The National Interest

Denys Kryvenko is the first person I met just a few days before the April 2023 opening of the Superhumans Center in Lviv, Ukraine. Denys is a twenty-four-year-old Ukrainian war hero from a small village who lost both legs and an arm fighting in Bakhmut. Before the war, he was, like many other twenty-four-year-olds, just playing sports, lifting weights, and chasing girls.

Then the war came. His thoughts turned to his country and to protecting his family. Now Denys is a triple amputee who is being photographed. Nick, the photographer, captured Denys’s aspirations for the future during a photo shoot with a pensive pose.

Denys wants to become a contact psychologist at the Superhumans Center, which is a special position. Military veterans typically don’t like to open up and talk. Since Denys is a veteran himself, it will be easier in group and individual sessions to encourage others to talk about their experience and the heavy fighting they have seen in the Donbas. Denys is motivated to give back and to help others who have been through the same wartime experiences. He will help them heal.

Two days later, on April 14, Superhumans launched its medical center outfitted with a prosthetics lab, elaborate rehabilitation rooms including a swimming pool, and PTSD treatment rooms in an afternoon ceremony that celebrated Denys and a dozen patients. At the ceremony, Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, Ukrainian minister of health Viktor Liashko, French minister of solidarity and health François Braun, Superhumans co-founder Andrey Stavnitser, CEO Olga Rudnieva, and American philanthropist Howard G. Buffett all spoke, but the focus remained on Denys and the other patients include soldiers and civilians, men and women, young and old.

“We are honored to be a part of this extraordinary effort to bring world-class care to Ukrainians who have suffered life-altering injuries from this war. They are truly superhumans,” said Buffett, Chairman and CEO of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. “Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is a war on civilians, and many men, women, and children will lose their lives, or their limbs, even long after the war ends due to the pervasive presence of landmines. This Center is a step towards giving Ukrainians a chance to rebuild their lives and their country. We must also do everything possible to end this war and the daily devastation it creates for all Ukrainians.”

Buffett is right. As a result of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine is now the most heavily mined country in the world. Reports of civilians being injured or killed by mines have become an almost daily occurrence. Overall, the war has also taken a devastating toll on the civilian population. No one knows the exact figure because it remains classified, but more than 12,000 Ukrainians are believed to currently need prosthetics. This would be a challenge for the world’s wealthiest states. For Ukraine, it is simply beyond the country’s resources.

This is where Superhumans steps in. Through a $16.3 million gift from the Howard Buffett Foundation and others, the Center is taking on some of the more complex cases involving multiple limbs or complex injuries that the state cannot handle or afford. Superhumans provides all services to civilians and soldiers free of charge. The price tag for providing Denys with three prosthetic limbs plus rehabilitation is more than $100,000.

Then there’s the incalculable and ever-present physical and mental anguish. The World Health Organization warns that one in four Ukrainians are currently at risk of a severe mental disorder as a result of the war. Huge numbers of Ukrainians will require professional support for many years to come.

There is another hidden wound from this monstrous war, elusive yet common. Something so fundamental that Ukraine and the world cannot rebuild without it. Millions face a loss of faith in the future. It is vital to rebuild the human spirit by restoring belief in a meaningful life filled with skills and purpose.

“Superhumans is not just the name of a project. I think it is a new social contract encapsulated in a single word. It is a philosophy representing not only of a clinic but a entire country. Superheroes instead of victims. Superpowers instead of disabilities. We want to build not just a clinic, but a super-country for Ukrainians. Because all of them are superhumans,” said First Lady Olena Zelenska.

Zelenska’s words encapsulate the new Center’s vision of a Ukraine where limb difference is only part of a person’s story, but by no means the whole story. Denys doesn’t feel limited. Neither does the very first Superhumans patient, Vitalii Ivashchuk, who is already climbing the tallest mountain in Ukraine with his bionic arm and driving at fast speeds. “My hand is completely restored, and I’m only getting started,” Ivashchuk said.

Michele Anenberg Poma is a team member at the Superhumans Center. She tweets @MAnenbergPoma.

Image: Superhumans.

There are intense and often heated differences between Turkey watchers over the outcome of the presidential elections that are just around the corner on May 14. Individuals have really dug into their respective camps with little room left in the middle: folks are convinced that Recep Tayyip Erdogan will definitely win or lose by a large margin. Both sides cite relatively compelling narratives for their position based on a myriad of explanatory factors: their experience as journalists or scholars, or, based on references to polls, the country’s economic situation.

The truth is, at this point in the calendar, it’s a guessing game. For my part, I am on record predicting that Erdogan has a greater chance of holding onto power for a third five-year term than opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu has of winning. I have attempted to explain my rationale in other opinion pieces and interviews. At this point, however, it is worth pondering, should my prediction come to pass, who or what factors will account for Erdogan staying in office?

To begin, there is the most obvious element: Turkish voters themselves. In the event that Erdogan scores a legitimate victory, much of that could be attributed to voter demands. The majority of Turks going to the polls on May 14 will not prioritize the rule of law, democracy, and other governance issues as their top priority. If they did, we would not see Erdogan polling in the 40 percent margins. Instead, voters are primarily motivated by their desire to hedge: “in voting, who do I believe will take care of my economic interests?” To address this motivation, Erdogan has turned on the monetary taps in the last few weeks: bonuses for retirees, free natural gas to households, and increases to the minimum wage. Kilicdaroglu’s problem here is that he is not in a position to convince voters that he can deliver better on pocketbook issues than Erdogan—the latter is already in a position to demonstrate such and thus tempt voters. He controls the purse strings of state resources, which are already being utilized to buy citizens’ votes.

By contrast, French and Israeli citizens have recently taken to the streets, protesting about governance issues they feel threaten the very viability of their democratic futures. In France, largely over the non-deliberative way in which the age of retirement was raised, voters are demanding government accountability. In Israel, in defiance of the government’s attempt to curtail judicial independence, citizens have engaged in mass protests. In both cases, voters are motivated by democratic governance issues. If a significant number of Turks attempted to replicate these two examples, the Erdogan government would likely use brute force to suppress such challenges, as displayed during the Gezi Park protests of 2013.

Linked to voter demands is the main opposition, the “Nation Alliance”—the six opposition parties who took the decision to nominate Kemal Kilicdaroglu as their candidate. Unfortunately, one can observe that, from the outset, this opposition bloc never prioritized the rule of law and democratic governance issues beyond rhetoric. Instead, it has been focused on the division of political spoils. The process of deciding who the alliance’s presidential candidate would be, for example, turned into a dysfunctional squabble and nearly broke apart the alliance. Given that the alliance’s main campaign promise is to transition Turkey back to a parliamentary system of governance (that would deprioritize the powers and position of the presidency), one wonders why alliance leaders fought so hard on who the presidential candidate would be. If the objective was to defeat Erdogan and re-establish the rule of law and democratic governance in Turkey, numbers suggest that nominating Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu would have been the best choice. Kilicdaroglu’s insistence on being the nominee instead lays bare the limits of the opposition’s democratic priorities. The intense rivalry to become the presidential nominee has been mirrored in the debates over determining the list of parliamentary candidates. Until the April 12 deadline (when all parties have to submit their parliamentary candidate lists), intense horse-trading over which party in the alliance would allot how many safe seats was the focus of attention. This basically signaled to voters the one thing they are already relatively accustomed to: politicians and political parties are only interested in securing their positions in government.

Throw into the mixture that there are two independent candidates, which divides the opposition vote, and the chances of defeating Erdogan in the first round of voting. More importantly, however, the candidacies of Muharrem Ince—who dismally ran against Erdogan in 2018 and failed—and Sinan Ogan are widely perceived as opportunistic, spurred on by Erdogan to tarnish and divide the opposition camp.

In the final analysis, supposing an Erdogan victory, voters will be grievously let down by opposition political elites who did their very best to not defeat Erdogan. In the event that Kilicdaroglu loses, much of the blame will be attributed to his lackluster candidacy.

Of course, none of these explanatory factors considers the possibility of chicanery and foul play that may come to determine who ultimately wins the presidency. There is a decent chance that undemocratic means may be utilized by Erdogan and/or state institutions to ensure a third term for the country’s longest-serving leader. In many ways this is already apparent: the Supreme Election Council has already accepted Erdogan’s unconstitutional candidacy to run for president. Additionally, there is little by way of press freedoms and access to media coverage that is not already exclusively pro-Erdogan.

A third term for Erdogan will likely curtail what remains of Turkey’s faltering democracy. Erdogan will likely use this opportunity to crack down on what little remains of critical voices within the country’s media and public space, while at the same time trying to turn a new page with the country’s allies in the West. By whatever means Erdogan is able to secure victory, both Washington and Europe will likely choose to remain silent and find new ways to work with him, based on their respective interests. If his re-election is perceived to be illegitimate, don’t expect the West to call this out. A new Erdogan term will likely result in old ways of finding paths to accommodate him.

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

Image: Shutterstock.

Space transportation company SpaceX provided this month what was a spectacle in two senses. One was the physical show of launching the most powerful rocket ever built. The other was how the whole affair, which ended with an explosion just four minutes into what was programmed to be an orbital mission, was described as a success, with congratulations from government officials and cheering by the company’s employees.

This way of defining success and failure reflects SpaceX’s engineering strategy, which involves launching a series of test vehicles with the expectation that each vehicle probably will have something wrong but will provide a learning experience to guide modifications on later versions. The upper stage of the Starship rocket, which never separated from its booster during this month’s launch, had already compiled a record of successive fiery crashes during earlier test flights.

This strategy is much different from the one that the government’s space agency, NASA, has had to follow. A failure of a NASA mission is regarded as a failure, period, and is not praised as a stepping-stone to some future hoped-for success. Because of that, the engineering that goes into a NASA mission is a more meticulous and time-consuming process aimed at achieving success in the fullest sense of the word every time a rocket is launched.

When NASA ignited its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket last November—making it at the time the most powerful rocket ever launched—it was only after numerous delays, which have been typical of NASA missions, as engineers checked every possible point of failure with the intention of making everything go right the first time. That first use of the SLS, in what NASA designated as Mission One of the Artemis program, was a success in the full sense, sending a spacecraft looping around the moon on a twenty-five-day mission.

This difference in the methodology of these two space programs is indicative of an expectation of perfection that often gets applied to government but not to the private sector. Some of the government agencies concerned are, like NASA, doing something as difficult as rocket science. Some routinely must address problems in which there are big information gaps—such as the intelligence agencies, that get looked to most on the very problems on which the information gaps are the biggest. Despite the inherent challenges involved—including the determination of adversaries to keep secrets and the unpredictability of many future events—when the intelligence community is unable to fill one of those gaps correctly on a matter that for some reason gets heightened public attention, this gets described as an “intelligence failure” amid calls for the problem to be “fixed.”

Understanding of such inherent challenges often is not extended to governmental missions but routinely is to all manner of activities in the private sector. In baseball, batters do not know what pitch the pitcher will deliver, and even the best batters in the major leagues fail to get a hit two-thirds of the time. But they do not get condemned for each out as a “batting failure.”

The chief reason for the differential treatment is that government programs are subject to politics, and politics involves incentives to find fault and demand accountability, regardless of the inherent challenges of a mission and the impossibility of achieving perfection. Those incentives are part of the process of one-upping political opponents and of politicians making names for themselves. The epitome of the process is the public congressional hearing in which committee members highlight in front of television cameras the less-than-perfect performances of governmental departments and demand changes. Daniel Dumbacher, a former NASA official who heads the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said of SpaceX’s explode-and-learn method, “Government programs are not allowed to operate that way because … we have all the stakeholders being able to watch over and tell you no.”

The intense partisanship of current American politics intensifies this process. The motivation is strong to highlight any failings that can be associated with the other party, even if it is only some problem that falls in the area of responsibility of an executive branch agency, and that branch happens to be headed by a president of the other party.

Politics may underlie differential treatment between NASA and SpaceX regarding launch-related measures on the ground. At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the launch pads used for the largest rockets have flame trenches and water deluge systems that mitigate the effects of a blast-off. In SpaceX’s move-fast-and-break-things approach, no such infrastructure was constructed at its facility in Texas. The huge Starship rocket took off from a platform atop one corner of an ordinary-looking concrete slab.

As a result, effects on the ground were substantial, extending well beyond the SpaceX facility itself. The launch blasted a crater into the slab and threw debris more than a half mile away, onto a public beach, adjoining wetlands, and the ocean. A road to the beach remained closed until chunks of concrete and rebar could be cleared away. An enormous cloud of dirt and dust coated houses and cars in the town of Port Isabel, miles to the north. Some local activists have expressed concerns but there has not been a critical response from officialdom. Had this been a NASA operation—with a Democrat as head of the executive branch in Washington and Republicans in control in Texas—it is likely the official response would have been different.

Zero failures may sound like a beneficially aspirational, even if not practically achievable, standard to apply to government programs, but the application has costs. One is that it may simply not be the best approach for tackling large problems and achieving major goals. SpaceX’s own experience is suggestive. Although the company had numerous early failures as it was developing smaller rockets, such experimentation eventually led to the Falcon 9, which is now a profitable and reliable workhorse rocket for orbital missions. Imposing a less flexible standard on government programs may help to make self-fulfilling any argument that such programs are inherently less effective than risk-taking counterpart efforts in the private sector.

Another potential cost is that fixation on a failure and insistence on fixing it may introduce new problems in the fix. This is true, as I have described at length elsewhere, of much of the intelligence “reform” enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which has been established in popular discussion as a landmark “intelligence failure.”

The inordinate focus on a happening that the public and political class can easily and immediately brand as a failure may obscure larger issues at stake that by their nature are not so easily branded. A leader’s effort to avoid the easily identified type of failure may lead to policies that inflict greater costs on the nation than the failure would.

