The National Interest

The quiet burial in St. Petersburg this week of Yevgeny Prigozhin may have laid to rest the mortal remains of the notorious mercenary chief, but the Wagner Group which he founded is still very much alive—at least outside Russia. Until the United States and its allies, including partners among African regional organizations and governments, can provide a credible alternative to what Wagner offers, the outfit will not only survive in one form or another but will continue to wreak havoc through wide swathes of Africa and elsewhere. This is because, reprehensible as it might be, there is a strong demand for what Prigozhin’s network offers.

While much of the focus in the aftermath of the spectacular crash northwest of Moscow of the private jet that killed Prigozhin, two of his top lieutenants, and seven other people on the two-month anniversary of the mercenary band’s abortive mutiny and march on the Russian capital was on either how the Embraer Legacy 600 was brought down and who may have been behind an incident that no one believed was an accident, not much attention was paid to where the Wagner boss was immediately before his untimely demise. In fact, as the Wall Street Journal’s world enterprise team first reported, the Russian street thug-turned-mercenary leader spent what ultimately proved to be his final days visiting outposts in Africa where he had not deployed some 5,000 hardened fighters, but also built a sprawling business empire dealing in everything from natural resources to liquor, much of it illicitly. According to the Journal’s reporting, Prigozhin made stops in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali and, while in the former country, also met with commanders of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) from Sudan.

In fact, from the information I received from senior African political and security officials—coincidentally, I was traveling in the Sahel at the same time and discussed the Wagner Group’s activities in neighboring countries with them, even before we knew of Prigozhin’s death—not only was he trying to prevent a Kremlin takeover of his African network, but he was actively trying to expand its operations. One security chief even gave me a detailed briefing of how Wagner was using the territory of a country where it had a presence to recruit opponents of his regime and form them into an armed group that, once trained, could be sent back to try to overthrow the government or at least cause considerable mischief.

Since Prigozhin, Wagner group co-founder and military commander Dmitry V. Utkin, and logistics chief Valery Y. Chekalov were all aboard the jet that went down on August 23, the future of the enterprise they built remains to be determined. The simultaneous elimination of all three certainly facilitates what is said to be the Kremlin’s preferred scenario: the takeover of the group as a whole by the Russian authorities. The call on Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar in Benghazi just one day before by Russian deputy defense minister Yunus-Bek B. Yevkurov, himself a career airborne commando and military intelligence (GRU) officer, was reported to have been for purposes of assuring the Libyans of seamless continued support “under new management.” Another potential scenario, perhaps less likely in the absence of Prigozhin and his deputies, is the emergence of two Wagner successor groups, one directly controlled by the Russian Defense Ministry, possibly via the GRU, and another retaining autonomy. This may have been what Prigozhin was aiming at as he scurried across Africa during his last days. Finally, there is the possibility that the network fragments into multiple discrete units, each acting opportunistically where and when it can. While some Western policymakers and analysts evince a relish for this outcome, as with terrorist groups, the loss of central leadership among organizations can often lead to increased violence and destruction, not its diminution.

Beyond what organizational structure a post-Prigozhin Wagner Group might assume, there is the question of whether or not the successor or successors can maintain the complex web of not just mercenary forces and arms traffickers, but also various commercial enterprises and trade links that enabled its hitherto rapid expansion and, indeed, high profitability. Can any governmental bureaucracy, much less a Russian one, really be run in an entrepreneurial fashion? On the other hand, without the vast profits generated by the businesses—a report by The Sentry in June 2023 documents, for example, the acquisition of a single gold mine with a deposit valued at $2.8 billion—how sustainable are the military operations far from the war in Ukraine?

These questions aside, however, it is important to ask why Wagner has been and continues to be successful in Africa. The answer lies in understanding the demand for what Prigozhin offered regimes, both incumbent and potential. Two things stand out in particular:

Regime survival. Two days before his death, Prigozhin spoke up on camera for the first time since the June mutiny, appearing in a video originally posted to Telegram channels affiliated with Wagner. In his short address, the mercenary chief declared: “Wagner is conducting reconnaissance and search operations, making Russia even greater on every continent—and Africa even more free. Justice and happiness for the African nations.”

Notwithstanding his soaring rhetoric, Wagner’s value proposition to regimes in Africa is very basic: regime survival. With the exceptions of Libya and, much more recently, Sudan, Wagner’s hitherto modus operandi has been to target weak, embattled sovereigns like the CAR’s internationally-recognized government which, at the time the first Russian “civilian instructor” (as the deployed Wagner personnel were euphemistically described then) arrived in early 2018, was barely able to secure the capital of Bangui. Not only did Wagner paramilitaries provide protection for President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, but Russian operatives also soon became critical players in efforts to ensure that he “won” reelection in 2020. More recently, they deployed to arrange the August 5 referendum which supposedly resulted in 95 percent of votes approving constitutional changes that abolished presidential term limits and extended the mandate from five to seven years. No wonder Touadéra hosted Prigozhin in the presidential palace on the banks of the River Ubangi.

The importance of regime survival is not to be underestimated when one contrasts the experience of CAR’s Touadéra, who is looking forward to a prolonged tenure, with the fate of four victims of the rash of military coups in the Sahel since 2020—Presidents Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta of Mali, Roch-Marc Kaboré of Burkina Faso, and, most recently, Mohamed Bazoum of Niger—who, despite being staunch Western allies with especially close ties to France, were overthrown while French troops stationed in their countries did nothing. In the case of the recent coup in Niger, Le Monde has even confirmed an allegation by the putschists that the now-deposed Nigerien government asked it to intervene to rescue the president in the early hours of the coup, but French authorities did not authorize the operation. The coup this week in Gabon only underscores the total dénouement of what was once Françafrique: if a garrison of some 400 French troops cannot prevent the overthrow of a President Ali Bongo Ondimba who, like his late father before him, has been a staunch ally of France, why would any government want to risk incurring the wrath of anti-French populist sentiment by having them around?

And it is not just the historical baggage of Western allies or even the questionable reliability of some of them, but African regional organizations like the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have not helped their credibility with not only their failure to prevent or reverse coups but their penchant for ostentatiously making threats they have neither the material capacity nor the political will to carry out.

Elite profit. While its services do not come cheap—the Wall Street Journal investigative team reported that Prigozhin sent a jet last fall to collect a $200 million payment he had earlier demanded from Haftar—Wagner has also taken care to allow local elites in partnership with it access to its globe-spanning network to sell natural resources that would otherwise be difficult for them to market, whether oil from Libya, gold from Mali and Sudan, or diamonds from the CAR. Were it to gain access to Niger—despite overtures from Prigozhin, the junta that took power in the Sahelian country had not opened the door for the Russian mercenaries, a clear red line for the United States as I have previously pointed out—this category might well include uranium.

Having established a quasi-permanent base in the CAR through de facto state capture, Wagner has used the country as a launchpad for entry to neighboring countries, including Sudan (where its non-state partner is the RSF) and Cameroon (where it engages in various rackets and through which it moves contraband to CAR). Earlier this year, it was reported that U.S. officials shared information with their Chadian counterparts of Wagner plots to destabilize their country from its CAR base. Since then, Chadian officials have maintained vigilance on their frontiers as well as focused on exiled dissidents who might fall in with the mercenaries. Similarly, following its initial entry into Mali, Wagner has not only expanded its presence in the country but used it as a bridge to Burkina Faso and other countries in West Africa. All this has bolstered the interests of Russia as well as the profits of Prigozhin and others. Even without the Wagner boss, the Kremlin will want to see the network survive and continue to exploit opportunities as they arise in Africa.

To counter this ongoing challenge, the United States, Europe, and their African partners will not only have to be conscious of the threat, but to craft their response by understanding what makes this malign element, irrespective of whatever form it assumes in the future, attractive to begin with.

Ambassador J. Peter Pham, a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Senior Advisor at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy, is the former U.S. Special Envoy for the Sahel and Great Lakes Regions of Africa.

Image: Shutterstock.

The National Interest recently published an article I wrote entitled, “Getting Smart about Dividing America’s Adversaries.” A critique of my article was subsequently published by Bouthaina Shaaban with the title, “Getting Smart!!!“ in Al Mayadeen—a Beirut-based news outlet that Wikipedia describes as being, “viewed as pro-Hezbollah and pro-Syrian government.” While the bio line on her article about my article demurely describes her just as “an Arab intellectual,” Shaaban is much more than that. She has served as a political and media adviser to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and “has been described as the Syrian government’s face to the outside world.” She has been sanctioned both by the U.S. Treasury Department and the European Union.

This being the case, whatever she has to say is probably either reflective of or at least in tune with the Assad regime. Indeed, I witnessed her strenuously expressing the Assad government’s viewpoint in person in Moscow at the February 2018 Valdai Conference on the Middle East. Just after both Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif gave speeches expressing sympathy for Turkey because the United States was supporting the Syrian Kurdish forces whom Ankara regarded as enemies, Shaaban harshly denounced Turkish intervention in northwestern Syria and accused Ankara of facilitating the infiltration of mercenaries across the Turkish-Syrian border.

It should not come as a surprise, then, that she disagreed—vehemently—with my article in The National Interest. In it, I argued that while in the past Washington had succeeded at exploiting rivalries between its adversaries (most notably Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s exploitation of the Sino-Soviet rift), the United States has not been as successful at this recently. The reasons I cited were opposition from both some of America’s existing allies and politically powerful domestic political forces inside the United States as well as the increased ability of America’s adversaries to exploit differences between Washington and its traditional allies.

According to Shabaan, however, “the US was not using disputes, but creating disputes in order to weaken all parties and stay as the most hegemonic power in the equation.” She further noted that what I “described as ‘taking advantage of disputes’ is seen by the people of these countries as igniting and creating disputes.” But the United States was not able to do this now because “most people all over the world have matured and become truly aware of the objectives of the US in … its endeavors to torment them one way or other.” Further, the “true intentions and purposes’’ of the United States “have become vivid to all in Asia, Africa and Latin America,” and this “is precisely why the US is no longer able to do what it used to do in the past.”

Her logic implies that if the United States cannot take advantage of (or, as Shaaban argues) create differences between its adversaries because “most people all over the world have matured and become truly aware of the objectives of the US,” then this must not have been true in the past when the United States was able to do this successfully. However, the adversaries whose divisions the United States was able to previously exploit were not democracies but authoritarian regimes. American diplomacy succeeded in working with not the people of these countries, but their hitherto anti-American leaders such as those of Communist China and Vietnam as well as of Arab nationalist Egypt, Iraq, and Libya. Even then, it was not any American charm offensive that persuaded previously anti-American leaders such as Mao Zedong, Anwar Sadat, Saddam Hussein (in the 1980s), and Muammar Qaddafi that they had previously been oh so wrong about Washington, and now saw that America was really their true friend. No, these previously anti-American leaders decided that certain other anti-American regimes or movements were more of a threat or problem to them than America, and that they could more readily deal with that threat or problem with America’s help.

If America’s adversaries now have differences with each other but do not turn to the United States for support, it is because they continue to regard the U.S. as more of a threat despite their differences with other anti-American regimes or movements, and so have no desire for any help from America. This is not because the anti-American authoritarian leaders of today, “have matured and become truly aware of the objectives of the US,” while those of the past were not. Instead, what matured in the past was rivalry between anti-American regimes or movements. For example, the Sino-Soviet rift had raged for over a decade (during which Moscow and Beijing competed with each other in supporting Marxist and other anti-Western movements) before each became frightened enough of the other to cooperate with the U.S. government that each had previously reviled. Similarly, Egypt’s Sadat did not turn to the United States out of a newfound love of democracy, but because he understood that the Soviet Union could not or would not help Egypt forcibly retake the Sinai following Israel’s occupation in 1967. Thus, his only realistic hope of getting it back was through an American-backed peace process with Israel—which did indeed succeed.

The truth of the matter is that, just like the present, Washington has never been able to create differences among its adversaries but only take advantage of those differences that had already emerged between them. Even then, it can take years for this process to succeed since long-entrenched aversion both inside anti-American regimes to cooperating with the United States and inside the United States to cooperating with those same regimes must first be overcome. In fact, authoritarian leaders can implement decisions to cooperate with the hitherto reviled Americans relatively quickly after finally making up their minds that this would be in their interests. However, American administrations coming to a similar conclusion about working with adversaries must overcome often vociferous opposition from Congress and politically influential segments of the American public who will denounce any attempt at cooperation with America’s adversaries as “naive,” “weak,” or “woke.”

In other words, there is no guarantee that Washington can even exploit rivalries that have developed between its various adversaries, much less create rivalries between regimes that still regard the United States as a greater threat than each other. But in that Shaaban has reportedly been “the Syrian government’s face to the outside world,” she may not appreciate that American administrations face domestic constraints—such as Congressional and public opinion—on foreign policymaking that authoritarian leaders like Assad can simply suppress.

Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Image: Shutterstock.

On July 30, Kuwaiti foreign minister Salem Al-Sabah embarked on a crucial visit to Baghdad and met his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein and later Iraqi prime minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani. The visit aimed to address the bilateral relations between the two nations and urgently tackle the longstanding and contentious maritime border dispute revolving around the Khor Abdullah waterway. This dispute remains a major source of contention between Iraq and Kuwait. The diplomatic visit holds special significance due to its close timing with the twenty-third anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which still reverberates in the region’s memory. Moreover, the visit occurs within a context of profound internal power shifts in Iraq, which have favored Shia groups.

The implications of these developments for regional stability are noteworthy, as they could bear on the future geopolitical landscape. In light of these complex dynamics, resolving the maritime border dispute takes on heightened importance, underscoring the urgency for both countries to find a constructive and lasting solution.

