Diplomacy & Crisis News

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is grabbing all the attention. But we need to look South, too. Neither the European Union nor NATO will be the strategic leaders in the Greater Mediterranean. Washington and Rome will have to play that role.

A stable, prosperous, peaceful Europe would be a boon to the entire transatlantic community. A free and open Greater Mediterranean is key to that goal. 

One reason is energy security. The Greater Mediterranean includes North Africa, Southern Europe, the Balkans, the Black Sea, and the entrance into the Middle Corridor through the Caucasus to Central Asia. As Europe diversifies energy sources, countries will draw increasingly from North Africa, the Caucuses, and Central Asia, as well as the Middle East and the United States. A lot of those resources will flow to energy hubs in Southern Europe, and those nodes need to be protected.

Another reason is supply chains. Redundant, resilient supply chains that reduce dependencies on Russia and China and open new sources of natural resources will, in the long run, reduce risks and costs to the West. They will also spur additional commercial activity. These new supply chains, too, will pass through Southern Europe.

Stability is another issue—one threatened by illegal immigration. The population of Africa is blowing out. Uncontrolled, unregulated mass migration North would be completely destabilizing. Southern Europe needs to be a bridge and a partner for the Global South, not a gateway for chaos. 

Finally, the Greater Mediterranean will be an active arena in the great power competition—whether the West wants it or not. To counterbalance its difficulties in Ukraine, Moscow is trying to strengthen its influence in Africa, thus putting pressure on NATO’s southern flank. A close partnership between Washington and Rome in the Mediterranean basin could effectively counter this strategy, promoting the stabilization of North Africa. Meanwhile, China is always looking to fill voids. Right now, for instance, they are making a full-court press in Tunisia. 

Why should Rome and Washington step in? They have common interests in addressing these problems. And, let’s face it, NATO’s top priority is going to be the eastern flank. The EU has no common foreign policy looking south, and little capacity to do much more than throwing ineffective foreign aid in all directions. Meanwhile, German leadership is moribund, and France’s has been demonstrably inept. 

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni is ready to pick up the slack. The main objective of her foreign policy is to relaunch Italy’s role in NATO and in the Mediterranean basin. She understands the strategic importance of the southern flank in countering China’s inroads and Russia’s persistent influence in North Africa and the Sahel region. In January, Meloni made two trips to North Africa, focusing on increasing energy supplies and tackling the problem of illegal immigration. Rome is trying to reduce the import of Russian gas and forestall Moscow’s potential weaponization of African migration flows. 

As such, when it comes to the Mediterranean basin, Italian foreign policy is gradually aligning itself with Washington. For instance, Meloni went to Tripoli, Libya, a few weeks after the director of the CIA met with Libyan prime minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and Gen. Khalifa Haftar. During her recent visit, the Italian prime minister declared her support for the political stabilization of the North African country, a position expressed, just a few days later, also by the U.S. Secretary of State during a meeting in Cairo with the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. 

While focusing its attention on the Mediterranean basin and on the Middle East, Italy’s conservative government is, at the same time, relaunching transatlantic relations and confirming its support for Kiev: after all, the challenges that both the eastern and southern flanks of NATO are facing are closely interconnected.

What the United States brings to the table is presence. For instance, the United States has been granted additional access to military facilities in Greece and Romania, allowing Washington to deploy reconnaissance aircraft, missile defenses, and other security enablers that make its southern European allies far more effective. This is a much smaller and more cost-effective footprint than what the United States deployed during the Cold War to deter the Soviet Union. 

Additionally, the United States can bring in foreign direct investment, mostly from the private sector, that can speed “friend-shoring.” This will help the region decrease its dependence on China and Russia while helping grow economies in Europe. Finally, the United States can bring diplomatic heft, sorting through the myriad of thorny relationship challenges in the region. 

Of course, the EU and NATO will always have a role to play in southern Europe. But a bilateral effort from Washington and Rome can be the catalyst for greater stability and prosperity throughout the Greater Mediterranean. 

Stefano Graziosi is an essayist and a political analyst who writes for the Italian newspaper La Verità and the weekly magazine Panorama.

A Heritage Foundation vice president, James Jay Carafano directs the think tank’s research on matters of national security and foreign relations.

Image: Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock.

Qui tire la sonnette d'alarme à propos de la « trop faible » croissance des salaires et des « distorsions [qui] rognent de manière excessive le pouvoir de négociation des salariés » ? Le patron de la Confédération générale du travail (CGT) ? Non point. Les propos émanent de M. Maurice Obstfeld, chef (...) / Économie, Idées, Mondialisation, Mouvement de contestation, Mutation, Travail, Chômage - 2017/12

The American commentariat and public were abuzz over the transit of a Chinese government surveillance balloon across the United States, with social media tracking its path (and reverse-engineering it), debating whether to shoot it down, both overplaying and underplaying the story, and asking if it matters at all. There has since been verification that there are multiple Chinese balloons in the Western Hemisphere, including one located in South America.

As far as we know, the spy balloon crossed into U.S. airspace in the Aleutian Islands and passed over Alaska and Canada before reaching the continental United States, where it loitered over important military and government installations. Media reports have claimed it “poses no safety threat to civilians,” a statement that the Biden administration trotted out to avoid shooting down the balloon while it was over land. The Department of Defense stated that “this balloon has limited additive value from an intelligence collection perspective,” contributing to the choice not to down the vessel until it reached the Atlantic. Other officials stated that this was not an isolated incident, but was “different” because the balloon remained over American airspace for far longer than usual. Besides the novel admission of previous incidents, this shows an escalation on the part of the Chinese regime. At the same time, Beijing averred that the military balloon is a civilian one and only accidentally entered American airspace—a contention that the U.S. military forcefully rebutted.

Eventually, the balloon was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina, but only after completing its journey across the continent. The only response, besides a belated shoot-down, that the Biden administration has thus proffered is canceling Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned trip to Beijing. The wording used by Blinken in addressing this provocative infiltration of American sovereign airspace was weak, labeling the deliberate sending of a surveillance balloon as merely “an irresponsible act.” The confusion and lack of response to this clear act of aggression have made the U.S. government look slow, unprepared, and timid. The cancellation of a meeting is doing the absolute minimum when this act—a deliberate test of our resolve—demands a stronger response.