A leading example is the war in Afghanistan. The messy end in August 2021 to the U.S. involvement in the war has been repeatedly and vigorously labeled as a failure, especially by political opponents of President Joe Biden, who ordered that final withdrawal. But the withdrawal was a necessary pulling of the plug on a two-decade military expedition that had become a feckless effort at nationbuilding and entailed far more costs than anything incurred during the few days of denouement. The very swiftness of the collapse of the Ashraf Ghani regime and its security forces demonstrated the fecklessness and how even the best-planned withdrawal would have looked ugly. Three previous U.S. administrations (including the Trump administration, which negotiated a withdrawal agreement but did not execute it) shied away from pulling the plug and risking exposure to denunciations of “failure,” and in so doing kept the war going indefinitely.

Another sort of failure that those earlier administrations wanted to avoid—bearing in mind the general awareness of the history of the 9/11 attack—was an anti-U.S. terrorist attack that had some connection, however tenuous, to Afghanistan, which would be blamed on any president who had earlier withdrawn U.S. troops from that country. The anxiety about avoiding that type of failure obscured the reality that the Afghan Taliban, who took over the country in August 2021, constitute an insular movement that does not do international terrorism and is an enemy of the Islamic State, or ISIS, which is the group with a presence in Afghanistan that would be most likely to perpetrate such terrorism. A reminder of this reality came this week with word that a Taliban operation killed a leader of the local ISIS element who had planned a bombing at the Kabul airport that killed thirteen U.S. service members during the August 2021 withdrawal.

That news did not interrupt the political game of pouncing on a single “failure” to the exclusion of broader realities. The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul of Texas, grudgingly acknowledged the desirability of the ISIS leader’s demise but said that “this doesn’t diminish the Biden administration’s culpability for the failures that led to the attack” at the airport.

The subject of terrorism in the post-9/11 era has been especially prone to a zero-failures mindset that has spawned avoidable costs that exceed the potential harm of the feared terrorism itself. Those costs have included not only the material and human costs of foreign wars such as the one in Afghanistan but also encroachments on personal liberty and the moral stain of resorting to torture.

Public policy, foreign and domestic, should never be thought of as a duty to reduce the probability of even a highly feared contingency to zero, regardless of the costs of trying to do so. Public policy is necessarily a matter of weighing non-zero risks and costs of various contingencies and objectives, with the pursuit of some objectives being unavoidably in conflict with the pursuit of other objectives. This means that even the most carefully constructed policy will see some failures. 

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

Image: Shutterstock.

Israel turns seventy-five this week. Most Israelis certainly didn’t anticipate this kind of commemoration as the country is engulfed in its biggest domestic crisis since its inception.

Yet this crisis is turning into the very gift that Israelis are giving to themselves and others for their birthday. It turns out that for all the talk that democracy cannot take root in countries where there is no democratic tradition, Israel’s demographic makeup tells a very different story. Notwithstanding that the majority of its population today has immigrated from across the Middle East, people are strongly committed to their freedoms.

With now sixteen straight weeks of demonstrations often totaling up to 4 percent of the entire population, one sees the depth of the Israeli public’s commitment to democracy. Nowhere else in the Middle East would even one week of such demonstrations be met with anything but massive bloodshed—and this extraordinary grassroots movement is a reminder that Israelis won’t tolerate the threat to end the separation of powers and an independent judiciary. Israelis won’t accept a majoritarian approach to the country that fails to respect the rights of minorities and preserves the rule of law.

The Israeli public has been aroused by what they see as a threat to Israel’s democratic character. Many of those demonstrating now have never demonstrated before. Reservists from elite air, naval, and commando units; the high-tech sector; the universities going on strike, hospitals offering only emergency services—all this forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to call for a pause and to signal he understands that any such judicial change must reflect a broad consensus in Israel. The story is not over by any means, but the Israeli public has acted in an unprecedented way because it perceived a threat to the democratic fabric of the country. At this point, the tide seems to have turned in favor of the grassroots democracy movement.

There are many lessons from this crisis that will be discussed for some time, but one of them surely is how a society that is fundamentally resilient can self-correct, especially when seeking to preserve its democratic identity. In Israel’s case, being a Jewish-democratic state is part of its ethos and that means both sides of the hyphen must flourish or they will each whither. In this framework, a Jewish-democratic state has meant equal voting rights whether one is Jewish or not for the last seventy-five years.

It is true that the Palestinian issue has not been the focus of the grassroots democracy movement in Israel. But there is no way to preserve Israel as a Jewish democracy without addressing the Palestinian issue. Those Israelis who favor yielding land in the West Bank do so not just to maintain dignity for Palestinians, but to ensure that Israel can remain both Jewish and democratic. This is critical to understand. For those Israeli leaders who take two states for two peoples off the table, they leave only one state as the answer—or their silence and the absence of a story to tell about the endgame of the conflict with the Palestinians leaves a vacuum. On the inside in Israel, there are extremist ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Betzalel Smotrich who are only too happy to fill it.

But we also see there are those on the outside who, from a very different perspective, will seek to fill the intellectual and policy vacuum left by seemingly departing from two states for two peoples as a goal.

A case in point is the recent Foreign Affairs article written by Michael Barnett, Nathan Brown, Marc Lynch, and Shibley Telhami, entitled “Israel’s One State Reality.” Regrettably, they offer a one-sided view of the conflict and present a picture that seems divorced from reality. In the Barnett et al telling, there is only a denial of Palestinian rights. One would not know that there are rejectionist threats against Israel. That Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas deny Israel’s right to exist, support terror against it—and would even if there was no occupation—and acquire and develop weapons to act on their aims. Barnett et al note Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and say that Israel retained control over the territory’s entry and exit points and the air and sea around it. Why? No mention is made of the fact that even after Israel withdrew, Hamas continued to carry out attacks against it and still does eighteen years later.

Hamas has never put the development of Gaza over its aims of resistance against Israel. It went from having roughly 3,000 rockets after the 2014 conflict to having over 30,000 in the 2021 conflict. Hamas used that time not just to acquire rockets but to build an underground city of tunnels, exploiting materials (concrete, electrical wiring, steel, and wood) that could and should have been used to develop and build Gaza above ground. The tunnels weren’t to protect the people of Gaza by creating shelters. Rather, their purpose was to protect Hamas leaders, fighters, and weapons and to be used to try to infiltrate Israel. If Barnett et al are concerned about Israel’s control of entry and exits from Gaza, why not call for Hamas to give up its rockets and stop building tunnels in return for a Marshall Plan for Gaza and an end to such Israeli control? Why not call on Hamas to accept a two-state solution?

But sadly the authors are more concerned with indicting Israel than promoting Palestinian needs and rights. In a world in which the authors are indifferent to the threats that Israel faces, it is not a leap to argue, as they do, to condition military aid to Israel in order to terminate Israeli military rule over Palestinians. How do the authors think the Iranians, Hezbollah, and Hamas would react to an American cut-off of military assistance to Israel? Would that make conflict less likely? Would that reassure others in the region about the threats they are likely to face? Wouldn’t the forces that produce failed and failing states in the region—Iran’s greatest export—perceive great opportunity in such a circumstance? We have seen a foretaste this spring. Amid all the announcements that Israeli pilots and elite forces were threatening to refrain from reserve duty due to the democracy demonstrations, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah openly talked about Israel’s early collapse. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya rushed to Beirut amid talk about the possibilities of a united front.

None of this is a concern to the authors. They are far more concerned with Israel being a Jewish state which “fosters a form of ethnic nationalism rather than a civic one…” For the authors, this is a sin, and while they acknowledge that it is not a perfect fit, they still apply the apartheid label to Israel. But apartheid was an ideology of subjugation of a large majority by a small minority; it promulgated a legal structure to ensure the power and control of the white minority over the black majority of people, permitting them to live only in certain areas, to have only certain kinds of jobs, go to certain schools, with limited access to any legal remedies. Is there inequality in Israel (as there is in the United States and in other democracies)? Yes. Is it written into the law, no. Is there a minority oppressing a majority with a legal edifice justifying it? No.

But the apartheid label fits the authors’ purpose of indicting Israel and justifying its call for creating equality in one state. There is equality before the law in Israel of its citizens, including its Arab citizens who vote and hold parliamentary and judicial office, even if this is not necessarily realized in the daily reality of those citizens. Obviously, the Palestinians in the West Bank are treated differently.

And, to be fair, there is a drift toward a binational state that needs to be arrested and reversed. We wrote a book about the need for Israel to have a political leadership that will make the hard decisions—and override the inevitable backlash of those like Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and extremist settlers—to ensure that Israel does not become a binational state where either it gives up being a democracy or it gives up being a Jewish state.

By definition, in a binational state, Israel cannot be both Jewish and democratic. For the extreme in Israel, they see no contradiction between being Jewish and denying rights to Palestinians. We do. Unlike the authors, who see the extremist vision having “strong grounding in Zionist thought and practice,” we see that vision as a fundamental contradiction of Zionism and its basic values. The most important Zionist theorists and leaders shared a deep belief in democracy and the rights of all people, including that the rights to Arabs must not be denied.

In no small part, the backlash today in Israel and the strong movement domestically to save Israel’s democratic character is a response to an extremist vision of Israel. They see the Supreme Court as the institutional safeguard against those trying to impose their values on the country—whether it is to block the religious parties trying to impose their values on the secular majority in Israel or it is the settler-dominated parties who don’t want the Court to block their ability to claim private Palestinian land.

One of the basic things that Barnett et al fail to see is that the democracy movement has the potential to address not just the internal threat to Israel’s democratic character but also the one posed by continuing occupation of Palestinians. Drifting toward a binational state is also a threat to Israel as a Jewish democracy. Yes, to date that drift has seemed far too abstract to produce a serious public backlash against it—especially with Hamas in control of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority characterized by dysfunction and corruption, and no sign of any Palestinian willingness to compromise. But with an aroused Israeli public more sensitive to the threats to democracy, it may no longer be possible to postpone the necessary debate on the dangers of a binational state.

While Barnett et al put the onus only on Israel, two states for two peoples requires something of the Palestinians as well. In fact, a serious Palestinian move to reform the Palestinian Authority or a determined and more public and peaceful form of Palestinian protest against occupation could help stimulate the debate in Israel. Violence plays into the hands of those in Israel who favor one state. They see it as definitive proof that Israeli territorial concessions will make it more vulnerable and not more secure. But ultimately one state is a threat to Israel and the drift toward it needs to be addressed.

For Barnett et al, one state is not just a reality, it appears desirable. But this, too, is a misreading because there is no such thing as a one-state solution. The authors fail to understand that the separate national identities of Israelis and Palestinians are deeply rooted and will not melt away. Both Israelis and Palestinians have paid a heavy price to preserve who they are. Israelis have built a state in an environment where they were rejected and wars were forced on it. Does a country with a flourishing culture and which successfully achieved its raison d’être by ingathering more than a million Jews from the Soviet Union, as well as providing a home to Jews from Ethiopia, Syria, Yemen, and throughout discriminated communities in the Middle East, suddenly yield that identity? Does a country of close to ten million—over seven million Jews and two million Israeli Arab citizens—that has persevered through wars to become the “start-up” nation with a GDP per capita now ahead of Germany, Britain, France, and Japan, say their state and identity has failed?

Palestinians, too, have persevered. In their dispersal, in the refugee camps, and through two intifadas and profound suffering, they have not surrendered their identity. Ahmed Ghneim, a Fatah activist who remains close to Marwan Barghouti, once explained why he favored two states: “in one state, one of us [Israelis or Palestinians] will feel the need to dominate the other.” Ghneim is right. A binational state would guarantee that the conflict would turn inward. For a country that does not share the same language, religion, or experience, this would turn into a nightmare very quickly.

Two states for two peoples may be difficult to achieve but it serves both Israeli and Palestinian interests. Barnett et al are too focused on their one-state reality to address how it would be certain to doom both Israelis and Palestinians to enduring conflict. Indeed, the bloodiest wars are civil wars. Having a flag and a soccer team is not enough. The authors ignore that in the Middle East there is not a post-nationalism reality. Every state in the region that is characterized by more than one sectarian, tribal, or national identity is either at war internally or completely paralyzed. Does anyone really want Israel-Palestine to look like the tragic conflicts that have engulfed Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, or Yemen? Is that the future that we should hope for these two peoples?

Yes, it is hard to go from where we are to two states for two peoples. And, yes the United States tried three times to achieve an end of conflict result requiring major compromise. You would not know from the authors of the essay that the Palestinians were a large part of the failure of those efforts, even if there is enough blame to go around. Even if the end of conflict moment is not at hand, Israel needs to have a policy that has two states for two peoples as a destination. The starting point for getting there is having that as a vision; moving to improve the realities on the ground for Palestinians; reforming the Palestinian Authority the way it was done in 2007 when Salaam Fayyad came in and restored law and order and created transparency economically; pressing the Israelis to help a reforming PA to deliver; restoring a sense of possibility for both Palestinian and Israeli public.

Given the complex realities of the Middle East, it is not enough for an idea to have abstract appeal. It has to provide very detailed, real-world answers that would satisfy deeply held nationalist aspirations on each side of this conflict. One state cannot and will not do that. If one state may seem too simple and misguided, that is because it is.

Ambassador Dennis Ross is counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization. Ambassador Ross’s distinguished diplomatic career includes service as special assistant to President Barack Obama and National Security Council senior director for the Central Region, special advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Middle East Envoy to President Bill Clinton, and Director of Policy Planning for President George H.W. Bush.

David Makovsky is the Ziegler Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute and director of the Koret Project on Arab-Israel Relations. He is also an adjunct professor in Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). In 2013–2014, he worked in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of State, serving as a senior advisor to the Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations.

Image: Shutterstock.

On April 13, Russia’s Institute of Technological Development for the Fuel-Energy Complex organized a panel to discuss energy cooperation between Moscow and African countries. One of the experts, Gabriel Anicet Kotchofa, who served as Benin’s ambassador to Russia, explained that “in Africa, we are waiting for Russia—for what Russia can do. I will tell you something that is never said today: we are tired of Europe.”

