Diplomacy & Crisis News

As the United States focuses on Africa’s future leaders and gender equality, why are we not explicitly discussing malaria’s immense impact? U.S. policymakers should see the disease for what it really is: inextricably linked to saving the lives of Africa’s women and girls, supporting a new generation of African leaders, and bolstering America’s immediate and long-term security interests.

Malaria is often misperceived by policymakers as a global health problem not vital to the United States. U.S. stakeholders feel pangs of empathy for malaria-affected peoples without realizing the disease’s surprisingly meaningful place in a complicated landscape of geopolitical challenges. Malaria unequivocally and tangibly stunts progress and the livelihoods of millions around the globe, especially women and girls, with broad implications and a significant impact on critical U.S. security interests in Africa.

Malaria Investments Serve African Prosperity and U.S. Security

While there has been great momentum in the Biden administration and Congress around engaging African leaders and a blossoming discourse around the strategic importance of the region to global security, and the need to offset China’s role, there is a need for greater attention paid to the tangible role of malaria, which continues to thwart the progress of millions of Africans.

In Africa, immediate investments in fighting malaria would lead to a significant acceleration of economic growth for African countries and bolster fundamental U.S. security interests over the long run. It is currently estimated that 25 percent of household income in Africa is lost due to malaria infections. This calamitous loss of income for African families results in fewer educational opportunities and widespread poverty for millions of people in the region. Moreover, this household economic loss due to malaria also results in significantly diminished economic growth for African countries, including those of particular geopolitical importance for the U.S.

In December of 2022, President Joe Biden hosted the African Leaders Summit and consistently stressed the critical role of African leaders in tackling the world’s most difficult challenges, including countering terrorism, mitigating climate change, and enhancing global health security. Biden has explicitly pointed to the rising threats of terrorism in Africa as a key national security priority since he took office. President Biden—like Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama—recognizes that between global demographic trends and emerging security threats, African leaders and the next generation of Africans will play a pivotal role in shaping geopolitical dynamics in the decades to come.

Acutely aware of Africa’s burgeoning influence, China has been uniquely proactive and even aggressive in its investments in Africa. However, China’s investments in the continent are often predicated upon specific benefits such as access to natural resources, jobs for Chinese nationals, and collateral for massive loans.

U.S. investment could offer an important alternative to China: the United States could provide less baldly conditional and more favorable investment terms with these critical future allies. Investments in malaria prevention and response could not only strengthen partnerships with African countries, but also reinforce U.S. commitment as a partner that delivers in tangible ways for people, prosperity, and political leaders.

Investing in Malaria is Investing in Women & Girls

Investments in malaria could also yield extraordinary and immediate benefits for African women and girls—the next generation of African leadership and enormously important to the continent’s future. They are a crucial half of the enormous and burgeoning youth generation, critical sources of future African economic growth, and pivotal voices to counter violence, extremism, and domestic political polarization.

Economic empowerment is often associated with three Es: access of girls and women to education, employment, and entrepreneurship. But malaria often disrupts this access. Research also shows that half of school absences in Africa are caused by malaria (with older girls disproportionately affected), leading to catastrophic short-term and long-term consequences.

In Ghana, one study found that 83 percent of household malaria cases are cared for by women. In an average agricultural household in Sub-Saharan Africa, women can invest up to 246 days of caregiving, as compared to 66 days by men, for malaria cases among children. Effective malaria response directly unencumbers women’s economic empowerment. Economic growth in low- and middle-income countries depends on fully tapping the potential of the roughly half of their population who are female, and malaria is a serious economic and social obstacle to such.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately one in four pregnant women are infected with malaria in areas of moderate and high disease transmission in sub-Saharan Africa, leading to low birth weight, stillbirths, and sometimes life-long learning challenges. Meanwhile, every year 50,000–70,000 young African mothers die from placental malaria. While rapid progress is being made on the treatment of placental malaria by the National Institutes for Health, U.S. investment in catalyzing and scaling research and investment remains remarkably low. Funding and providing access to intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (IPTp-SP) can lower the incidence of severe maternal anemia by 38 percent and reduce the consequences of malaria infection for both pregnant women and newborns. Yet just 35 percent of pregnant women currently receive the full three doses recommended by WHO. Likewise, supply and consistent use of insecticide-treated nets helps keep pregnant women safe, including those living with HIV who cannot receive IPTp-SP.

There’s another way effectively battling malaria facilitates women’s empowerment. Throughout Africa, a major element of malaria prevention, diagnosis, and treatment is community health workers (CHWs). These local caregivers serve the needs of marginalized, remote, and less-educated communities, often in informal settings. Their reach is why CHWs have been priorities for the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

As of 2019, women make up more than 70 percent of the global health and social care workforce, and only 25 percent of that number holds senior roles. Half of all CHWs in low- and middle-income countries don’t have salaries. Female CHWs spend four times as many hours doing unpaid work as compared to male counterparts. More effective malaria prevention, screening, and treatment in Africa—and elsewhere—requires more equitable pay and advancement paths for women in the health sector. The United States and the private sector can and must be catalysts.

Women’s economic empowerment in turn can help drive malaria’s elimination country by country in Africa. A 2020 study found that providing agricultural education services and support to community-level female agricultural sector networks in Uganda spurred a 22 percent increase in mosquito bed nets used per capita, and malaria prevalence decreased 29 percent at household level, 22.4 percent among children under 5 years old, and 56.8 percent among pregnant women.

Investments targeting malaria are exceptional in their potential impact: they reach huge swaths of the global population effectively and can rapidly catalyze outsized global economic growth. Indeed, malaria response is one of the most cost-effective ways to save lives and advance U.S. partnership and security interests in Africa. It is time to take the blinders off and see that investment in fighting malaria is a critical investment in women and girls and a necessary and timely investment in Africa’s future—and ours.

Sohini Chatterjee is Managing Director for Global Policy and Advocacy for Malaria No More and former Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Mark P. Lagon is Chief Policy Officer, Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Senior Fellow at The Trinity Forum; and former U.S. Ambassador-At-Large to Combat Trafficking in Persons.

Image: Shutterstock.

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order curtailing U.S. high-tech investment in China, reflecting a bipartisan consensus that U.S. investment should not be helping the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in these highly strategic industries. Such efforts are welcome, but to be truly effective, must be part of a broader strategy to push back on Beijing’s pursuit of global domination.

Military strength is obviously necessary for the free world to prevail in this new great power contest—however, it is not sufficient. The CCP uses economic leverage and elite capture to exert political influence, deploying information operations and exporting its authoritarian governance model to create the conditions for Beijing to advance its local and global interests. The more successful China is in eroding democracy around the world, the better placed it will be to undermine American interests and supplant the United States as the global superpower.

We need a strategy that combines the serious commitment of hard power resources and economic statecraft with a robust campaign to counter China by strengthening democratic resilience around the world. The United States has deployed foreign assistance to advance its geopolitical interests since the end of World War II, when the Marshall Plan was used to rebuild Europe and Japan’s social and economic foundations to prevent a Soviet takeover. Throughout the Cold War, the United States used foreign aid as part of its strategy of containment, providing valuable lessons for advancing U.S. interests in a new age of competition. This includes the establishment of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1961 and the founding of the congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy in 1983 at President Ronald Reagan’s instigation.

Research shows that U.S. foreign aid has improved the political and economic well-being of recipient countries and advanced core U.S. interests. Foreign aid advances America’s economic interests by creating new markets for American businesses and trade. Indeed, it’s no coincidence that eleven of the United States’ top fifteen trade partners are previous recipients of foreign aid. Foreign aid also helps strengthen democracies around the world—creating more stable and reliable partners and allies. A study of U.S. foreign assistance focused on democracy promotion programs conducted between 1990 and 2003 found that these initiatives had “clear and consistent impacts” on their overall democratization. And despite a global democratic downturn from 2012 to 2022, eight countries that were turning toward autocracy were able to reverse course and regain their democratic momentum thanks in large part to international democracy support. 

Foreign aid can also help improve citizens’ and governments’ views of the United States, often at the expense of its adversaries. China’s foreign assistance programs tend to favor physical projects that are often popular in the short term. However, over time the high costs of accepting aid from China—including shoddy construction work, loss of sovereignty, and increased authoritarian influence—make the prospects of an enduring partnership far less appealing. In contrast, U.S. foreign assistance spending is designed to reduce opportunities for misappropriation and corruption, and favors working with local partners to better serve the interests of beneficiaries. 

The United States can take pride in these achievements—but that can only take us so far. In order to harness the full potential of foreign assistance as a means of pushing back on China’s global ambitions, we need an approach that is clearly coordinated around America’s core strategic objectives.

We should begin by realigning spending to focus on allies and countries strategically important to competition with China and Russia. Our current approach to allocating foreign aid does not enable the United States to use funds in ways that directly advance U.S. interests. It forces the United States to center spending in many aid sectors on predominantly low-income countries and disincentivizes spending on higher-income countries that may be of significant strategic importance. The Trump administration explored realigning how the United States uses foreign assistance of all stripes—from economic aid to health assistance—to make competing with China a primary objective. This approach is worth revisiting.

We also need closer coordination of assistance with our foreign policy objectives. History demonstrates the value of such an approach in promoting long-term alignment with U.S. interests. Consider our successes in Western Europe, Colombia, South Korea, and Chile: In each case, America’s assistance approach combined security guarantees with cooperation and reform programs; economic-development packages that paired investment with revitalization of key industries; and incentives for local governments to improve their responsiveness to constituent needs.

The George W. Bush administration attempted to address the challenge of aligning assistance and foreign policy priorities by bringing development under the purview of a new Office of Foreign Assistance Resources at the Department of State. Despite this change, the United States continues to struggle with harnessing all elements of U.S. foreign assistance toward a common end. The secretary of state should empower the Office of Foreign Assistance Resources to truly lead this effort by deputizing its director to ensure aid is harnessed to support America’s foreign policy priorities.

Congress also has a vital role to play in ensuring the United States maximizes the impact of American foreign aid. For example, Congress could pass legislation requiring the executive to deliver plans for select priority countries, outlining how it intends to use all aspects of U.S. power and resources to compete with China. Such a law could be modeled on the 2019 Global Fragility Act, which requires the executive to deliver a strategy for promoting global stability and ten-year plans for achieving these aims in priority countries.

Finally, the United States should make strengthening democracies a core goal of its development policy. Strong democratic institutions are the most dependable defense against authoritarian subversion. The United States must respond to China’s global influence campaign by using foreign assistance in ways that empower individuals and institutions to fight back in countries where democracy is vulnerable, backsliding, or nonexistent. This includes supporting independent media, civil society, legislative training, governance best practices, and the development of democratic political parties and opposition movements.

Competition with China is playing out not only in the sea lanes of the Indo-Pacific but also in the parliaments, board rooms, and even local councils of developing nations. The record of success for U.S. foreign assistance proves that strategically targeted aid is a key tool in advancing U.S. interests. If the U.S. government is serious about countering the People’s Republic of China and creating a safer, more democratic world, it must act urgently to align foreign assistance with American grand strategy.

Patrick Quirk, Ph.D., is vice president for strategy, innovation, and impact at the International Republican Institute (IRI) and a nonresident senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Caitlin Dearing Scott is the director for countering foreign authoritarian influence at IRI.

Quirk and Dearing Scott are authors of the Atlantic Council Report Maximizing US Foreign Aid for Strategic Competition.