As the Pentagon mentioned, this was not an isolated incident. America’s authoritarian foes have been steadily increasing their malign actions and military presence in the Western Hemisphere over the past few months.

In addition to sending these surveillance balloons across the American heartland, Beijing has courted countries across Latin America. One such target is Nicaragua, led by the brutal authoritarian Ortega regime, which sits at a strategically-critical part of Central America. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used its economic largesse to flip Nicaragua from recognizing Taiwan to recognizing the People’s Republic of China, promising sweetheart deals for Ortega cronies, dual-use infrastructure projects, and military engagement. The deal may end up revitalizing the defunct Nicaragua Canal project, meant to be a Chinese-built waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific, and competing directly with the Panama Canal. China has also wooed nations in South America, notably Argentina. Near the end of 2022, it was revealed that China was planning to establish a naval base at Ushuaia in the far south of the country near the Straits of Magellan and the critical Drake Passage. A military facility in Tierra del Fuego would allow the CCP to intercept communications across the region, monitor maritime transit in the South Atlantic, and enhance its ability to project power in the Western Hemisphere.

These actions are of a piece, both being concerned with establishing a permanent presence in the Western Hemisphere and monitoring important maritime traffic. Control of international waterways has been a paramount geostrategic concern for millennia, and China has already made it known that it subscribes to this idea—the militarization of the South China Sea is a prime example. The Belt and Road infrastructure program also falls into this category, as Beijing is investing in ports, canals, railways, and other potential dual-use projects. The military dimension of these relations is key, as China seeks to establish itself as a global power player. After building a naval base in Djibouti at the heavily-trafficked confluence of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a facility at Ushuaia would expand this presence into another strategically-important region.

Iran has been engaging in aggressive incursions into the Western Hemisphere as well. The theocratic regime in Tehran works closely with nations like Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua to evade sanctions and launder money. The regime’s terrorist catspaw, Hezbollah, is also very active in Latin America, using it as a source of funds and support. Hezbollah gains intelligence on Western soft targets, profits from the illicit trade in drugs, and plans attacks, all within what many would consider America’s backyard. More provocatively, Iran has stated that it is sending two warships to the Western Hemisphere to visit its allies in the region and transit the Panama Canal. The Iranian Navy has been steadily growing its international operations, but this intrusion into the Western Hemisphere is novel and disturbing.

Russia, a perennial player in Latin America going back to the Soviet era, has also ramped up its interest in the Western Hemisphere since (re)invading Ukraine last February. Russia has expanded its ties with the anti-American regimes of the region throughout President Vladimir Putin’s tenure, and it has put those relationships to work over the past year. Russia, like its allies Iran and Venezuela, is evading international sanctions via the use of falsely-flagged vessels to ship its oil to another foe of American power, China. Russia has also called on its diplomatic ties with Latin America at the United Nations. In UN Resolution ES-11/4—a condemnation of the illegal Russian annexations of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine—Russia’s Latin American friends either voted against the resolution (Nicaragua), abstained (Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras), or simply didn’t show up (Venezuela, El Salvador). The resolution was resoundingly passed, but the varying degrees of dissent from Latin American states were noticeable and worrying.

All of these bold actions by authoritarian, anti-American adversaries are meant not only to test their reach into our hemisphere so as to destabilize American hegemony and counter our interests, but also to test our response and resolve. How the United States responds to local provocations could be very informative as to how it may respond to more global provocations. As such, Washington’s response is vital for countering this influence and signaling U.S. resolve to do so wherever and whenever it interferes with our interests. There are plenty of concrete actions that can be taken beyond the immediacy of the shootdown and the cancellation of Blinken’s trip. America should interdict any further incursions of its territory, whether balloon-based or otherwise, to send a deterrent signal to U.S. adversaries. We should increase military patrols of the key waterways in our hemisphere, police falsely-flagged vessels, and work to productively engage with our neighbors on security and economic issues. In the case of more permanent issues like the Chinese base at Ushuaia, America should seek to respond in kind, potentially with a basing agreement with Britain at the Falkland Islands.

Still, since none of these actions by American rivals have crossed the threshold into direct aggression (yet), the signaling response should be even more powerful to deter escalation that passes beyond that line. The era of great power conflict has returned, with non-state actors taking a backseat to the danger of grander, more kinetic warfare. We have seen this change manifest over the past few years, but it has struck with a vengeance in the case of Ukraine. American policymakers need to embrace this new reality of broad-based geopolitical competition if they seek to extend American hegemony into the future. The answer to this global—and regional—challenge lies in our past, when great power rivalry was the watchword of international affairs. It is time for a revitalization of the Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary.

200 years ago, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and during the Latin American revolutions, President James Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams promulgated the idea that would come to be known as the Monroe Doctrine. In his seventh annual address to Congress, Monroe declared that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” This message, which also decried the puppet monarchs of European states, was a sea change in how America conducted its foreign policy, asserting a strong stance against foreign interlopers in the Western Hemisphere. For the most part, the doctrine was successful, despite America being far weaker than the European states it sought to constrain.

In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt added to the legacy of the Monroe Doctrine and brought it into a new century. In what became known as the Roosevelt Corollary, the president posited that:

Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.

This “international police power” was intended to reinforce the Monroe Doctrine and ensure that the Western Hemisphere was secure for American interests. To Roosevelt, “a great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil,” a mission statement that has influenced American foreign policy ever since. The key passage of the Roosevelt Corollary reads:

We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence cannot be separated from the responsibility of making good use of it.

118 years later, Roosevelt’s statement and the principle it defends still retain their importance.

In 2023, in a new era of great power competition, a renewal of the Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary is long overdue. America must live up to the words and promises of these great statesmen and ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains free from the influence of foreign autocrats. Our region’s nations are unique in their democratic birth and republican spirit; we need to retain that legacy if we wish to bring that spirit forward into the twenty-first century. American leaders should say, point blank, that the Western Hemisphere is not safe for totalitarian foreign powers that wish to destroy or undermine the historic freedom of our region. We cannot countenance the rising presence of authoritarian foes in our own backyard.

