The National Interest

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine relies on old tanks but new tactics—engaging in a hybrid war of bullets, propaganda, cyberattacks, nuclear bluster, and economic bullying. This last tactic is broad and indiscriminate, aimed at Ukraine and the democratic, rules-based order. Russia has unleashed comprehensive economic warfare, using its energy sector, currency reserves, and infiltration of Western financial systems to sow division within Europe and build deeper economic alliances with China and Iran. Comprehensive and long-lasting financial isolation must be enforced to show the world that the global financial order will no longer tolerate Russia’s military expansionism and economic disruption.

The United States has responded to Russia’s unjust war on Ukraine, unleashing its own economic weaponry of sanctions and export controls, targeting leaders and oligarchs who push the conflict forward and feed the Kremlin’s war machine. The United States and Europe have unified to cut some Russian banks off from the SWIFT messaging system, freeze Russia’s overseas currency reserves, cap the price of Russian oil, and deny access to the Western financial system. The Western private sector, too, has fled Russia in substantial numbers, divesting assets and writing off billions of dollars in losses. Ukrainian teachers- and accountants-turned-soldiers are holding the frontline for their homeland while the entire democratic and rules-based economic order fights a parallel war against illicit money and malign oligarchs.

Russia is not simply seeking to shift its borders but has, for years, been sowing chaos, disinformation, and interference in democracies around the world, including election interference in the U.S. propaganda campaigns in Latin America, ransomware attacks on multinational companies, exporting corruption and infiltrating multinational organizations, propping up dictators in Iran and Syria, and funding mercenaries and terrorists around the world.

As the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) lays out in its new report, Ruble Rumble: Offensive and Defensive Measures to Defeat Russia in the Economic Domain, the United States and its allies must bolster Russia’s economic isolation and step up their financial pressure campaign if they expect to effectively undermine the military war machine and economic coercion of an autocratic and bellicose Russia. Sanctions must be designed and enhanced to impose true consequences on Moscow for its reckless and destructive choices. There is an offensive element of our economic battle with Moscow. Still, there must also be an equally strong defensive approach—protecting our election integrity against interference, redoubling our protections against hackers and cyber-attacks, cutting Russia off from the global financial system, and weeding out dirty Russian money from our real estate, our hedge funds, and our supply chains.

For China, which is watching and plotting its next move along the Taiwan Strait, a permanent financial ostracization of Putin’s Russia should make the CCP think twice about using missiles and battleships to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s authority.

A weakened Russia also stymies Beijing’s attempts to create a political and economic order parallel to and in defiance of democratic capitalism. If Russia and China work together, China can afford to increasingly turn its back on engagement with the West, controlling our supply chains but more resilient against any attempts at economic isolation.

To properly counter Russia’s expanded economic war, sanctions, and other economic consequences against Russia should be aggressively expanded. As recommended in the FDD report, the United States should increase secondary sanctions, eliminate sanctions exemptions (and omissions) in the banking sector, address weaknesses in the oil price cap, and hobble the Russian energy sector, including winding down U.S. dependence on Russian state-owned Rosatom. In addition, the United States and its allies should take steps to cut out the Russian alternative to SWIFT and similar economic workarounds. The West should reach out to neutral economies, like India, Turkey, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates—making a case for the benefits of joining the democratic fold against Russia... and the consequences of continuing to do business with Putin or joining an anti-Western alliance with China. Finally, the United States must levy real and substantial punishments for sanctions evasion—with particular attention to third countries such as China as well as so-called “enablers” that move tainted Russian money through the Western financial system.

While Russia has engaged in an economic war against the West for more than a decade, its actions have been facilitated by weaknesses and loopholes we have built into the financial and legal system. It is time for robust defensive economic measures, taking a firm and aggressive stand against malign finance and illicit actors that have infiltrated Western economies—undermining democracy, fueling corruption, funding terrorism, and finding new ways to evade U.S. and allied sanctions regimes. This will require a fight for financial transparency, the effective implementation of beneficial ownership rules, due diligence requirements for professional enablers, limitations on foreign influence on democracies, a battle against misinformation, and expanded resources for enforcement authorities at the U.S. Treasury, State, and Commerce Departments.

Putin and China seek to build a new rogue gallery of autocrats and oligarchs who can undermine democracy and transparent capitalism around the globe. For democracy and capitalism to flourish, we must unleash the full arsenal of economic weaponry to isolate Russia from the world, hobble its expansionist tendencies, and remind others that the Western financial system is closed to those who seek to destabilize and undermine the liberal, rules-based order.

Elaine Dezenski is the Senior Director and Head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Peter Doran is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Image: Shutterstock.

In February 2023, the chairman of the House Select Committee on China, Rep. Mike Gallager, secretly visited Taiwan, highlighting the importance of policymakers visiting countries and observing first-hand the defensive preparations being made. By interacting with the Taiwanese government and military officials, Gallagher learned that consistent delays in U.S. weapons delivery to Taiwan have been frustrating the island’s leaders and negatively impacting their confidence in acquiring external defensive aid. This information is crucial for U.S. policymakers who are seeking to make informed decisions about their support for Taiwan. Moreover, while there is a perception in the United States that a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan would play out similarly to Ukraine, stimulating defense preparation in countries where potential threats exist, analysts suggest that there is no need to panic.

In any situation, there is often a disparity between what political messaging claims and reality. Not only is the power disparity between China and Taiwan far greater than that between Russia and Ukraine, but survey results of the recent Taiwan National Security Survey, conducted by Duke University in mid-December 2022 with national representation in Taiwan, show that in an open-ended response setting, only 13.3 percent of respondents answered that they would join the army. Another 15.1 percent responded that they would resist China in some way. In the case of Taiwan’s geopolitical situation, if less than a third of Taiwanese may be as willing to fight a war of annihilation as the Ukrainians, the United States cannot afford to be ignorant of this reality.

Within the halls of American politics, a perception has developed that the Taiwanese people are not only eager to resist China but are capable of doing so after receiving the weapons through arms sales. This sentiment has been reinforced by Taiwan’s current governing party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The DPP touts programs, such as extending military service for conscripts, as evidence that the Taiwanese are determined to defend themselves. However, without a dedicated training plan in place and given China’s numerical superiority, it is unlikely such hollow gestures will meaningfully affect Taiwan’s overall combat potential. And even if it did, Taiwan would likely still decisively lose any protracted war without direct American assistance. Chest pounding with potential support from allies is an effective election tactic for any governing party but has little bearing on a nation’s actual ability to fight. While the oppositional Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) has been portrayed as soft on China and said to be subordinating itself to China’s interests, the ruling DPP tends to reinforce this perception by sharing Washington’s tough stance on China—both to satisfy U.S. policymakers and benefit electorally. This is an aspect of the situation American lawmakers must understand. If Taiwan continues down this path, the island nation could provoke an avoidable conflict that the United States could find itself drawn into.

The primary reason Taiwan should adopt a more conciliatory stance is due to the changes inside China itself. In the past, any leader’s actions that would threaten China’s position in the world would often see them ousted by the Politburo Standing Committee. However, China’s current president, Xi Jinping, has consolidated near absolute power within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Suppose Taiwan’s independence was perceived as inevitable by China. In that case, a war may break out regardless of whether it benefits China, as Xi cannot afford to lose Taiwan, much like Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has been to the detriment of Russia. This is why provoking the CCP, as the pro-Taiwan independence camp has done for the purposes of political expediency, is such an existential threat to Taiwan’s survival. While it is true that China could manufacture a crisis to justify hostilities, it is essential that, in the eyes of the world, Taiwan is doing everything to avoid confrontation. If Taiwan is seen inviting the CCP’s wrath, it will give China control over the war narrative. Such an outcome could reduce international support for Taiwan and handicap any effort to make China accountable for its actions

For these reasons, among others, it is clear that neither major political party in Taiwan is working toward the island’s political subjugation; instead, there is a disagreement about how best to maintain Taiwan’s democratic way of living. And seeing as no one can successfully defend the island in the case of war, the most prudent solution is to ensure war does not arrive by sufficiently deterring Chinese aggression. As most of what the United States understands about the conflict across the Taiwan Strait comes from political messaging, believing that all is well is tempting. However, in this critical moment, it is a necessity that we place reality over political bravado and allow the ships of state to be steered by empirical facts rather than the misplaced confidence of ill-designing men.

Dr. Dennis L.C. Weng is an associate professor of political science at Sam Houston State University, where he teaches comparative politics and international relations with a focus on East Asia. Weng also serves as the Founding Chief Executive Officer of Asia Pacific Peace Vision Institute, a new think tank on Asia Pacific Peace Studies.

Jared Jeter is a Research Associate at Sam Houston State University.

Image: Shutterstock.

The 2023 Summit for Democracy, initiated by the United States and co-hosted by Zambia, South Korea, the Netherlands, and Costa Rica, concluded on March 30, after affirming that “free, fair, and transparent elections” are “the foundation of democratic governance.” A week before, the People’s Republic of China held its own Second International Forum on Democracy. It took up such anodyne topics as “Democracy and Sustainable Development,” “Democracy and Innovation,” “Democracy and Global Governance,” “Democracy and the Diversity of Human Civilization” and “Democracy and the Path to Modernization.”

China’s Forum on Democracy was not about ensuring political freedom and self-government, but rather detaching the idea of democracy from its essence before an audience in the grip of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At its philosophical core, the project is being mirrored by developments in Western democracies.

Manipulation of the concept of democracy by the CCP began before its takeover in 1949; the revolution would succeed with a promise of democracy, then abandon it when power had been achieved. During his long struggle to assume control of China, Mao Zedong proposed the “New Democracy” concept to establish “a democratic republic under the joint dictatorship of all anti-imperialist and anti-feudal forces led by the proletariat.” Mao believed the Chinese Revolution should be done in “two steps“: the first step was to defeat imperialism and feudalism, and establish a new, democratic society through a democratic revolution; the second step was to continue the socialist revolution based on this foundation, and gradually transition China into a socialist society.

Mao scrapped “New Democracy” in the early 1950s, but subsequent Chinese leaders unveiled other democratic concepts to promote their programs. Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zeming advocated for “socialist democracy,” claiming that “without democracy, there can be no socialism, and without socialism, there can be no modernization. The purpose of political system reform is to eliminate disadvantages and develop a socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics.”

In 2019, Xi Jinping proposed “whole-process people’s democracy,” which is “socialism with Chinese characteristics” guided by the CCP, emphasizing “people’s participation,” “elections,” “democratic consultation,” and other terms lifted from liberal democracies. The CCP published a White Paper about China’s “democracy” in December 2021.

Objectively, free, fair, and transparent elections do not exist in China. China is a one-party state. Voters can only elect deputies at the township, district, and county levels, and under the strict control of the CCP. 

According to Article 2 of the Chinese Election Law, “The election of deputies to the National People’s Congress and local people’s congresses at all levels adheres to the leadership of the Communist Party of China…”

Appropriating the idea of democracy is consistent with the CCP’s habit of intellectual property theft, which has, along with forced labor, helped drive its rapid economic growth. Theft of basic science and technology breakthroughs has allowed China to profit from the export of complex products without investing in basic or applied research. The U.S. FBI said Chinese economic espionage has resulted in one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history. 

Many people around the world, repulsed by China’s genocidal policies toward Muslim citizens, repression of dissent and freedom of religion, and chilling promises of a “New World Order” that is run by powerful states that are unconstrained by common human rights standards, boycott Chinese products. 

While democracy had been appropriated by his predecessors and used as bate, Xi’s approach has been even more sinister; Xi’s democracy knock-off is more than the cynical appropriation of an attractive ideal to obscure the way it is subverted. In fact, history’s most brutal totalitarian regimes, including those in East Germany and North Korea, in addition to China, have called themselves democracies. But in doing so, as Theodore Dalrymple observed, they have sought “not to persuade or convince, not to inform but to humiliate,” forcing “assent to obvious lies.” Propaganda serves the process of moral domination. CCP leaders are showing the world that they have more power than the truth; that they can do what they want with the vocabulary of freedom. They are showing that they can call totalitarianism democracy, and by wearing it as a badge, demonstrate their power over reality, and over the minds and souls of their subjects and clients. 

In this regard, their methods are consistent with the intellectual aggression of ideological, post-modern wordsmiths in the West, whose manipulation of language and suppression of opposing views reveal what is also basically an ideology of power. What is happening in schools, businesses, and even in the military begins to resemble Maoist “Thought Reform,” a cultural revolution brainwashing technique aimed at detaching people from their social bonds, traditions and beliefs. Accompanying inverted, Orwellian slogans like “diversity” is institutionalized, soft-totalitarian coercion. Political correctness and the cancel culture are strategies in a movement from within against the central value system of Western civilization, one based on the universality of reason and nature. While China’s Democracy Forum appears as a crude, resentful and childish imitation of an American initiative, we would be wise not to sneer, but rather to apply its inner lessons to ourselves. 

Aaron Rhodes is Senior Fellow in the Common Sense Society and President of the Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe. He is the author of The Debasement of Human Rights (Encounter Books, 2018).

Image: Sandra Sanders / Shutterstock.com

Today, more than half of the sovereign states in Latin America and the Caribbean are governed by left-wing presidents, including the big three: Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Only five years ago, Latin America’s left held power in less than one-third of the region.

This political shift prompted claims that political change in Latin America resembles a pendulum effect, a series of reactions to social crises, which lead to perpetual oscillation from left-to-right-wing governments. Although pervasive in the foreign policy world, the claim holds no ground.

Some self-described Latin Americanists, who all too often reveal themselves to be Castro-sympathizing historians, assert this theory ad nauseam. They, along with a growing group of liberal policy wonks, profess that these sorts of political shifts are natural and unavoidable. Many have fallen into the trap of oversimplification, while others have simply benefited from perpetuating the myth.

Concretely, in recent years, many promoting the pendulum effect—as if it were fact and not merely theory—have posited that the rise of anti-Americanism and left-wing governments in the region is nothing but yet another chapter in a long book; one that will soon be followed by one of pro-Americanism and right-wing governments. Although reassuring, as theory usually is, this schematization does nothing but constrain the proper understanding of realities on the ground.

It is true that political transition originates in part from reactions to changing local dynamics. After all, no socialist has ever risen to power when income inequality in a given country is small. But local politics in and of itself is insufficient to explain the recent political shifts in Latin American countries in the twenty-first century.

For sure, some regions in the world are characterized by institutions and histories that facilitate the success of particular ideas over others. In the case of Latin America, it is often said that the rise of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and the so-called Pink Tide, which began in the early 2000s, followed the failures of widespread neoliberalism in addressing poverty and inequality. Before that, some go further to explain that the rise of neoliberalism in Latin America in the late twentieth century was itself a reaction to the high inflation and mounting debt generated by the dominant import-substitution-industrialization framework of the 1970s.

