key elements behind testing hypersonic systems. Guess where the world’s most powerful wind tunnel is for testing hypersonic systems? China.

Kratos is leading a group of powerful defense contractors, including the likes of Leidos and Rocket Lab, all of which are keen on expediting the R&D cycles of American hypersonic weapons. Kratos believes that it can reduce the risks and costs associated with hypersonic weapons development by accelerating the delivery of these systems in the field. One way to do that is by deploying advanced flying testbeds to allow for researchers to assess the efficacy of their hypersonic systems in real-world conditions.

Is the Problem Fundamental or Can It Be Resolved Quickly?

Pentagon insiders (and those at Kratos) do not believe that the United States lacks the fundamentals to achieve parity with both Russia and China in hypersonic weapons. They think the problem is taking all the disparate pieces the Pentagon has been assembling for hypersonic weapons research and development and accelerating those projects. There might be something to this theory. 

After all, hypersonic weapons have been researched since the last part of the Cold War. It’s not really new technology. The Americans, however, did not develop these systems, which left a gap for both Russia and China to fill.

So, it might very well be that this is an application problem rather than a fundamental inability to compete. Of course, the United States is being shown up by its rivals, notably China, in multiple other domains. Yet, the Americans are right to give the Kratos team a chance to see if it can accelerate the American development of hypersonic weapons. If Kratos is right, then the United Statees could achieve real parity with China and Russia in hypersonic weapons in the five years or so.

There are some problems with this outlook. 

Fundamentally, the defense industrial base is broken and the procurement systems for these weapons systems are increasingly corrupt and inefficient. The quest for greater weapons has been hindered by defense firms’ massive profit seeking—even at the expense of national readiness. 

Should the Kratos team be wrong, and the problems affecting America’s hypersonic weapons development are far more fundamental and systemic, then the United States will find itself in a world of hurt, as Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons threaten the homeland in ways that conventional missiles simply cannot. 

A global arms race is occurring, and the Americans are in the unenviable position of being on the defensive. Hopefully Kratos can help overcome these problems soon. 

Brandon J. Weichert, a Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest as well as a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest, and a contributor at Popular Mechanics, consults regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, the Asia Times, and countless others. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

In September of last year, it was reported that Russia had launched an astonishing 8,060 drones developed by the long-time Russian ally, the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine. 

At the time, it was an extraordinary number. The reporting back in September 2024 highlighted the importance that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of all shapes and sizes had for both sides fighting in Ukraine (the Ukrainians use overwhelming numbers of Turkish-produced drones). 

The Iranian drones that Russia loves are the Shahed-131 and Shahed-136 one-way attack unmanned aerial systems. In an October 2022 assessment by the Council of Foreign Relations, the bulk of the drones Iran handed over to Russia belonged to the Shahed-136 model. That’s the specific Iranian-built drone we’ll be analyzing here.

Back in March, the Russians signed a licensing agreement with Iran that allowed them to domestically produce these systems. According to a November 2024 report by Iran International, a website that advocates the end of the Islamist regime in Iran, the presence of large numbers of cheaply produced Iranian drones “supercharged Russia’s 1,000-day fight in Ukraine.” 

An Iranian Nightmare in Ukraine 

With Russia now mass producing the Iranian drones indigenously, the Russians will likely continue enjoying the boost that the drones gave their forces when the Iranians first sold the drones to Russia. As the fight over control of the Russian enclave of Kursk, located just across the border from Ukraine has shown, Russian drones are wreaking havoc on the entrenched Ukrainian forces operating there. 

The Shahed-136, also known as “Witness” (or, Geran-2, meaning “Geranium-2” in Russian), is a delta-winged loitering munition designed for long-range attacks. The brilliance of the system lies in its relative simplicity that allows for cheap mass production and lower maintenance costs compared to other, more sophisticated drones. It has a range of a little more than 1,200 miles and can carry a warhead weighing between 88 and 110 pounds. Shahed-136 drones typically have a subsonic cruising speed of 111 miles per hour.

The basic tactics underlying the deployment of these systems involve the saturation of enemy defenses with swarms of cheaply produced Shahed-136 drones, thereby overwhelming an enemy’s air defenses and allowing for the attacking force to achieve dominance over a contested area. Another tactic involves stealthy, surgical strikes, since these drones’ relatively small size and low-flying capability makes it more difficult for defenders to see and defend against them.

Iranian Shahed-136 drones have also been used by the Iranian-backed Houthis in their efforts to terrorize international shipping—and the mighty United States Navy—in the Red Sea and Strait of Bab El-Mandeb. That Tehran is the producer of this specific drone should not surprise anyone. Being a relatively small power under immense international sanctions has meant that the Iranian regime has had to innovate unique asymmetrical warfare capabilities. 