Competing against Russia, China, and Iran is extremely important, as is containing their revanchist imperial aims. We cannot present a credible deterrent in Eastern Europe, the Pacific, or the Middle East if we allow our rivals to do whatever they please in our own neck of the woods. If anything, a poor response here makes our longer-range deterrent seem far less credible. And that would be a disaster for the whole world, not just the Western Hemisphere. That security through deterrence starts closer to home; it is beyond time we recognized that reality and acted on it.

Mike Coté is a writer and historian focusing on Great Power rivalry and geopolitics. He blogs at rationalpolicy.com, hosts the Rational Policy podcast, and can be found on Twitter @ratlpolicy.

Image: Flickr/U.S. Navy.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its second year, there is endless speculation not only on how it could end but also on how it should end. What is clear is that the Ukraine conflict could go on indefinitely. The problem for the West is that time is probably on the side of the Russians. Moscow will be able to continue exerting pressure on Ukraine not only by threatening its critical infrastructure but also by interfering with its grain shipments and other exports. Russia can also threaten greater ecological damage should it, for example, allow the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia to leak radiation.

Adding to the urgency is the fact that strains on NATO defense industries, increasing domestic war-weariness, or higher priorities such as deterring China could force Ukraine’s partners to reduce, if not end, their support. Should that happen, the contest will become one of endurance, which is a contest Russia could win.

So it is time to talk specifics about what a just settlement might look like. Determining those specifics requires answering three questions: 1) should Ukraine revise its military objectives to make settlement more likely; 2) at what point are the United States and NATO permitted to reduce or end assistance even if there is not a just settlement; 3) at what point are the United States and NATO permitted to escalate to bring a more rapid—and just—end to the conflict.

The proper goal of a just war is a better state of peace, which requires at a minimum the vindication of the rights of the aggressed party. To vindicate an aggressed party’s rights, also at a minimum, the aggressor must publicly end hostilities, exchange prisoners of war, apologize, demilitarize at least to the point it cannot renew hostilities, and be held accountable for war crimes. Without meeting these minimum conditions, grievances will fester and aggressors will buy time to rebuild military capability and renew hostilities. However, if one accepts that Ukraine, even with foreign assistance, will not realize its goal of restoring its full sovereignty, then even this minimal standard may not be realistic.

Moreover, even if Ukraine’s goals are realistic, it must also consider the cost of attaining them. As Ukraine liberates more territory, Russian president Vladimir Putin will become increasingly desperate. Even if he does not use nuclear weapons, the Russian military will very likely continue its indiscriminate attacks against civilians and critical civilian infrastructure to force Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to negotiate. Moreover, given the expected resistance by Russian and separatist forces, the occupied areas will also experience significant destruction with any Ukrainian military operation to liberate them.

These points do not suggest that Ukraine should offer to negotiate terms now. Ending the war on any terms favorable to Russia would likely incentivize future aggression and set the stage for a renewal of hostilities when the Russians believe they have sufficiently recovered. If nothing else, Russia will be in a position to continue provoking Ukraine and the West, leading to further instability.

What these points do suggest, however, is that Ukraine should first consider under what conditions continued fighting will become either ineffective or disproportionate. Second, they should consider what conditions they can offer that Russia will accept while establishing a better, if not optimal, state of peace. This may sound like appeasement, but it does not have to be.

Thus, the answer to the first question posed at the outset—should Ukraine revise its military objectives—is provisionally “no.” But getting to a solution that the Russians can accept requires putting Moscow in a position where accepting a settlement and ceasing hostilities is preferable for them to continue fighting. Getting to that point will likely require greater Ukrainian military success before any diplomatic initiative has a chance of success.

To make the Russians better off if they stop fighting, the United States and NATO should consider addressing their security concerns, especially regarding NATO expansion. In the past, NATO has refused to offer such guarantees on the principle of respecting state sovereignty. However, given the costs of fighting and the urgency to resolve the conflict, compromising on this principle seems reasonable and low. For example, such an agreement does not prevent the United States and NATO from providing Ukraine with security guarantees should hostilities renew. NATO leaders should also continue efforts to admit Finland and Sweden as a cost for initiating hostilities in the first place and make it clear to the Russians that the alliance will continue to expand, and will admit Ukraine, should Russia not cease hostilities and negotiate a settlement.

The answer to the second question (i.e, at what point can the United States and NATO reduce or end their assistance even without a just settlement) is that the United States and NATO should continue to assist Ukraine until Russia is ready to negotiate a minimally just settlement. Even if the fighting does stop, Ukraine will need to continue to improve its military capabilities to deter Russia from trying again. The difficulty with this response, of course, is that it ignores certain political and economic realities. The first is that support to Ukraine has strained U.S. and NATO defense industries, which must significantly increase the production of critical materials not just to keep Ukraine in the fight but also to allow the West to maintain its deterrent threat against other adversaries like China. The second is that domestic politics in each of these countries could result in an abrupt end to assistance. In the United States, for example, there is a movement in Congress to end assistance and use these funds to improve the U.S. economy. Should the economy worsen, this argument will seem more compelling.

The morally obvious response here is for Western political leaders to remain resolute. Should the United States and NATO abruptly reduce assistance to the point where Ukraine cannot sustain the fight, the blame for the resulting injustice will partially lie with them. To avoid reaching the point where assistance to Ukraine is no longer politically viable, the United States and NATO should consider how much assistance they would provide to avoid a Ukrainian defeat and provide that now rather than providing it piecemeal in reaction to Russian successes. While the United States and Germany have recently announced their intention to provide modern battle tanks and better air defense systems, this assistance comes a year after the war started and its effects will take some time as Ukrainian crews will have to be trained on the new equipment.

While it may have made some ethical sense to limit assistance to Ukraine in the beginning to avoid escalation, that is no longer the case. If time is on the Russian side, providing assistance in reaction to Russian successes is a recipe for failure. This point does not entail giving the Ukrainians a blank check or undermining the necessity to manage escalation. However, it does suggest that it makes sense to provide now all the assistance one would eventually provide later should the tide turn more in the Russian favor.

This point naturally segues into the third question regarding escalation by the United States and NATO to bring a more rapid end to the conflict. Doing so, of course, increases the chances of direct conflict between Russia and NATO forces. Moreover, unilateral escalation by the United States and NATO will play into Putin’s narrative of NATO as a security threat, which will strengthen his hand domestically and make it more difficult to isolate him internationally.