Still, while looking at these trends complements a proper analysis of why nations change, it is insufficient without acknowledging the role of ideologically motivated domestic elites in Latin America and the role of external actors in enabling, if not guiding, these political transitions.

Both Michel Foucault and Karl Marx understood that knowledge and power are closely linked, and that revolutionary elites play an instrumental role in spreading knowledge, guiding the masses, and achieving systemic change. They knew that to take control, revolutionaries must not only distance themselves from “bad” elites, but also need to embrace “good” elites. After all, the legendary Che Guevara was not necessarily poor, and the same Hugo Chávez who spent decades exclaiming that “¡ser rico es malo!” (meaning that being rich is evil) died a billionaire. Some might call men like these hypocrites, and in some cases, they were. But more often than not, the Marxist text that inspired them justified their actions.

Times may have changed, but the same remains true: these revolutionaries are a-ok with the wealthy… if the wealthy support them. Extend this to the next logical conclusion, and one can understand that they also favor imperialism, if the empire supports them.

For some, these observations are not brain-boggling at all: they are common sense. In the United States’ foreign policy community, politically dominated by a class of self-loathing narcissists, these views sound alien. But for a group of rising U.S. and Latin American scholars and thinkers that grasp on-the-ground realities better than most, it is time for a change.

Earlier this year, on a damp night at the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C., more than one hundred twenty U.S. and Latin American political leaders, think tank scholars, and national security experts from eleven countries gathered in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS), along with the organization’s Western Hemisphere Security Forum.

At this event, you could hear a variety of Spanish accents. But aside from diversity in that regard, what was palpable, if not ubiquitous, in the cocktail reception before the panels began was the group’s desire for the rise of a new conservative movement in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Participants in the Forum, including Venezuela’s highest-polling opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and Colombian presidential-candidate-in-the-making Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal, understand, unlike many Latin American elites, that what has hit the region is even stronger than the so-called Pink Tide that plagued the region for the first decade of this century.

Moreover, inside the walls of the Spy Museum that night, there were no doubts that the political shift in the region is not the result of the pendulum’s bob swinging back. Rather, it is due to the progression of bad ideas that have slowly but surely moved to the political Left under the guidance of internal illiberal forces and external actors that wish to challenge American hegemony.

More than two decades ago, the rise of Hugo Chávez came after a piecemeal process of expanding Cuban influence that swallowed Venezuela’s institutions, which culminated with an uprising—demonstrating that, as Ernest Hemingway said in his 1926 breakthrough novel The Sun Also Rises, change can happen “gradually, then suddenly.”

After Chávez’s success, through petrodiplomacy and with the help of Russian-Iranian-Cuban intelligence and Chinese credits and loans, a new wave of authoritarian governance was reciprocated across the region like a viral pathogen. This wave came with a prescribed set of enemies and friends, along with several go-to institutional reforms—which always came under the guise of promoting a form of “equity” that ultimately deteriorates democracy. For example, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa both advanced constitutional reforms to end presidential term limits, following the footsteps of the Venezuelan tyrant.

In that same vein—unexpectedly for some, but predictably for many at the SFS Forum—the Latin America ideological map today is even more politically red than what it looked like a decade ago.

Joseph Humire, the executive director of SFS, told me that “the last so-called conservative wave in Latin America lacked a geopolitical vision that understood the new realities in the era of great power  competition; you cannot maintain China as your top trade partner while asking the U.S. for loans and development assistance, or continually buy military armament from Russia while sucking up to SOUTHCOM for more military support.” This lack of understanding of how the world was shifting, led, according to Humire, to “the return of not just leftist presidents in Latin America, but rising authoritarians who are seeking to take the region further away from the United States and toward greater conflict.”

With this in mind, it is evident that what the region has observed is no pendulum effect. A better metaphor would be that of a driver that occasionally makes small adjustments to the steering wheel to keep the car on track, but overall, the car stays on course, moving toward a specific destination.

In this case, that driver is a mix of malign regional actors, namely Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, as well as neo-imperialist totalitarian regimes from Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran. Today, more than ever, the car's fuel is provided by these extra-regional actors who benefit from this change in Latin America — primarily China.

Neutrality in the hopes of the pendulum’s bob bouncing back will only lead to the rise of new anti-American authoritarians in our proximity, impacting America’s economic relationships and worsening the migration crisis, as it already is. If Latin American conservatives want to win, they need new drivers, new cars, and new fuel. With prudence, the United States must back a new wave of Latin American leaders, and, with determination, Latin America must course-correct.

Juan P. Villasmil “J.P. Ballard” is a commentator and analyst who often writes about American culture, foreign policy, and political philosophy. He has been featured in The American Spectator, The National Interest, The Wall Street Journal, International Policy Digest, Fox News, Telemundo, MSNBC, and others.

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Less than a month after entering the White House in 2017, President Donald Trump flew to Dover Air Force Base to attend the dignified transfer ceremony for Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens, a Navy SEAL who was the first U.S. service member killed in action during the Trump presidency. It was a weighty experience, especially for the president who had personally ordered the raid. I was with him shortly after he somberly received news of Owens’ death. It impacted him so deeply that he would go on to bring up the Owens family—and in particular Owens’ widow, Carryn—many times in the months and years to come.

Other presidents have undoubtedly felt the weight of sending Americans into harm’s way and remember the first time that one of their orders resulted in an American servicemember being killed in action. But the reality is, most presidents in recent history haven’t let these harsh realities of war stop them from sending Americans to die in conflicts that are hard to justify, from mission creep in Afghanistan that turned into America’s longest war, to nation building in Iraq, and beyond. Senator J.D. Vance was right to hail Trump’s greatest policy success as simply not starting any wars. This would perhaps be a low bar if it hadn’t been too high for most modern presidents to clear.

There isn’t a singular explanation for how Trump accomplished this, but it certainly wasn’t because of pacifist sentimentality, although the above anecdote illustrates his deep emotional connection to the troops. After all, just two months after his first trip to Dover, he launched fifty-nine Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria in response to a chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime.

Trump’s intuitive approach means something very specific to America’s enemies: There is always the possibility that he will use overwhelming and shocking violence if he feels they have harmed or humiliated the United States. Unrestrained savagery doesn’t fit neatly beside the foreign policy elite’s favorite euphemisms, like “targeted killings” and “kinetic military action,” but no matter what you call it, it proved to be an effective restraint on our most vicious adversaries.

When Trump’s military advisors proposed a menu of options to deal with Iranian terrorist general Qasem Soleimani—an evil man with Americans’ blood on his hands, who was actively plotting more attacks—he chose the most aggressive option.

In the middle of the night, as Soleimani was being whisked away from an Iraqi airport, an American MQ-9 Reaper drone unleashed a Hellfire missile that tore him to pieces, along with several other members of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The move was so provocative that Joe Biden warned it could bring the Middle East to “the brink of a major conflict.” It didn’t. In fact, Trump doubled down, warning the Iranians that the United States had targeted “52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture,” making it clear that if they responded by harming Americans, they would be “hit very hard and very fast.” In other words, there was no telling what he might do. The only thing they – and other American adversaries – could be sure of was that if they crossed Trump’s threshold, he would not be going through a laborious policy process to figure out how to react.

Unfortunately, Iranian attacks have skyrocketed since President Biden took office. Most recently, an Iranian drone attack in Syria last week killed one American and injured six others. The Biden administration responded with what they called “proportionate and deliberate action,” an air strike against Iranian-backed militia facilities. Iranian proxy forces responded the very next day with attacks against U.S. troops. And while there were no casualties, it was a clear indication that they have priced in the Biden Administration’s predictable response as just the cost of doing business.

Trump’s critics—and in the case of his threat to Iranian cultural sites, even his own cabinet officials—bemoan his lack of restraint and willingness to deploy over-the-top force, but this approach has deep roots in America’s foreign policy tradition and maintains a firm grip on the American psyche.

In Walter Russell Mead’s seminal work on the Jacksonian tradition in American foreign policy, he remarked that “those who prefer to believe that the present global hegemony of the United States emerged through a process of immaculate conception avert their eyes from many distressing moments in the American ascension.” For example, American bombing raids at the end of World War II killed nearly a million Japanese civilians, “more than twice the total number of combat deaths that the United States has suffered in all its foreign wars combined.” In Korea, Mead noted that U.S. forces killed an estimated 1 million North Korean civilians, approximately thirty civilian deaths for every American soldier killed in action.

Many Jacksonians—and Trump is perhaps more of a Jacksonian than even Jackson himself—take a narrow view of America’s national interests, but when those interests are harmed, hell hath no fury like a Jacksonian unleashed. They will not be constrained by so-called international law or multinational institutions. As Mead wrote, “Jacksonians believe that there is an honor code in international life—as there was in clan warfare in the borderlands of England—and those who live by the code will be treated under it. But those who violate the code—who commit terrorist acts in peacetime, for example—forfeit its protection and deserve no consideration.”

The virtues of deploying such ruthless and devastating force are that it seeks to defeat aggressors as quickly as possible, resulting in fewer lives lost than there would be in protracted conflict, and serves as a deterrent against future attacks. Even suggesting there are virtues to this approach will result in condemnation from the foreign policy establishment, who decry Jacksonians as immoral, isolationist cowboys. But for many Americans, especially those who live in the American heartland far away from the coastal elites, this approach to foreign policy—and to life in general—holds deep resonance.

In 1968, Richard Nixon confided in his top aide, H.R. Haldeman, that he liked to employ what he called “the Madman Theory” to convince the North Vietnamese that he “might do anything to stop the [Vietnam] war.” Nixon as vice president had seen how President Dwight D. Eisenhower contained communism—and, according to Eisenhower, convinced China to end the war on the Korean Peninsula—by leveraging the terrifying threat of nuclear war.

Some pundits have tagged examples of Trump’s approach as the Madman Theory reborn, and there is some truth to that. But one thing the critics seem to miss is that it’s not a charade; its effectiveness lies in Trump’s capacity for genuine unpredictability, his openness to letting new developments shape and change his responses in real time.

As much as it will exasperate Trump’s foreign policy critics, nowhere was the success of this approach more evident than in the containment of Russian military aggression.

Here are the facts: Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 when George W. Bush was president. Russia took Crimea in 2014 when Barack Obama was president. Russia has now invaded Ukraine with Biden as president. However, when Trump was president, Russia did not seize territory from any of its neighbors.

Russian president Vladimir Putin’s appetite for expansion did not wane during the four years Trump was in office, and the world was not just miraculously a safer place. Bad actors—from Russia and China to Iran and North Korea—simply knew that they had to restrain themselves or deal with the unpredictable but inevitably severe consequences.

That, perhaps more than anything else, is how Trump kept Americans safe without starting a war.

Cliff Sims served as Special Assistant to the President, 2017-18, and as Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Strategy and Communications, 2020-2021.

Image: Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock.com

Policymakers in the United States are starting to come to grips with a stark reality—a Cold War with China—and the need for a strategy with clear objectives. The Chinese spy balloon traversing U.S. airspace and growing concerns over China’s diplomatic and potential military support for Russia’s war against Ukraine are just the latest developments galvanizing U.S. policymakers on the need for action to counter the threat from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The United States’ new hardline position on China was long overdue and has caught many, including Beijing, off-guard. But it should not have. For decades, China has systematically abused the privileges that it has been accorded as a member of the free and open community of nations in its own bid for dominance. Evidence of this can be seen in China’s ongoing use of diplomatic coercion, unlawful military provocations, and, in the economic realm, the rampant theft of intellectual property, predatory trade practices, and widespread market manipulation through massive subsidies to favored industries. The use of these tactics by the Chinese Communist Party is not an accident but part of a deliberate strategy to supplant the United States as the global leader and create a regional and global order deferential to its authoritarian preferences.

To put it bluntly, America has been far too slow to rise to this challenge. The fundamental change to a competitive approach made by the Trump and Biden administrations were a start, but a comprehensive strategy that organizes and coordinates America’s considerable policy tools to achieve victory still does not exist—especially in the economic arena.

That is why we launched the China Economic and Strategy Initiative, to help develop and articulate an optimal economic strategy, one that includes objectives with clear lines of effort, to address China’s epochal economic and technological challenge to U.S. geopolitical leadership. A vital part of that process is to first understand what has already been done to counter China to identify how the United States must position itself for success going forward.

“Strategic Competition” Is Not a Strategy

The start of the Trump administration in 2017 marked a shift in the United States’ post-Cold War foreign policy focus as it sought to bring back a great power competition mindset and apply it to what the administration viewed as America’s number one threat: China. This was enshrined in strategic documents such as the 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS)—which stated that China, alongside Russia, sought to challenge “American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity”—and the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), which identified China as a “strategic competitor.” The administration’s declassified U.S. Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific which guides the implementation of these strategies is another useful strategic baseline that future administrations can expand and implement.

The Trump administration’s policy shift was, in many ways, a hard reset of the United States’ foreign policy and national security agenda. Instead of focusing on unconstrained globalization and hunting terrorists in the Middle East, the Trump administration sought to instill a competitive spirit in the hope that it would permeate all aspects of the U.S. diplomatic, military, and economic agenda. The challenge that the Trump administration faced, however, was that the bureaucratic muscle memory and appetite for risk that the United States had developed to defeat the Soviets were all but dead, complicating the implementation of the NSS, NDS, and Strategic Framework. This ultimately limited the administration’s ability to execute the strategy it declared.

The Biden administration, in large part, has continued the Trump-era policies, with its 2022 NSS reinforcing the view that China has the “intention and increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order in favor of one that tilts the global playing field to its benefit,” and that it remains America’s most “consequential geopolitical challenge.” But President Joe Biden has also inherited the same institutional challenges of a fractured bureaucracy unable to coordinate a China strategy. Despite the significance of two consecutive administrations maintaining the same overarching policy on China, a strategy with clear objectives and means to achieve them has failed to materialize.

The result is that the United States still finds itself reacting to China’s malign behavior rather than seizing the initiative with calculated actions working toward clear strategic objectives.

The Economy Is Ground Zero

America’s shift in sentiment on China and growing desire for an economy free from the authoritarian influence of the CCP has made the economy ground zero for competition. The Trump and Biden administrations made attempts to impose economic costs on China for its predatory economic practices and position the United States to compete both at home and abroad. Policy actions taken by both administrations centered on leveling the economic playing field, defending America’s technological advantage, and cooperating with allies and partners. But have these policies, many of which were touted as political victories, made a measurable impact on protecting the American economy and way of life?

Advancing America’s Economic Interests

A core part of former President Donald Trump’s campaign bid in 2016 focused on advancing America’s economic interests by rolling back China’s unfair trade practices that have undermined the American economy and workforce. In 2018, the Trump administration took its first major action by imposing Section 301 tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods that have benefited from the theft of U.S. intellectual property and China’s unfair industrial practices, in addition to imposing Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to combat China’s “dumping” of products in the United States. The Trump administration, in response to China’s tariff retaliation, expanded Section 301 tariffs that at one point reached a 2019 high of $370 billion across numerous sectors.