Image: Shutterstock.

China’s mounting economic difficulties have embarrassed many Western observers—or at least should have. Not too long ago, many journalists and economists on this continent and in Europe praised Beijing for its disciplined and planned approach to economic management. Some counted the Chinese approach superior to their own seemingly chaotic market-oriented economies. Now the Chinese model looks less attractive. Of course, not all of China’s problems are a product of its planned approach to economic management. Some are a straightforward and unavoidable result of development. Still, Beijing’s reliance on authoritarianism and Marxist central planning bears much responsibility for the economy’s problems. Americans should take note, especially now that the Biden administration has succumbed to Washington’s ever-present temptation to use industrial policy and top-down planning, in other words, to follow a watered-down version of Beijing’s faulty approach.

The White House refers to its economic scheme as “Bidenomics.” At base, it promotes industrial policies in which planners in Washington determine the economy’s future needs and with subsidies, low-cost loans, tax credits, and the like nudge the private economy in their preferred directions. The administration has already touted the billions that have gone to compliant producers, as if somehow that added to the nation’s wealth. If the planners are correct about the future, the effort and the billions will pay handsome economic dividends. The problem is that no one, not even the best government planners, can see the future. They cannot be sure whether consumers will want the products they see as essential. Nor can they anticipate technological advances that might render obsolete today’s seemingly essential technologies. Should the plans go wrong—and that is entirely possible—the economy will have wasted huge amounts of capital and labor and likely diverted effort away from alternative endeavors that might otherwise have met future needs and spurred growth. It is just these sorts of problems that have bedeviled China’s planning and now are holding back China’s economy.

Not too long ago, Chinese planning seemed to have avoided any of these problems. China’s economy made astounding gains. From the late 1970s, when Deng Xiaoping first opened the country’s economy to the world and investment monies poured into the country, growth rates until very recently have been spectacular, especially since Beijing used the increasing national income to launch several impressive infrastructure projects that added still more the economy’s growth potential. Between 1980 and the turn of the century, China’s economy expanded in real terms at about 10 percent a year. Following China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization, its real GDP grew by slightly over 10 percent a year up through 2015. When in 2010 China’s burgeoning economy surpassed Japan’s, it was easy to extrapolate its pace of expansion and speculate that China’s economy would soon surpass that of the United States to become the world’s largest. Everything in China seemed to work. All of Beijing’s plans paid off handsomely.

These astonishing advances captured the imaginations of Western journalists and economists. Their enthusiasm raised speculation that China might possess a superior economic model to the market-based systems of the United States and to a lesser extent Europe and Japan. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went so far as to express envy of China’s dictatorship and how it allowed Beijing to “turn their economy around on a dime.” If this man is not known for deep thinking, other seemingly more sober voices shared versions of Trudeau’s China envy. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman echoed Trudeau’s preference for centralized planning over the messiness of markets. Articles in the Harvard Business Review heaped praise on China’s approach. One appeared as late as 2021 to explain “China’s New Innovative Advantage.” Only last year, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum described China as “certainly a very attractive model,” one worthy of consideration “for many countries.” In 2020, Jim O’Neill, then head of the storied think tank, Chatham House, praised China’s system for its “fast, aggressive” response to the coronavirus outbreak.

These are only a small sample of the favorable Western commentary on China’s planned, top-down, command-and-control approach to economic management. The enthusiasm is an understandable reaction to that economy’s growth record as well as its seemingly uncanny ability to plan, but the picture that inspired so much China envy was always illusory. China’s growth and planning success were more a result of the extremely underdeveloped state of China’s economy when Deng made his change than any planning prescience much less the superiority of what is effectively a command economy.

Underdevelopment carries huge burdens, but in creating an astonishing growth record and seemingly brilliant planning, it advantaged China tremendously. Flows of investment funds from America, Europe, and Japan had tremendous impacts on the otherwise impoverished China, advancing growth rates that would have otherwise taken much greater inflows. Underdevelopment also made the job of planning relatively easy. For decades, all Beijing’s planners needed to do to see the future was look to the developed world. There, China’s planners could see that their country’s prosperity required reliable roads, power lines, rail links, port facilities, and the like. The pursuit of these projects paid huge economic dividends and spurred growth at still faster rates. Things changed, however, as China’s economy caught up with the developed world. Beijing’s central planners then lost their model of the future. China’s future needs became harder to assess. Mistakes became more common. And because Beijing’s planners have great power to marshal financial, managerial, and labor resources, those mistakes have created great waste.

Illustrative of these problems is the present difficulty China faces with residential development. Years ago, the nation had an inadequate housing stock. The planners could see the need and encouraged development through subsidies, by arranging financing through state-owned banks, and by expediting permitting as well as licensing. Developers responded to the incentives and produced the vast apartment complexes so frequently pictured in Western media outlets. Initially, the effort paid off well. But even as the effort met the nation’s housing needs, planners continued it. China until very recently continued to dedicate as much as 25 percent of its economy to residential housing development. (By comparison, the United States in a strong housing year channels about 5 percent of its economy into residential construction.) China built more housing than its population could absorb and put it in places that Chinese people did not necessarily want to live. These projects failed to pay off, which is why so many Chinese development firms—the giant Evergrande in particular—have failed.

Residential development is not the only planning failure, though it is the most dramatic. The record is replete with roads to nowhere, underused rail links, and misplaced port facilities, as well as chronic electricity shortages. In this China is not alone. Everywhere, except for the underdeveloped ones that have a model, the future is foggy. America also has many examples of wasted effort due to poor planning, usually by business interests. But there is also a big difference from China’s centrally planned system. America’s market-oriented approach keeps the mistakes on a smaller scale, and because of a greater diversity of effort in a market-oriented system, it is also more likely to meet future needs sooner than centrally planned arrangements.

In a market system, the planning is done separately by thousands of firms and individuals. To be sure, business managers are no better at seeing the future than government planners, perhaps even less capable. But each mistake is smaller than in the centrally planned approach that can and does marshal huge amounts of the economy to the comparatively narrow range of activities favored by the planners. Also, unlike government efforts, business planners face tighter budgets, are constantly reviewing their efforts, and because they are also closer to their customers, are less likely to pursue a failing project for as long as will necessarily distant central planners. Perhaps most significant is the very lack of focus in a market system, the lack of discipline and organization that once seemed so attractive in China. Where thousands pursue diverse projects, the possibility rises that somewhere in the chaotic mélange of activity one of them will uncover one of those elusive future needs, build on it, and spur growth.

Relative debt levels can give an idea (admittedly a vague one) of the scale of waste caused by centralized planning. Every project, whether promoted by a planning authority or private firms, needs financing and commonly generates debt. That debt can be an obligation of the central government, local authorities, or private entities. A comparison of aggregate debt levels to income can then indicate whether the scale of projects has missed the mark and failed to generate an economic payoff. In China, the extent of error is huge. Aggregate debt levels have far outpaced national income. In the ten years that ended in 2019, just before the pandemic, overall debt in China expanded at a 23 percent average annual rate, while the country’s overall economy expanded at only 8 percent a year. In contrast, comparable data for the United States shows a 5.6 percent annual growth in aggregate debt during that ten-year period, faster than the about 4 percent nominal growth in the economy but a much narrower gap than in China. 

The difference has only expanded since. Even with all of Washington’s spending on Covid relief, debt—federal, local, state, and private—in the United States amounted to some $57 trillion at the close of last year, about 2.2 times the nation’s nominal GDP. Comparable debt levels in China amounted to the equivalent of over $51 trillion, almost three times the size of China’s nominal GDP. In other words, the accumulated waste from mistaken projects in China is a third higher than in the United States, a difference that is that much more striking given that the United States has a much older developed economy than China and so has had a longer time to accumulate planning errors and debt. And, according to the Beijing-backed National Institute for Finance and Development, local authorities alone in China are scheduled this year to issue the equivalent of $570 billion in new debt to help finance Beijing’s latest spending on infrastructure.

The kind of industrial policies promoted by Bidenomics raises the risk of going down the path that China has taken. Of course, the planners may get lucky. That may be true of China’s planners as well. Not surprisingly, planners in both places have focused on the same future frequently describe in today’s headlines—advanced computer chips, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, battery technology, and its basic inputs. If these become the future, it is just as likely that new technology will supersede them. That is exactly what happened in the 1980s when the widespread use of Intel’s microprocessor rendered wasteful Japanese plans to corner the market in simpler chips. Alternatively, planned development in both China and the United States could create a global glut of these products. Or the buying public—whether in the United States or China or elsewhere—may turn out to have less interest in these projects than the planners do. In any of these events, all the effort and resources marshaled by these planners will fail to have the anticipated economic payoff, while in the meantime all that effort will have crowded out alternative projects that otherwise might have hit on a future need.

Except in those rare instances when the future is obvious, as when China was so horribly underdeveloped, all economic plans—whether made by a government or by a private company—are a guessing game. Sometimes they work out, often not. Because central planning unavoidably only focuses on a limited number of projects, almost always drawn from the prevailing headlines of the day, they can easily miss. When they do, economies suffer huge waste and become saddled with debt that the failed project cannot support, a fact to which China’s huge debt overhang testifies. While burdening economies in this way, the central plans divert resources from a diversity of effort that has a better chance of finding that elusive future need. That is what modern China suffers today and where Bidenomics threatens to take America.

Milton Ezrati is a contributing editor at The National Interest, an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and chief economist for Vested, the New York-based communications firm. His latest books are Thirty Tomorrows: The Next Three Decades of Globalization, Demographics, and How We Will Live and Bite-Sized Investing.

Image: Shutterstock.

While Afghanistan has largely receded from public memory, the two-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal revives the shocking scenes of bedlam at the Kabul airport as desperate civilians tried to flee the country. Amidst the confusion, thirteen U.S. service members were tragically killed in a horrific terror bombing attack. Some distraught family members recently traveled to Washington demanding answers from senior military and civilian leaders. In defending the Biden administration’s actions, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby conceded there was no easy way to end America’s longest war but “that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth doing.” This somber occasion provides an opportunity for reflection on the war and the consequences of the withdrawal for Afghanistan and U.S. interests.

Unfortunately, there has been little progress in Afghanistan’s governance, economic prosperity, and security over the last two years. If not for a close inspection of the dates, one could easily mistake last year’s commemoration news reports for an analysis of the situation in Afghanistan today. Despite international conferences and donor pledges for billions of dollars in humanitarian relief and other forms of assistance, these well-intentioned initiatives have little chance of meaningfully changing the status quo. Moreover, those who optimistically believed in Taliban reform have seen their hopes repeatedly dashed by their hardline policies and brutal governance.

How does the stagnant and dreary situation in Afghanistan affect U.S. foreign policy going forward? Just as his predecessors “muddled through” a two-decade war without a clear plan for ‘winning’ in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden seems content to continue this approach in the post-withdrawal era. Given the intense domestic and international criticism surrounding the withdrawal fiasco—including U.S. allies and partners in Europe—his administration will attempt to remain low-key and get by with minimal effort and attention (while secretly hoping the entire affair fades from memory) so they can focus on other foreign policy priorities. One expects that John Kirby prefers touting the landmark trilateral summit at Camp David with Japan and South Korea than answering difficult questions about Afghanistan. Sadly, this does not bode well for the Afghan people.