Having said that, as Russia escalates, as it has done with attacks on civilians, the United States and NATO should find ways to increase costs to Russia as well as assistance to Ukraine to mediate the effects of that escalation. Doing so will underscore Western resolve while undermining the Russian narrative and its ability to build international support.

In considering what one should do, one first must establish what will happen if one does nothing. At current levels of assistance and Ukrainian military capability, the conflict will likely freeze. Such a freeze favors the Russians, who will continue threatening Ukraine while it consolidates its gains in the east, making their annexation a fait accompli. On the other hand, giving Russia a way out does not necessarily entail abandoning the vindication of Ukraine’s right or the demands of a better state of peace. It just means finding other ways to impose them. Thus, the ethics of conflict termination, as described here, suggest the following path to a just termination of the conflict.

First, Ukraine should continue to fight, and the United States and NATO should continue to provide assistance as long as the former’s military goals are feasible and the means to achieve them are proportionate.

Second, as long as Russia fails to return occupied Ukrainian territory, the United States and NATO should continue to impose sanctions and other costs to incentivize meaningful participation in negotiations.

Third, to ensure Russia is not able to exploit any pause a frozen conflict allows, the United States and NATO should continue military cooperation with Ukraine to improve its ability to defend itself in the future. The United States and NATO should also consider offering Zelenskyy the security guarantees he has asked for to further deter future Russian aggression.

Fourth, the United States and NATO should address Russia’s security concerns, while not recognizing Russia’s illegitimate claims to Ukrainian territory.

Fifth, the United States and NATO should not lift sanctions until Russia compensates Ukraine for the destruction it has caused and holds the soldiers who have committed war crimes, as well as their leaders, accountable. While there may be some room to negotiate whether this accountability occurs in domestic or international courts, any outcome that diminishes or ignores these crimes should be sufficient justification for continued sanctions and isolation.

Sixth, should Russian domestic conditions change, and it agrees to a minimally just settlement, the United States should consider a more rehabilitative approach and not just lift sanctions, but also assist Russia to improve its economic conditions and restore its relations with the international community.

Pursuing these measures is not likely to persuade Putin to negotiate. However, given the realities of this war, these measures vindicate the rights of Ukrainians even if the military capacity does not exist to fully restore them. Moreover, they provide an alternative to fighting that leaves Russia in a position where its ability to continue to provoke its neighbors is significantly diminished. Whether over the mid to long term, these conditions lead to a Russian government collapse or increased Russian resilience is difficult to say. But either way, they should make Ukraine more secure while placing the United States and NATO in a better position to address either Russian collapse or continued provocation and aggression.

Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff is the Research Professor for the Military Profession and Ethics at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College. He is also a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. The views represented here are his own and do not necessarily reflect that of the United States Government.

Image: kibri_ho / Shutterstock.com

Le précédent gouvernement français avait promis la création d'un compte personnel de pénibilité, ouvrant le droit à un départ plus précoce. Non seulement les critères ont été réduits par l'actuelle équipe, mais la plupart avaient été définis en fonction du travail masculin. Les facteurs de risques encourus (...) / Droit, Femmes, Inégalités, Politique, Santé, Travail - 2017/12

On February 17, political leaders, journalists, academics, and defense officials from around the world will converge at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Germany for the annual Munich Security Conference (MSC). A year after the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “Zeitenwende” speech, the MSC will center its program around Germany’s epochal turn toward taking its strategic reality seriously, and emergence as a reliable security actor in a world where conflict exists. Unfortunately for Germany, the United States, and their mutual security partners, Germany has not moved on from business as usual, even as war rages two borders away. This reflects the continued perception that Russia does not pose a direct military threat to Germany, based on the flawed assumption that Germany’s Eastern European neighbors and the United States would contain a Russian attack on NATO member states from physically reaching Germany itself. 

Wishful thinking such as this, in continuity with the prewar policies of previous governments, is increasingly divorced from the fact that the United States will direct fewer military resources to Europe over time as strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) places greater demands on its finite capacity. Combined with Russia’s continued commitment to what it views as a long-term military confrontation with NATO, Germany’s failure to truly embrace the Zeitenwende has major ramifications for European and German security. Both the United States and Germans who understand the challenge at hand must clearly communicate both the direct military threat Russia poses to Germany itself, and the consequences for Germany’s immediate national security if it fails to adequately resource its military.

Misread History

During the Cold War, when the Soviet military directly threatened the Bundesrepublik across the inner-German border, Germany maintained the second most powerful military in NATO, after the United States. Despite Germany’s partition, the fresh memory of World War II’s horrors, and the potential for German soldiers to once again fight Russians, who had suffered so much to defeat Nazism, West Germany mustered the resources necessary to contribute its share to NATO’s collective defense in line with its economic power and size. This made sense for West Germany itself, which recognized that a war fought deep in its territory would be devastating, and thus sought to stop the Soviets at the inner-German border. The Soviet threat’s immediacy was enough for the West German government to overcome popular apathy towards national defense and build an army capable of defending NATO’s eastern flank in partnership with its allies to the west.

With the Cold War’s end, and NATO enlargement through the 2000s, NATO’s vulnerable eastern flank now lies 1,000 km east of Berlin in the Baltic states. Germany is surrounded by friendly neighbors, with a “neglected” military that struggles to meet Germany’s existing collective defense commitments. In addition, despite near-constant warnings from its Eastern European allies, a generation of German leaders continued to deepen its economic relationship with Russia, built a dependency on Russian energy supplies, and blocked both Ukraine and Georgia from joining NATO in 2008. 

Such behavior primarily reflects a combination of the false sense of security Germany’s peaceful post-Cold War neighborhood provided it, and the reality that ultimately other countries, including Ukraine, bore the risks stemming from political and economic engagement with Russia while Germany reaped the benefits. Germany consistently prioritized its own national interests, even when they conflicted with those of its European Union partners and NATO allies. For example, Germany shaped the euro in a way that supported its export-centric economy at the expense of its less-developed European partners, precipitating the eurozone crisis before imposing bruising austerity measures on the indebted countries. It also unilaterally opened its borders during the 2015 migrant crisis, encouraging further migration over the objections of other European countries and without any consensus within the European Union. When Germany saw an opportunity to advance its national interests, the country was willing to pursue them, even at the expense of its neighbors, though this is not unique behavior in the anarchic Westphalian international system.

