The National Interest

Waning American support for military aid to Ukraine displays a marked partisan division, among both the public and politicians in Washington. In a poll conducted for CNN and published in August, respondents were asked whether the United States “should do more to stop Russian military actions in Ukraine” or had “already done enough.” Among Democrats, 61 percent said it should do more, and 38 percent said it had done enough. A majority of Republicans—59 percent—said the United States had already done enough, and only 40 percent said it should do more.

Such views among the Republican Party faithful are being reflected in the posture of many Republican candidates on the campaign trail. In Congress, the loudest voices opposing aid to Ukraine are coming from some members of a Republican caucus that is divided on the issue.

No single explanation underlies this pattern. Multiple factors are in play, including ones that are legitimate parts of a healthy foreign policy debate and ones that are not. The following are the principal factors involved, beginning with the two that can be part of a healthy conversation about foreign policy.

Calculated response to the course of the war

Although it might be hard to point to evidence of careful analysis, especially among respondents to public opinion polls, opposition to further military aid to Ukraine can be an understandable response to how people see the war going. Many view the current Ukrainian counteroffensive as yielding meager results at a high cost. This leads to an opinion that more aid to Ukraine would be throwing good money after bad. A related view is that further aid discourages the Ukrainians from accepting the inevitable outcome of a compromise settlement and only prolongs a needless expenditure of blood and treasure.

This is not, of course, the only reasonable way to interpret the story of the war so far. Even those who see an eventual negotiated settlement as inevitable may favor additional military aid to Ukraine as necessary in persuading the Russian leadership to accept a compromise peace agreement. But opposition to more aid is a legitimate, defensible posture, and one that Republicans can hold just as much as anyone else.

In the CNN poll, self-declared independents expressed views on this issue closer to Republicans than to Democrats. This may suggest that for Republicans as a whole, partisan considerations are playing no greater role in positions about the war in Ukraine than they are for Democrats, although the result masks the sharp divisions among Republicans on the issue.

Traditional isolationism

Opposition to aiding Kyiv’s war effort may be based at least as much on general foreign policy ideology as on interpretations of the specific war being waged in Ukraine. Isolationism, with an eschewing of involvement in other nations’ conflicts, has a long pedigree in America, and has been a prominent strand of opinion in the Republican Party. Some of the most prominent isolationist figures of the twentieth century were leading congressional Republicans such as William Borah and Robert Taft. The only senators to vote against ratification of the United Nations Charter were two other isolationist Republicans, William Langer and Henrik Shipstead.

The isolationist strand is competing against another ideological strand in the Republican Party, one that is partial to using military means to assert interests abroad and that favors standing tall against aggressive tendencies of regimes in Moscow. The conflict between these two ideological traditions is reflected in the split among congressional Republicans today regarding the war in Ukraine.

Making political life difficult for a Democratic president

The partisan warfare mode of addressing issues of the Ukraine war was demonstrated in the early days after the Russian invasion when the reflexive response of some Republican politicians was to blame President Joe Biden for the war, just as they might, as a matter of habit, try to blame him for any other untoward happening in the world. Senator Ted Cruz’s comment at the time that “Joe Biden sought to appease Vladimir Putin from the very beginning” was a ludicrous as well as puzzling way to wage partisan warfare when one compares Biden’s posture toward Putin with the posture toward the Russian president of Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump. 

That a Democratic U.S. president has been leading not only U.S. but also international support for Ukraine stimulates the Republican instinct to oppose whatever a Democratic president proposes. That instinct, like the isolationist tradition, has been colliding with Republican inclinations to oppose Russian aggression. The resulting confusion within the Republican caucus was aptly described by Democratic senator Chris Murphy when he said of his Republican colleagues, “I think many of them really do want to help Ukraine, but they are so used to opposing a Democratic president on everything and anything that they can’t figure out how to get out of their own way.”

Sympathy for Russia as “anti-woke”

The culture war to which the Republican Party devotes much attention and effort intersects with the issue of the war in Ukraine because Putin is waging a cultural war with similar themes, which has won him admiration among much of the American Right. Putin is “anti-woke,” former Trump political advisor Steve Bannon approvingly declares. Putin has used his own culture war, with its religious and anti-LGBTQ themes, as a device not only to help build support within Russia for his war in Ukraine but also, by appealing to culture warriors in the West, to weaken Western support for the Ukrainians. 

To the extent this strategy is even partially successful, it is another reason for Republicans to balk at added military support to Ukraine. Apart from any isolationist or analytical reasons for such opposition, Russia is seen as not the bad guy, and maybe even the good guy, in the conflict.

The projection of domestic social and cultural preferences onto a foreign policy issue is not new. Something similar happened in the early years of the United States, when attitudes of Federalists and Democratic-Republicans toward Britain and France sometimes had less to do with protecting U.S. interests abroad than with how partisans saw in each of the two warring European powers social patterns that they either sought or feared in the United States itself.

The Trump-Russia connection

That the Republican Party is still largely in thrall to Trump is reflected in his huge lead in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and in how most of those ostensibly running against him say they would support his candidacy even if he were a convicted felon. It follows that Trump’s extraordinary relationship with Putin and Russia colors Republican attitudes toward the war between Russian and Ukraine, and all subsidiary issues such as military aid to Ukraine.

The most evident foundation for that relationship was Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election in favor of Trump. More opaque but evidently no less real given Trump’s secretive dealings with Putin while still in office have been Trump’s business or other connections with Russia. All this augments any disinclination to aid another state in defending itself in a war against Russia.

Added to this disinclination have been related efforts to demean Ukraine and to associate it with corruption supposedly involving Biden or his family—the notion that was at the center of Trump’s caper that led to his first impeachment. Some other Republicans, in an apparent effort to deflect attention from Russia’s pro-Trump election interference, have falsely suggested that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election in favor of Democrats. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, continued to push this notion even after it had been investigated and debunked.

Conclusions

First, Republican opposition against aid to Ukraine is over-determined. This opposition is thus likely to continue growing.

Second, among the reasons for that opposition are some that are not legitimate ingredients of a healthy foreign policy debate and are likely only to confuse and pollute that debate.

But third, the illegitimate ingredients should not be allowed to overshadow sound reasons to question an open-ended supply line to Ukraine. The future course of the war in Ukraine has yet to be determined, and the jury is still out on which approach toward the war is best for U.S. interests and for bringing a stable peace to that part of Europe. All the arguments both in favor of and opposed to added military aid to Ukraine need to be carefully considered, regardless of any other reasons some participants in the debate have for taking the stand they do.

Paul R. Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was as the 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. His most recent book is Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy. He is also a contributing editor for this publication.

Image: Consolidated News Photos / Shutterstock.com

On August 28, 2023, U.S. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced in a statement that President Joe Biden will meet Vietnamese General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong on September 10 in Hanoi to “explore opportunities to promote the growth of a technology-focused and innovation-driven Vietnamese economy, expand our people-to-people ties through education exchanges and workforce development programs, combat climate change, and increase peace, prosperity, and stability in the region.” Biden’s trip is expected to see an upgrade of a “comprehensive strategic partnership”––the highest rank in Vietnam’s diplomatic hierarchy. In the context of China’s increasingly aggressive behaviors in the South China Sea, the possibility of a U.S.-Vietnam alliance is increasingly debatable.

Hanoi appears to leave the door open for deepening security cooperation with the United States. Despite the potential of an elevated partnership between the United States and Vietnam being forged during the Biden trip, I argue that the likelihood of a strategic alliance is highly unlikely. Apart from Vietnam’s adherence to the “Three No’s” policy, it is unlikely for both states to enter into an alliance for two reasons. First, Vietnam and the United States have non-overlapping interests in the South China Sea. Second, Vietnam has a deep-seated suspicion of U.S. peaceful evolution.

China’s recent assertive actions in the South China Sea may prompt Vietnam to consider aligning more closely with external powers like the United States. Many scholars believe that the U.S. presence in the South China Sea serves as a crucial factor in counterbalancing China’s aggressive behavior. However, whether the United States is willing to form an alliance with Vietnam against China is still highly doubtful, as Hanoi itself is uncertain on what position it would play in U.S. China strategy. Put differently, what cost would the United States be willing to bear to help Vietnam in the South China Sea disputes?

Vietnam is one of the main claimants having very high stakes in the South China Sea. The most important goal in Vietnam’s maritime policy is to defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity, which is critical to the Communist Party of Vietnam’s legitimacy. In the short term, Hanoi aims to maintain the territorial status quo and protect its waters in order to keep conducting regular economic activities such as oil drilling and fishing. In the long term, Vietnam attempts to recover its lost territories in the South China Sea. Hence, security and resources are two of Vietnam’s existential interests in the South China Sea.

While the United States has increased its naval presence in the disputed waters of the South China Sea to indicate its strong opposition to China’s activities, the United States has not employed its forces to protect claimant states’ security and resource rights. Instead, the United States has justified its interests in terms of upholding freedom of navigation by conducting freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in defiance of Chinese claims. For instance, the United States deployed its Navy ships and Air Force jets to patrol the waters of the Philippines in order to protect “freedom of navigation and overflight rights,” and called on China “to abide by its obligations under international law.”

Thus, we should not assume that the United States has high stakes in the South China Sea. If the United States does not protect its allies’ security in the sea, it may lose their trust. However, the United States does not suffer any direct losses to its truly vital security interests. Accordingly, while Vietnam’s concerns over territorial security, resources, and legitimacy may push policymakers in Hanoi to pursue an alliance with the United States policy, Hanoi needs to think twice about how far the United States is willing to go to defend Vietnam’s security. The exaggeration of U.S. interests in the South China Sea could undermine Vietnam’s long-term maritime policy.

Although Vietnam and the United States share significant concerns about China’s hegemonic maritime ambitions in the South China Sea, Vietnam remains highly skeptical about U.S. intentions regarding democracy, human rights, and religion, constraining the possibility of an alliance. In fact, according to the Vietnamese Communist Party propagandists, “Vietnam is still a major target of the hostile forces and reactionaries’ ‘peaceful evolution strategy,’” and “[g]iven the duplicity of several Western administrations, there remain plots and activities that take advantage of cooperative relationships to carry out the ‘peaceful evolution strategy’ in Vietnam, notably support of several administrations for individuals and organizations hostile towards Vietnam. These organizations still capitalize on American standards on ‘democracy,’ ‘human rights,’ ‘freedom of speech,’ ‘freedom of religion,’ etc., to slander Vietnam about violation of democracy and human rights, and use it as a driver to bolster the domestic forces politically and spiritually.”

Just ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Hanoi on April 15 this year, the United States condemned Vietnam’s jailing of a political activist and called for his release and the release of other human rights activists. The U.S. State Department spokesperson added that “Vietnam is an important partner in the Indo-Pacific, and that partnership can only reach its full potential if its government takes concerted steps to meet its obligations and commitments under international law and improve its human rights record.”

The Vietnam-U.S. alliance has always had two sides to it, and Hanoi needs to consider this dichotomy thoroughly before entering into an alliance. On the one hand, the alliance would strengthen Vietnam’s defensive capabilities against China’s intimidating behavior in the South China Sea. On the other hand, the alliance possibly impairs the Vietnamese government’s capability to implement self-reliant defense policies.

All this said, regardless of the shared concern about China, it is unlikely that Vietnam and the United States will join in an alliance due to the non-overlapping interests between the two states in the South China Sea and Vietnam’s deep-rooted suspicions of U.S. political intentions. 

Thi Mai Anh Nguyen holds a Master of International Relations from the University of Massachusetts Boston. She studies Vietnam’s foreign policy, U.S.-Southeast Asia relations, China’s foreign policy, and non-Western international relations theories.

Image: Shutterstock.

More F-35I Adir Fighters for Israel? This week, Israel’s Defense Ministry submitted an official request to the U.S. military’s Joint Program Office to purchase a third squadron of F-35 fighters.

If accepted, the current Israeli Air Force (IAF) fleet of 50 F-35s will increase to 75. 

Jerusalem announced earlier this summer that a potential F-35 acquisition was internally approved. The chief executive of Lockheed Martin Israel responded to the latest request in a statement: “We are proud to support the Israeli Defense Forces in providing the F-35 and honored that the Israeli government has announced its intent to purchase additional F-35s.” 

The proposed $3 billion dollar deal would elevate the IAF’s already formidable aerial capabilities.

Israel’s Unique F-35I History

Israel’s relationship with the F-35 Lightning II dates back to 2010, when the fifth-generation aircraft’s nine-nation co-development group gave the Jewish state the green light to procure a specialized version of the jet, which became the F-35I.

Lockheed Martin rarely allows client state-requested modifications to be incorporated into the F-35, but Jerusalem wished to layer its own electronic warfare capabilities on top of the platform’s existing avionics. 

In addition to these homegrown sensors and countermeasures, the IAF incorporated its own helmet-mounted displays and other data gathering and processing capabilities to their own model — the Adir, or “Mighty One.”

According to the Eurasian Times, the IAF’s drive for operational and developmental independence with its fleet of F-35 fighters stems from the service wanting an added layer of protection in case a cyber attack targets the F-35 platform. 

Is the F-35I Adir the Best F-35 Variant?

Surrounded by hostile neighbors and threatened by Iran’s nuclear aspirations, Israel has specific security needs that require ultra-advanced electronics. The Adir’s EWS enables the IAF to jam the electronics and guidance systems of adversarial ground-fired anti-aircraft weapons.

The Iran-aligned proxy groups operating around Israel’s borders make this capability especially significant. 

However, considering Iran’s distance from Israel, the F-35’s subpar range is a concern. The IAF could struggle to use the aircraft for aerial and ground attacks on targets more than 1,000 miles away.