As a graduate of the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas and a Russian citizen, Kotchofa is not a neutral commentator. Nonetheless, recent energy trends support his proclamation. African countries are exponentially multiplying their imports of Russian oil in response to European sanctions and price caps, providing the Kremlin with additional flexibility in the financing of its war against Ukraine.

Morocco imported 600,000 barrels of Russian diesel in the entirety of 2021. In February 2022 alone, approximately double that number arrived in the North African country’s Mediterranean ports. Last month, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria accounted for 30 percent of Russia’s diesel exports, which just returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Moscow is fulfilling a need in Africa. The International Energy Agency noted that the coronavirus pandemic provoked debt crises in twenty African countries, which will exacerbate the subsidy burdens that these nations already face as a result of frequent oscillations in energy prices. Paired with the fact that factories have still not recovered from pandemic restrictions, African countries are looking for outside aid from new sources. “Significant parts of [African refineries] are idle or underloaded due to equipment deterioration, maintenance problems, [and] interruptions in the supply of raw materials,” said Lyudmila Kalinichenko, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences, during the aforementioned panel. At the same time, Africa’s population is growing vertiginously.

As such, African countries are faced with two compounding challenges: energy refinery shortages and rising demand. One solution they have pursued is to step up their reliance on imports. Accordingly, these nations have turned to Russian gas companies happy to gain access to new markets. Some African companies have taken advantage of this realignment of imports and exports to deceive European countries seeking replacements for the Russian energy that used to flow under the Baltic Sea.

In Morocco, for instance, an MP accused several energy companies of forging documents about the origins of Russian gas quickly resold to Europe at a higher price upon arrival. These companies have allegedly mixed Russian oil into their domestic components to alleviate pressure from local extraction processes and augment their profits from both Russian sellers and European buyers. The gas Moscow is sending to Africa is clearly not all being used to satisfy domestic demand.

Beyond energy, relations between the EU and Africa have been deteriorating for the past few decades. Russian disinformation tactics, which have been scaled up since the start of the Russo-Ukraine war, partly explain this trend.

Despite European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s assurances that the EU has “no sanctions on food and agricultural products,” Senegalese president Macky Sall repeatedly voiced concern that European trade restrictions have blocked mechanisms that allow African countries to pay for indispensable Russian grains and fertilizers. On the military side, France’s inability to protect Malians from jihadist terrorist groups led to a complete withdrawal of its forces in 2022. This sparked widespread anti-French sentiment in West Africa, leading to attacks on businesses and diplomatic buildings in addition to shocking images of French flags being burned.

Russian propaganda has fueled this discontent. The Kremlin’s state-funded television networks like RT have signed deals with their African counterparts to shape minds about the ongoing war in Ukraine while repeating to audiences that France and the United States have harmed African interests. The recent U.S. intelligence leak adds detail about how Russian officials brainstormed propaganda initiatives to “realign” African public opinion on Western influence.

Russia has not spared energy debates from its carefully crafted narratives. During the panel, Kotchofa argued that African countries have been “forced to conclude unprofitable contracts with European partners in which over 90 percent of oil and petroleum products are exported from the continent.” He added that since Russia is blessed with its own array of natural resources, it feels “no need to take raw materials” from others. Such rhetoric is frequently repeated in the media and diffused throughout Africa, even if it blatantly ignores Russia’s increase in cobalt, gold, and diamond mining and the proliferation of joint ventures between Russian and African companies.

Indeed, Russia has entered into natural resource deals with about twenty African countries. In November 2021, the Russian State Space Corporation “Roscosmos” signed a cooperation agreement with Zimbabwe to expand its satellite intelligence in the country as a way to locate mineral deposits. Earlier this year, a columnist in one of Russia’s largest state-owned news sources, RIA Novosti, noted that Congo’s immense trove of resources represents the financial “contract of the century” before claiming that Russia feels no urge to repeat Europe’s “neo-colonialism.” He then exposed Moscow’s media-based strategy: “African leaders often do not have to explain why they need Russia…[our] PR on the continent is good and self-supporting.”

Western and Russian observers alike make the mistake of saying that Beijing and Moscow’s replacement of French influence in Africa demonstrates that the United States is losing ground on the continent. In reality, French and American interests in Africa are not interchangeable.

However, the United States and France do agree that it is strategically advantageous to oppose Russia. Their unity against the Kremlin will strengthen as Russians take the place of the French. And if Russian companies pool resources into Africa only to be outmatched by China while the United States directs its attention toward Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, Moscow’s increased involvement in Africa suddenly does not look so bad. With this logic, perhaps the United States should not rush to extend diplomatic ties to the disillusioned African countries tempted by Russian energy exports.

This argument has a critical flaw, however. It contradicts the sanctions policy that the U.S. Treasury Department has pursued since the start of the war in Ukraine: erode Moscow’s ability to financially support its wartime operations. With the recent news that Russia’s oil is being shipped to Europe through Africa, the Biden administration should think of the growing continent as inseparable from its Russia strategy rather than as a separate theater. This is especially the case for the North African countries that border the Mediterranean.

As one of the Russian experts said during the panel, “We are currently shipping Russian oil and petroleum products across the sea in the Mediterranean, in the Spanish port of Ceuta, and in the Greek port of Kalamata. But what prevents us from using the port infrastructure of North African countries for these purposes?” If American policymakers want to hinder the scope of Russia’s military operations, they cannot turn a blind eye to the African countries that have begun accepting enormous shipments of Russian oil and may fall prey to the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, Voice of America, and U.S. oil and gas companies must synchronize their efforts to achieve this goal. The first can scale up humanitarian aid, the second can provide further support to independent media organizations, and the third can provide competitive alternatives to Russian oil sailing to the African coast.

Russian experts are seriously thinking about how they can use Africa as an eager energy market and a natural resource hub to gain ground on the battlefield. American experts must do the same, focusing on the African countries that receive substantive aid from the West and are prepared to counter the Kremlin’s gas diplomacy and the way Russian media has portrayed the war in Ukraine.

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

Image: 

There is growing discussion that Department of Defense (DoD) procurement programs are not nimble enough to meet emerging threats from peer competitors such as China. The timeline for the development of new defense capabilities is lengthy, impeding the nation’s ability to offset swiftly and efficiently growing capabilities of potential adversaries. Critics say that the Department is not adequately accelerating the development of game-changing technologies and not effectively leveraging commercial technology. They have called for comprehensive procurement reform as the solution to these problems.

In fairness, the Pentagon has often proven itself more than able to use existing procurement authorities rapidly and effectively when urgency demands quick action. For example, in 2008, in response to warfighter needs in Afghanistan and Iraq for enhanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, the Air Force successfully developed and deployed the MC-12 Liberty aircraft in less than eight months following congressional funding approval. Similarly, in order to protect soldiers and Marines from improvised explosive devices, the Department of Defense rapidly acquired a new armored vehicle, the Mine Resistant Ambush Protect (MRAP). The decision to buy, followed by the actual commencement of production, took less than a year. More recently, the Air Force used its Rapid Capabilities Office to develop the new B-21 Raider bomber on time and on budget (so far!).

The challenge that remains is fostering an even greater collective effort to expedite weapons development. How can the nation better accelerate the DoD acquisitions process? What can be learned from the experience of the private sector to help? How might DoD adapt the intelligence community’s successful experiment, establishing In-Q-Tel, for military procurement? What can be done to harness private capital markets to help fund and speed Pentagon building programs, such as the renovation of our Navy’s shipyards?

When Aversion to Risk is a Negative

Complicating the challenge of improving the procurement process is the natural tendency toward risk aversion within any large government organization such as DoD, governed by a complex regulatory structure. Innovation carries risk. The safer approach, one surmises, is to follow the careful procurement system that has been developed incrementally by thousands of Pentagon regulations over the course of decades. Moving fast can mean less review, and hence carry greater risk for failure. Only when the need for speed is urgent and clearly demanded by top leadership, such as was the case with MRAP’s or Operation Warp Speed, does the bureaucracy turn to quicker procurement techniques available in the legal toolbox. Much as no one was ever fired at DoD for buying IBM computers in the 1960s, no one in the building is fired today for taking a careful, safe approach to procurement under the guidelines of a manifold regulatory system.

Another aspect of the challenge requiring consideration is congressional authority. Procurement laws and rules only address “how” the contracting process is pursued for the development and purchase of a weapons system. They do not address the issue of authorization—i.e., “what” Congress has empowered the Pentagon to do on a specific weapons system or program, including the expenditure of funds. The Air Force developed and deployed the MC-12 aircraft only after receiving congressional permission. The plane’s development was specifically authorized and funded by Congress, as was the Space Development Agency’s satellite constellation. Unless funding is first approved by Congress, DoD cannot lawfully commence the contracting process for the development of any new system.

This approach of detailed congressional authorization tends to be somewhat more pronounced for the DoD than for other government entities. Most federal agencies are governed by broadly worded authorizations that give them latitude for innovative purchasing and, in many cases, the ability to guarantee credit. The Department of Defense, on the other hand, tends to be controlled by a more detailed, annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) process that delimits exactly what it can and cannot develop and buy over specific time periods. The end result is an awkward system of annual funding for complex, long-term programs and institutionalized, cultural reluctance by the Pentagon to move innovatively unless specifically authorized by Congress.

An Alternative Approach?

A good illustration of the problem is DoD’s approach to experimenting with venture capital compared to other agencies. The CIA, in collaboration with other members of the intelligence community, created its own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, almost a quarter century ago. NASA followed suit a few years later with the creation of the Mercury Fund. In both instances, the CIA and NASA relied on their general statutory authority to set up these programs.

In 2002, Congress created the Army Venture Capital Corporation to invest in startups relating to power technology, but its funding robustness has so far been largely limited to its original appropriation. More recently, in December 2022, Secretary of Defense Austin established an Office of Strategic Capital whose mission will include partnering the Pentagon with public and private capital markets However, at this point, its ability to raise capital funding in the markets remains an open question as it continues to await specific congressional authorization to operate and guarantee credit, as well as an appropriation that can be used to support program funding, corporate investments, and reserves against lending or guarantees. Language contained in the Senate Report for NDAA 2023 contained wording that would have done much of that, but it was not incorporated into the final congressional conference report for the bill.

Change and innovation are hard. With rising strategic challenges in the Pacific and around the world, the Pentagon and the Hill must continue to work together to find more ways to speed the acquisition process. The Pentagon should continue, whenever possible, to use alternative approaches provided by existing procurement regulations to accelerate strategic weapons development. The regulatory success of such initiatives as Operation Warp Speed, MRAP, or the MC-12W aircraft might serve more often as an approach to speed up other programs. At the same time, Congress could consider providing the Pentagon with broader empowerment language for specific programs under the annual NDAA and appropriations process, as Capitol Hill has long done with other agencies. For example, Congress, if willing, could give DoD’s new Office of Strategic Capital just a few lines of NDAA wording to empower more open, Pentagon access to capital markets to support the application of commercial technology and major recapitalization projects.

The bottom-line reality is that practical approaches and solutions are available, both through the regulatory and legislative processes. More red tape can be cut, better enabling faster production of weapons systems to meet growing challenges in a multi-polar world.

Chuck Blanchard, a former general counsel of the Army and Air Force, is an Arnold & Porter partner specializing in government contracts law.

Ramon Marks, a retired Arnold & Porter partner, is Vice Chair of Business Executives for National Security (BENS).

The views expressed in this article are strictly their own.

Image: Shutterstock.

When it comes to illegal mass migration, it is almost impossible to successfully protect a thin border line stretching for hundreds and thousands of miles. Thousands of people—concentrating their efforts on short border sections—can easily overrun the equipment and guards, as has happened from the Spanish exclave of Ceuta to the small city of Yuma, Arizona.

Neighboring states are reluctant to deter people from crossing because they do not want to serve as a “parking lot” for illegal migrants, as Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić has said. It is much simpler for transit countries to simply let people go—a win-win situation both for the migrants and the transit country.

Similar patterns are visible not only in Europe, but also in Mexico, which—after the end of pressure and threats from the Trump administration—has begun refusing to permit Customs and Border Protection to expel families with children under the age of seven, citing a new law relating to the treatment of migrant children since the Biden administration took office. 

Yet it is not only the “carrot and stick” policy—which does not save transit countries from becoming parking lots—that can bear fruit for both transit and destination countries. Providing support for transit countries’ own border protection to prevent aliens from entering can be more beneficial for all participants, likely in a cheaper manner than pure—and costly—blackmailing and bargaining.

During the current migration crisis in Europe, more and more countries recognized the need for closer cooperation with transit countries in a way that makes them also interested in combating illegal border crossings. One of the possible solutions is to help them with their own border security. In November 2022, Austria, Hungary, and Serbia signed a trilateral agreement in which the two EU member states offered to help Belgrade organize deportations by plane for people who arrived in the Balkan nation from safe countries and are not eligible for asylum. Furthermore, they pledged a police contingent equipped with vehicles, thermal vision goggles, and drones to strengthen border protection along the North Macedonian-Serbian border. So, what actually happened was that the three countries shifted the focus of border security to the south, from the Hungarian-Serbian border to the Serbian-North Macedonian one. It made Belgrade interested in participating in the collaboration and perhaps it is closer to a durable solution than the constant debates between Belgrade, Vienna, and Budapest. And this may be just the beginning. As President Vučić emphasized, “we are ready to move further south together with North Macedonia and thus protect both Europe and our own country.”

Due to the increasing number of illegal border crossings across the Western Balkan routes toward Italy, a similar plan emerged through the participation of Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy in late March. According to the preliminary negotiations, Slovenia and Italy will send joint police forces to their neighbor to combat illegal migration within Croatia, while local authorities can concentrate their efforts on the border area. The measure could make available hundreds of additional law enforcement personnel to strengthen border protection, while it can also reduce the flow of irregular migrants to Slovenia and Italy.