Contemporary Struggles

Since February, however, it has been impossible to credibly argue that Russia does not pose a direct military threat to Germany, the rest of Europe, and NATO. Still, most Germans remain unconvinced. Recent polling from the Körber Foundation finds that 68 percent of Germans do not wish to see Germany play a military leadership role in Europe, and only 22 percent see Russia as a major military threat to Germany’s security. Germany is content to do just enough to barely stay in its allies’ good graces but does this out of a desire to be a good multilateral partner rather than actual concern for its national security. 

To Germany’s credit, as of late November, it is the second-largest source of military aid to Ukraine, following the United States. The problem is that the country’s allies have had to consistently cajole it along to each new step of military support, with Germany reluctantly following. In addition, Germany remains on track to miss the NATO 2 percent of GDP defense spending target through at least 2024 and has struggled to translate its €100 billion special military investment package into contracts and acquired capabilities. One can imagine what the counterfactual Western response to Russia’s invasion may have looked like in the absence of American leadership, and it likely would have resulted in Ukraine’s defeat, as MSC chairman Ambassador Christoph Heusgen recently suggested.  

However, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, 66 percent of Americans see Russia as a major military threat to the United States, demonstrating that political will and effective securitization can overcome geographical remoteness. This comes as the German government attempts to preserve a “relationship with Russia and with Putin for the future,” and limit German material support for Ukraine to avoid “breaking a special relationship,” per German parliamentarian Norbert Röttgen. Too many Germans still see the Russo-Ukrainian War as something happening “over there,” hence the prevalence of discussions centered on nuclear escalation as one of the few ways it could actually become Germany’s conflict. 

While there are prominent voices in Germany that do argue for greater military support for Ukraine and adequate resourcing of the Bundeswehr, discussion of German security policy is often quickly diluted by significant, but peripheral, issues. This distracts from the crisis of Germany’s national defense capacity while it faces a direct military threat from Russia. If the Zeitenwende is about everything, including action on climate change, a values-based foreign policy, and other factors separate from the balance of military power in eastern Europe, then the Zeitenwende quickly becomes nothing. As General Christopher Cavoli, NATO supreme allied commander Europe, recently said, “the great irreducible feature of warfare is hard power,” and “kinetic effects are what produce results on the battlefield.” Germany’s military leadership in Europe requires it to adequately resource the hard power capabilities needed from a nation with its size and economic strength. There are many pressing foreign policy issues facing the country, but fixing the weakness of European, and especially German, military capabilities relative to Russia should be the foremost priority at this critical juncture.

Deteriorating Security Environment

Though Russia failed to achieve its overall strategic goals at this point in the Russo-Ukrainian War, its performance indicates that it still poses a major threat to NATO’s most vulnerable members. Flawed assumptions about Ukrainian military resistance led Russia to attempt an invasion resembling the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, when it should have resembled the 2003 invasion of Iraq, using a military with a force structure more suited for mobilizing to liberate Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War. The likelihood of Russia making this same mistake leading up to a war with NATO is much smaller, and even with major failures, Russia still seized and controls significant portions of Ukrainian territory nearly a year after the invasion.

Exacerbating this challenge, the United States’ contribution to NATO’s conventional force presence in Europe is likely to shrink in the coming years. The Center for Strategic & International Studies’ recent wargames on a Chinese invasion of Taiwan demonstrate the significant challenge the U.S. military faces in deterring such a conflict. While the report shows that the United States, Taiwan, and Japan can repel the invasion, this effort would require the U.S. military’s near full devotion, including strategic enablers that European militaries often lack and the bulk of U.S. tactical airpower. This two-front challenge will force the United States to choose between prioritizing deterring the PRC, its self-described pacing threat, and resourcing European defense, with significant ramifications for Germany.

In light of this challenge, with a near-certain reduction of the U.S. military presence in Europe over the coming years and a Russian military that remains poised to target vulnerable NATO members such as the Baltic states, Germany faces an increasingly precarious security environment. The assumption that other allies will bear Germany’s share of the military defense burden ignores the clear trend towards a less favorable European NATO-Russia conventional force balance. Other countries, such as the United States and United Kingdom, recognize that their own national security rests on deterring and, if necessary, defeating aggression at their geographically distant allies’ borders. 

Germany’s reluctance to embrace such thinking, and the costs that come with resourcing the policies it demands, ignores the direct security threat Russia poses. A NATO-Russia war would spread westward across Europe’s strategic depth, just as Russian cruise missiles have rained down on western Ukraine while ground combat rages in the east. The country and its government are more than capable of breaking from “business as usual” when the political will is there, as German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck’s hard work to replace its energy supply while divesting from Russian oil, natural gas, and coal demonstrates. Unfortunately, the same sense of urgency has not been there for the Bundeswehr, resulting in the underwhelming Zeitenwende.

A Productive Way Forward

To address this urgent issue, American policymakers and interlocuters need to make it abundantly clear to their German counterparts that an enduring U.S. military presence in Europe will not come at the cost of a military defeat in the Indo-Pacific. The United States doesn’t need to performatively criticize Germany—as doing so would be counterproductive—but Americans need to have frank, realistic, and open conversations with Germans about America’s military commitments in the current strategic environment. This discourse should emphasize the immediate dangers that a gap in NATO’s capacity to defend its frontiers poses for Germany itself, and the steps Germany can take right now to adequately resource its contribution to this capacity. 

Old arguments that the German defense ministry and Bundeswehr would just waste increased funding, making institutional reform more important than spending increases, ignore the fact that all countries accept degrees of waste in their security apparatus. They continue to accept this because the existential costs of failure are far greater than those of inefficiency. If Germany was able to maintain Western Europe’s most powerful military just twenty years after World War II, then neither a supposed pacifist legacy nor disquiet over conflict with Russians is a meaningful justification for continued failure to meet its alliance defense commitments. Germans need to recognize the reality of a potential war with Russia, and how it would unfold in Germany itself even if most of the fighting was confined to the most vulnerable eastern NATO member states. Given the trajectories of Russia’s military power and the American military presence in Europe over the coming years, Germany can’t afford to lose any more time making the Zeitenwende happen, or the country itself will risk the consequences of inaction.

