The National Interest

Great power competition is old hat. Systemic rivals are already passe. The Second Cold War has started. China and Russia started it. It is past time to acknowledge this and start fighting back.

The Chinese regime is an existential threat to the peace and prosperity of the United States and its allies, partners, and friends. Xi Jinping’s appetites are global—from occupying democratic Taiwan to reshaping land borders with India, from redrawing maritime boundaries with its neighbors to imposing strategic dependencies on other nations and blackmailing them economically—all the while building both nuclear and conventional forces to intimidate any opposition.

Xi also greenlit Vladimir Putin’s aggressive war against Ukraine and forged a de facto alliance between China and Russia. Over the past decade, the two autocrats have held an astonishing forty one-on-one meetings—a frequency surpassing their engagements with any other foreign leader by more than twofold. While the United States and other democratic countries were isolating Putin diplomatically, Xi paid a visit to Moscow in March of this year, concluding his trip with a remarkable statement: “Right now there are changes—the likes of which we haven't seen for 100 years—and we are the ones driving these changes together.” The Russian president agreed. Russia, in short, has made itself part of the China challenge.

The thought of living in a world dominated by China and Russia is intolerable to Americans and all freedom-loving peoples. Like any war, a cold war is a contest of will between determined, committed adversaries. It is high time that the United States and its allies start fighting back. We thought long and hard for the list of indicators that would demonstrate America was serious about protecting its interest from the onslaught of aggressive forces that want to remake the world. Here is what we came up with.

Say You are Serious

The Biden administration has never communicated clearly to the American people and the world what we are up against. When it comes to China, Biden’s mantra is weak tea a decade out of date: “compete where we must, but cooperate where we can.” When it comes to Russia, Biden declares the United States will “support Ukraine as long as it takes,” without giving thought to explaining in detail what the plan to deal with Moscow as a threat in the long term. This makes our adversaries sound more like a nuisance than a threat, akin to saying that it’s not our business what Hannibal Lecter does next door, as long as we don’t go over for dinner.

That does not cut it. China has 1.4 billion people, the second-largest economy in the world by various measurements, and a nuclear arsenal that will soon rival that of the United States and Russia. They already dominate many of the world’s most critical supply chains. Beijing is a destabilizing influence on every continent. It is among the world’s worst dictatorial regimes, abusers of human rights, and polluters. Russia is a nuclear peer, meddles in every theater where the United States has vital and important interests, and has violated every norm of responsible behavior. If we can’t label them the cold war adversaries they are—we have lost before we begin.

Secure Your Own Territory

What nation leaves its borders wide open in times of cold war? This is madness. Under Biden’s presidency millions of illegal aliens from all over the world are pouring into the United States through our southern border. In 2022 alone, the Customs and Border Patrol encountered almost 100 people on the terrorist watchlist. Apprehensions of Chinese nationals, many of them men of military age, crossing into the United States illegally are up over 800 percent over the same period last fiscal year. Nobody checks their backgrounds and they are released into the United States on their own recognizance with a court date to be determined at some point in the future. Until America regains control over its open southern border, no nation in the world will believe America is serious about defending its interests.

Claim the Moral High Ground

America is in a contest with brutal dictatorships. The Biden administration must stop describing its China policy as competition, confrontation, and cooperation. This language implies an equivalence between the United States, a democratic country that respects international law, and Xi’s China, a brutal dictatorship that routinely violates key international norms, including through its support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Biden administration should communicate more about America’s freedom and achievements and less about its flaws. Some of the criticism of America’s shortcomings undermines the legitimacy, cohesion, and confidence of the American polity. It simply must be stopped.

Strengthen Deterrence

America cannot prevail unless we demonstrate the will to defend America’s interests. That’s not done by being the world’s policeman, babysitter, or any other metaphor. It is not about muscular actions like regime change or supposed “nation-building.” Nor does the United States have any inherent responsibility to protect some illusory world order. It is simply this: we must have armed forces with the capacity to protect America’s vital interests and be unafraid in our determination to safeguard them.

Grow and Protect the Economy

America can’t win without economic might. Too many Biden economic actions, from energy policies to inflation and infrastructure, have made the economy worse and ballooned our national debt. We must adopt policies that foster economic growth at home, including unleashing American energy, tax cuts to incentivize entrepreneurs, and targeted deregulation. Economic security is national security.

We must expand the safeguards that prevent China from exploiting America’s economy. We are efficient today at stopping Chinese companies that want to invest in U.S. companies in national security-sensitive sectors. We must also prevent U.S. investments in Chinese companies related in any way to the military or repression establishments in the People’s Republic.

Challenge Allies to do a Lot More

Putin’s war in Ukraine served as a global wake-up call for America’s allies. For instance, twenty countries in Europe are increasing their defense spending—but the figures ultimately amount to only about one percent in real growth over last year’s level.

The willingness to spend more on defense is not the long pole in the European tent—the big challenges are inflation, energy costs, debt servicing, and weak economies. There are serious fiscal structural challenges to Europe spending a lot more on its own defense. This is a key point because it’s not just about telling Europe to “defend yourself because the United States has to pivot to Asia.” Post the Ukraine war, Europe now agrees that it must do more for its own defense.

America’s task nowadays is to encourage Europe to overcome self-imposed constraints on economic growth. This is particularly true regarding energy, where the “green agenda” is hamstringing Europe—energy prices are so high now that there are serious concerns that European companies will move to countries with cheaper energy, resulting in the old continent deindustrializing.

Make the Case for a Freedom-Based Development Model

The unfortunate reality is that many developing countries have little interest in joining one camp or the other on the basis of ideals such as freedom. Their primary focus is on lifting the standard of living of their people. America must be very clear that our free market economic system is superior to the Chinese economic model controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and to the Russian model controlled by the kleptocracy in the Kremlin.

Contra popular notions, the China-Russia model has less to offer. In 2021, the United State’s GDP per capita was $63,670. In stark contrast, after seventy-four years of Communist Party rule and twenty-three years of Putinism, Russia’s level was $27,960. And after seventy-two years under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, China’s was only $16,997.

America ought to partner with developing countries to help them on the path of prosperity, not write blank checks of foreign aid. Economic partnerships that encourage foreign direct investment are the better answer for development. Partnerships are the answer even on security matters: Active diplomacy, encouraging foreign direct investment, security cooperation on strategic projects, and building stronger bridges can do more than raw military force.

Check the Checklist

When Washington starts delivering policies that achieve the ends we have laid out here, it will be a sign the United States is serious about winning the new cold war. Until then, we are just a target.

Dan Negrea is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center. He served at the U.S. Department of State in leadership positions in the Policy Planning Office and the Economic Bureau.

Dr. James Jay Carafano is a Heritage Foundation vice president, directing the think tank’s research on issues of national security and foreign relations.

Image: Shutterstock.

Last month, Lebanese authorities began a new campaign of harassment against Syrian refugees, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the recipient of billions of American taxpayer dollars, is putting muscle behind the policy. The LAF has conducted dozens of raids in recent weeks, arresting hundreds of Syrians and forcibly deporting many of them to Bashar al-Assad’s Syria in violation of international law.

Herein lies the irony: at the outset of the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged to put “human rights at the center U.S. foreign policy.” But in Lebanon, U.S. policy is predicated on a paradox. On the one hand, Washington’s stated policy is one of support for accountability, rule of law, and respect for human rights. On the other hand, the administration remains wedded to the misguided belief that Lebanese institutions, like the LAF, are a positive counterweight to Iran-backed Hezbollah, the country’s dominant political and military force. In truth, however, the LAF answers to the Lebanese government, which at the moment is beholden to Hezbollah. So Washington ends up propping up the very order it claims to oppose.

At best, then, the recent LAF campaign against Syrian refugees reflects failed U.S. policy. At worst, the deportations reveal the administration’s stated policy to be nothing more than empty rhetoric.

Lebanon is home to 805,000 registered Syrian refugees but Lebanese officials estimate the actual number is upwards of 1.5 million. (The United Nations stopped registering new refugees in 2015, on the order of the Lebanese government.) In a country with a native population of only 5 million, the presence of so many refugees is impossible to ignore.

Four years ago, untrammeled corruption led to the implosion of the Lebanese financial sector, resulting in a historic economic collapse from which there has been no sustained recovery. Two-thirds of the country now lives in poverty and the refugee population continues to serve as a convenient scapegoat for a political class unserious about genuine economic or political reform. Worse yet, Lebanese officials are now using the refugees as pawns in a political game with Damascus.

The latest chapter in this story began in late March when, on a visit to Lebanon, the European Union Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic announced €60 million in humanitarian assistance for Lebanon. But, Lenarcic said, the European aid is “not a sustainable long-term solution” to Lebanon’s malaise. The financial crisis “was not created by the Syrian refugees” and it is incumbent upon Lebanese officials to implement critical reforms.

Lebanon’s caretaker Social Affairs Minister Hector Hajjar begged to differ. “Dear [Lenarcic],” Hajjar tweeted, “The Syrian displacement does not alone bear responsibility for the situation in [Lebanon], but it bears a huge part.” Hajjar proceeded to unload on Lenarcic a list of grievances against the refugees.

And so, Beirut started cracking down, deploying the U.S.-subsidized LAF as its enforcer. The LAF intensified raids and began summarily deporting refugees without any legal process; one refugee told reporters the LAF raids entailed “no search of the apartments, no questioning nor any suggestion of wrongdoing.”

In late April, an LAF official disclosed that some fifty refugees were forcibly deported to an uncertain fate in Syria. That number reportedly ballooned to 600 by early May. Back in Syria, the returnees face potential arrest, torture, and conscription.

According to deportee testimony, some of those expelled are held by the Syrian Army’s Fourth Division, which the U.S. Treasury sanctioned in 2020 for aiding in “the large-scale displacement of Syrian civilians.” The risks of remaining in Syria are prompting some to shell out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for gangs to illegally smuggle them back to Lebanon.

The United States and international community have provided Lebanon billions in humanitarian aid to address the refugee file, but that has not stopped Beirut from taking unilateral action before: in July, caretaker Minister of the Displaced, Issam Charafeddine, announced a government plan to repatriate 15,000 Syrian refugees per month. The plan was opposed by the United Nations and human rights NGOs who argued Syria remained unsafe for returning refugees. Charafeddine dismissed these concerns as a “fear campaign.”

The timing of the renewed campaign, including the increased role of the LAF, suggests that the Lebanese government and its military are leveraging Syrian refugees to serve their political agenda—namely, reconciliation with Assad. This round of forcible returns is taking place against the backdrop of Damascus’ readmission into the Arab League, and Beirut is eager to exploit the new political landscape.

While Beirut and Damascus have coordinated on the refugee file in the past, official engagement ran through Lebanon’s General Security Directorate. With Assad out in the cold, ministerial-level engagement was politically problematic. But now that the Arab states have opened the door for this type of engagement, the Lebanese are eager to walk through it.

Sure enough, Lebanese ministers convened in late April and delegated individuals to coordinate with the Assad regime on refugee returns. And, Lebanon’s caretaker Minister of the Displaced announced soon after Assad’s welcome that caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati is willing to lead a ministerial delegation to Syria. In the likelihood that Hezbollah succeeds at installing its ally and Assad’s personal friend, Suleiman Frangieh, as Lebanon’s president, this official track between Beirut and Damascus is posed to strengthen.

This brings us to the current moment. Speaking at the Arab League Summit on May 19, Mikati called on Arab states to invest in Syria’s reconstruction and “establish a roadmap” for Syrian refugees to be repatriated.

Predictably, it was Hezbollah that choreographed this entire dance. In a speech earlier this month, the leader of the U.S.-designated terror group directed Beirut to “restore normal relations with Syria,” adding that “there is no excuse anymore after Arabs restored ties.”

In short: the LAF, as an instrument of the Hezbollah-run Lebanese political order, exploited Syrian refugees to facilitate a political maneuver and potentially extract foreign aid and investment. The former head of Lebanon’s General Security admitted as much to the press on the eve of a donor conference in Brussels: “Come and pay, come and do something for us, so that we slow down [these deportations],” he said.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has done little more than pay lip service to “humanitarian issues in the region.” The administration continues to support the LAF, and even advocate energy deals between Syria and Lebanon that would profit Assad, as officials in Washington express qualified approval of reengaging Damascus. U.S. officials continue to reiterate that the return of Syrian refugees must be “voluntary, safe, and dignified,” but the LAF, apparently, gets a pass.

If the Biden administration is serious about human rights, it’s time to reconsider aid to the LAF.

The United States has invested over $3 billion in the Lebanese Armed Forces since 2006. In January, the Biden administration announced a new plan to subsidize LAF salary payments: $72 million will be funneled to the LAF and Lebanese Internal Security Forces through the United Nations Development Program. The scheme is legally suspect because it involves repurposing Foreign Military Financing (FMF) funds for functions outside FMF purview and circumvents statutes prohibiting the government from directly paying foreign military salaries.

For all its rhetoric about human rights, the Biden administration continues to underwrite Lebanese state institutions, such as the LAF, even if those institutions neither counterbalance Hezbollah nor conduct themselves responsibly. That American taxpayer dollars perennially flow irrespective of the LAF’s behavior suggests Washington’s stated policy, however well-intentioned, is hollow.

Natalie Ecanow is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Image: Shutterstock.