Israel has made great use of the platform. In 2018, the Jewish state became the first country to use the stealth fighter in a combat role in the Middle East.

As detailed by Lockheed’s chairman, “With C4I technology integrated into the Adir, the F-35 is particularly critical to countering Hezbollah’s vast rocket threat through rapid identification and prioritization of targets for the IAF. They can fly in what we call ‘beast mode,’ carrying up to 18,000 pounds of internal and external ordnance, in a mix that can include 5,000-pound-class weapons.”

F-35I Adir Fighter. 

Two Israeli Air Force squadrons fly the F-35I Adir — the 116th Lions of the South Squadron, and the 140th Golden Eagle Squadron at Nevatim Base. Israel’s air force will certainly be pleased to add 25 new F-35Is. 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin. 

This week marked a huge milestone for the Air Force’s F-15EX Eagle II platform.

According to the 53rd Wing, the new fighter successfully completed the first phase of its initial operational test and evaluation program with the launch of an AGM-158 Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile.

During this phase, the Eagle II fighter participated in 19 Large Force Exercise events where it flew alongside the service’s fifth-generation airframes.

The JASSM was launched during exercise Combat Hammer. While the exact details of the shot remain highly classified, the jet’s employment of the longest non-nuclear Air-to-Ground munition in the Air Force’s inventory is quite the feat for the platform. 

Maj. Calvin Conner, 85th TES F-15 division commander commented that “Proving the F-15EX capability to employ three JASSMs after witnessing validation of the Air-to-Air dominance role it can play with a 12 AMRAAM loadout is incredible,” adding that “The firepower a 4-ship of F-15EXs brings to a combatant commander is tremendous.” As the service’s first ever airframe to carry out an Integrated Test and Evaluation program, the latest Eagle variant is a unique addition to the Air Force’s arsenal of aircraft. Equipped with more weapon stations than other Eagle predecessors, an enhanced processor and fly-by-wire control system, the F-15EX will add to the service’s already formidable fleet.

A brief overview of the Eagle II

Back in 2018, the Air Force discussed the development with an F-15 successor to replace aging variants with manufacturer Boeing. The service desired a new fighter that could carry up to 22 air-to-air missiles with the Advanced Missile and Bomb Ejector Rack, an AESA radar and other sophisticated attributes. Boeing proposed two prototypes, a single seat and a two-seat variant, which the USAF opted for the latter. Although the new Eagle variant is not expected to survive into the next decade, the airframe was procured by the Air Force at a time when F-22 Raptor production ceased to exist, the F-35 Lightning II was delayed and its existing arsenal of older F-15 models were badly aging. 

As detailed by the Air and Space Forces, “Due to insufficient FY22 procurement, the F-15C/D fleet has continued flying beyond its designed service life, posing a serious risk of structural failure. Similar infrastructure, support, and training requirements will permit existing F-15 units to quickly transition to the F-15EX.”

The Bomb Truck: Specs & Capabilities

By 2020, the new F-15EX program was approved under the National Defense Authorization Act for the fiscal year, which was signed in December 2019.

The same year, the first F110-GE-129 engine for the new fighter was delivered to the Air Force. By 2021, the latest Eagle iteration took its first flight.

Equipped with powerful engines, the F-15EXX can fly at a speed of Mach 2.5 (times the speed of sound), making it the fastest fighter jet across the globe. Comparably, the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor can fly at speeds of Mach 2.25.

The new Eagle can notably store up to 30,000 pounds of munitions, a huge threshold when compared to the F-35 Lightning II’s internal storage capacity of 6,000 pounds. 

Although the Eagle II’s service tenure will be short once it enters service with the Air Force, it will surely be impressive. 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.

Multiple administrations in Seoul and Washington have recognized the importance of cooperation in emerging technologies, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI). The 2021 joint statement, for instance, commits both nations “to collaboratively develop a future-oriented partnership.” This year’s follow-up joint statement further underscores the significance of “strengthening public and private cooperation” by leveraging AI talents. In essence, fostering AI bilateral cooperation aligns with the national interests of both South Korea and the United States. Even within its trilateral context, the urgency of this need is evident in the latest Camp David summit’s call to “maintain focus on building robust cooperation in the economic security and technology spheres.”

However, the call for AI cooperation still lacks clarity, primarily due to the lack of concrete discussions about the necessary steps for making this collaboration a reality. Facilitating cooperation that aligns with national interests requires a mutual approach, as defined by two key aspects according to the international relations scholar Robert Keohane. First and foremost, collaboration relies on a conditional framework similar to quid pro quo dynamics. A reciprocal action follows prior actions taken by the partner and contributes to their shared goals. Following this principle, there's a notion of equivalency, meaning that any assistance received should ideally be met with proportionate gestures or resources.

Exploring AI cooperation between South Korea and the United States raises a fundamental question: Can a reciprocal framework be implemented? Within the context of contingency, the feasibility of applying the principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” seems uncertain. This challenge is particularly evident in the landscape of private enterprises in both countries, frequently caught in competitive dynamics. A notable example of this competitive spirit is Naver. This major Korean IT company intends to advance a customized AI model to address non-English-speaking nations’ distinct linguistic and politically nuanced needs.

Furthermore, in the South Korean context, six prominent companies have either introduced or are developing their own generative AI models. These efforts are driven by a shared goal to provide personalized and finely-tuned services, particularly for the domestic user base. The ultimate objective of these initiatives is to enhance user experiences by delivering services tailored to the nuances of the local landscape.

The recent conflict stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act, which revolves around consumer subsidies for electric vehicle manufacturers, vividly illustrates the power imbalance. This case highlights the breach of the reciprocity principle. Although South Korea succeeded in having its manufacturers included in the list of eligible recipients for these subsidies, a substantial portion of its domestic subsidy fund ultimately benefits American manufacturers. This situation underscores a violation of the contingent facet of reciprocal cooperation.

For instance, this discrepancy is evident when purchasing a Tesla Model 3 in South Korea. Consumers receive approximately 4 percent of the total vehicle cost as a tax credit. In stark contrast, the principle of reciprocity weakens when attempting to acquire an equivalent electric vehicle, such as the Hyundai Ioniq 6, within American borders. In this context, the absence of available tax credits for purchasing purposes becomes apparent, with a limited 15 percent tax credit reserved solely for leasing agreements. This comparison highlights the inequitable nature of reciprocity in consumer incentives for electric vehicles.

In the broader context of national AI capacity, a discernible disparity exists between the United States and South Korea, as highlighted by data from the Emerging Technology Observatory’s Country Activity Tracker dataset. Notably, the United States stands out as the foremost producer of internationally collaborated articles, contributing to nearly half of all AI-related scientific publications. Interestingly, U.S. researchers collaborate extensively with their Chinese counterparts, co-authoring 32 percent of these articles, while collaboration with South Korean researchers remains relatively modest at 4 percent.

Conversely, South Korean researchers actively collaborate with U.S.-affiliated researchers, accounting for 44 percent of their joint publications. In terms of direct investment in AI companies, South Korea invests $1.7 billion in the U.S. sector, while American investors direct $2 billion. The former accounts for 30.5 percent of Korea’s total disclosed AI investment inflow, whereas the latter represents 0.5 percent of the American total. This analysis accentuates the substantial gap in AI research and investment levels between the United States and South Korea. It also underscores South Korea’s significant reliance on American investment and academic capacity, while the United States may consider South Korea as one of several potential collaborators.

The series of analyses underscores the impracticality of achieving genuine reciprocal AI cooperation between the two countries. This leads to another pertinent question: What should be the guiding principle for such collaboration? Unlike traditional reciprocity, diffuse reciprocity emphasizes moral values like mutual trust and good faith instead of rigid equivalence in exchanges. This innovative approach promotes cooperative endeavors that advance the collective good, transcending the limitations of direct quid pro quo arrangements.

Since they share democratic values, Seoul and Washington must explore collaborative avenues that amplify individual efforts and promote the broader welfare. Diffuse reciprocity emerges as a promising framework to shape the future trajectory of AI and emerging technology collaboration between Seoul and Washington.

Both nations possess the capacity to complement areas where the other may exhibit vulnerabilities or require further advancement. According to OECD.AI data, the United States has an extensive research and development infrastructure, marked by its wide-ranging international research collaboration and significant investments from the public and private sectors. This fusion of academic and industrial strength positions the United States as a formidable leader in technological innovation. On the other hand, South Korea exhibits a resilient AI workforce and the potential to cultivate a conducive research environment, highlighted by its transformation into a hub for AI talent inflow. As such, the convergence of South Korea’s skilled workforce and America’s robust research infrastructure promises synergistic outcomes.

In fostering research networks and nurturing cooperative relationships with other nations, Seoul and Washington find common ground with key partners, including Canada, India, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and France. These shared allies not only prioritize democratic values in their foreign policies but also exhibit a strong commitment to scientific advancement. Leveraging this shared foundation, the diffusion of cooperative efforts between Seoul and Washington can potentially radiate benefits across these interconnected networks.

By infusing their cooperative endeavors with a sense of shared purpose and mutual trust, both nations can pursue ambitious goals that transcend the constraints of traditional reciprocal arrangements. At the same time, this collaborative synergy arises from the inherent power imbalance between the two nations, with each contributing unique strengths to address their respective shortcomings. In doing so, they will strengthen their bilateral partnership and contribute to advancing democratic values and technological progress on a global scale.

Sanghyun Han is a Ph.D. student in International Affairs, Science, and Technology at Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. He has previously worked with research institutions in both Washington D.C. and Seoul, such as the Atlantic Council, the National Bureau of Asian Research, the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, and the East Asia Foundation.

This article was prepared as part of the CSIS Korea Chair’s 3.0 Program, where the author is part of the inaugural cohort. The author would like to thank Victor Cha, Evan Ramstad, and other Young Leaders for their insights.

Image: Shutterstock.

On April 18, 2007, a Chinese man named Wang Xiaoning filed a lawsuit at the U.S. Federal Court in the Northern District of California over his arrest by the Ministry of Public Safety for his pro-democracy activities. His detainment in China involved torture by the authorities. Despite his cautiousness in utilizing pseudonyms and publishing pro-democratic materials anonymously, the arrest was made possible through cooperation from American multinational technology company Yahoo, which handed over private email records, copies of email messages, and other content of the electronic communications. This has led to national attention in the United States. However, the case was later withdrawn after the plaintiff received an undisclosed settlement amount from Yahoo.

With the sixteen-year-old legal precedent of Xiaoning v. Yahoo!, Inc. (2007), there's been a shadowy history of U.S. businesses’ contributions to China’s mass surveillance and censorship programs. As uncovered through Doe I v. Cisco Systems, Inc. (2014), it has been an open secret that Cisco was involved in the development of China’s notorious censorship program, the Golden Shield Project, in the 1990s to early 2000s. Based on the timeline of these events, which is a decade old, these cases may no longer seem to be relevant in the present day. But as the human rights violations of Uyghurs and intelligence activities of China have been highlighted throughout the exacerbation of U.S.-China relations, the informational technology companies’ involvement in aiding and abetting foreign intelligence activities in alleged human rights violations will continue to face scrutiny.

In the case of China's human rights violations against Uyghurs and political dissidents, it has been acknowledged that the artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms that have been used to oppress these individuals have originated from American venture capitalists’ investments in the AI industry. Also, law enforcement surveillance devices ranging from police scanners to DNA forensic devices are still being exported to China from the United States, despite the existence of regulatory efforts such as the International Trafficking Arms Regulations, National Defense Authorization Act, and Export Administration Regulations. Amid the concerns pertaining to the private sector’s technological contribution to digital authoritarianism in foreign countries, many U.S.-based companies that have been publicly identified for alleged violations have asserted that they are in compliance with the relevant U.S. bylaws and these issues are inevitable collateral damage from the complicatedness of global supply chain.

Furthermore, as demonstrated through the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative ruling in Nestle USA, Inc. v. Doe I (2021) on the limitation and criteria of the extraterritorial applicability aspect of Alien Tort Statute (ATS)—which requires substantial conduct in the United States but doesn’t apply to foreign companies—these corporate activities have not borne any significant legal repercussions thus far since these issues have been deemed as a force majeure from the complicatedness of the global supply chain. As of July 2023, however, the Ninth Circuit has held in Doe I. v. Cisco Systems, Inc. (2014) that the claims of aiding and abetting human rights abuse by Cisco on the grounds of the Torture Victims Protection Act and the ATS, as shown by the U.S. District Court’s initial dismissal of the motion under ATS in 2014. Indeed, the motion to establish a claim for secondary liabilities of these corporate activities has been often challenged by the plaintiffs’ failure to satisfy mens rea (carried out acts that had substantial effects on the perpetration of a specific crime) and actus reus (substantially assisting the act of crimes) criteria of the court.

As shown with Russia's utilization of the global supply chain to acquire sanctioned semiconductor chips and other utilities for military operations, the limitations pertaining to sanctions are clearly evident as effective sanctions enforcement requires active multilateral cooperation at both the public and private level. Even though the high degree of interconnectedness due to globalization has created opportunities for sanction evasions, these transnational security challenges demand continued attention from the relevant authorities. These security challenges pertaining to human rights violations may seem irrelevant to many Americans, but they are becoming corrosive to U.S. national security and may leave Americans at risk of becoming victims to foreign adversaries’ intelligence gatherings.

With the absence of a singular law that protects overall data privacy, foreign intelligence agencies’ aggressive data collection activities, ranging from social media platforms to the gaming industry and including the collection of sensitive personal data through both purchase and breach of databases from data brokers, are posing a growing threat. In fact, reports indicate that massive data collection efforts may already be an effective tool for foreign intelligence operatives.