Similar solutions are not unknown on the other side of the Atlantic: certain U.S. administrations also realized that it was much cheaper and more efficient to provide assistance for Mexico to police its own southern border than focusing only on the American one. For instance, the Southern Border Plan aimed to construct a network of communications towers along Mexico’s southern border region in 2014–15 to help security and migration forces to communicate despite gaps in radio coverage. According to a report by WOLA, most towers had been built by 2019, even if final construction was delayed by Mexico’s lack of issuance of a deployment plan. 

But physical infrastructure is not the only thing. In the drug war, U.S. DEA agents are deployed to Mexico to facilitate the fight against cartels. The United States could follow similar patterns against illegal migration, sending Border Patrol agents to the southern border of Mexico. Even if they could operate—similarly to their European counterparts—only with the presence of local law enforcement agencies, it could increase the protection of the Mexico-Guatemala border and, from a humanitarian perspective, could make the procedure easier for people who are really escaping from persecution and war.

Furthermore, we should not forget that the length of the southwest border of the United States is 1,954 miles, while the Mexico-Guatemala one is just one-quarter of that, 541 miles, which makes more concentrated efforts possible.

Of course, this will not mean that the United States can neglect its own border security in the southwest. Even with enhanced support from Mexican border authorities, thousands will manage to reach the United States—not to mention people who fly directly to Mexico with valid tourist visas, and later move north. But preventing illegal migrants from crossing into Mexico from the south is also in the interest of Mexico City, which does not want to be “a parking lot.” Therefore, similarly to the European examples, it can lead to a mutually-beneficial collaboration and a win-win situation for both participants.

Viktor Marsai, Ph.D., is the Director of the Budapest-based Migration Research Institute, an associate professor at the University of Public Service, and an Andrássy Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, DC.

Image: Shutterstock.

French president Emmanuel Macron has again sparked controversy by suggesting that Europe should chart an independent course from the United States, this time over Taiwan. This is a recurring theme from the French leader, one that is both a challenge to his fellow Europeans and an opportunity for the United States.

On the one hand, the French have sought ways to distance themselves and Europe from U.S. leadership, while at the same time advancing their own authority. On the other hand, they have shown a reluctance to participate in the very organizations they seek to benefit from and to head. It is not easy to belong to a group whose leader does not seem to want to be a member.

The French have at least been consistent. Charles DeGaulle withdrew France from NATO's integrated military structure in 1966, intent on maintaining French autonomy, while at the same time retaining France's membership, and voting rights, in the organization.

In the early 1990s, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the eventual dissolution of Yugoslavia, French officials promoted the Western European Union (WEU), a fully-European security organization and tacit substitute for NATO. The WEU—made up initially of French and German military units—was supposed to provide Europe with the modest level of security it needed in the post-Cold War era, cutting Washington out of the scene.

But the WEU did not work. Worse still was what might have happened if it did. France would not accept German leadership, nor were the Germans eager to cede authority to Paris. In the wake of European paralysis in response to dueling crises in Bosnia and Kosovo, the WEU was quietly euthanized and Europe returned to its security dependence on the United States.

However, the Gallic dream of a purely European security alliance—one with France at the helm—never entirely perished. Macron has enthusiastically sponsored a new security dialogue with his counterpart in Germany, Olaf Scholz, both before and after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Germans, for their part, appear amenable to continuing the conversation, though the question of which great power will hold greater sway in the relationship remains unaddressed.

Such posturing regarding jettisoning reliance on the United States routinely elicits anguish and anxiety from members of the Atlantic security establishment. Yet it is doubtful that European security run, and paid for, by Europeans constitutes a significant problem for the United States.

Indeed, there are a number of benefits. The first, and most obvious, is that it would be cheaper. There has long been bipartisan support in the United States for the idea of Europe ponying up more for its own defense. American presidents from Barack Obama and Bill Clinton to Donald Trump have called for Europeans to do so. The problem is that Europe did not have to. Free-riding is a thing. European autonomy would force Europeans, not Americans, to pay for Europe's security.

Europe was also skeptical of the need for security and reluctant to provide what U.S. officials thought prudent. President Vladimir Putin of Russia has kindly resolved doubts on this matter. At the same time, the war in Ukraine has made it clear that in military terms Russia is not the Soviet Union. What was once thought to be “the second best army in the world” is now more widely acknowledged as possibly the second-best army among the former Soviet republics.

While Russia and other security challenges remain, Europe is fully capable of addressing them. Gone are the days when Europe, humbled by two world wars, could not afford to protect itself. Europe has instead become addicted to American largesse (a phenomenon I refer to as "military welfare") while at the same time complaining about their North American partners.

One final concern is that the United States will lose the benefits it accrues from membership in NATO. What are these benefits? One of the most often referenced, and vague, is "influence." The notion that Europe will stray into darkness without U.S. supervision, as it did twice in the twentieth century, is a uniquely American conceit. Europe is a different place today, one that is stable, affluent, and moderate in its posture. It does not need Americans telling it what to do.

Nor is it the case that the United States needs to meddle in European affairs for its own policy purposes. By and large, Europeans will adopt policies and actions that are, for the most part, compatible with U.S. interests, with or without U.S. efforts to impose outcomes on Europe.

At the same time, America needs to focus on problems elsewhere. China is richer and likely more competent militarily and politically than Russia. While some European militaries have executed gestures in solidarity with U.S. efforts to contain Beijing, these efforts mostly just demonstrate the limited value of Europe's contributions in a region that is distant from Europe geographically and politically. A better outcome for the United States would be for Europeans to resolve their own security concerns, allowing the United States to actually pivot to Asia.

Macron has laid heavy hints that the United States has overstayed its welcome in Europe. Other leaders are more polite, but their sentiment is also clear. America can afford to be gracious in response. As tensions in Eastern Europe abate in the aftermath of the Russo-Ukraine war, there will be an opportunity for the United States to refocus and streamline its security commitments in Europe. Doing so will free up resources and reduce liabilities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Erik Gartzke is professor of political science and director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at the University of California at San Diego.

Image: Nicolas Economou / Shutterstock.com

Until recently, relations between Mexico and the United States had largely been centered around immigration, almost to the exclusion of other concerns, with the Biden administration seeking to control cross-border flows while moving away from former President Donald Trump’s harsh “build the wall” rhetoric. However, lately, another sensitive issue, narcotics trafficking, which had been relatively dormant in recent years, has become a high-profile source of friction, with harsh words over fentanyl emanating from both Washington and Mexico City, followed by some efforts to defuse tensions.

Unquestionably, there is reason for concern regarding fentanyl, a highly addictive synthetic opiate, as it has increasingly become the product of choice among U.S. consumers of hard drugs. It is fifty times more potent than heroin. 70,000 deaths per year have been attributed to fentanyl overdoses, out of a total of 100,000 narcotics-related deaths.

Fentanyl’s precursor chemicals are produced in China, cross the Pacific by sea, and are smuggled into Mexican ports. The final product is then created in laboratories in Mexico and sent to the United States. The infrastructure for this, of course, already exists as Mexican drug trafficking organizations have long been major sources of heroin and cocaine entering the United States.

Calls in Washington for Unilateral Action Provoke a Sharp Response

With fentanyl deaths rising and receiving extensive coverage in the media, American politicians have become engaged. Republican Representatives Michael Waltz and Dan Crenshaw have submitted draft legislation authorizing the use of military force against the fentanyl trafficking cartels, while Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John Kennedy have submitted a bill designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

The evident intention of these bills is to put the United States in a position to take unilateral kinetic action against the cartels whether or not Mexico agrees, as has been done against terrorist targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Although Crenshaw did tell Mexico that “we would love to have you as a partner,” the implication behind such a statement is that the United States should act in any event. And Trump publicly stated that if re-elected he will “order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare and other overt and covert actions” against the cartels.

Mexican president Andres Manuel López Obrador reacted immediately to these initiatives. Never one to hold back on his own rhetoric, he asserted that fentanyl was America’s problem and the result of its “social decay,” rather than that of Mexico which, he said, does not produce or consume the product. This claim of Mexican non-involvement is true only if one somehow does not consider the processing laboratories in Mexican soil as production. And as for consumption, while it has not become a major issue in Mexico yet, there are documented examples of it taking place there.

Obrador has gone so far as threatening to urge Mexican-Americans to vote against Republicans if they do not cease their pressure campaign. This has resulted in some pushback from activists from that community, who have suggested that, instead, he should be concentrating on securing the safety of would-be immigrants—there was recently a fire at a Mexican detention center along the border in which forty detainees died.

Foreign Minister Marcel Ebrard also took up the cry against the American congressmen, going so far as to say he would call upon consular officials stationed in the United States to mount a public relations campaign “to defend Mexico.” And unsurprisingly, Mexican officials have also repeated their often-used response to American pressure on security issues, asserting (with considerable truth) that their country is flooded with weapons that are smuggled in from the north.

Answer: An Action Plan

After several weeks of sniping by American congressmen on one side and the López Obrador administration on the other, there has been some effort to turn down the heat. The Biden administration has avoided reacting to the Republicans’ offensive on the issue, doubtless viewing it as a complement to their ongoing effort to characterize its immigration policy as ineffective, despite the reality that fentanyl is smuggled into the United States through border crossings and not through illegal immigration.

For its part, despite its initial (and highly predictable) hostile reaction to U.S. congressional pressure, Mexico apparently has grudgingly accepted the need to be seen as “doing something” on fentanyl. A meeting between U.S. and Mexican officials took place on April 13, and Mexico has announced a fentanyl action plan which covers ground that will be familiar to those who have followed drug policy initiatives over the years.

The elements of this plan include creating a coordinating body within the Mexican government to address fentanyl, increasing the number of army personnel monitoring land customs stations and the number of navy and customs personnel at maritime ports, creating a special unit within the national prosecutor’s office dedicated to synthetic drugs and weapons, and establishing a protocol for consultations between the Mexican Finance Ministry and the U.S. Treasury Department on money laundering.

And after saying that fentanyl was entirely a U.S. problem, López Obrador has at least recognized that the precursor chemicals are entering Mexico. He has written to Chinese president Xi Jinping asking that action be taken to halt their flow. He is still awaiting a response.

At the same time, the U.S. Justice Department has recently announced charges of fentanyl trafficking against the sons of now-imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman, together with a $10 million reward for their capture. In addition to whatever legal merits this step may have, it has come at a moment when the Biden administration would certainly benefit from the appearance of aggressive action on this issue. However, López Obrador has criticized the United States for operating without consulting Mexican authorities, and said that his law enforcement priority is “public safety.” Further, while Mexican cooperation with the United States on fighting drugs will continue, López Obrador noted that it is at a “second level” of importance, seemingly undercutting any impact of the previously announced action plan.

The Drug Issue Always Comes Back

Thus it is not clear if the politics of fentanyl will remain conflictive or whether some sustained effort will be made to lower the decibel level. History shows that U.S. politicians and media become periodically seized on the issue of drugs coming from Mexico.

This includes during the Nixon administration when the border was nearly shut down for thirty days in “Operation Intercept”; during the Reagan administration, where at one point U.S. customs briefly repeated this action in an effort to put pressure on Mexico to address the abduction of a Drug Enforcement Agency agent; and during the Bush and Obama administrations, when, more productively, in response to the unprecedented rise of powerful drug cartels, the United States provided massive counter-narcotics assistance to Mexico under the so-called “Merida Initiative,” including aid to the police and military and also resources for judicial reform and human rights observance.

The narcotics issue, now manifesting itself as fentanyl, rises and falls as a public concern but never goes away. And the pattern of a spike in concern and the exchange of heated rhetoric by politicians, followed by an effort to return the issue to normal bureaucratic channels is likely to repeat itself. Ultimately, both countries have an interest in preventing the issue from disrupting the overall relationship. But in managing the issue, policymakers on both sides of the border will have to recognize certain unchanging realities.

The United States Needs to Get Real…

One reality that the United States must face is that unilateral action—subjecting the drug cartels to counterterrorist-style operations without Mexican consent—is a non-starter. Indeed, one may ask whether those promoting it are truly serious or are just looking to score political points. But if reiterated often enough an idea, no matter how dangerous, can go from the fringes to the center of debate, moving the famous “Overton window” of thinkable policy options.

First and foremost, unilateral action would not work. “Decapitation” strategies are unlikely to change the capabilities of the drug cartels if not accompanied by broader efforts to reclaim state presence in the large, lawless areas of rural Mexico in which they operate. Killing an individual drug lord or destroying an individual laboratory will have little effect without long-term follow-up by the Mexican government. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose career includes service in Colombia, has stressed that counternarcotics operations are fruitless without local “support and approval.”

And few things would be more likely to make such cooperation impossible than unilateral military action within Mexico by the U.S. armed forces. The country’s historic memory includes the 1846–48 Mexican War in which much of its north was annexed and during which Mexico City was occupied. It also includes the U.S. interventions during the administration of Woodrow Wilson in which the port city of Veracruz was occupied and General John Pershing embarked on a “punitive expedition” against Pancho Villa in northern Mexico.

Given this history, no Mexican government could tolerate U.S. forces acting on its soil without its consent. It would likely mean that cooperation on immigration, the other top U.S. priority, would stop, and instead of Mexican security forces discouraging periodic caravans of would-be immigrants trudging towards the border from Central and South America, they would simply let them pass.

The “remain in Mexico” policy, which began under Trump and was maintained with some modifications by President Joe Biden, under which asylum claimants are not allowed to enter the United States for adjudication but must wait in Mexico until their hearing date, would no longer be tenable. And vital cooperation on trade, law enforcement, the environment, and public health could come to a grinding halt.