No Easy Defense 

The Shahed-136 is particularly vexing for nations on the receiving end of its attacks. The drone poses significant defensive challenges, as both the Houthis out of Yemen and the Russians fighting in Ukraine have shown. Drones have proven that only layered air defense systems have a chance at reliably countering the threat that drone swarms pose to defenders. 

Such systems, however, are expensive to maintain—especially when compared to the relative cost and the overwhelming lethality of the Shahed-136 drones. What’s more, the risk of Iran proliferating these systems to other actors, particularly non-state actors, such as terrorist organizations beyond the Houthis, is a real complicating factor when it comes to defense.

Iranian weapons designers have already learned a great deal from the experience of their systems in various theaters of global warfare. They are applying those lessons learned to future iterations both of the Shahed-136 and other, more advanced Iranian drones. 

It is obvious that drone warfare will continue to evolve and to increasingly dominate the future of modern warfare. The Iranians understand this. As do the Turks and Russians. We shall see if the Western world truly understands this new reality. 

Brandon J. Weichert, a Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest as well as a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest, and a contributor at Popular Mechanics, consults regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, the Asia Times, and countless others. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Image: Shutterstock.

Almost every president since the end of the Cold War had his foreign policy legacy defined by a war no one could have foreseen. For George H.W. Bush, it was Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Bill Clinton sought to deflect Bush’s 90 percent popularity after the successful 100-hour ground war by focusing on bread-and-butter issues. In 1992, Clinton campaign consultant James Carville summarized the strategy with the famous quip, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Clinton genuinely hoped to focus on the economy. He extricated U.S. forces from Somalia following the “Black Hawk Down” incident but found himself drawn first into Bosnia and then more reluctantly into Kosovo. George W. Bush, too, sought to be a domestic president but, after the 9/11 attacks, ordered U.S. forces into Afghanistan and, more controversially, into Iraq. Barack Obama pledged to end “dumb war[s],” but not only remained in Afghanistan and returned to Iraq but then involved the United States in Syria and Libya.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dominated the Biden administration’s foreign policy. Joe Biden did not send U.S. forces into the theater, but he did provide Ukraine with weaponry and other forms of support for their war effort. For all his talk about his genuine interest in Africa, Biden has paid little attention to the world’s deadliest conflict, the civil war in Sudan. He staked out the middle ground in the Israel-Hamas conflict, meddling diplomatically and virtue signaling with humanitarian schemes while otherwise standing largely aloof. Biden also claimed to be “the first president in this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” However, he omitted U.S. involvement off the coast of Yemen.

While the COVID-19 Pandemic overshadowed Donald Trump’s first term (thanks to a Chinese lab leak), he is correct in saying that he did not involve the United States in new wars. His second term will likely not be so placid.

Several wars loom, all of which could impact Trump’s legacy, whether he chooses to involve himself or not.

Turkey And Syria Vs. The Kurds

After Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Turkish-sponsored Sunni Islamist group that previously aligned with Al Qaeda rampaged through Syria and ended Bashar al-Assad’s dynasty after nearly a quarter-century. Trump celebrated. “I think Turkey is very smart...Turkey did an unfriendly takeover, without a lot of lives being lost,” he said.

Trump’s assessment of Turkey’s wisdom may be premature. While Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leader Ahmed al-Sharaa (Abu Bakr al-Jolani) seeks to win international recognition, he does so less because he has yet to consolidate control and more because recognition will bring access and control over the nearly $400 billion that Syrians will need to reconstruct their country.

The broader issue that could impact the Trump administration is what the new Syrian regime will mean for the Syrian Kurds. Trump may not care about the Kurds personally—he certainly did not hesitate to betray them during his first term—but the stakes are arguably higher. Both Al-Sharaa and Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani are pawns of Turkey; both trade sovereignty and nationalist causes for cash and power. Both will turn on Syrian Kurds to remain in the good graces of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

In the past, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was a brake on Turkish ambitions. With him gone, Turkey and its proxies may seek to overrun Syria’s Kurdish regions. The short-term impact of this could be the release of thousands of Islamic State prisoners. They will tip the balance inside Syria toward militancy. They could spread throughout not only the Middle East—destabilizing Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia—but also become another tool by which Erdogan could blackmail Europe, as he did with Syrian refugees. It will only be a matter of time until some cross the southern border. What happens in Syria does not stay in Syria.

