The National Interest

In an episode of the hit TV show How I Met Your Mother, one of the characters drily explains that “the Eighties didn’t come to Canada until, like, ’93.” Today, Canadian cultural delay remains in full force. Just this year, the American 2016 presidential election seems to have finally arrived up north. This time, it is foreign interference by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at issue. The Chinese have targeted America’s largest trading partner, our partner in continental air defense, and a founding member of NATO. Americans should take notice.

As any American who even remotely paid attention to Russia’s efforts to sow chaos in the 2016 election can attest, the fog of foreign interference is disconcerting and frightening. While recent studies have suggested that these efforts did not sway a critical mass of voters, they did succeed in causing a significant portion of the American population to doubt the legitimacy of the Trump administration. Now, it’s Canada’s turn in the barrel.

Since February, Canadians have been treated to a constant stream of damning reports, spurred by a source in the Canadian intelligence services, suggesting that Canada has been the target of a widespread effort to affect elections at the federal, provincial, and local levels. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ordered two separate, albeit closed-door, investigations into China’s chicanery—although both the Tories and Trudeau’s governing coalition partner, the New Democracy Party, have argued that this is insufficient.

The allegations are as salacious as they are troubling: explicit Chinese involvement in defeating targeted candidates, including cash donations and Russian-style disinformation campaigns, in both the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. China’s aims in 2021 were allegedly to secure a chaotic minority government led by, but not dominated by, the Liberal Party. While a review conducted by the former chairman of the Pierre Trudeau Foundation—which itself has been embroiled in a scandal wrought by revelations it received CA$140,000 from a donor backstopped by the PRC—claimed the results were unaffected by China’s activity, former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole estimates that the Chinese activity may have scuppered eight or nine Tory victories.

More recent revelations are just as shocking. China’s diplomatic mission in Vancouver conducted candidate recruitment efforts ahead of the city’s most recent local elections. Worse, it appears that the Trudeau government knew that a Chinese diplomat operating in Toronto was targeting the Hong Kong-based family members of Michael Chong, the current shadow foreign affairs minister, and failed to notify Chong or expel the PRC's man from the country. (After this failure became public, the Canadian government did expel the diplomat, Zhao Wei, spurring China to expel a Canadian diplomat in turn.)

One of the alleged targets of China’s efforts, Kenny Chiu, just happened to be the champion of a foreign agents’ registration bill. (Canada, unlike the United States, does not require political influencers in the pay of foreign governments to register and report activities on behalf of their paymasters.) One of the alleged beneficiaries of Beijing’s largesse, Han Dong, purportedly urged a Chinese diplomat not to release two Canadian citizens being held hostage by the PRC because doing so would benefit the Conservative Party. (Dong, who has left the Liberal bench to become an independent, hotly denies these allegations and has filed suit against the Canadian media outlet that has reported it.)

That these events were set in motion by a source in the Canadian intelligence services is also disquieting. It could be—as the leaker him/herself suggested in the pages of the Globe and Mail—that the appropriate political agents have been hesitant to take action against Beijing’s shenanigans, perhaps unwilling to forgo the possible political rewards. But at this juncture, it could just as easily be the case that profane, not patriotic motives were at issue. Given that Canada is a crucial intelligence partner of the United States through the Five Eyes arrangement, neither option is a good ingredient to toss into the boiling cauldron bubbling on our northern border.

As you might expect, this is just the beginning. Trudeau’s chief of staff has testified in Parliament, albeit in a more limited capacity than desired by the opposition, about how the government learned of China’s interference. And at the end of May, a special rapporteur appointed by Trudeau will make a recommendation on whether the two secret reviews are sufficient—or whether a public inquiry (think something north of the Mueller investigation and south of the January 6th Committee in terms of publicity) is necessary.

As a rule, the American public tends not to pay attention to the vagaries of Canadian politics. This benign neglect may be unsustainable going forward. Americans do not generally recognize how deeply intertwined we are with Canada’s political and economic system for the same reason that fish do not think about why the water is wet. But a loss of public faith in Canada’s electoral system could spark a significant and unsalutary crisis in Ottawa—just as Russian interference did here. Such instability could echo through the U.S.-Canadian relationship.

Furthermore, we should keep in mind that hostile foreign powers will undoubtedly seek to replicate whatever elements of China’s Canadian playbook appear promising, including in our own election next year. This is unlikely to be an isolated incident. While there is still time, the United States needs to get on the same page with our North American cousins and confront these threats together going forward.

Zac Morgan is an attorney specializing in First Amendment and campaign finance law. He previously worked for the Institute for Free Speech, and currently serves as counsel to Commissioner Allen Dickerson of the Federal Election Commission.

The views expressed in this article are his own and do not express an official view of the U.S. government.

Image: Shutterstock.

With national elections taking place in Turkey, the stakes could hardly be higher as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, battle for the presidency.

The Center for the National Interest invited two leading foreign affairs analysts to discuss the elections on Sunday, May 14.

Henri Barkey is the Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen professor in international relations at Lehigh University and has served on the U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff.

Dennis Ross is the William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has served as special Middle East Coordinator under President Bill Clinton and as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department under President George H. W. Bush.

Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, moderated the discussion.

Image: arda savasciogullari / Shutterstock.com

Today, Turks will head to the polls to elect a new president and parliament. The incumbent, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will be on the ballot. Previous elections have seen comfortable majorities both for Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has enabled him to stay in power for twenty years—first as prime minister from 2003 to 2014, and then as president from 2014 onwards.

The upcoming elections, however, will prove to be the biggest challenge to his authority over the Turkish state. The deterioration of the Turkish economy and the damage caused by the massive earthquake on February 6 has turned much of the Turkish population against Erdogan, and there is the very real possibility of his party, and by extension Erdogan himself, being voted out of office, thereby forcing him to take a number of steps to bolster support. One way he has done this is by leveraging Turkey’s position in NATO to block Sweden’s ascension to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), by claiming that Sweden has been refusing to extradite suspected terrorists and not taking concrete steps to combat groups that Turkey considers to be security threats. While there might be some legitimacy in these claims, Erdogan’s belligerent stance towards Sweden can be more realistically interpreted as a means of portraying himself as a populist who will protect the Turks from Kurdish separatist groups and project Turkey’s influence as a serious player on the international scene to garner support ahead of the elections.

Under Erdogan’s leadership, Turkey has become more confrontational in its foreign policy and is more willing to intervene in the domestic affairs of its neighbors. According to Kali Robinson, “Erdogan has engineered an assertive shift in foreign policy that focuses on expanding Turkey’s military and diplomatic footprint. To this end, Turkey has launched military interventions in countries including Azerbaijan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria; supplied partners such as Ethiopia and Ukraine with drones; and built Islamic schools abroad.” It should be recognized, however, that domestic factors have long influenced Turkish foreign policy, and that the country’s foreign policy positions have often changed to accommodate those factors. As such, while it is easy to take the current diplomatic spat between Turkey and Sweden at face value, it should be framed within the context of the upcoming election and the impact of Turkey’s considerable internal problems.

The greatest among those problems is the economy. Since he was first elected in 2003, Erdogan favored using aggressive pro-growth policies—such as encouraging foreign investors, undertaking massive infrastructure projects, and accumulating of debt—to stimulate the economy. Over time, this economic model proved to be unsustainable since the glut of cheap loans and low-interest rates that were implemented by the Turkish central bank put an increasing strain on the economy. Erdogan’s own views on economics run counter to reality, and he has continually insisted on keeping interest rates low out of the belief that high-interest rates cause inflation when the reality is the opposite. In an interview with TRT news, Erdogan stated that “interest rates make the rich richer, the poor poorer,” and has invoked Islamic teachings against usury and referred to interest on loans as “the mother and father of all evil.” It can be debated as to how much Erdogan believes in such ideas and how much of it is to pander to his more conservative base, but the reality is that his policies have had a severe impact on the Turkish economy. Property prices have skyrocketed by 241 percent as of October 2022, the value of the Turkish lira has been slashed by half, and according to official figures published by the Turkish Statistical Institute, inflation reached 85 percent, although unofficial figures have put the annual rate at 185 percent. The purchasing power of the average Turkish citizen has collapsed, and many goods and services have become too expensive for many people to buy. The situation has only been made worse by Erdogan’s stubborn refusal to listen to anyone who disagrees with his economic policies, to the point of firing three members of the central bank’s monetary policy committee who opposed Erdogan on the issue of interest rates.

There are several factors that work in Erdogan’s favor though. Inflation has slowly been decreasing, as Erdogan has been pumping money into the economy in the leadup to the elections in an effort to soften the blow of the crisis to the Turkish population. These measures have included raising the minimum wage by 55 percent, providing subsidized loans to small businesses and tradespeople, and launching a scheme to protect savers against exchange rate losses if they convert their dollar and euro accounts to lira. The devaluation of the currency has also meant that exports have become cheaper, with exports increasing by 13 percent in 2022, meaning that foreign currency in entering the country.

The situation became direr, however, after the February 2023 earthquake. The disaster killed around 50,000 people in Turkey alone, destroyed thousands of buildings, and according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 20 percent of Turkey’s agricultural production was damaged, affecting over 15 million people. To add insult to injury, floods caused by torrential rains killed a further two dozen people in March, and left thousands more homeless. All in all, the damage caused by the earthquake exceeds $100 billion dollars, which accounts for roughly 10 percent of Turkey’s GDP. Recovery efforts are expected to take years to yield results.

The earthquake also piles political pressure on Erdogan. The government’s slow response to the earthquake and its inability to provide timely aid to the victims has seen its popularity drop. Despite increased efforts by the Turkish government to provide aid, many survivors expressed criticism of the government’s initial response, with many stating that the authorities were nowhere to be found, with people left homeless in the middle of winter with nowhere to go, supplies running low, and the impression that the victims were left to fend for themselves. The earthquake also tainted Erdogan’s personal reputation. When the AKP party was swept into power in 2003, Erdogan made promises of good governance, a clampdown on corruption, and establishing a state that was more receptive to the needs of the people. These promises were music to people who were upset at the aftermath of a previous earthquake in 1999, which led to a reform of the country’s building codes to earthquake-proof Turkey’s infrastructure. Instead, corruption became more entrenched as contractors took advantage of a construction boom to cut corners while the authorities awarded contracts without competitive tenders or proper regulatory oversight. To address this criticism, Erdogan has issued arrest warrants for dozens of contractors and fast-tracking reconstruction efforts, although it is unclear if this will have an impact.

Erdogan’s opponents have taken full advantage of his dilemmas and have shown a remarkable level of unity and discipline. Six opposition parties spanning the center-left and center-right, have allied together to create the Nation Alliance and put forward veteran politician Kemal Kilicdaroglu as their candidate. Kilicdaroglu, who is nicknamed the “Turkish Gandhi,” has projected an image of an everyman appeal, and has campaigned on promises of tackling inflation and ensuring a return to parliamentary democracy. His prospects increased when the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which usually wins around 10 percent of the vote in national elections, decided not to nominate their own candidate—which is especially advantageous since Kilicdaroglu has, in the past, expressed a willingness to extend more political rights to the Kurdish community.

The final factor to consider is the impact of the Kurdish question. Since 1978, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has fought a guerilla campaign to force the Turkish state to give greater rights to the Kurds, and Turkey has labeled the PKK as a terrorist group. Early in his tenure, Erdogan supported greater political rights for Turkey’s Kurdish minority but several factors changed his approach. While the AKP has consistently been the largest party in Turkey since 2003, it has had to ally with the far-right, ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) to achieve a majority in parliament. Due to the MHP’s hardline stance towards the Kurds, Erdogan has had to adopt some of their policies to keep their alliance intact. The issue only grew more complicated with the outbreak of the Syrian civil war. The breakdown of the Syrian state apparatus in the north of the country allowed the Kurdish population there to establish an autonomous Kurdish enclave. This stoked fears of Kurdish separatism that would spill over into Turkey, which led Erdogan to order the Turkish armed forces to conduct military operations into the enclave in an effort to stymie the Kurds from consolidating control of the area.