By acquiring information on targeted individuals, foreign adversaries are better positioned to infiltrate and intimidate their targets. Recent indictments from the Department of Justice have shown that the Chinese and Iranian governments have aggressively sought the expanded use of these opportunities by utilizing American private investigators for their transnational repression campaigns in the United States. Furthermore, in contrast to the United States, where the concept of governance on overall data privacy is not comprehensively adopted through a unilateral law at the national level, the legal governance of overall data privacy has become one of the most important agendas for Beijing's security apparatus.

In the case of China, subsequent to the implementation of the Cybersecurity Law in 2016, the Data Security Law (DSL) and Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) came into effect in 2021. These privacy protections have shown that China has benchmarked Europe's General Data Protection Regulation and strengthened its protection efforts on overall data privacy. Both the DSL and PIPL have outlawed sales of personal data from China to foreign actors without prior approval from the Chinese government. The PIPL also contains an extraterritorial impact by posing legal repercussions on the entities that are complicit such as the revocation of a business license in mainland China if there were to be any issue of concern pertaining to data that has been collected in China, no matter where the location of collection was made.

Since the effectiveness and importance of open source intelligence and data collection for modern-day spycraft has been highlighted throughout the Russia-Ukraine War, China has responded to these security concerns through the enforcement of the amendments to the pre-existing 2014 Counter-Espionage Act in July of 2023—which includes a broad definition of national security and defines the collection of information pertaining to national security interests as an act of espionage. These legal devices have reinforced China’s efforts to limit the open-source intelligence capabilities of its potential adversaries. Whilst having to reinforce its legislative efforts to counter foreign intelligence’s capabilities, China’s intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, is known to have recently increased its investments in open-source military intelligence and data collection. 

As multilateral security cooperation in cyberspace has recently been emphasized throughout the realm of international security, the United States and traditional security allies like South Korea have been increasing their bilateral cooperation in cyberspace to counter threats that are being posed by adversaries like North Korea. However, apart from international security cooperation at the government level, the structure of these security challenges that are being posed by adversaries is more oriented toward challenging the core values of liberal democracy, and its objectives are accomplished through exploiting the legal loopholes. Thus, the active exchange of knowledge and open discussion on the concept of privacy and the extent of these cybersecurity challenges amongst the liberal democratic states are needed more than ever.

Jong Min Lee is currently a master’s candidate with a concentration in International Security and Public International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. His main areas of interest include non-conventional warfare, neo-authoritarianism, and transnational threats. He is also a graduate of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, where he pursued a concentration in Security Policy and Global Public Health.

Image: Shutterstock.

For many years, the U.S. retained air superiority over its adversaries.

However, as China and Russia expanded their respective fifth-generation airframe programs, America’s aerial arsenal became less menacing. Beijing’s Chengdu J-20 and Moscow’s Su-57 have specifically threatened America’s former monopoly on next-generation platforms.

In order to rectify these tipping scales, the U.S. Air Force is developing its Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. A new sixth-generation fighter will be the center of the program, which is expected to enter service sometime in the late 2030’s. 

The history of the NGAD program:

The NGAD program was conceptualized nearly one decade ago, when DARPA studies was initiated to explore new technologies for air superiority systems for both the Air Force and Navy.

Over the next few years, the Aerospace Innovation Initiative was launched and the NGAD as we know today was created. Intended to replace the aging F-22 Raptor fighters, the new air dominance program is actually a suite of capabilities and not just a singular airframe. Propulsion, advanced weapons, digital design and stealth are some of the key technologies the NGAD program will feature. 

Last year, manufacturer Lockheed Martin released mock-up images for the next-generation program. These images, and the little information that has been released by the Air Force, sums up what we know about the program. The highly classified program will be developed by either Lockheed Martin or Boeing. Northrop Grumman was also a contender, however, reports suggest that the manufacturer took itself out of the bidding process this summer. The mock-up images released by Lockheed depict a sleek and tailless airframe with refueling drawn from the LMXT tanker concept, which enables greater stealth and lower observability. 

What (little) we know:

Although we don’t know how fast this sixth-generation airframe will be able to cruise, Lockheed’s rendering appeared on the manufacturer’s Instagram handle alongside images of well-known speedy airframes, including the Raptor, the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-117 Nighthawk. The F-22 can fly at speeds nearing Mach 2.0 (times the speed of sound) at altitudes reaching 60,000 feet. Analysts predict that the NGAD fighter will be able to fly with comparable capabilities. 

As a “family of systems,” the NGAD fighter will fly alongside drone “wingmen.” Earlier this year, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced plans to procure at least 1,000 of these sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

As explained by Sandboxx News, “At the heart of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft concept is the need for capable artificial intelligence agents that can fly NGAD’s drone wingmen, take cues from local human operators, and even serve as advanced co-pilots inside the crewed fighter itself to help reduce the massive cognitive load pilots must manage while flying their aircraft in combat. The Air Force’s Project VENOM is among the efforts underway to make exactly that happen.” 

Aviation buffs and industry experts alike are anticipating the release of more information surrounding the Air Force’s NGAD program. The new fighter has some tough shoes to fill, however, considering the legacy of the F-22 Raptor platform, NGAD could be amazing. 

Author Expertise 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin. 

Late last week, Iranian officials drew headlines with their claims of being able to detect and track American F-35s flying over the Persian Gulf. This prompted a flood of claims on social media about the $1.7 trillion stealth fighter program no longer offering a strategic edge over the aggressive nation.

“Over the past days, several of these planes were flying over the Persian Gulf and were fully monitored by our radars from the moment they took off,” an unnamed Iranian official was quoted as saying by the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen news, an outlet that is frequently criticized for its bias toward authoritarian regimes in Iran, Syria, and the militant group Hezbollah.

Is this claim true? The truth is… it’s pretty likely – but that wouldn’t have the implications many may think it does. Stealth fighters have long been detectable via certain radar frequencies and that’s neither new nor troubling for military planners. This story, like many that have come before it, is leveraging popular misconceptions about stealth, rather than the science associated with this technology, in an attempt to paint modern 5th generation fighters as less capable than they truly are. And make no mistake, the F-35’s detectability is not unique to its airframe – every 5th-generation fighter regardless of origin can be detected under the right circumstances.

It’s targeting those aircraft that can be tough.

The F-35 Claim from Iran

According to several Iranian-bases news outlets, Brigadier General Reza Khajeh, the deputy commander of operations of the Iranian Army Air Defense Force, was the first official to come forward with the claim that Iran has been detecting and potentially even tracking F-35s in the region. This claim follows the deployment of about a dozen F-35s to the U.S. Central Command region following a series of aggressive encounters involving Russian aircraft over Syria and Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz.

F-35 stealth fighter. 

According to General Khajeh, all flights in the region have been monitored by Iranian air defense systems, bolstered by what he referred to as “eavesdropping systems,” going on to claim that they have yet to detect a sortie via those listening methods that they weren’t also able to track on radar.

And based on the responses we’ve immediately seen popping up on social media, it’s clear that many are convinced, based on these claims, that Iran has cracked the code to peering through the most advanced fighter on the planet’s stealth capabilities.

Understand Stealth

Stealth aircraft are designed to delay or sometimes even defeat detection via a variety of means, including radar and infrared, but it’s commonly understood that stealth is not invisibility. That is to say that under the right circumstances, these aircraft are often detectable – especially when we’re talking about stealth fighters, in particular.

However, there is a significant difference between being able to detect a stealth fighter and being able to effectively target one, and these claims out of Iran (and subsequent media stories) rely on the average reader’s lack of awareness when it comes to this important distinction.

Modern stealth fighters are designed to delay or prevent detection specifically from high-frequency radar arrays that are capable of providing a “weapons-grade lock” – or radar arrays that can guide a missile to a target. Lower frequency radar arrays are not capable of guiding weapons with this 

Radar Issues

Different radar arrays broadcast in different wavelengths and frequencies for different reasons. The types of design elements that can help delay or prevent detection from one type of radar frequency won’t necessarily help prevent detection from another.

As a result, stealth fighter designs are specifically intended to limit detection from the types of radar arrays that can effectively guide a weapon to its position. While stealth aircraft are still not invisible to radar arrays that work within these bands, the goal is to make their radar returns small enough to delay detection, allowing the stealth fighter to either engage a target or escape without ever being targeted itself.

Radars operate by broadcasting electromagnetic energy (radar waves), usually in the L, S, C, X, or K bands. Each band uses a different wavelength and frequency, with only higher frequency (smaller wavelength) systems providing the image fidelity needed to accurately target an aircraft.

In other words, only certain types of radars can be used to guide a missile toward a target and get it close enough to destroy it. Lower frequency arrays are often capable of spotting stealth fighters in the air, but because of their larger wavelengths, can’t provide accurate enough data to actually lock onto an aircraft with a missile.

Stealth fighter designs only limit detection against higher frequency radar arrays, including parts of the S-band and the C, X, and Ku bands to prevent being targeted. Because these fighters are still visible on lower-frequency radar bands operating on S and C bands, these arrays can be leveraged effectively as early warning systems, notifying defensive forces that stealth fighters are in the area, and allowing for other defensive systems to be oriented in the right direction. But importantly, low-frequency arrays can do little more than point systems toward the area a stealth fighter is in. An effective stealth fighter design remains difficult to target via a high-frequency array even with this head start.

Stealth Fighters Are More Than Just Stealth

It’s not at all uncommon for stealth fighters like the F-35 to fly with radar reflectors on to both render them more detectable and mask their actual radar profiles while operating in regions with enemy air defense systems that are eager to gobble up data about their radar returns. These reflectors, often called Luneburg lenses, aren’t always easy to spot with the naked eye, but they render even the stealthiest aircraft easy to detect on radar.

In other words, it’s entirely possible that American F-35s operating in the Middle East may be flying with these lenses on specifically to make it more difficult for enemy air defense systems to work toward figuring out how to detect these aircraft more readily.

And considering the United States sent these fighters to the region as an intentional message to aggressive Iranian and Russian forces, advertising their presence is an intentional decision. That much was made clear by the Pentagon’s public announcement of their deployment prior to the F-35s even arriving in the region.

“In coordination with our regional allies, partners, and the U.S. Navy, the F-35s will partner with A-10s and F-16s already in theater helping monitor the Strait of Hormuz,” Air Forces Central (AFCENT) spokesman Col. Mike Andrews said in a statement last month.

In other words, there’s a multitude of reasons why Iran might be able to detect F-35s operating over the Persian Gulf, from Luneburg lenses to low-frequency radar arrays. In fact, it would be somewhat damning if they couldn’t. But just as Russia leveraged confusion about the definition of modern hypersonic missiles to claim their Kh47M2 Kinzhal was more than a simple air-launched ballistic missile, Iran is now leveraging confusion around the word stealth in a similar manner.

So, did Iran detect F-35s over the Persian Gulf a few weeks back? It’s pretty likely. But is that anything American military planners are sweating?

Almost certainly not.

Alex Hollings is the editor of the Sandboxx blog (where this first appeared) and is a former U.S. Marine who writes about defense policy and technology. He lives with his wife and daughter in Georgia. 

Last week, China released a new map called the 10-Dash map as a successor to Dash-9. This map represents an escalation by Beijing to further extend its unilateral redrawing of international boundaries. It is an extraordinarily provocative move. It also violates the International Law of the Sea. 

With the 9-dash line, China brazenly claims waters which are thousands of miles away from its territory, but along the coast of smaller nations. The latest map further solidifies those claims and expands upon them with the addition of one more “dash” around Taiwan. The United States must not stand idly by as China tries to redraw the world map.

Beijing's intent is to, first, acquire more territory and resources as some of these areas are rich in hydrocarbons; second, increase pressure on Taiwan by edging closer to its boundaries; and third, flex its muscles with its neighbors while testing U.S. reaction and resolve. 

The publication of the 10-Dash map indicates that China is getting bolder in pursuing its strategic objective to change the regional balance of power and pursue regional hegemony.

The countries of Southeast Asia, who are directly threatened by this Chinese action, are furious and have responded strongly, with some stating that they will take measures necessary to defend their territory. But it is not clear what those measures will be, and their collective failure to respond effectively to 9-Dash has clearly emboldened China to push ahead. 

The latest Chinese action has serious implications for the United States, and it would be a mistake to just dismiss this as bluster. We have treaty commitments to some of the countries threatened, including the Philippines. Our supply chain for several strategic items depends on unfettered access to the region. We simply cannot allow the arbitrary expansion of Chinese power to stand.

Countries in the region are watching for a U.S. response and are more open than previously to the prospect of greater security and military cooperation with the United States. Chinese hegemony in the region will change the global balance of power and directly threaten our vital national interests.

What should we do? Having just returned from a trip to Southeast Asia, I recommend the following measures be taken:

1. Deter Chinese escalation and aggression. For this, we will need to address gaps in our capabilities and those of our allies. Burden-sharing must become a hallmark of our rebalancing of power in the region. We must learn from our mistakes in Europe during the containment of the former Soviet Union. We should not and need not carry a disproportionately heavy amount of that burden.

2. Addressing the chasm in shipbuilding should be a priority. China’s shipyards have a capacity that far exceeds U.S. shipyards, by orders of magnitude—some estimate the gap is 25 million gross tons per year in China vs. 100,000 gross tons per year in the United States. Furthermore, China builds ships for a much lower cost. We must expand our industrial base for manufacturing ships. We should also take advantage of allied capabilities. For example, South Korea has the capacity to produce ship hulls. Some of our laws and policies stand in the way of cooperative production, but there are shelf-ready solutions. The rules should be changed to allow neutral components to be manufactured elsewhere, with the more sensitive capabilities subsequently installed in either the United States or another allied country.

