The National Interest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image: Shutterstock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Echoes of Vietnam

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

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

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

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

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

The Ukraine Debate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Arab Liaison Committee

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

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

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

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

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

With Friends Like These

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

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

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

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

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

Can Step-for-Step Work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Return of Industrial Wars of Attrition

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

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

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

We’re Out of Weapons

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

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

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

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

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

Facing the Hard Realities of War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image: Shutterstock. 

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

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

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

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

TikTok’s algorithm works in two reinforcing ways.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image: Shutterstock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

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

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

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

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

The Contemporary Relevance of Lord Palmerston

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

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

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

Alliances Are Not about Friendship but Common Interests

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

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

Don’t Let Allies Determine Our Policies

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

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

But Be Tolerant When Allies and Partners Disagree with Us

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

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

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

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

Image: Shutterstock.

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

The Far Right Comes on Strong

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

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

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

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

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

Who is Javier Milei?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Can He Win?

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

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

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

Contemplating a Milei Presidency

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

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

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

Rough Sailing Ahead

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

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

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

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

Image: Shutterstock.

Foreign Affairs magazine published an insightful piece in its most recent issue, titled “An Unwinnable War: Washington Needs an Endgame in Ukraine.” Written by RAND Corporation senior political scientist Samuel Charap, it is well argued and presents a number of reasonable proposals that prioritize a diplomatic end to the Ukraine War. Three examples—the Korean armistice, U.S.-Israeli security arrangements, and the Bosnia Contact Group—are drawn upon in order to suggest a roadmap to ceasing hostilities.

A number of responses were subsequently published in Foreign Affairs online. All take aim with Charap’s assessment that neither side currently holds the capabilities to achieve ultimate victory, defined in this context as establishing control over the disputed territory in Ukraine. Rather, they contend that Ukraine’s triumph is simply a matter of providing more—and deadlier—Western weaponry. Each argument also rests upon the assumption of a tottering Putin regime. They all cite the Prigozhin mutiny (it is mentioned a total of six separate times throughout the various responses) as irrefutable evidence of a latent contingent of discontented Russians that can and will eventually be mobilized to topple the current government.

The most extreme perspective comes from Dmytro Natalukha, Chair of the Committee for Economic Affairs of the Parliament of Ukraine and a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Natalukha claims that leaving any territory occupied by Russia will allow Moscow to subsequently use that land as a launch pad for future attacks to capture the rest of the country, as he claims it did after the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015—although he conveniently ignores the fact that it was both Moscow and Kiev who consistently failed to implement the terms of both the Minsk Protocol and Minsk II. Ukraine, Natalukha argues, must therefore wage war until all occupied land is seized back from Russia. What is more, the return of the eastern oblasts and Crimea must then be followed by forcible regime change in Moscow and the installation of a Western-approved leader. This will ensure that “post-Putin Russia will have the consent of Ukraine.”

“Ukraine and its allies must aim to make Russia less anti-Western. Regardless of what happens at the negotiating table, therefore, Putin cannot remain in power,” states Natalukha. He subsequently believes that the civilized world should reach a consensus on confronting Russian leadership, “as they did on Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Bashar al-Assad in Syria”—examples that should make any honest assessor of U.S. foreign policy in the past thirty years since. The final step after total Russian collapse and the installation of a puppet government would then be to demilitarize the country and destroy its state media i.e., its “propaganda machine.”

The ostensibly less severe proposals also support the contention that Russian armed forces will inevitably be crushed under the weight of well-armed Ukrainian resolve. Alina Polyakova and Daniel Fried are firm in the conviction that all that stands in the way of total victory is a lack of F-16s and long-range missiles. Early battlefield successes around Kiev, Kharkiv, and Kherson, are cited as proof of endemic Russian weakness. The authors also believe that, with the requested weaponry, Ukraine would be able to seize territory in the eastern oblasts. This will obstruct Moscow’s land bridge to Crimea, and “force Russia into an untenable position.” But the likelihood of Russian leadership abating rather than escalating its war effort once the naval base at Sevastopol is under threat of sustained artillery fire is a roll of the dice. The consequences of losing that bet could be catastrophic. Nonetheless, Angela Stent also reassures readers that the risks are worth it. She suggests that Moscow’s war machine is buckling under the weight of its own incompetence, while Kiev is on the cusp of turning a strategic corner. Ukrainian forces remain upbeat in a “battle for national survival”; meanwhile, “Russian troop morale is dwindling”—an assessment that by its nature is one of bias and unreliable speculation.

The eventual ouster of Putin is implicitly assumed in each of the arguments. Polyakova and Fried bring up Russian military losses going back nearly two centuries, all the way to the 1853 Crimean War. “Each defeat provoked domestic stress and upheaval,” the implication being that the same fate awaits the current regime upon its defeat in Ukraine. The Prigozhin mutiny is presented as evidence of pervasive “stress in the Russian ruling circles.” Stent also believes that “Putin’s grip on Russia” is weakening. The key to knocking down the Kremlin house of cards is thus “more and better Western weapons.” While any or all of these contentions may be true, no respondent addresses the very real possibility that an individual as equally committed—or perhaps more committed—to the objectives laid out at the beginning of the war might take power in Moscow upon Putin’s (potentially bloody) departure.

But most importantly, all of the responses fail to address the prospect that Kiev’s counteroffensive could fail to achieve its strategic aims even with Western arms. Ukrainian battlefield invincibility is assumed as an indisputable matter of historical necessity. They ignore the fact that Russian armed forces continue to secure important victories, inching their way westward while inflicting heavy Ukrainian casualties. Instead, all of Moscow’s strategic and tactical successes are handwaved away. Polyakova and Fried claim without explanation that the seizure of territory in the “Bahkmut [sic] offensive has deepened [Putin’s] costly mess.”

Nor do they address the fact that Russian armed forces have of late been very successful in destroying and capturing Western equipment, including the much-vaunted Leopard tank and Bradley fighting vehicle. Moscow also retains control of the skies, a situation that a limited number of F-16s without enough pilots who possess the requisite training will not change. Likewise, a longer war defined by increasing escalation favors both the military-industrial capacity of Russia as well as the much larger resource pool of human capital that it can draw from. The only way to counter this latter fact may eventually be for other nations’ military forces to begin engaging in the fight directly. Natalukha would undoubtedly be in favor of such a prospect, and it seems that the other commentators may be as well.

The hate for the Putin regime that seems to undergird the Western foreign policy establishment is very likely genuine and deep-seated; however, its authenticity does not make it a premise upon which to construct a realistic path for bringing the bloodshed in Ukraine to an end. Charap acknowledges this point and proposes that the U.S. form a governmental group to focus on exploring diplomatic pathways to peace. “There is not a single official in the U.S. government whose full-time job is conflict diplomacy,” he rightly laments. What is needed is a “regular channel of communication regarding the war that includes Ukraine, U.S. allies, and Russia.”

This is undoubtedly the correct approach. Negotiations for a sustainable peace are necessary not merely to de-escalate the situation and avoid a potentially larger conflagration, but perhaps most importantly to stop the wanton death and destruction currently befalling the citizens of Ukraine. As impolitic as it may be to currently say, it should also be our desire to stop Russian lives from needlessly being lost as well.

However, the responses to Charap form a litany of excuses for not engaging with Moscow. Something like the Korean armistice is discounted because North Korea does not occupy any of South Korea’s territory; the Israel situation is not feasible because Tel Aviv possesses nuclear weapons; the example of the Balkan Contact Group is inapplicable because one could do business with the Yeltsin administration.

But Charap presents these as cases to draw lessons from, not as exact models to copy. They illustrate how to adapt means in unique situations to reach the same end: a viable peace agreement amid hostile parties that is reached by way of a negotiated settlement.

The issue at the center of the disagreement is that the respondents do not believe that such an end can be reached unless it proceeds from total Ukrainian victory and the destruction of the current Russian regime. The reason for this is presented as a matter of fact: Russia can simply no longer be treated as a real nation-state. As articulated by Stent, any negotiation with Moscow is impossible because they are liars, and an armistice will inevitably be a “temporary solution while Russia regroups and plans its next attack.” Such a conclusion obviously leads the international community to an impasse in which the only way out is through.