So, what does this have to do with Sweden? The answer is that the Scandinavian country is an easy target for Erdogan to distract the Turkish citizenry away from Turkey’s internal problems and towards an imagined bad-faith actor. Historically, Sweden has been a favorite destination for political dissidents to seek refuge and, as a result, has a large Kurdish diaspora population. When Sweden submitted a joint formal application, alongside Finland, to join NATO in May 2022 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Turkey initially blocked the bid. In June 2022, however, Turkey, Finland, and Sweden signed the Trilateral Memorandum, whereupon Sweden and Finland would agree to take a stronger stance against Kurdish separatist groups, drop all arms embargos by Sweden and Finland against Turkey, and extradite individuals that Turkey considers terrorists. The agreement fell apart, however, in December 2022, when Sweden’s supreme court rejected the extradition request of Kurdish journalist Bulent Kenes due to the “risk of persecution based on the person’s political views” if he were to be sent back to Turkey, which did not sit well with Erdogan. Kenes used to be the editor of Today’s Zaman, an English-language newspaper that was often critical of Erdogan. After the failed coup attempt against Erdogan in 2016, Today’s Zaman was shut down and Kenes escaped to Sweden after an arrest warrant was issued against him alleging that he part of a network linked to U.S.-based cleric Fetullah Gulen, who Erdogan blamed for the coup attempt. The situation only escalated in January 2023, after pro-Kurdish demonstrators in Stockholm waved flags of various Kurdish groups, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency against Turkey and is banned in the country, as well as hanging an effigy of Erdogan. This happened in parallel with another incident where far-right Danish-Swedish politician Rasmus Paludan burned a copy of the Quran during a protest in front of the Turkish embassy.

Unsurprisingly, Erdogan was upset with these developments and stated that Turkey would refuse to support Sweden’s application to join NATO as long as Sweden allowed Quran burning and pro-Kurdish protests to continue. In response, the Swedish government stated that it did not support the protests, but that they cannot ban the pro-Kurdish protests nor Quran burning because such actions would go against Swedish law which protects them as free speech. Regardless, though, this was not enough for Erdogan, with Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accusing Sweden of being complicit of a “hate and racist crime.” There is still hope that Turkey might become more conciliatory towards Sweden after the elections, and the Swedish government is introducing a new anti-terrorism law which it hopes will persuade Turkey to change its mind.

Despite the strained relationship between the two countries, Erdogan’s primary concern is winning the election, and antagonizing Sweden is just one of the tactics that he is employing to shore up support. Once the elections have passed, it is quite possible that new negotiations will pave the way forward for Sweden to join NATO and even help to reset the relationship between the two countries.

Joe Boueiz is an independent analyst in international relations and the politics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. He is a graduate of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the American University of Beirut (AUB), and a former lecturer of international relations at the Modern University of Business and Science (MUBS) in Beirut, Lebanon.

Image: Shutterstock.

Over the last fifty years, western European energy businesses developed deep personal and business connections with the Soviet and then Russian gas industry. The greatest exponent of this relationship is former German chancellor Gerhard Schroder. As chancellor, he cleared the way for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline project, becoming its chairman after he left office. Alongside this job, he was a persistent advocate of an ever-stronger German-Russian energy relationship.

For Schroder and others like him in the European energy sector, the small matter of an all-out, state-on-state war on the European continent between Russia and Ukraine does not necessarily mean an end to business as usual. For now, it is true that Gazprom exports of Russian pipeline gas to the European Union have collapsed. Nevertheless, many business and political leaders want to return to “normal” as soon as possible. Already in Germany, Saxony’s prime minister called for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to be repaired and Russian gas flows restored. In Italy, one of the members of the Russian-Italian energy old guard, Paolo Scaroni, has been elected to become the chairman of the Italian energy giant ENEL.

It is not too difficult to see the game at play. The “business as usual” crowd, led by the likes of Schroder and Scaroni, will be pushing for doing deals on gas flows with Moscow.

At first sight, Re-Schroderisation looks impossible. Imports of Russian pipeline gas to Europe have fallen from 40 percent of European imports to around 5 percent. The largest Russian gas importer, Germany, has secured several new LNG floating regasification ships to import LNG. German ministers are constantly repeating talking points on energy diversification. Germany will take Norwegian natural gas, LNG, wind, solar—anything but Russian gas. However, beneath the radar Russian natural gas has not wholly gone away. Whilst it is true that Russian pipeline imports have collapsed, Russian LNG imports have increased. In fact, across the EU, Russian LNG imports are now only in second place to U.S. LNG imports.

More fundamentally the economic and political support system for Russian energy imports across Western Europe has not disappeared. It may be that, currently, it is seeking lower visibility, but that support system is ready to reengage and push Russian gas at the first opportune moment. Already we have Saxony’s prime minister, Michael Kretschmer, making the case for the repair of Nord Stream 1. Interestingly Kretschmer uses the suppression of Germany’s nuclear power station, the last three of which were switched off on April 15, as a justification. This case for restoring flows through Nord Stream 1 fits with a broader strategy of German supporters of Russian gas. They know that it is going to be difficult to furnish Germany with sufficient alternative energy sources with the effective ending of Russian gas imports. The loss in the last three years of altogether six nuclear power stations increases demand for more power from elsewhere, and planning restrictions make it difficult to bring wind power on enhanced networks to where it is needed. No one wants to massively increase coal use (though that is happening). All the German supporters of Russian energy need is a really cold winter and the Chinese buying up sufficient liquid natural gas on global markets that natural gas prices ramp up dramatically. At that point, the case for repairing Nord Stream 1—at the mere cost of $500 million—and returning to business as usual will be made.

This is not just an argument that will be made just in Germany. Schroderization, which sees European politicians and business executives seeking and supporting deep connections with the Russian energy market was, and remains, a feature of the Western European energy sector as a whole—not just in Germany. One can now see Re-Schroderization also in play in Italy, where the Meloni government, pushed by its pro-Russian Berlusconi wing, appointed a member of the Russian-Italian energy old guard, Paolo Scaroni, as chairman of ENEL, the Italian energy giant.

Scaroni was previously CEO of the other major Italian energy company, ENI, and developed a strong relationship, as the Kremlin minutes themselves demonstrate, with Vladimir Putin. He also supported, and partially financed, the ill-fated South Stream project which had the aim of undermining Ukraine by providing an alternative transit route for Russian gas into Europe. The clear overall aim of Moscow was not just to weaken Ukraine’s revenues but also to reduce Ukraine’s importance to the EU, making it easier (in theory) to attack later, with less chance of any European interest. ENI under Scaroni also locked Italy into the Russian gas network by sustaining long-term gas contracts with Gazprom and acquiring gas fields in Russia.

Like many others like him, Scaroni has shown no rethinking or repentance for his actions. He has continued to argue that Italy needs Russian gas for another decade and has opposed sanctions on Russia. This is despite the fact that the Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens European security and the international order. And despite the fact that the actions of Scaroni, Schroder, and others in the Western European energy establishment essentially encouraged Putin to contemplate invading Ukraine. From an energy perspective, their actions made Europe dependent on Russian gas, and when Moscow pulled the energy rug from underneath the EU, European consumers ended up paying the bill. The cost of EU energy imports in 2022 was three times what it was in 2021.

It is not difficult to see that Scaroni will soon be coordinating with the pro-Russians in the German energy establishment to push a resumption of Russian gas imports. All it will take is a cold winter, limited LNG, and high energy prices, and Scaroni will be seeking a revival of Russian gas flows, with Gerhard Schroder, and other Russian “energy understanders.” The Re-Schroderization of the Western European energy sector will then be fully underway.

Dr. Alan Riley is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Washington DC. He specializes in antitrust, trade and energy law, and EU policy issues.

Image: Shutterstock.

The war in Ukraine has settled into a bloody stalemate with no end in sight. As the world braces for more bloodshed and destruction in the second year of the war, all the major players find themselves having gained no clear victory—except China.

On one side of the conflict are the United States and its allies. Since President Joe Biden has come to office, the United States has been Ukraine’s most steadfast supporter, pumping more than $75 billion into the country in humanitarian, financial, and military support. Washington has been, or will soon be, providing Kiev with advanced weapons systems, including Javelins, the Patriot air defense system, and M1A1 and A2 Abrams tanks. America’s European partners have also been providing ongoing assistance to Ukraine in different areas, including financial, humanitarian, energy, and budget support, as well as diplomatic outreach. The European Union in December last year agreed on a legislative package that will provide Ukraine with €18 billion in financial support over 2023. Yet, despite the seemingly bottomless support provided by the West to Ukraine, the United States and its European allies are no closer to expelling Russia from Ukraine than when the war first began, while draining their own resources.

On the other side of the war is Russia, which continues to be the architect of its own demise. While the Russian economy has resisted the brunt of Western economic sanctions, Moscow has lost the EU market, experienced a tremendous brain drain, grown dependent on Iran and North Korea for arms and supplies, and become the de facto junior partner to China. By all metrics, Russia has failed in its bid for renewed hegemony over its own front yard. NATO is now more united than ever, has added Finland to the alliance, and is on track to add Sweden. Furthermore, the Russian-Ukrainian war has accelerated the global transition towards alternative energy, thereby posing a grave threat to Moscow’s fossil-fuel-based economy. In terms of the human cost of war, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies reports that Russian armed forces and private military contractors fighting alongside them have suffered 60,000 to 70,000 combat fatalities over the past year.

Clearly, the biggest loser in the war is Ukraine itself. Having heroically fought off the initial Russian decapitation strike aimed against Kiev, which targeted President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself, Ukraine now finds itself facing a World War I-esque situation of trench warfare against the Russians. The frontlines have become largely static along the oblasts of Kherson, Zaprizhchia, Donetsk, and Luhansk. At least 8,000 non-combatants and tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the war began. Nearly 18 million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance, with 14 million displaced from their homes. Vladimir Putin has ratcheted up the nuclear brinkmanship, announcing plans to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by July of this year—a move that would pose an existential threat to Ukraine’s survival. While Kiev has managed to avert defeat, victory—or more practically an end to the war—appears nowhere in sight.

Yet there is one country that is winning from the carnage: China. Just as Beijing sat back and smiled as the United States bled itself in various interventions in the Middle East over the past two decades, it is again doing the same now as Washington has found itself bogged down in yet another protracted and unwinnable war. In the meantime, China has funneled considerable expenditure into its military, modernizing its air and ground forces, expanding its naval forces in East Asia to counter the existing U.S. naval presence, and upgrading its strategic and tactical nuclear stockpile and launch systems. Chinese policymakers understand that continued and costly American forays abroad will only tip the balance of power further in Beijing’s favor. China has also taken advantage of the Ukraine war in its foreign policy, steadily increasing its economic relations with Russia and, according to some China experts, possibly supplying Russia with weapons and ammunition in the near future.

The devastating irony of the situation is that the West became embroiled in a war against Russia at the very moment when it should have been cultivating Russia as a counterbalance against the rise of China. Instead, the West has pushed Russia into the waiting arms of Beijing, which has been more than willing to pursue a “friendship with no limits” with a Russia that has every reason to fear a rising China. Nevertheless, instead of a situation where the United States and Russia are working together to contain China, we instead have one where they are effectively fighting a war against each other in Ukraine. The United States has thus set itself up for a confrontation against two great powers, a situation that only naïve optimists believe the United States can win.

Nilay Saiya is an associate professor of public policy and global affairs at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Rahmat Wadidi is a graduate student in international relations at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

Image: Shutterstock.

The recent visit of Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, often simply known as Lula, to Beijing should be a reality check for Washington. Coming on the heels of visits from leaders of France, Spain, Singapore, and Malaysia, plus success brokering a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, it affirms that China is now a global player on the world stage. Its presence is permanent and growing. Yet the United States has not fully accounted for the magnitude of China’s rise, nor for the multipolar system of international relations it augurs.

The U.S. relationship with China has always been defined in binary terms. The “good” China was the pragmatic one; it embraced capitalism following Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978 and fostered illusions that political pluralism, if not democracy, was around the corner. The “bad” one is the increasingly authoritarian Communist China of Xi Jinping, which parted with Deng’s reforms in 2012. This China has centralized power, stifled openness, massively modernized the military in every warfare area, and projected its power in East and Southeast Asia.

Yet China and the United States are stuck in a codependent relationship. Trade and investment ties between the two countries are critical to their prosperity and that of the world economy. The Biden administration’s extension of Donald Trump’s protectionist policies has curtailed trade and made China insecure. China’s rejection of international collaboration in favor of national self-reliance in technological innovation, from AI to quantum computing, has similarly alarmed Washington.

China believes the United States seeks to contain its rise—a far from fanciful notion given that Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia in 2012 was partly intended to reassert America’s military primacy in the Asia-Pacific. The United States, for its part, fears that China will supplant it as the world’s hegemon. Although its relentless growth has been diminished by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, the bursting of the real estate bubble, nonperforming loans, and a shrinking labor pool, China is still likely to become the world’s dominant economic power by midcentury. This trajectory and Xi’s repeated verbal sallies that the United States is in fatal decline only intensify American anxieties.

Pressured by public opinion produced by their own rhetoric, Washington and Beijing are demonizing each other, and talk of war is in the air. Critical to retreating from the precipice of conflict is re-establishing a dialogue. Without such a dialogue, there can be no hope of regaining a measure of mutual trust, as Tom Friedman wrote in the New York Times on April 14.

