SWP

Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. won the Philippines’ presidential election by a land­slide on 9 May and was officially sworn in on 30 June. During the election cam­paign, Marcos Jr. – the son of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. who was ousted in 1986 – remained extremely vague when it came to describing his foreign and security policies. Some observers initially speculated that Marcos Jr. would con­tinue to pursue the foreign policy shift towards the People’s Republic of China that had been estab­lished by his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte. Several weeks into Marcos Jr.’s presidency, however, a much more nuanced picture has emerged. It appears that the newly elected president is likely seeking to balance the Philippines’ relations with China and the US to a greater extent than his predecessor. He therefore seems to be follow­ing in his father’s foreign policy footsteps. This could open up new opportunities for coopera­tion between the Philippines and Germany and the EU – provided that such collabo­ration considers the high degree to which Manila’s current foreign policy agenda seems to be driven by domestic concerns and objectives.

Der Ansatz, der Russlands Nuklearstrategie kennzeichnet, wird im Westen oft als »escalate to deescalate« beschrieben. Demnach sei Moskau bereit, in einem Konflikt frühzeitig Nuklearwaffen einzusetzen, um diesen zu seinen Gunsten zu beenden. Die offizielle Doktrin des Kreml, Nuklearübungen des russischen Militärs und die Debat­ten unter politisch-militärischen Eliten deuteten bisher jedoch in eine andere Rich­tung. Mit dem Konzept der »strategischen Abschreckung« hat Russland vielmehr ein Abschreckungssystem entwickelt, in dem Atomwaffen weiterhin wichtig sind. Doch soll eine breite Palette an nicht-militärischen bis hin zu konventionellen Mitteln mehr Flexibilität unterhalb der nuklearen Schwelle schaffen, um Eskalation zu managen. Dies dürfte sich angesichts von Russlands Schwierigkeiten mit dem Einsatz konven­tio­neller Präzisionswaffen im Ukraine-Krieg und der militärischen Neuaufstellung der Nato jedoch verändern: Die Rolle nicht-strategischer Nuklearwaffen in Russlands Abschreckungspolitik wird wahrscheinlich wieder wachsen. Dies wird nicht nur die Krisenstabilität in Europa schwächen, sondern auch die nukleare Rüstungskontrolle künftig zusätzlich erschweren.

Millions of Turkish voters are geared up for the twin (parliamentary and presidential) elections that are scheduled to take place in June 2023 at the latest. After nearly 20 years in power, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule may seem unassailable to many observers of Turkish politics. However, owing to the economic downturn and rifts in his ruling party, this will be the first election in which Erdoğan is not the clear favourite. Six oppo­sition parties of different ideological origins have come together to pick a joint presidential candidate to stand against Erdoğan and to offer a common platform for restoring parliamentary democracy. Although the opposition alliance has reasonable chances of defeating Erdoğan’s ruling bloc, their victory would not guarantee a smooth process of transition to parliamentary democracy. If the opposition can defeat Erdoğan, the new government would need to undertake the arduous tasks of estab­lishing a meri­tocratic bureaucracy, restructuring Turkey’s diplomatic course and economic policy, and switching back to parliamentary rule. Due to the opposition alliance’s diverse com­position, accomplishing these goals may be as difficult as winning the elections.

Schriftliche Stellungnahme: „Beurteilung der Sicherheitslage und militärischen Lage“ am 22.09.2022

Putin ruft die Teil-Mobilmachung aus und droht gar mit Atomwaffen. Politisch ein riskanter Schritt. Welche Bedeutung hat er militärisch?

Ist Putins Drohung, Atomwaffen einzusetzen, ernst gemeint? Unter welchen Umständen könnte er sie wirklich einsetzen?