3. Burden sharing and pooling resources should extend to maintenance and repair work on our and allied ships to get them back into commission more quickly. For example, we are in an advantageous position with our nuclear submarines, but many are in maintenance for extensive periods largely because of the legal requirement for only American entities to do the work. This requirement should be appropriately reviewed and adjusted. 

4. Our aircraft and those of our allies are vulnerable to Chinese missiles on airfields without hardened shelters. Our allies should assume a greater portion of this burden by assuming broader responsibility for hardening these facilities across the region. 

5. The United States must assume the role of dispute mediator among the bickering nations affected by China’s Dash-10 provocation. Each nation is clear that the move is a violation of their borders, their sovereignty, and their security. They all have a strong shared interest in meeting this threat. But bilateral disputes among them are impeding their ability to act. This is an important opportunity for the United States to quietly step in as a mediator and work behind the scenes to help resolve these disputes. Such a strategic move would enable the affected countries to pursue joint cooperative policies against Chinese provocations.

These steps are necessary if we are to avoid further aggressive moves by China. The geopolitical risk is outsized. Without taking such bold measures, China may well miscalculate its capacity to continue this encroachment and overreach. There is a distinct potential for this strategic trend to lead them into a major regional conflict. We must take concrete steps like these now in order to preclude such a development.

Zalmay Khalilzad is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Image: Shutterstock.

In early May 2011, a CIA-led operation conducted by members of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6, also known as DEVGRU, took out the most infamous terrorist leader of the modern era, Osama Bin Laden. The mission, known internally as Operation Neptune Spear, was successful, though not everything went according to plan.

The plan called for the use of two highly classified and heavily modified UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters built specifically for clandestine operations. One of these stealth Black Hawks was meant to hover above Bin Laden’s walled compound for operators to fast rope in, while the other landed nearby to deploy troops, interpreters, and dog handlers to secure the perimeter.

But just as the mission started, things began to go wrong when one of the stealth helicopters crashed inside the compound.

Thanks to the pilot’s quick reaction, none of the operators or crewmembers onboard the helicopter were seriously injured, and the mission was ultimately successful. In order to prevent the stealth technology within the rotorcraft from falling into the wrong hands, the helicopter itself was destroyed prior to the special operations team’s departure.

But the exotic-looking tail section of this highly classified platform remained intact and left behind. It was clearly shown in pictures of the compound shared by media outlets around the world the following day.

Initially, the media didn’t seem to realize what they’d just shown the world… or perhaps the story of Bin Laden’s death simply warranted too much attention to address the uniquely angular and alien-looking tail rotor shown in the photographs. But it wasn’t long before journalists and aviation buffs around the world recognized how unusual the tail section really was, and came to a stark realization: Stealth helicopters are a reality. They’re in service. And none of us in the world at large, or even in the conventional side of the U.S. military, knew about it. At least, not until now.

Stealth is far more than a singular approach to radar evasion.

As detection and targeting capabilities continued to mature, so too did the technologies inherent to what we call “stealth.” Today, stealth designs take great pains to reduce not just radar detection, but also electromagnetic, infrared, acoustic, and even visual detection. It can be extremely difficult to incorporate these stealth design elements into fixed-wing aircraft, but one might argue that it’s even tougher when it comes to adding stealth to helicopters.

As retired U.S. Air Force helicopter pilot and former Air Force Weapons School instructor Mike McKinney put it, helicopters pose a number of unique challenges to the stealth enterprise because “they routinely operate within the heart of the threat envelope and their physical configuration does not allow for the use of many masking techniques.” 

In other words, it isn’t enough to build modern stealth helicopters that can delay radar detection: rather, they also need to minimize the heat produced by the engines, the detectability of their radio transmissions, and importantly, in the case of low-flying rotorcraft, the noise produced by their propellers. Helicopters have large propellers, which are basically narrow wings being spun overhead. These tend to produce a significant radar and acoustic signature, while the helicopters’ powerful engines pump out a ton of heat, all in a platform that’s slower and less agile than modern fixed-wing aircraft.

But it’s also important to understand that stealth isn’t a thing that a platform has or doesn’t have. It might be better to think of stealth as a segment within a spectrum of observability. On the broadly observable side, you have easy-to-spot platforms like the B-52 Stratofortress or the F-15 Eagle, and on the opposite “low observable” side, you have platforms like the F-117 Nighthawk and F-22 Raptor.

The degree of stealth required for a platform to be considered stealth in any given era is based not on clearly defined universal requirements, but rather on how a platform compares to the means of detection used in its day and to similar platforms of its class. Russia’s Sukhoi Su-57, for instance, may boast a worst-in-class stealth profile when it comes to its 5th-generation peers, but it is significantly stealthier than its 4th-generation predecessors. Its radar return may be thousands of times larger than an F-22, but it is dozens of times smaller than an F-15’s, pushing it far enough toward the low-observable side of the spectrum for many to consider it a stealth fighter.

The 90-degree angles inherent to helicopter design, as well as the ways in which these platforms operate, almost preclude them from ever achieving the sort of low observability that’s possible in bomber or fighter designs, but it is possible to design a helicopter that’s far less observable than its in-class peers and precursors, earning that coveted “stealth” designation, even if it will not be nearly as sneaky as its fixed-wing sisters-in-service.

About the Author

Alex Hollings is the editor of the Sandboxx blog (where this first appeared) and is a former U.S. Marine who writes about defense policy and technology. He lives with his wife and daughter in Georgia. 

The term “Political Maronitism” entered Lebanon’s political lexicon on the eve of the country’s civil war (1975–1990). Its introduction was due to the leadership of the Druze Jumblatt family, which criticized Maronite hegemony over Lebanon’s confessional system. In essence, however, Political Maronitism reflected the desire of the political and spiritual leadership of the Maronite Catholic community to influence Lebanon’s domestic and foreign policies with the goal of maintaining Maronite influence within the state. Only such influence, these proponents believed, could guarantee the protection of the privileges and safety of the Christian community in general and the Maronite community in particular.

Origins

In this respect, Political Maronitism as a leading political force in Lebanon can be initially traced to the reign of the first Maronite leader, Emir Bashir Shihab II (1789–1840), who ruled Mount Lebanon under Ottoman suzerainty. Regional developments within the Ottoman Empire forced his hand to pursue domestic policies inimical to sectarian coexistence. Dismayed by the Ottoman Porte (central government) for not granting him the province of Syria as compensation for his efforts in crushing the puritanical Wahhabi movement in Arabia, the ruler of Egypt Muhammad Ali invaded the Levant in 1831. Ali asked Emir Bashir for help in subduing the Druze rebellion in Hawran, which extended to Mount Lebanon. Unable to decline Ali’s request, Emir Bashir rallied a Maronite force of 4,000 to subdue the rebels. This marked the first time in the history of Mount Lebanon that a sect sided with a foreign force against another sect, bringing sectarianism to the fore of Mount Lebanon’s politics.

Once British and Ottoman forces forced Egyptian forces from the Levant in 1840, Emir Bashir was forced into exile and died in Istanbul in 1850. As tensions continued to escalate, a sectarian war erupted in which Druze forces massacred thousands of Christians in Mount Lebanon’s mixed towns. In hindsight, the 1860 massacres were instigated no less by sectarian hatred than communal vindictive superiority. Whereas the Maronite clergy described the war as one of religion and the Maronite stronghold of Kesrwan readied 50,000 men to help their brethren, the Druze led a struggle for a lasting ascendency dispensed with a knife at hand. The promised relief never came and the Maronites were butchered. European powers stopped the massacres and in concert with the Porte established a confessional system, Mutasarifiyah, in Mount Lebanon overseen by a Christian Ottoman wali (governor).

Stability in Mount Lebanon was shattered with the advent of World War I (1914–1918). Concerned about Christian collaboration with the French, Ottoman authorities blockaded Mount Lebanon and sought to subdue the Maronites by starving them. One-third of the population of Mount Lebanon and Beirut died from starvation and epidemics. Eventually, the Allies defeated the Ottoman Empire, and the French Army landed in Beirut in 1918, whereupon France had the mandate over Lebanon.

The French established a confessional system favoring the Maronite community, whose clergy played a key role in establishing Greater Lebanon. The National Pact actualized Lebanon’s independence in 1943, but it neither fostered nor forged a national identity. It was based on a compromise guided by the false assumptions that Muslims would “Arabize” the Christians while Christians would “Lebanonize” Muslims. The pact provided that Lebanon’s identity would be characterized by an “Arab face” and manifested by the slogan “No East, No West.” Significantly, deep currents within the Maronite community represented a spectrum of various impulses ranging from the belief of organic affiliation with the West, to opposition to Arabism, to espousing the idea of Phoenician origin. On one end of the spectrum, a Maronite political majority and the clergy supported Greater Lebanon; on the other end, a political minority advocated a smaller Lebanon where Christians would constitute a majority.

Disruption

Ultimately, Maronites wielded power in a confessional system undergirded by a communal balance. But this communal balance has often been disrupted. President Camille Chamoun (1952–1958) felt threatened by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser’s strident pan-Arabism which intensified anti-Maronitism among the Left, pro-Palestinian activists, and Arab nationalists. Led by the man of the Left Kamal Jumblatt, the National Union Front rallied anti-Maronite groups. Considering Nasserism to be a direct threat to Lebanon’s informal dissociation from the Arab-Israeli conflict, to Maronite hegemony over the Lebanese state, and to his growing relationship with the United States, Chamoun endorsed the Eisenhower Doctrine, under which a country could request U.S. military assistance if it was being threatened by another state.

Once Lebanon’s parliament approved the doctrine, the National Union Front called for the government to resign and a general strike. Meanwhile, Egypt and Syria supplied arms to Chamoun’s opposition. In May 1958, the general strike transformed into civil strife. Chamoun invoked the Eisenhower Doctrine and requested military assistance from President Dwight Eisenhower. A heated debate ensued in the U.S. Congress because some members believed that it was not communism but domestic issues that lay at the heart of Lebanon’s civil strife. Ultimately, the American military intervention took place only after a violent Arab nationalist coup d’état overthrew the pro-British Iraq’s Hashemite monarchy.

The U.S. Marines defused the crisis; yet its causes simmered, eventually leading to the eruption of Lebanon’s long and bloody civil war (1975–1990). Jumblatt led the Muslim camp, whose mainstay was the National Movement, a coalition including Leftists, Marxists, Nasserists, and pro-Syrians. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) fronted the National Movement. Jumblatt sought to overthrow Maronite hegemony over the state because he perceived them as central players in a U.S. and Zionist conspiracy against Lebanon and the Arabs in general. The Christians rallied around the Lebanese Front, whose mainstay included the Phalange party, National Liberal Party, and the supporters of then-President Suleiman Franjieh.

Maronite entreaty with the Americans to help the Christian camp led to nowhere, at least until the camp was faced with defeat in 1976. Washington saw a win for the pan-Arab-Leftist camp as a win for the Soviet Union, and therefore the Gerald R. Ford administration brokered the unwritten Red Line agreement between Israel and Syria to allow Syrian military intervention in Lebanon to stop the war and prevent the collapse of the Christian camp. Bashir Gemayel, son of the founder of the Phalange party Pierre Gemayel, sought Israel’s help to reinforce the Christian military camp and eventually drive Syrian and PLO forces out of Lebanon. Israel helped him as he became the pivot around which Israel’s policy revolved in Beirut.

Meanwhile, Bashir, under the banner of unifying the “Christian rifle [and cause],” into what became the Lebanese Forces, ordered both the assassination of former President Frangieh’s son Tony and subsequently the crippling of the Phalange’s rival militia, the National Liberal party’s Tigers. The 1978 and 1980 massacres of Ehden and Safra left deep wounds in the Christian community’s collective consciousness, which only deepened by the later assassination in 1990 of former President Chamoun’s son Dany and his family. During this time, Washington’s main concern in the region was stability and preventing an Arab-Israeli war. Washington came to broker a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1979, and entertained the idea of a potential Israel-Syria peace agreement. Henry Kissinger’s slogan “No war without Egypt and No peace without Syria,” reflected Washington’s outlook.

Yet Washington remained diligent in keeping an eye on the fast-paced developments in Lebanon and their repercussions for the region. American intelligence, led by Robert Ames, observed closely the chain of events in war-torn Beirut. Ames, among other American officials, had a paradoxical relationship with the Maronites. Although American officials sought to support the Maronites given their pro-American stance, they also had concerns about them. Ames felt there was enough hatred in Lebanon to fill the whole world. He called Bashir “our brutal warlord.” And he often emphasized that the “Christians want their own state, protected by the U.S., just like Israel. We don’t need another Israel in the area.” His words more or less still ring true in America’s corridors of power. Ames died in the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut in April 1983.

Modern Times

Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 alarmed Washington, which wanted to resolve the conflict before it spread across the region. Bashir was elected president and the PLO was evicted to Tunisia. Bashir, who had toyed with the idea of creating a Christian state, amplified his resolve to secure Lebanon’s territorial sovereignty. President Ronald Reagan, through his presidential enjoy Philip Habib, underscored to Bashir that he was no longer a sectarian Christian leader but a leader of all Lebanese regardless of sects. Sensing its potential defeat in Lebanon, the Syrian regime then masterminded the murder of the president-elect by a pro-Syrian Lebanese. Bashir’s death was tantamount to the collapse of the house cards upon which Israel had built its policy in Lebanon.