Borderline Disorder

The border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait is centuries old. Back-and-forth conflicts, meddling by colonial powers, and great power competition have influenced the current boundaries between the two countries. Even before the discovery of oil, the boundary conflict remained a contentious issue. Despite signing agreements and recognizing Kuwait in the past, various Iraqi governments, whether the Hashemite Kingdom or Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, have never relinquished their claims to parts of Kuwaiti territory. The Iraqi claim on Kuwait has shifted between complete and partial control, often depending on Baghdad’s political stability. Whenever Baghdad is politically stable, it escalates its demands on Kuwait and refuses to demarcate the border, leading to more problems for Kuwait.

In the past, Iraq has tried various tactics to force Kuwait into a settlement, such as announcing the Sheikh of Kuwait as a deputy governor of one of its provinces, making incursions into Kuwaiti territories, and deploying troops on the islands of Bubiyan. They also pressured Kuwait to cede the islands of Bubiyan, Warbha, and Falaikha on security and commercial pretexts. Kuwait, desiring peace, agreed to some of Iraq’s demands, including allowing Iraqi troops on the islands to counter Iranian aggression. Kuwait also provided substantial financial and political support to Iraq to prevent military actions.

Despite these efforts, on August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein rolled his army into Kuwait and annexed it as the nineteenth province of Iraq. The invasion triggered a forceful international reaction, uniting Western powers and Arab countries to eject Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. Following the conflict, Kuwait and Iraq signed several agreements, under the supervision of the United Nations, to demarcate their land border. While significant progress has occurred in determining most of the land border, maritime borders remain undrawn. Resolving this dispute was the main goal behind the visit of the Kuwaiti foreign minister to Baghdad last month.

At the core of this disagreement lies the strategically significant Khor Abdullah estuary, a crucial passage for 80 percent of Iraq’s imports and exports. Since 2003, Baghdad and Kuwait have entered into multiple agreements to settle this dispute. The deals encompassed collaborative navigation efforts and security measures to safeguard the area. However, Baghdad’s implementation has often been sluggish, influenced by both commercial considerations and geopolitical factors.

In the foreseeable future, Iraq aims to complete the Al Faw Grand Port by 2028—anticipated to be the largest in the Middle East. This ambitious project could revolutionize Iraq’s economic landscape, providing unimpeded access to the sea and reducing reliance on existing routes and resources. However, it’s improbable that the Grand Al Faw Port will significantly alter the perspective of the Iraqi political elite concerning Khor Abdullah. Consequently, this might prolong the controversy between Iraq and Kuwait for years to come.

Furthermore, territorial disputes often prove too intricate to resolve due to the substantial influence of a state’s status and identity, which can outweigh political and economic considerations. These conflicts often invoke feelings of national pride, victimization, or resentment, complicating the search for common ground and resolution. The emotional and historical dimensions can add complexity to negotiations, necessitating delicate and thoughtful approaches to achieve peaceful outcomes.

Public Outrage

As part of the conflict resolution framework, the Iraqi government took the initiative to establish a high-level committee responsible for overseeing a subcommittee dedicated to seeking mutually agreeable resolutions for border-related matters and other disputes existing between Iraq and Kuwait. Nevertheless, the Iraqi government’s approach to resolving these issues has yet to garner unanimous support. The Kuwaiti foreign minister’s visit, intended to address the border demarcation, swiftly evolved into a heated political and public topic within Iraq.

The relocation of residents and a neighborhood transition became a hot public opinion issue, triggering significant public resistance from the Iraqi side. A portion of this opposition has arisen due to misunderstandings and manipulation by populist politicians aiming to position themselves as ultra-nationalists for political gains, particularly in light of the upcoming Iraqi provincial elections scheduled for November 2023.

These populists have falsely accused the Iraqi government of treachery and ceding Iraqi territory to Kuwait, an assertion far removed from reality. Despite this, the messaging has gained traction within Iraq. Citizens, tribal leaders, and politicians from both Sunni and Shia backgrounds have accused the Sudani government of relinquishing Iraqi territory, gaining significant traction on social media.

The residents of the neighborhood have expressed their rejection of the relocation proposition. Some Iraqis have even reminded Kuwait of its role in Iraq’s devastation, alleging actions such as siphoning oil from Iraqi oilfields and aiding the United States in its occupation after 2003.

Protests have erupted in Basra, with people expressing concerns over concessions related to the Khor Abdullah canal and “Um al-Qasir to Kuwait.” Some individuals fired shots over the Kuwaiti border in defiance of any agreement recognizing Kuwaiti authority over Khor Abdullah. Furthermore, the tribal leaders in Basra have adamantly rejected the border demarcation outlined in the UN-brokered deal between Iraq and Kuwait. They argue that Iraqi territory was seized under extraordinary circumstances, prompting them to call for an amendment to the UN agreement to align with Iraq’s historical territorial boundaries. These tribal leaders have also leveled accusations against Kuwait, alleging land grabbing and the displacement of Iraqis from their land in Um al-Qasir. Such discourse can stir intense emotions on both sides of the border and escalate tensions. These events underscore a critical truth: intense emotions have intertwined with the border matter. Mishandling it could lead to instability.

In reaction, the Iraqi parliament formed a special committee to inquire about the progress of negotiations with Kuwait and assess alleged undue concessions to Iraq’s southern neighbor. Faced with significant public and legislative opposition, the Iraqi government had no choice but to clarify its Kuwaiti border position. Basim Al-Awadi, the spokesperson for the Iraqi government, strongly refuted any notion of territorial concession to Kuwait, characterizing the reaction as a form of “political blackmail.” Al-Awadi asserted that the government’s actions were in accord with the UN-endorsed 1993 agreement between Iraq and Kuwait. He emphasized that previous Iraqi administrations had also remained committed to upholding the terms of the agreement.

Shia militia threats

Latent tensions over the border have resurfaced elsewhere. Shia militia groups have frequently threatened Kuwait with violence and claimed Kuwait to be a historical part of Iraq. The issue over the Khor Abdullah demarcation has added intensity to such claims. Shia militia groups have targeted the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border in the last few years. The situation deteriorated further in 2022 when Kuwaiti border guards allegedly harassed Iraqi fishermen in the disputed territory of Khor Abdullah. Shia MP Ala Al-Haidari, affiliated with the Al-Fateh Alliance and the state-sponsored, mostly Shia paramilitary, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), accused Kuwait of “assaulting Iraqi fishermen.” He even posted a video on social media, calling the PMF to deploy their forces in Khor Abdullah to protect Iraqi fishermen. This escalation was accompanied by reports in news sites belonging to pro-Iranian militia groups, amplifying the voices of the PMF. This accusation led Kuwait to summon the Iraqi Ambassador to protest the allegations.

No doubt, if the border dispute remains unresolved, the situation could worsen for Kuwait in the coming years. The recent doubling of Iraq’s budget for the PMF and a personnel expansion potentially threaten Kuwait. The underlying tensions surrounding the disputed area are evident, raising concerns about possible escalations in the future. Consequently, it is paramount for both nations to actively pursue a peaceful resolution and prevent further tensions and potential regional instability. Establishing a clear demarcation of both the land and maritime borders is essential to mitigate the risks of future conflicts.

Implications for the United States

Kuwait has played a significant role in assisting American military involvement in the Middle East. In 1991, the United States orchestrated an extensive global military operation to expel the Iraqi Army from Kuwait. The Kuwaiti government also assisted the American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. While American and coalition forces withdrew from Iraq in 2011, unresolved historical and border disputes could draw Washington into diplomatic efforts.

Another standoff exists between Kuwait and Iran over offshore gas fields—known as Arash in Iran and Dorra in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Consequently, Tehran could exploit the ongoing Kuwait-Iraq border dispute to further its own interests. Taking advantage of the perceived decline in American influence, Iran has taken a more assertive regional stance. Iranian oil minister Javad Owji’s recent reaffirmation of Tehran’s rights over the gas fields has triggered strong reactions from nations in the Arab Gulf.

Considering Iran’s significant proxy political and military influence in Iraq, substantial security concerns for Kuwait are on the horizon. The potential manipulation of groups like the PMF to destabilize the Kuwaiti border under plausible deniability presents worrying scenarios. This could potentially entangle the United States in yet another Middle Eastern conflict, diverting resources and attention from other critical strategic priorities, including managing rivalries involving China and Russia. Resolving the longstanding border dispute between Baghdad and Kuwait City could undermine Tehran’s influence and proxies while contributing to regional stability, allowing the United States to prioritize.

The Path Ahead

In a region characterized by historical disputes, shifting power dynamics, and evolving political landscapes, resolving the Iraq-Kuwait border issue is a vital pillar of stability. Past experiences emphasize the dangers of leaving territorial conflicts unresolved. Transparent communication and engagement with all stakeholders are imperative in shaping the way forward and reducing jingoism on both sides of the border. The potential for external actors to exploit these tensions highlights the pressing nature of finding a resolution. Hence, it remains paramount for the United States to continue its diplomatic efforts to settle the Iraq-Kuwait border, thus contributing to lasting peace and security in the region.

Dr. Yerevan Saeed is a Visiting Scholar at the Arab Gulf Institute in Washington.

Image: Shutterstock.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reminded us how little autocracies care about humanitarian atrocities. The war is a gross violation of human rights and the principle of peaceful settlement of international disputes as codified in the United Nations Charter, which has helped maintain the rules-based international order and kept the world in relative peace since the end of the Cold War.

In today’s globalized world, even localized crises may have a global impact. It is therefore imperative to deter similar threats from happening elsewhere. Taiwan—a democracy that is home to over 23 million people and that I proudly represent—continues to confront enormous challenges posed by China.

Despite never having ruled Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has for decades vowed to take control of the island and refused to renounce the use of force. The people of Taiwan have remained calm, safeguarding the status quo of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. However, as China’s power has grown, so too has its aggressiveness—threatening our democratic way of life. They have sent warplanes and ships across the Taiwan Strait’s median line, encroached into our air defense identification zones, and intensified gray-zone tactics like disinformation and economic coercion against us in an attempt to wear down our will to fight.

But China’s aggressive behavior goes well beyond Taiwan. Through gray-zone activities in the East and South China Seas, China is attempting to expand its power and solidify its false territorial claims. In addition to signing a security agreement with the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, the PRC has been securing ports for future military use in the Indian Ocean. All of these maneuvers are causing grave concerns that peace is becoming more difficult to maintain.

It is in the interest of every country in the world to ensure peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. Half of the world’s commercial container traffic passes through the Taiwan Strait every day. Taiwan produces the majority of the world’s semiconductors and plays a key role in global supply chains. Any conflict in the area would have disastrous consequences for the global economy.

The best forum for discussion of these important issues is the United Nations. UN officials often speak of joint solutions, solidarity, and inclusion in tackling the pressing issues of our time. Taiwan is willing and able to take part in these efforts.

However, Taiwan continues to be excluded from the UN due to China’s distortion of UN General Assembly Resolution 2758. This resolution neither states that Taiwan is a part of the PRC nor gives the PRC the right to represent the people of Taiwan in the UN and its specialized agencies. The resolution only determines who represents the member state China, which China itself and the international community recognized following the relevant vote in 1971. The subsequent misrepresentation of Resolution 2758 contradicts the basic principles upheld by the UN Charter and must be rectified.

The 78th session of the UN General Assembly, centering on the theme “rebuilding trust and reigniting global solidarity,” is timely in light of a number of global challenges. For example, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were designed as a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity. Yet the most recent SDG progress report showed that just 12 percent of SDG targets were on track, while progress on 50 percent has remained insufficient. And on more than 30 percent, we have stalled or even regressed.

As a truly global institution, the UN can serve as a champion of progress. We call on the UN to uphold its principle of leaving no one behind by allowing Taiwan to participate in the UN system, rather than excluding it from discussions on issues requiring global cooperation. A good first step would be to allow Taiwanese individuals and journalists to attend or cover relevant meetings, as well as ensure Taiwan’s meaningful participation in meetings and mechanisms regarding the SDGs.

The bravery and resilience of the Ukrainian people have inspired freedom-loving people of all nations, forging a new sense of democratic solidarity around the world. Unity is crucial to pushing back against Russia’s aggression and to preserving the universal values of human rights and global peace more broadly.

Authoritarian governments need to know that they will be held accountable for their aggression, and the only way to settle differences is through peaceful means. Allowing Taiwan to meaningfully participate in the UN system would benefit the world’s efforts to address pressing global issues and demonstrate the UN’s determination to unite for global peace at a critical juncture when the future of the world is at stake.

We are stronger together. Now is the time to act on this fundamental principle by including Taiwan.

Jaushieh Joseph Wu is the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Image: Shutterstock.

Many Taiwanese identify themselves as the “Orphan of Asia,” not only due to the island nation’s long history of being ruled by foreign rulers but also because of its lack of assured security. Like the archetypal orphan of Jungian psychology, many Taiwanese people are haunted by feelings of detachment, insecurity, and distrust toward others and yearn for a stronger security commitment from the United States. Meanwhile, the prevalent sense of doubt or skepticism regarding the dedication to defending the island persists. If left unchecked, these narratives could undermine the relationship between Taiwan and the United States and imperil the strategic unity of Indo-Pacific democracies—a situation that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would no doubt exploit.

In essence, skepticism of the commitment to Taiwan’s defense centers around the perception of three key factors: the perceived balance of power between Washington and Beijing, the perceived level of American commitment, and the perceived image of the United States as a great power. These perceptions are just that, and they do not necessarily stem from concrete realities. Thus, Beijing intends to manipulate the Taiwanese populace’s perception by fostering the belief in Chinese omnipotence: the island is indefensible, America is unreliable, and unification is inevitable.