Azerbaijan Vs. Armenia

Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev took advantage of U.S. distraction during the 2020 election to launch an attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, a self-governing and democratic ethnic Armenian territory that Azerbaijan demanded to subordinate itself to Azerbaijan’s direct rule. On November 9, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin imposed a ceasefire sparing about half the region’s territory and enabling 120,000 indigenous Armenians to remain in the rump region. With Putin preoccupied with the Ukraine War and with Secretary of State Antony Blinken signaling moral equivalency and weakness, Aliyev finished the job in September 2023, driving the entire 1,700-year-old Armenian Christian community into exile. Blinken’s refusal to describe that episode as “ethnic cleansing,” preferring instead to describe events in the passive voice as “depopulation,” leads Aliyev to believe he can continue his anti-Armenian jihad. In recent weeks, Aliyev has demanded the European border observation team evacuate and Armenia stop arming itself. His rhetoric about Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan” mirrors the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s quip about Kuwait being Iraq’s “nineteenth province.”

The Caucasus could become even bloodier if Ukraine falls. Since 2018, Armenia has pivoted toward the West. Putin has a long memory. If given the opportunity, he will exact his revenge on Armenia. The same holds true for Moldova, which has also oriented itself increasingly toward Europe and NATO. Russia has already tightened its grip on Georgia. Trump must consider whether he is fine with the reconstitution of the Soviet Union.

China’s Proxy Wars In Africa

Trump would not be the first president to ignore African conflicts, but he may be the first for whom doing so would put the United States at untenable risk. China is no stranger to the continent. In 2017, it opened its first overseas naval base in tiny Djibouti in the Hord of Africa, just a few miles from Camp Lemonnier, where the Pentagon still stations its Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa.

During the Biden administration, China consolidated its strategic position without any serious U.S. pushback. Rather than counter China’s economic and military inroads, the State Department often facilitated them.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) may be one of the world’s most dysfunctional states. Still, it nevertheless will be indispensable for the twenty-first-century economy. The lithium-ion batteries (upon which so many technologies depend) require cobalt, tantalum, germanium, and other rare earth elements that the DRC possesses in abundance. Some geologists estimate that Congo’s mineral wealth is worth up to $24 trillion.

China has taken a two-pronged approach to the DRC. It has bribed successive presidents for lucrative and exclusive mining concessions and simultaneously sold high-tech weaponry to support its investment in President Félix Tshisekedi, who now seeks an unconstitutional third term. Meanwhile, U.S. officials still celebrate Tshisekedi as a democrat. Under Michael Hammer, the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa recommended lifting UN reporting requirements on Congolese military purchases, thus injecting an opacity that only benefits Beijing.

Tshisekedi is not an intellectual. He appears to believe that a top-shelf, multibillion-dollar military can buy victory, regardless of his regime’s corruption and general incompetence. Such a dynamic can lead rulers like Tshisekedi to pull the trigger. He has grown increasingly bellicose toward Rwanda, a pro-Western neighbor that has previously fought to protect itself from genocide-era terrorists who now call the DRC home. Anti-Rwanda rhetoric can both distract Congolese from Tshisekedi’s own mismanagement and also serve China’s interests as Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has taken a balanced approach that has effectively blocked Beijing’s ambitions. If a third Congo War erupts—and odds are it will—Trump will be forced to deal with a conflict that could disrupt the twenty-first-century economy just as much as the Arab oil embargo disrupted the twentieth-century economy.

Chinese interference in the Horn of Africa is an even greater threat. Somaliland, an unrecognized country that is nonetheless the region’s only democracy, also possesses rare earth deposits. It hosts an airfield that, prior to Somalia’s collapse into chaos, was an emergency landing strip for NASA’s space shuttle program, a deep water port that today is one of Africa’s top-ranked facilities, and several hundred miles of strategic coast along the Gulf of Aden. While countries like Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates take a transactional approach between the United States and China, Somaliland stands on principle and openly sides with Taiwan. 

China, alongside the Somali government in Mogadishu, has responded by sponsoring an insurgency in Somaliland’s Sool region. The Biden team bizarrely sided not with democratic, pro-Western, pro-Taiwan, and reasonably transparent Somaliland but rather with Mogadishu and Beijing. If Trump does not side unequivocally with Somaliland and recognize it, expect China to increase its efforts to destabilize the country. Simply put, it is impossible for Trump to stand up to China without working to checkmate its projects in Africa.

China Vs. Taiwan

The one possible conflict for which Trump’s team recognizes the need for preparation is a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Make no mistake: Taiwan is not China. Historically, it has been distinct for most of the last 500 years. Even Mao Zedong recognized that Taiwan was as distinct from China as Korea.

Taiwan, however, is not simply the single island that many Americans picture. It also includes several outlying islands—some in the Taiwan Strait and some further afield. Trump’s advisors must not assume, as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy-designate Elbridge Colby does, that China would “go big” with an immediate effort to conquer Taiwan’s main island. After all, the Taiwan Relations Act does not cover the islands Matsu or Quemoy, the epicenter of the Eisenhower-era Taiwan crises, let alone those further afield like Taiping or Dongsha. 