Consequently, as Israel began its withdrawal from Lebanon in 1983–1984, Christian forces were routed in Mount Lebanon’s Shouf area. Christian misfortunes sank to a new low when interim Prime Minister General Michel Aoun declared a “liberation war” against Syria in 1989. At the same time, Aoun opposed the efforts of Lebanese deputies to amend the constitution. He rejected the new version of the constitution, known as the Taif Accords, as a Syrian scheme to whittle away at Maronite power and called on the Lebanese Forces to stand by him in meeting the Syrian challenge. The Lebanese Forces demurred because they considered Aoun’s war against Syria to be political suicide. Consequently, deadly hostilities broke out between Aoun’s forces and the Lebanese Forces, shattering whatever was left of Christian unity. It was against this background that Iraq invaded Kuwait. Washington needed Syria’s help in forming an international and Arab anti-Iraq coalition to extract Iraq from Kuwait.

No sooner, Washington endorsed the implementation of the Taif Accords, and apparently gave the go-ahead to Syria and its allies in Lebanon to oust Aoun as a price for Syria’s participation in the U.S.-led anti-Iraq coalition. Consequently, Syria occupied Lebanon and expedited the implementation of the Taif Accords, which conferred equal powers to the Maronite president, the Sunni prime minister, and the Shia speaker of the house.

Thanks to Syria and Iran, the Shia Islamist party Hezbollah was able to build a state-within-a-state in Lebanon under the pretext of expelling Israeli forces from Southern Lebanon and defending it against Israel’s aggressions. The murder of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005 by Hezbollah members reportedly with Syrian collusion sparked a mass demonstration, known as the Cedar Revolution, which all but crushed the Syrian order in Lebanon. But corruption remained the hallmark of the confessional system. Ominously, since the end of the civil war in 1990 until the present, Lebanon’s political elite have forged a Faustian deal with Hezbollah grounded in preserving national coexistence, but practically expressed in providing political cover for Hezbollah in return for an extraordinary theft of the state by the political ruling class.

The Present

The steady collapse of the economy, the steep downfall of Lebanon’s currency as pegged to the dollar, and the poaching of the people’s savings have pauperized and starved society. It was against this background that the nuclear-like explosion in Beirut’s port in August 2020 sank the country to a depth of destruction and misery unseen in its history. Demonstrations and calls for reform and holding the culprits behind the port explosion accountable led nowhere thanks to obstruction from Hezbollah and the country’s political elite.

Frustrated, demeaned, and fed up with the chronic failure of the political system, proposals of federalism, partition, or creating a Christian state have once again been expressed by mainly Maronite voices. No doubt, the state and nation are facing an unprecedented crisis and need salvation and help. But Maronite plans have to be taken under careful consideration. As shown here, Political Maronitism since Emir Bashir to the present has been affected by both domestic and regional forces which continuously diminished the very influence Political Maronitism had planned to preserve. Today, the Maronites face challenges and threats within and beyond the community far more dangerous than ever before. The community is divided and has neither allies nor partners among the other sects nor among regional countries supporting its plans. Even Washington has been clear about its priorities in Lebanon: building state capacity and strengthening government institutions such as the Lebanese Armed Forces to impose its authority over the total territory of the country.

Broadly speaking, Washington’s view of Beirut still reflects Ames’ outlook. Saudi Arabia and even Israel have brushed aside Maronite exclusive plans. As happened recently, Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, on the order of Israel’s High Court of Justice, declassified documents, which were cited in Haaretz, pertaining to its plans in Lebanon and its relationship with Bashir Gemayel. The documents reveal that many Israeli officials had more apprehension than consideration about the Maronites, and that the real decisionmaker was not Bashir but his father Pierre, who was critical of Israel. Interestingly, some analysts believe the declassification of the documents at this time was partially meant to nip in the bud any formal or informal renewed contact by some Maronites with Israel.

Political Maronitism metaphorically resembles the myth of Sisyphus who is condemned by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity only to have it roll down again once he got it to the top. Suicide was not an option for Sisyphus and his struggle against defeat may have gained him definition and identity. Similarly, Political Maronitism today is a struggle against defeat, but the problem is that the boulder Lebanon’s Maronites are carrying to the top of the hill may crush them on the way down, should they not learn the lessons of their history.

Robert G. Rabil is a professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University. He can be reached @robertgrabil and www.robertrabil.com.

Image: Carlos Haidamous / Shutterstock.com

Taipei’s lobbying to include the 24-million democratic island nation of Taiwan in the upcoming UN General Assembly this month in New York will most likely upset China. With the continuing support for Taiwan’s “meaningful participation in the UN system” and other international organizations (IOs), the United States’ engagement in Taiwan Strait relations may also take another turning point in the Sino-American rivalry and the Indo-Pacific defense posture.

With the fresh memory of the infamous slogan of “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow,” the United States and the global community are looking anxiously at the volatile Taiwan issue. China’s relentless military intrusions into the island’s airspace with continuing naval exercises in and around the Taiwan Strait are worrisome for not only the immediate stakeholders but also the whole international community.

President Xi Jinping’s stated mission of “national reunification,” which would culminate in Taiwan’s “return” to the Chinese “motherland,” has always been the undercurrent of these simmering tensions. Beijing’s comprehensive plans for Taiwan encompass not only the threat of a possible armed attack but also a long-term consistent campaign of isolating the democratic island nation in the international space.

Countering the Beijing strategy to block the Taipei government’s meaningful participation in IOs, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated its diplomatic campaign for inclusion in the United Nations ahead of the UN General Assembly. Taiwan has been excluded from the UN for more than fifty years.

Is Taiwan a “Renegade Province” of China?

As a result of China’s over two decades of civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, Mao Zedong’s communist forces seized power over the mainland, announcing the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on October 1, 1949. The nationalist forces of the defeated Republic of China (ROC) led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek were forced to evacuate to the island of Taiwan.

Since then, both governments—the one in Beijing and the one in Taipei—have considered themselves the sole legitimate authority of all of China. Discrediting Taipei’s democratic ROC government, Beijing calls Taiwan a “renegade province.” It should, however, be noted that the current Taiwanese authorities are a continuation of the government of the ROC, which was established long before the intermittent civil war periods between 1927 and 1949. Indeed in 1911, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the “Father of the Nation” and the founder of the Chinese Nationalist Party (or Kuomintang, known by the acronym KMT), became the first president of the ROC after the collapse of millennia-old China’s dynastic empire. If it were not for the victory of Mao and his comrades, the world would today perceive the Chinese communists merely as rebels.

Despite losing the civil war in 1949, the ROC (Taiwan) kept the “China seat” in the United Nations for the next two decades. It was not until 1971 that the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 2758 in which it dismissed the representatives of the ROC from the seat, inviting the representation of the communist PRC in their place.

China’s Effective Disinformation Campaign

Whenever the issue of the return of the Taiwan representation to the UN is brought up, China triumphantly pulls the 1971 resolution out from its sleeve. According to Beijing, the UN resolution confirmed—once and for all—that “Taiwan is part of the PRC.” In fact, however, the claims of the Chinese authorities are based on manipulation.

UN Resolution 2758 recognizes the PRC as the “only lawful representative of China.” However, it does not resolve the statehood of Taiwan. It neither mentions the “Republic of China” nor “Taiwan.” It only states the removal of “Chiang Kai-shek’s representation” from the United Nations. In other words, the carefully drafted resolution does not authorize Beijing to represent Taiwan in the UN system and it does not state that Taiwan is part of the PRC.

Chiang Kai-shek—the head of the Nationalist government in China (1928–1949) and later in Taiwan (1949–1975)—has long been gone. Since then, Taiwan has become a flourishing democracy in the Indo-Pacific. Today, the presidential, parliamentary, and local elections are held in Taiwan. The thriving Taiwan’s democracy—ranked best in all of Asia—is among the top ten strongest “full democracies” in the world.

Taiwan also has a powerful partner: the United States. Even though Washington ceased its official relations with Taipei in order to establish diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1979, U.S. presidential administrations have maintained unofficial relations with Taiwan and guaranteed its security as confirmed by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, three U.S.-China joint communiqués of 1972, 1978, and 1982, and the Six Assurances. Nevertheless, with its stated “policy of ambiguity,” the United States deliberately avoids making legally binding declarations as to whether it would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a Chinese attack.

In all this, is membership in the UN really necessary for Taiwan? Or, perhaps, are Taiwan’s efforts to return to the UN an unjustified provocation against Beijing in the midst of Sino-American rivalry and increasing military posture in the Indo-Pacific?

Not to Provoke the Chinese Dragon?

The serious consequences of Taiwan’s exclusion from the UN system and other IOs are best evidenced by the events of the coronavirus pandemic. Due to the lack of Taiwan’s presence in the World Health Organization (WHO), for example, Taiwanese experts could not share their experiences from the previous fight against the SARS epidemic in 2003 on the WHO forum. Moreover, because of the continued pressure from China, Taiwan experienced a wide range of problems with the purchase of vaccines.

On the other hand, Taiwan was ranked as one of the countries that performed best in controlling Covid-19 infections. In fact, it was Taiwan that first informed the WHO about the mysterious transmissions of the new virus in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. Thus, it will not be an exaggeration to claim that Taiwan needs the UN, and the international community needs Taiwan. For the United States and the rest of the world, Taiwan’s participation is “not a political issue, but a pragmatic one.”

For years, Taipei has been trying to obtain membership or at least observer status in the UN family of organizations. However, despite the wide support of the United States, Japan, and the European Union countries, China has kept the door closed for Taiwan in many IOs.

China’s World Order, Replacing the United States

The rising China has been consistently and actively strengthening its position in the UN system and other IOs. Beijing has increasingly been placing Chinese nationals in IOs as well as influencing other member states and supporting their nationals if they were favorably aligned with Beijing’s strategic goals. For example, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus—the current director general of WHO and former minister of foreign affairs and minister of health of Ethiopia—was suspected of following China’s policy during the coronavirus pandemic.

China’s influence kept growing in IOs as the United States has until recently been neglecting the UN agencies. After five years of absence, for example, the Biden White House rejoined the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in July 2023. Meanwhile, China had space to replace the United States not just with its pressure and influence, but also the financial leverage coming from membership dues. In the absence of the United States, China became the largest contributor to UNESCO’s annual budget.

By taking control of UN funds and modifying the language of international documents as Beijing sees fit, China has slowly been changing the international order from within. The aim of these actions is to impose on the world the vision of the Communist Party of China, which depreciates the importance of universal human rights—e.g., equality among all as well as the freedom of speech and religion.

Everything considered, the global support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the UN is far more than just a matter of the international presence of the shining democratic island nation. It is about counterbalancing China’s growing influences in IOs and countervailing threats to democratic values and freedom worldwide.

Dr. Patrick Mendis, a former American diplomat and military professor in the NATO and Indo-Pacific Commands during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, is a distinguished visiting professor of transatlantic relations at the University of Warsaw in Poland.

Dr. Antonina Luszczykiewicz, a former Fulbright senior scholar at Indiana University in Bloomington, is an assistant professor at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

Image: Shutterstock.

After decades of stumbling progress toward democracy, suddenly, in the past few months, eight West African nations have been rocked by coups and civil wars, triggering waves of emigration to the United States and the EU, disrupting the production of oil, gas, and strategic minerals, and spreading shocking amounts of human misery.

What happened? Africa was on track to report the second fastest growth rate in the world this year, projected at 4.1 percent, compared to 3.8 percent in 2022. That puts it much higher than the global average of 2.9 percent. Only Asia’s growth of 4.3 percent will be higher.

Africa is also rich in the minerals needed for electric car batteries and other energy-transition industries. The demand for these minerals is climbing sharply and Africa is best placed to benefit from the mining and refining of these vital resources.

Yet another asset of Africa is the youth of its population. A growing cohort of people under thirty years of age means more workers, more consumers, and more new ideas. By 2050, Africa will be home to 2.4 billion under thirty, while Europe, South America, and North America will see a shrinkage of working-age populations.

Now, given recent developments, these projections may not be realized.

A Troubled Continent

Given these advantages and a potentially bright future ahead, why then is Africa in revolt?

One problem is the lack of investment in water, a necessity for rapidly urbanizing populations. Additionally, war and terror attacks are driving rural people away from land that they had long irrigated. Abandoned land is soon scoured by winds that scatter the topsoil, turning farmland into desert. The Sahara is marching south while other deserts are creeping behind the fleeing populations in the marginal areas of the Sahel and Southern Africa.

Schooling is lacking in too many places and the educated are among the first to emigrate. Once they have learned English and math, they can earn more abroad than at home—a brain drain that keeps the benefits of education from becoming a capital asset for many African lands.

For the enterprising that remain, inflation and currency fluctuations devour their savings. The coronavirus pandemic and a shortage of farm fertilizers from Ukraine only accelerated underlying trends.

At the root of it all is poor governance and state corruption. Bribery is common and placing politically-connected incompetents—a problem in every society—is arguably worse in Africa, where both tribal and political loyalties require jobs for followers lest they become rebels.

It is fashionable to incriminate the former colonizing nations, which once preferred low-priced raw materials over refined products that command higher prices. Yet African nations have been free of colonialists for at least half a century and corrupt elites have generally preferred to siphon their cut from raw-material sales rather than invest in value-adding technology that would produce higher returns over the long run. They have continued colonial economics, not departed from them.

Now, after decades, they own the failures that they once decried from pith-helmet-wearing exploiters. Overall, African elites have never managed to find national consensus in favor of stable and inclusive political systems, preferring tribalism and populism to political struggle around a social goal.

In the handful of cases where societies did unify and reform, economic growth surged, education improved, and poverty fell. Meanwhile, gangrenous states have allowed or encouraged the spread of terror groups across the Sahel for twenty years. This, too, drives away farmers and teachers while perpetuating poverty. All of this produces despair and desperate people imagine a savior, someone strong enough to right all of the wrongs.

Failing to produce a local model of reform, African leaders are seduced by China, which marries the idea of a strongman-savior with that of an alternative to the West. As one leader told former U.S. treasury secretary Larry Summers: “Look, I like your values better than I like China’s. But the truth is, when we’re engaged with the Chinese, we get an airport. And when we’re engaged with you guys, we get a lecture.”