A Capability Gap

China once basked in its status as a “rising great power,” enjoying impressive economic growth after the 2008 Beijing Olympics and its robust rebound from the global financial crisis. However, the conviction that China could replace the United States as the world’s next hegemon seems to have waned compared to the triumphalist fervor of a decade ago. According to 2023 global surveys by the Pew Research Center, this shift in sentiment results from several factors: China’s aging population, inefficient and ideology-driven economic policy, the trade war and technology sanctions, and the far-reaching economic repercussions of the pandemic shutdown.

Nonetheless, China’s ongoing military expansion continues to trigger apprehension within Taiwan, other Indo-Pacific nations, and the United States. Theories abound about a potential superpower clash and the potential emergence of a Chinese-dominated international order. Two competing viewpoints, Graham Allison’s “Thucydides Trap” and Hal Brands and Michael Beckley’s “Peaking Power Trap,” have engendered fervent debates. 

Allison posits that the current U.S.-China competition, like most historical instances of hegemonic transitions in modern history, could escalate into a great power conflict. On the other hand, Brands and Beckley contend that as China’s economic and demographic outlook prematurely peaks, the likelihood of successfully displacing U.S. supremacy diminishes. Should this scenario unfold, China may challenge the United States at a juncture when its prospects are most favorable. In either scenario, be it the “Thucydides Trap” or the “Peaking Power Trap,” a war involving Taiwan would inevitably serve as a litmus test for China’s ambition to challenge American hegemony.

For many skeptics in Taiwan, the hegemonic decline of the United States is evident in its inglorious exit from Afghanistan and its reluctance to intervene decisively in the Russia-Ukraine War. Islanders interpret these events as foreshadowing the eventual American failure to confront China on behalf of Taiwan. Adding to this perspective, certain theorists suggest that Washington views Taipei as a strategic pawn, using it to contain China by inciting a cross-strait war before consolidating its position as the world’s sole superpower.

A Credibility Gap

In addition to the uncertainties surrounding the United States’ capability to deter a potential Chinese invasion in Taiwan, a prevalent distrust towards the defense commitment endures. This sentiment partially results from the island’s historical experiences of feeling “abandoned” by its rulers and allies, whether the Dutch, Chinese, or Japanese. 

However, the history of the Kuomintang (KMT), Taiwan’s former ruling party, adds a profound layer to this collective memory. Since its inception, the KMT in China has shifted alliances among major powers such as Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the United States, all in pursuit of a more powerful and supportive ally. More often than not, divergent foreign policies characterized these relationships. After the KMT’s defeat in the Chinese Civil War and resettlement in Taiwan in 1949, the KMT witnessed the rapprochement between Nixon and Mao in the 1970s, precipitating Taiwan’s diplomatic isolation.

Another source of distrust stems from the policy of “strategic ambiguity,” in which the United States neither commits nor rules out defending Taiwan in the case of Chinese coercion. Unlike formal military alliances, such as NATO, where the principle of collective defense binds members together, Taiwan is not a treaty ally. The shift of diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 further precluded an alliance. 

Today, Taiwan may appear to possess a “rock-solid commitment” from the United States, underscored by President Joe Biden’s repeated affirmation of military support in the event of a Chinese. This commitment, however, remains verbal and has yet to materialize into a formal alliance or any substantial military deployment. Strategic ambiguity persists, leaving the Taiwanese people in suspense.

In addition to the historical perception of “abandonment” and the lack of strategic clarity, the Taiwanese are wary of the range of new ideas swirling in DC that may weaken commitment. For example, proponents of restraint, like Michael Swaine, advocate for reducing arms sales to Taiwan to de-escalate tensions with China. Charles Glaser even proposes a “Grand Bargain,” suggesting that Washington abandon Taipei in exchange for Beijing’s renunciation of military expansionism. Thinkers like Elbridge Colby highlight deficiencies in Taiwan’s military readiness and question America’s commitment if the islanders fail to take their own defense seriously. Furthermore, Corporate America, with its substantial economic stakes in China and pull in Washington, might lobby for closer U.S.-China ties or even suggest the incorporation of Taiwan into China, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has done.

Specific discussions or proposals that might not be in the American mainstream can still resonate, especially among those interested in fostering distrust toward America. For instance, “detaiwanization” involves potentially relocating valuable assets, such as the island’s advanced semiconductor industry and highly skilled workforce. Another discussion revolves around the paranoid notion that the White House might consider “destroying Taiwan” or its key industries should China invade, minimizing any strategic gains China could reap upon capturing the island. Lastly, discussions about Taiwan’s final status can involve scenarios such as the issuance of a “Fourth U.S.-China Joint Communique” or the brokering of an “interim agreement” that imposes the Hong Kong model of “One Country, Two Systems” on Taiwan. None of these proposals involves meaningful Taiwanese participation or consent, and they fuel the chronic sense of grievance.

America’s Image

Some narratives revolve around America’s general image in the eyes of mainlanders and are not directly linked to the U.S. government’s statements and posture. Nonetheless, these images exacerbate existing doubts about American support for Taiwan. For instance, anti-imperialist narratives suggest that the United States exploits the island for its military, political, and economic interests. Taiwan’s military purchases and TSMC’s investment in Arizona, are seen as embodiments of American imperialist inclinations.

Some Chinese nationalists in Taiwan view themselves as victims of a “century of humiliation” engineered by Western powers. This anti-Americanism can be attributed to the United States’ hegemonic position, which perpetuates China’s inferior global standing and Taiwan’s separation from the “motherland.”

The United States also faces accusations of hypocrisy for proclaiming support for democracy and human rights while grappling with internal issues of minority discrimination and bolstering autocratic regimes abroad. These criticisms arise when Washington limits its engagement with Taipei to appease authoritarian China and when its officials reportedly take sides in Taiwan’s elections.

Finally, some voices advocate ending Taiwan’s status as an American subsidiary. Related proposals may involve concepts such as “strategic autonomy,” an “equal distance strategy” between the United States and China, or a declaration as a neutral state.

Defending Democracy?

As we delve into narratives that cultivate distrust towards the United States within Taiwanese society, it is also necessary to thoroughly analyze public opinion surveys. These surveys provide valuable insights into the events that could impact confidence in American commitment to a greater degree. For instance, the Taiwanese often gauge American reactions to conflicts elsewhere to indicate how it might respond to a potential cross-strait war. Public polls like the Taiwan National Security Survey have shown that the proportion of respondents who believed that the United States would intervene fluctuated between 40 percent and 60 percent over the past two decades. However, following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War last year, these numbers dropped from 65 percent in October 2021 to 34.5 percent in March 2022, according to the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation surveys. Moreover, the surveys by Academia Sinica’s American Portrait project indicate a decline in those who believed the United States is a credible country from 45.3 percent in 2021 to 34 percent in 2022. Such changes even coincided with President Biden’s reiterated commitment to the island’s defense.

Examining these surveys also provides insights into the factors that shape Taiwanese people’s perceptions of trust and distrust regarding U.S. commitment. In their eyes, the United States makes decisions based on its calculation of national interests rather than on an unwavering commitment to democracy. According to a 2019 survey by Academia Sinica’s China Image project, most respondents (53.3 percent) believed the United States would intervene militarily due to the island’s strategic location in the Asia-Pacific region. The survey also revealed that then-President Donald Trump’s assertive stance towards China (43.5 percent), American military superiority over China (40.1 percent), Taiwan’s role as a significant economic partner (36.1 percent), and shared democratic values (36 percent) were considered secondary reasons for the U.S. to defend Taiwan. In contrast, around one-third of respondents (34.2 percent) believed that Washington would not prioritize protecting democracy over its own interests. Over a quarter of respondents also cited the economic benefits the United States could obtain from China (28.7 percent) and President Trump’s unpredictable policies (26.8 percent) as notable reasons for the likelihood of no intervention on Taiwan’s behalf.

Beyond the “Orphan of Asia”

In the end, it may be necessary to acknowledge that mitigating the many elements contributing to Taiwanese skepticism could be challenging. No matter how firm the American guarantee, Beijing and its collaborators’ cognitive warfare will continue to sow distrust of the United States within Taiwanese society. 

Nevertheless, Taipei and Washington can still tackle this issue collaboratively. It is crucial for both parties to openly acknowledge the existence of skepticism and take proactive steps to manage it. The Taiwanese people must recognize that their autonomy and democratic way of life would not be as assured under Chinese rule. Similarly, the United States. should acknowledge the significance of safeguarding Taiwan’s freedom as an integral element of the Pax Americana. 

As Nancy Bernkopf Tucker and Bonnie Glaser suggested, constant and open high-level dialogues between Taipei and Washington are essential for building mutual trust. Disagreements on policy are natural as long as both sides manage them constructively. Both nations may have limited perspectives due to their distinct policy priorities, making it imperative to consistently exchange viewpoints rather than launching unilateral directives at each other.

Finally, Taiwan should strive to overcome the lingering feelings of being an "orphan" and assume the mantle of responsibility for its own self-defense, regardless of whether it can rely on U.S. assistance during a crisis. The lesson from Ukraine demonstrates that the national resolve to resist and fight on is as critical as the backing of powerful allies. This determination might not guarantee instant aid from partners or provide immunity from enemy actions. Yet, Taiwan’s best hope is to escape the eternal recurrence of being ruled and abandoned.

Yang Kuang-shun is the Co-founder of US Taiwan Watch.

Image: Shutterstock.

Lebanese officials are opting to double down on efforts to extract as much funding as possible from the United Nations amidst one of the worst economic meltdowns in modern times. The ongoing battle between Beirut and New York over energy costs reflects the corrupt nature of Lebanon’s ruling class and the relationship flaws between the two entities. Lebanese leaders are effectively choosing to extort UN agencies supporting refugees in their country to sustain a corrupt system and bypass reforms—an effort that will only further harm refugees in the long run, possibly by design.

On August 21, the Lebanese Council of Ministers announced that it would cut electricity to Syrian refugee camps if the United Nations fails to pay for supposed dues owed to the Electricite du Liban (EDL), Lebanon’s state electricity provider. This follows an initial June decision to bill the United Nations for energy costs associated with Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in the country. At the time, Caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayyad argued, “We cannot allow this issue to disturb the financial balance of Lebanon's state power company, which was on the brink of collapse.”

The cabinet’s effort is a continuation of anti-refugee trends in recent years. Lebanese authorities, under Fayyad’s instruction, began collecting payments for electricity supplied to Palestinian refugees in December 2022. The move was highly unpopular amongst the Palestinian community in Lebanon as it occurred during a period of decreased funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the UN agency handling humanitarian and development activities associated with Palestinians. The UNRWA is responsible for the infrastructure in Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps, paying most or the entirety of the electricity bills for individuals and families living there.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon work within a similar system supported by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the UN International Organization for Migration. Electricity provision falls within the UN’s mandate in its work with Syrian refugees across Lebanon. In this regard, UN funding covers fuel purchases and generator upkeep that largely powers formal Syrian refugee camps and falls outside traditional Lebanese power generation. A substantial majority of Syrian refugees in Lebanon live in formal or informal camps, while those living in informal camps often have little to no electricity.

Fayyad and Lebanon’s political class ignore these facts, instead choosing to scapegoat refugees while extorting humanitarian actors providing basic provisions to those most in need. While horrific, the approach is hardly surprising when observing the Lebanese government’s treatment of Syrian refugees, who regularly face arbitrary arrest, torture, and refoulment to Syria. Work permits are few and far between and housing is nearly impossible to obtain, let alone at a fair cost. As a result, an estimated 90 percent of Syrian refugees live in extreme poverty.

Worse, Lebanon’s January 2015 residency regulations created an intentional catch-22 for Syrian refugees by requiring registration with UNHCR or a Lebanese sponsor to remain in the country legally. Both present undue burdens for Syrians, especially as the regulation also prevents UNHCR from registering new Syrian refugees unless they are children of registered individuals. Registration fees cost $200 to renew and individuals must have many different documents—often difficult for displaced Syrians facing passport delays with their home government. As a result, only 16 percent of Syrian refugees in Lebanon have legal status to reside in the country.  Syrians are thus regularly taken advantage of due to their unstable position in the country, entrenching their status as the country’s poorest individuals.

Perspective matters when observing government policies and their impact on those most in need. Beirut understands that it cannot squeeze pennies from the poorest in the country but sees an opportunity to extort UN agencies in the guise of balancing the electricity sector—a notoriously corrupt space defining the patronage and clientelism that has ravaged Lebanon to this day. Fayyad talks about the “financial balance” of the EDL as if this is a norm in Lebanese history when this is far from the truth.

Rather, the EDL is possibly the most inefficient and wasteful aspect of the Lebanese government. Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a comprehensive review of the EDL’s structure and governance in March, highlighting the scale of inadequacy that has come to define the institution. In the last ten years, EDL has run a deficit of “between $1.5 to $2 billion per year” while receiving annual budgetary transfers from the state averaging “3.8 percent of Lebanon’s gross domestic product (GDP) over the last decade, amounting to almost half the overall fiscal budget.” The report shares one particularly damning statistic, noting transfers to the EDL between 1992 and 2018 amounted to over $40 billion of the country’s public debt.

Yet the EDL produces an average of one to two hours of electricity per day, according to HRW’s 1,200 household survey. The question thus becomes one of efficiency: why is the EDL running deeply red numbers while producing barely any electricity?

The answer is corruption and mismanagement. On the technical side, Lebanon relies on heavy fuel oil and diesel for power generation and has failed to maintain its infrastructure. In terms of corruption, clientelism and nepotism are major issues. Preferential contracts within these corrupt networks, such as the 2020 tainted fuel scheme and the 2021 Karpowership scandal, produce kickbacks for the private sector, bribes for government employees, and politicians who maintain the status quo to their benefit. An informal private diesel generator industry valued at $3 billion has also grown substantially in recent years as households have shifted to private methods of obtaining electricity. This sector is powerful, with tentacles throughout the Lebanese government that prevent reform towards more affordable options like renewables or a more efficient EDL.