Both sides must reduce their attachments to cultural blinders that obstruct compromise. Xi may fancy that China has resurrected its celestial status as the Middle Kingdom, the center of civilization around which the world revolves, but that is an anachronism in a world of emerging powers. Ditto for the culturally ingrained American belief that the United States has been historically destined to redeem a wayward world. The objective of foreign policy is not to transform the world into America’s self-image; it is to defend and enhance the country’s interests in a competitive and often conflictual world.

To advance this objective, eliminate barriers to communication, and rebuild trust between Washington and Beijing, greater emphasis must be placed on diplomacy. Xi must abandon the combative wolf warrior diplomacy driven by hostility toward the West and resume the cooperative and pragmatic approach of Hu Jintao and his predecessors. The United States should put to rest its lingering attachment to unipolarity and the simplistic division of the world into democracies and autocracies. There needs to be a rule of law, but in the multipolar world that is emerging the United States will no longer be the sole rulemaker.

Protecting America’s interests requires retaining a robust military force, one that is well-trained and equipped and operates at a high state of readiness. It is prudent to impose sanctions on dual-use semiconductor chips that China will use to modernize its military capabilities. Publicly communicating America’s social and scientific achievements and its success in improving the quality of life for its citizenry, as Robert Gates has written, will also help to counter Chinese disinformation so long as the message is free of sanctimony. America should present itself as a model for others to emulate rather than as a proselytizing missionary.

Ultimately, the United States must recognize that China’s rise is part of the broader redistribution of global power stimulated by the end of the Cold War. Freed from the constraints of the U.S.-Soviet struggle, emerging countries began to assert their national interests. India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, and other states are intent on replacing a Western-dominated world order with policies that coincide with their objectives.

They favor a rules-based world, as Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar said last year, so long as it does not compromise their interests. Southeast Asian nations refuse to take sides in the U.S.-China conflict; they remain skeptical that the war in Ukraine is the portentous clash of ideologies presented by the West. Conflicting interests prompted fifteen African countries to abstain from the February 2023 UN vote calling on Russia to remove its forces from Ukraine. Competing interests likewise intrude on the solidarity of America’s allies, who wish to avoid becoming “vassals,” as French prime minister Emanuel Macron put it, in a U.S.-China confrontation.

De-dollarization is underway in international trade, in part to avoid U.S. financial sanctions in national security matters. Lula favors the use of alternative currencies to settle cross-border trades, and Bangladesh has recently decided to pay for a Russian nuclear power plant using the Chinese renminbi. Economists and investors such as Nouriel Roubini and Ruchir Sharma maintain that we are headed for a world of currency blocs.

Rising tensions between the United States and China threaten to redivide a world whose cohesion will be crucial to addressing a multitude of problems, among which climate change, poverty, disease prevention, and military conflict loom the largest. In the evolving international political system that is emerging from the ruins of the former U.S.-Soviet condominium, the distribution of power is becoming more dispersed. To maintain a stable world order, it will be increasingly important for both the United States and China to find a middle ground with other regional powers no less intent on having a say in how the world is governed. To avoid a calamitous conflict that would balkanize the world or, far worse, plunge it into a new dark age of perpetual warfare, Washington and Beijing must find a modus vivendi that will allow them peacefully to reconcile their competing interests in a changing world.

Hugh De Santis is a former career officer in the Department of State who served on the Policy Planning Staff, among other assignments, and later chaired the department of national security strategy at the National War College. His latest book is The Right to Rule: American Exceptionalism and the Coming Multipolar World Order.

Image: Shutterstock.

Joe Biden, as featured on the White House’s website, has recognized that tackling the climate crisis also represents a unique opportunity; a place “where conscience and convenience cross paths, where dealing with this existential [environmental] threat to the planet and increasing our economic growth and prosperity are one and the same.” We are wholly in agreement.

That said, Mr. President? While doing the right thing, it is just as important to do the thing right… in energy policy, as in all things.

As it happens, there are ways to achieve both and more. Doing so requires pursuing an energy policy founded in pragmatism, rather than misguided beliefs or notions. To that end, we are announcing Washington DC’s newest think tank, Washington Power & Light: an institution not affiliated with, nor funded by, any industry or sector, that is dedicated to encouraging such an approach.

Pragmatism is the most powerful known way of achieving across-the-board progress. We urge the Congressional “Problem Solvers Caucus”—headed by Chairmen Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ)—to add energy policy, now curiously absent, to its platform.

Deferring, per the logic behind Pascal’s Wager, to the president’s commitment to treating greenhouse gas emissions as an existential threat and fully sharing his enthusiasm for economic growth and equitable prosperity, how might we get the best of both worlds? Let’s not settle for trafficking in tradeoffs that result in the half-baked achievement of both important policy objectives!

As it happens, the federal government’s own U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), “the statistical and analytical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy,” publishes an annual report entitled Annual Energy Outlook (AEO). The agency and its findings are disclaimed as “independent of approval by any other officer of employee of the U.S. government,” and whose views “do not represent those of [the Department of Energy] or any other federal agencies.”

Yet the EIA is considered by many an authoritative source. Its Administrator’s Foreword, in the latest AEO, stipulates with refreshing candor that:

The U.S. energy system is rapidly changing. … Ideally, we would model these dynamics to produce precise numerical forecasts that demonstrate how energy prices, technology deployment, and emissions will shift over time. Unfortunately, such precise forecasts are not possible. The 30-year decision landscape we model is too complex and uncertain. Thus, our objective must be to identify robust insights rather than precise numbers—think ranges and trends, not predictions and point estimates. … Among the uncertainties we must confront, the timing, structure, and targets associated with yet-to-be-developed policy are the most uncertain. We only consider current laws and regulations across all modeled cases in this AEO. For some readers, this approach may be unsatisfying because policy rarely remains static for long periods. But this AEO should be considered part of an iterative policymaking process rather than apart from it; it gives decision-makers an opportunity to peer into a future without new policy. If the projected outcomes are undesirable from their viewpoint, they can effect change.

The agency provides a data-driven analysis, refreshingly free of what we call “hopium”—defined by YourDictionary.com as “irrational or unwarranted optimism.” Its analysis presents, in dry expository form, conclusions that fossil fuels will still dominate as our energy source both in 2030 and 2050, with renewables approximately doubling yet still dramatically below rival power sources.

Curiously, nuclear energy, among the most environmentally- (per a growing chorus of environmentalists) and prosperity- (per the consensus of economists) friendly is projected to decline. So much for the aspirational hopium-fueled goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.

Different energy sources are optimal based on geographical and other factors. Let’s be cognizant that, in the spirit of Bob Marley’s “One Love”, all humanity (and other living things) shares one atmosphere. And while we consider renewed reliance on nuclear power to be a constructive, likely imperative, contribution to cutting CO2 emissions while contributing to prosperity and security, we do not consider nuclear energy a panacea.

In  addition to environmental benefits, economic benefits, and energy security benefits, consider that America’s main rival, China, is permitting two huge coal-fired electricity plant per week, “six times as large as that in all of the rest of the world combined.” Geopolitics and worldly economics factor into the policy calculus.

The New York Times, notwithstanding its predominantly center-left worldview, represents the epitome of journalism. Its idealism is often tempered by pragmatism.

It is therefore notable when it provides column inches to the proposition that nuclear waste is misunderstood—fears of radiation from nuclear power plants wildly overblown—by the founder of the progressive Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal. This promptly is followed by a pretty darn glowing review of maverick filmmaker Oliver Stone’s new documentary, Nuclear Now, advocating nuclear energy as the decisive remedy both for climate change and for “climate doomerism.”

Meanwhile, The National Interest recently provided, over the course of two weeks, opinion pieces unflinchingly making the case for nuclear energy as the answer to global and environmental economics woes and another as to why nuclear power is the only realistic way of scaling up supply to meet future energy demand.

Bottom line? We applaud energy policies that honor President Biden’s stated goals: the imperative for both a clean environment and equitable prosperity. To those two objectives we would add energy security, unquestionably another value held by the president and most Americans, both in the general public and makers of policy.

Progress certainly will entail making laws, regulations, and overall energy policy based on data and analysis, rather than faith-based utopian “hopium” or narrative-driven dystopian hysteria or despair. But how? Simply follow the clear implications of the analysis provided annually by the Energy Information Agency to nurture the growing transpartisan consensus that energy policies fostering both equitable prosperity and environmental integrity are complementary, not antagonistic, values.

Energy policy based on proven, field-tested, engineering to bring about win-win solutions will bring federal policy back into better alignment with the mission statement placed right to the fore of the Constitution: to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Chairmen Fitzpatrick and Gottheimer? President Biden?

You’ve got the solution to a problem right in the palm of your hands. We encourage you and your colleagues to take a good look!

Jeff Garzik is an internationally respected futurist, entrepreneur, and software engineer, co-founder and CEO of Bloq. He is well recognized for his work on the original dev team of Bitcoin and for his extensive work with the Linux Foundation.

Ralph Benko worked in or with three White Houses, two executive branch agencies, and several Congresses, co-founded and chairs the 201,000-follower Capitalist League, is a multi-award-winning author and columnist.

The authors are the co-founders of Washington Power & Light, a new DC policy institute dedicated to pragmatic energy policy. Washington Power & Light, not affiliated with, nor funded by, any industry or sector, is dedicated to encouraging an energy policy based on pragmatism.

Image: Shutterstock.

At a scaled-down and muted World War II Victory Day Parade, Vladimir Putin again compared the war in Ukraine to the epic struggle of the USSR against Nazism. The ideological justification of Putin’s invasion—the “denazification of Ukraine”—is linked to the reanimated veneration of Stalin. Resurrecting the Soviet dictator, however, is much more than a wartime propaganda tool: it serves to legitimize the strategic culture of Putin’s Russia. If Stalin’s legacy becomes morally acceptable and legitimate, then Putin’s revisionist foreign policy goals—and all the means to accomplish them—will become similarly virtuous. To achieve lasting peace in Europe, the West must understand the present-day implications of Putin’s historic revisionism.

In February of this year, a new larger-than-life Stalin bust was unveiled in Volgograd to honor one of the deadliest battles of the Second World War: the battle of Stalingrad. A watershed moment of what Russia calls the “Great Patriotic War,” the Nazi expansion into the Soviet Union was halted at Stalingrad. The battle marked the turning of the tide, as the Red Army began to march victoriously all the way to Berlin. In the weeks preceding the unveiling of the new bust, officials floated the idea of changing the city’s name back to its Soviet-era name: Stalingrad.

However, the reanimated cult of Stalin is a more serious project than putting up a bunch of busts to boost wartime morale. The rehabilitation of the man of steel had already been going full steam when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022. In December 1999, when Putin was named acting president following Boris Yeltsin’s resignation, he pledged to reestablish order domestically and restore the strength of Russia abroad. The new president turned to the image of Stalin to build on Russian nostalgia for the lost gilded age of the Soviet empire. Barely a year in office, Putin replaced the Russian national anthem in 2000 with the National Anthem of the Soviet Union—a hymn personally selected by Stalin in 1943. The updated lyrics were written by the same Sergey Mikhalkov who penned the original version—mentioning Stalin—during the Great Patriotic War.

The rehabilitation of Stalin gradually gained momentum over the following years. In 2007, Putin called Stalin an “effective manager” and stated in Oliver Stone’s documentary, The Putin Interviews, that Stalin was “excessively demonized.” One of the last independent TV channels, Rain, was shut off in 2014 after it polled its viewers on whether Stalin should have surrendered Leningrad rather than killing more than a million citizens—including Putin’s brother—in the Nazi siege. The Kremlin has also been covering up Stalin’s genocidal act, the Ukrainian famine of 1932–1933, known as the Holodomor—going as far as getting rid of a monument dedicated to the victims in Russian-occupied Mariupol. To nurture the legacy of Stalin, Putin must erase the ostentatious inhumanity of the most murderous communist dictator in Russian history.

In 2020, Putin delivered an online history lesson for high school students and pre-university cadets where he praised the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which the Third Reich and the Soviet Union carved up Eastern Europe between them. In an essay published the same year in this very publication, Putin claimed that in September 1939 the Red Army only marched into Poland because “there was no alternative.” According to him, Stalin decided to carve up its neighbor to protect millions from “anti-Semites and radical nationalists.” Soviet-style “protection” included the massacre of around 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia prisoners of war in Katyn in 1940—a fact that Putin conveniently ignores. What is more, recently released FSB documents attribute this war crime to the Third Reich. Never mind the fact that the Russian Duma condemned Stalin for the massacre back in 2010. In his essay, Putin also paints the occupation and subsequent annexation of the Baltic countries during the fall of 1940 as “implemented on a contractual basis, with the consent of the elected authorities.” These rigged elections served the same goal as the phony referendums in Russian-occupied Eastern Ukraine organized last year: to discipline the population and teach them how to behave under Soviet/Russian rule.