Charap replies in kind to the various responses offered to his original piece. The central premise upon which he bases his rebuttal is straightforward: “My critics seem to see diplomacy as a synonym for surrender rather than as an important tool of statecraft.” This is correct, but understanding the argument behind why his critics view a peace settlement as capitulation is even more important. Russia (with Putin as anthropomorphized regression) has broken the rules-based order in a manner that undermines the end of history thesis. The implication of not rectifying this violation would be to implicitly acknowledge that the world is returning to balance of power geopolitics. This is a sin that cannot be forgiven. For that reason, nothing less than a total Russian collapse is an acceptable outcome to the war.

Unfortunately, this seems to be the mindset of not only those experts and diplomats responding to Charap’s sensible argument, but the Western foreign policy establishment more broadly.

Dominick Sansone is a Ph.D. student at the Hillsdale College Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship. Previously a Fulbright recipient to Bulgaria, his writing on politics in the Black Sea region has been published by The National Interest, the Euromaidan Press, The American Conservative, and RealClear Defense, among other publications. He also previously wrote as a contributing columnist focusing on Russia-China relations at The Epoch Times.

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On Monday, Lebanon’s Riad Salameh finally concluded his final six-year term as governor of the Bank of Lebanon after thirty years of office. After months of speculation on whether he would bow out, his deputy, Wassim Mansouri, announced Monday that he will assume responsibility over monetary policy until the appointment of a new governor. Widely viewed by the Lebanese as representative of the oligarchy that destroyed the country’s banking system and robbed them of their savings, Salameh leaves his post and Lebanon in financial ruin.

He was once hailed as the architect of Lebanon’s economic revival in the 2000s, shielding the economy from the disastrous effects of the 2008 financial crisis. Now, his reputation has fallen far from its original pedestal. There is little to say in the former governor’s defense. Mr. Salameh has been summoned multiple times by European courts in France and Germany on accusations of money laundering, tax evasion, and embezzlement. He is also under investigation at home for similar charges. However, the chances of the political class continuing to protect him from legal ramifications are high. On all accounts, he has failed to appear before a courtroom. The former governor denies all wrongdoings and vows to appeal.

Salameh was appointed governor in 1993 under the late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, who was tasked with rebuilding Beirut and Lebanon after its fifteen years of civil war (1975–1990). As head of Banque du Liban (BDL), he was responsible for attracting foreign investment for reconstruction projects, building economic confidence, and strengthening the banking sector. Billions of dollars flowed through Lebanon, creating a boom in infrastructure development, and service activities like tourism and banking flourished. A widely shared illusion of good times reigned supreme. But under the veil of this newfound “prosperity,” Lebanon’s national debt rapidly compounded, reaching over 100 billion dollars in 2021 (500 percent of its GDP).

Lebanon’s debt soon created a financial crisis in 2019, leading to record inflation and the impoverishment of two-thirds of the country’s population. The same year saw Lebanese people from all walks of life descend on Martyr’s Square in downtown Beirut. Shouting “All of them means all of them,” the demonstrators expressed their desire to oust the politicians they blamed for failing to avert the economic collapse.

People in Lebanon demand better living standards after inflation sent them into free fall. The situation has become so desperate that some resorted to breaking into banks to reclaim their own money. Two weeks ago, a man entered a Byblos bank branch in the Beirut suburb of Sin el Fil. He raised his fist in the air while sitting on a table for the media to observe. The man shouted, “Beirut, rise up…revolution,” in reference to the 2019 protests. Despite the man’s appeal, mass demonstrations have largely ceased as people found ways to cope with the changing economic conditions.

By some metrics, Lebanon’s economy is improving. This summer may be a profitable one as two million tourists and expatriates flock to Beirut. Nightclubs, bars, restaurants, and tourist sites are, once again, alive and well. Ten billion dollars in foreign investment may fuel the service and leisure sectors. Nonetheless, wages are still low, and commodity prices are high. The state is non-existent as the government remains in a caretaker formation.

Today’s situation is bleak for most Lebanese, as the currency plummets to a 98 percent low against the dollar. Some independent members of Parliament spoke to The National Interest about what should be the appropriate measures taken against Salameh.

Deputy Najat Saliba said, “this person broke the law many times and should be in jail.” Her parliamentary colleague, Mark Daou blames Salameh personally for the crisis: “He was the key architect and should be held accountable for the financial meltdown.”

Most Lebanese would agree that Mr. Salameh is responsible for the country’s economic failings. But his failure was also that of the broader political class, which presided over a grotesque national debt while doing nothing to alleviate it. Hence, the slogan “all of them means all of them” remains relevant today. A good leader leaves their institution and country in a better place than where they found it. Judging by this metric, Riad Salameh failed in his job, but the failure was not his alone.

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

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Why should a coup in one of the world’s poorest countries be a serious concern for the United States?

On July 25th, members of the special unit of Niger’s presidential guards detained President Mohamed Bazoum, prompting an outpouring of condemnation from leaders around the world.

Hours later, a group of soldiers appeared on national television, claiming to have overthrown the current government. They suspended all government institutions, closed land and air borders, and instituted a nationwide curfew.

General Omar Tchiani, commander of the presidential guards, appointed himself as the leader of the country’s new military government. While little is known about Tchiani and his motivations for the coup, there have been several rumors that Bazoum was preparing to fire him. Interestingly enough, Tchiani allegedly led the unit that successfully prevented a coup in Niger two years ago when a military unit tried to seize the presidential palace days before Bazoum was sworn into office. 

Sadly, the military takeover in Niger is just the latest in a succession of African coups that have contributed to rising instability and the spread of jihadist groups. Since 2020, the continent has seen a total of seven military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Chad, and Sudan. In many cases, the most senior military leaders have not led these regime changes. Instead, colonels in command of elite presidential guards or special forces units have seized power. In at least five cases, coup leaders have even received training at U.S. military institutions. 

And while the spate of coups is worrying, the latest in Niger is particularly concerning. Niger has avoided a violent overthrow in recent years and maintained a relatively healthy democracy in an increasingly unstable West Africa. Since entering office—during the country’s first peaceful transition of power since gaining independence in 1960—Bazoum has been one of the most reliable U.S. allies in the region and has even avoided deepening cooperation with Moscow. Underscoring the importance of the U.S.-Niger relationship, Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Niger earlier this year, praising Bazoum's government and announcing $150 million in new economic aid. However, with his removal, the status of Niger’s relationship with the West is imperiled, and it is unclear when or if Niger will return to a democratic government. The imminent departure of American embassy staff and European nationals is not a reassuring sign.

Militarily, Niger has acted as a critical base for Western forces fighting Al Qaeda and Islamic State-linked groups in both the Sahel and Lake Chad region. Currently, there are over 1,000 U.S. service personnel and an estimated 1,500 French forces in-country. Many were transferred to Niger after withdrawal from other African nations that cut ties with Western security partners. Moreover, the U.S. has used bases in Niger to operate drones for counterterrorism missions throughout the Sahel region. While the status of these American and French forces is still undetermined, losing Niger as a base of operations in West Africa would be a major blow to the fight against jihadist groups.

But perhaps the most concerning outcome of the coup could be a deepening of Russia’s footprint on the African continent through its Wagner paramilitary outfit. Shortly after the coup, Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin purportedly celebrated the coup on an affiliated Telegram channel, describing it as a long overdue liberation from colonizers, and appeared to offer his mercenary group’s services.

While many have questioned the future of Wagner in Africa after Prigozhin’s attempted coup in Moscow, the force’s footprint—and therefore Russia’s influence—is largely unchanged. Prigozhin has even met with Russian president Vladimir Putin and was seen rubbing elbows with African leaders at this week’s Africa-Russia summit in St Petersburg. So, with Wagner’s presence on the continent seemingly secure, Prigozhin could easily replicate his Mali and Central African Republic (CAR) operations in Niger by offering security and counterterrorism support in exchange for mining rights to Niger’s rich natural resources.

If there’s any lesson for Washington to learn from Bazoum’s ouster, it is that even close Western partners like Niger are vulnerable to political instability. Providing security assistance is not enough. Washington must provide broader support to address the root causes of unrest in these countries, or else risk a much more costly outcome: jihadist groups and Russia leveraging the instability for their own purposes.

Emily Milliken is the Senior Vice President and Lead Analyst at Askari Associates, LLC.

Image: Shutterstock. 

Evgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin’s chef-turned-warlord, appears to be cooking up trouble in Africa. The leader of the Wagner Group announced on July 19 in a video that Wagner troops should prepare for fighting in Africa. This is consistent with earlier Wagner Group activities. Wagner mercenaries have committed human rights violations and engaged variously in smuggling, disinformation campaigns, and natural resource extraction in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique, Sudan, and across the continent. These smuggling operations have been vital for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, as while the wider Russian economy buckles under sanctions, the vast amounts of gold and other minerals Wagner is extracting keep the Russian treasury afloat.

Whether or not the recent coup in Niger presents new opportunities for Wagnerian infiltration, the event will have significant geo-economic and geostrategic impacts. Niger is home to 5 percent of global uranium production. European energy production is also dependent on Nigerien uranium. According to Oxfam, “In France, one out of every three light bulbs is lit thanks to Nigerien uranium,” which is vital for broader European energy production. With the new government in Niamey announcing a total closure of its borders for the time being, European energy markets will feel a pinch if regular exports do not resume within several weeks.

This is not the first time Niger has experienced political discord. This week’s coup d’état is the fifth since the country gained independence from France in 1960. Some coups were brazen seizures of powers by the military, others putative defenses of democracy. Now, both sides claim a democratic mandate. Deposed ministers are calling on the civilian population to “rescue hard-won democratic gains.” At the same time, the new junta, some of whom cooperated with Russia in the past, pledged to preserve democracy and restore the rule of law.

Unsurprisingly, regional instability spills over into Niger. The wider Sahel region is a mess, and the country has to contend with multiple intersecting jihadist insurgencies. From the south, sectarian rebellions overflow from northern Nigeria and Cameroon. From the north, endemic chaos reigns in Libya. Looking east and west, Tuareg rebels in Mali and insurgents in Northern Chad present a grim outlook for regional security. More disruptive forces emanate from Sudan as well. For some time, it appeared that Niger was an exception to the anarchic trend. The now deposed Nigerien president Mohamed Bazoum had even deepened security ties with the United States.

However, the continuing chaos is a feature, not a bug, of Russian policy in Africa. Russia’s ailing and lagging soft power means it can offer little to Sub-Saharan African actors compared to the West or China. As a result, it opened its arsenal to both sides in armed conflicts throughout the continent and hopes that the short-term gains from mining and smuggling will save the Russian economy from the impact of Western sanctions. Moscow’s ruthlessly self-centered behavior is evident in the overall shift of Russian diplomacy towards the region since 2022. In July of last year, the African Union (AU) and Russia cordially discussed the prospect of resuming Russian grain shipments to needy African countries. In July 2023, after Russia literally torpedoed the grain deal and intensified food insecurity on the continent, only one-third of the invited African leaders to an African Union-Russia summit showed up.

Should Russia continue to expand its influence in the Sahel, it will enable the spread of anti-Western, radical terrorism while simultaneously disrupting Western energy supplies, including uranium. Disrupting alternative energy supply chains is critical for Russia since it increases European dependence on Russian natural gas and petroleum.

The Wagner Group may have lost some presence on Ukrainian battlefields, but that does not mean they no longer contribute to Russia’s war effort. However estranged Russian president Vladimir Putin and Prigozhin may be, the latter still advances the Kremlin’s grand strategy. Prigozhin called the conflict with the West “global.” For Wagner, it sure is.

Western policymakers should act to protect the uranium supply chain in Africa and recognize that Sudan and Niger are not just another organic bout of African instability. This is part of the Russian strategy to sow chaos in a desperate gambit to win its energy war.

Wesley Alexander Hill is the lead analyst and International Program Manager for the Energy, Growth, and Security Program at the International Tax and Investment Center. He researches geopolitical and geo-economic issues involving China, Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

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The weeks of intense turmoil in Israel over its future provides an opportunity for the United States to reassess its own policy toward that country. Former U.S. ambassadors and mainstream American columnists are broaching what was previously unthinkable: ending aid to Israel. The heavily indebted United States (federal debt owned by the public has reached nearly 100 percent of U.S. GDP) provides almost $4 billion in annual military aid to a rich country that has long been able to afford to pay for its own defense. Ending that largesse is long overdue.

Both sides in the current maelstrom of protest over weakening the Israeli Supreme Court, the only remaining check on the country’s parliament, are arguing that they are promoting democracy. That is not really true. Only the ultranationalist/religious Right-controlled parliament is strengthening democracy by trying to weaken the court by mandating that it no longer can strike down parliament-passed laws by ruling them “unreasonable.” The secular/pluralist side of the debate, despite their rhetoric, is really fighting for more democracy by trying to keep the one republican feature of Israel’s parliamentary system: a strong Supreme Court.

As the U.S. founders realized, unconstrained democracy is to be feared. It is no surprise that the Biden administration and many American Jews and supporters of Israel—used to the American written constitution (Israel has none) providing republican checks and balances to constrain raw majority power, that is, pure democracy—are uncomfortable with the Israeli ultranationalist/religious Right’s attempt to weaken the court and institute what could become a tyranny of the majority. Unlike Israel, the United States has many built-in safeguards to check majority power: a bicameral legislature, an independent executive with a veto over legislation, federalism that allows state governments to govern on many issues, a Bill of Rights that majorities at the federal and state level are not supposed to trample on, and a Supreme Court that is supposed to uphold those rights. Israel, however, has only a Supreme Court to sometimes temper parliamentary excesses and stick up for at least some rights.

The secular pluralist republicans in Israel fear that, with a weakened court, the rights of certain groups not favored by the ultranationalist/religious faction will be crushed by the unchecked parliamentary majority. Among the groups likely to be harmed are Israeli Arabs (about 20 percent of the population) and Palestinians in the West Bank. Although Israel is a democracy of sorts, it is not for those groups, who are treated as second-class citizens. The Israeli parliament, constrained less by a weakened court, would likely further erode the rights of Israeli Arabs, allow more Israeli settlers to take more of Palestinian land, or even attempt to annex the West Bank.

Most of these Israeli policies, which many Americans are uncomfortable with, are ongoing. But they could be accelerated with the demise of a court that occasionally stops or attenuates especially egregious Israeli government policies toward these disadvantaged groups. One would think that $4 billion in annual military aid give the United States leverage to moderate Israeli behavior toward both groups of Arabs. It hasn’t. In fact, continued U.S. aid—even when Israel has essentially locked up Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza for years and controlled their movement and trade, while it has stalled the creation of a promised Palestinian state and allowed Israeli settlers to grab ever more Palestinian land in the West Bank—implicitly condones Israel’s bad behavior and even funds military forces that can be used to sustain this human rights travesty.

Washington should end the almost $4 billion a year in military aid not just for all these reasons, but also because Israel has grown rich and can fund its own armed forces. The country now ranks 24th in the world in income per capita, right up there with other rich developed countries in Europe, East Asia, and the Persian Gulf. The country no longer needs the aid—it even should be embarrassing to the wealthy Israelis—and implies U.S. agreement with objectionable policies toward Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.

Ivan Eland is a senior fellow with the Independent Institute and author of War and the Rogue Presidency.

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A recent development has rocked the scientific community over the past two weeks. Advocates proclaim that we now potentially stand on the brink of a transformative age in technology that could render our current power network and level of technology as quaintly outdated as the telegraph.

The harbinger of this new age? Room-temperature superconductors—materials that conduct electricity with perfect efficiency, without the need for deep chilling. If viable, then the arrival of these superconductors is not just a technological leap; it’s a paradigm shift with significant implications for the economy, national security and defense policy, and the future of energy consumption.

First, however, we must determine whether these superconductors can truly be made. Policymakers and experts ought to be aware of the currently unfolding events.

The Quest for the Holy Grail

Let’s start with some basic science. A superconductor, as the name suggests, is a material that can conduct electricity with zero resistance. In other words, it allows an electric current to flow indefinitely without any loss of energy. Compare this to say, contemporary batteries, which can lose up to 25 percent of stored energy over time.

If that sounds astounding, that’s because it is. However, this magic comes with a caveat: traditional superconductors only function in high-pressure, low-temperature environments akin to those found in the deepest recesses of outer space, thus limiting their practical application.

Enter room-temperature superconductors. As the name indicates, these are superconductors that operate at temperatures you would typically find in your everyday environment. The quest for this radical development has been ongoing for decades, with physicists and material scientists around the globe drawn to this scientific holy grail like bees to honey.