With their joint announcement about the desire to resume peace talks, Colombia’s new president and the country’s second-largest guerrilla group, the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional), have sent a clear political signal. The pacification of the ELN is to take place under the aegis of a “leftist” government and be accompanied by a com­prehensive and ambitious reform project. This is a renewed attempt to end the civil war following the conclusion of a peace agreement with the FARC rebels in 2016. How­ever, the agreement with the FARC can serve as a blueprint only to a limited extent, not just because of the different historical origins of the two guerrilla groups but also owing to the strongly decentralized internal structure of the ELN. The issues of a cease­fire and the release of prisoners – prerequisites for possible peace talks – remain unresolved. Lengthy negotiations lie ahead, and the involvement of Colombian civil society is essential as central questions about the country’s future must be clarified.

Since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine, media reporting has shown an unfortunate tendency to observe international politics from a “friend or foe” perspective. For the sake of simplicity, anything that defies this scheme is placed on one side or the other: Those who are not with us are against us – and vice versa. Interpreting the summit meeting of the SCO in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, as an attempt to establish a new anti-Western axis of evil also falls short. For the organisation’s members, the SCO’s most important function has always been to balance interests among its major members. This is more true than ever against the background of ongoing geopolitical confrontations.

Not a Eurasian counterpart to NATO

The SCO was founded in June 2001 as the successor organisation to the “Shanghai Five”, an alliance that had existed since 1996 and consisted of Russia, the People’s Republic of China, and their three Central Asian neighbours Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. With its transition to the SCO, Uzbekistan also joined. Subsequently, the organisation, which also included India and Pakistan in 2017, established itself as a supraregional security policy format, which observers have always seen as a kind of Sino-Russian counterpart to NATO.

Such ambitions may well have existed on the Russian side, but the interests and preferences of the members always stood in the way. From the very beginning, China played the leading role in the organisation. The People’s Republic was primarily concerned with clarifying a number of unresolved border issues with its three Central Asian neighbours under the umbrella of multilateralism, containing the danger of the “three evils: separatism, extremism, and terrorism”, as well as preventing Islamist movements from spreading into its own territory from Central Asia. The majority of the agreements between the SCO members have been de facto bilateral in nature.

Russia’s efforts to create an overarching security alliance and merge the SCO with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – which includes Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – have not progressed far. This is partly because such a merger was not desired by the majority of member states. On the other hand, Russia and China have always held different views on the function and significance of the SCO, which they regarded primarily as a vehicle for achieving their own political and economic goals. Consequently, the SCO’s main function was primarily to balance Russia’s and China’s policies in Central Asia.

Multilateralism of the non-aligned

The Samarkand summit did little to change these realities. The objectives and preferences of the participating states are still too divergent. For Chinese President Xi Jinping, participation in the summit offered an opportunity to renew China’s claim of being a major player in Eurasia within the framework of the Silk Road Initiative (One Belt One Road). President Vladimir Putin, for his part, used the meeting to demonstrate that he is all but isolated, notwithstanding his war in Ukraine, which has been unanimously condemned in the West. The presence of other heads of state who have tense relations with the West led to a situation in which summit participants advocated critical views of Western policies and highlighted the importance of the SCO as an alternative model for governance in international relations.

But this approach by no means implies that the Samarkand summit is going to transform the SCO into an anti-Western alliance. Conjecture of this kind fails to take into account the interests of the majority of the organisation’s members. For the Central Asian states, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in particular, a bloc formation directed against the West would be anything but desirable. For these states, whose political weight within the SCO has grown considerably since its founding, the value of the SCO lies precisely in its non-aligned status, as emphasised by host Uzbekistan in the run-up to the summit. Due to their historical experiences with the hegemonic aspirations of Russia and China, Central Asian members hold foreign policy independence as a value of the highest order. With Russia in particular, they are bound by a complex web of relationships and dependencies. They would rather loosen these ties than strengthen them, and the means of choice is a diversified foreign policy. Relations with Western states are particularly important in this regard.

Against this background, the expansion of the SCO to include countries such as Iran and, prospectively, Turkey as well as Arab states is an extremely attractive option for the Central Asians. However, they do not associate this with the prospect of a powerful alliance against the West, from which they would gain no advantage. Rather, the benefit of an expanded SCO for them lies in increasing the diversity within the organisation, thereby curbing claims to power by individual members and at the same time expanding their own room for manoeuvre.