While Kabul celebrates the second anniversary of Taliban rule, the country has deteriorated by most metrics and its citizenry continues to suffer the consequences. The World Bank reports the Afghan economy shrank by 35 percent between 2021 and 2022 and more than nine in ten people are living in poverty. Even the Taliban’s “war on drugs,” which significantly reduced opium cultivation in the country because of voluntary compliance and strict enforcement of a government ban, has economically hurt subsistence farmers who lost income by growing less-profitable crops like wheat. Consequently, some 6 million Afghans are “one step away from famine” and rely on the World Food Program for rations. To make matters worse, the Taliban banned Afghan women from working with the United Nations and other non-governmental organizations, exacerbating the distribution challenge for humanitarian assistance. Finally, the Taliban continues its repressive ban on female education despite public criticism from religious scholars within the country.

The Taliban remains a pariah government, and has only itself to blame for the international community’s unwillingness to grant formal diplomatic recognition that would instill legitimacy and incentivize greater financial assistance and foreign direct investment in the country. Thus far, diplomatic and economic pressure has failed to moderate the Taliban’s behavior, and there is concern that tougher sanctions will only inflict further harm on the Afghan people. Given this conundrum, opinion in Washington remains divided on whether to engage—let alone formally recognize—the brutish Taliban regime in Kabul.

As an example, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul sent a scathing letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressing sharp opposition to any U.S. government officials traveling to meet with the Taliban in Afghanistan. He argued such attempts are “an egregious betrayal of the memories of the fallen and the millions of Afghans who continue to hope for a free, prosperous, democratic Afghanistan,” while raising national security concerns about “normalizing” the regime that continues egregious human rights abuses and its “active support of al-Qaeda.” McCaul sent the letter soon after Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko testified that he could not assure Congress the more than $8 billion in U.S. foreign aid dispersed since the U.S. withdrawal is not being diverted from the intended recipients (i.e., the Afghan people) to the Taliban and terror groups in the country.

Although Biden claimed Al Qaeda is no longer present in Afghanistan, a recent United Nations report assessed the terror group maintains a “close and symbiotic” relationship with the Taliban and is currently “rebuilding operational capability.” To mitigate the danger of resurgent terror groups, the administration views last year’s drone strike that killed Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul as validation of its “over-the-horizon” approach to counterterrorism. Nevertheless, the intelligence community remains concerned about safe havens in Afghanistan that could facilitate future attacks against the United States and its interests. Moreover, U.S. Central Commander General Michael Kurilla recently testified that “the reduction in collection, analytical resources, and intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance assets means our campaign against Al Qaeda and ISIS Khorasan is challenged; while we can see the broad contours of attack planning, we lack the granularity to see the complete threat picture.”

Despite the risks, Biden is unlikely to announce major policy changes anytime soon; especially as the hyper-charged presidential election cycle begins in earnest. Instead, the administration will continue muddling through the post-U.S. withdrawal era and redirecting its foreign policy focus—and the public’s attention—on geopolitical challenges in Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific. If these efforts to “turn the page” are successful, Afghanistan will remain an afterthought that only resurfaces during emotionally charged congressional hearings and annual remembrances.

Jim Cook is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College.

The views expressed here are entirely his own and do not reflect those of the U.S. Naval War College, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.

A recent article by Michael Crowley in the New York Times highlights divisions within the community of peace activists over U.S. support for the Ukrainian war effort. Some groups and individuals who have been prominent members of that community, along with political leaders generally sympathetic to their objectives, have backed the Biden administration’s support for the Ukrainian military as a just response to a war of aggression by Russia. But some others have gone into the hearing-disrupting, banner-waving, slogan-shouting mode that became a trademark of antiwar activism in earlier times.

The current divisions—between and sometimes within groups—over the Ukraine war can be called a crisis of the peace activist community. The issues are far less straightforward for that community, and thus more difficult for it to deal with than two decades ago when it was the United States that launched a war of aggression against Iraq. It was during the run-up to that war that groups such as Win Without War and Code Pink—both still prominent parts of the antiwar activist scene—were founded.

Echoes of Vietnam

Probably there should have been more of a sense of crisis, and more complications going through the minds of peace activists, during some other earlier wars than was the case at the time. Baby boomers who in their younger years identified as peace activists won their flower-powered spurs protesting U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam. There obviously are great differences between the U.S. direct involvement in that war, with its immense costs in American blood as well as treasure in a time of conscription, and the current U.S. backing of the Ukrainians’ fight. Much of the emotionally charged peace activism of the late 1960s and early 1970s was waged in highly simplified terms of “stop the war” and “get out of Vietnam.”

But achieving peace back then was never really that simple. Extracting the United States from a war to which it had committed an army of more than half a million was always going to be complicated—logistically, politically, and diplomatically. Responsible extraction had to consider, among other things, the status and objectives of allies, the possible indirect effects on other U.S. interests, and how the course of the war would affect the willingness of the adversary to make peace.

In other words, achieving peace required careful realist analysis that would consider all the relevant military and political factors, without turning away in disgust from the military ones. Realists might disagree among themselves over the shape of the analysis and the conclusions that ought to be drawn from it, but they would avoid oversimplification that tries to reduce everything to whether one is for or against war.

Oversimplification has been one of the consequences of the moralistic streak that has long characterized much self-declared peace activism. Another consequence has been a self-righteousness that not only inhibits useful debate among different views about policy but also loses sight of how historically self-righteousness has itself been an ingredient in launching many wars.

Another common trait of the peace activist community has been a focus on what might be called an “original sin,” in the sense of what brought about an untoward war in the first place rather than on exactly what needs to be done to get out of the war and to do so with minimum damage to the nation’s interests. This trait certainly was seen during the Vietnam War, when protests exclaiming how bad it was for the United States to have put troops into Vietnam continued long after most Americans had come to perceive the war as a mistake and the administration of the day was pulling forces out. Such a backward-looking perspective led to such phenomena as the lionizing of recently deceased Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, whose actions gave historians and political scientists an earlier look than they otherwise would have had at a fine study of how the United States got into the war, but did little or nothing to bring about peace sooner. At the time of the leak, the Nixon administration already was more than halfway through the mammoth task of bringing home that half-million-strong force.

The Ukraine Debate

Today, some similar characteristics can be found in discussions and debates about the war in Ukraine. The most dovish participants in that debate have focused attention on the decisions years earlier to expand NATO eastward, as part of the background to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That is a legitimate topic and one on which prominent realists have had much to say. But that is a different question from what the United States ought to do now about the ongoing war in Ukraine.

An aversion to realist analysis about matters of war and peace has been one of the most unhelpful features of much past vocalizing by antiwar activists. That aversion appears to be based on a mistaken view of realism as a sucking of moral considerations out of matters that, like war, involve life and death. In fact, realism does not add or subtract moral or other values to a nation. It instead entails a careful examination of how all the features of the real world—including the ugly and disagreeable ones—bear upon whatever values, interests, and objectives the nation pursues.

In wartime, the disagreeable features may include the objectives of an adversary and how the war must be shaped to get that adversary to agree to an acceptable peace. That was part of the reality that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger faced when extracting the United States from the Vietnam War. It is part of the reality that Ukraine and its Western backers face today in dealing with the Russian invaders. I have offered some thoughts about what that reality means for bringing peace to Ukraine. Others will have other thoughts.

Does the war in Ukraine, given the positions described in the Times article, mark a turning point in how the community of peace activists responds to wars? Crowley mentions, as factors that distinguish the current situation from previous episodes such as the war in Iraq, the obvious fact that U.S. forces are not fighting in Ukraine, along with the desire among some left-leaning activists not to make political life difficult for the Biden administration. But there is more to the current responses than that. A group such as Win Without War is to be commended for a position that not only reflects the difference between the United States committing aggression and defense against someone else’s aggression but also shows a nuanced appreciation for the line that the administration is trying to walk by aiding the Ukrainians while limiting U.S. costs and commitments.

Nonetheless, there always will be others in the traditional banner-waving mode. It feels satisfying to simplify things into a matter of peace vs. war, and right vs. wrong, and to see oneself as being on the side of the right.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was as a National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He is also a contributing editor for this publication.

Image: Shutterstock.

Syria continues to present one of the most difficult challenges in a region that hardly lacks complications. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the rapid slowdown of diplomatic progress witnessed since Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s return to the regional fold in May, when Arab leaders invited his government back to the Arab League. Unsurprisingly, these leaders have achieved minimal progress since this moment concerning concessions from Damascus. Yet Arab leaders continue to engage the intransigent Syrian government in the name of a broader regional thaw currently underway—most recently via the Arab Liaison Committee and other bilateral efforts—in what should still be viewed as a reasonable course correction to end the long-running conflict.

The Arab Liaison Committee

Arab states established the committee in May after opting to begin re-establishing relations with Damascus ahead of its return to the Arab League the same month. As such, it constitutes the core mechanism for Arab engagement with the Assad regime and Jordan’s step-for-step initiative. It is within this mechanism that talks were recently held in Cairo with Syrian officials to discuss files of concern, such as refugee returns, captagon smuggling, sanctions, Syria’s territorial integrity, and early recovery and reconstruction needs.

The summit occurred between August 15–16. The first day included multiple bilateral meetings, of which Egyptian officials met individually with the Syrian and Saudi delegations. The Jordanian and Syrian foreign ministers also held a bilateral meeting. The full committee talks included the foreign ministers of Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. The Arab League secretary-general also participates in the committee.

The discussions focused on the state of the conflict in Syria and topics of regional concern—namely the previously mentioned issues. Interestingly, the group also discussed the Syrian Constitutional Committee and enforced disappearance. Following the joint meeting, Egyptian foreign minister Samy Shoukry announced that they would hold the next meeting in Baghdad. Shoukry also expects the Constitutional Committee to restart its work in Oman by the end of the year—a notable point to raise.

Overall, official statements and reporting suggest the talks were fruitful and cordial. An Egyptian Foreign Ministry statement said that Shoukry confirmed the committee would “offer a helping hand to the brotherly Syrian people to pull through their predicament.” A final statement from the committee was similarly friendly, saying “The committee encourages the Syrian government to continue the steps and measures taken to deal with all the consequences of the Syrian crisis so as to fulfill the aspirations of the Syrian people in pulling through the relevant challenges and move to a better future.”

In this context, Syria’s neighbors are genuinely interested in resolving the crisis given the litany of issues stemming from “the heart of the Middle East.” They are also correct in understanding that issues emanating from this neighbor can have a disastrous impact on regional security and prosperity. For these reasons, the committee is likely to continue its work, even amidst a difficult political environment and the Syrian government’s present disinterest in concessions.

With Friends Like These

The issue at hand, however, is that very little progress has been made since these leaders decided to re-normalize with Damascus. The committee’s members appear stuck today, exemplified by Saudi Arabia’s decision to delay its embassy reopening in the Syrian capital. For its part, Jordan is experiencing minimal progress on captagon smuggling along its border with Syria. Similarly, Iraq is confronting a worsening smuggling issue along its porous western border with Syria. The general gridlock in the Syria-Turkey talks is equally concerning as they are hung up on the issue of the Turkish military presence in northwest Syria (NWS).

Indeed, the reality is that Assad has effectively stonewalled all diplomatic efforts to re-engage his government thus far, demanding strict and unwavering concessions in exchange for items of interest for his neighbors. To be sure, Damascus has attempted to present a better public image, re-opening Turkish border crossings for humanitarian aid. But the devil is in the details—namely that the Syrian government remains the core reason for the suffering of millions in opposition-held NWS and regime-held lands, blocking aid and laying siege to entire cities with chemical weapons. No one should be fooled by false kindness designed to distract from ongoing brutality.