As of late last month, it appears that the grail may—just may—have been found. A group of South Korean scientists published papers claiming that they had developed a room-temperature, standard atmospheric pressure superconductor utilizing a lead-based material now dubbed “LK-99.” The scientists’ results have supposedly been successfully replicated by Chinese researchers. Other physicists around the world are racing to see if they too can create functioning LK-99. A preprint from Sinéad M. Griffin, a physicist from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, provides an explanation of what the South Korean scientists have seen. Yet other efforts to reproduce the results have predominantly fallen short. The School of Materials Science and Engineering at Beihang University in China attempted to replicate the LK-99 team’s process but encountered different outcomes. Likewise, a team at the National Physical Laboratory of India also failed.

The jury is thus still out on whether or not LK-99 is indeed a viable room-temperature superconductor—we are still extremely early in the scientific investigative process. We must wait until respected national laboratories, institutions, and others more thoroughly experiment with the process. We simply will not know for days, perhaps even weeks, whether LK-99 is in fact the real thing. Even if it isn’t, however, current results indicate that, at the very least, the compound’s discovery “suggests new lines of research” into room-temperature superconductors.

A Scientific Revolution…

But let us suppose, for a moment, that LK-99 is indeed the real thing. Or, at the very least, that there is now theoretical evidence that room-temperature superconductors are possible and we’ll have the real thing developed within a decade or so. If so, why should this matter to us?

The answer is that the potential applications of this new superconductor, if viable, are nothing short of revolutionary.

Our current electrical grid leaks enormous amounts of energy as heat due to resistance in wires. Now envision a world where electrical power grids lose virtually no energy in transmission. Room-temperature superconductors could lead to “perfect” power lines, supercharging the efficiency of our power infrastructure, slashing energy costs in the billions of dollars, reducing carbon footprints, and invigorating the growth of renewable energy. Moreover, smaller, more efficient electrical equipment is possible. Think electric vehicles with dramatically improved range, or data centers consuming less power.

Further radical effects would be felt in various fields.

In transportation, the introduction of room-temperature superconductors could herald the advent of high-speed, magnetically levitated trains that whizz along at blistering speeds with unmatched energy efficiency—New York City to Los Angeles in twenty minutes flat. This could revolutionize both intercity travel and freight delivery, dramatically reducing commute and delivery times while making a significant dent in transportation-related emissions.

In the realm of information technology, these superconductors could catalyze the development of quantum computers. The technology, while still in its nascent stages, promises computational capabilities that make today’s most powerful supercomputers seem rudimentary. With room-temperature superconductors, this could become commonplace—comparable with the equivalent of the most advanced modern supercomputer being condensed into the size of a smartphone

In medicine, room-temperature superconductors would turbocharge existing high-tech applications. Regulator superconductors are already used here; they are the hidden champions powering Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners, allowing doctors to peer inside the human body in unprecedented detail, all without a single incision. Yet these require cryogenic temperatures to function. Room-temperature superconductors would, in the words of one engineer, “make MRI’s both more accessible, affordable, and also increase resolution to the sub micro-meter scale. Autodocs for all.”

In short, the impact of room-temperature superconductors would likely be seismic. The advent of these superconductors could usher in an era of unprecedented industrial growth, igniting the birth of entirely new industries, driving economic growth, and generating millions of jobs in sectors ranging from technology and transportation to energy and healthcare. The companies that harness this transformative technology could emerge as global economic powerhouses.

…and a Geopolitical Revolution?

But perhaps the greatest impact lies in the realm of national security, defense, and foreign policy.

Military systems depend heavily on electricity, from aircraft carriers down to the individual soldier’s gear. Room-temperature superconductors could mean more efficient and compact power systems, lighter and longer-lasting batteries, and more powerful radar and sonar systems. The U.S. military’s ability to project power around the globe would be significantly enhanced, as would its ability to sustain operations in remote areas.

Moreover, as the military becomes more electrified and networked, the vulnerability of its power infrastructure becomes a critical concern. Superconducting cables are resistant to many types of disruption and could theoretically even be designed to automatically “heal” after a break, greatly improving the resilience of the military’s power networks.

More broadly, room-temperature superconductors could reshape global geopolitical dynamics by altering the strategic significance of energy resources. If room-temperature superconductors lead to cheaper, more efficient storage and transmission of renewable energy, nations with abundant renewable resources could gain a strategic advantage. Oil-dependent economies could find their power waning.

Yet a superconductive world is not without its significant risks. The potential military applications of room-temperature superconductors could lead to a new technological arms race. Governments across the globe would quickly recognize the strategic importance of this technology and rush to stake their claim, leading to international disputes over patents, technology transfers, and market access. There are significant national security implications if other nations master this technology first, or if the United States fails to secure its supply chains for the requisite critical materials needed to make room-temperature superconductors.

This is not a prospect to be taken lightly, and policymakers must factor in these considerations while shaping policies.

When the Magic Becomes Real

The quest for room-temperature superconductors thus paints a tantalizing picture of a future that may be within our grasp—one where energy flows freely without loss, high-speed trains levitate on invisible magnetic tracks, and quantum computers hum in offices worldwide. Washington could perhaps speed up this transformation through a variety of means: increased funding for research and development, tax incentives for companies investing in superconductor technology, and strategic public-private partnerships that share the financial risks and rewards of this ground-breaking technology.

But the superconductive moment, such as it is, also presents us with a formidable challenge: how to harness the transformative potential of this technology while navigating the geopolitical tensions and policy challenges it presents. The superconductive transition would be massively disruptive, with entire industries falling prey to technological change, oil-rich and technologically-poor nations suddenly falling behind, and new dangers manifesting.

The balance that must be struck is a delicate one, melding the drive for economic growth and technological superiority with the pursuit of international cooperation and sustainable progress. It is incumbent that policymakers be extremely careful in this effort.

Ultimately, time will tell whether LK-99 is the real deal; a viable room temperature superconductor, with all that such implies.

It is also incredibly ironic that the South Korean scientists behind LK-99 used lead. Perhaps the ancient alchemists were right all along: lead can be transformed into gold.

Carlos Roa is the Executive Editor of The National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.

Amin Abou Rashed, president of the European Palestinians Conference (EPC), was rubbing elbows with Swedish politicians at an EPC event in late May. A month later, Rashed and his daughter were reportedly behind bars in the Netherlands for funneling €5.5 million to Hamas. This is just the latest instance of Hamas and other terrorist groups operating under the guise of charities and non-governmental organizations.

According to Dutch law, the names of suspects are not released until after a conviction. But the ages of the suspects, Abou Rashed’s conspicuous social media absence, and the analysis of those familiar with the case strongly suggest that the fifty-five-year-old man and twenty-five-year-old woman Dutch police arrested are Abou Rashed and his daughter.

Speeches by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh have been a fan favorite at the EPC, launched by the London-based Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) in 2003. Israel declared the PRC a front for Hamas in 2010.

Israel is not alone in identifying NGO networks in Europe affiliated with Palestinian terrorist groups. Treasury began sanctioning European-based Hamas-backed entities in 2003, including the UK-based charity Interpal, which is also designated by Canada and Australia. Two individuals who have served on the PRC’s board were also a board member and an activist in Interpal, respectively.

Beyond Interpal, the United States got serious decades ago about tackling charities and NGOs operating as fronts for Hamas. The most public of these cases involved the Holy Land Foundation (HLF). The United States designated the Texas-based charity as a terrorist group in December 2001, months after the 9/11 attacks. Over the course of years of investigations, U.S. prosecutors unraveled HLF’s web of fundraising on behalf of Hamas, particularly to support martyrs and their families. The HLF case highlighted Hamas’ strategy of collecting money through front groups.

Given his extensive connections to Hamas, it appears Abou Rashed was running the same playbook out of Europe. Israel sanctioned Abou Rashed, as well as two other EPC board members, in 2013 as an operative of Hamas in Europe. Abou Rashed also heads the Israa Foundation and was a member of the Al Aqsa Foundation Netherlands. Both are part of the Union of Good, a coalition of organizations fundraising on behalf of Hamas in Europe. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the Union in 2008, but the European Union has yet to follow suit. Abou Rashed has been affiliated with other NGOs tied to Hamas as well.

Swedish officials have yet to be deterred by Abou Rashed’s close, if not overt, ties to Hamas. In early May, Abou Rashed boasted about his successful meeting with Swedish Left Party member Mats Bilberg. At the EPC gathering in late May, Abou Rashed embraced a Swedish legislator known for anti-Israel remarks, while another Swedish lawmaker was in attendance.