President Biden, despite vowing to remove U.S. tariffs, has left more than $300 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese goods under Section 301, reinforced its commitment to Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs on China, and even extended Section 201 tariffs put in place in 2018 on Chinese solar components to protect American solar manufacturers.

The Trump administration also sought to negotiate a more open Chinese market, a process that culminated in the U.S.-China Economic and Trade Agreement, otherwise known as the Phase One Deal, that was signed in 2020. The Phase One Deal sought to level the playing field with structural reforms to China’s economic and trade regime and reduce the trade deficit by obligating China to make additional purchases of at least $200 billion in U.S. goods across a range of sectors in a two-year period—an agreement that Beijing has failed to honor. The Phase One Deal, however, was significant in that China signed the deal without the removal of any U.S. tariffs, implicitly accepting the U.S. charge of malign economic behavior. It also allowed the United States to unilaterally seek remedies if China was not living up to its end of the deal.

The overall impact of these policies on the goal of leveling the economic playing field with China, however, is questionable. While tariffs modestly shifted some supply chains away from China to other regional partners and the Phase One Trade deal brought China to the negotiating table, these actions appear to have a limited effect on trade. The new 2022 trade statistics support this trend, as the U.S.-China bilateral goods trade hit a new record at more than $690 billion with Chinese imports still outpacing U.S. exports. While the Section 301 tariffs sent a serious message to Beijing and the rest of the world that the U.S. would not accept business as usual, it also could have been the catalyst to implement a consistent approach to deal with China’s rampant intellectual property theft and a clear violation of U.S. laws. But that did not happen.

Defending America’s Technological Advantage

The Trump and Biden administrations both rightfully identified the need to protect America’s technological advantage to ensure the United States is not aiding China’s military modernization and surveillance state network. The Trump administration’s move to reform the United States’ inbound investment screening process in 2018 with the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) expanded the ability of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) under the Treasury Department to screen transactions for potential threats to national security. The Administration’s 2019 Executive Order on Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain (ICTS) also gave Commerce a powerful tool to screen information technology transactions from identified foreign adversaries, including China, that could impact U.S. national security. The impact of both FIRRMA and ICTS, however, is minimal at best due to lagging implementation and the absence of clear policy guidance on cases involving China at the Treasury and Commerce Departments.

The Trump Administration’s modernization of the United States’ outdated export control regime with the 2018 Export Controls Reform Act (ECRA) also directly gave the President greater authority to control dual-use exports and emerging technologies that could be applied to China’s military-industrial complex. The Department of Defense’s creation of the Communist Chinese Military Companies List (CCMC) in 2020 and the subsequent executive order banning investment in CCMC companies could potentially be a blow to China’s military-industrial complex. However, the Biden administration’s transfer of authority for this policy to the Department of Treasury in June 2021 dulled its impact by reducing the scope of the companies to be sanctioned. It has also failed to update the list for over a year.

Protecting American data has also been a key stated priority. The Trump administration sought to address this issue in 2019 by adding Huawei, China’s leading telecommunications company, to Commerce’s Entity List and later announcing Huawei’s indictment under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) Act in 2020 for trade espionage. The Biden administration in 2022 doubled down on this effort by banning the sale and import of equipment made by both Huawei and ZTE in the United States, in addition to banning TikTok from federal government agency devices. Huawei, ZTE, and TikTok are the most high-profile cases of China’s access to Americans’ data, but gaps still exist in other sectors, such as healthcare, that need policymaker attention.

One of the greatest challenges that both administrations faced was how to generate more domestic production through “reshoring” initiatives while simultaneously decoupling from China in core technologies such as semiconductors to reduce dependencies. Although President Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act aims to increase the United States’ domestic production of semiconductors, especially in advanced technology, it is still unclear how the United States is going to decouple from Chinese production of “legacy” chips that are also fundamental to our day-to-day activities. The October 2022 announcement of the Department of Commerce’s newly expanded export controls to deny China cutting-edge semiconductor chips and equipment reinforced this effort, but once again, only focused on high-end manufacturing.

Cooperation with Global Partnerships

One theme that has been consistent across both administrations is utilizing a strong network of like-minded partners to compete against China economically and uphold the free and open system for all nations. Despite signing the BUILD Act, a move meant to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative with economic statecraft, the Trump administration’s efforts to rally international partners largely fell flat. This was in part to the administration’s attempts at the time to re-negotiate long-standing trade deals with key U.S. allies and demand nations pay their fair share for defense, as well as hitting some friends with tariffs. This made real economic cooperation with China politically untenable at home for many of America’s global partners.

The Biden administration has sought to bring something more tangible to the table by launching the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) in 2022. Although this framework offers coordination with Indo-Pacific nations to discuss trade, supply chains, and anticorruption issues, the IPEF will likely fall short of countering China’s commanding economic position in the Indo-Pacific without concrete trade provisions such as market access agreements. In contrast, the Biden Administration’s newly signed 2023 agreement with Japan and the Netherlands to curb China’s ability to manufacture high-end semiconductors is a prime example of the types of agreements and partnerships that the United States should be forging to make gains in this competition.

America Needs a Strategy Tied to Objectives and Means

If America stands any chance of prevailing against the threat from the CCP, U.S. policymakers must begin implementing policies that are driven by a clear strategy—especially in the economic arena. Identifying the United States’ desired end states and core objectives, and means to achieve them, should be the foremost priority. The United States already has an arsenal of policy tools at its disposal that could be used, but a lack of strategic direction has meant that key economic agencies within the Departments of State, Commerce, Treasury, Defense, and the United States Trade Representative are simply not incentivized to compete with China.

The United States must maintain the economic might to defend its interests, ensure that the free and open system remains the dominant global economic model absent of authoritarian control, and undermine China’s malign economic policies. U.S. economic strategy must include targeted strategic decoupling to ensure the United States is reducing its dependence on China, optimizing the U.S. bureaucracy and legal system for competition, and creating alternative economic power centers with like-minded allies and partners.

First, targeted strategic decoupling from China will likely be the most challenging of these three efforts given the extent of the United States’ economic entanglements with China. This administration, and future ones, should continue to take steps to fully decouple from China in leading-edge technologies that could be used to give China an economic or military edge, including supply chains, manufacturing processes, and R&D efforts that are 100 percent free of Chinese influence. In addition to semiconductors, the United States should focus on other sectors that are vital to the security of the United States, such as China’s role in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and next-generation clean energy production. Policymakers should also identify “choke points” that the United States could leverage to deny China the critical components they need for the manufacturing of high-end technology for military operations.

Second, a competitive spirit must now infuse the work of the U.S. bureaucracy to optimize the United States to defeat its rival. One of the biggest ways this could occur is to have clear guidance from the White House that directs the creation of a coherent and expansive “lawfare” strategy that would maximize the entirety of the U.S. policy “tool kit” for one purpose—to undermine China’s strategy. The United States already has a robust set of export, tariff, sanctions, and investment authorities available to hold China accountable that need to be coordinated, organized, and implemented with a clear objective in mind. More robust attempts to weaken China’s military-industrial complex should be an easy starting point for U.S. policymakers.

Lastly, when it comes to allies and friends, America must focus on taking concrete steps to strengthen its tools for economic statecraft—prioritizing the use of positive trade tools instead of punitive ones. Defending against China’s malfeasance is not enough. The United States must help build alternative economic power centers across the globe. This is especially true in the Indo-Pacific as deepening our economic relationship could reinforce the Department of Defense’s efforts to strengthen its position in the region and help the United States and its allies better prepare for a regional conflict. Bilateral trade agreements with nations such as the Philippines, given their strategic significance and basing opportunities, should be prioritized by the U.S. Trade Representative and Congress, with an additional focus on more targeted bilateral or even multilateral agreements in mutual areas of interest, such as supply chain resilience or building a new global technology ecosystem.

The United States’ policy on China has changed dramatically during the Trump and now Biden administration in ways that even a decade ago would not have been feasible. Confronting the threat from China will be challenging and require sacrifice. But America has faced similar challenges before and prevailed—and it can do it again with the right strategy that leverages the tools and relationships America has invested in for decades to defend the free and open order for all nations.

Randy Schriver is Chairman of the China Economic & Strategy Initiative.

Dan Blumenthal, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the Vice Chairman of the China Economic & Strategy Initiative.

Image: Christian Lue/UnSplash.

A shroud of pessimism has hung over the United States for nearly a decade. Politically, economically, and culturally—and independent of socioeconomic class, gender, race, or geography—a majority of the population lacks a positive outlook on life in general.

Adding to this malaise, on March 16, 2022, the Federal Open Market Committee enacted the first of what would be eight interest rate increases. The result has been painful for both Wall Street and Main Street, with the most recent notable example being the collapse of both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. (Although it should be noted that for the last two decades, there have been approximately two bank failures per month.)

As for the current banking crisis, it is one that did not happen overnight but was years in the making. The earthquake in eastern Turkey, the war in Ukraine, and the Covid-19 pandemic were all outcomes of long-term processes. These events were just triggers that brought existing tensions to the surface. Lessons learned from large-scale events with devastating effects have allowed us to curtail the recurrence of such events or at least to significantly diminish their impact. However, introducing new rules to prevent certain types of crises can contain the seeds of other forms of crisis. 

The subprime turmoil of 2008 triggered a credit crunch, large-scale bankruptcies, and a global recession along the way. It took massive and coordinated liquidity injections and a major restructuring of the banking sector to pull the world out of this mess. Systemic risks were curbed by deploying all forms of circuit breakers into the system and shoring up the balance sheet of banks. 

Recapping recent history, SVB, a bank whose balance sheet looked good, had a high concentration in treasury bonds, which was matched by a client base that came mostly from the tech industry. As the pandemic receded, demand for tech dropped, triggering large-scale layoffs and causing customers to withdraw more than usual. At the same time, new account openings dried up, forcing the bank to sell its bond holdings at steep losses. Panic ensued, triggering a classic bank run which necessitated the intervention of the government to avert wider contagion. 

Several other smaller banks folded along the way, such as Signature, but the real shock came with the lingering troubles at Credit Suisse, a 167-year-old institution on the too-big-to-fail list. Fear and panic reached fever pitch, forcing the Swiss government to step in to avert a crisis with huge global financial repercussions from materializing. The events exposed some glaring deficiencies in the system and a troubling thought that even well-funded, too-big-to-fail banks were not immune from the effects of irrational mobs. 

The global economy appears to be in a transition phase, with conflicting signals indicating steady inflationary pressures and the potential for a looming recession. The Federal Reserve, which had been focused on combating inflation, is now having to deal with the fallout from its aggressive tightening, causing recession fears to show up in bond and currency markets. The United States is facing several challenges, including a slowing economy, record deficits leading to political showdowns, and the 2024 presidential election. The growing rift with China and Russia will likely create economic frictions, and a process of partial decoupling of their economies seems inevitable. 

Europe is also facing challenges, including a resource-sapping conflict, widening social upheavals, and an ongoing banking crisis. Over the longer term, Europe must secure its energy needs and navigate ideological rifts between East and West. The Biden administration’s drive to reduce dependence on China through subsidies is causing friction with Europe. 

Volatility is expected to persist in the second half of the year as the world transitions from the post-Covid recovery and inflation phase to a potential recession. Recent gains in gold and bitcoin suggest a lack of confidence in monetary authorities to steer the global recovery out of troubled waters. Bond markets may benefit as yields drop, but the outcome will depend on the banking crisis’s evolution. 

As for equity markets, these face headwinds, especially if the economic slowdown turns into a major recession, causing layoffs and reducing consumer demand, further squeezing profit margins. This is an environment that warrants a high degree of diversification with a conservative bias, and higher volatility allocations should tilt toward alpha-generating solutions. 

It is natural to ask: What should be the role of the government to alleviate banking crises and prevent future ones? Some argue that more regulation is needed while others argue “let the market sort things out.” Recognizably, there is no panacea and no way for financial institutions to insulate themselves from major macroeconomic and geopolitical “black swans.” The only recourse financial institutions do have within their control is to ensure they are well-capitalized, diversified in their portfolios, adept at managing risk, technologically sophisticated, and staffed with the very best people—and that includes their CEO.

Altuğ Ükümen is a Geneva-based investment consultant specializing in portfolio management, asset allocation, and fund selection. Jerry Haar is an international business professor at Florida International University and global fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Image: Shutterstock.

“Your platform should be banned … TikTok surveils us all and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is able to use this as a tool to manipulate America as a whole,” emphatically asserted Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers in a striking hearing featuring TikTok CEO Shou Chew. Amid mounting concerns over Beijing’s potential invasion of an island far from the American homeland, Washington has discovered another battleground that seems more aligned with its vested interests and can be better leveraged against China’s adverse influence, hopefully striking a chord with the public this time.

As both countries vie for global prominence, their respective approaches have exposed underlying weaknesses. One such vulnerability lies right in the role of the U.S. Congress. What used to be a strategic ballast during Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking meetings with Mao Zedong is now a catalyst behind the hardening U.S. approach toward China; the Achilles’ heel in this intricate ballet of diplomacy. The notion that the current U.S.-China dynamics mirror that between America and the Soviet Union during the Cold War not only resonates with individual convictions but holds broad appeal on Capitol Hill.

Historical analogies, in general, are found omnipresent during the U.S. foreign policy process. Members of Congress frequently invoked the Munich and Vietnam analogies during debates surrounding the Persian Gulf crisis in 1991, as both heuristics instruments and post-hoc justifications leading up to following policy actions. In light of the Washington-Beijing-Taipei triangle, this Cold War analogy conveys nothing but a clear and enduring pro-Taiwan bipartisan bias long rooted among American legislators.

A 1977 poll conducted by Brown University sheds light on this domestic pushback during the period of U.S.-China détente. In response to Beijing’s “three demands” (break diplomatic ties with Taiwan, withdraw the U.S. military, and abrogate the 1954 security treaty), approximately 93 percent of American political elites opposed them as preconditions for normalization. This aligned with the 89 percent of respondents who voted to uphold Taiwan’s “independence and freedom,” as well as the three-quarters who expressed support for maintaining diplomatic relations and a defense treaty with Taiwan in the event of an independence declaration. At the time, Rep. Robert E. Bauman, then vice-chairman of the American Conservative Union, vehemently criticized the Carter administration’s efforts to normalize relations with China, describing it as “the greatest act of appeasement since Neville Chamberlain went to Munich.” Likewise, Sen. Barry Goldwater denounced the move as “one of the most cowardly acts” and “a stab in the back” to Taiwan.

Men exploit the past to prop up their prejudices. In contrast to the majority of Democrats rallying behind Carter back then, bipartisan majorities appear to have reached a consensus: the multifaceted challenges China poses to U.S. values and interests constitute the greatest threat to American security and well-being. Considering that the GOP’s “China Task Force” was, at worst, able to produce some informed policy outputs led by experienced China hands—despite their slogans articulating the “CCP’s malign influence”—then the new China Select Committee seems solely dedicated to serving the hawkish agenda in Congress.