It is within this context that the United Nations and world leaders should push back on Lebanon. Extorting the UN agencies keeping Syrian refugees afloat amidst one of the worst displacement crises in modern times over so-called unpaid energy bills while operating an openly corrupt electricity sector should be called out as hypocrisy. To be sure, Lebanon is facing a brutal economic crisis and the ugly aspects of a racist global refugee and migration system refusing to fairly disburse the displaced in other countries. But Syrians are the poorest segment of Lebanese society and the least connected to the country’s electrical grid. Such facts should disqualify Beirut’s blatant efforts to pinch pennies from international institutions as some of Lebanon’s elites work to profit off a system harming Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian families.

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

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Ukrainian forces have recently advanced toward the key port city of Mariupol as part of their ongoing counteroffensive against Russian positions, marking the second advance in two weeks. Meanwhile, the recapture of the Urozhain village in the Donetsk region, announced by Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar on August 16, appears to be partially facilitated by the use of United States-supplied controversial cluster munitions.

Ukraine began employing cluster munitions supplied by the United States on the battlefield against Russia in mid-July to support its counteroffensive against the Russian defensive positions. The United States termed their usage “effective,” while Russia warned of responding in kind, with President Vladimir Putin stating that Russia has a “sufficient stockpile” of several kinds of cluster munitions of its own, which could be used in a tit-for-tat manner. However, both Kyiv and Washington are downplaying the long-term implications of the introduction of cluster munitions in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which could outlive the conflict itself, as is evident from previous examples of their usage where unexploded bomblets continue to affect ordinary citizens despite the passage of several decades. Their utilization for short-term military utility can thus be considered counter-productive, with long-term impacts outweighing their short-term benefits.

Cluster munitions, also known as cluster bombs, are weapons that open up mid-air, releasing tens or hundreds of explosive sub-munitions, killing or seriously injuring targets indiscriminately through explosives and shrapnel over extended periods of time and across an area equivalent to several football fields. They can be launched from air, ground, or sea through warships, aircraft, artillery, or rocket launchers. 

There are two main issues with the employment of such weapons. Their inability to discriminate between military and civilian targets, as evidenced by the fact that they have caused serious harm to civilians, including women and children, wherever they have been employed in conflicts. Secondly, they are notoriously unreliable given their high failure rate, also known as the dud rate. Given the fact that their scattering over a wide area is a key characteristic that incentivizes states to employ them, bomblets that fail to explode continue to act in a similar way as landmines. They also result in loss of eyesight and limbs as they stay dormant for years and decades until exploding as soon as any individual steps up on them, leading to death or severe injuries from explosives or shrapnel.

The usage of cluster munitions thus renders areas unsafe to live on, affecting the lives of ordinary citizens. Farmers may accidentally trigger the bomblets while working in their fields, children may mistake them for toys, and the public, in general, has to live in a constant state of fear and paranoia.

Given these implications of cluster munitions, the introduction of such weapons in the Russia-Ukraine conflict can cause disastrous consequences for civilians. The U.S. Department of Defense claimed that the munitions being sent to Ukraine have a dud rate of below 2.35 percent. However, it is important to note that assessments collected from experiments in controlled environments significantly deviate from those recorded under combat conditions. Moreover, despite the Pentagon receiving assurances from Kyiv in writing regarding the calculated usage of cluster bombs to break Russian defensive positions in non-urban areas only, there have been reports of Ukraine using them in attacks on Russian villages in the Belgorod region. Furthermore, with artillery units having these weapons in their inventory, the risk of unauthorized or accidental usage amid the fog of war will continue to linger.

However, even before the latest provision of cluster bombs by the United States, human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused both Russia and Ukraine of using such weapons in the conflict. An HRW report suggested that both sides used cluster bombs in Izium city and its surroundings in 2022, while the city remained under Russian control, which caused deaths and serious injuries to civilians. “Cluster munitions used by Russia and Ukraine are killing civilians now and will continue to do so for many years. Both sides should immediately stop using them and not try to get more of these indiscriminate weapons,” HRW’s acting arms director Mary Wareham had said. Both sides have, however, continued to blame the other for such usage while denying their own.

From a military point of view, cluster munitions can be viewed to have great utility. The main rationale given by the United States and Ukraine for the explicit provision and usage of such weapons is their utility in breaking the Russian trenches, which have continued to slow down Ukraine’s counteroffensive. The United States has provided over 2 million rounds of its traditional 155mm howitzer munitions to Ukraine, which has a range of 24-32 kilometers, an ideal choice for Ukraine to hit Russian targets from a distance. However, with Ukraine having to fire 7,000 to 9,000 rounds on a daily basis amid an intensifying counteroffensive, cluster munitions appear as an attractive option to hit more targets using fewer rounds.

Nonetheless, the long-term implications of these weapons have prompted international efforts to ban their use, stockpiling, production, or transfer, according to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which opened for signatures in December 2008 and entered into force in August 2010. So far, a total of 123 states have joined the convention, with 111 state parties and 12 signatories. However, almost all major countries, including the United States, Russia, and Ukraine, still remain outside its ambit.

There is a dire need for both Russia and Ukraine to stop using cluster munitions in the conflict given the long-term implications of these weapons, which outweigh both parties’ short-term military goals. Moreover, all major states that remain outside the ambit of the Convention on Cluster Munitions should proceed with signing the treaty, starting with the major powers, to put an end to the decades-long sufferings inflicted on ordinary citizens by cluster munitions. The goal might seem far-fetched given the current atmosphere of polarization and mistrust, but it is still a goal worth pursuing.

Saadain Gardezi a Researcher at Strategic Vision Institute (SVI) Islamabad and a graduate in Strategic Studies from the National Defence University Islamabad. He tweets at @saadaingardezi.

Image: Shutterstock.

Readers of a certain age may recall the time in the 1950s and 1960s when the so-called Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was the rage on the international scene, igniting one’s imagination as the struggles against imperialism, colonization, racism, and nuclear arms did.

Indeed, to be non-aligned with either of the two major powers, the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective blocs, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact, during the first two decades of the Cold War seemed the “cool” thing to do, reflecting diplomatic creativity, a certain radical chic, and the face of a glorious future when the nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America would determine the international outcomes.

The narrative would sound very familiar to contemporary audiences: the elites that ruled the old rich and powerful European powers that had won World War II were apparently passé, trying to perpetuate an old global status quo that supposedly benefited their economic and military interests and not those of 55 percent of the world population that had only a small slice of its GDP and that resided in what became to be known as the “developing countries.”

The developing world—later to be known as the Third World or the South—would choose a foreign policy middle course between the Western and Eastern blocs and press these advancing industrialized economies (later referred to interchangeably as the First World and the North) to provide them with more access to the world’s economic resources that the pro-status-quo powers control and more representation at the center of international power they dominate, like the United Nations.

It all seemed to make a lot of sense from a moral perspective, the world’s underclass demanding democratization of the international system and the distribution of the resources of the global economy.

These also happen to be the slogans promoted these days by the members of the so-called Global South as represented by the members of the BRICS (Brazil, India, China, and South Africa) grouping and those who seek to join it, who represent 47 percent of the world’s population and 37 percent of its GDP calculated by purchasing power parity.

If the NAM’s target for criticism were initially the First World consisting of the United States, Western Europe, and their allies, and the Second World of the Soviet Union, the BRICS challenges the Western industrialized countries, as represented by the Group of 7 (G7) consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States and the international order they control through various institutions.

And, indeed, since the first summit the BRICS held in 2009, the grouping has drawn international attention, not unlike the NAM in its early years. If some forecast now that the BRICS could one day rival the G7 and erode the preeminent global power of the United States and the West, predictions that were made in 1950s and 1960s envisioned the triumph of the developing nations, which would soon not only dominate the UN but also use their control of primary resources, like energy, to squeeze concessions from the industrialized nations.

The first conference of the heads of state of the NAM in Belgrade in 1956, following the historic Bandung Conference a year earlier, brought together the larger-than-life world figures—the leaders of newly independent states including Yugoslavia’s Josip Tito, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Egypt’s Gamal Nasser, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Indonesia’s Sukarno—representing the post-World War II struggle against Western imperialism.

Notwithstanding their grand rhetoric that celebrated democracy and human rights and their goal of expanding freedom, aspiring to collective security in global terms, and terminating the domination of one country over another, most of the leaders of these nations were ruled by authoritarian regimes that repressed ethnic and religious minorities, sought to advance their interests through military might and territorial expansion, and embraced a centralized economic system along the lines of the Soviet Union and Communist China.

In fact, contrary to their expressed goal of non-alignment between the two global superpowers, the NAM ended up advancing a mostly anti-Western agenda, with the United States accused of pursuing old-new forms of imperialism and colonialism through its Cold War military strategy as well as its trade and investment policies and being blasted for its support of racist South Africa and expansionist Israel.

In a way, as they gradually became a majority at the UN General Assembly, the NAM members were able to attack and pass resolutions criticizing the “imperialist” U.S. while disregarding the fact that the Soviet Union had remained the world’s last true empire—where European Russians ruled over Kazakhs and Azeris, not to mention Georgians and Latvians. Meanwhile, another NAM darling, China, repressed its Tibetan and Muslim minorities. The United States was ostracized for its military intervention in Vietnam; the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Czechoslovakia didn’t get much attention. So much for “non-alignment.”

The bottom line: with the exception of its anti-American, anti-Apartheid, and anti-Israeli positions, the NAM lacked a coherent agenda. It consisted of nations like Communist and secular Cuba and feudal and theocratic Saudi Arabia, poor Yemen and wealthy Kuwait, Indonesia’s military regime and India’s semi-democracy—many of which shared nothing in common and, like in the case of India and Pakistan, were long-time adversaries.

Interestingly enough, the same Communist China that these days is hoping to employ to expand BRICS (which has eleven members now) and transform it into a major body that would weaken American and Western domination of the global economy and international system while strengthening China’s influence had similar expectations from the NAM.

Hence, in the early 1950s, then-Chinese premier Chou En-Lai advocated that the non-aligned states could be employed to improve China’s diplomatic position, and stated that China’s goal was “winning over” the international middle-of-the-road forces, creating a neutral belt of states as the “zone of peace” during the Cold War.

Like the NAM, the BRICS, as columnist Japan Ganesh puts it, is a mishmash “of democracies (India), autocracies (China), secular states (Brazil), quite the opposite (Saudi Arabia), the rich (the United Arab Emirates), the poor (Ethiopia), former empires (Russia), and former colonies (Algeria).”

Who in all seriousness expects such a constellation of states “to ever cohere into something that deserves the name ‘bloc,’” asks Ganesh, who notes that after fifteen official summits, BRICS have yet to come up with an identifiable program to replace the Washington Consensus and neoliberalism. Ironically, if one country did benefit from the pro-free trade policies entrenched in the Washington Consensus, it was China.

Fans of BRICS should recall the gradual slide of the NAM (which actually continues to exist today as an organization) into global irrelevancy, as some of its members like Cuba and Egypt, turned into Soviet protectorates, exchanged lethal fire with each other (Iraq and Kuwait; India and Pakistan), and discovered that playing one superpower against the other has done very little to improve their international status and economic conditions.

In a way, after the collapse of the apartheid regime (thanks to U.S. pressure), the Arab-Israeli peace process, the success of new economic powers in East Asia (thanks to their embrace of American capitalism, a route eventually taken by Communist China), and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the NAM has become an anachronism.

Similarly, anti-American rhetoric isn’t going to turn BRICS into an effective international bloc. Growing tensions between China and India, the continuing war in Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear military program, and disagreements over trade and investment policies are only some of the issues that are bound to make it difficult to employ BRICS to pursue any form of collective action.

Like in the case of the NAM, America’s success in countering China’s BRICS designs depends on its ability to promote and project to the world a winning political and economic model, offer developing countries access to its markets while reforming the international economic organizations it leads as well the UN Security Council in a way that would respond to the needs of countries like India, South Africa, and Brazil.

Dr. Leon Hadar, a contributing editor with The National Interest, is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia and a former research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He has taught at American University in Washington, DC, and at the University of Maryland, College Park. A columnist and blogger with Haaretz (Israel) and Washington correspondent for the Business Times of Singapore, he is a former United Nations bureau chief for The Jerusalem Post.

The coup news from Gabon, one of the few Francophone countries where President Emmanuel Macron was still welcome, must be grim reading for the French leader. Gabonese president Ali Bongo, who claimed to have won the recent election, lost power in the coup.

This is the tenth coup in West and Central Africa in the last three years, and both regional and international political leaders have a challenge ahead, as it is unlikely that the Gabonese military will heed calls for restoring democracy.

Both the military and many Gabonese believe the election was neither free nor fair—a view which could not be disproved, since Bongo did not allow independent election observers. This turn of events also mirrors the recent similarly derided election outcome in Zimbabwe and the slew of undemocratic regimes in the BRICS membership queue. Will Washington, Paris, and London be sure-footed this time, or will they continue to mouth diplomatic platitudes and slink off?

President Macron was hosted by President Bongo in Libreville in Gabon as recently as March 1, 2023 at the One Forest Summit. The event kicked off a four nations African tour during which President Macron declared that “the era of French interference in Africa is over.” Some political and intelligence observers in Paris now expect nothing meaningful from the Macron government, “President Macron does not love France and cares nothing for Africa, he only cares about himself,” one of them told me this week. Under Macron, France has given up on Africa, setting up a geostrategic threat to America, Europe, and the UK. France has been ejected from Burkina Faso and Niger, Algeria only recently made up with Macron following a rocky diplomatic relationship, and Morocco recently denied a request for a Macron state visit. Even Macron’s plea for an invitation to the BRICS Summit in South Africa was denied.