Abou Rashed is just one of several Hamas members operating out of Europe. There is also Majed Khalil Musa Al Zeir, a German resident and senior member of Hamas. Al Zeir has held positions in entities based in Europe designated by Israel as Hamas proxies.

Then there’s EPC board member Mohammad Hanoun, who heads an Italian charity. In 2013, Hanoun led a European-Arab convoy to Gaza, where he met with various members of Hamas, including Ismail Haniyeh and Ahmed Bahar. Hanoun is on Israel’s sanctions list for Hamas activity.

Millions of euros flow into Gaza annually from Hamas-affiliated NGOs in Europe. But Hamas has also succeeded in attracting aid from non-Hamas European charities. In 2018, Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), a Norwegian government-funded NGO, was involved in a civil fraud complaint from USAID in which NPA was required to pay over $2 million to the United States for admitting to providing material support to Iran, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Beyond Hamas, Israel has identified an NGO network operating on behalf of the PFLP, which is likewise a U.S-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. Following an investigation into a murder committed by Palestinians who were PFLP members and affiliated with NGOs, Israel designated six Palestinian non-profits, all of which have received European funding, as PFLP proxies.

Though some European countries have recently made strides in arresting suspected European Hamas affiliates or even outlawing the group as a whole, the lack of European sanctions on individual Hamas members and other covertly affiliated groups allows operatives to run freely on European soil. By allowing terrorists to incite and operate on the continent, Europe becomes increasingly vulnerable to domestic extremism, endangering Europeans.

Burying their heads in the sand is not an option for Europeans. British cleric Anjem Choudary leads the al-Muhajiroun network, which preaches an extreme interpretation of Islam similar to that of Hamas. Usman Khan, inspired by Choudary’s radical message, murdered two people on the London Bridge in 2019. Michael Adebolajo, one of the two men who murdered British soldier Lee Rigby on a London street in 2013, also drew inspiration from Choudary. Adebolajo had attended Choudary protests and claimed he carried out his attack to “take revenge for the killing of Muslims by British soldiers.” Just this Monday, a London court charged Choudary with terrorism offenses.

Europeans might be inclined to think that Hamas’ brand of terrorism is separate from that of other jihadist movements. But they would be wrong. Abou Rashed was a regular feature at anti-Israel protests in the Netherlands, where he spewed his hatred of the Jewish state. This type of hatred inspired Shehzad Tanweer to carry out the July 7, 2005, London transit bombings that killed 52. Tanweer explained his motivations in a video released shortly before the attack, saying, “You have offered financial and military support to the U.S. and Israel, in the massacre of our children in Palestine.”

Both the Abou Rashed and Anjem Choudary cases further prove how terrorist groups use NGOs as fronts for illicit activity. It should serve as a wake-up call to Europe. From Amsterdam to London and beyond, allowing Islamist terrorist groups to operate on European soil puts European lives in danger.

Melissa Sacks is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where David May (@DavidSamuelMay) is a research manager and senior research analyst. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Image: Shutterstock.

In the days since Moscow canceled its participation in the Ukraine grain shipment deal, there has been much proverbial gnashing of teeth in Washington, Brussels, Kyiv, and other capitals. Primarily, the concern is how to proceed with the shipment of vital foodstuffs to developing countries in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, which are dependent on Ukrainian exports to sustain the diets of their combined populations of hundreds of millions of citizens.

Skilled diplomats have been tasked with bringing together the parties again, to meet Moscow’s conditions for resuming Black Sea exports, and sustaining Ukraine’s battered wartime economy in what may be just the initial phase of a years-long struggle with Russian armed forces. But even so, strategic thought is required now to adapt to the transformed geopolitics of not only the Black Sea region, but throughout southeastern Europe, where NATO and EU borders form the trans-Atlantic frontier with Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus amid perennial shifts in Europe’s fragile security architecture.

One ideal option is centered in the northern Greek Aegean port of Alexandroupolis, whose modest size and economy belie the significant opportunities it offers to resolve the conundrum of maritime supply lines embarking from Odesa and other Ukrainian ports through the Mediterranean Sea to foreign markets.

The Strategic Importance of Alexandroupolis

Located in a relatively underdeveloped region of northern Greece, several miles from the Turkish border and 60 miles north of the Dardanelles Straits that lead into the Black Sea, Alexandroupolis is the starting point for a vertical corridor that leads directly north into Bulgaria and Romania, which shares a 380-mile border with Ukraine.

The overland corridor runs parallel to current Black Sea shipping lanes closed off to Ukrainian exports by the Russian navy, serving as a gateway to southern Europe without having to enter the perilous Black Sea theater, thereby saving precious transportation time and costs and providing a superior alternative in the face of Moscow’s intimidation campaign.

According to the U.S. Defense Department, the port has provided strategic readiness, logistics support, and power projection, enabled by robust synchronization between the United States and Greece.

Washington’s interest began about five years ago, as the Trump administration sought to help Athens develop a pro-Western anchor point to compete with the Chinese-controlled port of Piraeus, acquired by Beijing during the 2008 financial crisis when U.S. and European companies rejected Athens’ pleas to invest in the modernization of that historic port city. The State Department was also concerned about Greece’s major northern port of Thessaloniki, owned by a Greek-Russian businessman with party ties to Vladimir Putin.

Under the most recent Mutual Defense and Cooperation Agreement with Greece, the United States has helped advance plans to upgrade Alexandroupolis into a strategic logistics hub whose expansion plans now include military, energy, and transportation. In the three years prior to the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon had already transported enormous arsenals, including 117,000 tons of U.S. military equipment, including seventy planes and 165 armored vehicles, all through Alexandroupolis.

In the sixteen months since the start of the conflict, the port has been a critical maritime lifeline for supplying NATO forces on Ukraine’s western border, providing constant resupply of weapons, foodstuffs, and essential humanitarian supplies to provide for the country’s ravaged citizenry, as well as to millions of Ukrainian refugees throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

Alexandroupolis’ existing infrastructure includes a usable 500-yard post space, along with adequate road and rail links north into NATO’s eastern flank. It retains excess spare capacity, unlike Piraeus and Thessaloniki, and has granted priority access to U.S. military forces. U.S. defense secretary Lloyd Austin publicly recognized Greece’s role in enabling “the expansion of U.S. forces in Greece to support the United States and NATO’s objectives for strategic access in the region,” especially in Ukraine.

Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Celeste Wallender visited the port in February, reportedly followed by CIA director William Burns in June. Their presence marks the growing U.S. interest in the port for both military logistics and strategic energy supplies. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez visited in August 2022, as the Pentagon moved 2,400 light armored vehicles, weapons, and ammunition boxes through the port. At a committee hearing in Washington last week, Menendez called Alexandroupolis “the Souda of the North and a major NATO energy and transshipment hub.” He was comparing the Aegean port to the strategic deep-water port of Souda Bay on the southern Greek island of Crete, which provides operational support to the U.S., NATO, and coalition forces throughout the eastern Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and northern African theaters.

During the course of the Ukraine war, Alexandroupolis has served as the starting point for scores of rail missions and about 4,500 truckloads into Balkan and Baltic states, delivering more than 2,400 tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters. For the recent annual Defender Europe 23 exercise in eastern Europe, the Pentagon’s local logistics team coordinated the shipment of more than 600 pieces of military equipment and vehicles within just four days—and the Pentagon plans to install heavy equipment to handle even more cargo.

The port’s proven NATO interoperability, readiness, and ability to deploy allied forces has multiplied its strategic value for long-term regional planning. British, French, Italian, and Portuguese forces have all used the port since its ongoing expansion. Cargo ships docking at Alexandroupolis unload directly onto, and load from, four parallel rail systems running through Bulgaria and Romania, reaching Poland in as little as five days.

The newly re-elected government of Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is proceeding with a major port modernization plan that includes improved rail, road, pipeline, and sea-land infrastructure to interconnect central and eastern Europe. In June, U.S. ambassador to Athens George Tsunis convened in the port a meeting of diplomats from western Black Sea countries to explore deepening cooperation and strengthening infrastructure, corridors, and networks that cross and connect Greece with Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, and Moldova.

In this context, their regional governments are assessing how best to transport Ukrainian grain to Alexandroupolis en route to dependent foreign markets in nearby northern Africa and the Middle East. According to the European Commission, Ukraine accounts for 10 percent of the world’s wheat market, 15 percent of the corn market, 13 percent of the barley market, and a substantial portion of the global sunflower oil sector.