For Beijing, Chinese “salami slicing” tactics in the South China Sea have been a success. Why should they change them now? Rather than simply address a theoretical invasion of Taiwan proper, Trump needs to determine in advance whether he will stand down should that invasion come in slow motion. After all, if China occupies Dongsha or Matsu absent American pushback, it is conditioning the American public for inaction.

Every president enters office with an agenda, but reality quickly intrudes. Biden allowed problems to fester, and the weakness and vacillation of aides like Blinken only encouraged irredentists and adversaries.

The foreign policy crises Trump does not expect and that his aides hope to ignore will likely define Trump’s legacy in ways he does not now imagine. Trump side-stepped wars in his first administration. He may not be so lucky in his next one.

Michael Rubin is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum.

Image: M2M_PL / Shutterstock.com.

If there is one untold, or completely misunderstood, geopolitical story of the twenty-first century, it is the rise of Turkey as a great power. Possessed of an Islamist political ideology and a commitment to restoring Turkey’s long-dead Ottoman Empire, the country that sits at the “Crossroads of Civilization,” between Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, is the only great power that has seen its political power and military strength enhance since the dawn of this century. 

One area where Turkey is showcasing its newfound power and potency is in the realm of indigenous weapons. Turkey is a global leader in drone technology and its Bayraktar TB2 Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) is a perfect exemplar of Turkey’s military technological prowess. The TB2 is known for having reshaped the dynamics of contemporary warfare with its affordability, effectiveness, and adaptability.

The History of TB2 Drones

Built by Baykar Makina, a Turkish defense contractor for the Turkish Air Force, the Bayraktar TB2 has become a massively popular system both in Turkey’s Armed Forces and as an export model. It has enjoyed extensive service with the Ukrainian Armed Forces as they war against their neighbor, Russia, for control over the eastern portion of Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula (both of which Russia views as its own). 

A common theme of Turkey’s development as a major military technological power is that Ankara is consistently denied access to key American and NATO military assets. And because Turkey is prevented from gaining access to advanced Western technologies, Ankara has endeavored to become militarily self-sufficient. That is precisely what has occurred over the last decade. 

So, again, after the Americans embargoed Turkey from purchasing armed drones (because the West did not want those systems being used by Turkey against U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in the Middle East), Turkey’s domestic drone industry was catalyzed into action. The TB2 made its initial flight in August 2014. By 2021, the drone had logged over 400,000 flight hours globally. 

The Specs

Turkey equipped the TB2 with advanced systems allowing for both autonomous and remotely controlled operations. Constructed predominantly of carbon fiber and Kevlar, this V-tail-signature craft has proven itself time and time again over the last decade, meaning that Turkey has become an unmanned aerial vehicle-producing superpower. The TB2 carries a payload of up to 330 pounds.

TB2s integrate electro-optical, infrared cameras, and laser designators (and laser range finders), making these birds a perfect ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) craft as well as effective for targeted strikes.

It has an operational altitude of 25,000 feet and an endurance of 27 hours, meaning that the TB2 can remain over targets for a protracted time, augmenting the user’s real-time battlefield information flow (granting greater situational awareness upon the force deploying the TB2).

Over the years, TB2s have participated in conflicts in Syria and Iraq. They were used to neutralize enemy air defenses on behalf of Turkish-backed elements fighting in war-torn Libya. In the brutal Nagorno-Karabakh war, Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan deployed TB2 drones so well that many believe these systems led to Armenia’s defeat in that conflict. 

A Powerful Export Model

As noted above, though, the TB2 drones became most well-known internationally for their use by Ukrainian forces against the invading Russians, giving the TB2 positive press.

In all the conflicts these drones have fought, they have performed brilliantly, making them a key system that Turkey produces. What’s more, the relatively cheap price of individual TB2s (around $5 million), makes these drones an attractive purchase for nations operating under constrained defense budgets.

Nearly twenty-four foreign nations have purchased these drones from Turkey, boosting Turkey’s arms industry as well as Turkey’s national influence and prestige. 

Thanks to the unqualified success of the TB2 program, Turkey has invested in a new round of systems augmenting the capabilities of the TB2. For instance, the even more advanced Bayraktar TB3 has been developed as well as the Akinci, promising greater strike and surveillance capabilities—at affordable rates—than what the legendary TB2 provided.

Turkey has arrived as a great regional power and its indigenous arms industry proves this. It is now only a matter of time before Turkey exerts its power beyond its present borders. Indeed, it has already started enhancing its power in the Middle East. The Bayraktar TB2 (and subsequent drone systems) are but a few of the symbols proving Turkey’s return to greatness. 

Brandon J. Weichert, a Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest as well as a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest, and a contributor at Popular Mechanics, consults regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, the Asia Times, and countless others. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Image: Flickr.