The West should not expect help from France in Gabon. In fact, another observer told me that many people in the French intelligence and security establishment hope that America will rescue democratic interests in Africa.

Given the United States’ poor track record of keeping Africa on the side of democratic values, it is unlikely that Gabon will spur Washington from its African torpor. This opens the door further for Russia and China, and newly-accepted BRICS members such as Iran, who are looking to bank Africa for their own account.

The UK also has a problem. Commonwealth members Gabon—a recent addition—and Zimbabwe now have questions about electoral legitimacy. Yet the West does not seem to have a clear policy or plan, unlike with Ukraine, where they immediately stepped into the breach for Ukrainians under attack by Russia.

All the while, the geostrategic threat grows. Algeria provided China with a deep-water port on the Mediterranean, Djibouti contributed one on the horn of Africa, and now Gabon may give one on the Atlantic. France’s retreat in West Africa and the Sahel enables Islamic extremists to march into the breach. This may soon present the West with a nightmare choice. If, for instance, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM)—a Mali-based terrorist group that has expanded its operations to Burkina Faso—participates in the mooted Burkina Faso elections planned for 2024 and wins, what could the West say or do? “This would create an Afghanistan in West Africa, thanks to Macron,” said my French source.

The Gabon development means nearby countries—including Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and even Ghana—must be quite nervous about either being next in line for a coup, or subject to extremist Islamic incursions from neighboring military governments weakened by sanctions and isolated from Western influence.

Expect Russia and China also to step into the vacuum in Gabon for the sake of its oil and gas riches. Such a development would be welcomed in many African circles. “When we talk to America they lecture us about pronouns and force ESG policies, but the Chinese give us roads and infrastructure,” a retired Congolese bank executive recently told me.

Until America, the UK, and Europe, particularly France, manage more than platitudes, the Chinese and Russian footprint in Africa will grow, bringing these autocratic regimes the added advantages of strategic ports, access to valuable minerals, and lucrative oil and gas resources.

François Baird is the founder of The FairPlay trade movement as well as co-chairman of the international consultancy Baird’s CMC, with forty-seven partners in seventeen countries.

Image: Radio Télévision Gabonaise.

Over the past two decades, the Caribbean has enjoyed a relatively strong track record of political stability in a largely democratic framework. Unlike other parts of the world, coups, assassinations, and socio-political upheaval have not been the norm. But there are exceptions to this: the failed state in Haiti and the weak state in Cuba. In both cases, prospects for improvement anytime soon are dubious.

At the same time, the rest of the Caribbean is not immune to some of the same pressures, including an upsurge in violent crime and corruption, fueled by easy access to guns from the U.S. and the spread of transnational criminal organizations operating out of Venezuela, another failed state. Citizens throughout the region are increasingly disillusioned by the seeming inability of their governments to come to grips with violent crimes which is eroding the democracy brand. For policymakers in Washington, these are major geopolitical concerns that are most likely to intensify.

Haiti: The Failed State

What is a failed state? To paraphrase political scientist Robert I. Rotberg, a failed state occurs when the government loses legitimacy due to its inability to deliver political goods to its citizens (such as law and order or basic amenities like water and power), accompanied by a breakdown into violence that leads to fragmented political authority. The most critical political good is human security, which ranges from the protection of national borders to “[enabling] citizens to resolve their disputes with the state and with their fellow inhabitants without recourse to arms or other forms of physical coercion.” Weak states suffer many of the same problems as failed states, but manage to stagger from crisis to crisis without a total collapse.

The Caribbean’s failed state is Haiti, a country pummeled by a long avalanche of negative events, both natural and political. An archaic land tenure system combined with the long-term absence of coherent government development initiatives has left much of the large rural sector to fend for itself since the nineteenth century. This has led to widespread deforestation, as Haitians have turned to chopping down trees to make charcoal for energy. Haiti now has an estimated 98 percent of forest cleared for fuel, stripping away topsoil, which facilitates repeated floods. Frequent devastating hurricanes have also hit the island. Furthermore, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in 2010 left considerable long-lasting damage. It was one of the deadliest earthquakes ever recorded, and resulted in between 100,000 and 300,000 people killed as well as leveling much of the country’s infrastructure. Further damaging earthquakes hit Haiti in 2018 and 2021.

While Mother Nature has contributed much to Haiti’s long slide into a failed state, the unraveling of the country’s political system has been just as devastating. Haitian politics have a track record of autocratic governments, interrupted by periods of attempted democratization and frequent political breakdowns. The period between 2018 and 2023 has been particularly onerous, marked by ongoing riots and demonstrations, a near-paralysis of the formal political system, major corruption scandals, the bloody rise of criminal gangs (estimated to number around 200), and the shocking assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021. The erosion of state authority is most evident in the power of the gangs, which conduct kidnappings, seize fuel depots and as of mid-2023 probably control more than half of Port-au-Prince, the capital. An ongoing stream of guns from the United States has not helped matters.

To the dismal political backdrop, the Haitian economy has limped along, with most foreign companies pulling out, aid programs suspended, and public services stopped in many places. In 2023, the International Monetary Fund noted that “Haiti faces a challenging macroeconomic outlook amid a dire humanitarian crisis”—a situation complicated by food inflation caused by the Russo-Ukrainian War that broke out in February 2022.

Considering the above, Haiti’s woes represent a complicated geopolitical problem for the rest of the Caribbean, which is largely unprepared to handle a failed state. The challenge comes in the form of large numbers of Haitians seeking to escape by mitigating elsewhere. While many of them head by boat to the United States, others are seeking to make it north by traversing the Darien jungle between South and Central America and showing up on the Mexican border with the United States. Still others are heading to the Dominican Republic, The Bahamas, Brazil, Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname, where social and healthcare systems are already stretched as well after being hit by waves of Venezuelan refugees.

For the international community, Haiti is a difficult challenge. In the past three decades, there have been three full-scale international interventions, none of which was a sustained success. The United States, Canada, France, and the United Nations have all unsuccessfully sought to help Haiti. This, in turn, has resulted in donor fatigue in working with Haiti, a crisis that never seems to go away. In 2023 efforts to induce Kenya to lead a new intervention offered some hope, but such a mission faces considerable challenges, such as whom to work with on the ground in Haiti. Indeed, the deep state decay and corruption on the island-state have been contributing factors to the hesitancy of the international community to commit. Within the Caribbean, the fifteen members of CARICOM (Caribbean Community) have demonstrated a flaccid response to the failed state in their midst, despite Haiti being a member of the regional bloc.

Sadly, Haiti’s descent into failed statehood is likely to continue, with an ongoing fragmentation of political authority to the gangs. This is akin to Somalia’s descent, which began in 1992 and has continued through today. As long-time Haiti watcher, Georges Fauriol, noted: “Undoubtedly a coherent, sustained international response is urgently needed, particularly in driving toward an identifiable ‘roadmap’ initialed by Haitians themselves. This should be the center of international efforts as Haiti policy stumbles into 2023.” It is possible that the same analysis will apply to Haiti in 2024.

Cuba: The Weak State

While Haiti has many of the attributes of a failed state, Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean, is sliding in the same direction. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, Cuba has been in an almost perpetual state of economic crisis. Despite that the Cuban Communist Party remains very much in control. President Miguel Díaz-Canel, a life-long regime insider who succeeded Raúl Castro, presides over a state that is increasingly failing its citizens in terms of meeting basic human needs. A combination of the U.S. economic embargo (in place since the 1960s), gross economic mismanagement, corruption, and ongoing opposition to private sector enterprise, Cuba entered the 2020s economically adrift. While some help came from China and Russia, Cuba has been unable to find a sponsor like the Soviet Union or Venezuela (in the 2000s and 2010s) to prop up its failed socialist economic experiment, with its survivalist state bent on maintaining its political-military-bureaucratic elite in power through its monopoly of armed force.

Under Díaz-Canel’s stewardship, the country’s problems have worsened, which was reflected by the brutal 2021 devaluation of the two-decade-old currency system. The mix of the devaluation and concerns over food security (already pinched in recent years) were then hit by inflationary food prices from the Russo-Ukrainian war. For a country that imports between 70 and 80 percent of its food, higher international prices hurt. Since 2020 inflation has been persistently high, adding to the pressure on household budgets. According to the World Bank, inflation hit 401.6 percent in 2021—one of the highest in the Americas and it has remained high since.

Cubans have responded to economic stagnation by either migrating, putting off having children, or sporadically opposing the regime. Indeed, over 340,000 Cubans, many of them working age, have come to the United States through the U.S.-Mexico border since the 2022 fiscal year commenced. The outbound nature of a youthful segment of the population raises some chilling prospects for the island—its demographic profile is closer to Italy or Spain, two countries with sharp population decline, than the rest of the Caribbean. Cuba faces a future of a shrinking labor pool and rising numbers of elderly people, who will put greater pressure on pensions and the healthcare system (one of the country’s few bright lights). Unlike Italy and Spain, Cuba is poor.

While there is no armed resistance to the Cuban state, there is a strong undercurrent of discontent, which spilled over in July 2021, when the country was rocked by demonstrations that emerged from popular anger largely due to the brutal deterioration of everyday living conditions. Significantly, the July demonstrations were the first major outburst of popular discontent since the 1960s. The government’s response was to crack down, arresting over 1,500 protesters and handing down harsh sentences. Considering that the Cuban economy continues to be deeply troubled, the socio-political landscape remains tense, with the potential propensity for further protests.

Cuba’s economic problems and the steady erosion of the communist regime’s legitimacy clearly have geopolitical implications. Both China and Russia have a presence on the island either through economic relationships (with Russia signing several deals in July 2023) or intelligence gathering, and it has been suggested more than once that there is the potential for either Beijing or Moscow to have a military presence on the island. At the same time, it is doubtful that either China or Russia has the intention to subsidize the lingering Cuban socialist experiment.

Will Others Follow?

While Haiti is a failed state and Cuba is a weak state, the rest of the Caribbean is not without its challenges to statehood. Much of it is caused by gang violence, which is worsened by the influence of drug trafficking and intense competition for drug routes. According to Statista, in 2022, Jamaica topped the list of homicide rates with 52.9 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, with Trinidad and Tobago in third place and Belize in eighth place. Puerto Rico rounded out the top ten.

While violent crime related to drug trafficking has a track record in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, places such as St. Lucia are now being affected. In 2021 and 2022, St. Lucia saw record numbers of murders. The Eastern Caribbean country’s crime problem stems from several factors: the island-state has emerged as a transit hub for South American cocaine destined for North American and European markets, gangs are well-equipped with weapons smuggled from the United States, and local authorities are out-gunned. In 2023, St. Lucian prime minister Philip J. Pierre requested assistance from the Regional Security System, which includes most of the Eastern Caribbean, Barbados, and Guyana.

The rise of violent crime is eroding the social contract between Caribbean states and their citizens. Corruption is also hurting the Caribbean brand of democracy in places like the Dominican Republic, Suriname, and Jamaica. According to the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, in terms of points (with 100 as a perfect score), Barbados fell from 76 in 2012 to 65 in 2022, the Bahamas from 71 to 64, and St. Lucia from 71 to 55. Corruption is eating away at citizens’ faith in their political institutions and leaders. According to Trinidad and Tobago’s intelligence body, the Strategic Service Agency (SSA), the gangs have moved beyond extortion and drug sales to becoming community leaders and being awarded numerous contracts to do public works as well as “illegal quarrying (sand mining), fraud-scheming, money laundering, black market sale and resale of U.S. currency, party and events promotion, organized robbery, motor vehicle larceny, counterfeiting, human smuggling and illegal gambling.”

Although several CARCOM countries have undergone political violence in the past (Jamaica in the 1970s, Grenada 1979–1983, Trinidad and Tobago’s Jamaat al Muslimeen coup attempt in 1990, and Suriname’s Interior War in 1986–1992), political violence has waned. Most governments now face transnational and domestic criminal gang violence, which is more unpredictable and threatening to the average citizen due to a certain degree of randomness. And CARICOM-related regional mechanisms (law enforcement and legal/governance) are either out-matched or simply overwhelmed by the sheer depth of actions and resources of bad actors.

Another challenge related to the ability of Caribbean governments to deliver political goods to their citizens is climate change. The region is struggling with increasingly more violent hurricanes, droughts, salination of freshwater sources, and eroding coastlines. There are also problems with dying coral reefs, overfishing, sargassum (floating mats of brown seaweed that rot on the beach), and the discharge of wastewater from cruise ships. If Caribbean governments are unable to resolve these problems, they risk their legitimacy by not fulfilling their part of the pact with their citizens. Many Caribbean governments are speaking out on this matter, such as Barbados, whose Prime Minister Mia Mottley has called for better financing mechanisms to help the region through a restructuring of the major multilateral lending organizations.

Does Washington Want a Failed Neighboring Region?

For the United States, Caribbean security is highly important, though it is sometimes lost in the shuffle of diplomatic priorities. Nonetheless, Washington must get tougher on the flow of illicit weapons to the Caribbean, curb its own domestic drug use, expand the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBISI) program, and rethink its Cuba policy (particularly as Havana is deepening its relations with Beijing and Moscow).

Greater engagement is also needed to help build sustainability and resilience vis-à-vis problems related to climate change and to help improve governance, something to which the Biden administration has been sympathetic to. But more is needed. The Caribbean has failed and weak states, but it is not a zone of instability; Washington should want to keep it that way.

Dr. Scott B. MacDonald is the Chief Economist for Smith’s Research & Gradings, a Fellow with the Caribbean Policy Consortium, and a Research Fellow with Global Americans. Prior to those positions, he worked for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Credit Suisse, Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, KWR International, and Mitsubishi Corporation. His most recent book is The New Cold War, China and the Caribbean (Palgrave Macmillan 2022).