…And So Does Mexico

But there are also realities that Mexico needs to recognize, notably that legalization by the United States of hard drugs, a solution preferred throughout Latin America, is simply not on the political agenda. While marijuana has been largely legalized at the state level (and de facto at the federal level), there does not appear to be any movement toward doing the same for cocaine, heroin, or now fentanyl. Given the rise in deaths and the potency of this synthetic drug, Mexican leaders cannot expect that the United States will solve the problem for them.

And although change is unlikely to occur during his administration, another reality is that López Obrador’s policy regarding the drug cartels has been a failure. He termed his approach “abrazos no balazos” (hugs, not shooting), arguing that the answer to the drug problem was social welfare spending to improve the situation of poverty-stricken Mexicans who would otherwise turn to this illicit trade.

Implicit in this policy shift was an end to aggressive action to defeat or even contain the cartels—live and let live, essentially in the hope of seeing reduced violence. This entailed lowering the frequency and intensity of counter-narcotics operations, disbanding a U.S.-trained investigative unit while severely curtailing the DEA’s ability to work with local counterparts, and forcing the United States to replace the Merida Initiative assistance to a far less counternarcotics-oriented “Bicentennial Framework.”

The result has been continued narcotics-related violence, and ever-stronger cartel domination of many of Mexico’s states, with local governments and security services becoming in effect their junior partners. And while this has gone on, the cartels, with their Chinese associates, have moved into fentanyl production—and although the recent round of tough talk in each direction may have gotten the López Obrador government at least to admit that a problem exists, it strains credibility to think that placing a few hundred more soldiers and sailors at customs posts and holding inter-agency meetings, per its recently announced plan, will make much difference.

In It for the Long Haul?

What steps should the United States take? First, to quote Hippocrates, do no harm. The prospect of treating fentanyl traffickers like terrorists may have brought the issue to the forefront but further threats of unilateral action will be unlikely to produce results and actually undertaking it would be a disaster. And we must recognize that López Obrador, heading toward his last year in office, is not likely to make major changes in his narcotics policies behind the absolute minimum to keep the United States at bay.

For the United States, the only hope is to press for greater cooperation from López Obrador while understanding that the real challenge will be to begin a dialogue with his potential successors, be they from his party or from one of the opposition groupings. It will need to make clear that the prospect of legalization, and especially that of fentanyl, is a chimera, while recognizing that geographic reality and ongoing demand for narcotics in the United States means that complete elimination of Mexico-based trafficking is impossible.

Rather, both the United States and Mexico need to understand that aggressive Mexican law enforcement, backed by significant U.S. assistance, can have a positive, though admittedly not conclusive effect on containing and then shrinking the power of the cartels and their capacity to traffic in fentanyl.

Mexico, of course, is not likely to greet a restart of an aggressive counternarcotics effort with great enthusiasm. Action against the cartels will cost lives and treasure, and require patience. The initial goal must be simply to keep the cartels’ power and their capacity to produce fentanyl and other drugs from increasing. But Mexico may come to realize—hopefully before it is too late—that simply letting the cartels have their way and expand further will impose far higher costs, and indeed may let the country drift toward failed state status in large areas of its territory. On both sides of the Rio Grande, realism is in order.

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

Image: Shutterstock.

The suffering of the Sudanese people becomes more dramatic by the hour: water and food supplies are shrinking while the injured are turned out of their hospital beds to make room for fresh victims of a pointless civil war, the third in as many decades. Hundreds have died and thousands have been gravely wounded in the crossfire as two generals fight for supremacy.

The shooting started the day following the Framework Agreement, which was supposed to enable the transition to a civilian government. Democracy in Sudan is always, tantalizingly, just out of reach.

Sudan’s politics live in a tragic loop. Since its independence from Great Britain in 1955, Sudan has been ruled by strongmen who are later replaced by coup leaders promising democracy, the rule of law, and, sometimes, the rule of Islam. Each time, from the coup leaders, a new strongman emerges.

After a bloodless 1989 coup, General Omar al-Bashir came to power along with his former classmates in what was then called Gordon College. Bashir, by 1996, had seized total power, pushing out the Islamists, former communists, and some northern tribal leaders. Bashir was himself was toppled in 2018 by protests, but the army quickly took control before democracy could break out. The doom loop cycled again.

Still, it would be wrong and dangerous to America’s security to assume a disintegrating Sudan poses no risks to the United States.

First, other global powers are already contending to control Sudan’s oil, gold, and strategic ports. If one Sudanese faction wins, then Russian demands for a naval base on Sudan’s Red Sea coast would give Putin’s navy a global reach. If the other faction wins, Russia would also gain but Chinese influence in Sudan—already extensive, as measured by the Chinese-built skyscrapers in Khartoum and the bobbing oil derricks in the Nuba region—would surge.

During a visit to Khartoum in February, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov discussed the prospect of a Russian naval base with Sudanese leaders and the goal of completing it by the end of 2023, according to a document leaked online by a Massachusetts air national guardsman.

What’s important is that, left to its own devices, Sudan’s future will be controlled by America’s rivals. Those rivals, especially, include China.

China, already the world's largest consumer of energy, sees Africa as a “promised land’ of oil and gas. Sudanese crude alone satisfies more than 10 percent of Chinese oil needs. Beijing needs Sudan.

China’s Africa Policy Paper, released in 2015, calls for deep military engagement, technological cooperation, and a strengthening of African security forces. Although assistance initiatives to the African Union and its regional military pacts have multiplied considerably under this policy, Beijing channels most of its support bilaterally, from government to government. Often, this means arms sales. As a result, China is currently the largest arms supplier to sub-Saharan Africa with 27 percent of the region's imports between 2013 and 2017—an increase of 55 percent over the period 2008–2012, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Sudan represents a significant part of that increase in weapon sales.

China also rules sub-Saharan Africa through debt. Growing debts of China’s military partner countries to Chinese state banks that fund China’s megaprojects now worry officials across Africa. They also ruefully note that China hires few locals for its African mega-projects—creating African debt without African wealth.

If Sudan comes apart like Libya, refugees will follow the Nile north and swamp Egypt’s rickety refugee centers. If Egypt decides to become more involved in Sudan, as it did in years past, it will use its influence to stem the tide of refugees and oppose the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, on Ethiopia’s stretch of the Blue Nile. This will put Ethiopia into conflict with both Sudan and Egypt. East Africa could soon be aflame—risking U.S. counter-terror operations in the region.

Other U.S. allies have strategic interests at stake, too. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are pressuring both sides to adopt a diplomatic solution. Sudan was part of the original Abraham Accord normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco. But after a military coup in Sudan in October 2021, the final steps of the process with Khartoum stalled. Israel is inviting Sudan’s warring parties to a peace summit in Jerusalem. For Egypt and Turkey, a civil war in Sudan would pose a significant threat to their naval presence in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.

For the United States, the options for mitigating the crisis are limited.  After successfully evacuating U.S. diplomats and citizens, the focus should shift to alleviating human suffering by establishing safe corridors to allow trapped civilians to escape.

This is an opportunity for America to impose its leadership and to restore the Framework for democracy with negotiation, not war.

The United States has left a vacuum in Africa and now its rivals have rushed in. It is not too late for America to offer the African continent what it really wants: peace, prosperity, recognition, and democracy. It could start with Sudan.

Ahmed Charai is a Publisher. 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: Shutterstock.

From 2016 until February 24, 2022, most U.S. foreign policymakers focused on America’s strategy in countering a rising China. Many policymakers placed Europe on the backburner, taking for granted the endurability of American primacy on the continent. The invasion of Ukraine changed this dynamic. Since the start of this war, America’s attention has shifted back towards Europe and NATO.

However, many policymakers seem to be regurgitating old solutions to new problems. These include an expansion of NATO and sending more American troops to Europe. Essentially, such solutions are a Cold War and 1990s answer to today’s new security environment. Whereas America’s position in the 1990s as the sole great power permitted it to expand the alliance, today’s NATO faces a revisionist Russia tired of the status quo of NATO expansion. Moreover, unlike the Cold War, today’s international environment consists of multiple great powers.

All of these concerns beg the question: what is the United States to do about Europe? The answer lies in strengthening Germany’s military.

Germany remains one of the richest countries in the continent, possessing a GDP of $4.479 trillion in 2022. It possesses much latent power, a form of power that John Mearsheimer defines in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics as “the socio-economic ingredients that go into building military power.” The more money, population, and resources a country has, the more likely it can use those resources to make a strong military.

In the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany seems to be attempting to transition this latent power into hard military power. As German chancellor Olaf Scholz stated in a speech to the Bundestag on February 27, 2022, Germany and Europe are at a Zeitenwende, or a turning point. As Scholz late elaborated in December 2022, this Zeitenwende involves Germany’s plan to build up its military capabilities to serve as “one of the main providers of security in Europe.” Despite critics pointing out Germany’s lack of ammunition stockpiles, and that Germany’s rearmament plans are lagging behind schedule, there remains hope and reason for the United States to encourage German rearmament. 

The main reason why the United States should desire a formidable German military is the dilemma of extended deterrence, usually defined as the capability and willingness of a country to deter and defend its allies against a potential attack. The dilemma with extended deterrence lies in its difficulty to credibly defend an ally at risk of military attack, since (in the words of RAND’s Michael J. Mazarr) “an aggressor can almost always be certain a state will fight to defend itself, but it may doubt that a defender will fulfill a pledge to defend a third party.”

It is understandable for critics of this German strategy to be hesitant in loosening the leash on Germany’s military. After all, Germany was the primary antagonist of two world wars in the twentieth century. Thankfully, the German government has taken measures to prevent this from occurring within its country again, having implemented laws on hate speech, and the German government employed its first rabbis to serve as a chaplain within the Bundeswehr. To be clear, there is a difference between militarism and maintaining a strong military. Militarists glorify war and the military, whereas prudent military strategists understand the necessity of a military to protect their country’s national interests. In other words, the difference between militarism and having a military is in the ends of having a military: militarists see war and the military as ends to themselves, whereas prudent strategists view these as means to achieve the ends of security.

Another way to make certain that Germany does not fall back into its militarist past is for it to create a people’s military. Such an ideal is not unfamiliar to German thinking. In fact, Gerhard von Scharnhorst, a high-ranking Prussian military reformer, strongly advocated for such a military. As Trevor Dupuy details in his book, A Genius for War: The German Army and General Staff, 1807-1945, Scharnhorst sought to extend military participation to common Prussians and grant them rights in a new constitution. Scharnhorst’s logic was to create a common identity with the military and Prussian citizens, thereby improving Prussian morale and military effectiveness.

The good news is that today’s Germany has made considerable progress in creating this people’s military. As James Angelos notes, Germany possesses “homeland protection” units within its military reserves, many of its personnel serving as part-time soldiers. To further progress this people’s military, Germany might consider reintroducing military conscription, creating an increase in citizen-soldiers within Germany.

The United States should encourage this development of German civil-military relations. Creating a people’s military within Germany would water two plants with one hose: improve its military effectiveness and solidify its democratic governance amid a strengthened military.  

An independent Europe would be the goal of all this remilitarization and engaged civil-military relations within Germany. Essentially, this would involve Europeans providing for Europe’s security. Germany would lead the way in this increased defense spending effort.

The world is anarchic, meaning there remains no international government to induce order. Creating order and stability is left to the most powerful countries to compromise over their interests. In this world, states can only count on themselves to guarantee their protection. Amid the need for the United States to deal with its domestic issues, such as increasing economic inequality and a mental health crisis, and a world of multiple great powers, it will be difficult for Washington to continue to be the security guarantor in Europe. Prudency and careful analysis are needed in foreign policy. Such statecraft is especially needed in our present world, where history is back with a vengeance in international politics. If we are not careful, we may be at risk of repeating history’s gravest mistakes.

Benjamin Giltner is a student at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M.

This essay won the John Quincy Adams Society’s 2023 Student Foreign Policy Essay Contest.

Image: Shutterstock.

Late last week, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Mark Warner described how over-classification of national security-related information is a key and neglected factor behind the latest, disturbing intelligence leak. “We need frankly a system that limits classification to really important documents and then have a process to declassify when appropriate.” His argument: fewer secrets shared with fewer officials are essential to keep our secrets secret.

He’s on to something. Just before the New York Times first revealed that top secret documents had been posted on social media, my nonprofit released a major study on over-classification. Those in the “know” understand that over-classification is bad but insist officials can’t help themselves: the penalties for letting a document leak far outweigh any professional rewards that might come from making secret information more available.

That’s the conventional wisdom. It’s also dead wrong. In fact, effective national security organizations have strong incentives not to over-classify. There are effective ways to avoid doing so, and one of the most important U.S. intelligence agencies—the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA)—has done it.

This is the key conclusion of a classification project my nonprofit ran for two years. Last month, the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) asked that I privately brief them on the project’s final report. The study subsequently received national attention. It gave examples of how harmful over-classification has become:

• American troops in Afghanistan couldn’t get timely, properly classified imagery from our government. To fight effectively, they had to buy unclassified imagery from private firms, which they could share with their Afghan compatriots.

• The Pentagon recently used a new information restriction—controlled unclassified information (CUI)—to keep unclassified weapons test results from Congress.

• The head of the U.S. Space Force was prohibited from publicly uttering the name of our key spy satellite system (KH-11), even though the media has long and repeatedly referred to it.

• Official historians writing classified studies to help black program managers learn from past mistakes and successes have been unable to find key classified documents because routine archival classification reviews, which would otherwise assure proper document filing, are not being done.

• Wasteful, expensive, duplicative military space programs have been shielded from oversight by special access program classification barriers that effectively block cross-communication and information sharing.

• Draconian security rules discourage innovative firms here and abroad from sharing their best with the Pentagon. These same rules are blocking needed military collaboration with our closest allies.

• Previously unclassified U.S. civilian nuclear export and cooperation information is being kept from Congress even though such commerce might help countries develop nuclear weapons options.

What allows this? In a word, mismanagement.