Still, Syria’s neighbors are making the right decision by engaging Damascus. They realistically have little choice at this stage—Syria is too geographically crucial to the workings of the region to be relegated to the status of a rogue state on par with North Korea. Further, the topic of regime change died years ago, leaving much more marginal—yet pragmatic—issues to address today. Even the Biden administration understands this, with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf expressing that regional leaders should “get something” in return.

Ruthless pragmatism of this type is just that—ruthless but realistic. No one should expect Arab states, particularly Gulf monarchies, to espouse a values-based approach to Syria, making the latter point on realism particularly important. Similarly, Damascus will not provide easy concessions, likely opting to instead use different forums and talks with its neighbors for increasingly better-negotiated outcomes.

Captagon offers a great example in this regard. The regime has increased joint-security efforts with Jordan while simultaneously sitting at the core of the entire drug operation in the first place. All stakeholders focused on Syria understand these contradictions. Yet such issues present the main problem as Assad will not change his behavior without something significant in return—in this case reconstruction funding with as little oversight or strings attached as possible.

Can Step-for-Step Work?

It is this reality that the Jordan-led step-for-step approach utilized through the Liaison Committee is hoping to see progress. Shoukry spoke with UN special envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen shortly after the meetings in Cairo to discuss the “agreements” reached. It is certainly interesting to see this collaboration following reports of the Constitutional Committee talks restarting in Oman by the end of the year. Such a move would be a good step forward should it also be understood that it is a relatively small concession on Assad’s part, who used the committee for years to buy time as he recaptured most of his country by force. The hope is that reported discussions surrounding the enforced disappearance can similarly see some progress this year.

Whether the Constitutional Committee will restart remains to be seen but is not impossible. From here, Arab leaders might push Assad to engage in serious talks by offering carrots to Damascus in the form of various early recovery or reconstruction projects. A focal point will be refugee returns and realistic assurances of their safety, although we should not confuse regional leaders with altruism when it comes to refugee protection, let alone Western governments.

Forced refugee returns are already occurring and are likely to expand independently of talks with Damascus. This reality is an issue Washington should intervene to stop at all costs. But it is folly to strategize an approach to Syria with the assumption that such violations of international law simply will not happen. Again, these are not values-based actors—they are ruthlessly pragmatic—and these violations are happening right now.

If talks eventually reach the stage of serious step-for-step exchanges, the focus ultimately becomes how Western sanctions block any potential recovery or reconstruction efforts connected to these discussions and how Syrians will be protected. The current U.S. administration has expressed flexibility on sanctions thus far, allowing regional partners to test the waters of rapprochement with Assad. But bypassing sanctions is another beast with serious challenges that are at least partially dependent on the U.S. Congress’s push for tougher actions against Damascus and the makeup of the presidency—namely the victor of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

President Joe Biden has thus far not utilized the Caesar Act sanctions extensively, which could indicate how future dealmaking with the Syrian government could look should the executive branch in Washington not utilize sanctions mechanisms. Overt and covert pressure to protect refugees could fall within the White House’s strategy as well.

Biden would be wise to consider this approach. If regional leaders and the UN special envoy finally implement an effective step-for-step strategy, achieving modest but important victories in an otherwise impossible situation, it would be folly for Washington to prevent such a scenario. Such victories should include basic protections for refugees and all Syrian citizens first and foremost, especially considering the inevitability of forced returns already underway in Turkey and Syria. Progress on some reforms and information on the disappeared are also crucial. Finally, solidifying efforts to secure the Arab Gas Pipeline in support of the 2022 energy agreement between Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt can be another huge win from progress on the Syria file.

The unfortunate reality is that Assad is here to stay, leaving strictly bad policy outcomes for policymakers. It is beyond clear that world leaders will not overthrow the regime, nor that a U.S. military presence is legal or necessary in the country’s northeast. In a situation in which economic pressure and diplomatic censure have not worked, it is long past time to apply the diplomatic tools needed to finally end Syria’s war, especially if the current approach only leaves the country in an ongoing conflict and economic nightmare that will worsen with time—leaving increasingly negative impacts on the region as well.

Alexander Langlois is a foreign policy analyst focused on the Middle East and North Africa. He holds an M.A. in International Affairs from American University’s School of International Service. Follow him at @langloisajl.

Image: Shutterstock.

Americans have grown up with the idea of the underdog. The dashing rebels that defeat a more powerful opponent through sheer determination and nobility is a staple cliche in popular culture. Unfortunately, the reality is that better-equipped armies usually beat those less equipped regardless of the strength of their cause. General Omar Bradley once said, “Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics.” The current discourse around the Ukraine conflict usually focuses on feats of heroism or the righteousness of the cause and less on the practical matters of munitions, production capabilities, and overall manpower issues.

Munitions, armaments, and manpower are the currency in this conflict, and the Western bloc is running out of all three. Russian drones, artillery, and air strikes have hammered Ukraine’s industrial base. The economic cost is astronomical. Congress has approved an estimated $113 billion in defense and financial aid to Ukraine since February 2022—more than half of Ukraine’s annual GDP.

The United States and NATO are becoming painfully aware of this fact every day as Western armories become increasingly depleted, and there is no existing industrial capacity to replenish the stockpiles, let alone continue to arm Ukraine.   

The Return of Industrial Wars of Attrition

Following the end of the Cold War, it became increasingly fashionable for military policymakers to argue that “hybrid warfare” had replaced large-scale conventional warfare. As Patrick Porter explores in his recent Journal of Global Security Studies essay, hybrid warfare is fought with or against non-state or proxy actors, often using subterfuge tactics and cyber and economic warfare. In 2009, then UK Chief of Defence Staff, General David Richards, dismissed the idea that China or Russia would dare to confront the West with conventional military arms, claiming instead that “there is a good case for believing that even state-on-state warfare will be similar to that we will be conducting against non-state groupings.” As Porter proves, even a cursory glance at recent history proves this thesis is demonstrably false.

One of the clearest examples of this mindset manifesting in war planning is the requirement that NATO members stockpile enough material to sustain high-intensity combat for a mere thirty days. This optimistic pre-war planning is typical for peacetime policymakers. In The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman notes how governments before the First World War hoarded stockpiles of artillery shells that they believed would last them throughout a hypothetical war. However, following the events of August 1914, the armories of the Allied and Central Powers were depleted within months, and domestic production increased considerably.

One of the current war’s defining features is the overwhelming reliance on artillery barrages and massive infantry reserves. Hence, the West has been caught unprepared, waging a proxy war of attrition with no industrial base to do so. On the other hand, the Russian defense industry is, in the words of John Mearsheimer, “designed to fight World War I.”

We’re Out of Weapons

President Joe Biden has openly admitted that the military is sending cluster munitions to Ukraine because it cannot provide the quantity of artillery shells that Ukraine needs. The Pentagon intel leaks from earlier this year indicated that the United States pressured South Korea to send 330,000 155mm shells to Ukraine, likely via Poland. There are reports that South Korea loaned the United States half a million 155mm shells. But even if South Korea sent one million shells to Ukraine, it would hardly make up for the immense artillery imbalance. This lack of balance is only a symptom of a more significant issue: the West’s inability to transition into a war economy.

A recent Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) report estimates that Russia fired 12 million artillery shells in 2022 and estimated the military would discharge seven million in 2023. This could indicate that Soviet-era stockpiles are thinning out. Still, the report notes that Russia is producing 2.5 million shells a year, in addition to munitions imports from North Korea and Iran.

In stark contrast, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated in January that the United States could only produce 93,000 155mm shells a year, all of which go to training exercises. If the military achieves an accelerated production schedule, it will produce 240,000 shells yearly, still less than 10 percent of Russia’s current production. Ukrainian artillery fires 8,000 rounds daily, consuming an entire month of current U.S. munitions production. Even if the Pentagon achieves its stated goal of manufacturing 90,000 shells a month by FY 2025, it still is only half of Russia’s current production level.

Other NATO members are in even worse shape. In June, the German Bundeswehr discovered that only 20,000 155mm shells remained in its entire arsenal. The United Kingdom cannot produce high-caliber gun barrels for tanks and artillery. Vast amounts of the equipment NATO has sent to Ukraine have been ill-maintained junk, calling into question the quality of the arsenals left behind. Meanwhile, at least 20 percent of the frontline equipment that the West scraped together for the Ukrainian counter-offensive was destroyed in the first week alone.

This is not even to mention the vast issues inherent in creating an army from the world’s spare stockpiles. Armored vehicles that are destroyed or damaged at the front are not easy to repair because of the range of materials, maintenance, and training required to service every piece of hardware. Ukraine is utilizing fourteen different 155mm howitzers alone.

Facing the Hard Realities of War

The Western public is not adequately informed about the nature of the conflict in Ukraine. Emotion and micro-level analysis of individual engagements overshadow discussion of the broader strategic situation. “Nothing is beyond our capacity” may sound good on a bumper sticker, but as a warfighting strategy without execution, it is fanciful. Realities on the ground will not allow us to pursue any goal without enormous cost to ourselves and our allies, who require our continued assistance.

The chance for a favorable settlement for Ukraine is vanishing due to the lag in armaments and manpower mobilization. The zenith of Ukraine aid has passed, and it will not be matched in subsequent months and years. The opportunity for a negotiated peace or even a ceasefire on terms favorable to Ukraine will become more unlikely as Russia’s advantage on the battlefield grows.

While the strategy of putting strain on the regime of President Vladimir Putin to the point of internal collapse may have been credible at the early stages of the war, there is scant evidence that it is working now. The Wagner mutiny, despite appearances, has only strengthened Putin’s authority over his decision-making subordinates.

If events continue as they are, Ukraine’s position will likely deteriorate. The structural imbalances that pervade the conflict will not improve with sporadic shipments of arms and equipment. If Ukraine is to hold a candle to Russia, the Western coalition must re-industrialize its military supply chains on a mass scale. Whether it has the capability or will to do so is far from certain.

While Western analysts have hoped for a decisive breakthrough in the recent Ukrainian counter-offensive, this has not been the pivotal battle they assumed it would be. The fighting in Ukraine may drag on for years with no clear end in sight. The Putin government also appears to be preparing for another wave of conscription, which will only increase the Russian advantages on the battlefield. In the words of an Atlantic Council report, “Putin is preparing for the long war.” These realities are not lost on some former top U.S. security officials, though they are negotiating with the Russians in opposition to the Biden administration. The logistical reality is not changing in favor of Ukraine, and there is doubt as to whether the West has the will to mobilize to the same extent as the Russians. Because of this, time is on Moscow’s side, and Western policymakers who hope that waiting will bring a more favorable settlement are in for a rude awakening.

Matthew Bryant graduated with a BA in Global Affairs from George Mason University. He is currently a joint Graduate student at the University of Trento & the Higher School of Economics. He researches and writes about the post-Soviet area as well as U.S.-Russia relations.

Zack Yost is a freelance writer and a Fall 2021 Marcellus Policy Fellow with the John Quincy Adams Society. He has been published in a variety of outlets, including The National Interest, The Washington Times, and The American Conservative. He is the co-host of the Mises Institute’s monthly foreign policy podcast, War, Economy, and State, and writes at his Substack blog, The Yost Post.

Image: Shutterstock. 