Make no mistake: the Russian population is more than susceptible to Putin’s Stalin worship. According to Levada, a polling agency, 56 percent of polled Russians in May 2021 agreed that Stalin was a “great leader.” Astonishingly, in Russia, Putin is sometimes even reproached for not being “Stalin enough.” Already in 2016, a bizarre, Stalin-mask selfie app became wildly popular on Russian Instagram. Just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this was written into Russian law: “any public attempt to equate the aims and actions of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during World War II, as well as to deny the decisive role of the Soviet people in the victory over fascism” is a criminal offense. It seems that Putin successfully seized on the unifying and catalyzing potential of the Soviet victory in World War II and the trauma of the dissolution of the USSR to vindicate Stalinism.

Like all people, Russians have the right to honor their leaders and write their own history. But the intensifying rehabilitation of Stalin only serves to legitimize Putin’s authoritarian regime and to support his revisionist foreign policy aspirations. When U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met in Yalta in February 1945 to decide on the post-war order in Europe, Stalin promised to allow free elections in Poland. He lied. Yalta didn’t stop Stalin from pursuing his imperial goals in Eastern Europe. In the same vein, the 1993 Budapest Memorandum didn’t stop Putin from invading Ukraine.

Putin is not Stalin, but Stalin’s heritage is omnipresent and deeply embedded in the Russian psyche. To understand Putin’s strategic culture, it must be perceived through a “Stalin lens.” The United States and its Western allies must look at history as a guide if they want to devise sustainable peace in the region.

Mónika Palotai is a Visiting Research Fellow at Hudson Institute specializing in the European Union, International Law, and Energy Security

Kristóf György Veres is a Senior Researcher at the Migration Research Institute (within the Mathias Corvinus Collegium) in Budapest.

Image: Shutterstock.

On May 27, Henry Kissinger will celebrate his one-hundredth birthday and a long life of exceptional consequence in the two highly competitive worlds of diplomacy and ideas.

Fleeing Nazi Germany, Kissinger arrived in the United States in 1938 as a bookish teenager with no immediate prospects. Thirty years later, he commanded U.S. foreign policy, first as national security advisor, then as the emblematic secretary of state to two presidents, Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.

In his four years as secretary of state, he helped end America’s most controversial war, split China from Russia (the hegemonic power that propelled China’s leader to power), and redrew the boundaries of several nation-states. His books, real doorstoppers crammed with careful research and close argument, continue to climb bestseller lists and compel the attention of leaders and thinkers across the world. Decades after leaving office, he continues to be consulted by chief executives, presidential candidates, and network-television bookers.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, chaired by another great man, a patriot and one of the most enlightened men in the American establishment, John Hamre, organized a reception in honor of Kissinger to celebrate his extraordinary accomplishments. Hamre began by reviewing history and Kissinger’s mark on it.

First, there was the Vietnam War. As the deadly presidential approached, Vietnam had settled into deadly stalemate. The year began with North’s massive Tet Offensive, which the United States desperately beat back. By September, the Viet Cong ceased to exist as a separate fighting force, but that meant no victory for the United States. The North Vietnamese Army was becoming an increasingly lethal force with its growing divisions of Soviet tanks, aircraft, and increasingly effective anti-aircraft missiles.  As long as the USSR and China backed the North, the United States could never defeat it.

The stalemate was evident, and it divided America. Protests, both anti- and pro-war (the pro-soldier “hard hat revolt” in Central Park was one the largest protests in the 1960s), divided America. On television, Americans saw burning wreckage in Saigon and burning draft cards in Seattle. The public was tiring of the war.

It was Kissinger who led the peace talks. Yes, South Vietnam collapsed in 1975. But, two years earlier, the U.S. military was able to make a secure and, above all, dignified withdrawal.

It is to Kissinger that we owe the famous policy of détente with the Soviet Union. For the first time, the United States and the USSR agreed to significantly slow the nuclear arms race. As a result, several regional conflicts de-escalated. Nuclear war was avoided, and lives were spared in Southeast Asia, southern Africa, and among the Pacific islands—every place where communist guerillas fought with the local successor states to colonial powers.

To strengthen America’s position in Asia, the Nixon administration made a diplomatic rapprochement with mainland China, from which the United States had been estranged since 1949, when the Communists had won control. To seal the new relationship, Nixon took a spectacular trip to China in February 1972.

After October 6, 1973, Israeli officials telephoned Kissinger to say that they were fighting off an invasion. Egyptian forces were attacking in the Sinai while the Syrian army was in Israel’s north. The so-called fourth Arab-Israel War had begun. Nixon dispatched Kissinger to negotiate with Israel, Egypt, and Syria—Kissinger’s famous “shuttle diplomacy.”

At the end, there was a new and, this time, lasting peace. These served a few important American interests: it stopped the cycle of invasions, halted the embargo by Arab oil-exporting states, and set the stage for a historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt (the Camp David Accords of the Carter years). Kissinger may be the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to secure more peace after winning the prize than before.

These successes make him a diplomat of historic stature. The intensity and scope of these diplomatic initiatives, and their success—in the sense that they all resulted in agreements—have no parallel in American history, and perhaps no parallel in the history of Israel. With his prodigies of diplomacy, Kissinger left his mark on the twentieth century.

While Kissinger admits that prophets have “the most passionate vision,” he said he prefers statesmen to them because they recognize on-the-ground realities and can see value in incremental gains.

Sadly, the current political climate does not encourage the emergence of leaders like Kissinger. His book devoted to “leadership” exemplified the importance of building consensus on the major issues. It is not by tweeting or posting on Facebook that a political leader can develop a vision that gives him the status of a statesman. Instead, as Kissinger writes, leaders are made by the cautious study of history.

All democracies suffer from the same ailment: An intellectually impoverished political class that is more obsessed with polls and social networks than a vision for their societies.

But this is a problem that even short-term thinkers should consider: How can America continue to lead the world without leaders who can combine high theory and grounded pragmatism, as Kissinger does?

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

Image: Mark Reinstein / Shutterstock.com

The advent of ChatGPT, No-code AI, and voice cloning software only further demonstrates that digital technologies have advanced more rapidly than any innovation in mankind’s history, reaching around 50 percent of the developing world’s population in less than two decades and transforming societies. But though the United States is, as of 2021, the most digitally competitive country in the world, many often forget that not all of its citizens benefit from these advances. There exists the digital divide—the gap between those who have access to modern information technology and services, and those who don’t.

Many Americans are unaware that this is not just a problem for developing nations. A study by the Pew Research Center finds that 7 percent of Americans, approximately 23 million people, do not use the Internet, and 23 percent do not have access to a broadband connection at home. That includes nearly three in ten people—27 percent—who live in rural locations, as well as 2 percent of those living in cities. Additional data shows that 40 percent of schools lack broadband, as do 60 percent of healthcare facilities outside metropolitan areas.

But the impact of the digital divide goes beyond schools. A national assessment of the quality of infrastructure, inclusivity, institutions, and digital proficiency found significant gaps based on race, ethnicity, and income. In terms of economic impact, a Deloitte study projected that a 10 percent increase in broadband access in 2014 would have resulted in more than 875,000 additional jobs in the United States and $186 billion more in economic output in 2019.

This is extremely concerning, especially given that, in modern times, digital technology is considered the single most important driver of innovation, growth, and job creation.

The digital divide is a significant challenge, but solutions exist: funding and implementing digital inclusion policies, programs, and tools can help. Some of these include affordable, robust broadband Internet service; digital literacy training; quality technical support; and reading material designed to enable and encourage self-sufficiency, participation, and collaboration.

The U.S. government understands the importance of this problem and is moving to address it. In March 2022, the Biden administration launched a $45 billion initiative to bring high-speed Internet to everyone in America, although some assert that $240 billion will be needed to bridge the digital infrastructure gap. Congress has since appropriated more than $100 billion, including $65 billion via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), to help states bring high-speed Internet access to every American household, much of which is allocated directly to state governments to implement it as part of BIL and the American Rescue Plan Act.

Creating and staffing new departments and planning how to deploy funds will be essential. Multiple stakeholders—including governments, the health insurance industry, Internet providers, and municipal bondholders—need to agree on precise plans and spending. The execution stage will also be lengthy, as the physical build-out of necessary infrastructure will take time.

Infrastructure needs aside, the affordability of digital services also plays a large role in the state of America’s digital divide. Europe, however, provides some salutary lessons from which the United States could learn. Because European standards mandate open access infrastructure—meaning that there are physical infrastructural that different service providers can all make common use of—multiple companies are spared having to invest in building physical infrastructure, enabling them to compete for customers in terms of a service level. As a result, European companies offer lower prices to attract customers, which benefits consumers.

The future that consumers are demanding is even more digital than today, even more connected, more global, and more intelligent. To achieve that future, with its growing demand for connection and data consumption, we need to invest more in digital infrastructure—whether that is a network, the Internet, data centers, storage, computers, transmission, systems, or applications. Of equal importance, we should make closing the digital divide for all Americans a priority of public policy. This task is one braced by inclusion and equity and aligned with our nation’s goal to compete and thrive in a digitally globalized world.

Jerry Haar is a professor of international business and executive director for the Americas in Florida International University’s College of Business. He is also a global fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.

Image: Shutterstock.

Since dollars are policy in U.S. national security, it is not surprising that, given the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the increasingly aggressive Chinese behavior toward Taiwan, and the escalating federal deficit, the Fiscal Year 2024 (FY2024) defense budget proposed by the Biden administration has provoked comments from all parts of the political spectrum. To put these comments in perspective, it is important to analyze at least ten major questions that, as we previously noted, President Joe Biden had to answer in formulating his proposed defense budget.

First, in deciding on the size of his FY2024 defense budget increase, would Biden use the $813 billion he originally proposed for FY2023 as a base? Or would Biden use the $860 billion, which was approved in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY2023?

For FY2024, Biden used the latter—the congressionally approved FY2023 level of $858 billion—as a base and proposed a total budget for FY2024 of $886 billion, an increase of 3.2 percent. Had he used his $813 billion as a base, his budget proposal would have amounted to $47 billion less. Even if Congress does not add to his FY2024 proposal, which appears unlikely, this would mean that, since the Biden administration came into office, the defense budget will have grown by $146 billion, or 20 percent. This is exclusive of the military assistance to Ukraine, which now amounts to over $50 billion, and nearly all of the weapons going to Taiwan. Moreover, it does not include the $100 billion the federal government spends each year amortizing the military retirement system and the approximately $325 billion the Veterans Administration will spend in FY2024. As the Pentagon comptroller noted, the United States is inevitably moving toward a trillion-dollar defense budget.

Second, after deciding on the base, which rate of inflation would the Biden administration use to determine whether to maintain the current spending level in real terms, as he did last year, or potentially provide a real increase, as Congress did previously? The yearly inflation rate in January 2022 was 6 percent, the second highest in forty years. Even with no real growth, a 6 percent increase above the amount Biden requested for FY2023 means an FY2024 budget request of about $870 billion. Using the NDAA level as a base would have resulted in a budget request of approximately $900 billion.

For FY2024, Biden assumed an inflation rate of 6 percent. Using an inflation rate of 6 percent and the Congressionally approved budget for FY2023 as a base would have meant a proposed budget of $912 billion for FY2024. Therefore, in real terms, the FY2024 Defense budget is $26 billion below the FY2023 level.

Third, in addition to deciding on which base and which rate of inflation to use in determining the top line, Biden had to take into account at least three different perspectives from members of Congress. First, that of the members of the House Republican Freedom Caucus, the Democratic Progressive Caucus, and sixty-two religious groups, who want to return the FY2024 defense topline to the FY2022 level of $775 billion. While many see this as an extreme measure, it is important to keep in mind that this figure would be $35 billion, or 5 percent, above the Trump administration’s last budget. It is also more than twice as much as China and Russia combined are spending on defense, and about the same amount Biden himself had projected in his first year in office. While many would argue that the Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s aggression toward Taiwan have significantly changed the international environment, it is important to remember, as noted above, that U.S. support for Ukraine is funded separately from the regular defense budget and that Taiwan is paying for almost all of the weapons.

A second group consists of those members who rely on the unfunded priorities list. These priorities, which by law must be submitted directly to Congress by the services and the combatant commanders, outline those programs that the Secretary of Defense eliminated from their original budget request. For FY2023, this list contained $21 billion in unfunded priorities, most of which were added to Biden’s FY2023 proposal. For FY2024, the list amounts to “only” $17.1 billion. However, this amount does not include the list from the Cyber Command, the National Guard Bureau, the Strategic Command, and the Missile Defense Agency.

A third group is composed of the defense hawks, who, given the Chinese military build-up want to increase defense spending from its current level of 3 percent of GDP to as much as 5 percent.