Some have flagged alarm that the preliminary undertakings of the committee indicate a potential inclination to repeat historical pitfalls. Indeed, different from inclusive reflections in the strategic community, the poverty of China debates on the Hill reveals its prioritizing political spectacle over meaningful analyses. Rather than presenting nuanced evaluations, it welcomes testimonies from those who corroborate the committee members’ assertive predispositions towards China, such as former Trump officials Matthew Pottinger and H.R. McMaster, both known for emphasizing the China threat. More importantly, fingers have been pointed at their American counterparts. McMaster contented during his testimony that leaders in academia, industry, finance, and government should be to blame for their long “wishful thinking and self-delusion” on China’s intentions. Those words are floating signifiers. Implying those professionals as pro-China sympathizers would likely translate to the label as transgressive, discredited pariahs, some of whom may be squarely relegated to the margins or even outside the policy circle in the future.

A similar situation happened in the recent high-profile TikTok hearing. As lawmakers grappled with the implications of Chinese technology companies on American soil, questions surrounding data privacy, national security, and the ever-present specter of censorship came to the fore and demanded clarifications as well as alternative solutions. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be an effective conversation to appreciate the public’s perspective and tackle critical national security-related concerns wound up being a nearly one-sided berating. Besides the indifference to Project Texas—the proposed TikTok-Oracle cooperation agreement to ensure compliance regarding data access—the “yes or no” style of interrogating on subtle, complex, even irrelevant topics, taken together, treated TikTok’s Singaporean CEO as a target. During that five-hour duration, Chew, whether he wanted it or not, became a proxy and scapegoat of CCP in the United States. It is also exposed that the inherent function of the hearing was no more than anti-China advertising and political posturing for armchair experts based on ideology and partisanship.

In her latest writing regarding the Taiwan issue, Jessica Chen Weiss cautioned that “[i]n any society, there are people who go looking for a fight.” But it appears that most of these individuals have now gathered at the Capitol, wielding more influence than those who keep a level-headed, cautiously calibrated approach toward China, particularly within the executive branch and epistemic communities. In this case, the congressional impact on China policy primarily exercises negative control by either rejecting proposals outright or altering their core substance. For example, Sen. Tom Cotton chastised the administration on the earlier Chinese balloon incursion by declaring that“President Biden should stop coddling and appeasing the Chinese communists…As usual, the Chinese Communists’ provocations have been met with weakness and hand-wringing.” He was hardly alone; the House unanimously passed a resolution condemning the Chinese spy balloon shortly after.

If the balloon incident is viewed merely as a reaction, then it is difficult not to evoke memories of the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis with Tsai Ing-wen’s sensitive stopover on American soil and her meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In 1995, Lee Teng-hui’s visit to his alma mater, Cornell University, to deliver a speech was perceived by China as a provocative move towards Taiwan’s independence, promptly sparking a series of missile tests and military exercises near Taiwan. Should a similar congressional provocation occur following Nancy Pelosi’s recent trip to the island, it would almost certainly antagonize Beijing again, leading to large-scale military and economic coercion, with tensions escalating further. If left unchecked, such tendencies would put the Biden administration in an awkward position, leaving them with no choice but to adopt a confrontational stance, thereby worsening the already deteriorating U.S.-China relations.

The original symbolic push for acts—centered on showcasing attitudes and claiming credit instead of prescribing concrete policy impacts—is turning Congress into an arena rife with demagoguery and sophistry, whereas genuine public interest finds no room to thrive. In such an inflated threat climate and a tendency to gaze on the present as tabula rasa, the United States struggles to pierce the informational and cognitive cocoon in an effort to grasp a comprehensive understanding of China’s motives. Consequently, the country may confront mounting difficulty in extricating itself from an arms race or open conflict with China, let alone crafting an effective long-term strategy towards China.

Junyang Hu is a Lloyd and Lilian Vasey Fellow at Pacific Forum.

Image: Shutterstock.

Gordon Moore, one of the founding fathers of Silicon Valley, died on March 24 at the age of ninety-four. He co-founded Intel in 1968 and grew it into one of the most powerful companies on the planet as its chief executive and chairman. Moore’s Law—his prediction that the number of transistors in a circuit would double every twenty-four months—was pivotal in putting chips in every electronic device and laid the groundwork for personal computers, smartphones, and artificial intelligence. 

But according to Intel’s January earnings call, the company is far from its heyday under Moore. Intel’s profits fell by 60 percent in 2022 while revenue fell by 20 percent, leading Moody’s, Fitch, and S&P to downgrade its credit rating. The company has started the process of laying off thousands of employees and has cut its employee base pay by 5 to 10 percent. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger blamed “persistent macro headwinds” for the collapse, though the company’s inability to deliver new products on time and its severe overestimate of demand for personal computers are also responsible. Intel’s recovery plan is largely dependent on it receiving billions in federal subsidies from the CHIPS and Science Act, which is likely as Intel was the principal lobbyist for the bill.

But why should Washington save Intel? The answer most frequently provided by policymakers is that the U.S. produces no advanced chips, putting it at risk of losing a conflict with China if Taiwan is unable to ship chips across the Pacific. In reality, this is a canard. Peter Wennink, CEO of Dutch lithography giant ASML, dispelled this myth in December, saying that “it is common knowledge that chip technology for purely military applications is usually 10, 15 years old.” America’s warfighting capability is not meaningfully undermined by its lack of production of advanced chips as even platforms like the F-35 fighter jet use only legacy chips.

Another justification for directing subsidies to Intel is the idea that American firms should regain leadership in chip manufacturing to promote U.S. economic competitiveness. As President Joe Biden said when he signed the CHIPS Act into law, “the future of the chip industry is going to be made in America” by “American companies.” This helps explain why Intel may receive upwards of $3 billion from the Commerce Department for its two plants in Ohio, while U.S. factories of foreign firms that have met ambitious technology targets like the Korean memory chip maker SK Hynix will receive less. 

Though industrial policy will undoubtedly increase U.S. production of chips, the future of the semiconductor industry is going to be made in East Asia—not America. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. receives over half of all global orders to produce chips, which has enabled it to perfect its manufacturing processes and mass-produce logic chips that are two generations ahead of Intel’s chips. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Tokyo-based Kioxia control 70 percent of the market for memory chips; Intel sold much of its memory business to SK Hynix in 2021. The CHIPS Act will likely increase U.S. semiconductor production from 10 percent of global output to just 14 percent.

Even with billions in government subsidies, Intel is unlikely to regain the commanding position Moore helped it gain. According to semiconductor industry analyst Jonathan Goldberg, Intel will not be able to increase production sufficiently to poach clients from TSMC until the end of the decade, by which time its cash reserves will be depleted. Gelsinger has sold six of Intel’s non-core businesses since he became CEO in 2021, a shrewd move to save cash in the near term but a long-term gamble that Intel’s few remaining products will be dominant even as it innovates at a slower pace than TSMC and Samsung.

Washington’s emphasis on subsidizing American firms to produce on American soil represents a misunderstanding of semiconductor industry dynamics. American companies already capture half of global semiconductor industry revenue and are leaders in key areas including machine tools, design automation software, and process control. Though U.S. firms produce fewer chips than TSMC and Samsung, they still control many choke points in the semiconductor supply chain, allowing Washington to slow China’s production of advanced chips through export controls. Whether a company is headquartered in the United States is a red herring in an industry as globalized as semiconductors; Idaho-based Micron, for instance, has 75 percent of its employees outside of the United States. 

A better alternative would be to Americanize foreign companies by enticing them to make good on their promises to invest in the United States. While Samsung has said it may invest $195 billion in Texas over the next two decades, companies rarely deliver on lofty headline investment numbers. TSMC chief financial officer Wendell Huang explained why on a recent earnings call, stating that the costs associated with constructing factories “can be 4 to 5x greater for U.S. fab[s] versus a fab in Taiwan.” This is part of the reason why TSMC intends to continue producing its most advanced chips exclusively in Taiwan. As former Obama administration official Kevin Xu has persuasively argued, Intel’s “core is rotting” while companies like SK Hynix and Samsung are ready to make the United States a leader in semiconductor production again. The Commerce Department should allocate funding to persuade foreign industry heavyweights to make chips in America rather than trying to bail out Intel.

In his 2023 State of the Union address, Biden remarked that “outside of Columbus, Ohio, Intel is building semiconductor factories on a thousand acres—a literal field of dreams.” But a closer look reveals that its field of dreams is fallow. 

Kevin Klyman is a technology researcher at Harvard’s Belfer Center and a former fellow at the United Nations Foundation and the AI lab of the UN Secretary-General. Twitter: @kevin_klyman.

Image: Nor Gal / Shutterstock.com

Surely no one sees the war in Ukraine as a net positive. The toll in lives on both sides, the destruction of Ukrainian infrastructure, and the Russian human rights violations, not to mention the high cost to Western economies in an era of ballooning deficits and high inflation all add up to an unmitigated catastrophe. No one can be happy with the conflict, except perhaps for China, which increasingly benefits from the relegation of Russia to its ever more junior status in their unequal Eurasian partnership.

We can wish this war had been prevented, and that the West, especially the United States, had made it clear to Russia in advance that it would not accept invasion and annexation. Yet Moscow had seen the Obama administration do little in response to the occupation of Crimea. Moreover, watching the Biden administration accept the humiliating exit from Afghanistan, it could reasonably conclude that it could swallow Ukraine with few consequences.

Yet the invasion might still have been forestalled by effective American diplomacy warning Russia robustly against pulling the trigger. Prior to February 24, 2022, Washington might have beefed up its embassy in Kyiv, raising the diplomatic stakes against an invasion, or even stationed a symbolic contingent of troops, a trip wire, to send a signal of commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty. Perhaps Russia president Vladimir Putin would have hesitated, if President Joe Biden had not repeatedly underscored what the United States would not do. The only effect of that overcautious messaging and the promise not to send U.S. troops was to invite Moscow to march right in, as if it were Prague 1968 all over again. To the surprise of everyone, however, Ukraine fought back.

There are conspiracy theorists on the Left and on the Right who misinterpret Washington’s pre-invasion messaging as an intentional trap to lure Russia into a war. This sort of speculation is risible. There is a much simpler explanation: poor leadership in America and lethargic diplomacy. But all that is water under the bridge now. The war that might have been prevented with better American vision has been raging for more than a year, and with this duration, new stakes have taken shape.

For Ukraine, the goals include expelling Russia from territory occupied since February 24, as well as ending the occupation of Crimea. These goals—the territorial disputes to which Florida governor Ron DeSantis referred—are consistent with international law, respect for internationally recognized borders and stated U.S. policy. Yet the United States has an additional interest of higher priority: imposing an unambiguous defeat on Russia. This ambition was not present at the start of the conflict; hence the initial American hesitation to support the Ukrainians. However, as the war has ground on, and the commitment on both sides has grown, American credibility as the prime defender of the international order is on the line. Unless the Russian aggressor experiences a clear loss, it is the United States who will suffer reputational damage. A Western defeat in Ukraine, after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, will become a narrative of American weakness. The world order will be less secure.

The way to impose a defeat on Russia is to accelerate military support for Ukraine, i.e., both the speed of the delivery of arms and an increase in their quality. The time has long passed for slow-walking the weapons the Ukrainians can use so effectively. The longer the war drags on, the greater the likelihood that our always half-hearted West European allies will drop off: Germany was recently gripped by a nationwide strike, and France is bogged down in violent protests over pension reform. Very soon such domestic concerns will undermine their commitments to security on the eastern front of the free world. It is foolish and short-sighted to withhold from Ukraine the tools it needs to win. Ukraine’s winning is in the American national interest.

Russell A. Berman is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he directs the Working Group on the Middle East. He previously served as Senior Advisor on the Policy Planning Staff in the Department of State.

Image: Shutterstock.

In a fascinating turn of events for the region in 2023, diplomacy appears to be leading the way in the Middle East. In this regard, Jordanian foreign minister and deputy prime minister Ayman Safadi met with Lebanese foreign minister Abdullah Bou Habib on March 28 to discuss bilateral relations and regional issues—particularly and interestingly that of Syria. The meeting is significant, given the rapid diplomatic shift across the region concerning Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Yet while Jordan has worked to build support for its “step-for-step” plan on Syria, Beirut has remained relatively quiet regarding Damascus’s role in the region. That said, Lebanon has serious interests in Syria that will guide its approach to Assad in 2023 as diplomatic engagement ramps up across the region.

The Refugee Question

The foreign ministers’ meeting touched on issues impacting both countries in relation to Syria. Both officials discussed the refugee file at length—a difficult subject given the Syrian neighbors’ substantial refugee populations. Lebanon officially hosts approximately 822,000 refugees, with some estimates reaching 1.5 million when considering unregistered Syrians. Jordan, meanwhile, hosts roughly 1.3 million Syrian refugees.

Yet while the refugee issue dominated talks on Syria, Jordan’s ongoing step-for-step initiative underpinned the meeting’s focus on Damascus. Amman has quietly advocated for the approach, which centralizes tiered diplomatic thawing with the Syrian government in exchange for parallel concessions consisting of political reforms, often described as protections for refugees returning to their communities, combating smuggling, and tempering Iran-backed armed groups inside Syria.

The plan has failed thus far, as Jordan’s renormalization effort with Assad has not slowed smuggling along the Jordan-Syria border or pushed Iran-backed militias from the border zone. Rather, ongoing efforts led by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) continue to garner the most focus and progress, albeit without much reform or clear political promises from the Syrian side.

Still, Beirut’s delegation expressed support for the Jordanian initiative. Indeed, the Lebanese government publicly supports many of the focus areas within the Jordan plan—namely refugee returns. Bou Habib made this clear, noting the “humanitarian tragedy is not only the tragedy of civilians displaced from their land and homeland but also a significant challenge for Lebanon at the economic, social and especially political and security levels.”

The foreign minister’s statement certainly reflects Beirut’s thinking on the Syria file. The Lebanese government has focused heavily on Syrian refugees in recent years to shift blame for its brutal economic collapse from the country’s traditional elites to that of a foreign enemy—namely, Syrians. It is an ongoing fallacy meant to scapegoat a group that, in reality, receives support and funding from relevant UN agencies and not the Lebanese government. Regardless, the line works with much of the public, and has thus become a priority area shared with Jordan as well as Turkey.

The Importance of Stability in Syria for Lebanon

Still, other issues connected to the Syria file also carry significant importance for Lebanon. This includes a general desire for stability in its eastern neighbor, particularly given the two countries’ deep interconnectedness. Indeed, instability in one of these two countries often leads to a similar outcome in the other, best exemplified by Lebanon’s currency crisis producing similar monetary issues in Syria in recent years.