Innovation is the best way to win the TikTok battle. Many liberal democratic states have banned the Chinese-owned platform from government devices, including the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. Despite this, TikTok remains the world’s most downloaded app, continuing to outcompete competitors, such as Meta, in a space they have traditionally dominated. Like all Chinese technology companies, TikTok’s parent company Byteadance is answerable to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), distinguishing it from companies in Western countries.

A global society-wide ban would be the silver bullet solution, but for various reasons—including legal risk and economic liberal cultures in some countries, and fear of Beijing in others—such comprehensive action is unpalatable and unlikely. The U.S. government needs to work in partnership with—not in opposition to—the private sector to encourage the creation of alternative platforms. The technology driving the success of TikTok’s algorithm is here to stay. In the absence of an immediate ban or acquisition of TikTok by an American company, the U.S. government should be devising ways to nurture a competitive U.S.-owned alternative through investment incentives.

Analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and other social media researchers has revealed a simple answer for why TikTok is outperforming U.S. alternatives: TikTok’s AI algorithm makes it more attractive. It produces a more personalized user experience than other platforms. The closest competitor is Instagram Reels, where, anecdotally, a large portion of the content is recycled TikTok clips.

Understanding how TikTok’s interest-based AI algorithm functions is the key to grasping the risks of the platform but also the secret to developing alternatives.

TikTok’s algorithm works in two reinforcing ways.

First, it learns by tracking users’ preferences based on how they engage with the content, such as what they “like,” how long they watch, their comments, and preferred content themes. For example, as tech guru Eugene Wei attests, TikTok learns not only whether a user prefers a diet of 20 percent news videos, 30 percent fashion videos, and 50 percent celebrity gossip, but how to alter the balance and how to introduce new preferences to the passive consumer. As an interest-based model, it operates independently of other users' preferences, unlike social networking platforms Facebook or Instagram which recommend related content based on user connections. The result is an addictive, curated experience, which U.S. Federal Communications Commission commissioner Brendan Carr described as “digital fentanyl.” The demand for this addictive social media experience is, unfortunately, not going to go away. Worse, the experience is being administered to American TikTok users by China.

The second way the algorithm works is by learning the characteristics of viral videos—what makes them popular—and providing those lessons to independent TikTok content creators—many of them users themselves—by identifying music, hashtags, and video formats and features likely to appeal to viewers. As a cycle, these TikTok functions can identify and predict the content that consumers crave before they even know they want it. The algorithm collects data on user patterns and creates new ones. By design, TikTok sorts and categorizes users' social, economic, and political preferences, and can either reinforce or alter what users see and hear over time. In other words, TikTok has the potential to become a weapon of mass persuasion.

That an adversary or affiliated company can influence what a large number of Americans see constitutes a national security problem, particularly when considered in the context of the broader threat of malign information and cyber sabotage that China poses to the United States and closely aligned nations such as Australia.

Foreign allies, partners, and some U.S. officials have expressed concerns about the variety of ways in which sensitive TikTok user data might end up in the hands of the CCP. One Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) partner, India, has outright banned TikTok. In early August another Quad partner, Australia, announced findings by a parliamentary Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media, which assessed that Chinese-owned apps, TikTok and WeChat, could corrupt “decision making, political discourse and societal norms,” contributing to foreign interference—one of Australia’s most pressing national security concerns. This focus on the potential for behavioral and political manipulation that the TikTok algorithm enables is the primary threat, though most concerned Americans stress data security—arguably a more manageable problem.

In the United States, state governors have joined federal officials in banning the use of TikTok on some government-owned devices over concerns about data misuse. In December last year federal representatives Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), alongside Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), introduced a bipartisan bill to ban TikTok in the United States along with other social media affiliated with China or Russia. In May, Montana governor Greg Gianforte signed a bill making his state the first one to outright ban TikTok. However, U.S. tech companies have pushed back in support of TikTok against these measures. The concern from the industry is the substantial risk of retaliatory action from Beijing that could force U.S. tech companies to sell off foreign assets or comply with state censorship.

More broadly, the TikTok debate is also influencing presidential campaigning, with GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis stating that he would investigate banning TikTok if elected, citing the security threat due to the links with China and data concerns.

TikTok says all U.S. user data is stored in Virgina, Singapore, or elsewhere beyond the reach of Beijing. But as the ASPI analysis points out, the location of the data is immaterial if it can be readily accessed from China. ByteDance—the Chinese company that owns TikTok—has admitted on multiple occasions that its employees have access to US TikTok user data and, under pressure, has introduced safeguards such as “Project Texas,” which purportedly isolates U.S. user data so only U.S.-based ByteDance employees have access. However, this policy doesn’t alleviate all concerns as some .U.S-based ByteDance employees are very likely Chinese nationals. As reported in Forbes, as many as 300 ByteDance and TikTok employees either previously worked for—or currently work for—Chinese government-run news media outlets such as Xinhua and China Radio International.

Over the last few years, ByteDance has increased the number of foreign workers brought to the United States from a few dozen to more than 500 employees through the H1-B and Optional Practical Training (OPT) under the F-1 student visa programs. The homelands of these foreign national employees are not publicly known, though logic suggests that many of them are likely from China and India. Senator Tom Cotton has asked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for a breakdown of these visa holders’ nationalities, revealing a possible point of access for China to tap U.S. user data. TikTok may not presently allow China-based personnel to access this data, but it may allow U.S.-based Chinese nationals to do so on behalf of the CCP.

Creating a compelling reason for users to see the risk TikTok poses continues to be a challenge. Finding another platform to replace TikTok without ties to adversaries and with adequate data protection measures that can be subject to trusted regulatory frameworks in the U.S. and legal recourse, is an alternative that policymakers need to consider.

Commentator and journalist Matt Yglesias’ insightful analogy sets its right by stating that “we wouldn’t have let a Soviet company buy NBC in 1977 and we shouldn’t let a Chinese company own a company that plays a similar content distribution role today.” Risk-averse elected officials keen to maintain voter support may prefer to avoid banning TikTok the way India has done, but the US should play to its own strengths in big tech and social media to encourage the innovation of an alternative platform that naturally overtakes TikTok in popularity.

Assuming a ban of the app is unpalatable to Americans right now doesn’t necessarily mean surrendering to a social media diet planned by Beijing. Innovation through competition is still what the United States does best. It’s time for America’s social media entrepreneurs to roll up their sleeves and offer TikTok users something better.

Bronte Munro is an Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Washington, DC, with a focus on critical technology and cyber.

Greg Brown is Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Washington, DC, and an Adjunct Professor at the Center for Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific Studies at Georgetown University.

Image: Shutterstock.

A rising coalition of adversarial states opposing the United States’ international leadership has rendered it indispensable for Washington to secure the allegiance of non-aligned middle powers. These countries will not be irresistibly drawn to alliances with the United States, and, indeed, may be tempted by the allure of revisionist adversaries who insist that Washington’s reputation is degrading and that it has systematically deceived its partners for its own benefit.

American adversaries seek to replace unipolarity with a multipolar world that ostensibly equalizes sovereignty and power among states. The revisionist appeal of the “democratization of international relations,” as phrased by the joint statement between China and Russia during their February 2022 summit, is especially compelling for middle powers aiming to maximize their influence in global institutions.

However, while hedging middle powers aspire to expand their influence by elevating themselves to the same level as today’s predominant great powers, America's primary adversaries envision the gradual implementation of global multipolarity—a world defined by several spheres of regional unipolarity that undermine the sovereignty of today’s middle powers. American grand strategy should, therefore, emphasize the dangers of global multipolarity to pivotal middle powers, and act as a balancing force to uphold the rules-based international order while denying adversaries the potential to form regional unipolarities.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, former Russian minister of foreign affairs Yevgeny Primakov inspired the formulation of the Primakov Doctrine, a doctrine that advocates for a multipolar world order in which Russia and other non-Western powers play a major role in world affairs. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has embraced the term and its execution, which supports the Kremlin’s decision to undertake a series of aggressive actions in its regional proximities, such as the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Subsequent Russian strategic documents have highlighted the importance of Moscow’s role in upholding a multipolar order. Russia’s 2020 National Security Strategy highlights “changes in the structure of the world order” that the Kremlin can exploit, and the 2023 Russian Foreign Policy Concept emphasizes Moscow’s “historically unique mission aimed at maintaining a global balance of power and building a multipolar international system.”

These efforts ultimately boil down to a re-consolidation of Russia’s former Soviet hegemony whereby Moscow’s neighbors are inextricably tied politically and economically to the Kremlin. The Eurasian Economic Union (EEU)—composed of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Armenia with Uzbekistan, Cuba, and Armenia as observers—explicitly describes itself as an “international organization for regional economic integration.” This seemingly paradoxical definition underscores the tension between obtaining global recognition and advocating for alliances to be limited to the regional level. Russian president Vladimir Putin is simultaneously pursuing both goals as he aims to include Asian regional hubs in the alliance, therefore expanding its international reach while keeping Russia at the head of the regional institution.

Beijing’s grand strategy similarly focuses on facilitating a multipolar distribution of power. In an address to the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), former CCP general secretary Hu Jintao urged for what he referred to as the “Community of Common Destiny for Mankind,” arguing that the international system is undergoing “profound and complex changes” and that the “global trend toward multipolarity and economic globalization is deepening.” This community has since been used as a political slogan by the CCP to characterize the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) declared foreign policy, one that proclaims China’s unique role in reshaping the international order to align with its own worldview. Building on this notion, Chinese president Xi Jinping further reaffirmed the PRC’s role in accommodating the so-called “multi-polarization in the world,” in a speech delivered to the Central Foreign Affairs Work Conference, urging its members to “pay attention to the trend of in-depth adjustment of relations between major powers.”

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) mirrors the EEU but lifts the concept of international regionalism to a more ambitious level. One of the BRI’s key promises is to “creat[e] opportunities for regional economic and trade integration” while pushing “developing countries [to] international division of labor and cooperation.” Beijing reaps the most benefit from exploitative development projects if the countries it aids become accustomed to pecking from China’s hand and are disincentivized from creating their own autonomous regional spheres of influence.

The recent Saudi-Iranian “truce” brokered by the Chinese government is an example of Beijing’s attempt to orchestrate international diplomacy by leveraging Iran and Saudi Arabia’s regional ambitions. As a part of a broader campaign to bolster its influence in Riyadh and Tehran’s foreign policies, Beijing has stepped in to assume the role of a regional power broker, recreating a hub-and-spoke dynamic in the Middle East that would foster a reliance on China to resolve regional disputes.

Saudi Arabia, a traditional U.S. ally, has chosen to pursue rapprochement with Iran as a safer alternative to outsourcing its security guarantees to the United States, which Riyadh began to perceive as increasingly unreliable in the context of a shifting global balance of power. Recognizing the insecurities brought by American disengagement from the region, Riyadh’s fear of abandonment, coupled with evidence of decline in American primacy, has led it to embrace the idea of inevitable global multipolarity.

India has the most to lose from China’s strategy of advancing unipolarity at the regional level. Its defense spending is the second highest in the region (behind China), it has an enormous stake in maintaining existing trade flows in the Indo-Pacific, and it has already outpaced China demographically. Accordingly, in its 2019 National Security Strategy, the Indian government dedicated an entire section to “achieving a secure neighborhood” after extensively discussing nationalism and sectarianism in its opening—an indication of India’s understanding that regional conflicts like those which embroiled the Middle East at the turn of the twenty-first century are best solved by afflicted peoples rather than outside powers.