Currently, our government has over 2,000 security classification guidebooks and roughly 1,400 original classification authorities. Nobody can consult them all, and they don’t. These numbers, and the impossibility of mastering their guidance, are why so many government officials over-classify—it’s safe, it’s easy, and it takes little or no thought.

Fortunately, our best government organizations disagree. A case in point is the NGA. Seven years ago, it recognized it could only succeed if it added value to its imagery and got it to its “customers” quicker than commercial, unclassified space imagery firms. If it continued to deliver its product too late, or made it difficult to share with critical allies and firms, the agency would effectively go out of business.

The NGA was floundering using sixty-five classification guidebooks to classify its imagery. So what did it do? It boiled these down to a single electronic guide, eliminating previously subjective, contradictory guidance. It also required classifiers to justify their proposals to an intra-agency group of users, de-classifiers, historians, and subject-matter experts, and made appeals easy and quick. Finally, it encouraged constant updating of its new consolidated guidebook.

One Senator—Mike Rounds (R-SD)—noticed. He asked the Pentagon to report on how well the NGA’s example is being followed. He saw its model as the one our government should replicate. If it doesn’t, automating the review of the millions of classified documents it generates will be pointless: even the best document filtering system will fail if it follows contradictory and vague guidance that’s inevitable with thousands of different guidebooks and officials acting as classifying authorities.

So, what’s yet to be done? The Biden administration has pledged to tighten up the current system. But Congress must also act. At a minimum, it should fund and authorize dedicated staff to its own declassification policy review unit, the PIDB, which it has so far failed to do. Congress almost did this last year. It needs to get on with it.

Second, Congress should task the PIDB to oversee any government bidding on advanced technology contracts aimed to help automate the classification process. It also should track how many guidebooks, original classifications guidebooks, original classification authorities, classified documents, and declassification requests are being generated and recommend how best to reduce these numbers. 

More, of course, is needed. But skipping these first steps will only ensure we still will have too many classified documents to track to ever keep America’s top secrets from leaking again.

Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, served as deputy for nonproliferation in the Defense Department and is the author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future.

Image: Shutterstock.

The White House released a twelve-page summary report on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan with little fanfare ahead of the Easter holiday. This low-key approach is unsurprising, given that America’s longest war ended in what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley described as a “strategic failure,” and that the national security apparatus has moved on to strategic competition with China and the war in Ukraine.

Yet while the report ostensibly provides context for a series of disastrous decisions that culminated in the deaths of thirteen U.S. service members at the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) in August 2021, it is also notable for what it doesn’t mention: what informed the decision to remove U.S. contractors as part of the operational retrograde. This is especially important considering the Biden administration’s plan relied on the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) to secure the country during the U.S. withdrawal and beyond.

Where Was the Air Support?

The February 2023 Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s (SIGAR) report, titled “Why the Afghan Security Forces Collapsed,” notes that many Afghans thought the bilateral U.S.-Taliban peace agreement was “an act of bad faith and a signal that the U.S. was handing over Afghanistan to the enemy as it rushed to exit the country.” Despite intelligence estimates about when the Afghan government would fall ranging from two years, to somewhere between six to eighteen months, to a month after the U.S. withdrawal, Milley noted that “There are no reports that I am aware of that predicted a security force of 300,000 would evaporate in 11 days.” That is how quickly the Taliban insurgency rapidly took over villages, then provinces, and eventually Kabul itself, as the ANDSF unexpectedly collapsed and the troops melted away. If there was a window to stop or at least slow the Taliban’s advance, it was in those eleven days.

It is here that questions should begin, because, in addition to a sizeable advantage in troop strength over the 80,000 Taliban fighters, the White House report includes the Afghan Air Force (AAF) in its overall assessment of ANDSF capabilities. Unfortunately, the AAF deteriorated before the United States completed the withdrawal and its demise was a predictable (and predicted) outcome not reflected in these intelligence estimates.

Former Afghan Army commander and three-star general Sami Sadat authored a blistering New York Times opinion essay expressing his anger over the peace agreement that cut off contractor support for the fledgling AAF attack and support aircraft fleet when it was critically needed to halt the Taliban offensive. In addition to military forces, the agreement specified that the United States would withdraw “all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel.” Accordingly, Sadat proclaimed that most of the 17,000 contractors were withdrawn by July 2021, “taking their proprietary software and weapons systems with them.” Consequently, the Afghan military lost its “superiority to the Taliban when our air support dried up and our ammunition ran out.”

The SIGAR report corroborates Sadat’s arguments and frustrations. Specifically, it states the AAF “was the greatest advantage the force had over the Taliban” but was not projected to be self-sufficient until at least 2030. The report also explains that the “decision to withdraw on-site contract maintenance from Afghanistan in May 2021 reduced the availability of operational aircraft and removed maintenance instruction at key regional airfields…As a result, ANDSF units complained that they lacked enough ammunition, food, water, and other military equipment to sustain military engagements against the Taliban.”

The SIGAR report concludes that the reduction of U.S. support “destroyed the morale of Afghan soldiers and police.” As demonstrated by Ukraine’s armed forces defending their homeland against a Russian aggressor more than a year after many analysts (wrongly) predicted the government would fall within days or weeks, morale and the will to fight can offset numeric superiority.

Questions to be Asked, Lessons to be Learned

If withdrawing contractors from the AAF was the seminal event described in the SIGAR report and by Sami Sadat, then these decisions warrant greater analysis and consideration going forward. The risk of prematurely cutting off contractor support should concern the Pentagon and policymakers. The demand for contractor support in efforts to advance U.S. national interests is unlikely to abate anytime soon. Moreover, some argue that such contractors have become a permanent element of the U.S. military force structure. If true, it behooves senior leaders in Washington to learn the right lessons from the Afghanistan experience and clarify policy going forward. The U.S. House’s various committees that provide oversight and perform investigations can positively contribute to these efforts by accessing classified reports and calling witnesses to provide a more robust analysis of the situation and the decisions made by military commanders and senior officials.

While one can criticize the United States for setting up the ANDSF for failure by providing an air force that is “too technologically advanced for its native country to sustain,” this risk was known to senior leaders before the withdrawal announcement. The White House summary report notes that President Joe Biden “took the advice of his military commanders on the tactical decisions regarding the operational retrograde of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, including the dates they closed facilities, and he regularly asked them if there was anything else they needed.” The House committees should summon these commanders to Capitol Hill and query them about these conversations and the impact of withdrawing AAF contractors. For example, there were legitimate concerns about force protection requirements for contractors in Afghanistan during the retrograde. What were the discussions regarding risk and was there a mitigation plan? Were there any deliberations about continuing AAF contractor work outside of the country?

In June 2021, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates argued that “we should encourage the Afghan government to retain or engage contractor support for the Afghan Air Force and other key logistical and operational elements of the Afghan security forces – and we should pay for that support (including private security to protect those contractors).” Such an arrangement would allow American and other foreign contractors to remain in Afghanistan and maintain the AAF throughout the U.S. withdrawal and possibly beyond. House committees should inquire whether the Biden administration ever seriously considered such proposals.

Previously, I personally lauded the Biden administration for applying lessons learned from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Specifically, I appreciated the extensive consultations and diplomatic efforts to rally NATO and lead a broader international coalition focused on countering Russian president Vladimir Putin’s ambitions and upholding the international order. That said, the “train, advise, assist” approach to build and sustain security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is not applicable to the Ukraine case because the United States does not have military troops conducting these activities in the country. Instead, training the Ukrainian Armed Forces is occurring in Europe and the United States. The contractor support issue will be interesting to watch as Ukraine receives and employs more Western equipment on the battlefield.

While I supported President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and am sympathetic to the constraints and deadlines inherited from his predecessor, he had agency for the withdrawal debacle that occurred on his watch. He should answer questions about whether his administration truly planned “for all contingencies – including a rapid deterioration of the security situation” as described in the summary report. Despite the political theater all too common in Washington these days, House committees should view the White House summary report as an opportunity for sober and bipartisan oversight to find out exactly what transpired, determine appropriate accountability, and codify lessons learned that can be applied in future operations.

Jim Cook is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed here are his own.

Image: Shutterstock.

When Erion Veliaj, the reformist mayor of Albania’s capital, promotes his plans to modernize and transform Tirana into a high-tech hub offering jobs and promise to his country, he imagines the city as “the Tel Aviv of the Balkans,” alluding to Israel’s largest city—a vibrant metropolis that was celebrated by the New York Times as the “Capital of Mediterranean Cool” and the headquarters for the country’s high-tech industries.

With its large and innovative sector, Israel, which is celebrating seventy-five years of independence next week, has produced more start-up companies on a per capita basis than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and all of Europe, and has more businesses listed on the NASDAQ than those of any other foreign country. Hence the reference to Israel as “Start-Up Nation.”

But Israel’s technological miracle has to do with more than just the success stories of several Israeli companies. It reflects in many ways the ability of that nation, with its Western outlook and first-rate higher education system, to employ its scientific instructions, financial system, and talented workforce to emerge as a winner in the global economy at the beginning of this century.

To put it differently, the achievements of “Start-up Nation” and the market economy—which turned Israel into a hotbed of innovation in software, artificial intelligence, chips, medical equipment, biotech, electronics, and wireless communications—were built on foundations that reflect first and foremost the progressive values of a modern population that was adhering to liberal democratic principles, the rule of law, women rights, free press, and religious freedom.

Relatedly, this is why Tel Aviv Pride is among the biggest annual gay events in the world and certainly the biggest in Asian continent. The open and buzzing cultural scene of what many in Israel call “the State of Tel Aviv” goes hand in hand with the spirit of innovation of its technology industry and the strength of the Israeli currency, the shekel.

From that perspective, Israel’s recent political turmoil in Israel exposed the fragility of these foundations of Start-Up Nation; they are weakened by the hard-right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who tries to push through a package of legislation that would undermine the independence of the courts, ultimately weakening the shekel.

In a way, the crisis in Israel is pitting the residents of the State of Tel Aviv—Israeli professionals with academic degrees that constitute the cultural and commercial elites of Israel, including its high-tech entrepreneurs—against a coalition of ethno-nationalists and ultra-Orthodox Jews who in the name of the “people” are trying to take control of vast political power sans the checks and balances required for the functioning of a liberal democracy and a market economy, and who are turning it into an illiberal democracy a la Hungary.

It was not surprising that many of the protests against the Israeli government were directly coordinated by high-tech entrepreneurs and investors, warning that Israel’s “Startup Nation” reputation would be threatened if the rule of law became questioned at home and abroad. In one demonstration, the tech industry protesters put a mock locomotive in the middle of Tel Aviv, decorated with signs saying “High Tech is the locomotive of the Israeli economy and democracy is its fuel.” Some of these protesters are threatening to leave Israel for Silicon Valley if the government succeeds in passing the proposed legislation.

Their concern is that, even if some sort of a compromise between the government and the opposition is reached, the current uproar demonstrates the shape of things to come. The proponents of illiberal democracy in Israel want to turn the Jewish state into a theocracy, and will continue strengthening their political power in the coming years, particularly if, as expected, the percentage of ultra-orthodox in the country increases and the residents of the State of Tel Aviv become a minority.

Ultra-orthodox Jews, or Haredim, are the fastest-growing demographic group in Israel, already close to 14 percent of the total national population; with their current growth rate of 4 percent, they are expected to constitute 16 percent of the population by the end of the decade, or about a quarter of all Israeli Jews in 2040.

Young ultra-Orthodox men study religious texts in yeshiva seminaries, which are funded by the government but impart an exceedingly limited formal secular education. These individuals do not learn a core curriculum of math, science, and English. As a result, the majority of the members of the community, with the men (who unlike secular Jews don’t perform the mandatory military service) continuing to study the Torah are not part of the workforce and remain dependent on state funding.

A report published last year by the Programme for International Student Assessment, commonly known as PISA, last year suggested as the number of Jewish students learning in Yeshivas has been growing, Israel’s ranking for fifteen-year-olds has been steadily falling, with Israel ranking very low in math (32nd) and science (33rd), as the widening gap between Ultra-Orthodox and secular Jewish students continues to expand.

So while 10 percent of Israel’s workforce is now employed in the tech industry, the world’s highest proportion, many doubt that will last. Indeed, the dazzling high-tech industry is diverting attention from a changing reality in which a segment of Israeli society and economy has all the markings of a third-world culture.

As their numbers rise in the Israeli population, the political parties representing the ultra-Orthodox and other religious sects have gained more political power. For the first time in Israel’s history, with thirty-three seats in the Knesset (parliament), the religious parties constitute a majority in the governing Israeli coalition.

While in the past much of the demands by the religious parties centered on increasing government support for their religious institutions, the ultra-Orthodox and their religious allies are now trying to move beyond that limited agenda and transform the country’s political system through their proposed legislation.

That legislation weakens the current civil rights safeguards and allows the government to keep public transportation closed on the Sabbath and separate men and women in educational and public institutions. Not to mention that the religious parties are continuing to press for an ultra-nationalist agenda, including the building of new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, which they want to annex to Israel.

Considering that close to 25 percent of the Israeli population is now Arab, adding the percentage of ultra-Orthodox Jews and other religious Jews to that number, suggests that Westernized liberal secular Jews, whose ancestors were the driving force in the Zionist project, are gradually a minority in their own country. This raises the following question: would their children and grandchildren want to continue living in a country where the responsibility for securing Israel and developing its economy lies exclusively on their shoulders while they defend and subsidize a sizable percentage of the country’s population?

Moreover, the growing influence of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox and ultra-nationalists could lead at some point to the annexation of the occupied Arab territories, with Arabs constituting at least 50 percent of the population in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. That raises the specter of Israel turning into a third-world Middle Eastern country, that, like Lebanon would be ravaged by ethnic and religious wars. The Start-Up Nation would turn into a distant memory.

Dr. Leon Hadar, a contributing editor at The National Interest, has taught international relations at American University and was a research fellow with the Cato Institute. A former UN correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, he currently covers Washington for the Business Times of Singapore and is a columnist/blogger with Israel’s Haaretz.