This project is bolstered by a $1.1 billion European Union investment upgrade to add extra track, electrify the entire underutilized rail system, and connect the port to the EU’s Trans-European Transport Network. The first phase involves a 35-million-euro project to deepen the port, purchase cranes, build new warehouses to store as much as 200,000 tons of Ukrainian grain exports per month, and construct a local ring-road bypass.

This will facilitate a substantial, if incomplete, replacement of traditional Black Sea shipping routes for Ukrainian grain exports, as Alexandroupolis is not currently deep enough to handle the largest bulk carriers. It would also enable exporters to avoid expensive war risk insurance premiums currently in place for Black Sea shipping.

An Potential Energy Hub

Concurrently, Europe seeks to accelerate its independence from Russian hydrocarbons. The eastern Mediterranean region can provide abundant liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies from offshore reserves in Egypt, Israel, Cyprus, and potentially Greece that would be shipped to a floating storage and regasification unit under construction just off the coast of Alexandroupolis and set to begin operation by January 2024.

American and Qatari LNG supplies are also expected to be in the mix of up to 5.5 billion cubic meters of annual capacity linked inland via the port to an expanding network of natural gas pipelines delivering LNG through the port into central and western Balkan economies, through North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Serbia, and eventually into Albania, Montenegro, and Croatia along the Adriatic coast. A second future floating terminal southwest of Alexandroupolis is already moving forward.

In addition, expanding the current Trans-Adriatic Pipeline moving Azeri gas through Turkey into northern Greece, expanding the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria pipeline, and potentially reversing the Trans-Balkan pipeline to carry natural gas northward from Greece through Bulgaria, Romania, and possibly Ukraine and Moldova can together transform the regional energy grid of southeastern Europe.

Overall plans for Alexandroupolis include an ambitious expansion plan adding significant dock space, a new cargo terminal, an extra 500-meter pier, and a bypass to the local motorway to connect to the modest 8,470-foot runway airport only three miles away, and especially to the 420-mile Egnatia highway across northern Greece, linking the western Ionian Sea ports to Istanbul in the east.

Ankara has viewed these Greek port developments skeptically, through the prism of Black Sea competition rather than operational complementarity. The vertical axis north of Alexandroupolis will enhance transshipment options beyond the choke points of the Dardanelles and Bosporus Straits controlled by Turkey, and the northern route through Poland into western Ukraine. Such a configuration will become essential when a peace agreement is eventually achieved, and the projected half-trillion dollars of reconstruction materials, equipment, and energy capacity will need to rebuild Ukraine’s battered infrastructure and persuade millions of refugees to return home to a secure post-war environment.

Turkish authorities have long warned about the safety and environmental damage risks of steadily increasing tanker and shipping traffic through the straits, where more than 140 maritime incidents have occurred since 2006. The Alexandroupolis port would alleviate logistical bottlenecks and environmental stress on the straits astride a growing Istanbul population of nearly twenty million citizens.

Given the recent rapprochement signals by Prime Minister Mitsotakis and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the NATO Summit in Vilnius, reliable and environmentally sound supply lines throughout southeastern European markets from the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean Seas should be a new sector of strategic cooperation between the neighboring allies.

An Opportunity for Regional Development and Security

There is no assurance that Russia will stop blocking Ukrainian ports any time soon following its withdrawal from the grain deal. Even if Black Sea shipping is restored, the threat of recurring crises will loom for years, perhaps decades. The need for strategic diversification of energy and food corridors in case of future crises, or as an alternative scenario if Russia-Ukraine agreements collapse, is self-evident. Ship owners can expect to bear increased insurance premiums to enter the Black Sea and will remain reluctant to have their vessels and cargoes pass through a recent war zone without safety assurances.

Rather than be turned into a geopolitical flash-point, developing the Alexandroupolis port can help to stabilize the global food market and provide abundant natural gas supplies to directly replace Russian LNG supplies which remain excluded from EU sanctions until at least 2027. It will also deliver to NATO new routes from the south to project power against serious Russian and Chinese inroads, including growing influence over critical infrastructure in Syria, Libya, the Balkans, and across southeastern Europe.

U.S. support for the peaceful development of regional overland interlocking markets via sea-based communication lanes emanating from Alexandroupolis positions the port to become the next military, energy, transport, and logistics hub within the arc of regional crises during and beyond the war in Ukraine.

John Sitilides is a geopolitical strategist at Trilogy Advisors and diplomacy consultant to the State Department under a U.S. government contract.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions of the U.S. government.

Image: Flickr.

South Africa recently sent a senior ministerial delegation to the United States to make its case it should remain a beneficiary of its trade preferences under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Pretoria is in danger of losing these preferences due to what Washington regards as a de facto pro-Russian bias in the war in Ukraine.

This would be a mistake; there are good reasons why it is in America’s interests to keep South Africa as a trading partner and within its sphere of influence through AGOA membership.

Under AGOA, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 2000, America decides which Sub-Saharan countries have duty-free access to U.S. markets unilaterally. President Joe Biden will determine Whether South Africa keeps its benefits with the advice of international trade officials.

The main sticking point for the U.S. government, and many commentators, is South Africa’s position in the Russia-Ukraine War. Critics believe that the government of President Cyril Ramaphosa—which allows joint military exercises with Russia, loads mysterious cargo onto a Russian ship, and refuses to condemn the Russian invasion—is effectively pro-Russia and harmful to U.S. interests. According to AGOA, African beneficiaries must “not engage in activities that undermine United States national security or foreign policy interests.”

But it would nonetheless be harmful to America’s interests to terminate South Africa’s AGOA membership since it would likely drive South Africa further into the arms of Russia and China. Considering South Africa’s strategic position as an alternative sea route to the Suez Canal, its strategic minerals bounty, and its relatively high level of industrialization, America has a strategic motivation to keep South Africa in the AGOA fold.

South African retention in the AGOA is vital because America is rightly worried about expanding Russian and Chinese diplomatic and trade ties to the African continent. Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured Africa in 2021 and 2022 to show African countries how much they are valued in Washington and showcase offers of U.S. assistance. Why undermine his message?

Last year, Biden unveiled a new Africa strategy with a policy document stating, "Sub-Saharan Africa is critical to advancing our global priorities.”

Removing South Africa from AGOA would frustrate this aim. Why would Washington force South Africa, and possibly other African nations, into an adversarial camp? Trade and diplomatic ties could be followed by military sales, basing agreements, or even alliances. A Russian or Chinese naval base in Simonstown would complicate American naval presence in the Indo-Pacific.

In addition, removing South Africa from AGOA would be costly for U.S. manufacturers and taxpayers.

First, America is a beneficiary of the AGOA terms of trade, not only because of increased access to the South African markets but also because South African manufactured goods, such as parts for motor vehicles assembled in America, enter the country duty-free. U.S. industry would lose these supply chains if the president disqualified South Africa.

Second, when Congress renewed AGOA in 2015, it forced South Africa to accept a substantial annual quota of American chicken portions free of the anti-dumping duties to which they were previously subject. Because of the quota, poultry suppliers benefit because they are the leading supplier of frozen chicken portions to South Africa, even though South African chicken farmers object. If AGOA goes, the South African poultry industry will rejoice, but U.S. poultry producers would forfeit a substantial market they have developed.

Third, losing AGOA membership would be a harsh blow to the South African economy, with ripple effects beyond its borders, punishing workers and poor people throughout the southern African region. Expelling South Africa could result in costly increases in U.S. aid to Africa if the already fragile South African economy collapses under the weight of its pre-existing domestic problems and the denial of access to U.S. markets.

The United States spends billions annually in aid to Africa—$8.5 billion in 2020 alone.

AGOA does exactly what its name indicates—it helps African economies grow, increase their trade ties with America, and create jobs, improving opportunities for social mobility.

Expelling South Africa from AGOA would hurt poor Africans the most—particularly workers in South Africa’s manufacturing and agricultural industries dependent on AGOA benefits. Each wage earner has to support multiple dependents in a region noted for record unemployment. One job lost means that many go hungry.

It is undoubtedly not in America’s interests to take actions that could destabilize the economies of Southern Africa, frustrate the AGOA vision, and increase the billions that U.S. taxpayers spend to uplift African countries and their peoples. AGOA benefits the United States and South Africa, and removing South Africa from AGOA is not in the interests of America or American taxpayers.

Francois Baird is the founder of the FairPlay trade movement.

Image: Shutterstock.