George Pavlakis is a U.S. Army officer currently earning an M.Sc. in Politics & Technology at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, where he focuses on European security and emerging military technologies. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. 

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image: Shutterstock.

In today’s fraught international environment, technological innovations such as artificial intelligence, automation, robotics, quantum technology, and space technology generally provide exceptional advantages to states and shape global power competition. China, which has attracted attention with its investments and policies in these areas, has started to emerge as a significant opponent of the United States.

China aims to take advantage of the political, economic, military, and commercial opportunities offered by innovative technologies to become the world leader in technology. China’s strategy, in which all Chinese state mechanisms act together, intends to increase support for state-owned enterprises, prioritize research and development activities, ensure high-tech industrialization, and boost innovation programs. But what does this approach, which has recently worried Western countries, mean?

China’s technological pragmatism

In early 2006, China’s cabinet declared that it sees innovative technology as a strategic choice within the National Medium and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (2006-2020). In this context, China, which focuses on reinforcing its capabilities in areas such as unmanned aerial vehicles and space, has started to popularize using digital technologies and automation in line with its five-year development plans. Under the 973 Program, which started in 2009 under the coordination of the Ministry of Science and Technology, China has increased its support for many scientific programs, including quantum technology, space and satellite technologies, cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, automation systems, and robotics.

China, which codified its technology goals in 2015 when it announced its “Made in China 2025” and Internet Plus plans, has particularly focused on investments in artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and big data. Technological development also provides large-scale economic opportunities to China, though challenges remain in developing high-tech industry and increasing market share. Against an actor with big technology companies like the United States, Chinese policymakers are trying to increase China’s capacity and to become an actor that can compete in the global market with companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, and Xiaomi.

Another purpose of China’s investments in innovative technology is to integrate these capabilities and other dual-use technologies into the military area. China under President Xi Jinping began reforming the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 2015 as a part of its civil-military integration policy, and has since improved the PLA Strategic Support Forces’ capabilities in areas, including space, cyber war, and electronic warfare. Thus, while modernizing its army, China also is aiming to implement a new military doctrine based on competition in space and future wars.

In line with this doctrine and the goal of restructuring the armed forces, state-owned companies, private technology companies, universities, and research centers are in partnership with the Chinese military. At this point, quantum technology, cyber capabilities, space programs, automation, robots, and artificial intelligence stand out as the basic components of China’s civil-military integration strategy. China, which established the Integrated Military and Civil Development Central Commission in 2017 to coordinate civil-military integration policies, has given this commission broad powers to determine and supply needs.

China, which sent a quantum satellite into space in 2016 to raise its military capabilities, has sought opportunities to improve its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities and gain an advantage over global rivals. Similarly, China’s 360 Enterprise Security Group, the country’s first civil-military cyber security innovation center, has started to create cyber defense systems for military needs.

Global competition in the shadow of innovative technology

For Washington, China’s rising technological capacity has become one of the main issues in bilateral relations with Beijing. Given American decisionmakers’ desire to maintain Washington’s global leadership in economic, military, and technological spaces, Beijing’s civil-military integration and development of dual-use technologies have become crucial challenges for the United States. Therefore, as early as the 2010s, Washington under the Obama administration adopted a strategy to limit China’s rapid economic rise. After President Donald Trump was elected, he adopted a more aggressive policy involving economic and technological sanctions. The sanctions-based policy has inflicted significant losses on Chinese companies such as Huawei. Washington’s policy of combating China continues under President Joe Biden, although the methods are different.

Despite this, it can be said that Washington’s China policy is not clear yet. However, four crucial parameters can be discerned: maintaining its technological, economic, and military leadership; limiting China’s influence in the technology market by deepening cooperation with its allies; producing alternative technologies; and building a techno-political structure against its rivals.

For instance, NATO’s close focus on China’s technological rise is a significant indicator of the West’s concern. Western companies have been encouraged to limit cooperation with China and, in some cases, restrictions have been legislated. Efforts have also been made to limit Beijing’s acquisition of Western companies.

However, the conditions and areas of competition in today’s world are not solely based on the security paradigm. The current global order’s institutions and actors closely interact with China. In other words, in today’s competitive environment, there is no bipolar structure. Many actors, including the United States and its allies, must interact with China in diverse fields. This situation complicates the scope and future of the anti-China campaign.

Moreover, technological competition is not only limited to physical or geopolitical spaces. The competitive environment reaches beyond states, institutions, companies, and other actors to include information and data-based areas. This competition in the digital space is not an area where states, governments, or other actors—even hegemonic ones—can exercise direct dominance. This situation heightens the importance of discussions about the future of today’s competitive environment.

Mesut Özcan is a Ph.D. student at Sakarya University Middle East Institute studying how innovative technologies will shape security and international competition.

Image: Shutterstock.

Vladislav Surkov, an ex-aide to Vladimir Putin, claims that, under Putin, Russia entered a new historical era—“the long state of Putin,” in which it returned to “its natural and only possible state of a great expanding and land-gathering community of people.” Per Surkov, Russia will exist in this capacity for hundreds of years.

Surkov states that Russia is back to its old imperial self. There is even a new clause in the Russian constitution allowing the inclusion of new territories into the Russian Federation. Numerous public figures, including Putin, claim that gathering lands for Russia is a historically just endeavor. Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian politician who has served in several key positions in the Russian government, even claims that Russia has a right to take back any lands where Russians have shed their blood and sweat. 

Yet Surkov’s prediction regarding the longevity of the “state of Putin” is unlikely to come true. Indeed, under Putin, Russia has entered a new historical era: both the most frightening and the most fragile in its history. It is the most alarming because of the unprecedented nature of the new nationalism of Russia’s political leadership. It is the weakest because of the weakness of Russia’s institutions of power, armed forces, and national unity.

This newly promoted nationalism is belligerent and retrogressive. For the first time in Russian history, the ruling elite praises nearly all of Russia’s past, all its powerful leaders, and all its wars. Moreover, a seemingly unthinkable merge of Czarism and Communism has taken place. The best symbol of this merge is the order of the “Hero of Labor,” a civilian award introduced by Joseph Stalin in 1938 as the “Hero of Socialist Labor.” In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, the first Russian president Boris Yeltsin eliminated the order. Yet Putin restored it in 2013 under a slightly different name, “The Hero of Labor.”