Interconnectivity and stability also go hand in hand with another core Lebanese interest; namely, finalizing and implementing an energy deal negotiated in late 2021 between Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. Importantly, U.S. officials helped mediate the deal. The agreement establishes the framework for a $300 million World Bank loan to finance repairs to the Arab Gas Pipeline in Syria that would, in part, facilitate the flow of gas from Egypt and Jordan to Syria and northern Lebanon.

The deal is currently held up by both delayed Lebanese reforms to its electricity sector and a supposed ongoing U.S. sanctions review. Both Egypt and the World Bank have thus far refused to begin implementing the deal without Washington’s assurance that it does not violate the Syria sanctions regime and Beirut’s reforms to its highly inefficient electricity regulations, respectively. Specifically, the concern relates to details in the agreement that stipulate a small percentage of gas for the Syrian government as a type of payment for its section of the pipeline. At present, U.S. sanctions do not allow any energy sector imports or investments in Syria.

Given these interests and their deeply rooted connection to Lebanon’s overarching stability—or political survival with respect to false accusations against Syrian refugees—Beirut thus places high importance on Syria’s return to the regional diplomatic fold. Lebanese leaders likely view Amman’s step-for-step plan as a serious mechanism for such prospects, even if anti-smuggling components directly harm certain Lebanese factions (namely Hezbollah). Whether Lebanon views step-for-step as a mechanism for broader, international shifts on Syria, however, remains to be seen.

Constrained by Internal Division

To be sure, Lebanon’s political landscape is as far from monolithic as any context across the globe. A substantial portion of the population is intensely anti-Syria and anti-Assad—namely the March 14 Alliance consisting of the Lebanese Forces, Kataeb Party, many independent MPs, smaller parties, and the former Sunni-dominated Future Movement. These parties stand in contrast to the pro-Syria March 8 Alliance, led by Hezbollah and consisting of the Amal Movement, Progressive Socialist Party, and Free Patriotic Movement.

How the March 14 Alliance members view any such move deemed as accommodating to Damascus—particularly amidst an ongoing presidential debate that has witnessed Hezbollah-backed and staunchly pro-Assad Marada member of parliament (MP) Suleiman Frangieh become the potential frontrunner for the Lebanese presidency—remains to be seen. It is not far-fetched to speculate that negative views of Frangieh translate similarly to any engagement with Assad, and vice versa, given the strong fear of and resentment against the Syrian occupation of the past. Still, neither alliance is necessarily a monolith either.

Ultimately, Hezbollah carries the most power and influence in Lebanon and can easily dictate not only the presidential outcome but Beirut’s engagement with Damascus. That said, the Lebanese government carries minimal serious influence over regional actions pertaining to Syria given the scale of foreign interference in its internal affairs. For these reasons, Lebanon will likely remain in the shadow of broader regional renormalization efforts tied to the Assad regime while focusing heavily on the Syrian refugee file in the near term—regardless of its support for Amman’s efforts.

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

Image: Shutterstock.

The Iranian drone strike against the American military base in northern Syria that killed one American contractor and wounded six servicemen has once again called into question the purpose of the American presence, with some 900 troops, in the country. The official reasoning, according to the Pentagon chief, Gen. Mark A. Milley, is “to counter [the Islamic State].” Furthermore, the policymakers in Washington have stated that the United States should stay in Syria to “contain and roll back Iranian influence … also protecting Israel.” Whereas the two objectives may sound legitimate, the ways by which the United States implements them are inherently problematic and will beget more problems, not only for Washington but for the region as well.

Countering ISIS

ISIS has posed a much more immediate threat to the regional states and actors than it has to Washington, which weakens the argument that the United States is in Syria to counter ISIS. By design, ISIS is an extremist Sunni organization that during its reign directed its attacks primarily against the Shia Muslims in Iraq and Syria, explicitly engaging in a Shia genocide. This makes the organization a prime adversary for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Iran and its proxies, who are Shias. The pro-Iranian militias such as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria played a great role in rolling back ISIS. Ironically, Washington has indirectly allowed Iranian influence in the region to strengthen by helping eliminate an anti-Shia group like ISIS, just as it did by removing a staunch anti-Iran figure, Saddam Hussein, and fighting the anti-Iran Taliban in Afghanistan.

ISIS has declared Turkey “the Wilayat Turkey” (a part of its alleged caliphate) and issued a death warrant for the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for his cooperation with “the Crusaders” (NATO) in the fight against ISIS. The terror organization is known to have carried out numerous suicide bombings in Turkey that cost the lives of dozens of Turks.

All this considered, Washington’s insistence on staying in Syria under the pretext of “containing ISIS” is rather weak. Every actor in the region considers ISIS an existential threat and has a stake in eliminating it. If anything, Washington should have cooperated with its NATO ally Turkey, a regional power that has formidable economic, political, and military clout, and its proxies. Such a partnership could have maintained U.S. power projection without risking a direct confrontation with regional adversaries such as Iran and the probability of initiating another “forever war” that would have America bogged down in the Middle East. This was seen with the assassination of the Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2020, for which Iran retaliated by firing more than a dozen ballistic missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq where more than 100 US troops suffered brain injuries.

However, a series of mistakes Washington made in 2014-2015 not only cost it Turkey, a valuable ally, but also resulted in America’s unjustified presence in Syria. At the height of the ISIS threat, the Obama administration failed to adopt a clear plan for its defeat and the toppling of Assad. The confused U.S. agencies began to support different opposition groups each having different agendas. The CIA began to train and equip the pro-Turkey Sunni opposition, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), whose main goal was to topple Assad and fight ISIS. The Pentagon, in contrast, propped up the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Turkey’s arch foe, whose aim was primarily to fight ISIS and ultimately to gain autonomy, even independence, within Syria. 

By 2015, Washington’s Syrian plan was in shambles such that the FSA and the YPG turned against each other, while at the same time separately fighting ISIS. Eventually, the same year, Washington decided to abandon the Sunni FSA in favor of the YPG, and to relinquish the idea of toppling Assad, an Iranian ally, a decision that coincided with Obama’s Iran rapprochement. Not surprisingly, having seen the American ambiguity and weakness, in the Summer of 2015, Russian president Vladimir Putin descended into Syria to save Russian interests and Assad from being toppled, which resulted in retaliatory genocidal campaigns against the anti-Assad Syrian opposition and the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including the infamous 2017 chemical attack.

Are the YPG an Asset or Liability?

The Pentagon’s staunch support for the YPG brought about the question of countering Iranian influence in the region. 

In Syria, the Pentagon heavily relies on the YPG, a majority Marxist Kurdish militant group, which as former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter put it, “has substantial ties with PKK … which is a terrorist organization in the eyes of the US and Turkish governments.” The YPG’s inability to counter Iran’s influence stems from two reasons: first, the YPG and the PKK have had organic ties with Iran due to their aligned regional goals; and second, Washington is making the same mistake in Syria that it did in Afghanistan—nation building. 

YPG/PKK - Iran Ties

Iran, which has historically pursued adverse policies against Turkey, provided the PKK with a safe haven not only in Iran but also in Iraq. Tehran denied Ankara’s request for a cross-border operation into the Iranian Qandil Mountains, where the PKK’s upper echelon is believed to reside.

Likewise, the PKK and Tehran have cooperated against their mutual adversary, Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani and his Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the strongest faction in Iraqi Kurdistan. Therefore, given their long-term strategic goals, the PKK’s top commanders, who also have control over the YPG, want to exert extreme caution to not agitate Tehran. Thus, the PKK’s leaders don’t allow the United States to use their Syrian branch, the YPG, as foot soldiers against Iran’s proxies. Bassam Ishak, then the Washington representative of the Syrian Democratic Council, a political umbrella organization to which the YPG belongs and which represents the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), acknowledged that an all-out war with Iran would wreak havoc on them. Moreover, Nicholas Heras, the Center for a New American Security fellow who talked to SDF members in Syria said, “There is a deep concern within the SDF over the extent to which the United States is looking to use SDF forces as a counter to Iran in Syria.”

Washington’s Futile Effort: Nation Building in Syria

From a social, political, and economic point of view, the YPG autonomy project in Syria is unsustainable. The Pentagon is pouring billions of dollars to train and equip the YPG and facilitate its autonomous rule in northeastern Syria. But the predominantly leftist Kurdish YPG is alien to the region, which is overwhelmingly Sunni Arab with some Turcoman. 

The YPG is known to have engaged in de-Arabization as it gained territory from ISIS, sowing further resentment, and breeding further intra-communal clashes. “By deliberately demolishing civilian homes, in some cases razing and burning entire villages, displacing their inhabitants with no justifiable military grounds, the Autonomous Administration is abusing its authority and brazenly flouting international humanitarian law, in attacks that amount to war crimes,” said Lama Fakih, senior crisis advisor at Amnesty International. Moreover, the YPG’s political wing, known as the Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD), has a reputation of persecuting those Kurds who don’t share their neo-Maoist worldview. Ibrahim Biro, the then-head of Syria’s Kurdish National Council, accused the PYD of being dictatorial. He was kidnapped by the PKK for opposing the YPG in Syria. The World Council of Arameans (WCA) has frequently condemned the YPG for closing their schools and kidnapping and conscripting Aramean Christian teenagers against their wills.

Furthermore, Turkey controls much of the vital water inflow in Syria that is necessary for agriculture and power, as well as trade. A prospective Kurdish YPG state will heavily rely on resources from Turkey, which sees the organization as an existential threat. Currently, the YPG is exclusively sustained by American taxpayers and a small amount of oil export that necessitates a fragile deal with the Assad regime. 

It begs explanation why Washington is so insistent on investing in a pointless Kurdish nation-building exercise in Syria whereas the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq has much more wherewithal, from its own government to the central bank. Ironically, Washington in 2017 rejected Kurdish statehood in northern Iraq by not recognizing the region’s independence referendum. If the purpose is to counter ISIS and the Iranian influence via proxies, why has Washington not been investing in the Erbil government, which is extremely wary of the Iranian influence? Additionally, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces successfully fought against ISIS. To make things worse, by unconditionally supporting the YPG, Washington indirectly consolidates the PKK’s regional presence, which further complicates intra-Kurdish politics. The KRG in Erbil has long considered the PKK to be an existential threat. The friction escalated to the extent that the PKK began ambushing and killing members of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in 2021.

What now?

I believe Robert Pape, the renowned political scientist from the University of Chicago, is right: it is not the religious convictions but military occupations that create extremism and suicide bombers. After all, former British prime minister Tony Blair acknowledged that the Iraq War “helped give rise to ISIS.” It is not surprising that we don’t hear any more of those roadside bombs, or suicide bombings, after the United States departed from Afghanistan. 

When examining the consequences of the U.S. actions in the last thirty years, one can argue that by taking it upon itself to destroy Iran’s enemies from Saddam to ISIS, “America has Fought Iran’s Wars in the Middle East.” The weary American public now wonders why Iran, China, and Russia have become ever more influential in the Middle East and the United States is losing clout despite Washington having spent more than $8 trillion and lost more than 5,000 servicemembers. 

As the Ukrainian war rages on and talk of a war with China is abundant, the last thing America would want is to get bogged down in the Middle East by initiating another forever war with Iran. The United State ought to revise its Middle East strategy. Maintaining a small presence in the name of protecting the YPG and “countering Iran” is counterproductive. The Senate has repealed the Iraq War authorization, a move in the right direction. American policymakers should do the same for Syria. Instead of constantly alienating Turkey, a NATO ally and a major local powerhouse, by unconditionally supporting its arch PKK/YPG foe, Washington needs to take advantage of Ankara’s increasing military, political, and social clout not only in the Middle East but also in the Caucasus and the Black Sea.

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

Image: DVIDS.

With increased bipartisan concern in Washington about the data collection and management practices of Chinese-owned social media applications such as TikTok, we inquired as to whether the public is similarly concerned.

In August of 2020, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to impose economic sanctions against Tiktok, which would have prevented the app from being updated and receiving advertising revenue from American companies. The Trump administration argued that this order was necessary due to the app’s ability to share data with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, which then could be used by the Chinese government. Federal Courts blocked the Trump administration’s executive order from taking effect. The Biden administration revoked the executive order in 2021, but decided to study the application and how it manages data to determine the threat it posed to national security.

Then, in November of 2022, FBI director Christopher Wray testified to the Homeland Security Committee, stating his agency had “national security concerns” regarding the potential uses of TikTok both for data collection and for influencing via its recommendation algorithm. By mid-March, growing bipartisan congressional support sought to respond to security concerns associated with TikTok. Use of the app already was prohibited on government devices, and the Department of Justice announced an investigation into the parent company of TikTok over inappropriately obtaining data on American journalists. Legislative efforts, although still in their infancy, currently suggest the possibility of an outright ban of social media technology owed by adversarial countries, while critics suggest that regulation would be more suitable. 

We ask whether the public supports either option. The assumption would be that Americans, even if concerned about Chinese influence, would support regulation over a ban. To address public support, we conducted a web survey via mTurk Amazon of 1,228 American respondents on February 28, 2023. After a series of demographic and attitudinal questions, respondents were randomly assigned one of two prompts to evaluate on a five-point Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree).

The statements were:

Version 1: Social media apps owned by Chinese companies, such as WeChat and TikTok, should be regulated in the United States.

Version 2: Social media apps owned by Chinese companies, such as WeChat and TikTok, should be banned in the United States.

Overall, we find clear support for regulating these social media apps, with roughly two-thirds of respondents supportive of regulation; however, that support declines by 9 percent or greater when considering an outright ban of such applications. In addition, and consistent with the stronger anti-China sentiment overall, we see greater support for both regulation and for a ban among Republicans compared to Democrats.

After controlling for various demographic and attitudinal factors, we found that this pattern regarding support for regulation versus an outright ban endures. Furthermore, conservatives and those with more education were more supportive of regulation, while women overall were less supportive. We also asked respondents to rate China on a 1-5 scale (very negative to very positive) and find that views on China negatively correspond with support for any action against Chinese apps.

We also asked people to indicate on a scale of 1-5 whether a range of issues in U.S.-China relations were important or not, with a 1 being not important at all and a 5 being very important. People who indicated that cybersecurity was a more important issue were more likely to support regulating Chinese-owned apps, but this relationship did not hold when respondents were asked about a possible ban on foreign-owned apps.

There are several possible explanations for the strong support for regulation, but weaker support for banning foreign-owned apps. TikTok is an exceedingly popular social media app that has millions of users in the United States, so the opposition to banning the app could partially be a reflection of its popularity. Although not an app, Huawei phones and technology, which are banned in the United States, did not receive the same amount of attention since they had not taken hold in the United States at the time. 

Admittedly, we acknowledge the limitations of our experimental web survey. In particular, we did not ask about the use of social media applications, with a March Washington Post poll showing starkly different views of a ban based on whether one used the application. Use also largely falls on generational lines. Many TikTok users are from Generation Z, a group underrepresented in Congress, one that current policymakers may underestimate, and from which we may see a potential backlash to policies toward the application. 