At a closed-door Iran briefing in May, Biden administration officials reported to the U.S. Senate on the rapid advance of Tehran’s nuclear program. Senators who emerged from the briefing could not point to any clear plans the administration has to stop Iran from approaching the nuclear weapons threshold. Negotiations have stalled, but the White House also lacks a plan to turn up the pressure. Rather, the administration appears content to kick the can down the road, a strategy that may soon become untenable as Tehran’s nuclear capabilities approach a critical juncture—beyond a certain point, sanctions, and diplomatic pressure will not be able to deter Iran from building a bomb.

Inertia prevails in the White House even though the administration insists it is fully committed to preventing Iran from getting the bomb. Biden’s emphasis on great power competition entails a focus on China and Russia, not Iran. His priority for the Middle East is avoiding any new military intervention. Persian Gulf oil once commanded Washington’s attention, but the shale revolution has made the United States the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, so there is less pressure to play an active role.

The Biden administration is also short on foreign policy bandwidth. The war in Ukraine and fears of a confrontation over Taiwan are both consuming senior officials’ attention.

Clearly, the White House would like to conclude a new nuclear deal with Iran, but the changing nature of Tehran’s nuclear program makes it impossible to return to the original deal from which Donald Trump withdrew in 2018. Iran’s clerical regime has enriched uranium to much higher levels than ever before, approaching the production of weapons-grade material it could use in a warhead. Most of this progress occurred after Biden made clear he wanted a new deal—Tehran understood this meant the White House would tolerate new provocations.

Washington acknowledges that there is no simple way to return to the original nuclear deal and a longer and stronger deal is needed. Yet the lack of a viable alternative leaves the Biden administration seemingly rudderless. Instead, the White House appears to be stalling for time, hoping some unforeseen bit of good luck resolves its nuclear dilemma. But deferring decisive action may soon become impracticable. Time is on the side of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Soon, no combination of diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions will be sufficient to stop him if he decides he wants the bomb.

The Iranian economy continues to struggle, yet Biden’s decision not to enforce sanctions vigorously has strengthened Khamenei’s hand. The regime continues to grapple with very high inflation, massive devaluation of its currency, and sluggish growth. Yet Iran still has substantial export revenue thanks to the lack of sanctions enforcement. In the Persian year 1401 (April 2022 to March 2023), Tehran exported $53 billion in non-oil goods. In just the first half of that year (April 2022 to October 2022), Tehran exported $29.4 billion in oil, gas, and condensate, according to the Central Bank of Iran. For comparison, between April 2020 and October 2020, Tehran managed only $8.6 billion of such exports. The majority of Iran’s crude oil exports go to China, which is glad to help undermine U.S. leverage.

Diplomacy with rogue states rarely results in disarmament. Even North Korea, with far fewer natural resources than Tehran, proved itself capable of withstanding a combination of economic and diplomatic pressure. It strung out negotiations over multiple decades, all the while building its nuclear arsenal. Libya did agree to dismantle its nuclear program, but only when the alternative appeared to be U.S. military intervention. In contrast, Israeli airstrikes destroyed both Syrian and Iraqi reactors.

Instead of its current policy (or lack thereof), the United States needs a “Plan B” that restores economic, diplomatic, and military pressure on Tehran. The Iranian nuclear program has reached a point where containment is not enough; rather, the United States needs to reverse the advances the program has made over the past two and a half years. The first step is to restore the credibility of U.S. military option through bold actions, such as the 2020 elimination of Qassem Soleimani, or destroying vessels that harass the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf. Washington could also enforce crippling sanctions, including using the Navy to stop Tehran’s exports of sanctioned goods such as crude oil and petrochemical products. If all else fails, and Tehran makes it clear that will acquire the bomb no matter what, then what is left is implementing a comprehensive plan to support the revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow Iran’s clerical regime.

The only alternative to Plan B is to accept the emergence of a nuclear-armed radical Islamist regime.

Dr. Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior Iran and financial economics advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), specializing in Iran’s economy and financial markets, sanctions, and illicit finance. Follow him on Twitter @SGhasseminejad. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Image: Shutterstock.

Since the beginning of the 2010s, the United Kingdom has developed its Indo-Pacific policy in pursuit of economic opportunities and expanding its security engagement. As part of these initiatives, Japan and the UK have developed defense and security cooperation since April 2012, when Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda and British prime minister David Cameron issued the Joint Statement: A Leading Strategic Partnership for Global Prosperity and Security.

Against this background, on May 18, 2023, British prime minister Rishi Sunak, who was in Japan to attend the G7 Summit, issued the Hiroshima Accord: an Enhanced Japan-UK Global Strategic Partnership with Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida. The Japan-UK Hiroshima Accord, a comprehensive agreement on bilateral cooperation in the field of defense and technology, is a milestone for further enhancement of the bilateral defense and security cooperation that has been strengthened over the past decade or more.

The Japan-UK Hiroshima Accord indicated the development of cooperation among defense authorities based on the Japan-UK Reciprocal Access Agreement that was signed in January 2023. In the accord, both countries will conduct more practical joint military exercises to improve interoperability between the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the British Armed Forces, including the future redeployment of the UK’s aircraft carrier strike group to the Indo-Pacific.

It is also noteworthy that the accord positioned Japan-UK defense cooperation within multilateral frameworks such as the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) initiative and the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific Partnership. On March 13, 2023, the UK released a new foreign and security policy paper, “Integrated Review Refresh 2023: Responding to a more contested and volatile world” (IR23), with an eye on rising China. In it, the UK positioned its Indo-Pacific policy as “a permanent pillar of the UK’s international policy” in the context of the Japan-led FOIP and the NATO-led Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific partnerships. Such a British Indo-Pacific policy in IR23 was also reflected in the Japan-UK Hiroshima Accord.

However, in the history of Japan-UK defense and security cooperation, the two countries have consistently pursued cooperation in the field of defense equipment and technology. Of the eight defense and security cooperation items agreed upon in the 2012 Japan-UK Joint Statement, three were related to defense equipment and technology. On this basis, Japan concluded an Agreement for the Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology with the UK in July 2013. Within this framework, Japan and the UK promoted defense equipment and technology cooperation, culminating in the announcement of the Joint Leaders' Statement on the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP), a Japan-UK-Italy joint development plan for fighter aircraft, in December 2022.

On the other hand, given the importance of economic security in the face of intensifying great power competition, the Japan-UK Hiroshima Accord included a section entitled “Economic Prosperity and Security Underpinned by Science, Technology and Innovation,” which called for the establishment of a more comprehensive science and technology cooperation framework beyond purely defense technology. To do so, that section announces the establishment of a Ministerial Dialogue Framework between Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) and the UK’s Department for Business and Trade (DBT) to facilitate comprehensive cooperation between Japan and the UK in the areas of supply chain resilience, access to critical natural resources, semiconductors, digital data, AI, and health sciences.

The accord also states that these efforts will be facilitated by “a new Industrial Science, Innovation and Technology Implementing Arrangement” that will include not only relevant ministries but also the private sector, education, and research institutions. A press release issued by Sunak on May 17, 2023, the day before the launch of the Japan-UK Hiroshima Accord, announced the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group to the Indo-Pacific in 2025 and also noted the strategic relationship between Imperial College London and the University of Tokyo, as well as technical cooperation with Japanese private companies such as Hitachi Ltd. and Fujitsu. These remarks suggest that the development of bilateral cooperation on industrial science, technology, and innovation has already made considerable progress.

Thus, the Japan-UK Hiroshima Accord is a joint declaration by Japan and the UK on the efforts to prepare for the irreversible reorganization of global supply chains and international joint research networks in the context of economic security under great power competition. In other words, the release of the Japan-UK Accord means that defense and security cooperation has gone beyond the framework of diplomatic and defense authorities to reach a stage where it extends to the entire society of both countries.

Shingo Nagata is a visiting researcher at the Institute of Human and Social Sciences, Kanazawa University, Japan. He also serves as an editorial board member of the Japan Society of Strategic Studies.

Image: Shutterstock.

In June 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) formally designated Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturers Huawei and ZTE as national security threats, effectively banning their equipment in the United States. “We cannot treat Huawei and ZTE as anything less than a threat to our collective security,” commented FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. “America has turned the page on the weak and timid approach to Communist China of the past … and our efforts will not stop here.”

Now, the world is facing a new threat from telecom providers backed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But this time the threat resides not in cell phone towers, but in low-earth orbit.

The satellite internet industry has experienced a boom in recent years and competition is beginning to heat up. The CCP has selected its national champion and plans to launch nearly 13,000 satellites, with the intent of further expanding its influence in the developing world. If the United States and its allies are to counterbalance China’s growing influence and promote internet freedom internationally, it is imperative that the U.S. create a regulatory ecosystem that fosters domestic competition in satellite internet.

Less than a decade ago, satellite internet networks offered relatively spotty, low-speed service that was ill-fitted for mass commercial uptake. But in 2019, SpaceX’s Starlink was the first to take a new approach. Rather than operating a low number of high-flying satellites as others had done, SpaceX took advantage of declining launch costs, thanks in part to its successful Falcon 9, to begin launching constellations consisting of a large number of satellites in low-earth orbit (LEO). These new LEO satellite internet networks have proven to be a gamechanger, offering consumers service with higher throughput, lower latency, and more global coverage than older networks.

With nearly 3,500 active satellites and more than 1 million subscribers, Starlink is reaping the benefits of being the first mover. But it isn’t the only project vying for this growing market. London-based OneWeb has nearly completed the first phase of its satellite constellation and projects that it will have global coverage by the end of the year. Amazon’s Project Kuiper plans to launch its first satellites early next year and to begin providing services to consumers soon after.

Then there’s China’s planned constellation. Alarmed by the speed and size of Western satellite constellations, China’s response to Western innovations became clear in late 2020 when the country submitted a spectrum allocation filing with the International Telecommunication Union—a branch of the United Nations charged with coordinating issues related to telecommunications networks. This filing indicated for the first time China’s plans to establish its own “megaconstellation” in LEO. The CCP contemporaneously added satellite internet to a list of “new infrastructure” projects that are the targets for significant investment, research, and development. Not long after, the state-owned China Satellite Network Group was established “to oversee the constellation project known as ‘Guowang.’” This new project fits squirrely within the CCP’s ongoing strategy for exporting internet and communications technology around the world.

For more than a decade, the CCP has been engaged in what the Council on Foreign Relations described as “one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived.” Known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), this project is a collection of development projects and investments across the globe directly funded or financed by China. Foreign policy and national security experts regularly warn that the BRI is a thinly veiled exercise in sharp power where the Chinese government continually leverages BRI projects and investments to increase economic dependence and its political influence abroad.

One major component of the BRI is telecommunications networks. Dubbed the Digital Silk Road, China has invested heavily in building telecom infrastructure, particularly in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. As a report from the Democratic staff of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations warned in 2020, “China’s rise as a key player in the digital domain that uses its influence to promote digital authoritarianism presents fundamental security, privacy, and human rights concerns for the United States and the international community at large.”

As that report and others have explained, telecom networks are an essential component of Chinese digital authoritarianism. While we often think of authoritarian censorship and surveillance as taking place on applications and platforms, much of this censorship instead happens on the networks that run these applications. CCP authorities actively monitor nearly all internet traffic running through their networks and use this surveillance apparatus to oppress domestic populations and propagandize to foreign countries.

Meanwhile, the lack of reliable internet infrastructure remains a major obstacle to development in many areas of the world. Traditional broadband connectivity is often limited or nonexistent in remote areas, hindering economic progress and knowledge exchange. By leveraging satellite internet technology, China aims to overcome these barriers and extend ubiquitous connectivity to the farthest reaches of the developing world.

Once established, these services will be used by the CCP in ways that expand its influence over and surveillance of the developing world. As highlighted in the most recent threat assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, China is on pace to “achieve world-class status in all but a few space technology areas,” including LEO-based satellite internet by 2030, and will use these technologies “to advance its global standing and strengthen its attempts to erode U.S. influence across military, technological, economic, and diplomatic spheres.”

China’s strategy for building a tech industry that rivals that of the Western world is to designate certain entities as “national champions,” giving these entities near-monopolies over certain industries, and then backing them to the hilt. This strategy spurred the rise of Huawei, Tencent, Bytedance, and other companies. While this approach has its benefits, competition is more likely to drive innovation and technological advancement over time. Multiple competitors vying for market share drive companies to push boundaries, invest in research and development, and expand into new markets, ultimately benefiting users in the developing world. In this way, strong domestic competition is a key component of winning the international competition for digital preeminence and safeguarding global internet freedom.

There are several ways that the United States could support competition in the satellite internet industry. One agency already endeavoring to do so is the FCC. In late 2021, the FCC began a series of actions intended to support spectrum sharing and coordination between satellite internet providers. As FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel commented, “the rush to develop these new space opportunities requires new rules that keep competition and innovation front of mind. … We want to make sure [the rules] create a level playing field for new competitors.”

Now, the FCC is continuing this effort with further actions seeking to promote domestic competition. As the American satellite industry faces international competition from China, promoting spectrum sharing and coordination allows domestic satellite companies to optimize their use of available spectrum resources, which strengthens their ability to compete globally and deploy service to the developing world.

Beyond spectrum sharing, the FCC should take further steps to promote domestic competition amongst satellite internet providers. One area worth examining is the eligibility of satellite internet providers for certain federal programs. Starlink made headlines last year when the FCC awarded it over $855 million under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction only to then have those funds later revoked. While the FCC pointed to the fact that Starlink’s upload speeds fell “well below” the required 20 Mbps, questions remain about why and whether Stalink should have been excluded from receiving these funds, leading the company to appeal the FCC’s decision.