Fourth, would the Biden administration finally release its budget in a timely manner? During Biden’s first two years in office, the administration released its budget more than a month later than the normal practice. Such tardiness makes it much more difficult for Congress to pass the budget before the start of the fiscal year. This is particularly difficult for the Department of Defense, since, until a budget for the new fiscal year is passed, the Pentagon can only spend at the previous year’s level and not start any new programs, leading to a significant amount of waste and mismanagement.

Biden released his budget proposal on March 13, which is a month after the due date and makes it likely that Congress will only pass a continuing resolution for at least the first part of the new fiscal year, making it more difficult for the military to spend these funds efficiently and effectively.

Fifth, in addition to deciding on the base and the inflation rate, the president had to decide on the rate to increase military pay. The current basis for raising active-duty pay is the Employment Cost Index (ECI,) which as of September 30, 2022, was 5.2 percent compared to 4.6 percent a year before. This would be the highest raise in thirty years. For retired pay, the average cost of living increased by 8.7 percent from July to September 2022. No administration is bound by law to implement these levels, but most administrations do since they have a large impact on recruiting and retention. Since pay and benefits already consume one-quarter of the total defense budget, how much Biden raised them will have a significant impact on how much is left for investment in current nuclear and conventional procurement and research programs.

Biden proposed a raise that used the September 2022 ECI as the basis and proposed 5.2 percent pay raise for uniformed military and civil servants and 8.7 percent for military retirees. However, some critics, who support a larger raise, have pointed out that, since FY2021, military pay has increased by only 10.7 percent, while inflation has totaled 16 percent, and military housing allowances have dropped from 100 percent of rent and utility costs to 95 percent. These policies have contributed to the crisis in recruiting and retaining a sufficient number of qualified women and men in the active and reserve forces.

Sixth, after deciding on the base, would Biden increase the budget by just enough to keep pace with inflation, or would he accept a real increase of 3 to 5 percent, which some in Congress, including many in his own party, said is necessary to keep up with the growing threats from Russia and China? Increasing the budget by such in real terms, with an inflation rate of 6 percent and using the FY2023 NDAA as a base, would have resulted in an FY2024 defense budget request of about $922 billion—$110 billion more than Biden requested just a year ago, and $136 billion above what he proposed for FY2024.

Seventh, would Biden make any changes in the strategic and tactical nuclear weapons programs now that he has completed his Nuclear Posture Review? In his first two budgets, Biden ignored his own campaign pledges and the Democratic Party 2020 platform, which called for reducing overreliance and excessive dependence on nuclear weapons. Instead, in his first budget, Biden actually embraced the proposal he inherited to rebuild and modernize all three legs of the strategic nuclear triad—at a cost of $1.7 trillion—and provided funding for three new tactical nuclear weapons, including the low-yield nuclear cruise missile. Last year, Biden did try to cancel the low-yield warhead but was overridden by Congress.

The Democratic platform characterized the Trump administration’s nuclear proposal, as unnecessary, wasteful, and indefensible. Moreover, while running for president, Biden himself pledged to dismantle America’s commitment to increasing the role of nuclear weapons. Many of Biden’s supporters had hoped that his pledges would lead to his cutting back or even eliminating the land-based component of the strategic nuclear triad, which will cost $264 billion to maintain and modernize. Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review did not make such a recommendation.

The most likely cuts they suggested would be canceling one or more of the three tactical nuclear weapons programs: a new nuclear-armed cruise missile now in the research phase, a Cold War-era thermonuclear bomb, and a new low-yield warhead that the Trump administration wanted to deploy on attack submarines.

In FY2024, the Biden administration is once again including funding for all three legs of the strategic nuclear triad and two new tactical weapons, but not including any funding for the low-yield nuclear weapon, the SLCM-N.

Eighth, would Biden continue his “divest to invest” strategy for our naval forces, and what will be his goal for the ultimate size and composition of the fleet? In his FY2022 request, Biden proposed decommissioning fifteen ships, including seven cruisers and four littoral combat ships, and building only eight—four fewer than were funded in FY2021. Congress not only authorized an additional four ships that year but limited the ability of the Navy to decommission ships. In his FY2023 budget request, Biden proposed $27.9 billion for the purchase of eight new ships and retiring fifteen. But Congress again added $5 billion for six new ships and prohibited the de-commissioning of twelve of the fifteen.

In light of these changes over the last two years, the Biden administration had to decide whether to increase its goal for expanding the Navy from its present level of 296 ships to 321 by 2030. And if it did, will the administration take the money from the other services or increase the total budget topline?

In the $256 billion FY2024 budget proposed by the Navy, the largest of the five services, it has been allowed to once again repeat its divest-to-invest strategy. It proposes spending $32.8 billion to buy nine new ships, one more than it proposed last year, but two less than Congress approved last year. Moreover, it is once again proposing to retire eleven ships, eight of which have not reached the end of their intended service life, including three land-classed dock-loading ships that it proposed to retire last year but were saved by Congress. Because of its rising costs, which have grown by about 25 percent, Biden proposed in FY2024 to decrease the amphibious fleet below thirty-one, despite a Congressional mandate and an agreement with the Marine Corps on that number. This provoked outrage among the Marines and their supporters on the Hill.

Even in the unlikely event that Congress approves the Navy’s FY2024 request as is, it will mean that over the last five years, the Navy’s procurement budget will have grown by 54 percent and its operations and maintenance budget by 22 percent. However, it is much more likely that Congress will prevent the Navy from retiring many of these ships and will add funds to procure new amphibious ships.

Ninth, would Biden continue to try to slow down the production of the tri-service F-35 aircraft until it fixes its myriad problems? For FY2023, Biden requested sixty-one of these aircraft, down from eighty-fix the previous year, but Congress added eight more to bring the total to sixty-nine.

In the FY2024 proposal, Biden requested eighty-three F-35s—forty-eight for the Air Force and another thirty-five for the Navy and Marine Corps. This is not only fourteen more than Congress approved last year, but twenty-one more than Biden requested a year ago. The administration did this in spite of the fact that the F-35 has not yet fixed most of its problems, including whether it can use a revolutionary but costly new engine that Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has tried to kill. Moreover, the Air Force did not request any additional F-35s in its unfunded priorities list.

Tenth, the administration had to decide on the number of active duty personnel, it wishes to recruit and maintain. Because of the difficult recruiting environment, it reduced its active force for all the services except the Navy. This resulted in a decline of the force from 1.34 million to 1.308 million FY2023. Adding in the Reserves, the total force for FY2023 was 2,087,334.

In its FY2024 budget proposal, the Pentagon is asking for a Total Force of 2,074,000. This is 13,354 fewer than was authorized in FY2023, but 12,335 more than are currently serving, which, given the current recruiting environment, will be difficult to achieve.

No matter how much the nation spends on defense, it cannot buy perfect security. How Congress and Biden handle these issues will not only have a significant impact on our security and economy but it will also tell us a great deal about our values. As Biden himself said prior to becoming president, “Don't tell me about what you value. Show me your budget and I will tell you what your values are.”

Lawrence Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Image: Shutterstock.

Very few countries have proven to be hospitable to Syrian refugees in recent years as the country’s long-running war has resulted in a de facto partition of the country. Lebanon offers no exception to this dynamic, as proven by the numerous attempts by the Lebanese government to return some of the 800,000 to 2 million registered and unregistered Syrian refugees within its borders forcibly and illegally to their home country.

The latest iteration of this dynamic arose last month, as the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) arbitrarily detained hundreds of Syrians across Lebanon, turning them over to Syrian security services at the border. Yet while the army’s intervention in the refugee space is a new development, the political underpinnings behind the operation are not.

No Home for Syrians

Reports emerged in mid-April indicating Beirut’s renewed efforts to identify, detain, and return Syrian refugees after a brief lull in such efforts. In this context, an anonymous LAF official confirmed to local media that roughly fifty Syrians were deported in the first half of April, led by army intelligence. According to the official, the operation prioritized locating undocumented Syrians living in Lebanon. This is operationalized through a 2019 Higher Defense Council administrative procedure allowing immediate deportation of anyone entering the country “illegally” after April 24, 2019.

This number ultimately grew, with many reports indicating over 400 Syrian detainees across roughly sixty raids in April. Of this group, approximately 130 were forcibly returned to regime-held areas in Syria. Other reports highlight 1,100 arrests and 600 deportations across seventy-three raids as of May 4. The raids focused on individuals with invalid residency permits, supposedly under the orders of caretaker Social Affairs Minister Hector Hajjar. The Lebanese General Security Office (GSO) is not conducting deportations—an irregular move given they handle such cases.

Hajjar is a member of the Hezbollah-allied Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and has openly derided the presence of Syrian refugees, warning of a “big explosion” if tensions are not reduced between Lebanese and Syrians in his country. He has also claimed that Syrian refugees make up 40 percent of Lebanon’s population, arguing “no country in the world would accept” such conditions. The minister has plans to lead a ministerial delegation to Damascus to discuss the refugee issue in a similar fashion to previous Lebanese ministers.

However, Hajjar claims that GSO is leading deportation efforts—conflicting reporting focused on the LAF. In this regard, Acting General Security Director Elias Baissari—officially tasked with the refugee file—reportedly visited Damascus last week to meet with Syrian officials about refugees. Following up on these efforts, Prime Minister Najib Mikati on April 27 assigned Baissari with the task of developing a mechanism for returning Syrians.

In parallel, Lebanese interior minister Bassam Mawlawi ordered his ministry to survey and register Syrian populations on May 2, demanding municipalities ensure Syrians are documented before permitting them to buy or rent property. This coincides with a slew of curfews for Syrians in many municipalities, as well as checkpoints and roadblocks to identify undocumented migrants. Finally, Mawlawi, alongside other ministers, demanded the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) revoke the refugee status of any Syrians who go to Syria and return to Lebanon.

Government Failure and Scapegoating

These evolving dynamics surrounding the refugee file suggest a new level of engagement on the part of the Lebanese government. While the GSO has traditionally held authority over the refugee file, the inclusion of the LAF and multiple ministers suggests Beirut is shifting toward a whole-of-government approach as it prioritizes the issue even further in 2023—although such an approach could be decentralized along political alliances. For example, some have argued that the LAF’s involvement suggests Joseph Aoun is catering to the public and other politicians in support of a presidential run.

To be sure, this does not suggest the existence of any serious or effective strategy, nor that multiple governing entities were not previously working on the file. Rather, the intensity of anti-refugee efforts is increasing, albeit amidst a government that is incapable of doing much of anything well—which lies at the core of the situation.

Just as Beirut failed to implement its 2022 refugee return plans, stipulating the return of 15,000 Syrian refugees a month, recent efforts suggest the limits of and impediments facing the Lebanese government. Indeed, while any illegal returns in violation of basic non-refoulment clauses—the international legal statute outlawing forced returns to unsafe conditions like Syria—must be actively fought at all levels, recent efforts to return between 130-600 Syrians highlight Lebanon’s limited capacity to operationalize and scale such a program or any other serious government action today.

This suggests what many migration experts and human rights advocates have argued for years: that Lebanese political figures and elites continue to operationalize a Syrian refugee scapegoating strategy as opposed to any serious return program or domestic reform agenda. Given Lebanon’s historic economic collapse at the hands of a septuagenarian elite that is primarily interested in retaining a corrupt and sect-based political system, defenseless Syrian refugees present an easy target.

Human rights groups have rightly condemned this approach, with Amnesty International releasing a statement on April 24. The NGO cited previous research documenting human rights violations experienced by Syrian refugees upon return to regime-held areas in Syria—not limited to arbitrary detention, torture, and disappearance. Given that these constitute the norm under Assad’s government, Amnesty put it simply: “The Lebanese authorities must immediately stop forcibly deporting refugees back to Syria.”

Syrian Refugees and the Future

Unfortunately, Lebanese officials are not listening. Indicative of broader anti-Syrian hate speech prominent across Lebanon, FPM minister of parliament George Atallah stated that Amnesty should “mind its own business” and “not interfere in the sovereign decision of Lebanon.” This echoed responses to the human rights organization’s tweet on the issue, in which many identified Syrians as synonymous with violence, economic collapse, and land theft.

The heightened rhetoric draws a direct path to Lebanese political actors, producing increasingly violent hate speech and actions against Syrians in Lebanon. The unfortunate reality of this dynamic is circular in that elite rhetoric informs the population, which in turn expresses support for increasingly brutal anti-refugee policies. This scenario mirrors hate speech against Syrians in Turkey.

Thus, 2023 will likely continue to present a rapidly deteriorating situation for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. The latest iteration of efforts to make conditions unbearable for refugees will not be the last this year, especially amidst rapidly evolving re-normalization efforts between Arab states and Damascus. 