The Scramble for Africa 2.0 and America’s Role

A new “scramble for Africa” is underway—and the West is way behind. China has become the main economic partner in Africa. Turkey has built its first military base abroad (in Somalia). Vladimir Putin’s Russia is “rediscovering” Africa, pushing aside the Wagner Group to manage military affairs directly. Democratic regression in Africa also reflects great power dynamics. It is in this context that the latest coups must be placed.

Anti-French sentiment is linked to Paris’ refusal to change the paradigm. The soldiers are acclaimed by the people because the people are exasperated by the inefficiency of the state and the absence of public services.

The United States is right to refuse foreign military interventions which would only crystallize mistrust and weaken nations. Still, Washington has a leading role to play for several reasons.

First, America has no colonial liabilities, which is a definite advantage in the current context. Moreover, if the United States is faithful to its values, it will develop an accompanying policy for strengthening democracy, fighting corruption, and encouraging investment.

Second, America could offer a framework for investment in mining and energy projects in exchange for transparency. This would mean that ordinary Africans, not the elites, would take the lion’s share of the returns.

Third, America could also work to stabilize African currencies—perhaps through currency boards that would peg those monies to the U.S. dollar—to defeat the scourges of inflation and devaluation.

American leadership, within the framework of international institutions, would allow Africa to emerge from underdevelopment and allow the world economy to benefit from its reservoir of growth. Otherwise, dictatorships will continue to make Africa synonymous with misery.

Ahmed Charai is the Publisher of Jerusalem Strategic Tribune. He is on the board of directors of the Atlantic Council, the International Crisis Group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Center for the National Interest.

Image: U.S. State Department.

All truths, however long they may take, will find themselves revealed with the passage of time. Unfortunately, in the case of Imam Musa Sadr, that moment has not yet come. August 31 marked the forty-fifth anniversary of Sadr’s disappearance while traveling to Libya to meet the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Many observers, including people from his family, hold the former Libyan leader responsible for his disappearance and hope to discover one day what happened to him. 

But what did Sadr do during his life in Lebanon that he merits remembrance today? Born in Iran to Lebanese parents of Shia heritage, Sadr adhered to the teachings of Islam and is universally beloved by Lebanon’s Shia community. If any traveler were to visit the religiously and ethnically diverse Mediterranean country, they will find pictures of the Imam across the Shia-populated areas of Lebanon. However, his impact on Lebanon goes far beyond a single sect. He is remembered and cherished by Lebanese people across different religions, including Lebanon’s Maronite community.

To understand his legacy, one must explore the effect Sadr had on Lebanon and his efforts to support social cohesion during times of political violence and fear.

One resident of the Shia-majority town of Baalbek, Ali Kusai, shared his views on Sadr and how the imam’s teachings brought Lebanese people together at a moment when peace seemed like an illusion for most.

“He was a man of unity, a defender of human rights. Whoever is a person who cherishes unity, he is threatened in Lebanon.”

During the late 1970s, Lebanon was shattered by a fifteen-year civil war. Where before, peoples of all different faiths could visit and enjoy the beauty of all of Lebanon, many were now living in fear of their fellow Lebanese.

Twenty-two kilometers north of Baalbek lies the small town of Deir El Ahmar, whose inhabitants are mostly Maronites Christians. Like everyone else during the war, they too saw their neighbors take up arms and join militias, and felt they were next in line to be targeted.

In a single statement, Sadr called for the safety of Lebanese Christians and declared what they meant to him.

“Whoever shoots a bullet at the people of Deir al-Ahmar is as if he were shooting it in my chest. For me, everyone is to pray in the church as I pray in the mosque. There is no difference between a Muslim and a Christian, between my south and my north.”  

Truly, he was a man who garnered the respect of all Lebanese and worked effortlessly to stop senseless bloodshed. And this was no easy task, for Lebanon’s civil war also possessed a regional element, which succeeded in dragging Lebanon into a conflict that served no sect or community. This was something that Sadr was trying to stop.

In the south of Lebanon, Palestinian commandoes and militia-fighters, including the Palestinian Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat, were running what was effectively their own autonomous region.

With this freehand in the south, the Palestinian guerrillas were waging a war against Israel with dire consequences for Lebanon. Although was a supporter of the Palestinian cause, Sadr did not endorse Arafat’s strategy of fighting Israel or any other Palestinian group. He believed it would only cause unnecessary harm to the people living in the south due to Israeli retaliation.

Sadr was prepared to go to great lengths to solve this issue, which included having a dialogue with Libya’s Gaddafi. According to Hassan Chami, a judge and coordinator of Lebanon’s official committee that is investigating the disappearance of Sadr and his two companions, Gaddafi wanted to fight Israel through Lebanon’s territory by supporting Palestinian organizations and militias. Since the other Arab countries had ceasefires with Israel (Egypt, Jordan, and Syria), Lebanon was the only pathway to waging war against the Jewish state. Gaddafi was committed to proving himself to be the Arab World’s next Gamal Abdel Nasser, who died of a heart attack in 1970.

In a discussion with the National Interest, Chami spoke about Gaddafi’s theories on how to solve the Lebanese civil war and the Palestine-Israel conflict.

“From Gaddafi’s point of view, if you want to resolve the Lebanese war, you must clear the Christians from the country to places like Australia or Canada. Imam Musa Sadr did not accept this. This absurd idea from the Gaddafi was the first area of contention between the two men. Sadr rejected all forms of sectarianism, making it clear Lebanon was home to all. Yet, the most crucial and deeper motivation for Gaddafi was his Nasser obsession and desire to fight Israel.”

Chami continued, “Gaddafi dreamed of being the successor and second version of Gamal Abdel Nasser. If anyone wants to be a great Arab leader, he must fight Israel. Gaddafi saw Sadr as an obstacle and needed him out of the picture.”

According to Chami, Sadr was not killed immediately after he arrived at the Libyan capital of Tripoli. Rather, he was put in prison because Gaddafi believed in old “black magic” that says you cannot kill someone on your lands. This was allegedly revealed to Sadr’s family by Libya’s new officials after the fall of Gaddafi’s regime. This old superstitious belief may have prevented Sadr from being killed, but it did not save his life. Further, this terrible ordeal may have indirectly caused the Lebanese civil war to carry on for many years. What would have happened if he lived?

In the end, no one knows for sure. But everyone knows what happened when he was gone. The best way to honor Sadr’s timeless influence is to build the Lebanon that he struggled to see in his lifetime. One of peace, coexistence of all, and support for your fellow citizens who fall on hard times.

Adnan Nasser is an independent foreign policy analyst and journalist with a focus on Middle East affairs. Follow him on Twitter @Adnansoutlook29.

Image: Hiba Al Kallas / Shutterstock.com

Three years ago, Belarusians took to the streets to protest the fraudulent presidential elections that saw dictator Alexander Lukashenko reelected as president for the sixth time. The regime responded with a brutal crackdown, leading to the West breaking off diplomatic relations and imposing sanctions. Since then, Lukashenko has adopted an increasingly belligerent stance against his Western neighbors by orchestrating a migrant crisis, aiding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, hosting Wagner Group mercenaries, and authorizing the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil. While these provocations serve the Kremlin’s interests by destabilizing NATO’s eastern frontier, Lukashenko hopes they will pressure the European Union to normalize relations and lift sanctions as his country grows more isolated and dependent on Russia.

Compared to other post-Soviet countries, Belarus has achieved minimal political and economic reforms. By maintaining a largely state-controlled economy—heavily dependent on Russia—and strengthening the internal security apparatus, Lukashenko has consolidated power since he attained the presidency in 1994. There have been sporadic attempts to improve relations with the West, most notably in 2008 after Russia attacked Georgia, and again in 2015, after the Ukraine crisis and Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Both attempts led to the release of political prisoners and the rise of pragmatic and reform-oriented technocrats seeking to reduce ties with Russia, such as the late Vladimir Makei. Ultimately, efforts to normalize relations were short-lived, and Lukashenko reverted to mass repression and human rights violations after the 2010 and 2020 presidential elections.

The 2020 anti-government protests were the largest in Belarus’s history, with over 200,000 people marching in the streets of Minsk demanding Lukashenko’s resignation. Had the Kremlin not provided political support to the regime and offered to intervene militarily, perhaps Belarus’s story would have taken a different path. Russia’s intelligence apparatus worked closely with their Belarusian counterparts to help suppress protests, and it’s likely they provided intelligence on the whereabouts of opposition activist Roman Protasevich, allowing the regime to hijack Ryanair Flight 4978 in 2021.

The fact that Lukashenko needed Kremlin support to survive undermined his authority and legitimacy within his own government. This allowed Russia to develop closer ties with other key regime figures and infiltrate Belarus’s security apparatus. Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolay Karpenkov, who heads both Belarus’s security forces and the Main Directorate for Combating Organised Crime Corruption (GUBOPiK), played a crucial role in suppressing protests and is a staunch supporter of Russia. He often overshadows his superior, Minister of Internal Affairs Ivan Kubrakov, and is one of Russia’s preferred candidates to replace Lukashenko. Aware of Moscow’s tendrils, Lukashenko has tried to limit its influence by naming Ivan Tertel, who has few ties to Russia, as the head of the State Security Committee (KGB).

Even though some members of the security apparatus are apprehensive of Russia’s encroaching influence, they remain anti-West and have a vested interest in preserving the regime. Furthermore, the Russian Ambassador to Belarus, Boris Gryzlov, is very close to the siloviki (Putin’s inner circle) and helps reassert Russia’s influence while keeping an eye on the internal power dynamics in Minsk. Belarus’ pragmatic technocrats have been sidelined, especially after the sudden and mysterious death of Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei in November 2022, who happened to be one of the few figures openly hostile to Russia.

With Belarus now cut off from Western markets, its economy has become even more dependent on Russia, which is by far its largest trading partner. Minsk’s weakened bargaining position has allowed Moscow to accelerate plans for economic integration and defense cooperation within the Union State of Russia and Belarus. In 2021, both countries signed twenty-eight agreements, including a unified tax system, oil and gas market, and customs union. Ironically, when the Union State was first conceptualized in the late 1990s, Lukashenko pushed for greater integration between the two states, hoping that he would lead the union and take power in the Kremlin after Boris Yeltsin.

Although the opposition, led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, is supported by the West and most Belarusians, it is unlikely that they will be able to overthrow the regime. The constitutional amendments, passed in February 2022, allow Lukashenko to secure lifelong immunity from prosecution and retain power post-presidency as President of the All Belarussian People’s Assembly. The amendments also enable the permanent deployment of Russian troops and nuclear weapons in Belarus. Lukashenko may retain an honorific title but gradually lose actual power within his own country, whereas Russia’s influence is likely to stay for the foreseeable future. 

Lukashenko hoped hosting Wagner troops, thanks to his mediation efforts during Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed mutiny in June 2023, would provide greater security from Russia. The bold assassination of Wagner’s leadership two months after the mutiny served as a message to Russians and allies alike, including Lukashenko, that betrayal is an unforgivable sin. Lukashenko has inadvertently traded his country’s sovereignty to remain in power for a few more years.

Kelly Alkhouli is a political consultant and director of international relations at the Center of Political and Foreign Affairs (CPFA).

Image: Shutterstock.

Amidst the war in Ukraine, Americans shouldn’t be faulted for thinking their closest allies lie across the Atlantic. But unlike many free-riding NATO members, Australia is emerging as the United States’ most willing and capable defense partner. This is good news for America as it enters a “decisive decade” of competition with China. The United States is no longer militarily preeminent and regional states must do more to uphold the status quo by bolstering their defensive capabilities. By this measure, Australia is proving to be a valuable ally.

Australia is reorienting its grand strategy for long-term competition with China after decades of fighting alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. No longer are Australian leaders calling on their Chinese counterparts to assume the mantle of “responsible global citizenship.” The Australian public’s attitude toward China has turned negative too, with nearly 60 percent of Australians classifying Beijing’s foreign policy as a critical threat to their country’s vital interests. These concerns are not unfounded: while the continent itself remains physically secure, China’s long-range precision strike capabilities could threaten key maritime trading routes that are essential for Australia’s economic prosperity.

Canberra is upgrading its defense posture in meaningful ways. For the first time, defense spending will exceed A$50 billion. Divestments in infantry fighting vehicles and self-propelled howitzers, and procurements of littoral maneuver vessels and land-based maritime strike systems align with the review’s aim of implementing an anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy. To that end, the Australian Defence Force is looking to purchase U.S. Tomahawk missiles, air-launched Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles, Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, small-diameter bombs, and Norwegian-made Kongsberg Joint Strike Missiles.

Yet, these investments are modest compared to the expenses that will come with implementing the AUKUS agreement. The Australian government estimates that the costs of the submarines could run as high as A$368 billion over the next three decades, though the final price tag is likely to be higher. How Australia will pay this bill—and develop the industrial capacity, infrastructure, and workforce required to maintain nuclear-powered submarines—is an open question. What AUKUS shows however is that Australia is committed to preserving the balance of power in the Pacific and believes acquiring this expensive capability is necessary to secure its interests.

The near-term significance of AUKUS is almost as important as the day when Australian sailors finally take command of their own SSNs in the early 2040s. In March, U.S. president Joe Biden, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese, and British prime minister Rishi Sunak announced that beginning in 2027, up to four U.S. Virginia-class attack submarines and one British Astute-class attack submarine would begin rotational deployments to HMAS Stirling in Western Australia, known as Submarine Rotational Force-West (SRF-West).