RDOF is only one of the numerous programs run through the Universal Service Fund (USF). To create clear rules that put domestic competition and innovation front of mind, the FCC should clarify standards and benchmarks for when satellite internet services have sufficient quality to become eligible for USF programs. Furthermore, the Federal Aviation Administration and Environmental Protection Agency, which are both involved in the licensing and regulation of the satellite internet industry, should follow the FCC’s lead and examine ways to promote domestic competition through standards-setting and streamlining regulatory compliance.

When it comes to countering China’s growing digital authoritarianism abroad, one of America’s most potent weapons continues to be its commitment to free and fair competition. Promoting domestic competition in the satellite internet industry is a critical aspect of geopolitical competition with China and an essential element in the pursuit of global internet freedom. If the United States does not proactively support its own satellite internet companies and encourage them to innovate, it will continue to cede ground to the Digital Silk Road. With a few nudges from federal policymakers, satellite internet may prove a potent catalyst for socioeconomic development, empowerment, and the free exchange of ideas both at home and abroad.

Luke Hogg is the director of outreach at the Foundation for American Innovation where his work focuses on the intersection of emerging technologies and public policy. He is also an innovation fellow at Young Voices. You can follow him on Twitter at @LEHogg.

Image: SpaceX.

The modern world faces a conundrum: how can policymakers and nations meet rising energy demand while simultaneously protecting the environment from rising greenhouse gas emissions?

Doomberg—a widely-read writer and commentator on energy, heavy industry, private equity, hard sciences, cryptocurrency, and a host of other complex issues—recently attracted attention by making a provocative-but-true declaration that addresses the above question directly: “there is no path to significant decarbonization of our economy without a global nuclear renaissance.”

Yet such a renaissance may be in the works. A recent joint development agreement made by two companies provides some insight into the quiet revolution happening in the realm of nuclear energy, that scalable decarbonization is possible, and why policymakers should be more attentive.

The Xe-100 Deal

In early March of this year, X-energy, a leading developer of advanced nuclear reactors, and Dow, the chemical and material sciences multinational, made an intriguing announcement. According to the press release, Dow has agreed to place X-energy’s Xe-100 small modular reactor (SMR) at Dow’s UCC Seadrift Operations manufacturing site in Texas. The project’s state goal is “to reduce the Seadrift site’s emissions by approximately 440,000 [megatons of carbon dioxide per year].”

According to Dow, its Seadrift site “covers 4,700 acres and manufactures more than 4,000,000 pounds (1,816 tonnes) of materials per year used in applications such as food packaging, footwear, wire and cable insulation, solar cell membranes and packaging for pharmaceutical products.” Such a large facility with over a thousand employees requires a significant amount of energy to provide power, process heat, and steam, ideally while producing zero carbon emissions.

This is where the Xe-100 enters the picture: it is a high-temperature, gas-cooled, 80 Megawatts electric (MWe) reactor that can be scaled into “a four-pack 320 MWe power plant—with [its] modular design, the scale can grow even larger as needed.” 

X-energy and Dow’s new partnership signals that advanced nuclear technology can be implemented to abate carbon emissions in the industrial sector without sacrificing the bottom line. After all, it is traditionally difficult to mitigate higher carbon emissions in heavy industry. Yet this project has the potential to do just so, since nuclear power produces zero emissions during baseload generation. If successful, this would be the first project between two private companies, with some government assistance, to develop and demonstrate “the first grid-scale next-generation nuclear reactor for an industrial site in North America.”

How the U.S. Government Is Helping—and Preparing to Do More

Dow and X-energy are now working to submit a construction permit application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). But regulatory hurdles continue to be a tangled web standing in the way of advanced reactor deployment in the United States. Bureaucratic inertia creates delays, which forces utilities to continue burning more natural gas, coal, and oil for electricity in New York and New England. The Dow/X-energy project will likely not be an exception to overcome NRC foot-dragging; securing the building permit is estimated to go until 2026, with completion of the whole venture expected by the end of this decade.

Despite this impediment, nuclear power is at the forefront of clean energy options available. It is for this reason that the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) is not only pushing for this project, but also helping fund it. The Xe-100 was one of two next-generation reactor designs selected by DoE in 2020 to receive $80 million each for “initial cost-shared funding to build an advanced reactor demonstration plant that can be operational within seven years.” Since the award, X-energy has completed the engineering, begun the initial design of the reactor, and is working with the NRC, along with state and local authorities, on the licensing and development of a fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Relatedly, the DoE named Dow a sub-awardee under the recent deal between the two companies, which “provides for up to [$50] million in engineering work, half funded by the [DoE program] and half by Dow.”

Other companies have taken notice of this new model of pairing advanced nuclear reactors with other hard-to-mitigate sectors. For example, Nucor, the largest steel manufacturer in the United States, is now considering using NuScale Power’s SMRs to power its scrap-based electric arc furnace steel mills, and has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to further that possibility.

Policymakers are also increasingly recognizing the viability of SMRs. The U.S. Congress is supporting these projects and future projects by considering passing the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act, which would “facilitate the development of the next generation of advanced nuclear reactors.”

Companies focusing on developing SMRs are intent on demonstrating that it is possible to build a new fleet of atomic plants that are smaller, easier to finance, and construct. If successful, the X-energy/Dow project and others like will show that these reactors can be used in a wide variety of settings, from industrial sites to remote military installations. For its part, if everything goes well with the Seadrift project, Dow envisions retiring its gas-fired combustion and steam turbines at the site.

This would be an astonishing development and would signal to the wider economy that the use of SMRs should be adopted on a grand scale. It is entirely possible that in the future the United States could achieve energy superabundance

With the Xe-100, and other projects in the development and MoU stage, it’s an exciting time for the U.S. nuclear economy.

Todd Royal is the Senior Project Analyst for E4 Carolinas, a non-profit energy advocacy firm located in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he is working on a three-year grant for the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration focusing on a value chain study for the advanced nuclear technology sector (Generation IV reactors, SMRs, and advanced reactors). Todd lives outside of Dallas, Texas.

Image: Shutterstock.

Since Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele began his crackdown on violent street gangs, the Biden administration, international media, and NGOs have made the small Central American republic the focal point of negative attention about accused corruption, civil liberties violations, and creeping authoritarianism. In contrast, the Dominican Republic, which is using much harsher forms of “preventative detention,” has seen virtually no hand-wringing about “democratic backsliding,” corruption, and human rights violations. Instead, the Biden administration has praised the Dominican Republic’s criminal justice system. The media and U.S. government’s disparate treatment of these two Latin American nations demonstrates a lack of consistency and principles in our diplomacy towards our neighboring countries.

After an unprecedented spike in gang-related homicides, El Salvador instituted a state of exception to address the violence. The crackdown increases the time someone can be detained without charge from three to fifteen days, restricted bail and other alternatives to pre-trial detention, and strengthened police powers. Even critics acknowledge the moves have popular support and have dramatically reduced violence. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized the crackdown because it “lends itself to attempts to censor the media, prevent reporting on corruption and other matters of public interest, and silence critics of the Salvadoran government.” The United Nations Commissioner on Human Rights called it a violation of human rights law, focusing on the fact that “the previous two-year limit to pre-trial detention has been eliminated.” International media has put the spotlight on these criticisms with heavy coverage for an otherwise obscure country of six million.

In contrast, there has been almost no attention given to the Dominican Republic’s far more draconian “pre-trial detention” regime. According to the country’s National Office of Public Defense (ONDP), 70 percent of the prison population in the country is held under the “preventive detention” mandate imposed by President Luis Abinader. Most of the inmates are imprisoned for extended periods, even years, without formal charges or court proceedings. A recent ONDP report acknowledges that half of these detainees remain in confinement even past the expiry of their preventive detention mandate, the exact issue raised by the United Nations.

While Blinken warns that El Salvador’s pretrial detention can be used to silence critics of the government, the Dominican Republic has arrested nineteen members of the opposition leadership including Abinader’s 2020 opponent, Gonzalo Castillo. Six of these leaders were ordered to serve eighteen months of preventive detention without any charges, as the investigation continued. These preventive orders do not expire until after the 2024 re-election, effectively neutering their ability to conduct a campaign.

The U.S. embassy in the Dominican Republic has expressed significant concern over the pretrial detention programs, noting that the detention periods “equaled or exceeded the maximum sentence for the alleged crime, with some detentions reportedly lasting years.” It also reported that “Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings by government security forces; cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by police and other government agents; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary detention; [and] arbitrary interference with privacy.”

Yet these reports are ignored and contradicted by the White House and State Department leadership. Instead of criticizing the pretrial detention of political opponents under the guise of anti-corruption, President Joe Biden recently praised Abinader for “moderniz[ing] its anti-corruption law.” In contrast, there has been little evidence that El Salvador’s gang crackdown has been used on political opponents. Under Secretary of State for Security, Democracy, and Human Rights Urza Zeya has called the Dominican Republic a “bright spot” for "combating corruption, improving citizen security" and "protecting human rights"

Part of the disparity is no doubt caused by Bukele’s eagerness to highlight his crackdown on Twitter and criticize the Biden administration. But our foreign policy should react to substance rather than social media. To the extent that the U.S. and international organizations enact diplomacy in Latin America based on civil liberties, we should look to the actual policies rather than the bombast of media coverage and Twitter.

John Bugnacki is an attorney and director of government affairs for a technology company. He has served as a Fellow at the American Security Project focusing on Latin America, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. He received his J.D. from the University of Chicago.

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Hezbollah’s recent military exercise in the south provoked criticism and condemnation from opposition forces including the National Bloc. Michel Helou, the party’s secretary-general gave his thoughts on the maneuvers and discussed what should be the proper alternative for Lebanon. “Our position is the military demonstrations clearly shows that Hezbollah is a threat to the sovereignty of the Lebanese state. It violates the monopoly of weapons that belong to the legitimate state.”

These operations in the south are not a new phenomenon. Hezbollah has mobilized its forces to demonstrate its power in the wake of either threats from Israel or to remind local opponents not to cross its authority. People in Lebanon are constantly on edge and fear the outbreak of additional violence. Lebanon’s international partners like the United Nations have put forward proposals to end the phase of hostilities through resolutions 1559 and 1701. UNSC Resolution 1701 was written and released on August 11, 2006, with a clear road map for peace in the Levant-Mediterranean region:

“This resolution calls for the full cessation of hostilities, the deployment of Lebanese forces to Southern Lebanon, parallel withdrawal of Israeli forces behind the Blue Line, strengthening the UN force (UNIFIL) to facilitate the entry of Lebanese Forces in the region and the establishment of a demilitarized zone between the Blue Line and the Litani River.”

Helou said the National Bloc respects this UN resolution and wants to see its implementation. “We also demand the application of all UN resolutions 1559 and 1701. On top of that, Hezbollah today is trying to escape the problems that are affecting the Lebanese people. Starting with the socio-economic collapse because they are not able to deal with that. This demonstration is another attempt at reclaiming their lost legitimacy as the resistance.”

It is a curious thing to see Hezbollah parading around with heavy weapons and soldiers while the people of Lebanon still live in increasingly worse conditions. The power Hezbollah holds is at this point extremely hollow. It does not impress most Lebanese. Rather, seeing a display of militarization when the region is calming down emits signals of weakness, not strength. In the recent weeks, the Arab League re-invited Syria and its leader Bashar al Assad back to the organization. Years of bloodshed caused by a Syrian government crackdown on protesters in 2011 forced Damascus out of the league. Now, there is a new approach from both Syria (a Hezbollah ally) and the Arab world that wants to focus on development and avoid war.

This maybe putting Hezbollah in an awkward situation. From its inception, it sold itself as a resistance movement waging a fight against Israeli occupation in the south, but also a group that represents the disenfranchised Shia Muslim community (a historically neglected community). It fought off the Israeli occupation when the Lebanese army didn’t. It provided social services when the state was non-existent. But these were temporary measures that are less relevant today.

Now, however, the people of Lebanon are searching for something more than a resistance. If the resistance Hezbollah speaks of is about building a state with normal institutions, no one in Lebanon would object. But today, the situation is that the presence of Hezbollah as paramilitary group is endangering Lebanon’s fate and circumvents the government’s legal mandate. As part of its principles, the National Bloc is calling for a secular state where every citizen enjoys the same rights and responsibilities regardless of sect.

Nevertheless, calls for a state over militias by individual politicians are not enough to make it happen. But the momentum is certainly there to pursue it until the end. Otherwise, there will be an atmosphere of more division, anger, and resentment among the Lebanese people. This is where the leaders must step up and use their influence to remind all Lebanese that opposing a party does not equal animosity toward a fellow Lebanese from a different sect. Lebanon’s social cohesion must come first, which must be preserved by the national security forces and the rule of law.

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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Despite China’s growing assertiveness in the competition for marine resources, Beijing has openly discussed its vulnerabilities in the Strait of Malacca. In November 2003, then Chinese president Hu Jintao coined the term “Malacca Dilemma,” referring to China’s vulnerability to a naval blockade at the strait—the shortest sea route connecting the Middle East and East Asia. Although imposing a naval blockade could incur high economic and diplomatic costs to all involved, intensifying tensions in the Indo-Pacific region increase its possibility of happening. This is of great concern to China’s leaders, as the Malacca Strait is an effective choke point in China’s economic network because of Beijing’s huge dependence on importing energy and its lack of reliable allies in the region. Seeking to remedy this situation, China, by promoting its recently proposed Global Security Initiative (GSI) to expand its security partnership with countries around the region, can potentially minimize the impact caused by the Malacca Dilemma.