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

Image: Richard Juilliart / Shutterstock.com

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is certainly on a path to enhance his country’s diplomatic profile by turning it into a “middle power,” a concept born during the Cold War to characterize states that “punch above their weight” in world politics. Considered to be neither big nor small powers, these countries can project a global significance that transcends a merely regional profile. Canada is the prototypical middle power. Australia is also frequently mentioned in this context.

Middle-powers are frequently associated with economic significance (for instance, due to their energy resources) combined with what scholars call their “norm entrepreneurship.” They typically do not exert influence through military force but rather through diplomatic means, often involving their role in conflict resolution.

Kazakhstan has all the classical characteristics of a middle power: strategic location, abundant natural resources, and commitment to international principles and cooperation. Kazakhstan has continuously emphasized multilateralism and conflict resolution in its international diplomacy.

One of the key factors contributing to Kazakhstan’s emergence as a middle power is its commitment to hosting and participating in international political conferences. In recent years, Kazakhstan has positioned itself as a neutral ground for dialogue and mediation. For instance, in January 2017, the country hosted high-level talks on the Syrian Civil War in Astana, bringing together the Syrian government, opposition forces, and regional stakeholders such as Russia, Iran, and Turkey in the Astana Process, which has since had a key role in promoting ceasefires and facilitating humanitarian aid.

In 2013, Kazakhstan also facilitated the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 countries (the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany), which culminated in the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. As a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) from 2017 to 2018, Kazakhstan emphasized such crucial issues as non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, conflict prevention, and counterterrorism. Likewise, it was instrumental in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan after the country’s political turmoil in 2021. 

Kazakhstan has coined its position on the Ukrainian crisis, a policy of non-recognition of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states. Such courageous consistency in pushing strategic neutrality in a region neighboring Russia and China has contributed to efforts to strengthen the UN principles in support of the world order, as well as the regional prospects for greater multilateralism.

It is remarkable that Kazakhstan is emerging as a middle power on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea at the same time as Azerbaijan is also doing so on its western shore. The promotion of their bilateral cooperation is driving deeper integration in the region, reinforcing its security structure. The recent agreement with Azerbaijan to leverage the full capacity of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TCITR) is an example. The TCITR, also known as the Middle Corridor, runs from China to Europe through Central Asia and South Caucasus.

The latest bilateral meeting between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan follows the 2021 transformation of the Turkic Council into the Organization of Turkic States (OTS). Established in 2009, the Turkic Council was initially a platform for dialogue and collaboration between Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkey. The creation of the OTS was a natural development from the Turkic Council’s evolution, over the years, into a more comprehensive organization encompassing economic, cultural, educational, and security affairs.

Kazakhstan’s diplomacy was a driving force behind both the foundation of the Turkic Council and, under Tokayev’s leadership, its more recent institutionalization as the OTS. This shift has enabled countries like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan to develop stronger ties and to work together more effectively on regional challenges. The OTS’s November 2022 Samarkand Declaration, adopted on occasion of its ninth summit meeting, laid out a broad but grounded multilateral program for cooperation in the foreign policy and security fields as well as in the economy and people-to-people relations and the reinforcement of the institutionalization of Turkic-world activities.

The country is well-placed to cooperate with Azerbaijan to play key middle-power geopolitical and geoeconomic roles in the Caspian Sea region. Each is the economic powerhouse of its area with vast energy resources and a stable political climate, making it an attractive partner for regional and global powers. Similarly, Azerbaijan is a crucial player in the South Caucasus, an important transit hub for oil and gas supplies, connecting Europe and Asia, including the westward transit of energy from Kazakhstan. Their recent bilateral agreement is in line with the 2022-2027 roadmap for the Middle Corridor’s development that Kazakhstan proposed trilaterally among Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkey in Aktau last November at the foreign-minister level.

It is worth mentioning that Kazakhstan was among the first to rally for greater regional and intra-regional cooperation to confront global challenges arising from increased polarization and fragmentation. It has reached out to the middle powers around the world, as well as business and academia with the call to convene in Astana at the Astana International Forum on June 8-9. The forum will provide a new means to amplify voices standing for nonviolence in international politics to ensure sustainable economic growth, peace, and security. There is a hope that the call will resonate among “middle powers” to find the path back to peace.

Kazakhstan has pursued a multi-vector foreign policy aimed at maintaining the balance between major powers while advancing its national interests. This pragmatic foreign-policy approach, pioneered by Tokayev as the country’s foreign minister and prime minister in the 1990s and 2000s, has allowed it to thread the needle between Russia and China while deepening its ties to the West as well as to other Asian powers and regional players. This is the policy of an archetypal Eurasian middle power.

Harun Karčić is a journalist and political analyst covering the Balkans and Turkey. Over the past decade, he has authored numerous articles on Islam and foreign influence in the region, including Saudi, Iranian, Turkish, and more recently Chinese and Russian. He also regularly reports on Muslim minorities in Europe and rising right-wing nationalism. He tweets @HarunKarcic.

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Patriot missiles have finally arrived in Ukraine, but the reality may not live up to the hype. Ukrainian air defense operators have been lauded in training, but the threat environment that Ukraine faces poses challenges that are daunting for the Patriot system.

Ukraine faces threats that run the span of Russia’s missile and drone arsenal. Russia’s unmanned aerial systems range from consumer-grade reconnaissance drones to more sophisticated Iranian-made kamikaze drones. Several classes of drones are interceptable by Patriot, but then it becomes both a tactical and economic issue: Drones can use their maneuverability and terrain-hugging flight patterns to remain undetected by Patriot radars. Moreover, it’s questionable to use $3 million interceptors to take out drones that cost orders of magnitude less. 

This is particularly the case when Ukraine’s supply of Soviet-era interceptors is slated to run out soon, and U.S. resupply of Stinger missiles remains similarly strained. This would leave Patriot as the sole defense Ukraine has against Russian air supremacy. The United States can’t just throw more Patriot interceptors at Ukraine, either. For one, they’re a precious commodity; Washington only bought 252 PAC-3 MSE interceptors this year for the entire U.S. Army, and many of these will be used to phase out more antiquated interceptors.

Patriot operating on its lonesome is a tenuous proposition at best; while a first-rate system technologically, the Patriot cannot be used to full effect if it is divorced from air defense doctrine. Patriot systems are limited to pinpoint defense of major assets and are designed to operate in tandem with air defenses engaging targets at higher and lower altitudes. Without these additions, Patriot will have too many threats to engage and the result will either be porous coverage that doesn’t protect its defended assets, or coverage that quickly subsides when Patriot runs out of interceptors.

Moreover, Patriot systems are themselves vulnerable. Operating a Patriot radar system gives away its location, making it an open target for Russian attacks. This means that Patriot is not a one-stop-shop for defending Ukraine’s military assets or its people.

The “do-somethingism” of handing over this advanced weapons system is also divorced from the strategic ends that the United States could reasonably achieve from doing so. Patriot coverage, or lack thereof, will not bring the war in Ukraine to an end. The air war in general is a means of shaping operations for maneuver forces, and on this front Ukrainian and Russian forces remain stalemated. Insulating Ukraine against air attack also discourages negotiation by providing a false impression that the air threat can be mitigated indefinitely. The longer the negotiation process is delayed, the more Ukrainians are killed and the more damage is done to Ukraine’s infrastructure in the long term. 

Given these tactical and operational flaws, there is dubious strategic value for the United States in sending further systems to Ukraine. Patriot systems are not going to bring the war in Ukraine to an end or enable Kyiv to negotiate for or reclaim Crimea or the Donbas. What they do signal is a false American commitment that may prolong Ukraine’s carnage.

The ideological framing of the sanctity of territorial integrity needs to end, as it exacerbates Kyiv’s more maximalist—and unachievable—aims of retaking Crimea. The end state of the Russia-Ukraine War will likely not look like the status quo ante, and Washington should recognize this. Ukraine managed to make gains in the Donbas in 2022, but both sides’ long-anticipated spring offensives have yet to materialize, with a Stalingrad-esque deadlock in Bakhmut preventing any territorial gains.

The United States can follow a different model, namely one of mediation and deescalation. The United States cedes initiative and influence when it allows others to be the dealmakers, such as China’s recent brokering of the Iranian-Saudi rapprochement or Turkey’s facilitation of Ukraine and Russia’s grain export deal during the war. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has begun undertaking the groundwork along with China for a negotiated end to the war. Germany likewise has not done much to decouple or rearm as its rhetoric suggested early in the war. The United States can take advantage of a stagnant front line to bring about a negotiated end, or at least a ceasefire. Waiting to do so limits what Washington can accomplish when Ukraine’s military means are exhausted.

Washington has misstepped by giving Ukraine Patriot systems that will likely produce few benefits. However, there is an opportunity for Washington to still play a needed role in concluding the war. Tactical means cannot achieve these strategic ends; weapons systems will not prove decisive, but diplomatic power might. Washington can still achieve much by doing less. The path to peace in Ukraine may not be paved with weapons but with diplomatic finesse.

Geoff LaMear is a Fellow at Defense Priorities.

Image: DVIDS.

Friday, April 28 marked the one-hundredth day of Dr. Najat Saliba and lawyer Melhem Khalaf’s parliamentary sit-in to demand accountability from Lebanese lawmakers and follow the constitution. In over ten sessions, Lebanese members of parliament have failed to elect a successor after President Michel Aoun’s mandate expired in October 2022. Rather than continue the process, everyone decided to return to their homes and wait until a “suitable” candidate appears. Najat and Melhem, however, chose an entirely different approach.

Why did they start the sit-in?

In a press conference held in January, both Najat Saliba and Melhem Khalaf announced their intentions to remain in parliament until every other MP assembles to have successive and open-ended sessions to elect a new president. At the conference, Khalaf highlighted that Article 75 of the Lebanese constitution obliges parliament to meet regularly until a person wins the necessary votes to become president.

The present situation and recent developments:

Saliba had to temporarily stop her side of the sit-in to travel abroad to Geneva and the United States. Her goal on the trip is to speak with high officials from the United Nations who share her conviction that the rule of law is being usurped in Lebanon. Once she returns to Beirut, Najat intends to return to parliament alongside her colleague and comrade. She is being accompanied by journalist and supporter Lebanese Australian film director Daizy Gedeon who produced the movie “ENOUGH! Lebanon’s Darkest Hour.” Although the sit-in received enormous praise for its tenacity and courage in defiance against a failed system at the beginning, there is now a sense of indifference and criticism.

Many are now seeing the sit-in as a waste of time and do not believe it can move the needle regarding the presidency. I have come across several people in Lebanon saying, “Why are they still sitting in there? They should be working.” My reply is always the same: “If they weren’t in Parliament, you would say they are no different from the rest.” The irony of such criticism is that Melhem and Najat are working. Everyone else is at home. Some have also taken shots at the sincerity of the sit-in. Najat and I spoke on this matter, and she explained her position.

“I think the sit-in with the values and principles should not be questioned anymore. Because this is the only way we can regain our democracy. People who are thinking the sit-in can do the miracle that the other MPs could not do, they are mistaken. So, I think instead of asking us about how much the sit-in has made a difference, I think they should be asking the other Parliamentarians who are really on vacation and doing nothing. They are not attending to people’s needs. This needs to be asked. I think we have stopped our lives for a beautiful and excellent cause that is to regain our anchor and point of reference, that is the Lebanese constitution.”

It is clear from speaking to both Najat and Melhem they have no regrets for initiating the sit-in. Nevertheless, it does beg the question … Why haven’t other MPs from the so-called “Change” bloc followed their example? The arrival of more MPs could solidify and strengthen the sit-in and may push for more people on the ground to come out to support them. Ordinary Lebanese citizens have asked me questions such as, “Why are they not coming together?” Can they at least agree on a name? There is growing resentment on the streets towards some of the Change MPs.

There is truly no reason for all other independent and opposition MPs to be sitting at home. This notion of the “right timing” for a bargain to be struck by all the political bigshots is an insult and anyone who abides by it is breaking the law. MPs are supposed to be legislating and working on behalf of their constituency. Not ignoring them until a political breakthrough manifests out of thin air.

There is no perfect candidate. There is no international or regional solution for Lebanon. There is only the Constitution. If it is followed accordingly, Lebanon would have had a president by now. When will the rest of parliament understand this?

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

Image: Karim naamani / Shutterstock.com

On May 14, Turks will be going to the polls in one of the more consequential elections of this year. Turkey is a critical country, and the competing alliances and leaders promise distinct solutions and approaches to awaiting challenges.

This is the first in a series of articles analyzing the consequences of the different electoral outcomes. I start with a possible defeat of the incumbent president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). This starting choice reflects neither an expectation nor a preference. However, the fact is that tumultuous days await Turkey if Erdogan were to be defeated after a twenty-year reign. This is because the Turkish polity is deeply divided and polarized and needs a well-defined road map for a political transition. Moreover, the structural political changes pledged by the opposition coalition led by the Republican People’s Party (RPP) and its head, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, represent a complete regime transformation.