Banning applications could also cause concerns about freedom of speech protections. Laws protecting free speech are a major reason why many European countries are not pursuing bans of TikTok despite the cybersecurity and data privacy concerns about the app. Policymakers would have to carefully consider laws around free speech to effectively craft a ban that would stand up to legal scrutiny.

Nevertheless, the results suggest a broad acknowledgment of the potential dangers of Chinese social media applications and a potential area for a bipartisan solution, though the data gives little indication as to what regulatory strategies the public would most support.

Timothy S. Rich is a Professor of Political Science at Western Kentucky University and Director of the International Public Opinion Lab (IPOL). His research focuses on public opinion and electoral politics, with a focus on East Asian democracies.

Ian Milden is a recent graduate from the master’s in public administration program at Western Kentucky University. He previously graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Western Kentucky University.

Josie Coyle is an honors undergraduate researcher at Western Kentucky University, with majors in International Affairs and Chinese.

Image: Ascannio / Shutterstock.com

April is the cruelest month. Especially in the banking sector. In the middle of a war.

It seems that not a day passes that the Institute for the Study of War tells us of the impending gloom on the Russian front; no weapons and an imploding economy at home, though anecdotal stories on the streets of the Red Square would seem to deny any validity to the wasteland of the Russian plateau. Yet a specter is haunting Europe. A specter of “confidence.”

The confidence issue is key when you operate in “fiat” currencies. When Ptolemaic historians predicted the “end of history” in the 1990s: that universal victory of liberal democracy and markets, which would sweep aside the authoritarian, the traditional, and… well, everything, they forgot to account for geopolitics. Joe Biden said the ruble would be reduced to rubble. The French finance minister said the Russian economy would collapse. But despite these various pronouncements, the sanctions and freezing of assets of Russian individuals and firms, along with the foreign exchange reserves of the Russian Central Bank, have not produced any significant tsunami of regime change. It is simply that power and economic power calls the shots—Bismarck’s “blood and iron.” This might not suit the flaky new class of privileged U.S. and UK graduates of the public sector elites, steeped as they are in all-inclusive public sector economic security; the trahison de clercs of modernity. Realpolitik, that of Machiavelli, Carl Schmitt, and Henry Kissinger, didn’t go away. It has taken a back seat amidst the bread and circuses but is now back firmly in the driving seat.

Fiat currencies are promises to pay debts. Hence, they are vulnerable to economic shocks. Now, U.S. and European banks, invested heavily in bond portfolios, are reliant on “confident” consumers and investors. The citadel of capital is made of paper money, fluttering in the winds of change. In that way, the economies of fiat currencies rely on confidence. But the economies of resource commodities are immune to “confidence.”

The economic caesura can go back to the United States ending the crude gold standard in 1971. It was more strategic than economic. This adoption of petro-dollars above gold ushered in a revolution of dollar dependency worldwide. Out of this, the United States was now both militarily and economically the godhead, just as the Papacy had once been—Roman locuta, causa finita (Rome has spoken, so the case is closed). This expansion was based on a dual dialectic; at once the United States needed to solidify hegemony and military Keynesianism was the answer.

Now this house of cards, built on confidence, has gone bipolar. Yet the writing was on the wall. The movement to resource-backed currencies has been accelerated by the U.S. acknowledgment of the trend and its attempt to reverse it, ostensibly through the Ukraine debacle. Zoltan Pozsar, who then was at the New York Federal Reserve, published a report on the switch, which signaled this hiatus and the journey to resource economics. In times of high stress (such as now in Ukraine) commodity prices become volatile, driving instability. This is due to the fact that these commodities are used as collateral for many other debt instruments.

The revolution in economics is not Bitcoin, but resource-based currencies. The West has hastened its own demise. Pozsar moved to Credit Suisse, ironically, and the rest is history. “Hoisted by his own petard,” as they say.

The hastening began with the Ukraine war, with the United States forcing the West into a round of sanctions against Russia. With the Russians placing a limit on the price of their gold, Russian investors were stuck with an undervalued ruble, therefore forcing it to rise vis-a-vis the dollar. In the last six months, the ruble has steadily strengthened. Then Putin added the double whammy that oil purchasers must buy in rubles. Or gold. If they buy in gold, they are effectively getting a discount on the oil. This also heaps pressure on the supply of gold, raising the price.

In effect, the West’s commitment to burn the ruble has backfired. The strengthening of the oil price has had a concomitant strengthening effect on the ruble. The upshot of this? In the land of paper, commodities are king. Russia and China are now able to control the prices of gold and oil, which is epoch-defining. We are moving away from Westworld.

At last year’s St. Petersburg Economic Investment Forum, the CEO of Gazprom forewarned about the shift to a new dynamic: “The game of nominal value of money is over, as this system does not allow to control the supply of resources.” It signals the emergence of “outside money,” to quote Poszar again, rather than “inside money,” i.e. the use of debt and fiat currency. The post-Lehman Brothers world has been built on the property stripping of the world, using cheap debt for institutional investors to wrest more and more property under their umbrella. The world of the dollar reserve system is coming to an end. Inside money has been artificially inflated by the West in order to cheaply buy the assets of the Orient. Now it’s payback time for the Orient. The West emphasizes rules and laws as a means to accrue wealth; in the Orient, the workhouse of the world, wealth is created through labor and invention. This is the fundamental malaise of the Anglophone world: it is not the absence of fruit in the supermarket post-Brexit; it is the civilizational surrender of the very ethos which gave the nations their success in the first place.

The war in Ukraine has seen outside money taking back some of the inside money of the Davos oligarchs. It is Russia clawing back the real world of commodities, of realpolitik.

The dollar is still the reserve currency. This seismic change will not happen overnight. But the seeds are sown. The present banking crisis, at Credit Suisse, at Deutsche Bank, and at others, are symptomatic of the weakness of the fiat system. During pressures, the banks are less inclined to risk the inside money game; the currencies are not backed by commodities. However, with outside money, the currencies are supported by hard commodities. This is the allure of the new system. In times of banking pressures, the central banks are forced to step in and print new money; hence the currency is further weakened. This is now playing out in the West; the gradual death of fiat currencies.

Meanwhile, the Eurasian Economic Commission is preparing for a commodity-backed currency, based on a commodity bundle of gold, water, oil, grain, and metals. For them, the confiscation of dollar reserves by sanctions is pushing new ideas along. It is the reverse of globalization. Globalization, like colonialism before it rested on a false nomos—the Greek word for the real underlying forces of the world. The sun is rising on the new nomos of the earth; a resource-based order of territorial aggrandizement, of realpolitik. The West will be putting out the wildfires of this new history for a long time, with Ukraine being only the first of many.

In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond argues that civilizations crash for a variety of reasons: environmental, population, the loss of trade partners. The problem of integrated globalization and the outsourcing of the original ethos to rival states such as China falls within the Diamond schema. He particularly cites the “courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible.” He states that elites can prove disastrous in this context as they practice short-term divisive policies at odds with the teleology of society. This is the Achilles’ Heel of economic liberalism: Short-term deindustrialization and deterritorialization have led to a shattering of the telos of the West. Societies lack meaning and elites substitute a self-destructive cultural philosophy to hide extraction and accumulation.

The Easter Islanders, who lived an idyllic agrarian lifestyle with a spiritual teleology based on the building of Moai statues to collect the spirits of tradition and the past, are a warning about forgetting and uprooting.  From the fifteenth century onwards, two groups, the Tu'u and the Oto Itu, lived in separate parts of the island. They clashed in the mid-eighteenth century over claims of ancestral hegemony. The result was a period of statue-toppling, in which the rival groups neglected core values and sought to destabilize the rival’s cultural power embodied in the Moai. Famine and homelessness followed as elite groups took control.

A warning to history. Yet nothing is learned from history. It is an epic Spenglerian cycle of rise and fall, of shifting civilizations, of statue toppling in the West. The telos of success is forgotten and the values of the past are cast away for the pyrrhic victory of liberal fetishes.

Brian Patrick Bolger studied at the LSE. He has taught political philosophy and applied linguistics in universities across Europe. His articles have appeared in the United States, the UK, Italy, Canada, and Germany in magazines such as The National Interest, GeoPolitical Monitor, Merion West, Voegelin View, The Montreal Review, The European Conservative, Visegrad Insight, The Hungarian Conservative, The Salisbury Review, The Village, New English Review, The Burkean, The Daily Globe, American Thinker, The Internationalist, and Philosophy News. His book, Coronavirus and the Strange Death of Truth, is now available in the UK and the United States. His new book, Nowhere Fast: The Decline of Liberal Democracy, will be published soon by Ethics International Press.

Image: Shutterstock.

The International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Putin for the abduction of Ukrainian children is groundbreaking—the issue has not nearly gotten sufficient public attention. Beyond its relevance for human rights and criminal prosecution, the unlawful removal of Ukrainian children also lays bare Russia’s intention to erase Ukrainians’ identity and eradicate Ukrainian statehood. Any peace settlement will continue to be a non-starter unless it can guarantee accountability for the abductions and the return of all Ukrainian children. As long as the violence against children remains unaddressed, there is little prospect for sustainable peace.

Russia has targeted children since the very beginning of the war. According to estimates by Yale researchers and the Ukrainian government, between 6,000 and 14,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly relocated to Russia since February 2022. Harrowing stories of these abductions are easy to find—albeit only for those fortunate enough to have been rescued. One of them is twelve-year-old Oleksandr, who narrowly escaped forced adoption after having been separated from his parents by Russian soldiers, thanks to his grandmother’s rescue mission through Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Russia. Thousands of other children have not been as lucky.

At the same time, the amount of violence against children in Ukraine is astonishing. Infamously, in March 2022, a Russian airstrike on a theater in Mariupol that had “children” written in big red letters on its roof killed around 600 civilians. Nearly one in ten hospitals in Ukraine has been damaged by the Russians, often hitting maternity wards and children’s hospitals. More than 2,500 schools have been damaged or destroyed. Many kids are among the victims of grave sexual violence and executions in the occupied areas, and are deliberately targeted in atrocities like in Bucha.

Children do not suffer by accident, nor are they simply collateral damage—this is a calculated and methodological scheme. Children symbolize and universally represent the future of a society—in terms of ethnicity, culture, and identity. As such, the abduction, maiming, and slaughtering of children frequently occurs in wars and genocides around the world. The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide explicitly lists the forcible replacement and targeting of children as a genocidal tactic—and for good reason.

What, at first glance, may seem to be strictly a human rights issue in fact shows that Russia is pursuing a grand strategy for the Russification of Ukraine through whatever means it deems necessary, down to genocidal tactics. This effort can be traced as far back as the Soviet Union and the Russian empire. The historical continuity of such a strategy highlights Russia’s commitment to denying the existence of Ukrainians.

The documented patterns of violence against Ukrainian children and systematic nature of the abductions underscore our analysis of strategic intent. Although Russian law prohibits foreign adoption, Putin signed a decree in May 2022 that streamlines the “adoption” process of Ukrainian children; there is even a financial incentive of up to $1,000 for Russians who take in and impose Russian citizenship on a Ukrainian child. In the meantime, Russia holds abducted children in camps, where they are subjected to political re-education—and there is no end in sight.

This all raises an important question: how can Russia be a trustworthy negotiation partner? Independent of all other valid arguments, Russia’s strategy vis-a-vis Ukrainian children demonstrates that there is more to the issue than just land disputes. The violence against children must be part of any future security analyses, ensuring the full scope of Russia’s actions against Ukraine is captured. In the end, it is Ukraine’s decision when to negotiate—but currently, a workable compromise seems highly unlikely. The Ukrainian government cannot let Russia erase Ukraine, even “just a little bit.”

For a peace settlement to be feasible, the children’s issue must be incorporated at the forefront of negotiations. Criminal accountability and the swift return of all Ukrainian children should be set as prerequisites for returning to the negotiation table. Without properly addressing Russia’s abduction of children, the chances of a sustainable peace agreement are likely to be diminished by the partial success of Russia’s genocidal tactics and ensuing opposition from the Ukrainian people and civil society.

Sofie Lilli Stoffel is a McCloy fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Non-resident fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. She works on foreign and security policy and specializes in children in conflict.

Vladyslav Wallace is a Belfer Young Leader Student Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Thomas R. Pickering Graduate Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. He works on U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy and specializes in matters related to Eurasia such as human rights and democracy.

Image: Shutterstock.

For years, certain voices in Lebanon have opposed the rising influence of Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian political military movement, and have warned of the dangerous consequences of not directly addressing this issue with a clear vision. Among these voices is Samy Gemayel, the president of the Kataeb Party, whom I recently had the chance of interviewing. For Gemayel, the reality is simple: Hezbollah is the greatest threat to Lebanese sovereignty, and all roads lead to them.

Gemayel and his Kataeb supporters have a specific grievance against Hezbollah. They view the movement’s decisions and current form as that of an autonomous armed group, which poses an unnecessary danger to the Lebanese people. This danger is especially apparent given the country’s current economic crisis, the worst in Lebanese history. While the existence of Hezbollah’s arms did not solely cause the crisis, other factors, such as the lack of strong state institutions and weak accountability for corruption by other political forces, played a role. Despite this, the problem of how Hezbollah sees Lebanon and what it is remains relevant. It raises the question of whether Lebanon can modernize as a country if it cannot have a single source of authority. Two viewpoints exist on this matter. On the one hand, some in Lebanon argue that the power of Hezbollah grows because of the absence of a state. On the other, there are those who argue that the state is weakened because of Hezbollah and thus cannot effectively legislate and govern. It is even possible that both views are right, leaving Lebanon in a catch-22 situation.

Kataeb is striving to explain the issue of Lebanon's sovereignty to other members of Lebanon’s parliament to ensure a unified approach. Gemayel notes that though economic and other reforms have been agreed upon, there is a lack of consensus on how to address Hezbollah. Whether this was due to naiveté or fear, he answered: “I don’t know, I think it is a bit of both. They didn’t face Hezbollah in the last fifteen years like we did. They didn’t see firsthand the violence, the intimidation, and the will to block the country and to destroy the economy the way we saw it. We cannot hide this elephant in the room called Hezbollah and we cannot escape from tackling this problem.” Gemayel emphasized the need to confront the problem posed by Hezbollah, which has imposed its convictions on all other players in Lebanese politics, leaving no benefits for the Lebanese people.

Opposing Hezbollah has been a top priority in Mr. Gemayel’s political life, but after years of nonviolent resistance alongside other allies of the March 14th Alliance, a political coalition which sought to disarm the Shiite political party, Hezbollah has only grown stronger. Gemayel attributed this to Hezbollah’s ability to bring everyone under its umbrella since 2015–2016, which resulted in the election of Michel Aoun, their primary ally, as president. This move effectively included everyone under their umbrella. “All the political players, played the game of Hezbollah. This was the problem.”

Why did March 14th Alliance Fail?