The Malacca Dilemma

The Strait of Malacca is an 805-km stretch of water that falls between the Malay Peninsula on the northeast and the Indonesian island of Sumatra on the southwest. It connects the Andaman Sea in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea in the Pacific Ocean, making it an important marine route for hydrocarbon, container, and bulk cargo shipments between Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. About a quarter of the world’s traded goods and one-third of total global petroleum and other liquids production transported using marine routes pass through the strait annually, making it the second-largest oil trade chokepoint in the world after the Strait of Hormuz. Additionally, 80 percent of China’s exports pass through here, meaning China’s economic destiny is heavily tied to the strait’s stability.

The strait, however, is itself a narrow stretch of water only 65–250 km wide, meaning that it could easily be blocked by nearby nations with sufficient force. To China, this is especially threatening because of the political dynamics in the region. The strait is surrounded by neutral countries like Malaysia, U.S. allies like Singapore, and geopolitical rivals like India, which also recently joined the United States’ Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Some of these countries have a central geographic location in the region and possess outlying islands like the Andaman and Nicobars (controlled by India), which could allows said nations project naval power and control the strait more easily. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy (the 7th and 5th Fleets), which operates in the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, is the only force capable of guarding the strategic sea lines of communication stretching from the shores of Africa to East Asia. As such, the United States still maintains tight control over the Strait of Malacca—something Beijing is ever conscious about.

In contrast, China’s navy operates at a farther distance from the strait. If geopolitical tensions between China and the United States or the Indo-Pacific countries escalate (e.g., if China decides to invade Taiwan), the latter can weaponize this essential chokepoint by imposing a blockade, resulting in a disruption of trade, energy resources, and raw material flows. This would significantly increase China’s costs in pursuing its great power ambitions or waging a war in the Indo-Pacific region, to say nothing of the calamitous consequences to its economy.

Can China Avoid the Malacca Dilemma?

Admittedly, China has attempted to minimize the impact of a potential blockade by diversifying its energy sources. Beijing has been establishing alternative land links and energy partnerships with Russia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and other Arabic and Central Asian countries which are politically distant from the United States so as to ensure access to key resources in volatile times. Besides, China has allocated more resources to developing renewable energy to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and thus oil imports. For example, China’s fourteenth Five-Year Plan has indicated that it will continue to develop green technologies.

Yet ultimately, China’s economic success is largely derived from its energy-intensive manufacturing sector, and the developmental pace of renewable energy technology can hardly catch up with its growing demand for energy. Thus, China still relies on foreign energy imports. It is now the world’s largest net oil importer and the second-largest oil consumer. Research also suggests that, with an increasing demand for energy, China’s foreign oil dependence level will rise from 65 percent in 2016 to over 80 percent in 2030. In short, it is unlikely that China can avoid importing energy from foreign countries using marine routes in the near future.

Meanwhile, China could face difficulties in searching for alternative routes. While the Malacca Strait has been known as a shallow strait, the Sunda Strait is even more difficult to navigate, due to a strong tidal current and it having a minimum depth is only 20m in parts of its northeastern end. The Lombok/Makassar Strait is a longer route, which can increase shipping costs. And although China can in theory also use the Northern Sea Route, not only is there a discernable lack of infrastructure, but the route is often covered by ice, so the navigation season is short and insurance costs would be high. For now, the Malacca Strait route remains irreplaceable.

Compounding the situation is the fact that, Beijing does not have any regional military allies which could guarantee firm support in a geopolitical crisis. Although China has formed partnerships with countries like Pakistan, the security provided is minimal. It is uncertain whether these countries would give up neutrality during wartime, especially because they could become vulnerable to wartime military threats and retaliatory sanctions. China’s ties with its partners in the Indo-Pacific region were also weakened by its economic exploitation. China’s investments and loans, especially those provided under the Belt and Road Initiative, have prompted countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka to surrender sovereignty over some of their ports, which has led to backlash and triggered a rise in domestic anti-China sentiment. Developments like this may make it more difficult for China to secure support during wartime unless Beijing expands its security cooperation or improve its ties with these countries.

The Global Security Initiative

Though the Malacca Dilemma poses a threat to China’s economic and strategic security, Beijing’s recently announced Global Security Initiative (GSI) could potentially help avoid it.

At the 2022 Bo’ao Forum for Asia, China proposed the GSI, with a concept paper released in January 2023. The initiative contains six core values and principles: (i) pursuing common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security; (ii) respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries; (iii) abiding by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter; (iv) taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously; (v) peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation; and (vi) maintaining security in both traditional and non-traditional domains. The aforementioned values reflect China’s growing emphasis on cooperation to maintain international security. It also attempts to create an impression that China desires to help other countries stabilize their political situation. It goes without saying that China is apparently eager to be more active in the security sphere.

Meanwhile, in the concept paper, China has stressed that more engagement with regions like Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Middle East is needed. These regions are, however, core players in the Strait of Malacca. By expanding its security ties with these regions under the GSI, China can potentially build up mutual security commitments and weaken the United States’ security partnerships with countries around the strait. In the long term, China could even build up an opposition force against American hegemony in the security sphere with states which have tensions with Washington. This would help China exert pressure on the United States and dissuade Washington and its Indo-Pacific allies to impose a blockade on the Malacca Strait.

Furthermore, with more engagement, Beijing might be able to operate foreign military bases in these regions to enlarge its military presence and establish an overseas military network. At present, China has already strengthened its alliance with the Solomon Islands and formed a strategic deal that allows it to “make ship visits to, carry out logistical replacement in, and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands,” therefore possibly opening the door to a Chinese naval base. Further military build-ups promoted by the GSI will enhance China’s capability to interfere with American naval capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region.

It must be noted that China’s growing aggressiveness has led to the distrust of some countries against Beijing’s GSI initiative, especially those which have territorial and marine disputes with China like the Philippines. The United States may appear to be a more trustworthy security partner than China, since the former does not have any territorial claims that threaten these countries’ geographical interests. China’s escalating competition with the United States also places the Indo-Pacific countries in a dilemma of their own. Joining China’s security partnership and architecture can potentially be considered an act of “taking sides,” which could worsen Indo-Pacific countries’ relations with Washington. As such, not all Indo-Pacific countries will be incentivized to join the GSI to form security partnerships.

Nonetheless, China can make use of the loose ties between some Indo-Pacific countries with Washington to promote the GSI, so as to tackle the Malacca Dilemma. Some Indo-Pacific countries like Myanmar are less inclined to offer comprehensive human rights protections or implement democratic accountability mechanisms which Washington has always desired them to put forward. The divergence of their values could hinder these countries to form close ties with the United States, which would thus deter cooperation during a conflict.

This, however, allows China to emerge as an alternative. The GSI suggests that China could offer security assistance to help maintain the stability and security of other states or regions. Meanwhile, the GSI has reiterated some universal principles to which Indo-Pacific countries often subscribe, such as respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, adherence to UN principles, and the emphasis on dialogue. It also criticized the use of sanctions which the Western countries heavily rely on, so China is vocally criticizing the U.S.-led international security order. This could all raise the incentive of countries with relatively weaker ties with Washington to join the GSI. Accordingly, China would have a higher chance of securing more solid support during a naval blockade.

A Quest for a Greater Influence and Stability

Ultimately, the question of a naval blockade is a hypothetical future issue, but it is not entirely impossible. Beijing has been thirsty for greater power on the international stage. However, its pursuit of higher status has led to growing tensions with other states, especially the United States. Given this, China’s dependence on the Malacca Strait for energy transportation and trade could give rise to its concerns about the threats of blockade led by the United States or other countries in the region. Its lack of reliable support from partners could increase its vulnerability to serious economic and strategic repercussions arising from the Malacca Dilemma.

Nonetheless, the United States no longer has the hegemony it had during the Cold War. It relies on its regional partners to maintain effective regional security. If China is able to promote engagement with Indo-Pacific countries through the Global Security Initiative, it might be able to build closer cooperative ties with other states to weaken the influence of the United States’ coalition and prevent the Malacca Dilemma. This would embolden China’s ambition of expansion in the Indo-Pacific area and enhance its national security.

Ho Ting (Bosco) Hung is a geopolitical analyst at the Nicholas Spykman International Center for Geopolitical Analysis and a member of the International Team for the Study of Security Verona. Recently, he presented at the Oxford Hong Kong Forum 2022 and was interviewed by France 24, Al Jazeera, and Asharq News to provide geopolitical analyses of China’s political economy and global politics. He has written for Initium Media, UDN, The Journal of Conflict, Intelligence, and Warfare, The Webster Review of International History, Oxford Political Review, and other newspapers, peer-reviewed publications, and magazines.

Image: Shutterstock.

Our children are our future, but the demands of work mean that we can’t attend to them all the time. Because of this, an estimated 15.7 million children under the age of five experience some form of childcare outside their parent’s hands. Policy institutions, like the Center for American Progress and Child Care Aware, have reported on the impact this has on families and the economy as a whole, noting the need to attend to children has significantly contributed to labor shortages in many industries.

The semiconductor industry is no exemption from this, as the childcare imperative, along with the lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic, has exacerbated the ongoing talent shortage. In an attempt to mitigate this problem and expand the labor force, the Biden administration is mandating childcare as part of the requirement to seek incentives from the $52.7 billion CHIPS Act fund. President Joe Biden, via the Commerce Department, is leveraging the CHIPS Act and requesting chip manufacturers seeking over $150 million in incentives to provide a plan for childcare services.

This idea appears very attractive to some American employers, including many manufacturers who regard the lack of childcare accessibility as the drive for talent shortages. But while childcare is indisputably a vital necessity, the CHIPS Act is not the means to achieving such.

First, including childcare in the CHIPS Act diverts resources and attention from the core objective of the law.

Almost 95 percent of the $52.7 billion CHIPS fund is allocated to semiconductor manufacturing incentives and research and development (R&D). Yet if manufacturers have to spend a significant portion of that on childcare, revitalizing the onshore chips industry ends up becoming secondary. Consider that, on average, childcare costs about $10,000 per year—accounting for over 10 percent of the income of a married couple. This burden would be placed upon manufacturers who already have limited funds.

Moreover, childcare is a social policy that many companies seeking incentives are unqualified to implement, including semiconductor firms. Mandating childcare would end up increasing the costs and complexity of implementing the CHIPS Act. This is intolerable in an industry that already faces challenges from budget constraints, political opposition, and geopolitical tensions. What’s more, the funding provided for CHIPS is nowhere near the amount that China has invested in its own domestic industry. To mandate childcare would effectively be asking companies to do more with less against well-funded competitors.

Second, mandating childcare in the CHIPS Act does not address the root causes of the childcare crisis in the United States: inadequate funding, quality, accessibility, and affordability of childcare services and programs.

The idea of leveraging funding from industrially-focused legislation to cover social policy has been tried before. During World War II, the Lanham Act funded childcare centers all over America as a means of addressing labor shortages in critical industries. However, after the war, these 3,000 or so childcare centers were closed, demonstrating that tying the provision of childcare to supporting the temporary funding of a strategic imperative only lasts so long as there is a need for the latter. Additionally, the childcare centers funded by companies who pursued this agenda implemented a one-size-fits-all childcare policy that did not account for families’ diverse needs and preferences nationwide.

We cannot expect that introducing a childcare policy into the CHIPS Act would fare better; at most, it would offer temporary relief to the chips industry. It would not have any major impact on solving the issue of inadequate funding, quality, accessibility, and affordability of childcare services and programs.

Finally, using the CHIPS Act to implement childcare creates a potential conflict of interest between the federal government and the private sector. In terms of regulating and providing childcare services, this can create unintended consequences and trade-offs for workers and families.

Though both the government and private sector are facing the same issue of labor shortage, the two have different interests when it comes to childcare. If employers are required to provide childcare services by constructing on-site childcare facilities or contracting existing providers to help, it’s hard to say whether the quality of childcare provided would be sufficient without proper government oversight. An employer could reduce workers’ choices, flexibility, and autonomy in balancing work and childcare responsibilities—imagine if you were only allowed to spend thirty minutes with your child because your employer said so. This creates a disincentive for parents to work in the semiconductor industry or other high-tech sectors that require long hours and specialized skills. The government standard for quality and diverse childcare welfare may not align with private actors, whose primary motivation is to maximize production and profit. Scott Lincicome, a senior fellow at Cato Institute stated that the government would not have mandated child care “if they weren’t in conflict”.

Leveraging the CHIPS Act to implement affordable childcare may present useful outcomes on paper, but these would not be without a cost. Using the CHIPS Act as a means to remedy the childcare crisis sidelines the main agenda of the legislation, diverges from the root cause of the childcare crisis, and breeds a conflict of interests between the government and private actors. Moreover, adding this social policy to already complex legislation would increase the program’s cost and reduces its effectiveness in addressing the semiconductor shortage and broader U.S-China tech competition.

Childcare is a public good with no place in a purely economic and political agenda. By using the CHIPS Act to revitalize the domestic chip industry and address childcare, Biden is attempting to put the old adage “killing two birds with one stone” into action. But will a “stone” like the CHIPS Act be enough to kill two birds if they both happen to be eagles?

Benedicta Kwarteng is a 2023 Marcellus Policy Fellow at the John Quincy Adams Society. She is a graduate student and Public Service Fellow at John Hopkins SAIS. Her research interests include U.S. foreign policy, the informal economy, and the U.S.-China Tech War.