The transition will be challenging as the new government will be confronting three immediate problems: the economy, the status of state institutions, and governing amidst disarray at all levels of society and politics. The most pressing one is the dire economic situation caused by mismanagement and exacerbated by the devastating February 6 earthquake. Therefore, the government must quickly introduce a financial package that tackles the high inflation rate, the dismal current account crisis, and the declining value of the lira and address the dramatic loss of confidence in the Turkish economy.

The earthquake’s cost is estimated to be between 8 and 12 percent of GDP—an immense amount. Considering how poorly the Erdogan government performed after the quake, expectations that a new government will quickly rehabilitate its victims and the affected provinces’ infrastructure are bound to be high. However, such expenditures will collide with the introduction of more orthodox economic policies, including interest rate hikes. In such a challenging environment, the new government must win domestic support by becoming as transparent and truthful as possible in explaining its policies to a public that has lost faith during the last decade of Erdogan’s rule.

The good news is that the Turkish manufacturing base is solid and capable; it needs to double its efforts at increasing and diversifying its exports, primarily geographically, and once again attracting direct foreign investment. Turkey’s advantageous location is conducive to landing some “friend-shoring” types of investments. Turkey will require sizeable foreign assistance to accomplish these and obtain restructuring funds; this support is likely to come mainly from the United States and Europe.

The second challenge is executing a transition unlike any other in modern Turkey’s history. This is because, during his rule, Erdogan, the consummate populist-authoritarian politician, brought just about every state and societal institution of any significance under his domination. From the judicial system to the central bank, the public universities, most of the press, parliament, the military, and the bureaucracy were all stripped of their autonomy.

Yet, nothing can move forward without first reestablishing the rule of law; one cannot attract investments in an environment where legal norms are constantly violated. So how does the new government deal with pent-up expectations for redress and justice in a country where thousands have been imprisoned arbitrarily or dismissed from their jobs and professions? While 800 government officiald—including governors, ambassadors, heads of intelligence and religious affairs, and various agencies—will automatically lose their jobs, the judiciary and other critical institutions will continue to be run by Erdogan loyalists. So, the victorious coalition must devise an action plan to rebuild confidence in institutions.

The third task is to create a coherent governing structure out of quite a disparate set of coalition allies and outside partners while tackling raw and divisive issues that separate them. Understandably, the focus will be on the promise to return to a parliamentary system and do away with the exiting hyper-presidential one. This gargantuan task will require careful planning and debate and a few years to accomplish.

The leader of the opposition, Kiliçdaroglu, is a well-meaning if unimaginative person who comes from a bureaucratic background. Nevertheless, he has outperformed all expectations by running an intelligent campaign and eschewing a calm and non-confrontational style. This is in stark contrast to Erdogan, who has gone out of his way to employ divisive rhetoric in which criticisms of the president were often deemed treasonous and meriting prosecution.

Kiliçdaroglu has projected himself as the ideal transitional leader; expansively viewed, the opposition has many rising charismatic stars all chomping at the bit to play a more significant role. While it may be problematic at the beginning of a new administration, their diversity in background, experience, and worldview will bring much-needed dynamism to Turkish politics. This needs to be improved on the government side; paradoxically, when he came to power in the early 2000s, Erdogan had amassed a wide-ranging group of seasoned political personalities and others from different walks of life. Unfortunately, over time they were all discarded in favor of “yes-men.”

One of the immediate challenges for the new government will be to manage the pent-up frustrations of supporters who feel they have been wronged during the very partisan governing style of the incumbent administration. For those who have been in Erdogan’s camp, even if they may have prepared themselves for a possible defeat, the fact remains that the rug will have been pulled from under them. Absent partisan institutions they can turn to for support, they will find themselves without protection and thus quite fearful of a coming reckoning for their future. These are businesspersons, especially builders who have been accused of corruption and favoritism; leaders of a slavishly pro-Erdogan press; judges and prosecutors who, under orders from the presidential palace, concocted fabulous conspiracy theories that “legitimized” the jailing of opponents; and unqualified university leaderships that ran amok firing professors deemed insufficiently loyal to the regime. The latter has already taken steps by surreptitiously creating positions for themselves in university systems.

The press, both state-owned and private, is a particularly thorny issue. The Erdogan government tried to starve the “non-loyal” outlets by forcing TV stations and websites to close down temporarily or preventing state entities, be they state-owned banks or ministries, from advertising in “opposition” newspapers. Meanwhile, it lavished attention and resources on members of the dominant pro-Erdogan press who actively collaborated in repressing regime opponents by heaping made-up accusations on them.

Will Erdogan, who has a large entourage to safeguard in addition to his family and his allies in the press, bureaucracy, and other sectors, pull a January 6 or try to delegitimize the elections? He tried it once when his party lost the Istanbul mayoralty in 2019 and fabricated an excuse to have the local elections repeated. It backfired on him as Istanbulites voted in much larger numbers for his opposition. Then the Supreme Electoral Council had no option but to follow Erdogan’s illegal wishes because he effectively yielded enormous power. This time, it may be different as members of the council are unlikely to risk their well-being if he proves unsuccessful in returning to power. Already, there are indications that some members of the Constitutional Court are willing to defy him.

Still, for the sake of a peaceful transition, the incoming government may want to consider coming up with an understanding with Erdogan and his family that offers them immunity and a promise that they will be left alone, provided he does not engage in election chicanery and interfere with the incoming government’s efforts to constitute an administration.

The new leadership will likely face unexpected challenges; different groups previously targeted by the Erdogan government can be expected to move quickly against their former tormentors once election results are announced. One can envisage, as an example, Bogazici University academics and students, who have maintained a vigil against Erdogan-appointed cadres that ransacked one of the country’s best educational institutions, attempting to take over the university forcibly. On the contrary, such events will likely be replicated nationwide.

Given the monumental domestic economic, political, and social issues awaiting the new government, it will likely focus on improving relations with the West, whose support Turkey desperately needs to fund the massive post-earthquake reconstruction efforts and stabilize the economy. Unfortunately, at this early stage, foreign policy disputes would divert attention and energy from the task at hand.

At the top of the agenda is Sweden’s application to NATO which the Erdogan government has blocked because Stockholm has refused to extradite so-called terrorists. Not only does the opposition have a different outlook on this issue, but traditionally Turkey’s center-left has had a favorable view of Sweden. U.S. President Joe Biden has indicated that he wants to sell Ankara F-16 aircraft, especially in light of Turkey’s ejection from the fifth-generation F-35 fighter program following its acquisition of the Russian S-400 air defense system. Congress, however, is unlikely to approve any arms sales, F-16s in particular, and offer substantial support to Turkey if the veto on Sweden is maintained. The much thornier S-400 problem, for which no immediate solution exists, will have to await an imaginative answer. Therefore, a new Turkish government will have to kick this can down the road. 

Not everything will change in foreign policy; Turkey’s center-left has its nationalistic attitudes. Kilicdaroglu, once in power, will continue to pay lip service to traditional issues that have been the hallmark of Turkish foreign policy, such as Cyprus and the Aegean, absent Erdogan’s combative style. It is worth noting that since the earthquake, the Turkish Air Force has stopped overflying Greek islands for fear of antagonizing Western donors.

Kilicdaroglu will push to restore relations with the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, especially if this would occasion some Syrian refugees' return. The recent “rapprochement” between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the apparent efforts at reintegrating Assad by Gulf countries may result in an attempt to end the Syrian stalemate. With Assad still firmly in power, Riyadh and Tehran could agree to enshrine the status quo, provided the regime makes some concessions. Given its support for the Syrian opposition and its military presence in northern Syria, Turkey’s participation would help ensure this agreement’s success.

Washington and Ankara are more likely to come to an agreement on the presence of U.S. forces stationed in northern Syria that partner with local Kurds in fighting the Islamic State, or ISIS. This had been a significant source of tension between the two countries.

Finally, Europe and the United States want to see Turkey reverse the path to authoritarianism under Erdogan. To this end, it is also in their interest to be as accommodating of a new government as possible.

Henri J Barkey is the Cohen professor of international relations at Lehigh University and an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council of Foreign Relations.

Image: Shutterstock.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently announced a joint American-Turkish effort to sanction two individuals with ties to radical entities inside northern Syria. Specifically, the U.S. Treasury Department and its Turkish counterpart designated Omar Alsheak and Kubilay Sari as supporters of terrorism for their role as “financial facilitators for designated terrorist groups Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Katibat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad.” This collaborative move represents a seemingly renewed era of cooperation between Ankara and Washington, just ahead of Turkey’s impending national elections on May 14. While the effort will and should be welcomed by the Biden administration, it should be perceived as a token move—one that is intended to facilitate a reset in the beleaguered bilateral relationship between the two NATO allies.

Just days before this announcement, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced that the country’s intelligence service operatives had successfully neutralized the current leader of the Islamic State (ISIS), Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi. The new decision to sanction two individuals affiliated with radical entities in Syria builds upon a previous collaborative effort between U.S. and Turkish authorities that succeeded in disrupting ISIS’ financial networks at the beginning of January. On the surface, it appears as though Turkey has begun to substantively cooperate with its Western partners in the counter-terrorism efforts. However, that would be a hasty conclusion.

For one thing, the designation of a relatively few number of terrorist entities in 2023 misses the fact that radical entities and their operatives inside Syria are large in number. More importantly, for years, Turkey has provided support to entities that include, but are not limited to, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Katibat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad. Erdogan’s quest to topple the Assad regime resulted in Turkey making a series of terrible choices. Ankara provided salaries, weapons, equipment, and logistical information to a plethora of jihadist organizations. Moreover, since 2015, Erdogan parted ways with the United States, as Washington was primarily focused on eliminating the ISIS threat, mainly by partnering with the Syrian Kurds under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Turkey chose to label this organization a terrorist group due to its affiliation with its parent organization inside Turkey: the Kurdistan Worker’s Party. In doing so, Erdogan chose to ignore the real terrorist threat posed by ISIS and chose to back jihadi entities to fight against the Assad regime.

Erdogan’s jingoism in foreign policy can no longer continue, however, and Erdogan is aware of this. For one thing, he has had to abandon his fixation to topple Assad, as he is now likely to remain in power. Second, if Erdogan wins Turkey’s elections in the days to come, he will need to reset ties with Washington and the West in general. This is likely due to the serious amount of economic support that Turkey’s economy will require from Western creditor institutions. Turkey’s central bank spent over $14 billion to prop up its national currency in the past month. Following the elections, the ability to maintain the present level of exchange rate will be impossible. Bottom line: Erdogan (or whoever is in charge of Turkey) will need a Western lifeline, however, he has shown little that would convince lawmakers in Washington to sympathize with Turkey’s economic woes.

Erdogan has initiated a series of regional resets with Egypt, Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. What has been lacking is positive overtures toward the West—Washington in particular. Ankara, under Erdogan’s continued tutelage, is attempting to buy American support, particularly if Turkey decides to knock on the IMF’s door. To be sure, sanctioning individuals affiliated with jihadist organizations and disrupting their financial networks will be welcomed. However, these initiatives represent only a fraction of the moves that Ankara could make if it was serious about counter-terrorism. To demonstrate that intent, it could definitely withdraw its support from radical groups in Syria and provide sustained information of more high-profile individuals to sanction. We have yet to see this happen.

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.

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For a decade, as democratic institutions in Venezuela crumble, the United States has been paralyzed by a single choice: to engage President Nicolás Maduro or not. As his grip over the country remains steadfast, Washington is working for a breakthrough in supporting ongoing negotiations between the Maduro government and opposition. A potential opportunity opened last week when the United States hosted the first-ever Cities Summit of the Americas.

The United States has long overlooked the role of mayors and governors in restoring democratic institutions from within, yet the Cities Summit presents a unique opportunity to redefine U.S. policy towards Venezuela. The U.S. Department of State invited mayors from across the Western Hemisphere, including Venezuela, for a two-day conference to help local leaders develop solutions to global challenges, including “democracy renewal”—signaling a growing focus on city and state diplomacy. By applying this subnational approach to U.S.-Venezuela relations, the United States could breathe new life into a protracted situation.

Venezuela’s humanitarian and economic crises cause ripples across the hemisphere that will fundamentally alter regional stability if gone unresolved. With over seven million migrants and refugees, Venezuela’s population is the third largest group of internationally displaced people after Syrians and Ukrainians. The crisis leads to a steady stream of human suffering, strains host countries’ resources, and facilitates the rise of criminal networks. Formerly the United States’ largest single supplier of crude oil, Venezuela is entrenched in debt. At a time of growing tension with Russia and China, the decade-long crisis in the United States’ hemisphere weakens the country’s ability to compete across the world.