The rotation of these nuclear-powered attack submarines—estimated to reach full strength in 2031—will augment the five already stationed in Guam, allowing U.S. forces to better control key sea lanes like the Malacca Strait during a conflict. Each Virginia-class boat is also equipped with up to forty Tomahawk cruise missiles that can strike targets 1,000 miles away. Taken together, the presence of several highly capable stealthy submarines in the Western Pacific will shore up collective deterrence by frustrating the Chinese navy’s efforts to project power over long distances and operate unmolested in the bastions of the South China Sea.

The creation of SRF-West also underscores why Australia’s greatest asset is its geography. Australia is a continental island—about equal in size to the United States in fact—surrounded by open ocean and friendly neighbors in its littoral waters. More importantly, it lies largely outside of China’s land-based missile umbrella that imperils U.S. bases and assets in Japan, the Philippines, and Guam.

Improving the resiliency of the U.S. force posture will require dispersing U.S. assets widely enough to survive a first strike and muster sufficient combat power to respond effectively. Although Canberra prohibits the establishment of foreign military bases on its soil, provisions allowing for the rotational presence of U.S. forces have seen modest enhancements to the U.S. posture down under, including the planned deployment of six B-52 bombers in northern Australia. With Canberra’s consent, during a crisis, additional U.S. forces could be surged into the Pacific via Australia like they were during World War II.

Along with power projection, Australia’s geography mitigates another problem plaguing U.S. strategy in the region: logistics. Sustaining high-end operations in the Pacific theater will require an accessible logistics and sustainment hub outside of China’s land-based precision strike envelope. At the most recent Australia-U.S. Ministerial Consultation (AUSMIN) in late July, the two sides outlined their desire for “the longer-term establishment of an enduring Logistics Support Area … to enhance interoperability and accelerate the ability to respond to regional crises.” Accordingly, both militaries have prioritized joint logistics support in their regular exercises. The recently concluded Talisman Sabre exercise, for example, saw U.S. sustainers move fuel and water through a three-mile-long pipeline connected to Australian vessels 1,000 meters offshore.

The perennial American complaint that NATO members don’t pay their fair share or take their defense seriously doesn’t apply to Australia. Instead, U.S. policymakers have an ally that is pulling its weight by making meaningful investments in hard power. And by not waiting until a war breaks out to begin the process of rearming, Australia is making such a calamity less likely.

Matthew C. Mai is a research associate at Defense Priorities.

Image: Shutterstock.

Since the demise of Chairman Mao Zedong, the Chinese state has embraced drastic changes in its priorities. The Communist Party’s efforts toward market-oriented economic reform represent a change of the party-state’s priority from political to economic leadership. After the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping sent an unambiguous message to the Chinese public, denying the possibility of political reform while keeping the doors open for economic growth. This is widely considered the political bargain structuring relations between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese people. In other words, the CCP has premised its political legitimacy on its ability to generate economic growth.

However, this understanding of the party-state’s decision to reform misrepresents the CCP’s fundamental objectives. The party’s ruling legitimacy does not depend on China’s economic advancement. Instead, the fundamental aim of the CCP behind the reforms was to ensure its own security. Logically, should economic reform become an obstacle rather than a solution to the CCP’s political monopoly, the CCP will quickly jettison economic liberalization. In some cases, it already has.

Recovering from the economic catastrophe caused by the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping struggled to lead China forward. While Deng is widely credited for China’s economic boom, the idea of market reform did not originate with him. In 1978, eighteen peasants from Xiaogang village in China’s Anhui province signed a secret agreement to privatize communally owned land for household farming. Notably, this reform attempt was bottom-up, not top-down. It was not until after observing the success of this ground-breaking private experiment that the Central Committee of the CCP officially approved the Household Responsibility System (HRS) in 1980 and incorporated it into the 1982 Constitution, which effectively reprivatized rural land ownership.

Examining Deng’s words, it is not difficult to notice his confused idea of his policies. When Deng famously described his policies as akin to “Cross[ing] the river by feeling the stones,” he effectively denied the supposedly scientific doctrine of Marxist-Leninism. Further, even after the unprecedented wave of privatization in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the leading principle for China’s reform is illustrated as “grasping the large, letting go of the small.” Privatization may be allowed but only in areas of lesser importance to the national economy. The dominant sectors of the Chinese economy must remain state-owned.

Nonetheless, the private sector has always been the primary contributor to Chinese economic growth. The private sector churns out roughly 60 percent of China's GDP, 70 percent of innovation, 80 percent of urban development, and 90 percent of new jobs. Therefore, if economic advancement is genuinely where the CCP has premised its ruling legitimacy, it has failed to harness its most enduring source of prosperity.

Aside from historical observations, the decisions made by today’s CCP flawlessly display where its actual concerns lie. The party-state’s political prosecutions and judicial interference in Hong Kong triggered a series of protests in Hong Kong throughout 2019–2020. In particular, the city’s residents demonstrated against an extradition bill allowing the city government to extradite criminal suspects directly to mainland China. However, instead of striking a deal with protestors (as it did in 2012 when Hong Kong residents protested the introduction of “Moral and National Education” to school curricula), the CCP feared a knock-on effect in the mainland and decided to intervene with an iron fist, introducing the draconian National Security Law (NSL). Given the deliberately vague, overly broad, and manipulatable nature of the new NSL, its implementation has dramatically affected civil liberties on the island. The legislation’s wide coverage spans all disciplines and professions in Hong Kong, while its extra-territorial application threatens any businesses with ties to Hong Kong around the globe.

As a result, the NSL devastated Hong Kong’s status as an international financial center. According to an American Chamber of Commerce survey, 68 percent of 183 companies polled in Hong Kong are increasingly concerned about sustaining business operations. Moreover, many international companies are reconsidering their investment in Hong Kong, and an increasing number of multinational firms are building offices in Singapore to service the Asian market instead. In addition, the U.S. government also revoked Hong Kong’s special status for trade benefits. Clearly, “national security” is more valuable than mere commerce.

The trade-off of sacrificing Hong Kong’s economic prosperity for the party-state’s regime security was not an isolated incident. One need only examine a series of crackdowns on China’s private sector, especially high-tech and internet companies. In November 2020, regulators halted Ant Group’s $37 billion Initial Public Offering (IPO), considered the largest IPO globally at the time. Since then, the bureaucracy has commenced a series of regulatory crackdowns on Chinese high-tech and internet companies, wiping approximately $1.1 trillion from the market capitalization of Alibaba Group, Tencent, Meituan, Baidu, and JD.com in the Hong Kong stock market. However, as China relies on the United States and Taiwan for most of the advanced technologies, like semiconductors and microchips, there seems to be neither a rationale nor an incentive for the government to crack down on its own high-tech companies. This would inevitably hinder economic growth, restrict military capabilities, and curb technological innovation. While the crackdowns seem aberrant, the reason behind them is clearer when one considers that China’s high-tech industry is private instead of state-owned. While private enterprises in China enjoy limited freedom, they are dangerously autonomous in the eyes of the party-state. Therefore, they must be suppressed.

China’s development indicators also show how the regime has obstructed growth for its own ends. While China’s overall GDP and GDP per capita have been consistently rising over the past decades, it is not difficult to notice the striking inequality in the allocation of resources between Beijing and individual households. Chinese households only retain around 55 percent of the national GDP, compared to industrialized democracies, where household income represents roughly 70 to 80 percent of GDP. As a result, state investment, not private consumption, drives China’s GDP. Had economic prosperity been the determinative ruling legitimacy, Chinese households would retain a significantly larger share of the overall GDP. Moreover, despite the rhetorical goal to elevate extreme poverty, former premier Li Keqiang openly admitted that the monthly income of some 600 million Chinese people is still barely ¥1,000, which is equivalent to roughly $140. Namely, around 600 million Chinese people earn less than $5 per day, lower than the $5.50 benchmark recommended by the World Bank to evaluate extreme poverty.

When sustainable economic growth threatens its survival by creating independent sources of wealth and power, the party-state can no longer tolerate it. This way of thinking is also reflected in President Xi Jinping’s numerous speeches, which he calls “bottom-line thinking.” Here, the bottom line is the unchallenged political authority of the CCP. Therefore, if the requirement for economic advancement would cost the life of the Party itself, economic progress becomes expendable, regardless of its apparent prior role as a hallmark of the CCP’s legitimacy.

Wilson Y. Wen is a Juris Doctor candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School and serves as a senior editor of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal. He is also the research director at HanVoice and serves as an East Asia associate for the Open Foreign Policy Initiative.

Image: Kazakh Press Office.

The United Nation’s annual climate change conference, COP28, is set to be hosted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this November, succeeding the previous host, Egypt. Amid the discourse surrounding COP28 an important perspective has been absent: that of the Middle East. Though the decision to transition COP hosting responsibilities from Egypt to the UAE was made by the Asia Pacific group of nations, it encapsulates the shift in power dynamics within the Middle East over the past two decades. Egypt, which led the Arab world during the twentieth century, has handed over the reins to a new regional force that seeks to spread its vision: the UAE.

It was Egypt’s leaders who championed Arab unity in the twentieth century, popularised socialist economic ideas, and pioneered peace talks with Israel. The Arab Spring that erupted in 2010 marked the end of the era of Egyptian hegemony and the beginning of a shift in power towards the region’s smaller, wealthier, and more progressive countries like the UAE. Abu Dhabi advocated models for a diversified economy that would not rely solely on natural resources, for leadership that would speak to all actors in the region—including Israel— as well as for a society looking to embrace progress alongside conservatism, prosperity-based nationalism, cultural pride, and most importantly, religious and social tolerance.

Now, the UAE needs to show its strength in leading policy and action on climate change, perhaps the gravest threat facing the world today. Indeed, for the UAE this is not a theoretical discussion. Contrary to popular belief, the Middle East faces a more immediate impact from climate change than the West. Desertification, food scarcity, migration, rising sea levels, and the stark difference in life expectancy between the Middle East (71) and the West (78.9) underline the urgency. The UAE, positioning itself as a regional and global leader, holds significant stakes in ensuring COP28's success.

In recent years, the UAE has demonstrated its commitment to adopting and implementing the highest international standards. It ranked first in the Pandemic Resilience Index’s ranking of governmental responses to coronavirus in 2022. On the economic front, Abu Dhabi worked to effectively streamline its government ministries and stimulate job growth in the private sector, an effort that saw the 29,810 Emiratis working in the private sector in 2021 almost triple to 79,000 in 2023. In 2022, it also shifted to a Saturday-Sunday weekend to align its economy with that of the global market. The UAE’s pragmatic approach is yielding results. Domestically, as part of its effort to ensure its competitiveness and future development it has undergone significant human rights reforms including offering naturalization to foreign workers and introducing civil marriage for non-Muslims. Regionally, it has been investing extensively in Africa, is supporting Egypt economically, and was active in search and rescue efforts following the recent earthquake in Syria and Turkey.

These strategic changes reflect the UAE's dedication to progress, a vision inherited from its founders. The global competition for talent and an innovative economy means that the UAE must adapt quickly, and the upcoming COP28 conference in Dubai, therefore, represents a meaningful opportunity. It is an expression of the country’s effort to adapt to global changes and become a model of a thriving Arab economy that meets the highest international standards. Despite its role in the traditional energy market, the UAE wishes to lead the global climate agenda including emissions reduction. This is reflected in the action plan that the UAE presented in Brussels in July 2023, as well as in its domestic policies including, for example, the efforts of the construction industry—especially in Dubai—in recent years to increase investment in smart construction techniques that focus on reducing energy consumption.

For a global action plan on climate change to succeed, effective cooperation with the regional leaders of today and tomorrow is critical. In the Middle East, pioneers persuading their neighbors to make courageous reforms—from flexibility in interpreting Islamic law to the adoption of international standards on matters of individual rights including the status of women and integration of foreigners – are likely to have substantial influence on climate as well.

The appointment of Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber—the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) as well as the chairman of the (very active but much less discussed) Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar), the UAE’s renewable energy company—as the COP28 president epitomizes the UAE’s result-oriented approach towards effectively diversifying their economy.

Senior Emirati executives are steering the region towards sustainable futures. Their intimate knowledge of the elements shaping the country and the region means that they have a better chance of successfully impacting real change.

The UAE-led COP28 is an important opportunity to shape the Middle East’s perceptions and policies towards climate change, a phenomenon that is already severely impacting lives in the region.

Yossi Mann is head of the Israel and Arab Gulf program at the Abba Eban Institute and head of the Middle East Program at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel.

Image: Shutterstock.

Following last year’s Russian invasion, millions of Ukrainians fled to countries across Europe and beyond. What distinguishes this group from other refugee flows, however, is its unusual gender distribution: most refugee arrivals have been women. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy barred men aged eighteen to sixty from leaving the country so they would be available for military service. As a result, the share of women among adult Ukrainian refugees is close to 70 percent in most host countries.

This is in contrast with other refugee flows; for example, women only made up 30 percent of all asylum applications during the 2015-17 refugee crisis in Europe. Other data provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show that women accounted for slightly less than half of all those protected and/or assisted by the refugee agency in 2022.

We can refer to a “feminization” of refugees in the Ukrainian context. The term feminization of migration was coined to note not so much an increase in the proportion or numbers of female migrants but the emergence of a new form of female migration in the early 1980s: women were migrating independently to seek jobs abroad (rather than joining their husbands) and were becoming the main income providers for their families.

Ukrainian refugee women who fled without their husbands are faced with new responsibilities. They have to manage alone and find employment while taking care of dependent family members who traveled with them (mainly children and elderly people and, in some cases, people with special needs), while also supporting family members who stayed behind. These challenges can become overwhelming; some end up choosing to return, trading safety in a foreign land for the familiarity of home. Ten percent of all Ukrainian refugees who left following the February 2022 Russian attack have returned home from abroad, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Welcoming Ukrainian women refugees in Europe or the United States and giving them access to the labor market does not necessarily ensure their economic integration. Challenges such as the breakdown of the family unit, limited access to adequate and affordable childcare, social isolation, an employment-education mismatch, overqualification or lack of qualifications and skills, lack of recognition of degrees, etc., can hinder the success of these women in their host countries.