Image: Shutterstock.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s loss against incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan should be seen as a loss not only for the people of Turkey but for democracy worldwide. It is difficult to see the silver lining from Erdogan’s 52-48 percent victory against Kilicdaroglu, and Turkey is likely to slip further into authoritarian, even autocratic rule. On a systemic level, Erdogan’s victory adds credence to the view that removing authoritarian leaders by elections is less than likely. Expectations that Erdogan would lose the presidency ran high in early 2023. How do we explain this electoral upset, given that Erdogan presided over widespread economic mismanagement, corruption, and undemocratic governance?

For a large part, the uncomfortable truth is that Erdogan won because Kemal Kilicdaroglu was his opponent. The Nation Alliance, the opposition’s political coalition, chose to nominate Kilicdaroglu largely due to his insistence. The Republican People’s Party (CHP), under Kilicdaroglu and since 2010 conducted primaries to select parliamentary candidates. For some reason, Kilicdaroglu’s own nomination as the opposition candidate was not determined by party members. It was not even favored by all members of the Nation Alliance, causing Meral Aksener (leader of the Good Party), to briefly abandon her coalition partners.

Put simply, Kilicdaroglu’s nomination was imposed from the top, with little to no deliberation. Was there a better candidate? Polling suggests as much: ahead of his nomination, these consistently indicated that Kilicdaroglu was not the best candidate to defeat Erdogan, who continuously trailed the more popular candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, the CHP’s mayor of Istanbul. This option was railroaded over due to concerns that if Imamoglu had been nominated he would have been banned from running, owing to a lawsuit that was pending against him. This is true, but if had been nominated and banned by the courts, Kilicdaroglu would still have had the opportunity to become the candidate as his successor. It was pure political greed on the part of Kilicdaroglu to insist on his own nomination, and it has cost Turkey dearly.

In addition to not having a say in the candidate nomination process, following the beginning of the election campaign, the anti-Erdogan opposition camp was expected to back the Kilicdaroglu campaign without debate, dissent, or criticism. To not unconditionally back Kilicdaroglu was projected as de-facto giving support to Erdogan. Even publishing polls three days before the election, which predicted an Erdogan win was seen as an immoral act! This level of hubris led the level of debate on Turkish politics to dizzying lows. Voters and analysts had no part to play in the determination of Kilicdaroglu as the candidate and were also expected to fall in line, simply because there was no other alternative. I’m sorry to say that this is not good enough. Impositions are impositions, regardless of whether they come from authoritarian leaders, or their democratic challengers.

Insult was added to injury. Kilicdaroglu ran a lackluster and muddled campaign. Critics of his campaign strategy were once again asked to remain silent.

For example, Kilicdaroglu ran a campaign of inclusion—one that promised the restoration of the rule of law, institutions, and an equitable economy that would benefit the masses, not just cronies as in the case of Erdogan’s rule. But following Kilicdaroglu’s failure to secure victory on May 14, (where he received ~45 percent against Erdogan’s ~49.5 percent), we were asked to not perceive this as an impending Erdogan victory, but an Erdogan loss. Not only that, but instead of taking stock of what needed to be adjusted in his electoral strategy, team Kilicdaroglu went off the rails and abandoned its previous message of inclusivity and temperance. In the final two weeks leading up to May 28, Kilicdaroglu attempted to pander to the nationalist right by promising to deport Syrian refugees. He even signed a pact with the far-right Victory Party of Umit Ozdag, promising him that a Kilicdaroglu presidency would present a tougher stance on the Kurdish question. Why did he depart so radically from his previous election strategy? It was because he was told that Erdogan’s right-wing nationalist campaign had resonated with voters and therefore he must do the same.

Kilicdaroglu’s turn to the political right appeared desperate and inconsistent, and likely turned off some Kurdish voters who voted for him on May 14. Moreover, while he was attempting to rebrand his campaign, Erdogan played dirty: he falsely accused Kilicdaroglu of consorting with Kurdish separatists by releasing fake videos to that effect. Kilicdaroglu and the Nation Alliance took days to try and refute these claims. More importantly, it is incredible that their campaign had not anticipated such tactics on the part of Erdogan and was not prepared. One easy strategy would have been to put together a reel of Erdogan’s greatest hits throughout the years, where he insults women, kicks protestors, and displays videos of shoe boxes of money that his son tries to scuttle. This would have meant that Kilicdaroglu would have run a negative campaign, but it would have had the virtue of at least displaying the truth.

Bottom line: Kilicdaroglu came to a gunfight against Erdogan with a knife and lost.

To Kilicdaroglu’s credit, the presidential race was not a fair fight. From the start, Erdogan utilized the advantages of public and private media that gave him disproportionate media space. For example, TRT, the state broadcaster gave Kilicdaroglu less than thirt-five minutes of coverage in the first round of voting, compared to over thirty-two hours for Erdogan. In both rounds of presidential voting, there were numerous allegations of voter fraud and voter intimidation. However, the vast majority of these have not been substantiated to the point that it would fundamentally change the outcome of the actual result. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which deployed election monitors, while outlining the unfair conditions of the election, did not find any serious subversion of the democratic process.

All this said, there is no excusing the fact that Kilicdaroglu ran a terrible campaign and he was the wrong choice to run against Erdogan. Some suggest that Kilicdaroglu did as well as any candidate could have done against Erdogan. I disagree. If an opposition candidate wanted to run a campaign that handed the election to Erdogan, it would resemble Kilicdaroglu’s campaign. No deliberation over his determination as a candidate; no clear and consistent campaign strategy, a blind cheerleader support network that demanded unconditional support of his ill-conceived veer to the right, and now, followed by “we did the best we could.” This is an undefendable position and the least Kilicdaroglu can do is resign. Turkey’s voters deserved better, much better.

Sinan Ciddi is a nonresident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he contributes to FDD’s Turkey Program and Center on Military and Political Power. Follow Sinan on Twitter @SinanCiddi.

Image: Shutterstock.

Another debt ceiling crisis is here, complete with partisan finger-wagging and handwringing newscasters. If Democrats and Republicans cannot overcome their differences on spending, the federal government will run out of money in early June, which could result in a sovereign debt default. Although an agreement has been between the two parties’ leadership, now comes the hard part: selling the deal to the rank and file in Congress and the Senate. Hardliners in both parties could complicate matters. Will the center stand?

Although the United States has never had a sovereign debt default in its history, Washington’s current political class has opened the door to such possibility. Sadly, the American public is jaded: they have seen this show before. The expectation from many market participants is that the parties will posture until the last minute or a little over the time when the financial buzzer goes off, but then reach an agreement. Both sides will then declare victory, arguing that the other side blinked first. The problem with this game of chicken is neither side can stand down on their respective positions (due to internal party politics) or let a default happen.

We can expect an agreement in the last hour possible, but there is a rising risk that the political class miscalculates and plunges the United States into a debt default, which could have a knock-on effect on the dollar and the U.S. role in the world.

What Is the Debt Ceiling?

According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the debt limit, or debt ceiling as it is more commonly known, is “the total amount of money that the United States government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt, tax refunds, and other payments.” Historically, the debt ceiling has been around since 1917, being modified by the Public Debt Acts passed in 1939 and 1941.

At present, the debt ceiling is currently at $31.46 trillion; we are roughly there now.

Congress has always acted when called upon to raise the debt limit since 1960, having acted seventy-eight separate times to permanently raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit. This happened forty-nine times under Republican presidents and twenty-nine times under Democratic presidents.

Failure to increase the federal debt limit will result in multiple consequences—a sovereign debt default, financial crisis, economic downturn (with global repercussions), job losses, shutdowns of parts of the government, a possible suspension of Medicare payments, and, theoretically, rating downgrades of the U.S. AAA/AA+ sovereign debt rating. The issue gets complicated very quickly, depending on how long a default would last and which obligations are not met. Indeed, U.S. treasury secretary Janet Yellen has repeatedly warned that if the debt ceiling is not raised soon, there will be “hard choices to make about what bills go unpaid.”

Dollar Dethronment

One of the big worries related to a potential default is that such an event would give further momentum to the dethronement of the U.S. dollar as the world’s major reserve currency. Although this issue is hard to translate into the day-to-day living of Americans, it matters. China, Russia, South Africa, and several other countries have already begun to conduct part of their trade in other currencies to escape the U.S. government’s potential weaponization of its national currency, which has been evident in economic sanctions leveled against Russia. For anyone watching, China has been working hard to de-dollarize, reducing its exposure to Treasury Securities from over $1 trillion in 2022 to $859 billion in January 2023 (and it is expected to drop lower).

While a rapid shift away from the U.S. dollar is not likely in the short term, the trend is not Washington’s friend. A sovereign default caused by a lack of political will as opposed to capacity to pay would certainly fuel the momentum to dollar dethronement. With that would come the end of Washington’s ability to endlessly print money in the form of U.S. Treasuries and other securities.

The decline of the U.S. dollar would have consequences for the American political classes’ voracious appetite for ever-greater public spending. But, say the pundits, that will never happen, as Washington’s debt ceiling politics are a show that will go on forever—especially as deficits do not matter!

However, deficits will not matter until they do; the continued stripping away of U.S. comparative advantages—stable democratic politics, prudent economic policy, a general consensus over economic policy, and manageable debt—all have a cumulative impact.

The problem facing the United States is not just the debt ceiling. Indeed, the debt ceiling crisis itself is a symptom of something far more problematic: a tired political system limping along, quite possibly broken. The critical middle ground where the ugly sausage-like making of laws takes place has been radically shrunk. Compromise is a dirty word, especially when it comes to budgets and deficits. Political virtue is now defined more by ideological purity, something upheld by the extreme right in the Republican Party and the far-left progressives in the Democratic Party. Neither extreme courts pragmatism; rather, they embrace vilification of the other, victimhood, and a winner-takes-all approach.

The Politics of No Economic Pain

The massive amounts of federal spending and borrowing since the 2008–09 financial crisis have been geared to make certain that even when there is an economic slowdown, spending goes to help buffer the depth of the downturn. This goes for the middle and working class as well as big business and the financial sector. The extended period of low-interest rates was taken by many as cheap money. This helped Wall Street hit record highs, kept zombie corporations lurching along, and boosted average savings through the coronavirus pandemic.

One result of this is that there is no traditional business cycle of expansion, peak, contraction, and trough—yet. One sign of this is that bankruptcies remained at historically low levels from 2009 through 2020. According to S&P Global, it is only in 2023 that corporate bankruptcies have been on the rise, with the first two months registering the highest total for any comparable period since 2011. Indeed, the response to the latest round of bank failures was to raise the FDIC ceiling on deposit losses.

Even the Federal Reserve’s push to cut inflation is running into the politics of no pain. While the central bank has hiked interest rates, the Biden administration has launched two major spending programs, the CHIPS and Science Act, which provides roughly $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors, and the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act, which invests in domestic non-fossil fuel energy production while promoting so-called clean energy. If successful, the two programs will greatly reduce U.S. dependence on China, make major strides towards zero carbon targets, and completely transform the U.S. economy. At the same time, specific interest groups are disproportionately benefiting, including the tech sector, unions, and the auto industry (all of which have well-lubricated lobbying machines working overtime in Washington).

What provides hope in the current crisis is that moderates in both parties want a deal. As it stands, the agreement entails a two-year appropriations deal, a two-year extension of the debt limit (pushing the issue back past the 2024 election); work requirements to receive federal aid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, for people up to fifty-four years of age, with exceptions for the homeless and veterans. Medicaid will not be affected. Although Republican and Democratic hardliners are likely to oppose the deal and complicate its passage, the likelihood is that moderates from both parties will be enough to pus the deal through the House and Senate. If not…

Looking ahead, the debt ceiling crisis will probably be resolved before the federal government runs out of money or shortly thereafter. However, the wounded nature of U.S. politics leaves the door open to a further erosion in U.S. economic policymaking that erodes King Dollar’s international role and undermines the United States’ global leadership. Ongoing threats of politically-induced default do little to instill confidence in a currency. Although stated in the late nineteenth century, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck gave sage advice to those who wish to lead, “Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others.” There are plenty of examples of countries where economic and political consensus broke down, with interest groups fragmenting the national good; but it could be that Washington prefers not to listen to such advice. A lot is riding on making the right choice.

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

Offensive cyber operations have become an increasingly large part of doctrine among Five Eyes members in recent years, as states have grappled with how to deal with the threat of state-backed hackers and increasingly capable ransomware groups. A recently released strategy from the UK National Cyber Force, or NCF, discusses how London is taking a new approach to conducting offensive cyber operations with a focus on disrupting information environments. This new strategy introduces what the NCF calls the “doctrine of cognitive effect,” aims to “change adversary behavior by exploiting their reliance on digital technology,” and conduct offensive cyber operations with the goal of limiting an adversary’s ability to collect, distribute, or trust information.

As the FBI and other U.S. agencies seek to tamp down the threat of ransomware, they should adopt cognitive effect as part of their campaign against operators and affiliates.

Successes to Date

Over the past few years, Washington has tried a number of strategies in a bid to slow the growth of ransomware but has nonetheless struggled to find an effective deterrent. It has indicted individual hackers and sanctioned firms and organizations that supported criminal gangs. These efforts, however, have largely failed either because they were not applied consistently, ransomware groups easily adapted to the measures, or, most importantly, because said groups operated beyond the reach of Western law enforcement agencies. In response, the United States and some of its allies have taken a new tack against ransomware groups by pledging to use offensive cyber capabilities.