In the document, India expresses hope that its “economic growth can be a driver for greater prosperity in South Asia and lead to enhanced regional cooperation” in response to China’s “growing assertiveness” and “debt trap” in the Indo-Pacific (emphasis added). If China truly wanted a multipolar world, India would be equally represented on the global stage, yet this clearly does not align with the CCP’s goals.

In greater Eurasia, Turkey was also faced with a decision regarding whether it should follow the traditional path of Western alignment or autonomously pursue its own national objectives. Ankara chose the latter, proactively asserting its own regional ambitions in its geographical peripheries. Such efforts are demonstrated by Ankara’s foreign policy in the Syrian Civil War, during which it has maintained an unrelenting military presence in the Idlib Province, provided military assistance to Azerbaijan in its war in Nagorno-Karabakh, and deployed foreign mercenaries to provide air and weapons support on behalf of the Government of National Accord in the Second Libyan Civil War. In addition to these efforts, Ankara, acknowledging the lack of Western support in its geopolitical priorities, has executed a delicate balancing act with Moscow to secure tacit approval in its political dealings. In return, it has accommodated Moscow's vision and rhetoric of global multipolarity.

To middle powers like India, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, the concept of a “multipolar world” presents an enticing prospect in their bid for enhanced political and economic influence, especially in the context of rising competition between great powers. As declared by the members of BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—today’s revisionist great powers have “reaffirmed their intent to move towards a multipolar system, based on the principles of sovereign equality, trust, and indivisible security.” For pivotal middle powers that do not consider their national interest adequately fulfilled within the confines of the U.S.-led, rules-based international order, such principles are likely to elicit, at the very least, passive acquiescence and, at the most, active alignment and support.

Therefore, Washington now bears the task of articulating the perils of global multipolarity to pivotal middle powers without displaying signs of hubris. In undertaking this endeavor, American delegations traveling abroad should counter the revisionist narrative that the so-called “multipolar world” would yield more prosperity and sovereignty for middle and minor powers on a regional scale. Moreover, State Department and White House officials need to assert that the prevailing Western-led distribution of power not only fosters greater stability and prosperity than its global multipolar alternative, but more effectively upholds the principles of sovereignty and self-determination for middle and minor powers by providing incentives and alternatives for security and development tailored to each country’s national interest. 

During talks with representatives from neutral states, American officials should highlight how initiatives like China’s BRI and the Russian-led EEU are attempts to partition the world into spheres of regional unipolarity with Beijing and Moscow at the top of each. An international system in which the United States is relegated to reduced oversight of North America while China and Russia extract disproportionate benefit from unbalanced regional alliances in the name of “sovereign equality” is dangerous for middle powers.

Such efforts would open new opportunities for Washington to deepen cooperation with existing hedging powers, and would likely dissuade middle powers from developing irreversible dependencies on Beijing and Moscow. Ultimately, whether the West prevails in its new great game against its geopolitical adversaries depends on the alignment of pivotal, often neutral powers. The existential challenge posed to American leadership by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the economic rise of China—both of which threaten the post-WWII international order—has made it urgent to counter the narrative of multipolar diplomacy and secure the support of middle powers.

Axel de Vernou is a junior at Yale University studying Global Affairs and History with a Certificate of Advanced Language Study in Russian. He is a Research Assistant at the Yorktown Institute.

Will Kielm is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in Public Policy with a focus in International Relations Theory and U.S. Grand Strategy from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

After Russia invaded Ukaine in February 2022, the United States quickly learned that many of the governments which Washington regarded as allies, partners, or potential partners would not meet American expectations. While many Western governments have joined the United States in sanctioning Russia and arming Ukraine, many others—especially (but not only) those in the Global South—have not done so. Indeed, many have continued to buy Russian oil and trade with Moscow, thus helping support the Russian war effort.

Divergences between the United States and its allies, though, did not just begin with the Ukraine war. Several of America’s allies have been cooperating with some of its adversaries, including Iran, Russia, and China. Western countries bought Russian oil and gas not just before the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, but even after it. There are several countries that have been actively trading with Iran—including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), whose leaders have decried what Emiratis describe as insufficient American protection against Tehran. And not only have many countries throughout the world been unwilling to join either the Trump or Biden administrations in imposing economic sanctions on China, but America’s own robust trade with China has continued, even if through third countries.

This, however, is not a new problem. Indeed, America has had difficulties managing its allies ever since it has had allies. The list includes America’s being at odds with Britian, France, and Israel during the 1956 Suez crisis with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt; Washington’s difficult relations with French president Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s; Washington’s efforts to navigate the animosity between NATO allies Greece and Turkey, which have been ongoing since before both joined NATO; opposition from France and Germany in particular to the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq that began in 2003; and Israeli and Saudi opposition to the Obama administration working with Britain, France, and Germany (as well as Russia and China) to achieve the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord. Many other such instances could be mentioned.

Whether the problem of so many of America’s allies and partners being at odds with Washington and/or too cozy with America’s adversaries is worse now than before is debatable. What is certain, though, is that it is a very serious problem for the United States today. The real question is: What, if anything, can Washington do about it?

The Contemporary Relevance of Lord Palmerston

The United States, of course, is not the first global great power to experience this problem. It was one that the British Empire also faced even in its heyday in the nineteenth century. One of the leading British statesmen wrestling with it was Lord Palmerston (Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston), who was the dominant figure in shaping British foreign policy from 1830 until his death while serving as prime minister in 1865. It was Palmerston who famously said, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” In the same speech to Parliament on March 1, 1848, during which he uttered this dictum, Palmerston set forth several guiding principles about how a great power should conduct foreign policy generally but especially when dealing with allies that do not support it. American foreign policymakers would do well to adopt similar principles.

First, though, something must briefly be said about the context in which Palmerston made his 1848 speech to Parliament. The year 1848 was one of great revolutionary upheaval throughout Europe. It was also a time when conflict and change had been occurring in many other parts of the world, including Asia, the Middle East, and North America. Like now, aggressive Russian military action was a serious concern. On February 23, 1848, another member of parliament—Thomas Anstey—gave a long speech criticizing Palmerston’s policies during his previous stints as foreign secretary (1830-34, 1835-41) as well as his then current one beginning in 1846. Basically, Anstey accused Palmerston of not having done enough to support Britain’s allies or to thwart its adversaries—the type of criticisms that have frequently been leveled against recent American administrations.

It was in response to Anstey’s criticisms that almerston delivered his March speech, which lasted over five hours. Much of it was a detailed refutation of Anstey’s criticisms about Palmerston’s policies regarding a host of events that would take far too long to describe and which many would not see as relevant to America’s contemporary foreign policy concerns. But over the course of the speech, Palmerston made three observations about foreign policy which are particularly relevant to several American foreign policy concerns now.

Alliances Are Not about Friendship but Common Interests

In his speech, Palmerston observed, “As to the romantic notion that nations or Governments are much or permanently influenced by friendships, and God knows what, why, I say that those who maintain those romantic notions, and apply the intercourse of individuals to the intercourse of nations, are indulging in a vain dream. The only thing which makes one Government follow the advice and yield to the counsels of another, is the hope of benefit to accrue from adopting it, or the fear of the consequences of opposing it.”

The modern-day lesson from this which Americans need to draw is that while many governments may genuinely admire the United States for being democratic, they cooperate with the United States in order to get something that they value from it in return—including protection from common enemies. Authoritarian governments, of course, do not need to admire American democracy at all to cooperate with it when they see their interests as being served by doing so. Presidents, cabinet secretaries, and other top foreign policymakers who believe that their own ability to befriend and maintain good relations with foreign leaders are fooling themselves if they think this is the basis of America’s alliances and partnerships. Common interests—which are usually not identical, but convergent—are what underly alliances and partnerships. And what governments see as being in their interests can change.

Don’t Let Allies Determine Our Policies

Later in his speech, Palmerston declared, “I hold with respect to alliances, that England is a Power sufficiently strong, sufficiently powerful, to steer her own course, and not to tie herself as an unnecessary appendage to the policy of any other Government.”

The lesson here is clear: while weaker powers may not be able to avoid going along with the policies of their great power partners, weaker allies must not be allowed to define or limit the foreign policies of great powers. Allowing them to do so risks both involving great powers in conflicts that are more in their allies’ interests than their own, on the one hand, and foregoing opportunities at rapprochements with adversaries that their weaker allies are fearful of on the other. Some of America’s allies—especially those in the Middle East—have seemed to believe that they can or should have a veto over American foreign policy in certain parts of the world. But just as they do not hesitate to pursue their own interests even when these are at odds with America’s, Washington should pursue its own interests even when those interests appear (often incorrectly) to allied governments as being at odds with theirs.

But Be Tolerant When Allies and Partners Disagree with Us

At the end of his speech, Palmerston noted, “When we find other countries marching in the same course, and pursuing the same objects as ourselves, we consider them as our friends, and we think for the moment that we are on the most cordial footing; when we find other countries that take a different view, and thwart us in the object we pursue, it is our duty to make allowance for the different manner in which they may follow out the same objects. It is our duty not to pass too harsh a judgment upon others, because they do not exactly see things in the same light as we see...”

The lesson here is that when allies and partners do not fall in line with U.S. policies (as many have not with regard to Ukraine and Russia), it is important for the United States to exercise tolerance. While many in Washington had gotten used to the idea of India, for example, being a quasi-ally as a result of common concerns about China and membership in the “Quad,” its unwillingness to condemn Russian actions and its buying huge quantities of Russian oil have been disappointing. It is important to understand, though, that the Indian military still relies mainly on Soviet/Russian arms and that India is far more concerned about what it sees as threats from China and Pakistan to itself than Russian actions against Ukraine. Just as India has not let America’s past cooperation with its adversary Pakistan prevent New Delhi from cooperating with Washington now on Asian security issues, the United States should not let India’s cooperation with Russia at present do so either.

While many in the United States seem to adhere to the idea that other countries are either eternal friends or perpetual enemies, many of America’s own allies instead follow the Palmerstonian principle of prioritizing their interests over friendship with the United States. Washington can and should adopt the same approach—not to “teach them a lesson,” but because this approach is sensible. Like its allies, the United States should not refrain from cooperating with its adversaries when Washington deems this to be in American interests. At the same time, the United States should exercise forbearance when its allies do not go along with it even on some important issues so long as there are other important ones where joint cooperation can continue or be achieved. America, in short, needs to pursue a Palmerstonian foreign policy which avoids seeing the world in terms of eternal allies and perpetual enemies, but focuses instead on identifying and reassessing where American interests converge and diverge with those of other governments going forward.

Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He has contributed numerous articles to The National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.

Ahead of the August 13 primary, it had been a given that Argentina was moving to the political Right as all of the major presidential candidates were more conservative than the leftist/populist Kirchners, Nestor and Cristina, and their followers, who had governed for the bulk of the last twenty years. However, this shift to the Right now appears to be more of a lurch, with libertarian economist and media personality Javier Milei gaining over 30 percent of the vote, more than 10 percent above what polls had predicted, making him the largest vote-getter among those running.

The Far Right Comes on Strong

Argentina’s primary system has two functions. When multiple candidates from different parties run under the same slate in a coalition it determines who will carry its banner into the general election (scheduled this year for October 22), and if necessary, the runoff between the top two candidates (scheduled for November 19). For those who, like Milei, run unopposed on their own slate, it is a measure of their popularity, and doing well in the primary can give a candidate a real boost ahead of the general election.