Image: Shutterstock.

A new weapon has just been added to America’s economic statecraft arsenal—one that has the potential to realign Western capital flows in ways that support U.S. national and economic security, at home and abroad. In an August 9 executive order (EO), the Biden administration imposed new rules on outbound investments in three critical industries—semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence—to prevent “countries of concern” from turning U.S. technology against its creators.

The new EO lists a single country of concern (China) but the designation could be extended to a host of other adversarial nations. The Treasury Department will still need to draft regulations based on the order. In addition, multiple bills have been introduced in Congress to address problematic outbound investments that weaken American security. Interestingly, even the currently narrow EO lays out a framework that could later be expanded to address the risks posed by new industries or countries that, as the EO states, support our adversaries’ “military, intelligence, surveillance, or cyber-enabled capabilities.”

The limited focus of the new EO may obscure what it truly represents for global markets: Washington’s recognition that outbound capital flows are strategic extensions of national power—whether used to build foreign industry or, in China’s case, funding dual-use technology and research with known military applications. While America has long relied on inbound investment screening, sanctions, import restrictions, and export controls to constrain the malign or disruptive behavior of foreign adversaries, outbound investment restrictions have the potential to evolve into a more potent economic tool.

Outbound investment rules can limit the flow of capital to worrying sectors of a foreign economy and significantly constrain the funding that otherwise might be keeping adversarial industries afloat. Most importantly, it sends a critical message to the private sector to carefully examine geopolitical risks when investing in foreign regimes.

Outbound investment rules could also help America, its allies, and the powerful engines of private Western capital work in greater alignment to support democratic and economic guardrails. Like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s belligerence towards Taiwan threatens our globally integrated world economy.

Outbound investment restrictions could evolve into a critical new tool to curb our adversaries’ weaponization of technologies that disrupt America’s economic and national security, by handicapping key industries that adversaries use to wage war, promote authoritarianism, or build surveillance states that oppress their citizens. While outbound capital restrictions will not necessarily prevent the domestic support of those industries—China will undoubtedly still continue to fund domestic AI industries—it does keep Western capital from inadvertently furthering investments counter to U.S. and allied interests in highly critical areas. Given the size and power of the Western private sector, that is an ambitious objective.

Like any weapon, economic or ballistic, risks are inherent to its deployment: unintended consequences, collateral injuries, and the temptation to overuse. If poorly implemented, outbound investment screening can obstruct or burden legitimate investments and could easily harm U.S. investors who would face competitive disadvantages against overseas rivals. Further, U.S. companies with legitimate and productive investments in countries like China could face unwarranted retaliation.

Despite that, outbound investment screening has tremendous promise—in large part derived from its ability to harness the power of the U.S. financial sector and highlight the long-term market risks that derive from propping up dangerous regimes. While this might have once seemed heavy-handed, the private sector risk appetite is shifting. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, private multinationals pulled out of Russia in record numbers, taking losses and closing off markets that they had worked hard to establish. As tensions have risen with China, in parallel with China’s self-inflicting government actions against industry, the United States and global private sectors have not waited for a possible invasion of Taiwan to act. Even without any outbound investment restrictions in place, foreign investment in China has nosedived. Indeed, Chinese officials who used to come back from foreign trips with briefcases full of private sector agreements to invest in the country are now coming back empty-handed.

With the private sector paying close attention to geopolitical risk and rising divisions between those who support the global order and those countries seeking to supplant it, the timing is excellent for the US and its allies to help drive the alignment forward, helping to support the rules of the road by which all nations can prosper.

To truly succeed, outbound investment regulations drafted based on this EO will need to pay attention to two critical dynamics:

First, any regulations must be clearly defined and combined with an enforcement framework that is robust and palatable to private companies seeking to make legitimate investments in higher-risk countries.

Second, regulators must launch an open and frank ongoing dialogue with investors (with similar dialogues between the United States and its allies), as we seek to collectively reimagine how private investment can and should support our shared national and economic security.

If policymakers commit to enforcement and meaningful communication, outbound investment rules could help facilitate a global realignment of capital that benefits all those countries committed to playing fair.

Elaine Dezenski is senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Image: Shutterstock.

The recently released film Oppenheimer has drawn public attention to the real and present danger of nuclear weapons. This is long overdue, as the nuclear threat has often been overshadowed in public discourse despite these weapons presenting as much of an existential risk to the world as the climate crisis.

The Doomsday Clock, a symbolic measure of humanity’s vulnerability to nuclear catastrophe, was recently adjusted from one hundred seconds to just ninety seconds to midnight. There are multiple reasons for this. Over the past twenty-five years, the global nuclear security architecture has come under strain, and international tensions have severely tested it, reminding us that the apocalyptic fears depicted in “Oppenheimer” remain pertinent. It is imperative that the world take the threat of nuclear weapons seriously and map a pathway towards nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

Kazakhstan knows all too well the disastrous consequences of nuclear weapons. For almost half a century, our land endured atmospheric, ground, and underground tests. This impacted the health of roughly 1.5 million Kazakhs living near the Semipalatinsk test site, where the Soviet Union conducted nuclear tests between 1949 and 1989. The after-effects of radiation persisted three decades after Kazakhstan decommissioned the Semipalatinsk test site in 1991.

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres was right when he said last year that it is vital to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons before they eliminate our world.

What can be done to achieve this?

Firstly, the international community must resist any attempt to normalize nuclear threats, challenging those who assert that even a limited nuclear strike can be justified.

Secondly, negotiations on arms control and further reductions of nuclear arsenals must be resumed. In particular, the United States and Russia must negotiate a new arms control framework to supersede New START, the last remaining major nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia still in force. Unless updated, New START will expire in 2026.

The international community must underscore the need to restore global nuclear diplomacy and reaffirm worldwide commitment to nuclear disarmament—the ultimate goal of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation Weapons and the more recent Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

The upcoming G20 summit in New Delhi in September, which will bring together senior representatives of global powers, presents an ideal opportunity for political leaders to reaffirm their commitment to nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

One year ago, the tenth Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference concluded without agreement. Ahead of the next Review Conference in 2026, states parties to the NPT should leverage preparatory meetings to redress this and advance an agenda to reduce nuclear risks and strengthen the treaty that has long been the cornerstone of the global nonproliferation regime. NPT signatories have entrusted Kazakhstan to chair the second session of the NPT Preparatory Committee. It is my country’s hope that a balanced approach can reinforce the Treaty’s review process.

To support the global push for nuclear disarmament, Kazakhstan was among the first states to join the TPNW in 2019. Given our painful history with nuclear testing, we have partnered with Kiribati—a Pacific nation that has similarly experienced the devastating fallout from nuclear tests—to co-chair a working group focused on victim assistance, environmental remediation, and international cooperation under the framework of the TPNW. A key goal is to establish an International Trust Fund. We are optimistic that this initiative can be realized during Kazakhstan’s presidency at the Third Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW in 2025.

Even amid global geopolitical unease, progress in nuclear disarmament is possible. The number of nuclear weapons has decreased from around 65,000 in the mid-1980s to about 12,500 today. Kazakhstan can act as a blueprint for nuclear powers as a country that voluntarily relinquished its nuclear weapons after independence from the Soviet Union and closed the world’s largest nuclear test site. Together with its neighbors in the region, Kazakhstan established a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia. This process can be applied to other areas of the world, too.

Of course, numerous political and technical obstacles stand in the way of a nuclear-weapon-free world. Yet, as international tensions and nuclear arsenals rise, there’s no alternative if we are to avert potential disaster. The record of close calls over the decades shows just how near the world was to a nuclear catastrophe. Amidst other pressing global challenges, the time to eliminate the man-made threat of nuclear weapons is now.

Kairat Umarov is First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan.

Image: Shutterstock.

The Jackson-Vanik Amendment, contained within the Trade Act of 1974, was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Gerald Ford. The legislation denied permanent normal trading relations with non-free-market economies that restricted emigration rights. It remains in force today for several nations, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. While these countries are not among the freest in the world, they have made strides in their human rights records. This coercive weapon used against the Soviet Union has outlived its usefulness.

Originally, Jackson-Vanik aimed to help Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union. The Soviet government persecuted Jews for much of the twentieth century. However, as independent states, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan have become more tolerant toward religious minorities.

Central Asia’s largest and most developed country, Kazakhstan, has changed significantly since its independence by embracing free markets and displaying tolerance towards minority communities. Kazakhstan has a vibrant Jewish community among many other minority groups. Kazakhstan’s constitution requires religious tolerance, and several religious minorities, including Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Catholics, have found refuge in Kazakhstan. Additionally, throughout its independent history, Astana has shown that it embraces free market competition and the rule of law.

Kazakhstan has much to offer the United States commercially. The United States has billions of dollars in energy investment in Kazakhstan, with some major American-owned companies, such as Chevron and ExxonMobil, possessing interests in Kazakh oil and gas fields. In addition, Kazakhstan is an attractive partner in securing rare-earth elements (REEs) as environmental restrictions inhibit U.S. domestic REE excavation. However, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce stated that the Jackson-Vanik Amendment unnecessarily puts American companies at a comparative disadvantage in the Kazakhstani marketplace.

The case for freeing Uzbekistan and Tajikistan from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment is less clear-cut than Kazakhstan’s, but advancements are occurring in these developing countries.

In 2020, the U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom announced that Uzbekistan, where Sunni Islam is the dominant religion, was no longer engaged in “severe violations of religious freedom.” As a result, the U.S. State Department removed Uzbekistan from the Special Watch List. However, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)—an independent, bipartisan commission, released a report following the Ambassador’s announcement, which stated, “Uzbekistan has made important progress in recent years—such as ending raids on religious minority communities, granting official registration to a handful of religious groups, and releasing some prisoners incarcerated for their religious activities—but it has yet to fundamentally change its position regarding the state’s role in controlling religious affairs.” As a result of their findings, the USCIRF recommended that the U.S. Department of State place Uzbekistan back on its Special Watch List.

Tajikistan, a country with a Sunni Islamic majority, has its own struggles with religious freedom. In 2009, religious freedom in Tajikistan declined sharply after the government adopted several highly restrictive laws. Recently, USCIRF designated Tajikistan and Turkmenistan as  “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) for being among the world’s worst violators of religious freedom. However, Tajikistan has been receptive to international criticism and hosted the U.N. Special Rapporteur Nazila Ghanea, allowing Tajikistan to reflect on and better understand its religious communities' conditions.

The prospect of freeing these Central Asian countries from Jackson-Vanik has caught the attention of prominent U.S. policymakers, including Chris Murphy (D-CT). This growing interest has culminated in the bipartisan Kazakhstan Permanent Normal Trade Relations Act of 2023, introduced by Representatives Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Robert Aderholt (R-AL), Dina Titus (D-NV), Darin LaHood (R-IL), and Ami Bera (D-CA), which would repeal the amendment.

To the credit of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, all three countries maintain constructive diplomatic relations with Israel, do not engage in state-sanctioned antisemitism, and Jewish citizens are free to emigrate. How can outside countries like the United States expect more significant progress toward religious freedom in Central Asia without recognizing the steps Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan have taken since their independence?

Despite their progress, these countries are lumped together with Cuba and North Korea, also punished under Jackson-Vanik. In contrast, the United States removed China from Jackson-Vanik in 2002 after it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), and it did the same for Russia upon its accession to the WTO in 2012 despite Russia’s and China’s questionable human rights records. Meanwhile, Kazakhstan officially acceded to the WTO in 2015 but is still subject to Jackson-Vanik.

The United States Congress should pass the Kazakhstan Permanent Normal Trade Relations Act of 2023, as there is no reason to inhibit economic cooperation with an emerging partner like Kazakhstan with archaic legislation. By repealing the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, the United States would formally recognize Kazakhstan’s improvements and show that it sees Astana as a true partner. While Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have more work to do before achieving Kazakhstan’s level of success, the United States should work to make clear the concrete improvements needed for them to gain permanent normal trading relations with the United States.

Alex Little is an MS graduate of Georgia Tech and specializes in Russian and Central Asian affairs.

Image: Shutterstock

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine, precipitated by Russia’s invasion, has had numerous consequential effects on international affairs. Yet while much of the world has focused on the most pronounced of these—such as economic impact and shifts in energy routes—on particularly important trend has gone unnoticed: the war has spurred Central Asian nations to reconsider existing linkages and trade routes. In fact, the conflict has arguably ushered in one of the most pivotal moments for the connectivity of the Central Asian region with the global trade destinations since the dissolution of the USSR.

Prior to this conflict, the trade activities of Central Asian nations predominantly traversed Russian territory to access international waters. Yet the war has made transport through the Russia/Ukraine border region significantly more challenging. Moreover, sanctions imposed upon Russia by the West have further complicated trade activity through Russian territory. Thus, along with Moscow’s limited capacity to simultaneously engage in Central Asia, means there is a newfound impetus and favorable environment for the diversification and expansion of trade routes in the region.

This moment presents a unique opportunity for U.S. policymakers. Given Central Asia’s geographic and strategic importance, it is imperative for the United States to help facilitate new connectivity routes within the region.

Why does Central Asia Matter to Washington?

Long underrecognized, the Central Asia region, along with the nearby South Caucasus, is of flourishing importance to all geopolitical actors. It is filled with rich reserves of energy and natural resources, plays host to numerous key trade routes, and occupies a strategic geopolitical real estate between most of the great powers of the world. The importance of the Central Asian and Caucasus regions, collectively termed as the “Silk Road Region” by Damjan Krnjević Mišković, was best described by him in a recent essay for the summer 2023 issue of the Baku Dialogues. He argues that “as the region’s multifaceted connectivity infrastructure increases in both scale and scope,” it will become “indispensable to the fulfillment of the strategic ambitions of the major powers that surround it on all sides”

This trend is becoming increasingly apparent if recent diplomacy is anything to go by. In the eighteen months since the start of the war in Ukraine, the Central Asian region has seen a barrage of interregional and regional summits, building upon the U.S.-proposed C5+1 platform (with the “C” standing for the five Central Asian governments of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). These recent summits include C5+China, C5+India, C5+Russia, C5+EU, the Gulf Cooperation Council’s Summit with Central Asian countries, and others. Throughout all of these engagements, significant emphasis is placed on expanding trade relations, investing in regional infrastructure, and enhancing connectivity.