Some of the few bright spots in Venezuela over the last decade have been driven by local leaders. The United States should support this momentum and reorient its strategy around a new objective—not only presidential elections in 2024, but gubernatorial and municipal elections in 2025. By using a variety of levers across government and multilateral agencies, the United States can help support a long-term approach to restoring Venezuela's democratic institutions. The upcoming regional elections are an opportunity to show support for democratic actors across the political spectrum.

A closer look at the landscape of city and state leadership in Venezuela reveals great potential. Venezuela’s tradition as a federal republic has allowed local and regional leadership to continue exercising public functions and representation. Municipal elections have been held since 1989, and the 2025 subnational elections will appoint leaders to over 3,000 positions. While many Venezuelan opposition leaders have boycotted elections in recent years, individual candidates have had unexpected victories that revitalize the country’s opposition movement.

In 2021, opposition candidate Sergio Garrido defeated Maduro’s former foreign minister and preferred candidate in Barinas after a series of political setbacks. The opposition’s victory in what’s considered the political cradle of Chavism reignited hope in the promise of regional elections. The United States should set its sights on replicating victories such as Garrido’s, but local Venezuelan leaders currently face systemic obstacles that make Garrido an exception, not a rule.

The Maduro government has tried to marginalize local opposition politicians by limiting subnational resources and centralizing programs. As of 2020, the largest share of local government revenue came from central government grants and subsidies, which allows Maduro to control levers that reduce the power of mayors and governors. Starting in Hugo Chávez’s time, opposition leaders have lost authority to administer airports, toll roads, and local police. The tactic of weaponized centralization is most evident by the decrease in local government expenditures, which have dramatically declined from 7.1 percent of GDP before 2014 to 1.8 percent in 2020.

The launch of the first-ever Cities Summit is an opportune moment to kickstart a new approach to subnational engagement in Venezuela. As State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and Unit for City and State Diplomacy brainstorm next steps after the Summit, they should consult with partners in the Venezuela Affairs Unit and on the ground to understand how future summits could fit into broader U.S.-Venezuela policy. The United States could consider convening country-specific subnational conferences or regional conferences between mayors from border communities, and should start by helping to connect Venezuelan cities to international networks such as C40 Cities, Metropolis and Strong Cities Network. In the coming months, the State Department should consider including a Venezuelan city in the Cities Forward initiative, a three year program announced at the summit that will help cities in Latin America and the Caribbean develop and fund action plans.

The United States should also take decisive action to include subnational diplomacy in its long-term approach to Venezuela. In calling for a timetable for credible elections to be announced in the context of Venezuelan-led negotiations, the United States should also urge the Maduro government to reinstate the powers of municipalities. According to the Venezuelan constitution, municipalities have a broad mandate to govern policies relating to their interests and local life, including urban roadways, waste collection, and city police services—many of which have been assumed by the central government.

In addition to restoring municipal powers, it’s also crucial to help Venezuelan cities access funding sources so that they can implement programs for their communities. While Maduro has abolished many of the revenue structures established in the constitution, the United States should pull together experts from domestic and multilateral agencies to identify strategies for supporting local private sector investment that supports city budgets. Specifically, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security could lead this initiative, in consultation with the Inter-American Development Bank given their regional expertise on subnational financing.

Local Venezuelan leaders can also help implement the multibillion-dollar Social Agreement signed by the Maduro government and opposition in November 2021, in the context of the ongoing negotiations process. The Social Agreement aims to address crises in the electric, public health, and education systems, and when fully implemented will be managed by the United Nations. Mayors and governors are best equipped to help reconstruct state infrastructure given their first-hand experience helping communities manage blackouts, healthcare crises, and gaps in education, and the United States should encourage the UN to work with them to carry out this historic package.

The United States can tap into the momentum following the inaugural Cities Summit to initiate a new approach to Venezuela that sidesteps Maduro to engage directly with mayors. While most international attention is drawn to next year’s presidential elections, the United States must not lose sight of long-term strategy. There is still time to support transformative change ahead of the 2025 regional elections. In a broader region all too familiar with democratic backsliding, a U.S.-Venezuela subnational policy could inspire broader strategies for engaging with local leaders who are fortifying their base of democracy and sparking hope in future generations, against all odds.

Willow Fortunoff is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. She leads the Center’s work on city and state diplomacy and is a 2023 Fulbright recipient studying subnational diplomacy between the United States and Ecuador.

Adriana D’Elia is a senior counselor at the Office of the Executive Director for Panama and Venezuela at the Inter-American Development Bank and former General Secretary of Government of Miranda State, Venezuela (2008–2015). She is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent trip to Central Asia, where he emphasized that the United States supports the territorial integrity of regional countries and hopes to expand economic ties, missed the opportunity to highlight more substantial areas of cooperation—namely, nuclear proliferation and arms control. Amid Russia postponing New START meetings in late 2022 and China steadily increasing its nuclear warhead count, the prospects of arms control between Russia and the United States seem bleak. Moreover, worsening U.S.-Russia arms control relations could also threaten future cooperation on nonproliferation. However, one Central Asian country can play a critical role in these dire circumstances: Kazakhstan.

Kazakhstan has been and can continue to be a partner for the United States in the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). After the fall of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan was left with one of the most significant remnants of the Soviet nuclear arsenal and associated nuclear infrastructure. Removing and dismantling these weapons was one of the outstanding achievements of U.S. nonproliferation policy, and it continues to be an integral part of U.S.-Kazakh relations.

Recently, the United States has taken the initiative regarding nonproliferation in the region. For example, Jill Hruby and Frank Rose, the administrator and principal deputy administrator, respectively, of the National Nuclear Security Administration, completed a trip to Kazakhstan on October 5 of last year to commemorate the achievements of U.S.-Kazakh joint nonproliferation efforts. Previously, these efforts brought about the successful 1994 “Project Sapphire,” which reduced the threat of nuclear proliferation by removing nuclear material from Kazakhstan as part of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. “Cooperation on nuclear security and nonproliferation is a cornerstone of the strong relationship between our countries,” Hruby said.

Since Kazakhstan dismantled these Soviet weapons, it has become a leader in arms control and disarmament diplomacy. Not only has Kazakhstan been able to secure nuclear weapons and material left in its territory, but it also has led nonproliferation efforts to make Central Asia a Nuclear Weapon Free Zone via a treaty signed in 2006.

Kazakhstan also has a track record of nonproliferation diplomacy beyond its backyard.  Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev participated in all four of the Nuclear Security Summits organized by the Obama administration. Nazarbayev articulated to Iran the drawbacks of operating nuclear programs and that it could choose peace like Kazakhstan. These efforts culminated in Kazakhstan’s crucial coordination of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. This involved hosting two rounds of negotiations between Iran and P5+1 in 2013. Kazakhstan’s participation through hosting negotiations reinforced its status as a valued member of the nonproliferation community.

For the United States, WMD nonproliferation continues to be an avenue to work with the Russians, who historically share similar concerns about the spread of these weapons. Moreover, Russia understands the dangers of the spread of WMDs on its periphery. Therefore, the United States must make the case that adhering to nonproliferation norms promotes a more stable international security environment.       

Given Kazakhstan and Russia’s geographical proximity and historical bonds, Kazakhstan will likely be an increasingly critical partner for the United States in future arms control negotiations with Russia. Concretely, multilateral support for arms control treaties will be essential in maintaining accountability for nuclear stability. New START lasts through 2026 and is the only active arms control treaty aiming to provide guardrails between the United States and Russia. However, this area of cooperation stands on shaky ground due to the increasingly adversarial relations and limited diplomatic contact between the United States and Russia since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Russia’s suspension of New START talks is not great news, but a third-party country like Kazakhstan could potentially play a mediator role and host future arms control talks. Thankfully, Russia’s suspension does not mean the deal is nullified and that a buildup of Russian nuclear weapons is inevitable. U.S. policymakers should resist the pressure from defense hawks to expand nuclear buildup, considering that more nuclear weapons do not ensure U.S. security. Instead, they could easily have the opposite effect by raising threat perceptions in Moscow.

Despite the current dire straits that envelop the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, the record of nonproliferation is impressive, given that no new countries have acquired nuclear weapons since North Korea acquired them in 2006. This speaks to the effectiveness of treaties like the Treaty of the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Arms control efforts to prevent the buildup of nuclear weapons among great powers have been an even more significant challenge. With regional partners like Kazakhstan that have a greater understanding of their respective regional landscape and security dynamics, the United States stands a better chance of fostering nuclear stability.

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

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It is worth remembering, more than a year into Russia’s war in Ukraine, that the conflict was initiated not by an artillery shell or missile or any kinetic action, but with a cyberattack on the Ukrainian financial system with the deliberate aim of terrorizing Ukrainian citizens alongside more conventional cyberattacks on the Ukrainian Defence Ministry, according to Ukrainian intelligence services. As the world would later learn through more acute horrors in the physical world, such crimes were always the plan, not an accident of an army run amuck.

Although Russia has mostly used cyberattacks throughout the conflict for tactical support to its battlefield operations—including successful early efforts to knock out satellite communications—and not the more spectacular attacks on critical infrastructure we have become accustomed to seeing, it is noteworthy they began with an attack on the people of Ukraine themselves.

China is studying the progress of the war in Ukraine for lessons that might inform its own potential invasion of Taiwan, perhaps as early as 2027, according to CIA Director William Burns. But while Moscow has relied on nuclear weapons to deter decisive intervention by the Biden administration and NATO, Beijing is likely to wield a broader toolkit to keep Americans and our Indo-Pacific allies out of any future fight.

This includes the potential for “aggressive cyber attacks against the U.S. homeland” with the goal of “inducing societal panic,” according to the latest threat assessment from the U.S. intelligence community. Whereas the Kremlin has used its cyber capabilities to raise the perceived cost of resistance among ordinary Ukrainians while eschewing potentially escalatory attacks on the U.S. that might draw us into the conflict, Zhongnanhai is preparing to gamble that a shocking cyberattack on the American people—not just its military networks—would make a nation already weary from decades at war reconsider the cost of standing up for Taiwan’s democracy.

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Jen Easterly warned about this recently when she alluded to plans that an invasion of Taiwan “might very well be coupled with the explosion of multiple U.S. gas pipelines; the mass pollution of our water systems; the hijacking of our telecommunications systems; the crippling of our transportation nodes.”

This problem is worse than it seems. Water systems in the United States are highly federated, matching thousands of individual municipal systems often defended by just a few employees benefitting from minimal cybersecurity investment against the skill and resources of China’s military concentrated at the point of cyberattack—a hopeless mismatch at present.

China’s ability to threaten U.S. infrastructure persists across sectors, driven not only by hacking power but including supply chain threats driven by its manufacturing prowess as well, with a commercial reach that already successful Russian cyber operatives would envy.

For example, natural gas systems have been mentioned in every Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. intelligence community for the past several years—two of which I coauthored—reflecting longstanding concern. Left unsaid is that many natural gas compressors in the United States are imported from China, meaning that if they are held at risk during a time of heightened tension or conflict the U.S. would be relying on its adversary for replacement parts. This is not a promising prospect for security and national success.

National efforts to address cybersecurity shortcomings too often seek to treat every problem like cybercrime—solutions meant to scale, at the lowest financial and political cost; the low-hanging fruit. But Beijing’s operatives include not only criminals turned to national purpose but uniformed professionals who rival our own in skill, professionalism, and access to cutting-edge resources. They won’t give up just because the front door is locked, and the United States needs to prepare more seriously for what a wartime conflict in cyberspace would look like if fought at home rather than in some distant continent.

2027 is closer than it seems. The kinds of engineering changes, investments, and policies that must be crafted to form a cohesive national defense against this kind of national digital attack take years to put into place under the best of circumstances.

The new U.S. National Cybersecurity Strategy rightly calls for stepped-up responsibility from key private sector players, but the U.S. government must do more to show that it takes its own intelligence assessments of this cyber threat seriously and is taking action proportionate to the risk: unambiguously stating what escalation foreign nation-states can expect if they disable U.S. critical infrastructure by cyber means, akin to the warnings we give for impairing our key national space assets such as early warning satellites; more aggressively declassifying intelligence of a tactical defensive nature—even if it means accepting marginal increased risk to classified sources—with a recognition that it is the same private sector likely to be on the front lines of cyber war; and committing to the defense of critical but under-defended sectors, such as water systems, during wartime with priority more comparable to efforts made to keep U.S. military networks up.

America’s spies are telling us there is a direct, credible, foreseeable threat to U.S. citizens coming in only a few years; it’s past time to take them seriously and move beyond the standard toolkit for cybersecurity.

Christopher Porter is a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative. From 2019 to 2022 he was the National Intelligence Officer for Cyber, leading the U.S. intelligence community’s analysis of cyber threats and threats to U.S. elections as a member of the National Intelligence Council.

This article does not represent the views of the U.S. government or any current or past employer.

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