In the Soviet Union, the order was in the form of the five-point golden star embossed with the hammer and sickle: the symbols of communist ideology and working-class solidarity. Putin’s new “Hero” order is also in the form of the golden star, yet now it is embossed with the double-headed eagle: the symbol of the Russian Empire. The two initially warring ideologies stand reconciled under the banner of Russian expansionism.

The Russian government now portrays all wars Russia has fought over centuries as both necessary and just. The Russian constitution legalizes this in a new amendment: “The Russian Federation honors the memory of defenders of the Fatherland and safeguards the defense of historical truth. Diminishing the significance of the heroism of the people in defending the Fatherland is not allowed.” Following this logic, Putin now justifies the “Winter War”—an act of brutal aggression by Stalin’s Soviet Union against Finland in 1939–1940. Even in the Soviet Union, especially in the post-Stalin era, this war was not portrayed as necessary or just. 

Most frighteningly, Russia’s new nationalism borrows directly from German Nazism. One of the slogans, posted on billboards throughout Russia and on the occupied territories of Ukraine, reads “One People. One History. One Country.” This a direct reference to the Russian-Ukrainian War, which is almost identical to the Nazi slogan “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer” (One People, One County, One Leader). The latter was used during the Nazi-led referendum on the annexation of Austria on April 10, 1938.

Similarly, Russia’s ruling elites, with the personal involvement of Putin, lionize the legacy of Ivan Ilyin, a Russian anti-communist philosopher who was expelled from the Soviet Union shortly after the Communist Revolution and who expressed sympathy for fascism. In 1933, Ilyin wrote that Hitler did Europe a huge favor by rescuing it from Bolshevism, declaring “While Mussolini leads Europe and Hitler leads Germany, European culture gets a break.” After World War II, when the crimes of the Nazi regime became widely known, Ilyin still justified fascism, calling it a complex phenomenon within which “one finds elements of health and illness.” In October 2005, the remains of Ilyin were brought back to Russia and reburied in Moscow under the personal patronage of Putin. Putin even cites Ilyin in his speeches.

Primordialism, or the desire to have one long continuous history, is another facet of Russia’s new nationalism. The Russian elites want to be heirs of all its purported predecessors: Kyivan Rus, the Mongols, the Byzantine Empire, and, most unbelievably, the Aryans. Viacheslav Nikonov, one’s of Russian most prominent political and media personages, who happens to be a grandson of Stalin’s foreign minister Viacheslav Molotov, called Russians the Aryans in a statement posted at some point on the website of the Russian parliament.

Primordialism leads to the idea of a civilization-state: the belief that Russia is a unique civilization with its own political, social, and cultural norms. Per Putin, “it is precisely the state-civilization model that has shaped” Russia’s state polity. This model is discriminatory both in practice and by the letter of the law. The Russian constitution now labels the Russians a “state-forming people.” Whether being a Russian is determined by one’s physical appearance, culture, language, or religion is not discussed. Neither is it clear who decides whether a person is Russian.

This horrid nationalism notwithstanding, Russia today is fragile as never before. Putin and his cronies are aware of this. Therefore, they introduce draconian amendments and laws banning any kind of dissent and, “God forbid,” separatism.

Several key factors explain why the current political regime is unlikely to survive after Putin. 

First, Putin now rules as a petty and capricious tyrant, resulting in unwise decisions. It was his sole choice to launch a full-scale war against Ukraine in February of 2022. Even Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, was reportedly unaware of Putin’s plans. And just two days before the war, Putin publicly chastised Russia’s otherwise hawkish spymaster Sergei Naryshkin for appearing indecisive on invading Ukraine. This is exceptional even in Russian history. The Russian Czars and Soviet Leaders consulted their inner circle on key issues. For example, the decision to send Soviet troops to Afghanistan in December of 1979 resulted from long and collegial discussions at the Politburo, the highest Soviet governing authority. 

Second, there are frictions between the three elements of the Russian invasion—the regular military, the Wagner Group, and the various Chechen battalions. The Wagner Group is a mercenary army and criminal organization owned by Putin’s notorious pal Evgeny Prigozhin. It is known for its brutal war tactics, including recruiting convicts from prisons and executing those who refuse to fight on the battlefield. The Chechen battalions are semi-autonomous, as they are allegiant to the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, and Chechnya itself rather than to Putin or Russia. Prigozhin and Kadyrov have publicly criticized Russia’s military command, claiming that it has been their forces that have realized Russia’s recent territorial grabs.

Third, Putin wages this war with a colonial-style army. Russians from affluent families dodge the draft and flee Russia en masse, forcing the Russian military and the Wagner Group to recruit from ethnic minorities—Lezgins, Avars, Buryats, Tatars, Chuvash, etc. However, since Russia has historically oppressed its national minorities, it is implausible to imagine that they have a genuine allegiance to the Russian state. If the situation permits, they may cease fighting or even turn against Russia. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the great Russian writer and humanist Leo Tolstoy called Russia “a combination” and predicted that it would eventually collapse. “The circumstance that all these nationalities are regarded as parts of Russia is an accidental and temporary one,” he wrote.

Lastly, and perhaps most disturbingly, Russian propaganda has never been so aggressive and simultaneously absurd. For example, TV presenter Olga Skabeeva has claimed that the entire West is now at war with Russia, just like allegedly during World War II. Surely, Skabeeva knows that the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain were allies after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941. Another TV presenter, Vladimir Soloviev, scorns German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, saying that a Nazi uniform would fit her the best. The political commentator Igor Korotchenko says that Russia should treat Germany’s Chancellor Scholtz as Adolf Hitler and repeatedly calls for nuclear strikes on the United States.

It is difficult to imagine that the Kremlin can keep Russia in this state of national psychosis for a prolonged period of time, especially after Putin goes. The United States, the European Union, and NATO are currently strategizing how to enable Ukraine to end Russian aggression. This is a noble cause. Yet it is also time to prepare for the potential collapse of Putin’s or post-Putin’s Russia. Given Russia’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, it may not be beneficial for everyone involved, including Ukraine. If Russia disintegrates along the borders of its national autonomous republics—Dagestan, Chechnya, Tatarstan, etc.—this could very well turn into a nuclear Armageddon. The United States, the European Union, and NATO need to have a long-term strategy to avoid this.