Image: David Cohen/Shutterstock.

On a recent state visit to Beijing, French president Emmanuel Macron declared that his country would not feel obligated to support the United States in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” Macron said.

These calculated remarks reveal a selfish and cynical perspective. Macron expects America to shoulder the lion’s share of the burden for the war in Ukraine, yet feels France has no obligation to support the United States in the event of war in the Pacific. So, to borrow Macron’s phrase from his remarks at the White House last December, we must be “brothers in arms” on Ukraine, but America must go it alone with China.

Macron’s statement should spark Washington to review the United States’ status as the lead donor to the Ukrainian cause. Congress should request that the Biden administration provide a full accounting of what France and other European partners have contributed to Ukraine over the last fourteen months, both individually and as members of the European Union. This request should also require a breakdown of the nature of that support. The House of Representatives should also make clear that it won’t consider any future requests for additional funding for Ukraine until it has received this accounting.

President Joe Biden has framed the war in Ukraine—most notably in his February speech in Warsaw—as an existential global struggle for democracy undertaken in conjunction with European allies. Macron’s comments expose this justification as disingenuous. The existence of Taiwan’s flourishing democracy, just 100 miles off China’s shores, disproves the PRC’s oft-repeated lie that the Chinese people do not want democracy as it is foreign to their cultural heritage. It is hard to imagine a more direct threat to freedom than a PRC invasion of a successful Chinese democracy. Yet, in the case of Taiwan, Macron finds no need to lend a hand in the struggle for democracy, nor any obligation to help those American brothers in arms who liberated his country in World War II.

Macron’s comments were so poorly received that even Chancellor Olaf Scholtz of Germany hurried to distance himself from them. Scholtz indicated that, in the event of a conflict, Berlin would not let either Taiwan or the United States down. He placed the burden on China not to escalate tensions around the island.

But all our European allies should be on notice that the days of the United States bearing a disproportionate burden for Ukraine while also being expected to go alone against China over Taiwan are running out, and that more will be required of them than “moral support.” While many partners in what Donald Rumsfeld once called “New Europe” are stepping up to the plate and contributing more than their fair share, this audit would provide clarity as to what France and Germany—the European Union’s two largest economies—are and are not contributing to the defense of democracy on their own continent.

Recent intelligence leaks disclosed, among other state secrets, that the Defense Department assesses that Ukraine is running short of a range of supplies. This suggests that Biden’s oft-repeated strategy for Ukraine—“as much as it takes for as long as it takes”—is failing. In addition, these documents have revealed a contingent of Special Forces Operators stationed at the U.S. embassy in Kiev, despite frequent administration assurances that there will be no U.S. boots on the ground in Ukraine. As well as an accounting of the contributions our European partners are making, Congress must demand clarification of what Biden’s strategy on Ukraine actually is, that the administration provide a realistic assessment of what it will take to make it successful, and how that investment might impact our ability to counter China.

The bottom line on Ukraine is that, given the multi-valiant threats the United States faces around the globe, America cannot care more about European security than the Europeans do, especially if continental leaders such as Emmanuel Macron openly declare their intent to abandon America when the United States might need them the most.

America needs allies who understand the unique pressures the United States faces and can see the larger picture beyond what is happening in their own backyards. And if that is too much to ask, those same allies can start taking the lead in a war that is, after all, a far more direct threat to them than it is to America.

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

Victoria Coates is a senior research fellow at Heritage’s Thatcher Center for Freedom.

Image: Shutterstock.

Asked at a recent event, when asked what possible plans his country had or would support for its relationship with Russia once the conflict between it and Ukraine ends, a senior member of a NATO-country parliament and political party official replied, “None at all. At least while Putin is still in charge.” That would be a serious mistake, not only because of Russia’s inherent, domestic attributes but also because of its relations with other countries, especially (but not only) with China. NATO allies, and Ukraine itself, need to find an acceptable blueprint for engaging with Russia after the war.

The palpable fury at the Kremlin by Ukraine and the NATO allies is driving their policies toward Russia. We have not seen such an intentional, deliberate, indiscriminate, barbaric assault turning entire regions and towns, hospitals, schools, nurseries, homes, and power plants into rubble and concrete graveyards since the Wehrmacht attack against Poland and the Soviet Union.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has established the unambiguous Ukrainian objective: "We will only stop when we bring our country back to the borders of 1991. We will return the Ukrainian flag to every corner of Ukraine." That understandable ambition is almost certainly beyond the grasp of the Ukrainian forces. Yet Russia is also unlikely to achieve Vladimir Putin’s goal of terminating Ukraine’s independence, decapitating its government, re-occupying all or almost all of the country, and absorbing it within a Greater Russia. It seems unlikely to even recapture all of the Donbas at this time. Short of resort to its tactical nuclear arsenal, it does not have the military resources—troops, hardware, munitions, leadership, strategy or elan—to do so. Still, neither side is (yet) willing to settle for a ceasefire in which, like World War I, the two forces are dug indefinitely into trenches running down half of the Donbas.

Zelensky has rightfully noted that 2023 is key to Ukraine’s goal. Ukrainian forces must be able within the year to turn the tide and make significant advances expelling Russian forces in the east and the south. If they cannot, the tide of the war will most probably turn against them and in favor of Russia or of a stalemate. The Ukrainian people cannot indefinitely withstand the desolation visited upon them. Their remarkable valor, endurance, and granite resistance cannot last indefinitely, nor will their own assets or the economic, political, and military support of allied countries. None of that portends a Russian victory—it means only that at least parts of the Donbas and probably most, if not all, of Crimea would remain in Russian hands, meaning that de jure borders would sooner or later adjust to the de facto realities. Ukraine’s allies will need to work with Kyiv to develop and support a realistic strategy through 2023 and, preferably, to some kind of victory acceptable to and achievable by Ukrainians.

Still, notwithstanding NATO outrage at Russian aggression and atrocities, international ostracism does not provide a judicious prescription for relations particularly for a country as large and important as Russia once the wanton carnage has ended or abated. True statecraft requires a sagacious perspective on long-term as well as immediate-term policies. Russia will not disappear, although Putin might.

If anger and hostility are to be the hallmarks of NATO-country policies toward Russia, the result would be a line of enmity from the Barents Sea, down the eastern frontiers of Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Ukraine to the Black Sea and, depending on the disposition of Turkey, possibly to the Mediterranean—in effect, a recreation of the Cold War 450 miles to the east. It would mean a border of animosity between whole civilizations, each with huge armies and economies, and with nuclear armaments capable of turning one another into a pulverized (and now also radioactive) wreckage. The celebration of the end of the last Cold War three decades ago and its replacement by a peace, however stoney and contingent, would be reversed. Surely that cannot be the only or let alone the best option.

Justifiable anger toward toward Russia cannot blind policymakers to what it really is: an expansive county with extensive human and natural resources; a federation of republics, the largest country in the world spanning eleven time zones; really, a kind of empire in its own right. Moreover, it has a long history and a commensurate sense of itself as great power in Eurasia and an imperial chronicle three centuries old. It commands very substantial armed forces, however much now depleted, and it has nuclear weapons and systems of delivery that could obliterate an adversary even if Russia itself were also devastated in the process. In addition, even if Russia could be ostracized from the West, it cannot be sequestered from the rest of the world, and although it would pay an enormous price were it to be isolated by the West, so too would the countries attempting the isolation. Finally, it cannot be in the U.S. interest to see Russia pushed into the arms of China and thus find itself confronting two colossi rolled into one challenger. Russia is not some barely inhabited Pacific atoll, and it would be both foolhardy and arrogant, even self-defeating, to try treating it as one.

By far the better strategy is, if possible, to induce Putin (or his successor) with his enervated forces and economy to negotiate a tolerable resolution, and to provide clear benefits for doing so. Among those benefits would be a return to global commerce, an end to sanctions, and—unlike the end of the Cold War—treatment as the global power that it is rather than the humiliation it felt in the 1990s. Instead of “no relationship at all,” Russia—with or without Putin—should be integrated as far as practicable into the European family not as a supplicant seeking the forbearance of its superiors. None of that requires restraint in supporting Ukraine now or restraint in responding to Russia’s barbaric aggression. It requires only that carrots, not just sticks, be available in the process and that the NATO allies keep in mind that the objective is a better status quo not a worse one.

Gerald F. (“Jerry”) Hyman has been a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies since 2007. He held several positions at USAID from 1990–2007, including director of its Office of Democracy and Governance from 2002–2007. He has published widely.

Image: Shutterstock.

While this week’s White House meeting between Colombian president Gustavo Petro and U.S. president Joe Biden saw no major announcements, the meeting itself was historic—and shows that both countries understand the importance of maintaining a close relationship in spite of policy differences.

The irony of his Washington visit was probably not lost on Petro. The Colombian leader has often commented on the way that his transition from Marxist guerrilla to mainstream politician—and his country’s first progressive president—has shaped his view of the United States. After shaking hands and exchanging gifts with CIA director William Burns in Bogota in October, Petro remarked: “A few decades ago we might have been enemies, today I’m giving him a hammock and a bag of sugar.”

This relationship has not been easy. Petro has been deeply critical of Colombia’s traditional counternarcotics approach, which has been a pillar of the U.S.-Colombia relationship over the last three decades. While coca cultivation and cocaine production numbers have reached record highs, Petro is emphasizing the need to provide economic opportunities in rural areas over conventional military-led crop eradication.

The Colombian president’s trademark domestic policy is a plan for “total peace” that includes dialogue not only with that country’s last remaining rebel army, the National Liberation Army (ELN), but also with other organized crime groups that control much of the countryside. His administration is attempting to address inequality by proposing major pension, healthcare, and labor market reforms, and has promised to better address the needs of underrepresented indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities.

The ambitious agenda isn’t surprising. Petro took office in August promising to lead an agenda of change to reshape Colombia’s political and economic landscape. That’s precisely what he is working for.

While there will inevitably be points of disagreement between Washington and Bogota, the historic and strategic nature of this partnership needs to be preserved. One year ago, Biden called Colombia the “linchpin” to the hemisphere. The United States needs to preserve and strengthen its linchpins. In a rapidly changing global order, and with geopolitical rivals trying to shore up their own relations in our hemisphere, it is more important than ever for the United States to deepen alliances with longstanding hemispheric allies.

It's a relationship that is far deeper than policy and economic interests. Even at the level of people-to-people diplomacy, Colombia and the United States have a special relationship. Colombians have among the most favorable views of the United States in the region.

Productive engagement with the Petro administration—both on the issues where there are disagreements and those where there is common cause (including a resolution to the Venezuela crisis and addressing climate change)—should be a top priority during and after the White House visit. Rhetoric aside, U.S. policymakers should operate under the reality that Petro understands the value of a productive relationship with Washington. He knows U.S. cooperation is essential to enact his domestic agenda.

Progress won't be easy, but it is possible for both the U.S. and Colombian administrations to chart a way forward based on shared priorities of peace, prosperity, security, and regional diplomacy. This approach—one of patient engagement that prioritizes interests over ideology—is gaining traction in Washington. On Capitol Hill this week, Senators Ben Cardin and Bill Hagerty presided as Honorary Co-Chairs over the launch of the US-Colombia Advisory Group, a high-level group of experts, policymakers, and private sector and civil society representatives.

The group aims to encourage productive bilateral engagement for this new chapter in U.S.-Colombia relations. As Colombia tries to move beyond its armed conflict and address the needs of areas hardest hit by violence, there is a clear role for the United States in supporting efforts to build state presence and rule of law across its territory. Doing so may require taking a hard look at best practices in security and drug policy cooperation.

Building a more prosperous Colombia should also present new opportunities for investment. But many investors remain concerned by the rapid pace of changes to the country’s longstanding economic model – from major overhauls to tax policy to reforms of the health and pension systems. As a free-trade partner, Colombia has an opportunity to capture new domestic and foreign investment as momentum toward nearshoring advances in our hemisphere. Moving forward, with Petro’s robust social agenda, reassurances of a healthy investment climate will be essential.

Navigating tensions will require an approach that builds on consensus. While the two administrations may differ on their views toward Venezuela, the White House has applauded Petro’s plans to hold an international conference in the coming days in support of ongoing negotiations between the opposition and Maduro government to restore the country’s democratic institutions. This kind of coordination, based on a relationship of mutual respect, could provide a foundation for future cooperation on other complex diplomatic issues.

The fact that Biden and Petro reaffirmed shared interests at the White House is a good sign. But it is essential for this affirmation of common cause to be echoed more broadly. The leadership of the U.S. Senate, including Senators Cardin and Hagerty, to advance our shared agenda goes back to the core of what has made the U.S.-Colombia partnership successful: long-term, bipartisan Congressional prioritization of our bilateral ties alongside a willing Colombian government. Coming out of Petro’s visit, the greatest accomplishment will be agreement on a route forward to ensure that our partnership can adapt to the new reality of the relationship while ensuring that core U.S. strategic interests remain at the top of that agenda.

Jason Marczak (@jmarczak) is Senior Director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center/

Geoff Ramsey (@gramsey_latam) is the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center’s Senior Fellow for Colombia and Venezuela.

The Center launched its new US-Colombia Advisory Group on April 18.

Image: Dmitrij Plehanov/Shutterstock.

The long-term energy crisis provoked by the war in Ukraine has been economically destructive to the entire world—Europe faces the prospect of deindustrialization, coal factories have been turned back on, countries in the Global South have been priced out of liquified natural gas markets, and so on. Yet demand for energy is expected to keep growing. Higher energy prices reverberate throughout the entire economy, and arguably where oil prices go, there go prices for everything since over 6,000 daily products emanate from petroleum derivatives.