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said in an interview released on July 21 that the airline could resume a small number of flights to Ukraine as early as the end of 2023 should Ukraine open part of its airspace for commercial aviation. The executive revealed that the Ireland-based airline was weighing two options for resuming business in Ukraine—the first being “the war finishes, and everything reopens in one day or two” and the second “more likely” situation in which the airline resumes a “small number of flights” during wartime at the year’s end.

Despite this chatter, Western regulators should prohibit such wartime flights to avoid risks to the lives and safety of those onboard and ensure commercial aviation does not become a convenient stairway for those seeking to escalate the Russia-Ukraine War.

O’Leary is not alone in expecting, if not hoping for, the partial wartime reopening of Ukrainian airspace to commercial flights, despite the air traffic management body Eurocontrol forecasting that the closure of Ukraine’s airspace to civilian aircraft will persist until 2029.

In April 2023, France’s Minister for Transport Clément Beaune told European Pravda that Ukrainian authorities were “working hard” to open airspace for civilian planes either “fully” or “partially.” “As I understand it, Ukraine already has certain considerations for this event, and Kyiv is working hard on it. However, of course, the main issue is still security,” Beaune said.

From a purely symbolic standpoint—holding off the debate on feasibility and risk—the resumption of flights to Ukraine might allow Ukraine and its supporters to celebrate a victory, making claims that Russia’s ability to destroy Ukrainian latent power and infrastructure is waning due to the supposed ‘bravery’ of the Ukrainian armed forces. As such, a resumption of flights could temporarily boost Ukrainian morale. However, the risk and feasibility of such a move indicate that it is dangerous and should only be encouraged once the war ends.

The leading threat vector airlines will encounter during wartime flights to Ukraine is Russia’s anti-air capabilities. Consequently, O’Leary’s comparison of the risks of flying to Israel falls apart when one realizes that Russia’s ground-to-air and air-to-air attack capabilities are far superior to those of Palestinian militants.

The weaponry currently available to Palestinians can only threaten aircraft when parked at an airport or flying at low altitudes. These include rocket-propelled grenades, artillery rockets, and Strela-2 shoulder-launched anti-air missiles. Conversely, Russia enjoys a full spectrum of sophisticated anti-air capabilities beyond unguided rocket artillery, rocket-propelled grenades, and shoulder-launched missiles.

In range and speed, Russian air defense systems, many intended for ballistic and cruise missiles, can conveniently down civilian aircraft, including those flying at cruising altitude. As such, they would make civilian airplanes easy targets.

The 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over the Donbas by a Buk surface-to-air missile is a notable warning to any airline that seeks to send airplanes into a warzone where Russia and Ukraine are engaged in combat. With ranges of 250-400 km, Russian S-400s from Belarus can down any approaching aircraft in Western Ukraine, rendering major and minor airports in cities such as Lvov, Ternopol, Vinnytsia, and Ivano-Frankivsk dangerous for civilian aviation. Buk and S-300s can assist Russian air defenses, although their ranges are lesser than the S-400s. Other parts of Ukraine, including Kiev, are also unsafe for civilian aircraft, considering their proximity to Belarus, Crimea, or Russia and its newly annexed regions in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk.

Russian air-to-air capabilities are no less dangerous. The Russian air force can fire long-range air-to-air missiles from a distance, notably the Vympel R-37 missile. While Ukrainian fighter jets could dodge this missile, according to reporting from Forbes, civilian jetliners lack the hardware for jetfighter-like evasive maneuvers.

One might be tempted to point to the Patriot missile systems in Kiev and their relative success at intercepting Shahed drones and cruise missiles. However, the relative success of Ukrainian air defense is not a reliable indicator of civilian aviation safety.

Air defense system interceptors risk producing shrapnel when they strike missiles near jetliners—the shrapnel either from the interceptor or the intercepted projectile. Once shrapnel shreds the fuselage or enters the engine, it can severely damage a civilian plane, possibly causing destruction sufficient to down it.

Aside from the risk of shrapnel, Russian strikes on Odessa demonstrate that successful interceptions in Kiev are no reason for celebration—Russia can still develop and deploy missiles that evade air defenses and deliver immense destruction.

Furthermore, the threat of airstrikes on airbases and runways, especially those shared by Ukraine’s air force, renders the authorization of civilian flights to Ukraine a negligent and reckless move for regulators and airlines.

Passengers choosing to fly on such wartime flights to Ukraine will be making a suicidal gamble. The other risk of allowing such wartime flights is that they could catalyze military escalation.

Though Ukrainian officials and their supporters can present civilian airplanes as civilian transport, such flights can become, in essence, “dual use” when used to ferry Ukrainian officials, male conscripts, soldiers, and Western intelligence personnel in and out of Ukraine. Civilian passengers would become human shields for strategically important cargo onboard such flights.

Russia could briefly tolerate such flights to avoid escalation. However, analysts should not mockingly dismiss Russian restraint as a weakness. If Russia feels pressed too hard with the possible exploitation of civilian transport for military purposes, it might not be long before the military strikes a commercial plane.

The sinking of the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania, which catalyzed U.S. entry into World War I, is a helpful analogy to understand the risks here. The German attack on the ocean liner killed 1,198 people, including 128 American citizens—a fact British propaganda did not fail to emphasize. However, Lusitania was no harmless vessel. Like several other civilian vessels at the time, it was carrying war munitions headed for Britain, arguably a legitimate military target. This inconvenient fact, nonetheless, failed to deter war advocates pushing the United States to intervene in Europe.

As Western countries increasingly edge toward the escalation cliff, such flights could ferry clandestine war cargo, Ukrainian officials, western intelligence officers, and soldiers to Ukraine, making them an attractive target for Russian forces. The presence of civilians onboard, including possibly citizens of other NATO countries, will make the aircraft’s downing a tripwire that pro-escalation activists and politicians in Ukraine and the West might exploit to pressure NATO into further escalation with Russia.

Citizens of Western and European countries, airport workers, and regulators must play a crucial role in resisting the implementation of wartime civilian flights to Ukraine, even if their governments give tacit consent.

In his interview with Interfax-Ukraine, O’Leary said that whether flights to Ukraine would resume is contingent on European regulators deeming any total or partial opening of Ukrainian airspace safe for European regulators. This gives one hope that reason—not premature celebration over the supposed “successes of Ukrainian resistance” or escalatory brinkmanship—will triumph in the regulators’ decisionmaking calculus.

Andrew Jose is a freelance news reporter and analyst covering politics, foreign policy, and transnational security. He has written for several notable publications, including The Jewish News Syndicate, Stacker, The Daily Caller, and The Western Journal. Andrew is a Master of Arts in Security Policy Studies candidate at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. He received his Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar.

Image: Shutterstock.

Until this past week, Niger was the bastion for the United States and its Western allies in the volatile central Sahel region of Africa. Not only does the country host more than 1,000 U.S. military personnel on two airbases and some 1,500 French troops engaged in anti-terrorism operations, but in the wake of coups in Mali (2020) and Burkina Faso (2022), and an improvised succession in Chad (2021) after the assassination of that country’s longtime leader, Nigerian president Mohamed Bazoum led the last democratically elected government in the region. Niger was also a key development partner. Yet with the overthrow of the Nigerien government announced by the commander of the Presidential Guard and the European Union cutting off its budget support for the country in response, years of patient effort and billions of dollars of investment to support what was thought to be an anchor for regional security and stability seems to have been lost in the blink of an eye.

While the situation remains fluid, the regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), met in an emergency summit on Sunday and decided to impose sanctions on the coup leaders, freeze financial transactions with the Nigerien government, close land and air borders between members of the bloc and Niger, and give the junta a one-week deadline, after which it would take additional measures which “may include the use of force.”

Policymakers need to keep in mind four points in the days ahead:

First, avoid facile narratives and simplistic conclusions about a complex political-military situation. The putsch was barely underway when headlines like “Niger Coup Leader Joins Long Line of U.S.-Trained Mutineers” began appearing. Aside from being simply wrong—the commander of the Presidential Guard, Brigadier General Abdourahamane “Omar” Tchiani, emerged at the head of the junta, not Brigadier General Moussa Salaou Barmou, the Fort Moore- (formerly Fort Benning) and National Defense University-trained chief of the Nigerien Special Operations Forces as the Intercept headline proclaimed—those repeating these tropes also evidence a lack of basic understanding of internal dynamics within the armed forces of a country like Niger.