Milei ran under the rubric of his own “Freedom Advances” party, taking 30.04 percent of the total vote. The slate with the next highest total, 28.28 percent, was “Together for Change,” the principal opposition grouping which is an alliance of the old-line Radical Civic Union, the traditional party of Argentina’s middle class, and Republican Proposal, a newer formation which under Mauricio Macri had held the presidency from 2015 until 2019, when the Peronists returned to power.

Of the two leading figures running to head the “Together for Change” ticket, the more conservative figure, former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, came in ahead, beating Buenos Aires mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, 16.98 to 11.30 percent—another indication of a rightward trend in the current political cycle.

The other slate, “Union for the Fatherland,” which groups the major factions among the Peronists together with some independents, came in third with 27.27 percent. The Peronists coalesced around Economy Minister Sergio Massa, a pragmatic figure, rather than anyone associated with the leftist/populist wing led by former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, in the hope that this would put them closer to the electorate’s current views.

Massa had hoped to gain a boost by getting at least 30 percent of the votes and being the largest single vote-getter. But with the economy in an abysmal state, this was not to be. He only received 21.40 percent with 5.87 percent going to social activist Juan Grabois, who ran as a token representative of the left wing of Peronism but has pledged to support Massa in the general election.

Who is Javier Milei?

Milei’s background is decidedly different from that of his rivals, all career politicians. An economist with graduate degrees from local universities, his work includes acting as a consultant to one of Argentina’s magnates. However, he is best known as a television personality, espousing the libertarian gospel of a limited “watchman” state which eschews the spending on social welfare that has been a tenet of Argentine policy for the last century.

His flagship issue is the replacement of Argentine’s much-devalued peso with the U.S. dollar and the concomitant abolition of the central bank. He has called for a massive shrinkage of public employment, as well as the privatization of state-owned enterprises, and has shown an affinity for conservative recipes such as replacing public schools, medical services, etc., with vouchers and other market-oriented incentives.

Although his message is primarily economic he has taken some hard Right stances on other issues. These include opposing abortion, which was legalized in Argentina only recently, giving a free hand to the police, and loosening controls on private ownership of guns. He is a climate change skeptic. At the same time, he takes libertarian positions regarding gender and sexuality.

Milei’s allure, however, has been less his program’s specifics and more his persona and rhetoric. With an unruly mop of hair, thick sideburns, and a penchant for leather jackets, he projects a rock star image. He has derided Argentina’s political establishment, both Peronist and opposition, as a corrupt, intransigent “caste.”

Once considered a fringe figure, he has capitalized on frustration with a political and economic system that clearly is not working. His support seemingly comes from those in the middle class who want stronger medicine than then the traditional opposition has provided. This includes younger voters (Argentines can vote from age sixteen) and, more notably, elements of the working class that previously supported the leftist/populist approach and the now somewhat tattered cult of personality of the Kirchners.

Milei has major weaknesses, of course. His genuine political experience consists of only a term as a deputy in Argentina’s congress. He has spoken publicly of his conflicts with his father, his experience with psychotherapy, and his sexual history. His inner circle is small and his chief advisor is his sister, who is distrusted by many who otherwise support him. His temper can flare up when pressed.

While his “throw the bums out” rhetoric rather than his program or his skill set has seemingly driven him to become a serious contender, he himself rejects the assertion that he is just a protest candidate benefiting from the “voto bronca” (the vote of anger). He argues that if voters just wanted to register their unhappiness they could just as easily have voted for candidates on the far Left (which exists both within and outside of Peronism) and that his libertarian message is in fact getting through to voters.

But Can He Win?

As one of three top candidates each commanding a bit less than a third of the vote, and with the wind of his primary success at his back, a Milei victory is perfectly plausible; if he repeats his primary results, he will be one of the two candidates to emerge from the first round of the general election, leaving the outcome of a second round as anyone’s guess.

Of course, he may stumble. Argentine politics is volatile and large swings in voter support are not unknown. His fitness for high office will come under scrutiny as well as his extreme positions, such as a recent statement that he would break relations with China “because it is communist” and that MERCOSUR, a regional trade bloc, should be “eliminated.” The “Together for Change” coalition’s Patricia Bullrich may come across to many as a safer, though still extremely conservative candidate. However, she has gone through a bruising primary, which may in fact have driven many opposition-minded voters into Milei’s arms, and it is not clear how unified her coalition is at this point.

As for Sergio Massa, though burdened with defending Argentina’s dismal economic state, his coalition came in only slightly behind Bullrich’s. We can expect that he will run against Milei’s plans to brutally dismantle Argentina’s welfare state. Still, with the economy powdering away, it is by no means impossible that Peronism, once dominant, even hegemonic, might not even make it to a second round.

Contemplating a Milei Presidency

Given that Milei’s election must be viewed as a distinct possibility, the question arises as to what his administration would look like. In the aftermath of his primary success, he is not backing away from his signature issue of dollarization and abolition of the central bank. (His chief economic advisor, has, however, said that dollarization would be a gradual, multi-step process.) And he has recently stated that he would be even tougher in implementing an adjustment than the IMF is demanding.

For this and his other big plans, he would need legislative approval. Even if a relatively conservative Congress is elected, he would likely need the votes of members of the “Together for Change” coalition, many of whom may not be disposed to go as far as he proposes. He has suggested that if necessary he would resort to provisions in Argentina’s constitution that allow for referenda. However, the circumstances under which these are permitted are limited, and any referendum which he would call might be non-binding, useful only as a tool of persuasion.

The one Argentine president for whom Milei has expressed admiration is Carlos Menem, whose policies when in office (1989–1999) included a fixed exchange rate, with the peso linked to the dollar, and a privatization policy that was aggressive though flawed by corruption. Former President Macri has also reached out to Milei following the primary (though he still is supporting Bullrich). We thus could conceivably see a Milei administration staffed at least in part by former Macri officials and perhaps even a few from the more distant Menem administration such as the University of Chicago-educated former economy minister Roque Fernández, a Milei adviser.

Rough Sailing Ahead

Uncertainty has long characterized Argentina in the eyes of investors and the outcome of the primary has only increased it. This has become manifested in the country’s volatile foreign exchange rate, which was jolted by the unexpected primary result. In the face of pressure on the peso, Economy Minister and presidential candidate Massa announced on August 14 a general devaluation from 287 to 350 per dollar—something he had hoped to avoid until after the general election, at least, while the Central Bank raised the benchmark interest rate by 21 percent to 118 percent. The devaluation came as the informal or “blue” rate, 420 pesos per dollar only four months ago, but steadily rising since then, skyrocketed to 790 per dollar, before settling somewhat lower.

With the devaluation about to work its way through what is already a high inflation economy, Argentina is likely to see further price increases and demands for hikes in wages and welfare benefits to at least partially compensate for them. Together with what is sure to be a high-decibel campaign, we may see strikes and protests in a country where massive demonstrations are common.

While Milei, Bullrich, and Massa scramble for votes, even as the economy spins out of control, leaving Argentines to struggle from one day to the next, it will be a real challenge for the country to get to October’s general election and the probable runoff in November without a complete economic, political and social meltdown. The actual inauguration, on December 10, and with it, what could be vast policy changes, seems far off indeed.

Richard M. Sanders is Senior Fellow, Western Hemisphere at the Center for the National Interest. He is also a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. A former member of the Senior Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State, he has served as the Director of the Office of Brazilian and Southern Cone Affairs and at embassies throughout Latin America.

Image: Shutterstock.

Millions of citizens cast their ballots over the weekend in Spain, marking an end to five years of left-wing rule in Europe’s sixth-largest economy. Alberto Núñez Feijóo led the center-right People’s Party (PP) to victory in tightly contested snap elections, defeating Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). The elections were highly scrutinized on the continent and beyond, with many anticipating a decisive conservative triumph in line with Europe’s recent right-wing tilt. However, the PP failed to achieve an absolute majority, and Sanchez’s political career isn’t over yet, with arduous coalition negotiations on the horizon. As uncertainty and deadlock consume the country, Spain’s political drama is set to continue.

Before analyzing Sunday’s results and what lies ahead, a closer examination of Spain’s fractured political landscape sheds light on the current situation. Since the end of the Franco regime in 1975, two main parties have dominated the Spanish legislature, the center-left social democratic PSOE, and the center-right Christian-democratic PP. However, the political landscape fragmented during the 2015-16 general elections and the rise of the far-left populist party Podemos. With neither party able to secure an absolute majority, this shift bolstered the influence of minor parties, who leverage their positions as potential coalition partners to gain concessions and impact future policy decisions.

One such party that gained prominence is Vox, a far-right populist group predicated on Spanish nationalism and associated with anti-immigration postures. In the 2019 elections, Vox won 52 seats, fostering a concern that any future PP-led government would require a coalition with the party.

Since becoming Prime Minister in June 2018, Mr. Sánchez pushed his party’s (PSOE) progressive agenda in a coalition with several center and far-left parties. His ascent to power reflected a decline in support for the scandal-ridden PP at the time, specifically the Gürtel case and subsequent motion of no confidence that ousted the conservative government. Despite Mr. Sánchez’s relatively effective governance and solid economic record, the PP has gradually improved its image and rebuilt support. Led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the PP trounced the PSOE in May’s regional and municipal elections, taking control in nine of the twelve jurisdictions that voted. In response to his party’s lackluster performance, Sánchez called for snap elections in a significant gamble, aiming to replicate his success in 2019 and outmaneuver Feijóo before the PP could capitalize on its momentum.

In another example of the polarization engulfing the West, Sunday was the culmination of a nasty campaign season characterized by mudslinging and personal attacks. While Sánchez’s socialists added two additional seats from 2019, 122 in total, the PP increased their seat tally from 89 to 136. In the lower chamber of Spain’s parliament (Congress of Deputies), which has 350 seats, a party needs at least 176 seats to form a government. As neither the PP nor PSOE comes close to this number, Sánchez and Feijóo need support from minor parties to reach the threshold.

Traditionally, the leader of the party with the most seats, the PP, in this case, becomes Prime Minister. However, the populist Vox party, considered the PP’s likely coalition partner, suffered a shocking setback. Vox lost half its seats on Sunday, reduced to 33 from the previous 52 gained in the 2019 elections. As the PP and Vox together lack the votes required to form a government, Sánchez’s political career has a new lease of life

In accordance with the Spanish Constitution, Feijóo and Sánchez will convene with King Felipe VI in the forthcoming weeks to present their cases. Subsequently, the king will propose the candidate for Prime Minister whom he believes has the most parliamentary support. Feijóo will argue that the next Prime Minster should come from the party with the most seats, as is the historical precedent. On the other hand, Sánchez must convince the King that he has sufficient support from minor parties, ideally with commitments from their leaders. However, because several parties in his 2019 coalition lost their legislative seats, Sánchez needs to strategize a new alliance. This entails intense negotiations with the far-left Sumar and pro-independence Catalan and Basque parties, who will demand concessions in return. As stated by the party leader of Together for Catalonia, “ We will not make Pedro Sánchez president in exchange for nothing.”

Once the King decides, the chosen candidate undergoes a parliamentary vote, which requires an absolute majority of 176 votes for approval. Spain will likely hold a fresh election if the candidate falls short of the threshold. After a failed investiture vote, the constitution obliges the king to dissolve the legislature within two months, with a new election mandated 54 days after its dissolution. Consequently, Sánchez would act as caretaker Prime Minister with limited legislative powers during this period.