In 2005, following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, most Lebanese people rallied across the country demanding an end to Syria’s near thirty-year-long military occupation. This call for sovereignty paved the way for the formation of the March 14th Alliance. Syria had intervened in Lebanon’s civil war at the request of the Lebanese government in March 1976. The intervention was intended to halt the war and continued until the signing of the Taif Agreement in Saudi Arabia in 1990, which was endorsed by all Lebanese military and political factions. However, the Syrian army remained in Lebanon despite the agreement's promise that the troops would leave eventually.

As opposition to Syria’s increasing influence in Lebanon grew, so did the voices of dissent. Among them was Pierre Gemayel, the late brother of Samy Gemayel, who was eventually assassinated for his opposition to Syria’s military rule and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Pierre was killed along with others who spoke out against Syria’s power in Lebanon. Prominent anti-Syrian regime voices within the early stages of March 14th Alliance were also assassinated, including the independent politician and respected former editor of An-Nahar, Gebran Tueni, in 2005. In December 2013, former Lebanese minister and Hezbollah critic Mohamad Chatah, who was an advisor to the Saad Hariri government, a Lebanese ambassador, and member of the March 14th Alliance, was also assassinated in downtown Beirut. Shortly before his death, he tweeted a warning about Hezbollah's attempts to take control of specific state responsibilities: “Hezbollah is pressing hard to be granted similar powers in security & foreign policy matters that Syria exercised in Lebanon for 15 yrs.”

To this day, no one had taken responsibility Chatah’s killing. Hezbollah has denied all involvement in the assassinations of their political rivals, saying it benefits the enemies of Lebanon to sow internal division. Putting accusations aside, the greatest common factor for all these kinds of assassinations is that none of their perpetrators have been brought to a fair and just trial. Why? Because the rule of law is not practiced in Lebanon. The truth of the matter is, if every March 14th leader had the courage of Gebran Tueini, Pierre Gamayel, and Mohamed Chatah, Lebanon might be in a better situation today. Instead, everyone pursues their own narrow interests. The public is forced to remain silent out of fear and total cynicism of the country’s political, judicial, economic, and other systems’ failure to live up to promises of a better future.

What Comes Next for Lebanon?

Gemayel believes that Lebanon’s current problems are due to the concessions made to Hezbollah, which has caused Lebanon to be in a state of “confrontation with all the Arab countries and the Western world.” He notes that his party has been opposed to these concessions from the start.

Yet there are some minor signs of change. While in the past, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has condemned Saudi Arabia as a sponsor of terrorism, there has been a shift in rhetoric following a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia mediated by China. Nasrallah welcomed the normalization, stating “This is a good development. We have complete confidence that this will not come at our expense.”

There is optimism that the resumption of ties between the region’s most influential players could help Lebanon. Nevertheless, it is a matter of principle, not deal-making, for Kataeb. No political party today in Lebanon must be allowed to carry weapons. “As long as we have this military organization in parallel to the Lebanese army, making decisions parallel to the Lebanese state and acting like first-degree citizens while the rest of us are second-degree citizens, the problem will remain,” Gemayel says. He hopes for a positive impact but acknowledges that “as long as Hezbollah’s behavior with the Lebanese people and Lebanese institutions doesn’t change, the problem is still there.”

And If Lebanon Does Not Change Course…?

 In early February, Gemayel spoke at Kataeb’s 32nd general assembly about how he sees the country’s present situation: that there are effectively two Lebanons.

“On the one hand, you have the Republic of Lebanon, with all the people from all the sects who believe in it and believe in the democratic system and the constitution, which governs the relations of the Lebanese from all sects with one another. And on the other hand, there is a state called the Islamic Republic of Hezbollah.” He went to declare that Hezbollah’s actions are tantamount to asking for a national divorce, and if that is what it wants, “lets have it.”

When we spoke, I pressed him on this question. Some have accused him of desiring partition or federalism for the country—policies that are not practical or within the best interest of all Lebanese.

Gemayel indicated that what he was doing was pointing out that living under Hezbollah’s hegemony is not an option. He clarified that Kataeb’s resistance to Hezbollah will always remain non-violent, but that regardless, political paralysis cannot remain an option. “What I am trying to point on that Hezbollah is responsible for creating this huge gap between the Lebanese society. This gap may turn into something more dangerous, which is a kind of two Lebanons.”

In other words, Gemayel’s statement about the two Lebanons was not about partition or federalism, but rather a warning about the division between those who believe in the democratic system and those who follow Hezbollah. Such a situation, if not ultimately resolved amicably, could certainly turn into something more dangerous. For a tragedy-ridden country, such a prospect is grim.

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

Image: Shutterstock.

The question “are the United States and China in a new cold war?” is not particularly challenging. The answer is yes. A more intriguing question might be, “can the United States and China avoid the mistakes of the previous Cold War?”

One of these mistakes was a fear-driven credulousness; a tendency to take all boasts and claims of the rival power (think Nikita Khrushchev’s pronouncement of “We will bury you!”) as accurate, and in doing so, miss a chance to craft sensible, non-escalatory responses. Currently, after Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow and boasts about China being ready to “stand guard over the world order,” it might be worth taking a closer look at China’s foreign policy environment. Do its boasts match reality, or is China’s global position weakening like a seaside home at high tide?

Far from being astride the globe, the “China Dream” globally—China’s economic power, political attraction, and standing—are all eroding. Several key indicators reveal that, in the epic clash with the United States and the “collective West,” China is weaker than at any time in the last ten years.

Consider the economic dimensions for starters. A key instrument of great power influence has long been foreign direct investment (FDI), something that is also crucial for China’s own economic health. Spurred by its 2001 “Go Out” policy and supercharged with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, Chinese outward FDI grew steadily, from $10 billion in 2005 to more than $170 billion by 2017. Since then, four of the last five years have seen drops in outward FDI—including a 15 percent fall in 2022, according to the American Enterprise Institute. Chinese investment into Europe, previously a choice location because of its high value-added manufacturing capacity and weak regulation, fell sharply as well. Once eager partners like Germany, Italy, and the EU itself have adopted or strengthened investment screening mechanisms and blocked key Chinese acquisitions. A mutual investment treaty that is supposed to address chronic business complaints about Chinese practices and restrictions has stalled in the European Parliament due to widespread Chinese human rights violations and tit-for-tat individual sanctions. Viewed in the other direction, European investment into China dropped steadily after 2018 until rebounding last year. But as Rhodium Group figures show, FDI inflow to China has become concentrated to the point where almost 90 percent of European FDI in China comes from only four countries. During the coronavirus pandemic, the Rhodium report notes, “virtually no European investors that were not already present in the country have made direct investments.” The impact of European investment, which had in 2018 accounted for 7.5 percent of Chinese GDP, fell to 2.8 percent three years later.

The most serious challenge to Chinese economic clout has come from the United States. Heightened tariffs and restrictions put in place during the Trump administration have continued under Joe Biden. Reviews of foreign (read: Chinese) investments have broadened, as have policies blocking the sale of high-tech goods to China—not only from the United States, but also from companies in other countries whose goods have U.S. components. Washington redoubled its efforts to block Huawei and TikTok, along with passing legislation to subsidize U.S. production of high-tech goods at home and direct “friendshoring” investments to reliable allies and partners.

As an economic colossus, China has alternatives, especially in Asia, Africa, and other places where it claims to offer an alternative development model. But here, too, China’s presence has run out of steam. Annual investments in the countries of the BRI, once the flagship vehicle for the extension of Chinese influence, are today less than half of what they were only five years ago. And most of that is in countries with serious debt issues. As a report in Foreign Policy put it, “China can make friends or break legs. It can’t do both.”

In some places, the Chinese “model” proved more destructive than instructive. Beijing’s bullying of Sri Lanka into handing over the Hambantota port that it built with borrowed Chinese money has not exactly burnished Beijing’s reputation as a guardian of a new world order. In fact, according to Pew Research, favorable views of China have dropped sharply around the world—a fall reinforced by China’s “digital authoritarianism” during coronavirus, its draconian and unsuccessful lockdown policy, and its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In Europe, which is generally less strident than the United States, China is on the verge of trading its once flourishing ties with the world’s most advanced economies for the cheap oil and the desperate embrace of what Alexander Gabuev calls its “new vassal,” Russia. At the EU-China summit in April 2022, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was blunt: “China, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has a special responsibility. No European citizen would understand any support to Russia's ability to wage war.” She is right. In February 2023, a report by the Munich Security Conference showed that across the globe—including in India and Brazi—two-thirds of those surveyed felt that China’s support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine made them wary of Chinese ambitions.

Among the EU’s new East European members, Beijing’s much-touted “CEE+” framework has foundered on China’s willingness to see Ukraine’s sovereignty ravished and its bullying of states that veer even a little on Taiwan, like Lithuania. China has also forfeited one of its more important European trade and investment partners in Ukraine itself. At one point. Volodymyr Zelensky offered Ukraine as “China’s bridge to Europe,” and Chinese companies began the construction of the largest wind farm in Europe near Donetsk and the refitting of the port of Mariupol, now in ruins.

If weakening the Western alliance structure is one of Beijing’s aims, it is now more distant than ever. Ukraine and Moldova have been advanced to candidate status for the EU, and NATO, the very embodiment of Western global domination in Beijing’s view, has been given new life, strength, and members by the actions of Xi’s “best friend” in Moscow. Worse than that from China’s point of view, the alliance has now incorporated China’s own neighborhood into its security stance. In 2022, NATO formally declared the Indo-Pacific to be part of its “shared security interests.” Under President Joe Biden, the United States has significantly increased the prominence of policy initiatives in this region, such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad (composed of India, Australia, Japan, and the United States), and taken actions—like selling nuclear-powered submarines to Australia and adding U.S. bases in the Philippines—that support a more muscular U.S. presence in the region.

Even the EU—which is certainly not a military alliance—has adopted the strategic aim of insuring an “open and rule-based” South China Sea—a direct rejection of China's unilateral claims to virtually all of it—and backed up this rhetoric with action. This month, Italy—the only G-7 country to sign on to the BRI and once the most open to Chinese investment—announced the deployment of one of its two aircraft carriers to the region and confirmed a tripartite deal with Japan and the UK to develop and produce a new generation fighter plane.

Nowhere has the rise of China been greeted with more alarm than in Japan. It was then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who first put forth the notion of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” now widely adopted, as a notion to counter China’s influence. More recently, Japan has doubled its defense budget, reconceptualized the notion of what “defense” means, and opted for new, higher-quality weapons. While some of this comes as a response to North Korea’s menacing actions, Japan’s new national security strategy, adopted in December 2022, makes clear that China represents “the unprecedented and greatest strategic challenge.”

A broader unwelcome development for China is the comparison offered in the United States and elsewhere between Russian actions in Ukraine and possible Chinese actions against Taiwan—a comparison rejected by Beijing. As an alarm bell, the sound could not be clearer. “Ukraine today could be East Asia tomorrow,” said Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida, who just concluded a high-profile visit to Ukraine.

The news is not all bad for China. Foreign trade is up—including with its number one partner, the United States. Beijing scored a significant coup by facilitating the recent deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, Honduras has changed sides, and European leaders still head off to Beijing, with groups of businessmen in tow. But the overall worsening international setting cannot be encouraging for Xi and the Chinese Communist Party, which must at the same time reckon with a dramatically slower growth rate at home, the consequences of a disastrous coronavirus policy, and a population that is both declining and aging.

Brave words and boasts are required when authoritarian leaders need to use nationalism to stay in power at home. But they need not be swallowed whole by outside observers in the face of contrary evidence, nor by policymakers trying to ensure that the new Cold War stays cold.

Ronald H. Linden is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh. During the spring of 2023, he has been Visiting Professor in the Department of Political Science of Sapienza University, Rome. Recent publications include, “Is Moldova Next? Brigadoon in a Tough Neighborhood,” The National Interest, May 22, 2022, and “No Limits? China, Russia and Ukraine” (with Emilia Zankina) Eurozine, May 4, 2022.

Image: Shutterstock.

The deterioration of liberal democracy has become a global phenomenon and, one by one, countries in different parts of the world have fallen victim to assaults on such. Israel is only the latest victim of an attempted attack.

However, civil society’s mobilization against such moves may teach us how to deal with slow-moving authoritarian tendencies.

The Fundamental Law of Hungary initiated by the government of Viktor Orbán, which passed in only nine days and without much public discussion, reduced judges’ retirement age from seventy to sixty-two, forcing almost three hundred judges into retirement. With a parliamentary majority, Orbán could pack the courts with loyal judges. Hungary’s system of constitutional courts was established in 1990 after communism collapsed and interpreted laws and rights according to constitutional principles, following the spirit of the European Union. Orbán’s Fundamental Law annulled rulings that helped define and protect these fundamental rights.

In Poland, the governing Law and Justice Party (PiS) attacked the Polish courts by claiming they represent an elite whose decisions often do not align with the majority's will. Like in Hungary, the PiS removed judges by reducing the age of retirement. The Polish government attacked the constitutional tribunal, which protected the democratic process and limited executive and legislative power. It refused to recognize elected judges and publish constitutional courts' opinions and judgments. The PiS also proceeded to control the public prosecutor's office and politicized the national council responsible for nominating judges.

In Turkey, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government moved to control the courts by passing amendments to expand the size of the constitutional courts and increase the number of Supreme Court judges and prosecutors. Those amendments aimed not to strengthen these institutions but to pack the judiciary with AKP ideologues.

In Argentina, the then-president and now vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, introduced the concept of “democratization of the judiciary,” which in spirit has nothing to do with real democracy. Upon taking office in late 2019, President Alberto Fernández and Vice President Kirchner accused the judiciary of being political and unsuccessfully introduced a broad judicial reform to expand the number of federal courts in Buenos Aires from twelve to forty-six. This sharp increase would have allowed Fernández and the Peronist-controlled Senate to appoint many new judges loyal to the party. The president also appointed a commission of experts that proposed other changes to the judiciary, including creating new tribunals that would reduce the influence of the Supreme Court.

Along the same lines, the Fernandez-controlled Argentinean Senate voted to remove judges deciding on corruption cases involving Kirchner. However, a Supreme Court ruling managed to postpone it indefinitely.

Likewise, Fernandez initially refused to comply with a Supreme Court decision that forced the government to return federal money to the city of Buenos Aires (The president refused to give the city of Buenos Aires, which is not a district that typically votes for the president's party, federal money the city was entitled to). Fernandez was also particularly hostile to the tribunal after his vice president was found guilty of corruption. The president helped mobilize the masses after a federal criminal court sentenced Vice President Kirchner to prison for fraud and corruption. The vice president claimed she was a victim of lawfare orchestrated by the judiciary. The president, the vice president, and their allies sarcastically call the courts "the judicial party" as if the courts did not represent independent institutions of justice but a political party that serves the interests of the opposition. Last year, again unsuccessfully, the president proposed to pack the court by increasing the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to twenty-five. 