Yet due to geographical distance, the United States is at a disadvantage in the region, which is itself encircled by Russia, China, Afghanistan, Iran and the Caspian Sea. Moreover, given prevailing circumstances—including Russia’s increasing propensity for military interventions in foreign policy, Iran’s determination to exclude non-regional countries from regional affairs, the lack of recognition of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, and the considerable extent of China’s regional presence—Washington’s involvement in shaping connectivity routes within Central Asia is of vital importance, as it provides an important avenue to exert influence.

To that end, it is worth considering some of the potential routes being explored and developed in the region.

The Trans-Afghan Route

On July 18 of this year, a trilateral agreement was reached by the railway authorities of Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan, the latter of which is under the administration of Taliban. This agreement concerned the construction of the Trans-Afghan railway, which aims to establish a vital linkage, connecting the city of Termez in Uzbekistan, spanning through Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul in Afghanistan, and culminating at Peshawar in Pakistan.

Although the project’s initial introduction to the public sphere dates back to 2018, substantive strides in its implementation were realized subsequent to the Tashkent International Conference on Afghanistan in 2022. Notably, the comprehensive feasibility study for this ambitious railway venture was successfully concluded within the same year.

While this route might offer a convenient route for Central Asian connectivity, financial challenges in Uzbekistan suggest a potential completion timeline around 2027. Moreover, the lack of widespread recognition of the Taliban government in Afghanistan poses obstacles for Uzbekistan’s export endeavors.

Given these circumstances, compounded by the United States’ non-recognition of the Taliban administration, Washington is likelier to advocate for an alternative route.

The Iranian Route

Situated in a geographically advantageous position to the southeast of the Central Asian region, Iran offers one of the shortest routes to international waters that traverse a single country. This route, however, remained largely underutilized for an extended period due to Moscow’s influence over Central Asian countries and Iran’s isolation from the global stage. However, following the onset of the war in Ukraine, leaders from nearly all regional countries embarked on official visits to Tehran to reassess their relations with Iran.

These commenced with the president of Tajikistan on May 30, 2022, followed by Turkmenistan on June 14 and Kazakhstan on June 20. The most recent leader to visit from the region was the president of Uzbekistan on June 18, 2023. While intentions were voiced for Kyrgyzstan’s president, Sadyr Japarov, to visit Tehran in February of 2023, this has not yet occured.

A pivotal focus during these visits was the theme of trade and connectivity. Iran holds the potential to provide these nations not only with the alternative route to the European market through Türkiye but also a direct path to the Arabian Sea, granting access to international waters. In addition, discussions during the visits of the leaders of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan also encompassed the situation in Afghanistan. Key topics in these bilateral dialogues were socioeconomic reconstruction, peace, and stability in Afghanistan. Iran’s president specifically emphasized Tehran’s interest in excluding non-regional countries from influencing the settlement of situation in Afghanistan.

Given Washington’s poor relations with Iran, it is obviously in the United States’ interest to discourage Central Asian countries from utilizing the route through Iran. This could not only fuel Iran’s economic growth but also elevate its influence in Central Asian affairs, with adverse implications for the U.S. interests in the region.

The Caspian Route

The sole route giving access to the international waters while not being confined solely to railways is the passage spanning the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Türkiye, ultimately extending to the Mediterranean Sea and the European Union. This route employs a combination of both railway and maritime transport for the movement of goods.

A few developments over recent years highlight the growing importance and usage of this route.

A pivotal juncture was first reached with the introduction of container train system, first tested on August 3, 2015. The inaugural test container train embarked from the Chinese city of Shihezi, traversing Kazakhstan, and ultimately arrived at Baku en route to Türkiye. Later, on October 30, 2017, after multiple delays, the ceremonial inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway transpired in the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku. The commencement of this railway not only facilitated the connection between Azerbaijan and Türkiye via Georgia but also established groundwork for enhanced connectivity across the East-West corridor, linking Chinese, Central Asian, and EU markets.

The significant rise in trade via this route came with the ending of the Second Karabakh War in November of 2020. Rail freight data between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan for the years 2021 and 2022 demonstrate a remarkable surge, from 125,000 tons to 950,000 tons—an astonishing 800 percent increase. Similarly, another significant event unfolded on December 27, 2022, as the inaugural container block transporting copper from Uzbekistan to the EU successfully arrived in the Port of Baku.

Drawing the attention to the recent summit between the EU and Central Asian countries in Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan, where the expansion of trade relations emerged as one of the central topics, and considering the discussions surrounding the construction of the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway during the C + C5 summit in Xian province of China, there exists a compelling anticipation for a substantial increase in the volume of freight traversing this route.

Yet while trade volumes along this route have experienced significant growth, further expansion is limited at present due to the limited capacities of cargo ports in the Caspian Sea. On the western side of the Caspian is the Port of Baku, which holds a cargo handling capacity of 15 million tons, set to be increased to 25 million tons. The primary ports located on the eastern shoreline of the Caspian Sea are Aktau and Kuryk in Kazakhstan, along with Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan. At present, Aktau boasts an extensive handling capacity of 17.7 million tons, while Kuryk port is set to expand its capacity to accommodate 10 million tons by the 2030, while the port of Turkmenbashi stands prepared to manage 17 million tons of cargo.

Overall, because these ports currently operate within restricted capacities, the Caspian Route is unable to evolve into the foremost trade artery for Central Asia.

Geopolitically, the route is the most aligned with U.S. strategic interests. For one, it passes through countries that are not members of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Eurasian Economic Union. These nations also partner in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Partnership for Peace program, notably exemplified by Georgia and Azerbaijan. Finally, this route culminates in Türkiye, a major U.S. NATO ally.

This alignment thus seamlessly intertwines with the United States’ overarching foreign policy objectives, underscoring the Caspian route’s pivotal role in advancing multifaceted interests and forging enduring partnerships across the dynamic Central Asian landscape.

How Can the United States Support Central Asian Connectivity?

It is evident that Washington should position the Caspian Route—traversing the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Türkiye—as the paramount conduit for international trade for the Central Asian countries. To that end the United States should exhibit a readiness to undertake a number of strategic actions.

First, Washington should make strategic investments in regional port infrastructure. The route passing through the Caspian Sea, often referred to as the Middle Corridor, currently only has a capacity equivalent to 5 percent of the capacity of land route through Russia (known as the Northern Corridor). In other words, the Caspian Route requires significant capacity improvements to effectively provide a strong alternative to the portion of trade passing through Russia. If Washington wishes to facilitate greater trade through this route at Russia’s expense, it will have to necessitate investments in the comprehensive expansion of cargo handling capacities at crucial ports, including the Port of Baku in Azerbaijan, the Aktau and Kuryk ports in Kazakhstan, and the Port of Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan.

Second, Washington should make similar investments in regional rail infrastructure, including rail ferries. Rail ferries, as the name implies, involves transporting train blocks using specially designed ships equipped with railway tracks. Such as system is utilized for cargo transportation across the Caspian Sea, but is at present very limited in its capacity, meaning that it is unable to handle a large potential shift in trade volume from Russia to the Caspian Route. To further facilitate trade along this route, it may be necessary for Washington to consider allocating funds for a greater number of rail ferry ships in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, or support the development of newer, more efficient technology. Along with this, to actively promote trade via the Caspian Route, it would also be beneficial for the United States to cooperate with local railway authorities to modernize existing railway networks, particularly the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway. Such investments aimed at increasing railway capacity can establish a stronger connection between the Central Asian region and the Mediterranean Sea, further strengthening U.S. interests in the region.

Third, Washington should allocate more diplomatic resources and attention toward engaging with countries along the Caspian Route. The C5+1 platform has proven a successful and effective forum for dialogue, and should be continued. It could also be potentially expanded to include other countries along the Caspian Route, particularly Azerbaijan, due to its pivotal role.
 

By strategically investing in and engaging local partners, the United States can elevate the Caspian route’s capacity, ultimately not only fostering trade diversification and reinforcing ties with regional countries, but also advancing its own interests in the region.

Ibrahim Mammadov is a Research Fellow at the Caucasian Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies (QAFSAM). He is currently also a Masters of Arts in Diplomacy and International Affairs student at ADA University, where he obtained his Bachelor’s degree.

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The United States' steadfast commitment to enhancing Taiwan’s defense capabilities is vital to deter unprovoked Chinese aggression. Growing economic investment in and military assistance with Taiwan raises the cost and calculations of hostilities from the People’s Republic of China. However, more can be done on the economic front of U.S.-Taiwan cooperation.

Recently, Taiwan’s vice president stopped in the United States on his way to attend the inauguration of the new president of Paraguay. This visit drew criticism from China, which conducted military drills around Taiwan—even though merely traveling through the United States is not unprecedented and in line with longstanding policy.

China increased its gray zone tactics, violating Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, by 79 percent from 2021 to 2022. However, Taiwan is determined not to provoke China. Moreover, Taiwan will hold presidential elections in January 2024. Its two main political parties—the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Kuomintang (KMT)—are committed to maintaining the current status quo with China, which most of the population supports.

According to the Election Study Center at National Chengchi University, 32 percent of the people of Taiwan prefer to maintain the status quo indefinitely, while nearly 29 percent favor maintaining the status quo for now but are open to changes later. By comparison, only 4.5 percent wanted independence immediately, while 21 percent preferred to move toward independence gradually.

Nevertheless, the U.S.-Taiwan relationship should be examined through a bilateral and regional context instead of solely through a China lens. Some American policymakers believe war is imminent between China and Taiwan. While on a recent trip to Taipei led by Wilson Center President and CEO Amb. Mark A. Green, I spoke with Taiwanese leaders. They made it clear that while it is vital to strengthen Taiwan’s ability to defend itself, war remains avoidable.

Taiwan is the ninth-largest trading partner for the United States and produces more than 90 percent of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Almost half of the world’s container fleet and between 20 to 30 percent of global trade transits through the Taiwan Straits and the South China Sea. This underscores the importance of peace and stability and underlines the vulnerabilities facing global economies should there be any threat to accessing these waterways.

Supporting Taiwan also helps Americans at home. Taiwanese businesses want to divest from China and move elsewhere to the United States or its Indo-Pacific allies. As Taiwan’s exports to China continue to decrease slowly, Taiwan’s foreign direct investment in the United States has grown to nearly $14 billion in 2020—an increase of 13.6 percent compared to 2019.

Washington can do more to increase its economic ties to Taipei. The double taxation agreement under consideration in Congress will help stimulate economic growth. In addition, the Biden administration signed an agreement this year between the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States. Even though this agreement did not initially go to Congress for approval, Congress proactively and quickly passed it into law.

Several other measures should be prioritized.

Although Taiwan has applied to enter the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the United States is not part of it. Nonetheless, it could lead the effort for a smaller regional trade initiative, including Taiwan and other allies like Australia, Japan, and South Korea. With the recent “trilateral partnership” signed by President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and President Yoon Suk Yeol, a new era of cooperation looks possible.

It is also essential to allow technology transfers so Taiwan can produce weapons to bolster its defenses. That would include cybersecurity capabilities as much as conventional land, sea, and air-based defense power.

Finally, Taiwan should be admitted to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) as a non-borrowing member. Of the 12 countries, plus the Holy See, that recognize Taiwan, seven are in the Western Hemisphere: Guatemala, Haiti, Paraguay, Belize, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and St. Kitts and Nevis. Sadly, in the last six years, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and, most recently, the Central American Parliament have shifted recognition away from Taiwan and toward China. With concerns rising over China’s malign influence in Latin America and within the IDB itself, Taiwan being elevated from observer status to a non-borrowing member would be a significant step forward in recovering its limited international recognition.

Half measures are not enough to send strong signals to our allies or our adversaries abroad. The United States should continue its policies of supporting Taiwan, especially with a comprehensive free trade agreement, especially after Congress has demonstrated strong bipartisan support.

Taiwan is a key partner of the United States, and strengthening our bilateral relationship is vital to secure our economic interests in the Indo-Pacific region and throughout the world. Even though Taiwan seeks not to provoke China, it will also not surrender to it.

Eddy Acevedo is the chief of staff and senior adviser to former Ambassador Mark Green, the president and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He was formerly national security adviser at the U.S. Agency for International Development and senior foreign policy adviser for former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

This opinion is solely of the author and does not represent the views of the Wilson Center.

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The United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran have brokered an ill-advised deal: Tehran has pledged to free American hostages in exchange for $6 billion of its frozen funds in South Korea and an undisclosed number of Iranians currently incarcerated in the United States. Additionally, evidence suggests that a previous release of $10 billion of Tehran’s funds in Iraq might be tied to this arrangement. Here are ten reasons why the deal is calamitous:

1. Encouragement of further hostage-taking. Tehran’s regime interprets the success of the hostage-for-cash scheme as validation of its strategy. Prominent officials, such as Mosen Rezaei, an advisor to Iran’s supreme leader and the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have been championing hostage-taking as a tactic to replenish the regime’s finances.

2. Contradicting successful precedent. The Trump administration secured prisoner releases without ransom payments, relying instead on just swaps. While exchanging people who have been guilty of nefarious activities such as sanctions-busting and proliferation with innocent American hostages is not ideal, it is still a better option than paying ransom. The new deal reverts to the Obama administration’s approach, which included a $1.7 billion payment alongside an exchange of prisoners.