As the leaders navigate uncertainty, Spain might not have its next Prime Minister until 2024. The dysfunction comes as Spain assumes the EU’s rotating presidency, and the forthcoming outcomes will have implications for the country’s political trajectory and the broader European landscape. However, Vox’s disappointing performance is a setback for right-wing populism in Europe, following recent victories in Italy and Germany. Regardless, Spain cannot afford a period of prolonged political turbulence as the country continues to grapple with the aftermath of the European debt crisis and pandemic-related downturn. With comparatively lower living standards than most Western European nations, timely action and a cohesive approach are crucial if Spain hopes to rebuild its economy and ensure a brighter future for its citizens.

As losses of Advanced Equipment Mounts, the images will be used to shift morale on the battlefield in Ukraine – A Leopard 2A4 image shows a damaged tank, it is unsure if this image shows losses due to Russian Army actions.

Inflation related to food prices are hitting almost every economy in the world, stressing local citizens in countries where the support for defending Ukraine is the highest. The end of the Grain Deal between Ukraine and Russia ended, and without a pause, Russia sent missiles into the Odessa Region targeting grain reserves meant for export out of Ukraine. While Turkey and other countries seeking to extend the Grain Deal push for another agreement, the change in atmosphere and strategy from Russia may not encourage Russia into another agreement. While the lack of grain exports will directly affect countries like Egypt, the indirect effect on food inflation for NATO allies may be the intended effect Russia wishes to have on citizens of those countries.

It is a well known tactic that when combating Western countries, the long game often wears out their population. The pressures the Governments of the day have to endure when convincing a relatively safe and well off population into a war footing almost never extends past a few short years. Losses and change to the daily lives of Americans and other NATO countries not in proximity to the conflict is heavily influenced by the cost to their daily deeds and added frustrations in accomplishing the same tasks as they did outside of a war footing. Fuel prices in many of these colder countries affect the price of everything, and even when fuel prices drop, policies that increase the cost of food do nothing more but stress the incomes of local populations. Policies to diminish more money leaving the economy and reducing local taxes are as important as military aid in supporting your ally.

Some countries have sought to publicize greatly the amount of money and support given to Ukraine, while using the war as a catalyst for explaining difficulties with food and fuel prices to their population. Some of the same Governments will intentionally promote support for the war while increasing local taxes and costs of fuel and food several times over, even ignoring displacing Covid debts incurred by municipalities a few short years ago. Officials in some cases refuse supporting for their own major cities in reducing severe crime and poverty crises while sending their tax dollars outside of the country. Such actions will destroy any support for help abroad as their cities quickly deteriorate due to lack of funding and Government fuelled inflationary taxes.

While energy sales can bring money back into an economy to help with Covid funding losses, the greater strategic nature of using energy to bolster allies like Germany and Japan against Russia and its allies have a major effect on defunding Russia’s arms industry. If Ukraine’s allies intend for it to win as much territory back as possible, they have to make sure that Russia is unable to fund the creation of more weapons to put onto the field. Displacing Russian Oil and Gas is the only strategy that can reduce the income from Russia’s oil reserves. Most countries not aligned in the conflict will support their country by purchasing the most affordable and easy to obtain energy reserves. Countries like Japan, that are strategic allies, and Germany, who are bearing the brunt of much of the costs and supply of weapons, require low cost energy to keep their populations content and warm so they can endure a longer fight with a healthy population. Displacing Russia’s energy income might be the most important tactic the West could use to win in the long run, while keeping support constant among citizens in NATO ally countries. To this day, there has been little movement by NATO’s allies with large energy reserves in displacing Russian oil and gas. The claim is that Russia is now producing several T-90M tanks per month, and have organised and stabilized weapons to the front line, a line that has become very difficult to break.

While little is being done past funding more ammo hungry air defence systems in countering low cost drones, more and more funds are being promoted as being sent to fight in Ukraine. Losing the image of strength in the united fight for Ukraine has a massive effect on the morale and outcome of the war. Support for the war came at the sight of Russian armour being decimated like fireworks outside of Ukraine’s cities, and gave hope to Ukraine’s allies that the war can be won. Russia was always looking for an opportunity to turn the media images against Western support for the war, and they might have had this opportunity presented by Ukraine’s allies themselves.

Russia was able to use low cost drones to diminish the number of advanced anti-air missiles defending Ukraine, to the point that some in NATO have even stated they are running out of ammo. At no point was there a massive cost saving action taken by NATO in destroying the manufacturing facilities of the drones. Such an action would have saved many innocent lives, billions in spending, and kept advanced missiles at the ready for more deadly future threats.

While promoting billions upon billions of military support to Ukraine, some NATO soldiers were sent to Europe with no food being provided to them, putting them in personal debt just to obtain proper meals. Others were not provided even basic safety equipment, meaning they had to buy their own, preventing them from participating in exercises. A NATO member even refused, in the middle of the largest NATO conflict in their history, to contribute even the minimum amount of spending while claiming they gave the most directly to Ukraine without it being the case. Using funding announcements to Ukraine while underfunding the actual soldiers is not how you support an ally, nor assist them in winning their conflict. All it does is sour support for the war even further.

As Russia made an error in 2022 by assuming that Ukraine’s generational defensive posture would have been easy to dismantle in short time, the losses of NATO’s almost invincible equipment during Ukraine’s Counter-Offensive has been used by Russia to help them reclaim back of some their reputation as a powerful military force. It should have always been assumed that the loss of Leopard 2 or other highly regarded NATO equipment should have been expected, and would have been used to make Western powers look weak during their attack. Trying to assault a defended line is very difficult, and will certainly lead to many losses, along with images of burning tanks being used as part of the media war against Ukraine. Russia was likely very content in obtaining images of the best equipment in the world falling to their Soviet era artillery barrages, and have used those images as much as possible over the last few weeks. Less information about the Counter-Offensive is now being shared because of the losses, and populations in NATO countries are feeling the daily pressures without the images of victories on their screens weekly. Inflation, taxes and morale will hurt Ukraine more and more as the war goes on, and Russia will take any opportunity to displace support for Ukraine when it is made available by opposing Governments.

According to an article published in the Russian media titled “Visa with a trick,” this year, the International Olympic Committee is banning Russians from partaking in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris unless they are ideologically opposed to the war in the Ukraine, act under a neutral flag, and have nothing to do with the Russian security agencies. This comes after countries like the Czech Republic banned Russian athletes from partaking in sporting events in their borders and Russian tennis player Vera Zvonareva was barred recently from Poland.  

By taking such a strong stance against Russian athletes, the international community has demonstrated that they care to punish Russia for the crimes against humanity that they have committed in the Ukraine.   Russia also is a country that systematically represses gays, another action which should prompt from them to be penalized by the International Olympic Committee.   In Russia, it is illegal to promote same-sex relations or suggest that it is normal to be gay, according to legislation put forward by Russian President Vladimir Putin last year.

According to Human Rights Watch, “The new laws significantly broaden the scope of a 2013 law which banned the dissemination of LGBTQ-related information to minors. The new iteration extends the ban on promoting such information to adults as well.”   However, Russia is not the only country that represses gays and yet there are many anti-gay countries which are partaking in the International Olympic Games, without anyone batting an eye.

One of these countries is Iran.   Iran is a country where being gay is punishable by death.  Up to 6,000 gays have been executed in Iran since 1979.   Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi also made homophobic remarks on his recent trip to Uganda: “The West today is trying to promote the idea of homosexuality and by promoting homosexuality, they are trying to end the generation of human beings.”  He referred to homosexuality as “one of the dirtiest issues.”

Another country which represses gays that is partaking in the Olympic Games is Yemen.   According to the 1994 Yemenite penal code, married men in the Arab country can be sentenced to death by stoning for homosexual intercourse. Unmarried men face whipping or one year in prison in the war-torn country. Women face up to seven years in prison for being lesbian.

Pakistan is another country that criminalizes gay conduct, with men potentially receiving life imprisonment for gay intercourse, yet the Asian country is participating in the upcoming Olympic Games.  Ifti Nasim, a Pakistani gay poet, within the past year was forced to flee his homeland and move to the United States, after surviving an assassination attempt.   This past year, Pakistan’s first transgender TV anchor also survived an assassination attempt as well.    However, Pakistan is treated at the Olympic Games like a normal country.

The Palestinian Authority is another anti-gay dictatorship that is partaking in the Olympic Games, even though there was a Palestinian gay man who was awaiting asylum in another country last year who was beheaded in Hebron for the crime of being gay.  “We, as Arab LGBT people, are viewed as trash by the Arab-Palestinian society. We are dead in their eyes,” a Palestinian gay man reported.  As a result, countless Palestinian gay men try to flee to Israel, as their lives are constantly in danger in the Palestinian Authority.  

While it is commendable that Russia, an anti-gay country, is getting penalized for the crime of being gay, countries like Iran, Yemen, Pakistan and entities like the Palestinian Authority should receive similar treatment.  Countries and entities that endanger the lives of gay people should not be permitted to partake in the Olympic Games.       

Les incidents militaires qui ont opposé Russes et Chinois sur l'Oussouri, en mars 1969, occupent une place particulière dans l'histoire des conflits frontaliers entre les deux pays, non tant parce que les armes y ont parlé fort que par les problèmes soulevés par la localisation de cet affrontement. (...) / Chine, URSS, Démographie, Sibérie, Frontières - 1969/04

Au moment où l'U.R.S.S. intervient dans le conflit du Moyen-Orient d'une manière extrêmement explicite pour soutenir les pays arabes, où elle affirme – même si par ailleurs elle prodigue des conseils de modération, – son appui total aux thèses arabes, il n'est pas sans intérêt de rappeler l'évolution (...) / Proche-Orient, URSS, Conflit israélo-arabe, Palestine mandataire 1922-1948, Pacte de Bagdad - 1967/06

Les effets de la révolution culturelle en Chine ont rappelé une fois encore l'existence d'un problème souvent méconnu de ce pays, celui des minorités nationales. Si certaines semblent causer peu de difficultés, les peuples vivant dans la région du Sin-Kiang, en Mongolie, au Tibet surtout, ont témoigné (...) / Chine, URSS, Identité culturelle, Langue, Minorité nationale - 1967/03

Bien avant que n'éclate le conflit — à dominante idéologique qui depuis plusieurs années oppose l'U.R.S.S. et la Chine, alors que la solidarité au sein du camp socialiste semblait totale, des contestations territoriales apparaissaient déjà à l'arrière-plan des relations entre les deux pays, qui mettaient (...) / Chine, URSS, Histoire, Minorité nationale, Frontières - 1966/01

Les organisations recourant à la violence armée nées en Europe dans les années 1970 disparaissaient l'une après l'autre, mais le 17-Novembre (17-N) grec demeurait. La hantise d'un terrorisme venu d'ailleurs succédait aux « années de plomb » imposées par des groupes autochtones (Fraction armée rouge en (...) / Grèce, Justice, Terrorisme - 2003/05

Une large majorité des citoyens a peur de la justice française ; la moitié émet pour le moins un doute sur l'intégrité des juges. Préjugé populaire ? Mauvaise information ? M. Olivier Guichard, quittant en 1977 ses fonctions de garde des sceaux, fit à la presse cette déclaration laconique mais informée (...) / Justice - 1990/02