Early this year, President Fernandez publicly called to impeach four members of the Supreme Court, accusing the high court of abusing its power when it forced the government to return federal funds to the city of Buenos Aires. The impeachment is not likely to occur because there is not a majority to approve it. However, the fact that the president openly attacks the high court is a distressing act of illiberalism, if not authoritarianism.

In Israel, a coalition government-proposed judicial reform would allow for a simple majority vote in the Knesset, Israel's unicameral parliament, to revoke Supreme Court decisions.

The proposed reform would enable an “override clause” to eliminate judicial review of legislation and would change the makeup of the Judicial Selection Committee to ensure the government controls the appointments of judges and justices. Likewise, it would weaken the criterion of "unreasonableness" the Supreme Court occasionally uses to oversee and intervene in executive orders.

The separation between the executive and legislative power is nonexistent in Israel because Israeli law requires a parliamentary majority to form a government. Therefore, weakening the Supreme Court would open the way to an unchecked government—an absolute power.

Thus, Israel has been on the way to joining the nations moving in the direction of illiberal democracy. The official rhetoric looks as if it were taken from the Kirchner playbook: since judges do not constitute an elected entity, they do not represent the majority's spirit and sentiments.

But by rebelling against that move, Israelis have made an enormous difference. More than a million people have taken to the streets to demonstrate in front of the parliament and government offices. Centrist and left-wing parties, individuals from the right, academia, doctors, reservists, trade unions, professional associations, and many others who make up the fabric of society have participated in the protests.

The same social networks that united Israelis in times of war have connected them in the face of an attempted government power grab. This has created schisms within the governing Likud party, forcing it to seek a pause to open a dialogue with the opposition.

The judicial overhaul is still on the table, and the government’s proposal represents a severe crisis. But on the other hand, the Israeli people— its officers, doctors, and its productive force—have stood up to the government assault. Israelis have proved willing to challenge their government even amid widespread Palestinian terrorist attacks. Furthermore, to defend democracy, reservists have been ready to refuse army service in a clear message to the government that the state is not the rule of the elected, and that the state must continue to guarantee citizens' rights and protection of political minorities.

As illiberalism spreads throughout the world, the courts, along with the media and the political opposition, are the first victims. It is difficult to reverse the process when society remains passive in the face of slow government movements toward authoritarianism. The people at large will be the next victims. It is enough to see the blood, torture, incarceration, and purges that Venezuelans, Turks, Nicaraguans, and others are already experiencing.

Illiberalism is the spirit of our times. Even in Europe and the United States, illiberal forces have gained ground.

The Israelis, this time, provided a counterexample. This time is not about how to fight terrorism or develop state-of-the-art technology but how to avert, from the outset, attempts at destroying democracies in slow motion.

Luis Fleischman, PhD, is co-founder of the Palm Beach Center for Democracy & Policy Research, and professor of Social Sciences at Palm Beach College.

Image: Roman Yanushevsky/Shutterstock.

On March 10, Iran and Saudi Arabia announced reestablishing diplomatic relations, under Chinese good offices, after seven years of hiatus. The Iranian president appears poised to visit the kingdom in the near future. Some see Iran’s diplomatic rehabilitation and the apparent decline of the U.S. role in the Middle East as a threat. Yet concerned pundits overlook the changing regional balance of power and the opportunities coming with it.

Iran’s Troubles

The normalization deal results not from Iran’s strength but from Iran’s growing difficulties in sustaining its regional ambitions. Iran faces domestic troubles and new enemies while its regional endeavors remain fruitless.

On the domestic front, the Iranian regime has been confronting a massive protest movement since the death of Mahsa Amini at the local police’s hands in September 2022. These protests have turned in some regions into a latent insurgency. The protest movement has worsened the country’s already dire economic situation, forcing Tehran to refocus on domestic problems and new rivals.

The contestation aroused longstanding Iranian fears of Azerbaijani independentism and, beyond it, of Azerbaijan and Turkey. Iranian Azeris represent the majority of the population in three northwestern provinces of the country. Tehran worries that Azerbaijan supports Iranian Azeris’ actual or supposed separatism. It also resents Baku’s strong ties with Israel, Iran’s official enemy. Azerbaijan’s victory in its 2020 war against Armenia (which has good relations with Tehran) also reinforced its position, mechanically weakening Iran’s. Border incidents have become frequent, and, most dramatically, a gunman attacked the Azerbaijani embassy in Tehran in January.

Iran’s worsening conflict with Azerbaijan entwines deeply with a new sense of Turkish threat unseen since the Ottoman Empire’s collapse. Turkey supports Azerbaijan against Armenia, Iran’s close partner. Furthermore, Turkey’s military occupation of several chunks of northern Syria, Iran’s foremost ally in the region, has worried the Iranians for many years. Ankara’s growing military encroachments over northern Iraq did little to allay these concerns. The establishment of a Turkish military base in Qatar right across the Gulf also added to Iran’s restlessness. Turkish expansionism poses a rising challenge to Iran’s core interests.

More broadly, Iranian endeavors throughout the Middle East cost the Iranians dearly for little tangible gains. Iran has spent billions subsidizing its allies in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Palestine. The only clear-cut Iranian success is Assad’s victory in the Syrian Civil War, but Syria is now more Russia’s satellite than Iran’s. Yemen’s Houthis survived loyalist forces’ assaults but so far failed to conquer the whole country. Hamas and Hezbollah have proven unable or unwilling to harm Israel significantly. Although pro-Iranian militias roam Iraq, Baghdad still maintains its independence and a multivectorial foreign policy.

In addition, the growing trend among Arab states to normalize relations with Syria threatened to place Iran in an awkward position. Its main regional ally would have had working relations with its Arab rivals while itself would have stayed isolated. If Iran had not jumped on the appeasement bandwagon, it might have lost in the long term its hard-won influence over Damascus, lured away by Gulf petrodollars. Now that the Assad regime has emerged from the civil war as the victor, it needs Iranian military backing less than before. Diplomatic and economic support from the Arab world would dwarf anything a cash-strapped Iran could offer.

Saudi Concerns

Iran’s internal difficulties, new threats on its northwestern borders, and costly regional stalemates pushed Tehran toward appeasing Saudi Arabia. But Riyadh, too, faces problems of its own, although less severe. It wants to extricate itself from the Yemeni quagmire, where it has failed since 2015 to defeat the Houthi regime. Riyadh needs to talk with the Iranians, the Houthis’ principal supporters, to end this conflict on acceptable terms. Also, the United States’ growing focus on great power competition and China diminishes Washington’s commitment to Saudi preferences and thus pushes the Kingdom to rethink its regional posture.

The Saudis have complicated relations with Turkey, too. Normalizing relations with Iran allows Tehran to focus on other priorities like northern Syria and Iraq. They would benefit greatly from letting the Iranians and the Turks fight each other in distant lands, thus leaving Riyadh free rein to consolidate its power at home and in its “near abroad,” the Arabian Peninsula.

Saudi Arabia understands it is unlikely to ever outdo Iran’s superior size, military power, and soon-to-be nuclear capabilities. Conversely, Tehran cannot seriously threaten Saudi survival. Its conventional military is in escheat and lacks the means to conquer Saudi Arabia and march on Riyadh. Furthermore, the Iranian army will remain unable to enter Saudi territory as long as Iraq maintains its independence. In addition, the Saudis still benefit from the United States’ nuclear umbrella and understand that a nuclear Iran is unlikely to nuke them out of the blue. Since neither could win, Riyadh and Tehran have agreed to a relative draw.

America’s Interests

The Iran-Saudi Arabia normalization thus arises from Tehran’s growing weakness and Riyadh’s changing security environment. What would be the best course of action for the United States in that background?

First, Washington is deeply interested in building good relations with Iran, regardless of its nuclear program. The United States is refocusing its foreign policy toward great power competitors, primarily China. It cannot waste finite resources on feuding with Iran, a relatively weak state. On the contrary, Washington should want to improve its relations with Tehran—and Syria—to prevent it from supporting China or Russia. A nuclear Iran could even become a formidable buffer between Chinese and Russian power and the Persian Gulf.

In any case, Washington has no easy path to stop Iran’s nuclear program. An airstrike against Iran is unlikely to produce long-lasting success and would slow down Iran’s nuclear program for only a few months. A ground invasion is the surest way to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program. However, invading such a large country would be an operation of an unimaginable scale. The Iraqi and Afghani campaigns would pale in comparison, and the bloodshed would be immense.

In addition, regional powers are capable of containing even a nuclear Iran. The Middle East already counts a nuclear state, Israel, which could deter a nuclear-armed Iran if it ever had expansionist ambitions. Israel’s military capabilities combined with those of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states should suffice to prevent an Iranian bid for regional hegemony. Thus, Tehran does not represent a major threat to the United States, and Washington would be better off rethinking its approach toward Iran.

Second, the United States should use the Iranian-Saudi rapprochement as a foundation for a larger regional security architecture. Ongoing conflicts in Syria and Yemen open the Middle East doors to Washington’s main rivals, China and Russia. Regional instability also allows Turkey to harbor destabilizing expansionist ambitions. Reintegrating Iran into the regional concert could, in time, lead to a general Arab-Iranian-Israeli normalization. Such a depolarization would leave fewer openings for Beijing and Moscow to penetrate the region. Also, alleviating regional conflicts will free additional U.S. bandwidth for great power competition.

The Saudi-Iranian normalization remains far from a total reshuffle, and their longstanding mistrust will continue for the time being. It came out of exhaustion more than of a sincere desire for reconciliation. However, these evolutions offer the United States the opportunity to reduce regional cleavages and thus close possible avenues for Chinese and Russian power.

If the United States remains committed to confronting Iran at every corner for its nuclear program or human rights record, Washington’s regional position is likely to decline. Iran will growingly align with China and Russia to counteract American pressure, while the Arab-Iranian normalization will break Tehran’s isolation. Continuing the failed ‘maximum pressure’ campaign will only bring the worst of both worlds: a nuclear-armed Iran replaced at the center of regional politics, a springboard for Sino-Russian endeavors.

The current era of intense great power competition requires political imagination combined with astute diplomacy. Decisionmakers must keep foreign policy traditionalism and dogmatism about Iran from sacrificing this opportunity to advance essential American interests at little cost.

Dylan Motin is a Ph.D. candidate majoring in political science at Kangwon National University and a Marcellus Policy Fellow at the John Quincy Adams Society.

Image: Shutterstock.

As the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine passed, there are promising signs that the war may soon end.

In something of a Christmas miracle, President Vladimir Putin made an advent day announcement that Russia is “prepared to negotiate some acceptable outcomes” in regard to the war. Last month, China announced its peace plan for the conflict, and President Xi Jinping visited Moscow to explore the plan’s feasibility.

Both Russia and Ukraine are locked in a bitter stalemate, with no real changes on the battlefield in recent months. Now seems to be the perfect time for some sort of ceasefire, armistice, or similar agreement.

As the momentum begins to shift, it is time to think about what will happen after the war. Specifically, billions of dollars’ worth of American military equipment will remain in a country rebuilding from war with the possibility of weak institutions, a pro-Russian insurgency, and occupied territories.

To date, the United States has given some $34 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, 48 percent of a total of $48 billion dollars in combined humanitarian and financial aid. Of the total military aid, $12.7 billion have been provided in the form of weapons and equipment from existing Department of Defense stocks, along with $1.3 billion in grants and loans to purchase more defense articles.

It is right and just for the United States to support Ukraine. Putin’s war of aggression is one of choice, unlike anything seen in Europe since World War II. The United States has an obligation to support democracy and freedom where it is in such danger. However, it is also right for the United States to demand accountability for the weapons it sends to Kiev, something that Republicans in congress have been calling for.

What the United States should avoid is a repeat of the Soviet-Afghan War. The similarities are striking. There, the Soviet Union led a war of choice, and there, the United States supported brave Afgan freedom fighters up against similarly impossible odds. In that conflict, it was the U.S.-made FIM-92 Stinger shoulder-fired missile system that led to many Soviet helicopter losses and helped turn the tide of the war. At the time it was considered sensitive technology, and U.S. aid stipulated that in order to receive new missiles, expended ones had to be returned.

In the aftermath of that conflict, the United States launched a buyback program to retrieve the estimated 1,000 Stingers that it sent to Afghanistan. The $65 million program was largely seen as a failure. The missiles supplied to the Mujaheddin soon found their way to North Korea, Iran, Qatar, and Tajikistan.

In Ukraine, it is the American FGM-148 Javelin that is destroying Russian armor with a 93 percent kill rate. In November, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl stated that the Russians have “probably lost half of their main battle tanks” with many destroyed by the Javelin. Over 8,500 have been supplied to Ukraine, along with over 1,650 Stingers, 1800 Phoenix Ghost Tactical drones, and 2,500 in various types of missiles and rocket systems.

Yet very little is being done to monitor sensitive weapons. The U.S. embassy in Kiev, which has the U.S. government lead over accountability, isn’t fully staffed nor operational as a result of the war. There is no 1:1 swap for Javelins, as was the case for the Stingers sent to Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe, and is the second most corrupt nation on the continent after Russia. It is ranked 122nd in the world for corruption—a place it shares with Estwani, the last absolute monarchy in Africa. At the end of the Cold War, Ukraine was notorious for the illegal arms trade, a result of the massive former Soviet stockpiles in the country. From 1992 to 1998, the country lost $32 billion in military equipment through theft, lack of oversight, and discounted sales.

EUROPOL, the EU Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, has stated that “the proliferation of firearms and explosives in Ukraine could lead to an increase in firearms and munitions trafficked into the EU via established smuggling routes or online platforms.” It added that the threat may be even higher at the end of the conflict. Weapons sent to Ukraine have already been found in underground networks in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

What the United States should do is increase the number of on-site inspections. Only 10 percent of high-risk weapons have undergone such measures since U.S. aid began. These are conducted by the Defense Attaché and Office of Defense Cooperation at the U.S. embassy in Kiev.

In the case that such inspections would be too dangerous, the United States should stipulate end-use monitoring by the Ukrainians themselves. Pictures of serial numbers and geolocation tags could be uploaded to a database shared by the Ukrainians and the U.S. government.

Finally, a one-for-one swap should be mandatory for the most sensitive of U.S. weapons. When a Javelin missile is fired, for example, the fiberglass tube should be returned in order to receive a replacement missile.

Such standard accountability for the weapons sent to Ukraine is not a right-wing talking point; it is something that must continue to be taken seriously and planned for. Nothing lasts forever, and for the sake of millions, hopefully, the end of this war comes soon. We must be prepared for that eventuality and for what comes after.

Wesley Satterwhite works as a consultant at the U.S. Department of State. He holds a BS in Diplomacy & International Relations from Seton Hall University and a MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University. A U.S. Army Reserve Intelligence Officer, he served in U.S. Army Europe from 2019–2020.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.