The turn to offensive operations manifested itself recently as the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the FBI announced in late January that they discretely gained access to the systems of Hive—a ransomware group that stole over $100 million from organizations across the globe in its first year of operation alone and ranks among the most prolific such outfits over the last two years. The DoJ and FBI’s successful intrusion into Hive’s systems went on for over a year, allowing government operators to seize decryption keys and distribute them to victims. Likewise, the authorities also took down the dark web site used by Hive to shame victims and leak stolen data when organizations refused to pay a ransom.

The Hive takedown was not a one-off operation either, as the FBI and DoJ have also taken down cybercrime hubs like RaidForums, Genesis Market, and BreachForums, and arrested some of the administrators of these operations.

Yet Washington can go further with this by taking advantage of existing fractures in ransomware groups and creating new ones that can be exploited.

Hunting Big-Game Hunters

Most of the ransomware attacks against U.S. infrastructure come from groups known as big game hunters, who specialize in attacking large businesses with high-value networks that cannot sustain much downtime in their systems. The structure and hierarchy of these groups have become increasingly visible in the past two years as threat analysts have infiltrated the groups and disgruntled members have leaked internal chat logs and documents. The emerging picture provided by these leaks and the work of threat analysts points to major organizational weaknesses in these entities.

Take for example the ransomware group Conti. It is a network of about seventy individuals who know each other by their usernames. The group functioned like a small business, hiring employees for their skillset and then assigning them to teams where they worked on specific parts of their ransomware toolkit. Leaked chat logs reveal tension at the bottom of the group over low wages, long hours, and poor working conditions. This worker dissatisfaction drove frequent turnover at lower-level positions, with openings advertised on several cybercrime forums and little vetting for new hires.

Conti was not alone in having problems with morale and paranoia. The cybercrime group TrickBot is another illustrative example. The Conti leaks, which were released on February 27 after Conti came out in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, spurred TrickBot to completely uproot its operation, migrating all of its employees to new forum accounts, phones, computers, and encrypted chat services. This switch was not enough to save TrickBot, as a leaker began posting files, messages, cryptocurrency wallet addresses, and IP addresses used by the group on March 4.

As such, ransomware groups are quite conscious of the threat that governments’ turn toward offensive operations presents. LockBitSupp, the leader of the ransomware gang LockBit, said that targetting ransomware gangs’ infrastructure is “the most effective way to deal with [big-game hunters],” as it provides a useful method to steal decryption keys, take down servers, and collect intelligence on the operators behind ransomware groups. This is an effective approach and would be even more so if paired with a strategy of using cyberattacks to destabilize the information environment ransomware groups operate in.

There’s less visibility into the reaction to the Hive compromise, but it’s reasonable to assume it had a tangible impact on the operations of other ransomware groups, seeding further paranoia and forcing them to turn away from their usual work of attacking others’ networks to deal with the security of their own.

Adopting the Doctrine of Cognitive Effect

The days of the lone hacker are over—as the leaks from Conti and Trickbot show, modern ransomware groups operate like businesses. The broader ransomware ecosystem is defined by connections as well, where members frequently cooperate on forums, move between organizations, and bring old habits to their new workplaces.

The organizational complexity of ransomware groups and the weaknesses outlined above thus makes the use of offensive cyberattacks for cognitive effect especially useful in combating ransomware. Cutting off or restricting the flow of information is a great strategy to sever the networks of people that ransomware groups depend on to make and deploy their tools and find their targets.

The Biden administration committed itself to disrupting and dismantling threat actors as part of its National Cyber Strategy. Adopting the doctrine of cognitive effect is the best way to distract ransomware groups from their usual mission of causing havoc in a sustained manner.

Kyle Fendorf is the research associate for the Digital and Cyberspace Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Natasha White is a student at the University of Rochester.

Image: Shutterstock.

North Korea’s nuclear capability poses a serious danger to the Republic of Korea (ROK). Such is the South Korean fear that, according to some polls, more than 70 percent of South Koreans want Seoul to develop its own nuclear weapons capability—a military option that is prohibited by the 1969 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

As an alternative, South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol recently suggested that the United States deploy theater nuclear forces at a U.S. military base in South Korea while also enhancing joint Seoul-Washington military planning and cooperation. The threat from Pyongyang is, after all, an incentive for Seoul to secure a stronger U.S. deterrent commitment. Washinton rejected the former idea but worked to implement the latter.

This, however, does not touch the root of the problem: what are the chances the North Korean nuclear capability can be rolled back? Many observers continue to believe the North Korean nuclear programs were developed to protect Pyongyang from what the North refers to as a “hostile policy” of U.S. antagonism. The continued U.S. military presence in the ROK and the annual military exercises Seoul and Washington direct on and around the Korean peninsula is also often cited by the North as justifying their continued nuclear deployments. In addition, Pyongyang sees the cooperative military relations between Japan and the ROK as evidence of a joint effort by the two countries to harm North Korea.

In short, to the extent the United States and its allied military presence in the region is scaled back, the conventional wisdom is North Korea will be more susceptible to making concessions.

But what if such assumptions are incorrect? What if a more in-depth examination of the origin of this North Korean nuclear military capability produces a much different answer? After all, the North’s nuclear weapons are only one of the two net additional nuclear weapons states that have emerged since 1962. Did North Korea, an impoverished country with little advanced technology, get nuclear weapons because it feared being attacked by the United States? Or was the North Korean nuclear program part of a strategy to push the United States out of the region, initiated by China in 1982 as part of its one-hundred-year plan to be the world’s number one military and economic hegemon?

China’s Longstanding Nuclear Proliferation Endeavor

Siegfried Hecker, writing in his new book Hinge Points: An Inside Look at North Korea’s Nuclear Program, examines this very issue and produces two claims. He concludes that a nuclear disarmament deal with North Korea was in the cards but U.S. hawks, pushing for regime change, were responsible for mistakes that deep-sixed a possible disarmament agreement. He further elaborates, as other observers have, that the Chinese were not responsible for the North Korean nuclear programs and cannot be looked to for a resolution of the problem.

Both claims are not correct.

Understanding the fallacy of the second claim—that there was no Chinese role in the development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons—illustrates why the first claim is erroneous as well.

The evidence starts in 1982, when the Chinese government decided to spread nuclear weapons technology to rogue state allies in North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, and Libya. This effort was done in secret as it was contrary to China’s obligations under the 1969 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which obligates its 191 signatories not only to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons but to also work toward eventual general and total disarmament, including conventional and nuclear weapons.

China began with Pakistan. The full development of the atomic bomb in Pakistan was subsequently the work of A.Q. Khan. Pakistan reportedly received the actual atomic device blueprints from the Chinese. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, eventually created a network—what one might call it “Nukes ‘R Us”—that, with the coordination of China, spread nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

This network was fully discovered when nuclear centrifuges made in Malaysia as part of the Khan network were being transferred to Libya were intercepted by the Italian and U.S. navies. A manifest on the shipping crates was addressed to the son of Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gadhafi.

The interception led directly to a confrontation with Libya over the extent of its nuclear program, which was then subsequently dismantled by the United States with the assistance of Great Britain, and remarkedly also with the cooperation of Tripoli. The successful effort proved the viability of the 2003 U.S.-created Proliferation Security Initiative, which Washington hoped could be duplicated with other rogue state nuclear programs.

But can such counter-proliferation efforts truly be successful without China’s full cooperation? The extent of the Chinese involvement in the Khan network and the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology has remained unappreciated, despite Tom Reed’s 1969 book, The Nuclear Express. Reed detailed the Chinese push to arm its allies with nuclear weapons, which succeeded in programs in Pakistan and North Korea (Iran remains an open question)

China’s Motivations

Why would China undertake such a foreign policy initiative? The answers are multifold, but are consistent with other Chinese activity, especially in the Western Pacific.

China’s ambitions to be the world’s military hegemon, as detailed in Michael Pillsbury’s The One Hundred-Year Marathon, requires the U.S. military power in the Western Pacific to be diminished.

Enabling North Korean nuclear capability was designed to cause friction and conflict within the U.S.-ROK alliance, as ROK elements might begin to question the American willingness to deal with the increased threat to the region. If China could create doubt in the government of South Korea about whether the United States would keep its deterrent commitment to protect the ROK, maybe Washington would forgo even trying, or the ROK would try and go it alone. 

American observers such as the Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow took the bait and proposed that all U.S. military forces in the ROK be withdrawn so the United States would not be involved in any possible war on the peninsula. With U.S. forces still in the ROK, the theory was the North would hold at-risk U.S. cities as a means of leveraging against American support for the South Korean government in the event of a war.

David Asher at the Hudson Institute has put together a briefing—(to access, use passcode Nv2&35tD)—on the extent to which multiple dozens of Chinese government and military entities and individuals have been established for the sole purpose of sustaining and advancing the North Korean nuclear program. The founder of Sayari Analytics, a financial-intelligence firm, Asher has previously identified the Chinese and North Korean entities responsible for cooperative nuclear activities and thus targeted by the U.S. for economic sanctions.

There is sufficient evidence to make it undeniable that the North Korean nuclear weapons program is very much a joint cooperative program of the first order, established by China many decades ago to facilitate the development of a North Korean nuclear bomb.

In this context, China’s strategy is understandable: start undermining U.S. security guarantees for American allies in the Pacific and hopefully begin a process of unraveling overall U.S. military presence in the region. This is not necessarily limited to the Indo-Pacific: China is seeking military basing rights from Iran in the Persian Gulf region. What better way to counter the U.S. Middle East military presence as well as to intimidate U.S. allies in the region such as Saudi Arabia?

China is Not Innocent

The recent summit between the U.S. and Korean presidents has, however, indicated that the Chinese strategy may be backfiring. Over the past few administrations, the U.S. military alliance with the ROK and Japan has been strengthened. The latter two countries have also significantly increased their military spending as well as the development of advanced military technology.

Given the possible development of a ROK or Japanese indigenous nuclear weapons capability would markedly undermine Chinese hegemonic ambitions, Pyongyang’s nuclear threats might also be a catalyst to push the Chinese government to put an end to North Korean nuclear proliferation. The last thing the Chinese government wants is multiple additional nuclear weapons powers in the region—a proliferation that might very well occur due to Beijing’s missteps with respect to creating a North Korean nuclear threat.

When added to the current nuclear weapons states now in the region—Russia, China, the United States, and North Korea—there could be upwards of seven or more nuclear-armed powers in the region. The chances of accidental, inadvertent, or deliberate use of nuclear weapons would increase exponentially, and with it, the resulting fracturing of the world’s top economies, to say nothing of the potential death of more than a billion people.

The counter and non-proliferation efforts of the United States and its allies have successfully prevented what Israeli ambassador to the United States Dori Gold once predicted might be a cascade of new nuclear weapons states if not just North Korea but Iran also went nuclear. While Washington and its allies were successful in ending an actual nuclear weapons program in South Africa, and nascent programs in Iraq (1991) and Libya, (2006) as well as in Brazil and Argentina decades ago, North Korean proliferation remains, as well as potentially Iran. To bring those programs under control and eventual termination will require a hard-headed analysis of their origin and purpose. It is here that the notion that China is an innocent party leads us down the wrong road and toward possible catastrophe.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Defense Fellow at the Hudson Institute and President of Geo-Strategic Analysis. These views are his own.

Image: Shutterstock.

A strategic storm is brewing on the frontier of the South Caucasus and the northern rim of the Middle East. It involves the cross-border ethnic Azerbaijani population that forms a majority in Azerbaijan and is the largest minority group in Iran. Baku’s victory in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Armenia, resulting in Azerbaijan having a much longer border with Iran, and the unrest accelerating regime evolution in the Islamic Republic could create a crisis on Iran’s northern flank. Tehran is facing a significant challenge from its ethnic Azerbaijani citizenry which it discriminated against for decades.

Baku-Teheran relations are at a nadir after a gunman murdered the security chief of Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tehran in January. Tit-for-tat followed. Iran expelled four Azerbaijani diplomats on May 5, which itself was in response to Baku’s April 6 move to expel four Iranian diplomats in retaliation for the March 29 assassination attempt on one of its prominent lawmakers, Fazil Mustafa. Tensions between the two countries experienced another spike in the wake of the March 29 opening of Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tel Aviv. Days after Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen’s April 19 visit to Baku, thirty-two Israeli lawmakers sent a letter to Cohen’s office expressing support for Iran’s ethnic Azerbaijani minority. Coincidentally, on April 20, Israel opened its embassy in Turkmenistan.

That last data point is noteworthy. Having made significant inroads in the Arab world, with Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza serving as a launchpad for its operations against Israel, Iran is now increasingly worried about what it perceives is a growing Israeli presence on its northern flank. This is in addition to the fact that its historic Sunni Muslim competitor, Turkey, has also made major inroads into the Trans-Caspian region, where Ankara is trying to create a strategic Turkic corridor.

For the longest time, Tehran took comfort from the fact that its regional ally Armenia served as a check on Azerbaijan, and Russia managed the balance of power in the South Caucasus. Turkey’s increasing influence in what was a Russian sphere of influence since 2020, followed by the Kremlin’s military and economic weakening in the aftermath of its 2022 war on Ukraine, is a cause of major concern for Iran.

Historically, much of the South Caucasus, along with parts of Dagestan in the North Caucasus, was under Persian control and was lost to the Russians in the early 1800s. Iran’s northern borders were established in three treaties with Moscow throughout much of the nineteenth century. For the better part of the twentieth century, Iran’s pro-Western Pahlavi monarchy represented a frontline state straddling the Soviet Union. Even after the ouster of the monarchy in 1979 and the establishment of the Islamist regime, Tehran was in no position to try and regain influence in the South Caucasus.