Ukrainians who fled their country benefitted from immediate labor market access in Europe and the United States. To avoid overwhelming the standard asylum system and for faster protection rights, the European Commission decided to give a “temporary protection” status to nationals of Ukraine which entails a residence permit, access to employment, housing, social welfare, medical care, education, etc. Across the Atlantic, the U.S. government launched a program called “Uniting for Ukraine” to offer Ukrainians a chance to come to the United States outside the regular refugee resettlement program under “humanitarian parole” for an initial period of two years. Ukrainian parolees in the United States are eligible for employment authorization and Social Security numbers, as well as federal assistance and refugee resettlement benefits. The same benefits are available to those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which was recently extended to many more Ukrainians in the United States.

This parallelism is interesting. Both the European Union and the U.S. government offered fast and efficient protection modes to Ukrainian nationals outside the regular refugee system. This is quite telling about how the current refugee system is becoming obsolete. 

Two Oxford professors, Alexander Betts and Paul Collier, have written extensively about the existing broken refugee system and called to transform it and render it fit for the twenty-first century. They explain in their book Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World how important it is to provide refugees with opportunities for human flourishing (jobs, training, etc.), rather than seeing them as inevitably dependent upon humanitarian assistance. Those employment opportunities and newly acquired skills can also empower refugees when they return home to rebuild their country—a return very much encouraged by the Ukrainian government, which is providing grants for businesses to stimulate job creation and rebuild the workforce. Zelenskyy recently declared: “Without people coming back, we will not have a strong economy.” His government is betting on attractive job opportunities to act as a pull factor and encourage returns.

While many have done just that, permanent return doesn’t seem to be on the agenda for most Ukrainians. The idea that “all Ukrainians want to return home” is not supported by data on migration intentions. Even prior to last year’s invasion, one in four adults in Ukraine wished to migrate, according to researchers from the Clingendael Institute. The desired destinations were mostly in the EU, but non-EU countries such as the United States and Canada were also on the list. Moreover, research focusing on re-migration patterns teaches us that “it is in fact women and children who have a relatively low probability of returning, especially the longer the war lasts and children put down roots at school.” That is the exact demographic composition of Ukrainian refugees.

As the Ukrainian crisis kept stretching in time and space, a shift from crisis management and short-term measures to long-term policy and support was in order. With this in mind, the U.S. government has set up a new public-private initiative and signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with “Tent Partnership for Refugees” to support employment opportunities and economic integration for refugees generally. “Tent” is a business coalition made up of more than 300 multinational companies committed to supporting refugees through hiring, training, and mentorship. This partnership seeks to mobilize U.S. and international businesses and corporations to connect refugees (including Ukrainians) to employment opportunities in the United States and other hosting countries. It also underlines the importance of shared responsibility, which is one of the main ideas behind the United Nations Global Compact on Refugees.

As time passes, Europe’s integration capacities, including job markets, education, housing, etc., could reach their limits. Aside from those who choose to return home, many Ukrainians will want to migrate onward looking for better opportunities or to join family members scattered farther around the world. We know that diasporas attract onward migration; with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians on U.S. soil (old and new arrivals), more and more Ukrainians will want to join them. Some 355,000 Ukrainian immigrants were living in the United States as of 2019, and at least 300,000 Ukrainian refugees made it here in the last eighteen months.

It is important to follow up on key measures that are meant to help refugees help themselves. The feminization of Ukrainian refugees means additional initiatives will need to be put in place to ensure the social and economic integration of this particular group. For example, is the MOU initiated by the Biden administration bearing fruit? Is it specifically targeting Ukrainian women who are facing numerous challenges on their own? Is the international community making sure that newly acquired skills developed through vocational training could be reinvested by these women when they return to their country and participate in its reconstruction when the time comes? To attain success in their host countries or back home, these women need more than open borders and job markets.

Nayla Rush is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Image: Shutterstock.

Just over one year ago, I asked a simple question in The National Interest: What if machine learning—the most famous research paradigm in artificial intelligence (AI) today—is more limited than it seems? I expressed concern that the United States Department of Defense (DoD) could be unprepared for a slowdown or stagnation in AI development (an AI “winter”).

In the intervening period, state-of-the-art capabilities in subfields of AI, the most prominent among which is natural language processing, have dramatically changed. The rise of generative AI, powering applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion, has led to an endless stream of media coverage on the technology. Generative AI yields seemingly infinite applications; its development has produced a flood of invigorating research and a geopolitical “scramble” of age-defining proportions.

More than this, the U.S. government has seen significant AI-related transformations of its own making. The Chips and Science Act of August 2022 apportioned $280 billion over ten years for research and development in critical technologies, commercialization support, and semiconductor manufacturing on American soil. In October 2022, the U.S. government imposed an extensive array of export controls on Chinese firms, restricting the export of advanced semiconductor equipment and designs. These efforts have since expanded with limited outbound investment controls. The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) has matured, recently launching a task force meant to study the uses of generative AI by the DoD.

If one were keeping score, my concerns of an AI winter dulling American innovation might look decidedly unfounded in retrospect. But is this picture accurate? How seriously should the DoD take the threat of an AI slowdown or stagnation? These possibilities, save for some defense analysts like Paul Scharre, who acknowledge that AI development could “peter out,” have not been given adequate consideration.

Here, I provide a brief tour of AI’s history to explore these possibilities, examine generative AI’s prospects today, and then offer three recommendations for the DoD to mitigate over-reliance on this technology.

Rise, Fall, and Rise Again

AI is an oddball field. The field swings back and forth between “winters” and “summers,” indicating a rise and drop in funding, perhaps owing to an underappreciation of the difficulties researchers face. The founding research proposal for the field of AI in 1955, indeed, had luminaries like John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, among others, writing: “We think that a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems [language use, forming abstractions and concepts, solving problems, and self-improvement] if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.” “Overambitious” does not adequately describe the founding mindset of AI.

Since then, the field has seen cycles characterized by dominant research paradigms. The use of explicit rules hand-coded by human programmers dominated the first wave, Symbolic AI, hoping this approach would eventually capture the dynamism of human intelligence. Others, known as Connectionists, hoped that a system premised upon the structure of mammalian brains—in which artificial neural networks learn from data directly without explicit rules—would lead to human-like intelligence. But by the 1970s, funding dropped, and the field entered its first winter.

“Expert systems” triggered an AI Summer in the early 1980s by hand-coding discipline-specific knowledge into systems for trustworthy commercial deployment. This approach, however, crashed into specialized hardware obstacles and the comparatively more successful deployment of desktop computers, leading to Symbolic AI’s drop from the scene. The computing power that accompanied the rise of desktop computers aided the Connectionists, who used this power to refine artificial neural networks, leading banks to adopt an AI technique premised on this approach that used character recognition to process checks.

Still, the demands for data and computing power required by this emerging form of AI that trains deep neural networks led to its stagnation from the 1990s until the early 2010s, when the big data revolution and increased computing power led to deep learning’s reinvigoration.

The Past Decade as a Race to the Ceiling

The past ten years in AI are commonly described as a victory streak for deep learning, a subset of machine learning. But the abrupt AI “arms race” between American corporate giants, set off earlier this year by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, means that generative AI hype has “spiraled out of control.”

Generative AI hype shields uneven progress within the field and the technical roadblocks to achieving robust deployment of AI systems for sensitive operations. Whereas a typical debate on this matter may center on the opposing positions of generative AI systems being “intelligent” in a meaningful sense or, in contrast, being dead-ends on the road to “artificial general intelligence” or “human-level intelligence,” it need not take this form for defense purposes.

Instead, generative AI may be seen as an acceleration in an ongoing race to the ceiling of machine learning’s utility in emulating human cognitive abilities. It is simultaneously successful in narrow domains and a giant step closer to the limits of this approach, gobbling up the remaining fruits in machine learning’s garden.

U.S. Defense Must Stare Down the Commercial Hype

There is no better time for the U.S. defense establishment to confront the hype, especially given generative AI’s reliance on private-sector AI innovation. Advisory firm Gartner—known for its “hype cycle” of emerging technologies—recently categorized generative AI at the “peak of inflated expectations,” immediately before descending into the “trough of disillusionment” when it becomes critical for providers to deploy the technology in full awareness of its limitations.

There should be no illusions about the potential for existing generative AI systems and major corporate owners to overcome the following (inexhaustive) list of obstacles at a speed suitable for private investment: the tendency to hallucinate (inventing facts with a tone of authoritativeness); the unpredictability of one model version to the next; insufficiently tailored business models that capture the economic value of the generative AI application in question; incompatibilities between AI implementation methods and some companies’ data infrastructures; vulnerability to adversarial attacks that lack robust safeguards; and insufficient consumer interest in AI-integrated search engines.

Generative AI systems do not, as CDAO Craig Martell would have it, offer “five nines…of correctness. I cannot have a hallucination that says: ‘Oh yeah, put widget A connected to widget B’—and it blows up.”

While not all these obstacles are relevant to the DoD’s AI adoption efforts, its reliance on the private sector to act as the primary engine of continuous innovation makes them critical. In addition, while there is sufficient corporate interest in generative AI in the immediate term for the technology to survive, the DoD must nonetheless concern itself with a possible stagnation of the technology’s capabilities or slowdown in mission-applicable breakthroughs.

Consistent with my previous assessment, an AI winter is not guaranteed to occur within a reasonable timeframe. Some argue that the technology will improve over time, making its flaws invisible to consumers. I agree in principle, but this is a major assumption that neglects two critical facts: (1) Time is not unlimited, and the AI bubble could burst before limitations in generative AI are overcome; (2) Generative AI is already receiving a disproportionate share of AI funding across subfields. Generative AI in America exists in a dynamic commercial environment and will survive, thrive, or die primarily in that context.

What should be done by the DoD to mitigate over-reliance on generative AI?

First, the DoD should signal interest in emerging AI research paradigms, like causal and neurosymbolic AI.

Whereas before, I recommended that the DoD send clearer signals about the value of “minority voices in AI pursuing research agendas outside of machine learning,” this should now be firmer and more explicit: emerging AI paradigms, including causal AI and neurosymbolic AI, both identified by Gartner as occupying the “innovation trigger” stage of the hype cycle, ought to be sought out by high-level, agenda-setting organizations like the CDAO. These research paradigms, in part, draw inspiration from the successes of the Symbolic and Connectionist approaches to AI while adding new elements to recognize their shortcomings.

Furthermore, innovative combinations of techniques across subfields in AI (i.e., natural language processing, strategic reasoning, computer vision, etc.) should be prioritized. It is time to break the misleading association bound up in the acronym “AI/ML.”

Second, link AI adoption efforts to the needs of both AI and future warfare.

The operative assumption in much of the DoD’s recent efforts to adopt, field, and integrate AI technologies is that, whatever the flaws of the systems invested in today, they can be improved over time—that autonomous piloting agents will continue to improve in ways suited for the “collaborative combat aircraft” program, that uncrewed drones characteristic of the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 59 will continuously make for better eyes and ears at sea, and so on. Directly connected to this assumption is the DoD’s external-facing organizations like the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) that link the public and private sectors, with concerns about unstable and insufficient funding as well as a difficult-to-navigate defense bureaucracy designed for traditional defense companies abounding.

Given the complexity of the pursuit of AI-enabled autonomy, efforts by organizations like the DIU should be guided by a simple truth: algorithms support applications. It is critical that the DoD not fall into an extrapolation trap, assuming that progress in some areas today means progress will continue indefinitely—at some point, a deliberate hammering out of adoption goals based on the needs of state-of-the-art AI systems themselves may be as important as the funding of such organizations. Echoing the importance of emerging research paradigms in AI above, even the most bespoke AI applications in defense may eventually require a more fundamental innovation that makes them possible.

Third, use academic input to retain intellectual sobriety throughout critical industry dealings.

Over the past year, the U.S. defense bureaucracy has attempted to assert more control over the “technical baseline” in AI-enabled systems. This creates tensions between the DoD and the private sector, where companies like OpenAI closely guard such technical secrets. Pentagon deputy CTO for critical technologies Maynard Holliday thus expressed interest in input from industry, academic, and defense representatives on various issues. This echoes more recent news that the U.S. Army is seeking industry input on an initiative that would have companies “disclose the provenance of their artificial intelligence algorithms.”

Balancing the expertise found in industry and academia—particularly as generative AI’s extraordinary computing power requirements widen the gap between their respective abilities to experiment directly with such systems—can be addressed in the same breath as generative AI’s potential winter. Specifically, individual industry AI leaders must be consciously separated from industry AI research, development, and other defense-relevant trends while recruiting academic expertise for a sorely needed intellectual sobriety on where AI is realistically heading.

Industry leaders have every incentive to inflate the trajectory of state-of-the-art AI systems but frequently employ an extrapolation fallacy. Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, for example, uses the successes of the Diplomacy-playing agent “Cicero” along with other gameplaying AI agents as evidence that warfare will be dramatically transformed in “less than ten years.” It is unclear how this conclusion can be drawn. Academic expertise would not be recruited to put down or oppose such claims by default but instead to recontextualize AI developments in a manner that keeps the DoD’s AI adoption efforts grounded.

Vincent J. Carchidi is a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute’s Strategic Technologies and Cyber Security Program. His work focuses on the intersection of emerging technologies, defense, and international affairs. His opinions are his own.

Image: Shutterstock.