3. Skyrocketing per capita ransom costs. The Biden administration’s $6 billion offer for five prisoners equates to $1.2 billion per hostage. If the entire financial package totals $16 billion, the ransom soars to $3.2 billion per hostage. This alarming rise from the Obama administration’s $340 million per hostage, already exorbitant at the time, underscores a worrisome pattern.

4. Incomplete hostage release. Despite the substantial financial concession, some hostages, such as Shahab Dalili, a U.S. permanent resident, and Jamshid Sharmahd, a long-time resident of California, remain unreleased. Responding to a question about why Dalili was not part of the deal, a State Department spokesperson said that Dalili had not been designated as a “wrongfully detained” person. Dalili, who has been in prison for seven years, was convicted by Tehran for the trumped-up charge of “aiding and abetting a hostile nation,” likely referring to the United States.

5. Reduced U.S. financial leverage. By offering Tehran $16 billion, the United States undermines its financial leverage over Iran. Rewarding the Iranian regime with hard currency and dismantling U.S. sanctions leave Washington with nothing but a military option as leverage to dissuade Tehran from going nuclear.

6. Strengthening of repression in Iran. The influx of funds would fortify the regime’s repression machine, which has weathered three extensive waves of protests over five years, leading to the murder, injuries, and imprisonment of tens of thousands. Tehran will use the newly found resources to reward its loyalists and security and intelligence forces, as it did after the sanctions relief provided by the 2013 interim nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

7. Demoralization of the pro-democracy movement. The Iranian opposition has called for demonstrations in Iran and across the globe on September 16, the anniversary of twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Amini’s murder by the morality police. The new deal—coming just a month before the anniversary—seemingly aligns the Biden administration with the regime, potentially deflating the opposition’s spirit.

8. Emboldening other hostile forces. Currently, Russia holds Americans hostage and China has shown its willingness to follow suit. Seen as a sign of weakness, the agreement may encourage adversarial nations and entities to capture Americans in order to exert influence over Washington.

9. Funding of terrorism and regional aggression. After the JCPOA’s finalization, Tehran increased funding for organizations such as the Ministry of Intelligence, the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, and the IRGC, all of which perpetrate Tehran’s terrorism and regional aggression. This precedent shows that the regime leverages sanctions relief to escalate its malign conduct throughout the Middle East.

10. Reliance on Qatar’s oversight. Qatar has been a key supporter of the Taliban, Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other radical groups across the Muslim world. The U.S. reliance on Doha to supervise the deal, which purportedly requires Tehran to spend its newfound largesse only on non-sanctioned goods, thus raises concern, particularly given Tehran’s past finesse in bypassing sanctions.

The hostage deal warrants reassessment in light of these significant shortcomings. Should the Biden administration decline to reverse its policy, Congress must act and block the executive branch from using financial incentives to facilitate the release of American hostages globally.

Dr. Saeed Ghasseminejad is senior Iran and financial economics advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @SGhasseminejad.

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This week, the BRICS group held its fifteenth annual summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. The forum has drawn more public and media attention than usual compared to past summits due to the much-publicized expansion of the group, which is said to bolster its geopolitical weight. Twenty-two states have officially applied for membership, six have been invited to join, and many others have expressed interest in membership of this exclusive club of rising economies. For the candidate states, official membership in the BRICS creates a window of opportunity for coveted goods: development aid, technological cooperation, and the much sought-after wiggle room to avoid or minimize potential or actual Western economic sanctions.

On August 24, the summit announced the six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. This is an unprecedented development in the history of BRICS. Originally a descriptive economic grouping proposed by a Goldman Sachs economist, the bloc was formally launched in June 2009 (South Africa joined the group in December 2010). The BRICS’ membership expansion drive holds enormous potential benefits for the existing and aspiring candidate states. For China and Russia, a larger roster adds additional weight to their geopolitical agenda to curb the United States’ unilateral dominance.

But despite the crowing headlines, there is substantial doubt whether BRICS can emerge as a credible counterweight to the Western-dominated world order. The real challenges to success in transforming the global geopolitical landscape originate not from without but rather within. Wide internal differences significantly undercut BRICS’ capacity to work as a unified bloc and realize its goal of a multipolar world order.

On paper, the bloc maintains serious economic heft. The current BRICS accounts for approximately 32 percent of the world’s GDP, 41 percent of the global population, and 16 percent of international trade transactions. The addition of six new members significantly boosts the group’s global economic standing: their combined GDP now totals 37 percent of the world’s (in PPP terms) with a total population of 46 percent of the worldwide population. The three new oil and gas-producing members—Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—add strategic weight to the group. The bloc’s combined fossil fuel deposits and production create an OPEC effect and enhance the prospects of open oil and gas businesses between the member states. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ massive sovereign wealth funds can inject billions of dollars into the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB) established in 2015.    

The group’s push for de-dollarization in the form of a common BRICS currency or a gold-backed digital currency was primarily spurred by the Biden administration’s Russia sanctions. But the dollar won’t yield so easily. Unlike the EU, BRICS is neither a political integration project nor an economic union under the supervision of a central bank with jurisdiction over the member states. Without these components, a currency union between sovereign states with divergent fiscal policies is politically impossible.

BRICS and Geopolitics

BRICS is the brainchild of China. The grouping reflects Beijing’s growing economic, political, and diplomatic clout. Like the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative), it is China’s other ambitious project to create an alternative power base to the West. Except for Russia, all BRICS member states reside in the so-called Global South, a loose and ambiguous geopolitical construct. A serious question to ponder is: Do China’s interests (or the group’s collective interests) converge with the interests of the vast majority of poor and developing countries in the Global South?

A common goal, however, binds BRICS member states together—the attempt to shift their status from “rule-takers” to “rule-makers” by breaking down U.S. hegemony and cultivating a multipolar power structure in the global economy. Until the 2007–08 global financial meltdown, the United States and its G7 allies exclusively exercised global rule-making power. The rise of the G20 and BRICS in the wake of the financial crash made some clear dents in the West’s rule-making capacity. Alongside the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), BRICS’ two-tier institutional setup—the NDB and the Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA)—was created in 2015. While the NDB finances sustainable development projects, the CRA is a safety net to help member states weather financial crises. Nonetheless, this rudimentary financial architecture is negated by problems of political ideology and foreign and economic policy misalignment.

BRICS is a heterogeneous club of democracy and autocracy, free market and state-controlled economies, and contradictory foreign policy alignments. India, Brazil, and South Africa could be labeled at least flawed democracies with largely free-market economies. China and Russia’s political systems are mostly autocratic, and their economic systems are neither state-controlled nor market-based economies but a mix of the two. The entrance of three Middle Eastern autocracies further dilutes BRICS’ partially democratic character. Striking any meaningful chord that unites democracies and dictatorships and between market-based and state-controlled economies remains a Herculean task.     

More glaringly, BRICS members often have more conflicts with each other than the United States. Most notably, India’s long list of grievances with China include its border provocations, support for Pakistan, and growing Indian Ocean naval presence. These differences have pushed New Delhi to forge a strategic partnership with Washington.

The BRICS members’ different levels of economic development remain a major disincentive for solidifying closer economic integration. China’s gargantuan economy is larger than the economies of all other BRICS countries put together. Measured in GDP terms, China’s economic output is approximately fourteen times bigger than South Africa’s and five to eight times the size of the Indian, Russian, and Brazilian economies. The overbearing nature of China’s economy has made inter-BRIC economic cooperation more difficult. For instance, India chose not to join the BRI, fearing that Beijing’s growing economic muscle might overshadow New Delhi’s position in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region.

There also exists little demonstrable BRICS foreign policy convergence in other global fora. Neither does the group broadcast a shared vision of an alternative new world order to the Western-dominated one. Other than some issue-specific cooperation (such as climate change and counterterrorism), BRICS member states have no notable record of the cooperation needed for a coherent group identity. Moreover, divergences in voting behaviors are evident in the UN General Assembly, the Security Council, and other international bodies.

The Way Ahead

BRICS runs a high risk of becoming an artificial construct. To overcome this risk, BRICS states must first put their own houses in order. There must be a way to address intra-BRICS tensions and conflicts. No economic or political grouping can survive on the mere slogans of reform of or opposition to the current world order. Anti-Western and anti-American postures may fade unless BRICS states foster solid economic ties and strategic linkages to effect their desired changes in the global order. The admission of new members may be more meaningful if BRICS addresses its own internal shortcomings and cooperates more often and more effectively. Otherwise, it’s just another multilateral grouping in an international forest of fora.

Dr. Mohammed Nuruzzaman is a Professor of Political Science at North South University, Bangladesh.

On August 11, Turkey mounted a series of cross-border drone attacks in Iraqi Kurdistan against alleged targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a militant group that has been recognized as a “terrorist” organization by the United States, the European Union, and Turkey itself. The group is known to maintain bases in the border areas. 

The recent attacks signal a new page in the relationships between Ankara and Tehran, and the prospect that they have sealed a new clandestine deal to cooperate on undermining undermine Kurdish autonomy in Iraq.

It is necessary to consider the region’s recent political developments to understand why Turkey has recently intensified its cross-border drone attacks in the Sulaimani region specifically close to the Iranian border.

In April 2023, Ankara targeted Sulaimani international airport in an unprecedented drone strike, and recent attacks have targeted places heavily used by civilians.

Since its inception, Iraqi Kurdistan has been politically divided between two rival ruling parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). In order to sustain their power politics, especially during the Kurdish civil war from 1994 to 1998, the KDP has forged close ties with Ankara; in contrast, the PUK sided with Tehran, despite the fact that these ties date back further. 

As a result of the civil war, Ankara and Tehran have significant influence over Kurdish politics in Iraq. PUK-controlled Sulaimani has become the spotlight, where Tehran has long attempted to counter Ankara’s influence and expansions in the region. Meanwhile, Ankara has done the same through the KDP-controlled Duhok and Erbil provinces. 

Despite the fact that Turkey and Iran are two rivals, their rivalry has never reached direct conflict. Instead, the two countries have fought mainly through proxy forces and in indirect conflicts. It’s already well-known that both Iran and Turkey are fighting for influence in the Middle East by supporting opposing proxies in states trapped in conflicts and civil war. 

Ankara attempts to fight the PKK militants in Iraqi Kurdistan as part of its proxy warfare by pushing the KPD to use military force against them. The most recent example of this was on August 13, during which KDP-affiliated Peshmerga forces engaged in an armed clash with the PKK militants in the border areas of Duhok province. The KDP immediately blamed the PKK for the fighting.

The PKK once was a conduit for pressuring Turkey, due to an unofficial deal between a pro-PKK Iranian group known as PJAK (Kurdistan Free Life Party). Yet that appears less important today: Ankara’s increasing attacks in Tehran’s sphere of influence stand testament to the fact that the potency of Iran and Turkey’s regional rivalry has weakened as economic ties have grown. Turkish energy needs and Iran’s vast oil and natural gas resources have been important drivers of the increasing Turkish-Iranian cooperation in the recent decade. Given its dependence on Iranian energy, especially natural gas, Ankara will seek to retain a degree of flexibility regarding its policy toward Iran. Turkey has a serious interest in preventing relations with Iran from deteriorating too badly and in not taking actions that could give Tehran an excuse to step up support for the PKK. 

Iran, on the other hand, has launched a spate of missile and drone attacks deep into Erbil province, where Ankara’s sphere of influence that stretches from the Duhok area ends. In 2022, the Iranian attacks witnessed serious escalations. It’s difficult to believe that the two regional powers could so openly interfere in such a contested area as Iraqi Kurdistan without some sort of agreement.

In March 2022, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps unleashed a missile attack on Erbil, targeting an alleged Mossad headquarters in the province, according to official Iranian media said. In November of the same year, the Revolutionary Guards once again unleashed several attacks on Erbil’s Koya town with kamikaze drones and missiles against the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) headquarters, leading to several deaths and casualties.

Iranian officials have repeatedly warned the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to disarm the Iranian-Kurdish groups, threatening to launch a military attack deep into the region's territory if no action is taken.

In the fractious Middle East, there is one thing that most of the rival regional countries now agree on: an independent Kurdistan is a bad idea. This is especially true for Turkey, whose 15-million-strong Kurdish population comprises between 15-20 percent of the country’s population. 

Currently, Ankara and Tehran have come to the conclusion that a Kurdish autonomous region anywhere in the world, but especially in a place such as Iraq, would encourage Kurdish independence movements everywhere. Both states consider the repercussions of such an Iraqi Kurdish quasi-state to be unacceptable.

Turkey and Iran already face their own nationalist Kurdish movements, some of them armed such as the PKK and KDPI. Both groups maintain a large number of bases in Iraqi Kurdish territory. Tehran accused the KDPI of fomenting the nationwide protests that swept the country for months over the death of the Kurdish woman in the custody of the Iranian morality police.

Last year, John Bolton, a former U.S. national security advisor, claimed that weapons were being smuggled from the Iraqi Kurdish region to Kurdish opposition parties in Iran, a claim that was subsequently denied by the KRG.

An autonomous Kurdish region would be a model for those fighting to free the remaining parts of what is known as Kurdistan, which have been long divided between Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Syria. Governments have been and remain afraid that any concessions to Kurdish demands will result in further demands for independence. Therefore, from Ankara and Tehran’s perspective, a subservient or weakened Iraqi Kurdish region must be achieved.

Shad Sherko is a journalist working in Iraqi Kurdistan. He has studied politics and international relations at the University of Sulaimani. He is currently working as a senior English editor at Sulaimani-based Esta Media Network.

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

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

Malaria Investments Serve African Prosperity and U.S. Security

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

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

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

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

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

Investing in Malaria is Investing in Women & Girls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image: Shutterstock.