It was not until the 1991 Soviet implosion that Iran was able to use Shia Islamism to project power into a then newly-sovereign Azerbaijan, a Western-leaning secular Turkic, Shia majority nation. This was not just an offensive strategy but also a defensive one: an independent Azerbaijan could now do the reverse, leveraging Azerbaijani ethnonationalism to weaken the clerical regime—an objective on which Azerbaijan and Israel see eye-to-eye.

While it is expected that the Iranian regime would accuse Israel of supporting Azerbaijani separatism in Iran, the same claim was notably made by Reza Pahlavi, the late Shah’s son. Additionally, during a mid-April visit to Israel, Pahlavi got some Israeli parliamentarians to retract their signatures from the Knesset letter in support of Iranian ethnic Azerbaijanis.

Now that Tehran is faced with significant domestic unrest, it is all the more fearful of ethnic minorities that have been Persianized linguistically. There is worry that non-Farsi groups may culturally rise up against the theocratic order—in particular ethnic Azerbaijanis, who form about a quarter of the country’s 88 million people.

In the fast-approaching post-Khamenei era, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) will likely complete the process of supplanting the clergy as the principal center of power in the Islamic Republic. But the IRGC will be unable to rely on coercive means alone to ensure that minority communities such as the Azerbaijanis, as well as the Baluchis, Kurds, and Arabs, will remain loyal to a shape-shifting regime.

Azerbaijanis have been at the forefront of the protests that broke out after the killing of Mahsa Amini, the young Kurdish woman who morality police murdered last year after arresting her for not observing the hijab. “Freedom, justice, and national government” has been the common slogan on the streets of Tabriz, Urmia, and Ardabil, the three largest ethnic Azerbaijani population centers in northwestern Iran. Azerbaijani protest activists have become a leading factor in the Iranian protest movement. Eight different protest organizations united around the Telegram channel AZFRONT, based in the city of Tabriz. The accelerating regime evolution is an opportunity for ethnic Azerbaijanis to revive their ethnolinguistic Turkic identity. During a 2011 visit to Turkey, Ali Akbar Salehi, a former Iranian foreign minister, acknowledged that as many as 40 percent of all Iranians speak Azerbaijani.

As its religious influence continues to wane, the regime will try to use Iranian nationalism as a means of maintaining unity among the masses. This will not work—only about half of the country is ethnically Persian. Iran’s rulers will have to forge a new social contract with the country’s minorities, especially the ethnic Azerbaijanis—or face dire consequences to national coherence.

Kamran Bokhari, PhD is the Senior Director of the Eurasian Security & Prosperity Portfolio at the New Lines Institute for Strategy & Policy in Washington. Bokhari is also a national security and foreign policy specialist at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute. He has served as the coordinator for Central Asia Studies at the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. Follow him on Twitter at @KamranBokhari.

Image: Sepah News.

In the days leading up to May 25, the twenty-third anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon, Hezbollah engaged in a series of highly-visible wargames. The demonstration of force included hundreds of fighters with live ammunition and sophisticated weaponry typically used by national armies. Except it was not the Lebanese Armed Forces that carried out the drills but a mere political party with an armed wing. For many in Lebanon, the events constituted a blatant disregard for state authority and international law. The question of what to do about Hezbollah’s weapons is consistently being put on the back burner out of fear of internal unrest. Hezbollah claims it needs its weapons to defend Lebanon from Israel. Yet others say this is nonsense and that the group wants to keep its arms to maintain its impunity from state rule.

This debate has gone on for decades and, indeed, it is nowhere near being resolved. Supporters of Hezbollah cite Israel’s eviction in 2000 as a sign of the Shia group’s justification to keep its guns. One person from the south told The National Interest, “I don’t remember the Lebanese army fighting Israel. Only Hezbollah.” Others remember Hezbollah’s action on May 7, 2008, when the group seized half of Beirut in defiance of the government’s attempt to subdue its telecommunication network, and point to it as an example of why the group cannot be trusted.

Domestic response to Hezbollah’s actions

The politicians and members of various political parties that oppose Hezbollah and advocate for state sovereignty have denounced the military drills. The caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, acknowledged that these maneuvers challenge the government’s role in defending Lebanon, but followed up by stating that the situation is too complicated for the state to act alone. The Lebanese government “rejects any act that infringes on the state’s authority and sovereignty, but the issue of Hezbollah’s arms requires a comprehensive national consensus,” Mikati said.

Some have further questioned the motive and the timing behind Hezbollah’s drills. Najat Saliba, an independent member of parliament, inquired why Hezbollah would display force now if Lebanon and Israel agreed last year not to use violence as part of a negotiated maritime deal. “I would like to ask Hezbollah if this drilling is in line or conflicting with the deal they signed for the maritime border. Didn’t they sign an agreement that they won’t use force? If so, why are they showing off their forces inside Lebanon?” Although it was not a peace agreement, Lebanon and Israel signed a maritime accord in 2022 that was mediated by the Biden administration. Thus, some are interpreting these exercises as Hezbollah’s way of reminding its domestic opponents who wields the real power in Lebanon.

Michel Moawad, a presidential candidate with the highest number of votes in parliament, is regarded as both a reformist and a strong opponent of Hezbollah. Moawad condemned the wargames and expressed that they only make Lebanon’s crisis harder to recover from.

“How can Lebanon get out of the tunnel of collapse, rebuild the state, institutions, and economy, and implement the required reforms while Hezbollah continues with the logic of subjugating the state and violating the constitution and laws of the Lebanese Republic?” Hezbollah regards Moawad as too confrontational and “anti-resistance” because he stands against their strategic goals, even if just symbolically.

However, Moawad is not alone in his thinking. Ashraf Rifi, a retired general of internal security, said he and others from the opposition bloc will continue to support Moawad for president. “We will only elect a president who looks like us and Moawad so far fits that description.” Rifi is a member of parliament who represents the North II list, which is aligned with the Lebanese Forces (LF) party. Like Moawad and Rifi, the LF also has condemned Hezbollah’s moves in the south, while its leaders have said that Hezbollah is an anachronism.

“The days of militias are over,” declared LF party member and former minister Richard Kouyoumjian. “We have a national army with the responsibility of defending the country.” Indeed, it was the era of militias that destroyed Lebanon through the 1970s and 1980s until the signing of the Taif Agreement in 1989. All sides’ militias then relinquished their weapons, and the gradual rebuilding of the Lebanese Armed Forces began. All except for Hezbollah, which was allowed (or tolerated) to continue on as a resistance movement against Israel in the south. But once the Israeli army left, Hezbollah made itself the master of the region and “protector” of the Shia community.

The security situation in the south

The south is where Hezbollah draws its base of internal support, which means that the region must be addressed if the “Hezbollah question” is going to be resolved. One source spoke to TNI about the security situation in the south today: “The south is stable and will be like this for a long time. Unless we face a prompt miscalculation from any side. No one has an interest or is ready to change the rules there. It is not appropriate for any party to have military forces, for many reasons. But Lebanon is in a hostile situation with Israel and has the right to defend its territory, including by resistance, especially when this resistance is legal and legitimate according to the ministerial statements for decades and United Nations Charter.”

It is true that for many in the south, Hezbollah has served their interests by defending them against Israel, whether they were a Hezbollah supporter or not. Like on so many fronts, the Lebanese state must earn the trust of its people of all sects and serve them equally.

What is required now is for a new leader to put the question of Hezbollah’s arms on the table for discussion. This is why Parliament needs to resume its role by becoming the legal representation of the people’s will and electing a new president. But when that will happen is anybody’s guess.

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

Image: Gabriele Pedrini / Shutterstock.com

Today—May 27, 2023—marks the 100th birthday of Henry A. Kissinger, one of America’s most influential and famous foreign policy minds (and Honorary Chairman of The National Interest). In commemoration of this date, The National Interest will be rerunning some of our best content on Kissinger throughout the day.

It is likewise worth spending a moment contemplating Kissinger himself on this occasion, for in the annals of American diplomatic history, few figures command such awe, inspire such debate, or embody such complexity.

A refugee from Nazi Germany, Kissinger’s life and career embody a particularly American tradition: triumphing over adversity, working service to a new homeland, and relentless intellectual engagement with the challenges of one’s era. Rising from relative obscurity to the zenith of American power, his trajectory embodied the promise of the American Dream, even as his approach to international relations was grounded in a deeply pragmatic and realist worldview.

Kissinger’s approach to foreign policy—realpolitik—is defined by a clear-eyed understanding of the world as it is, rather than as we might wish it to be. Power, balance, negotiation—these were his instruments. He sought not to reshape the world in America’s image, but to manage it, to balance its forces, and thus secure the national interest. This approach won him both admirers and detractors. To his supporters, this sort of pragmatism is a breath of fresh air in a world full of ideological crusades. To his critics, his approach is a chilling dismissal of human rights, if not worse.

But Kissinger’s accomplishments as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor speak for him. He laid the groundwork for détente with the Soviet Union, pursued a policy of engagement with China that profoundly reshaped the global order, and sought a lasting peace in the Middle East with the historic shuttle diplomacy after the Yom Kippur War. His negotiation of the Paris Peace Accords, for all their imperfections, helped bring an end to U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

As we commemorate this milestone, it is worth reflecting on the challenges that lie ahead. The lessons of Kissinger’s realpolitik—both its successes and its failures—remain profoundly relevant. A devoted student of history, Kissinger emphasizes the necessity of a stable world—one where great powers must be balanced, where economic forces shape diplomacy, and where statesmen must be able—as Kissinger himself wrote so eloquently in his doctoral dissertation—“to contemplate an abyss, not with the detachment of a scientist, but as a challenge to overcome—or perish in the process.”

Contemporary policymakers must take heed, lest the apocalyptic century of a hundred years ago repeat itself. As U.S. preponderance fades and a multipolar order takes its place, America will need leaders capable of guiding her through this new age. Kissinger’s legacy is a timely reminder that the conduct of foreign policy is a delicate balancing act, one that requires both wisdom and will, as well as an understanding of the world as it is, even as we labor to make it as it ought to be.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Kissinger.

Carlos Roa is the Executive Editor of The National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.

The Washington Post didn’t dub the Turkish presidential election as “2023’s most crucial election in the world“ for no reason. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cleverly taken advantage of waning U.S. global influence by pursuing an ever-autonomous foreign policy that promotes his country’s interest, which has often contravened with that of the United States. Erdogan, by a series of military incursions, successfully undermined the American project of establishing Kurdish autonomy in Syria, which Ankara deemed a matter of national security. Citing Washington’s apathy for Turkey’s security, Erdogan, despite relentless U.S. objections, went ahead and acquired the Russian S-400 air defense systems. In the energy-rich Eastern Mediterranean, he adopted the concept of “Mavi Vatan” (the Blue Homeland), which draws Turkey’s maritime borders from the land-based perspective, as opposed to Greece’s interpretation based on its 3,000 or so islands. This has prompted Ankara to sign a maritime deal with Libya, which has allowed Ankara to effectively control the marine resources, cutting off Greece’s maritime access from the Greek Cypriots.

However, Erdogan’s opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu is known to be determined to roll back Erdogan’s perceived foreign policy gains. He considers the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the U.S. proxy in Syria, as “Patriots trying to save their homeland.” He has occasionally questioned Turkey’s North Africa policy asking, “What is Turkey doing in Libya?” Finally, he criticized Erdogan’s decision to buy the S-400 saying, “Who would attack Turkey? Why did we buy them?”

Kilicdaroglu’s high hopes of winning on May 14 turned out to be futile. He lagged about 4 percent behind Erdogan’s 49.5 percent, which prompted a runoff to occur on May 28. With Erdogan being the favorite in the second round, its worth asking why Kilicdaroglu is likely going to be the loser despite Turkey’s economic hardships and refugee problems—issues that have plagued Erdogan’s campaign.

The “Anybody but Erdogan” Coalition

Being the head of the largest opposition party, Kilicdaroglu embarked on the impossible task of assembling a coalition of parties, the Nation Alliance (NA), that have in the past been located on the exact opposite of the ideological spectrum from Kilicdaroglu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP).

The CHP, with its leftist, secular, pro-Western, and progressive views, has had to strike a coalition with the right-wing, nationalist Good Party (iP), the Islamist Felicity Party, as well as Deva, and Future Parties, whose leaders are former Erdogan cadres who turned against him. The decision by the NA to nominate Kilicdaroglu took so many meetings it calls into question whether the coalition would even be capable of forming a government. Moreover, Meral Aksener, the head of iP—the second-largest party in the NA—walked away from the meeting in an apparent show of anger immediately after Kilicdaroglu was declared the presidential nominee. She is known to have supported Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, to be Erdogan’s opponent. In a sensational manner that was interpreted as having been coerced by “foreign influences,” she later returned to the Nation Alliance.

What is worse for Kilicdaroglu is that he felt compelled to receive the de facto support of the Green Left Party (GLP), which professes that it is the political wing of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), the terrorist organization that is responsible for the death of more than 40,000 Turks and Kurds. The move to appeal to GLP’s voters, which has historically stood around 10 percent of the population, alienated the anti-PKK constituents of the NA who are mainly the CHP Kemalists (leftist nationalists) as well as the iP nationalists, who instead voted for the ultra-nationalist Sinan Ogan. Ironically, Ogan later announced that he would support Erdogan since the latter eliminated the PKK terrorism in Turkey. Kilicdaroglu was further hurt by his reluctance to denounce the repeated overt support from the PKK’s upper echelon, known in Turkey as “Kandil,” the mountain between Iran and Iraq where those PKK leaders are believed to reside.