The clichéd accusation of American training leading to coups is particularly inapt in the case of Niger, where much of the $500 million that the U.S. government spent on military assistance to the country since 2012—one of the largest security assistance programs in Africa—has gone to training and equipping specialized units such as the Special Operations Forces as well as aerial medical evacuation teams, logistic companies, and even two battalions for United Nations peacekeeping operations. The unintended, but foreseeable, consequence of this intensive program was to create new elite units within the Armed Forces of Niger (FAN), which rose in prestige as they accumulated resources. At the same time, the 2,000-strong Presidential Guard, hitherto a quasi-Praetorian corps, declined relatively, giving rise to tensions within the FAN. Ironically, however, while the Special Operations Forces units are dispersed across the country combating jihadist insurgents, the Presidential Guard is stationed in the capital of Niamey, where they were well-positioned to act on their frustrations. (Until things clarify, I would caution against reading too much into General Barmou’s sullen appearance on Nigerien television, standing silently with other senior officers behind the spokesman of the putschists as the coup declaration was read: he may have had little choice in the matter since the only personnel he normally has in his headquarters are operations planners, intelligence analysts, and logisticians—hardly the force with which to resist, much less launch a countercoup.)

Notwithstanding the self-justifying claims of General Tchiani about the “continuing deterioration of the security situation” leading to “the gradual and inevitable demise of our country,” the evidence is that the sustained investment of Niger’s partners in FAN Special Operations Forces seems to have been paying off. As The Economist reported: “While death and destruction have soared in Mali and Burkina Faso, less than a tenth of the deaths in the three countries last year were in Niger, despite its also having to deal with separate jihadist violence perpetrated by Boko Haram, a group that spills over from north-east Nigeria. Deaths from conflict in the first six months of this year in Niger have been the lowest of any similar period since 2018.”

Second, while security is a necessary precondition for state legitimacy, it is by no means sufficient. While serving as U.S. special envoy for the Sahel, I repeatedly emphasized: “The heart of the crisis in the Sahel is one of state legitimacy—a perception by citizens that their government is valid, equitable, and able and willing to meet their needs. Absent states’ commitments to meeting their citizens’ needs, no degree of international engagement is likely to succeed.”

To their credit, both President Bazoum and his predecessor, President Mahamadou Issoufou, understood this and made building up Nigerien state legitimacy a center of their domestic political agenda. America and its allies have generously supported these development efforts. Until last week’s coup caused the European Union to cut off budget support to Niger, the EU allocated approximately €125 million per year for improved governance, education, and sustainable growth programs. France, acting through the official French Development Agency provides approximately €100 million per year. In fiscal year 2022, the United States provided $101 million in development assistance, primarily through the U.S. Agency for International Development, plus $135 million in humanitarian aid.

Moreover, last year, the Nigerien government adopted a five-year Economic and Social Development Plan (Plan de Développement Economique et Social) built around three pillars: developing human capital, inclusion, and solidarity; consolidation of governance, peace, and solidarity; and structural transformation of the economy. At an international conference in Paris in December 2022, the Nigerien government received pledges from various international partners amounting to some $23.4 billion of the estimated $30 billion price tag for the ambitious plan, to be paid out between 2022 and 2026.

The problem, however, is that transformative change takes time and that was one commodity that the Nigerien government not only did not possess much of—but clearly had even less of than it thought it had. The critics of “militarization” of the response to the crisis in the Sahel may be wrong in their instinctive disparagement of security assistance, but they have been not entirely incorrect in observing the often-stark disparity between military and non-military aid programs.

Third, be realistic not sensationalistic about the involvement of malign outside actors. The coincidence of the coup and the opening of the second Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg—a meeting that President Bazoum was pointedly not attending—immediately raised suspicions of possible involvement of the Wagner Group, which is entrenched in the Central African Republic and Mali and has its tentacles in Burkina Faso, Sudan, and elsewhere in the Sahel belt. Researchers from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab have documented how, as the coup unfolded, Russian Telegram channels stepped up longstanding propaganda campaigns that “portrayed Bazoum as a vassal of the West, and Niger under Bazoum’s leadership as being ‘directly dependent on France’ and ‘part of the remnants of the French neo-colonial empire.’” Some channels even claimed that the coup leaders were associated with Wagner. Yevgeny Prigozhin did not go that far, but did not shy from making what amounted to a sales pitch to the Nigerien junta for the services of his mercenary company, posting on social media:

What happened in Niger has been brewing for years. The former colonizers are trying to keep the people of African countries in check. In order to keep them in check, the former colonizers are filling these countries with terrorists and various bandit formations. Thus creating a colossal security crisis…The population suffers. And this is [the reason for] love for PMC [private military company] Wagner, this is the high efficiency of PMC Wagner. Because a thousand soldiers of PMC Wagner are able to establish order and destroy terrorists, preventing them from harming the peaceful population of states.

While it would be a mistake to ascribe too much to Prigozhin’s screed or overestimate his ability to deliver after the tumult within his global criminal network since his own short-lived mutiny against the Kremlin in late June, it would also be one to discount his ambitions (or those of Russia) as simply bravado or to overlook the role that foreign actors have played in a long-running, sophisticated effort on social media to discredit the Nigerien government. It was not by accident that Russian flags and signage have popped up at pro-coup demonstrations from the very first day of the mutiny. (What I replied to one high-level U.S. official when asked three years ago for my take on Russian flags appearing after the coup in Mali applies equally to the white, blue, and red colors now seen in Niger: “Where does one buy large quantities of industrially-produced Malian flags in Bamako, let alone Russian ones?”)

But even if Prigozhin is not able to deliver on his boasts of expansion in Africa, that concern in Washington, Paris, and other Western capitals that he might prove sufficient to divert resources to counter the potential threat on the continent and away from where they might otherwise have been deployed. It is a risk that will require sober assessment.

Fourth, understand the options available are limited and be pragmatic in making choices amongst them. With French forces kicked out of Mali and Burkina Faso after the coups in those countries and the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the former about to be drawn down, there is no sugar-coating the strategic setback that the possible loss of the U.S. and French bases in Niger—which not only support the counterterrorism fight against the regional affiliates of Al Qaeda and Islamic State but also surveilled the ongoing civil conflict in Libya—would represent in the short and intermediate terms. Yet, assuming that the putsch is not reversed, if the U.S. administration is to conform to the law as well as remain true to American values, it will have little choice but to declare what occurred in Niger a coup, with all the consequences that such would entail in terms of security cooperation with the country’s new rulers. In this case, given that ECOWAS has categorically rejected “any form of resignation that may purportedly come from His Excellency President Mohamed Bazoum,” it would be difficult to avoid the legal determination that a coup has taken place. As a result, so-called Section 7008 restrictions would be triggered, blocking foreign assistance delivered to the regime and military training and equipment from the Defense Department. The problem is that this is precisely the type of sanction that creates openings for the West’s geopolitical rivals.

In Niger, it is not only Russia—whose entrée into Mali, it is worth recalling, was the denial by the Biden administration of an export license for a non-lethal military part, a refusal that was not required by law—waiting at the wings, at least according to Prigozhin, but also probably China, whose state-owned oil company CNPC has nearly completed a 2,000-km oil pipeline running from eastern Niger to the Port of Seme terminal on the Atlantic in Benin that will be Africa’s largest. Is it any surprise that, having “taken note” of the African Union and ECOWAS condemnations of the coup, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning limited herself to an anemic call for “relevant parties in Niger” to “solve their differences peacefully through dialogue?”

In practical terms, the coup in Niger leaves Chad as the only country left now in the central Sahel to which the United States can turn as a possible security partner, although doing so requires Washington to be cognizant of the unique challenges there. It was no accident that the ECOWAS Summit dispatched Chad’s Transitional President Mahamat Idriss Déby to Niamey to deliver its decisions to the junta and to seek to check in on President Bazoum. For their part, U.S. policymakers will need to become more creative over time, seeking opportunities to reopen channels to and maybe even flip the allegiances of some regimes currently aligned with Wagner, including the Central African Republic, Mali, and Burkina Faso.

In the end, whether the coup in Niger succeeds or is reversed somehow, the dynamic has certainly shifted. Irrespective of the immediate outcome of the current crisis in Niamey, to safely navigate the strategic challenges ahead in the Sahel, the United States and its allies will need to be clear-eyed about both the stakes and the even more limited options they now have remaining in that fragile African region.

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

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