Given this situation, one thing is very clear: only nuclear power is carbon-free and able to meet growing U.S. calls for electrification and global needs for basic economic growth. Nuclear power works to alleviate the dependence on oil and gas, since it is abundant, energy dense, and can be a tool against Middle East geopolitical mechanisms used against whatever U.S. president is in office.

America is Investing in Nuclear

Washington is cognizant of this necessity. In April 2022, two senators introduced the International Nuclear Energy Act of 2022 to enable a “whole-of-government” strategy for U.S. global leadership in civil nuclear technologies, including advanced nuclear technology (ANT). Nuclear power is now at the forefront of safe, reliable, emission-free ways to produce electricity and thermal heat. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, approximately 70 small modular reactors (SMRs) concepts are currently under research and development.

Globally, there are roughly nine different types of SMR designs. These are fluid projections since new Generation IV (Gen IV) technologies are rapidly changing. For the United States, companies such as NuScale Power’s VOYGR SMR design to Kairos Power’s Fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor; and Westinghouse’s eVinci Heat pipe-cooled microreactor are leading the way for ANT.

Gen IV reactors and SMRs offer financial benefits and improvements from Generation III-III+ reactors with their ability to produce electricity at a lower operational cost over the life of the power plant. Moreover, SMRs offer lower initial capital investment, greater scalability, and sitting flexibility for locations unable or unwilling to accommodate larger light water reactor power plants. The potential for enhanced safety and security compared to previous designs makes advanced reactors desirable moving forward. This drives economic growth and high-paying professions in the nuclear industry.

Alternatives to Nuclear Aren’t Enough

Unfortunately, nuclear power has been demonized, and many believe it should be fought against at all costs. Nothing could be further from the truth. Approximately 200 people have died of radiation from nuclear accidents in over sixty years. These numbers are inclusive of accidents at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. Counting cancer diagnoses among people exposed to radiation from these accidents, the harm from a nuclear power plant compared to the effects of coal pollution or methane emissions from natural-gas-fired power plants is definitive proof why nuclear power is the best choice for energy and electricity when all factors are considered.

Speaking of coal, the recent dramatic increase in coal use numbers more than echo the call for greater nuclear power. Despite global promises, 2022 witnessed “the coal fleet grow by 19.5 gigawatts, enough to light up around 15 million homes.” New coal plants were predominantly added in China and India, then Indonesia, Turkey, and Zimbabwe. If nuclear power were deployed instead of coal, global emissions would have declined instead of growth in the United States and abroad.

But what about the counter-argument of using renewables? The wind and the sun are always free, and no matter what OPEC, the international oil cartel, conjures up the change in energy prices can be countered with natural resources.

If only that were true. Renewables use enormous amounts of materials compared to nuclear and fossil fuels. It is a misnomer to say renewables are carbon-free compared to nuclear power. Whereas nuclear power accounts for all materials through the decommissioning phase—and surprisingly, 90 percent of all materials from a nuclear power plant can be recycled—compared to old wind and solar platforms, which generate millions of tons of waste. The International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that old solar panel disposal to meet 2050 Paris Accords “will more than double the tonnage of all of today’s global plastic waste.”

Of course, nuclear power plants themselves require enormous amounts of steel, rebar, concrete, wiring, plastics, and other materials. But a nuclear power plant reliably performs and isn’t intermittent, unreliable, or variable. As an example, a typical wind turbine demands “900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic” to function. Solar power requires even more metals, cement, steel, and glass. Renewables have their uses in non-grid applications, some microgrids, and remote applications, but to build enough wind turbines and solar panels to supply at least half the electricity needed for global consumption “would require two billions tons of coal to produce the concrete and steel, along with two billion barrels of oil to make the composite blades. [And] more than 90% of the world’s solar panels are built in Asia on coal-heavy electrical grids.”

Nuclear power plants do not run into heavy fossil fuel conditions nor do they need to be replaced within a mere ten to twenty years the way industrial solar and wind farms need replacement under current technology. A nuclear power plant does not warrant nearly the amount of land renewables confiscate, and this is where the greatest advantage lies. True, coal-fired and natural-gas-fired power plants also do not require significant amounts of land. But it is the land-use issue that is crucial for why nuclear power can solve global and environmental energy woes. Nuclear will play a leading role in mitigating the effects of high land-usage renewables on the grid, and growing populations in India, Africa, and Asia gaining carbon-free electricity according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Nuclear’s Time Has Come

The United States’ nuclear industry has had a tough stretch, but the biggest obstacle to advanced reactor progress, lower emissions, and geopolitical stability is the modern environmental movement. What once was meant for good has taken on the stench of Malthusianism. Nuclear can also solve that woe.

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

A rather poorly-formed argument questioning Hungary’s loyalty to NATO has emerged in recent months over its opposition to Russian sanctions and calls for negotiations with Moscow. Some have even called for the country’s suspension from the alliance. But critics ignore Hungary’s real-world military-industrial buildup and humanitarian aid support provided to Ukraine which, unlike the fuel sanctions against Russia, has actually produced results and ultimately serve to strengthen NATO.

Were NATO’s leaders to heed calls for Hungary’s dismissal, they would be playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin by creating fissures within the alliance and ignoring the steps the country has made that benefit the alliance’s defensive posture.

Since former President Donald Trump’s call for European NATO members to step up their game, Hungarians have undertaken an unprecedented effort to modernize their defense forces; an act that was ironically characterized as “democratic backsliding” in 2020 before becoming in vogue again with Putin’s aggression. Whereas Germany mostly failed to deliver on Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s grand speeches of plans to expand his nation’s military might, Budapest has actually begun to push a lot more capital into the defense sector; as much as $1.4 billion.

Defense industry firms have taken note. Europe-based military contractors such as Dynamit Nobel Defense, Colt CZ Group, and Rheinmetall have been attracted to Hungary for its existing industrial base and its need to upgrade its national military arsenal. While the current focus is to modernize Hungary’s own forces, the country’s central location on the European continent makes it a prime logistics node for transporting products all around Europe to other NATO partners.

The most prominent example has been Rheinmetall. The German manufacturer has begun initial production of the Lynx infantry fighting vehicle with full production scheduled to commence in July of this year. The Lynx is predicted to become a favorite of NATO’s forces, potentially replacing the Bradley fighting vehicle, a long-time workhorse for Western militaries. Hungary was the first customer. The Lynx also has the potential to operate remotely without putting a crew in danger, which explains Rheinmetall’s manufacturing plant being built as part of the Zalazone complex in Zalaegerszeg,  a testing track as well as a research and development center for self-driving cars. Clearly, the industry considers Hungary important for the future of European defense.

All of these developments seem to escape Hungary’s fierce critics, who continue to paint the country as a traitor to the West rather than a crucial pillar for its defense due to its divergence from the collective message-signaling opposition to Russia.

With regards to Western economic sanctions, they are not a prerogative of NATO but rather of the EU, and Hungary has in fact voted in favor of every single one of them despite Budapest’s serious concerns that sanctions will not achieve their intended goal of debilitating Russia enough to end the war.

Besides ignoring the facts on the ground, there is clearly a double standard when it comes to judging Hungary versus the rest of Europe. If any deviation from mainstream EU position on the war or act of dissent is treasonous, then what do we call France after Macron’s calls for negotiations with Russia? Or Germany’s initial refusal to provide tanks for Ukraine’s war? Should these countries also be suspended from NATO? Don’t hold your breath for an answer.

As an American currently in Hungary, I am rooting for a victory for the West in the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II. Believe me: there is not a whole lot of sympathy for Putin on the streets of Budapest or in the countryside. Hungary has, in fact, shown greater support for Ukraine than anybody dares to give the country credit: over two million refugees fleeing the conflict have received safe passage and support from Hungary, with approximately 200,000 taking asylum here. That alone is equal to the population of Hungary’s second-largest city. Yet you don’t see refugee camps anywhere in Hungary. Why? Because Hungarians literally let their Ukrainian neighbors live with them in their spare rooms, vacation homes, or converted basements. Some have housed total strangers for over a year for free—a notable contribution for the citizenry of such a small nation. One is curious to know if other countries in the West have made such efforts.

Along with ignoring Hungary’s humanitarian efforts, the country’s loudest critics have no appreciation of the efforts of the country’s men and women in uniform to defend NATO’s eastern flank. Last year, a battalion of Hungarian troops deployed along the nation’s border with Ukraine, providing aid to Ukrainian refugees as well as standing ready to fight should Putin’s ambitions push farther westward. Last year, the Hungarian Air Force led aerial defense efforts patrolling the Baltic region, keeping watch for Russian incursions into NATO airspace.

At the heart of the conflict between Russia and the West lies the most important principle: freedom. Just as Ukraine has the right to self-determination, nations of the West cooperate in an alliance of consensus, not submission. One must not forget that Hungary has a long history of living under foreign oppression—including the Russians. The “obey or be punished” line brings back memories of imperialism and occupation the Hungarians suffered at the hands of the Soviets, not the democratic collaboration that America fosters.

The consequences have already become manifest. In the shadow of Budapest approving Finland’s application to the alliance is its continued deferment of approving Sweden’s admission. When Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson demanded an explanation, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán (no relation), had an answer at the ready. During Kristersson’s previous position as head of Sweden’s Moderate Party, he had called for the EU to “break Hungary’s development” through financial pressure in response to “xenophobia,” and “renouncing support to Ukraine,” despite all Hungary’s actions showing directly the opposite. Asking for help from a nation that one previously tried to morally posture over does not make for good political optics. A recent Hungarian parliamentary delegation’s affirmative call for Sweden’s application to NATO lends hope that the storm will pass, but the affair demonstrates the folly of states sowing bad blood when bigger dangers loom.

Implementing a policy of conformity and “purification” within NATO will only widen fissures between member states. To avoid that, the West must prioritize unity along with tangible accomplishments like Hungary’s growing military industry and support to Ukraine’s exiles while setting aside the virtue-signaling that its detractors espouse. The former will strengthen Europe’s defense while the latter will strengthen the power that NATO is meant to keep at bay and out of Europe: Russia.

Logan C. West is an American visiting research fellow at the Danube Institute in Budapest, Hungary. His research focuses on geopolitics and cyber affairs of Eastern and Central Europe. Logan is also a graduate student at the Institute of World Politics in Washington DC.

The top UN Development Program official in Baghdad warned that an increase in global temperature will decrease the fresh water available to Iraqis by 20 percent. Basra, Iraq’s second most populous city, which sits at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, is already dying of thirst, its water contaminated and its population decreasing.

Israel, too, faces tremendous environmental stress on its water supply, yet has mastered the process of desalination. Its efforts are so successful, it has been pumping desalinated water into its natural reservoir, Lake Kinneret. So advanced is Israeli desalination that former Arizona governor Doug Ducey described the Jewish state  as “the world’s water superpower.” Accordingly, the arid southwestern state has awarded Israel contracts to deal with Arizona’s water shortage. Azerbaijan is also an Israeli customer.

Why not Iraq? Water can become the basis for formal peace between Israel and Iraq. The latter could reap the rewards of peace as soon as November when the United Arab Emirates (UAE) hosts the UN climate conference COP28.

At COP27, held in Egypt in November, the UAE brokered a water-for-energy deal between Israel and Jordan. Jordanian farms produce 600 megawatts of solar energy that it exports to Israel, which in turn uses the energy to desalinate sea water and pump it to Jordan, the second most arid country in the world. This water is just one of the benefits that flowed from Amman’s decision to make peace with Israel in 1994.

Iraq is the country fifth most vulnerable to climate change. Suffering through water shortages and sand storms prompted Baghdad to organize a conference last month in which Prime Minister Muhammad al-Sudani promised to plant five million palm trees to combat sand storms. The Iraqi Environment Ministry produced a documentary to spread awareness about global warming, while Iraq’s environmental NGOs—Humat Dijlah (Arabic for “defenders of the Tigris”) and Nature Iraq—have also launched several campaigns.

Yet Baghdad has no ideas on how to solve its water problem, other than having Turkey allow more flow on the Tigris.

Iraq desperately needs Israeli desalination technology, which in turn requires moving toward peace. Instead, Baghdad has been going in the opposite direction, passing an absurd law that punishes with death or life in prison anyone “who places a call to the Zionist entity.” Iraqis loyal to Iran and Qatar even criticized Sudani for participating in the U.S.-sponsored virtual Summit for Democracy because Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also took part.

The Iraqi law says that its goal is to “preserve national, Islamic, and humanitarian principles and popular Iraqi wishes in defending Palestine, its people, and all the other Arab peoples whose lands are under [Israeli] occupation.”

Stoking popular resentment of Israel has a long history in Iraq, yet doing so now directly undermines the national interest in a secure supply of water.

Emirati plans include a Water Security Strategy 2036, which aims at reducing water consumption by 21 percent, increase water efficiency, improve water quality by reducing pollution, and achieving “universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water to all by increasing national water storage capacity.” Israeli universities and companies have been involved in jointly researching and achieving further efficiency in water production.

Gulf countries have already been trying to benefit from the Israeli desalination model.  Oman hosts MEDRC, a center established in 1996 as part of the Middle East peace process and tasked with finding “solutions to freshwater scarcity.” Members of MEDRC’s executive council include Israel, Oman, and Qatar, even though neither Gulf nation has relations with Israel. Water is indispensable.

Iraq—the second largest oil exporter in OPEC—should follow in the UAE’s footsteps, not only by switching to clean energy, but also by suing for peace with Israel and benefiting from Israeli innovation that can solve Iraq’s water problems.

So far, Iraq seems to be heavily invested in COP28. The Iraqi Embassy in Abu Dhabi has been recruiting young environmental activists to expand the Iraqi delegation at the summit. Just as Jordan benefited at the previous summit, COP28 offers Iraq a golden opportunity to enlist the help of the UAE and Israel in dealing with its thirst problems. The Iraqi government should convince parliament that desalination is a life-or-death priority, so now is the time to make peace.

Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow Hussain on Twitter: @hahussain.

Image: Luciano Santandreu/Shutterstock.