To the NA voters’ dismay, the three smallest members of their coalition—the Felicity Party, the Deva, and the Memleket—received only around 1 percent of the combined votes but grabbed a whopping 33 seats out of the CHP’s 167, dragging the CHP’s numbers lower than what they were in the 2018 parliamentary elections. Kilicdaroglu is now regarded as a terrible accountant, harkening back to the 1990s when Turkey’s social security administration went bankrupt under his leadership.

In short, the “anybody but Erdogan” coalition under Kilicdaroglu can be likened to a mechanic trying to build a car using completely incompatible parts. Yes, he built a car, but it didn’t start.

Kilicdaroglu Is No Match for Erdogan

Before his nomination, Kilicdaroglu was regarded by many in the Nation Alliance as incompetent; someone who is prone to faux pas. He has referred to Turkey’s provinces as “countries” with which Turkey should engage in trade. He couldn’t recite the first two lines of the Turkish National Anthem. He proposed assigning an assistant to 50,000 local authorities (muhtar) to reduce unemployment. He made an official announcement that he is an Alevi, a minority Shiite sect—perhaps an unwise declaration to make, given Turkey’s overwhelming Sunni identity. More famously, he has lost eleven times against Erdogan in the last thirteen years and yet insists on remaining the head of the CHP despite criticism to the contrary. So bad is his reputation that anti-Erdogan celebrities, as well as young voters, staged “Please Kilicdaroglu. Don’t become a candidate” rallies. One man’s tattoo, “K.K. Don’t become a candidate,” went viral.

On the other hand, Erdogan’s supporters have repeatedly emphasized Erdogan’s charisma and qualities—aspects that make him a world-class leader who has dealt with principals such as Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Joe Biden.

This contrast impacted undecided voters’ views. Kilicdaroglu has given the impression of being an unconditionally pro-Western politician who is ready to fulfill everything Europe and the United States dictate. This doesn’t bode well with nationalist constituents who believe Washington and Brussels are the cause of Turkey’s problems, particularly regarding PKK terrorism.

The Disaster of the Century: The Twin Earthquakes

Having repeatedly lost to Erdogan, the opposition argued that “a major disaster or a war” would weaken him, precipitating a political regime change moment. Their wish came true when, in February, two major 7.6- and 7.4-magnitude earthquakes struck south-central Anatolia, leaving more than 50,000 dead and causing monumental havoc in eleven provinces. The calamity gave the opposition a chance to undermine Erdogan’s legacy and defeat him in the election.

The first round of elections proved otherwise. In all but one of the eleven earthquake-stricken provinces, Erdogan came out overwhelmingly on top. It turns out that the citizens in the earthquake zone have been convinced that only Erdogan can address the situation by providing financial assistance, rebuilding the cities, and compensating them for their losses. Opposition CHP supporters reacted to Erdogan’s overwhelming victory in the earthquake zone by openly displaying their regret that they had even helped victims. The mayor of the city of Tekirdag (a CHP member) went so far as to evict the quake victims from their temporary residences because they were from Kahraman Maras, where Erdogan received more than 60 percent of the votes. This created a public uproar, further jeopardizing the opposition’s election chances in the runoff.

Erdogan Has Already Won the Parliamentary Majority

The May 14 election gave Erdogan and his political coalition a clear majority (323/600) in the Turkish parliament. This makes a hypothetical Kilicdaroglu victory on May 28 less meaningful for the opposition as he would thus become a lame-duck president, discouraging NA supporters from going to polls. The Kurdish supporters of the Green Left Party are particularly prone to skipping the election day as their party has dropped from receiving 11 percent to 8 percent of the votes since the 2018 elections. Aware of this situation, the PKK’s upper echelon has repeatedly and publicly encouraged their supporters to go to the polls, further drawing the ire of Turkish nationalists.

What Now?

Despite the country’s ongoing economic crisis, the majority of Turkish citizens have considered Kilicdaroglu’s courtship with the Green Left Party to be an existential threat to the republic, as the party is widely seen as the political extension of the PKK. This perhaps is the most significant reason why Kilicdaroglu lagged about 5 percent behind Erdogan in the first leg of the elections and will likely cost him the presidency. Kilicdaroglu’s attempts to appeal to the supporters of Fethullah Gulen, who was behind Turkey’s 2016 coup attempt, only further hurt Kilicdaroglu’s chances.

Assembling five right-wing parties under the leftist CHP’s leadership to oust Erdogan was a daunting task and gave constituents the impression that the resulting dysfunctional coalition government would cost the country its relative stability—particularly given the already contentious climate among the coalition members.

The first round of election results jolted the Turkish opposition, and herald a major defeat in the runoff. An Erdogan victory will have serious repercussions not just for the Turkish opposition, but also likely lead to a more assertive foreign policy.

Ali Demirdas, Ph.D. in political science from the University of South Carolina, Fulbright scholar, professor of international affairs at the College of Charleston (2011–2018). You can follow him on Twitter @AliDemirdasPhD.

Image: Shutterstock.

Helen Andrews is having a lively time defending foreign authoritarians. In 2017, she waxed nostalgic for Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, denouncing the white liberals who were “slavering to hoist barricades from the word ‘go.’” In 2021 she directed her fervor toward a “benevolent autocrat”—Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, prime minister of Portugal. Now, in a review of the historian Katja Hoyer’s controversial new book, East Germany, Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany in Compact, Andrews holds up for our inspection her latest object of fascination, Erich Honecker’s German Democratic Republic.

Andrews, an astute and agile polemicist, makes it clear that her object isn’t so much to praise East Germany as to hold it up as a viable alternative to imperialistic Western liberalism. Andrews, you could say, is anti-anti-East Germany. Not for her meaningless shibboleths about democracy and freedom and liberty.

Instead, she faithfully exhumes ancient Western leftwing defenses of the East bloc to prettify its record. For a start, she suggests that East Germany was a victim of Western perfidy, assigning culpability for the regime’s woeful inability to produce a decent amount of consumer goods to West Germany’s denial of diplomatic recognition to it. The truth is that East Germany relied on hundreds of millions in loans from Bonn to survive, not to mention its unsavory practice of selling dissidents and other hostages to West Germany for cash on the barrel. One East German friend remarked to me that he knew the demise of the regime was looming in the 1980s when it even sold cobblestones from roads to the West.

Anyway, the true economic problem wasn’t that the West was interfering with an otherwise sound East German economy. It was communism. The Soviet model, which relied on the collectivization of agriculture and industrial state planning, was an unmitigated disaster. Whether it was Poland or Albania, communism created the very immiseration of the workers that Marx blamed on capitalism.

Indeed, as someone who visited East Germany a number of times and participated in a seminar at the Humboldt University in East Berlin for a few weeks, I can only marvel at Andrews’ insouciance about what it was actually like to live in real existing socialism. There were no books, other than classic German novels, to read. There was little fresh food. There were few automobiles—the waiting list for a Trabant or Wartburg was almost twenty years. What did exist was an omnipresent state security service, coupled with a border zone several kilometers deep and filled with landmines, guard dogs, and automatic shooting devices. East Germany, in other words, was a national prison.

Yet Andrews asserts that the pervasive surveillance was “an annoyance at most for the average person.” How does she know? The fact is that East Germans were terrified to talk to each other in public even on the subway or the tram. The most that Andrews can concede is that “human rights is the soundest basis for condemning East Germany. Surely, we need no greater proof than the fact that they had to build a wall to keep people in.”

Andrews states that we can “afford to be magnanimous in evaluating our former enemies.” Why? There is nothing to evaluate about East Germany’s conduct and everything to expose about its terrible crimes, including conducting anti-Semitic purge trials in the early 1950s, as the historian Jeffrey Herf has copiously documented. Would she espouse this lofty stance toward Nazism? Hitler, after all, built roadways, restored order, and got the economy humming again. She goes on to declare that “some people” want East Germany back. Yes, they do. Just as some people in West Germany wanted Nazism back after World War II.

The truth is that Andrews doesn’t really appear to be very much interested in the plight of East Germany. It serves as a prop for her wider assault on liberal triumphalism about victory in the Cold War. She states that the “strength of modern liberalism lies in its ability to dismiss all alternatives, past and present, left and right, as unthinkable.” This notion, that totalitarianism might represent a possible utopian future, truly is the triumph of hope over experience. The French historian Francois Furet called totalitarianism’s demise the end of an illusion. For Andrews, however, it seems to remain a vibrant one.

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest.

Image: Karolis Kavolelis/Shutterstock.

The latest common sense on China is that Washington is in the throes of groupthink—a phenomenon when a group ignores opposing views and contradictory evidence, pressing on to a course of action despite ideological blinders. Supporters and critics of America’s China policy agree groupthink is leading to poor strategy, whether by under or overestimating the China challenge. As renowned journalist Fareed Zakaria put it, “China is a serious strategic competitor, the most significant great-power challenger the United States has faced in many decades. That is all the more reason for Washington to shape a rational and considered foreign policy toward it.” Yet across the Pacific, with Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power, some observers worry Beijing might be suffering from groupthink of its own. The Chinese, these observers fear, have converged on the view that Washington is out to halt China’s rise while it still can. If both sides persist in holding these views, a dangerous spiral downward in relations can likely lead to conflict.

However, not all of Washington is suffering from groupthink on the China issue. Irving Janis’ original description of the term fits poorly with the current situation, as it applies to small-group decisionmaking settings—not sprawling marketplaces of ideas like Washington DC foreign policy debates. There is plenty of robust discussions and different thinking on China in American national security circles. The question, then, is why do more hawkish voices dominate and how can they be balanced out?

The China Paradigm Shift

Groupthink comes about as a result of needing to maintain group coherence. As anyone who has ever been in a sufficiently large meeting knows, groupthink occurs when no one opposes the direction of a discussion or agreement because doing so seems worse than any sub-optimal decision the meeting might reach—including not reaching any agreement at all.

Yet in practice, maintaining the U.S. foreign policy community’s coherence is the opposite of what America’s security experts hope to achieve as they participate in a lively ongoing debate on U.S.-China policy.

Reverting complex processes to psychological diagnoses like groupthink is commonplace—think of cognitive bias or negative stereotyping. Though these labels have a scientific ring, they also serve to shift attention away from often politically-charged social realities towards a supposedly de-personalized collective mindset. Blaming mere groupthink, in other words, obscures the messier processes behind the paradigmatic change in how Washington views Beijing since 2016, which marked the end of the “engagement” era.

This shift in predominant views of China—from potential partner to rival, and increasingly toward the de facto enemy—is better described as an exercise in “policy capture” by anti-engagers. Those arguing for a reinvigoration of engagement and the careful management of America’s competition with China are, at most, politely tolerated, and are certainly not in positions of authority. The individuals who are in power have concluded Washington and Beijing are locked in a decades-long ideological conflict.

To be fair, it was inevitable that Washington’s approach to China would move away from the rose-tinted views encapsulated in the pro-engagement approach. A resurgent China was never likely to accept U.S. predominance in East Asia, was bound to crack down on freedoms in Hong Kong, amplify threats toward Taiwan, and convert its massive economic gains into military might. Concern with developments in China was gaining strength during Barack Obama’s second term. Yet it was with the Trump administration that engagement critics’ ideas were translated into policy—from the trade war to the China Initiative, which was aimed at reshaping bureaucratic priorities across the government. Far from pursuing a reversal, the Biden administration instead stayed the course and drew on expertise in Washington with views very similar to those who had worked for Trump.

America’s current China policy is, in effect, a number of bureaucratic processes set in motion by the Trump national security team and continued by the succeeding administration. At the executive level, the National Security Council has modified America’s strategy, outlining a new competitive approach in May 2020 which was echoed in last year’s National Security Strategy. Defense Department planning for an era of great power competition predates Trump, and China is now firmly America’s “pacing challenge”—driving procurement and force posture decisionmaking. With their victory in last year’s midterm elections, House Republicans have firmly targeted pushing a more robust government approach toward China.

Re-Centering the China Debate

Yet the notion that this shift toward a more hawkish approach constitutes bipartisan groupthink in Washington foreign policymaking ignores those China experts—think tankers, former diplomats, and business people—who have raised concerns about this new direction. Pro-business voices, like former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, have questioned the logic of decoupling. Misdiagnosing the contemporary China debate as groupthink rather than policy capture matters because it leads to inappropriate solutions. Moreover, experts have voiced concern over whether the demise of engagement has left the United States with a dangerous lack of the bilateral connections with China needed for crisis management.

The remedy to groupthink beyond foreign policy is “thinking outside the box.” Companies use specifically-designated “devil’s advocates” in meetings. The U.S. military has a well-established tradition of “red teaming”—tasking specific groups with challenging assumptions and evidence to combat groupthink. But applying this is difficult in Washington—whereas groupthink can come about unintentionally, policy capture is very much intentional. Asking the same individuals who are purposely pushing for a harder line on China outside-of-the-box thinking will not necessarily lead to a change.

Not all of America’s foreign policy elite is of the same mind on China—not just on the facts of the CCP’s actions and intentions but what Washington should do in response, what America’s interests are, and what policies best serve it. Many fear that competition has too easily slipped into confrontation, and that a return toward a managed form of great power competition would be wise. The administration should listen to other voices pushed aside, since these voices present different understandings of America’s interests, which remain firmly against conflict.

David M. McCourt is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. He is working on a book tentatively titled The End of Engagement: America’s China and Russia Watchers and U.S. Strategy Since the Cold War.

Image: Shutterstock.