Peter Eltsov is professor of international security studies at the College of International Security Affairs at National Defense University and the author of the recent book, The Long Telegram 2: A Neo-Kennanite Approach to Russia.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U. S. government.

Image: Shutterstock.

En décembre dernier, quand il devint évident que le film « Titanic » remporterait un énorme succès, l'appréciation du spectacle et de son producteur-réalisateur bascula en un tournemain. Après avoir moqué l'extravagant coût de fabrication du film, la communauté des critiques salua le génie de James (...) / Cinéma, Inégalités - 1998/08

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Russia has always been and remains committed to strict compliance with its obligations in combating criminal proceeds. For twenty years as a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), we have managed to develop one of the world’s most advanced anti-money laundering regimes. The FATF mutual evaluation proved that in 2019.

Additionally, over recent years, the Russian Financial Intelligence Unit has accumulated unique experiences that it has willingly shared with all interested countries. In order to boost the capacity of law enforcement agencies, a number of educational programs are being actively fulfilled for experts from Central Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

The past year turned out to be unprecedented in terms of the politicization of international institutions combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT). Blindly following the directive to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia in retaliation for our desire to put an end to multi-year flagrant injustice in Ukraine, there is a wish to settle scores with us on different dialogue platforms.

No exceptions are made, even for purely expert and technical bodies designed to promote international cooperation in combating various kinds of financial crimes—the FATF, the Egmont Group, and Interpol. It appears that authors of anti-Russian initiatives, in a bid to “expel” Russia from everywhere, have completely lost touch with reality and forgotten about the dangerous consequences of dismantling the global AML/CFT system.

Despite measures taken by the international community, the threat of terrorism does not subside. It is naive to believe that terrorists and their facilitators have abandoned their plans to carry out attacks against humanity. They skillfully adapt to current realities and adjust emerging technologies to suit their needs.

The issues of transnational crime and the increasing involvement of terrorist organizations with drug trafficking are acute. In this context, it is important to remember that the majority (86 percent) of global illicit opium production takes place in Afghanistan. The potential increase in drug flows from there could destabilize any region of the world.

For this reason, the Russian Federation is putting considerable energy within the FATF-style Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism, featuring countries that border the former Islamic Republic.

Russian authorities traditionally make a significant contribution to the security of both regional and international financial systems. The statistics speak for themselves: at our request, the funds of about two thousand persons involved in terrorism were “frozen” in foreign countries. However, with the introduction of unilateral restrictions against Russia, the global financial security situation began to objectively worsen.

The attention of special governmental structures—initially called upon to fight crime with taxpayers' money—has been diverted to the search for Russian assets for their subsequent illegal blocking. As a consequence, serious cross-border offenses remain uninvestigated.

What can attempts to limit Russia’s role in the multilateral anti-money laundering efforts result in? The answer is obvious: at the very least, it results in a weakening of the global financial system security. Any restrictions on interaction and exchange of information related to terrorism, drugs, fraud, cybercrime, money laundering, and other serious offenses make it difficult to trace illegal assets. The pursuit of dangerous criminal groups risks practically stopping.

As a result, the benefit of such ill-conceived actions is obtained directly by criminals, including by those who committed economic offenses in the countries that “frozen” useful and mutually beneficial enforcement contacts with Russia. There is no doubt that they will certainly take advantage of the emerging vulnerabilities in their own vested interests.

States that refuse to cooperate with the Russian government agencies on special issues of combating crime are, in fact, “shooting themselves in the foot”—exposing their own citizens and their national security to unreasonable risks.

The credibility of the FATF, well-known for its professionalism and high-quality expertise, is also suffering. It is sad that statements regularly made during its meetings about the need of establishing international cooperation in combating the financing of terrorism without politicization and double standards are nothing more than empty rhetoric. Our former Western partners are clearly not rushing to put these declarations into practice.

It would seem that in the history of Russia’s relations with Western countries, including the United States, there are many examples of successful cooperation in countering terrorism and crime. Our joint efforts saved people's lives and brought criminals to justice. Facilitated strengthening of mutual financial security. Why destroy what has been built over the years?

Yury Chikhanchin is the Director of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation.

Image: mojahata/Shutterstock.

An increasing media galore is witnessing the discussion of the role of Wagner Group, a Russian quasi-private military company (PMC), in the Ukrainian conflict.

The Wagner Groups’smercenaries are popping up all over Ukraine, allegedly committing blatant war crimes and providing the necessary combat skill lacking among young, untrained Russian conscripts. While the focus is on Ukraine, the actual value of Wagner is in Africa. Russian paramilitary groups and mercenaries are increasing their footprint in Africa, from Mali to the Central African Republic. While the Russian army is bogged down in a war of attrition with Ukraine, the Wagner Group is a placeholder for Moscow’s geopolitical interests in natural resource-rich African countries. Several reasons are related to the increasing footprint of the Wagner Group in the continent, starting with Russia’s long history of involvement in Africa and the support of strong ties with several African countries. Since Putin’s rise to power, Russia has increased its economic and military presence in Africa.

The Wagner Group is an efficient tool to further Russian objectives on the continent without attracting the same level of scrutiny as regular Russian military units. Besides offering plausible deniability, Wagner is a source of income for oligarchs tied to Putin. For example, in Africa, Wagner’s training services and supply of Russian military hardware are a source of hard currency and precious metals that help the Kremlin to mitigate international sanctions.

To b clear, the Wagner Group more often refers to the Kremlin’s commitment to using paramilitary groups and mercenaries as the sharp end of the stick of its foreign policy from the Middle East to Africa. The Kremlin’s strategy is straightforward: mercenaries provide plausible deniability and achieve precise strategic objectives with limited resources. Russia’s proxy warfare doctrine has changed since Soviet times. Today, it cannot count on former Soviet satellite states to provide the proxy forces required to conduct expeditionary warfare, such as the Cubans in Angola. The use of mercenaries is related to efficiency and the fact that Moscow’s options are limited. Tor Bukkvall, a specialist on Russia’s military strategy, defines the Wagner Group as Moscow’s “power projection on the cheap.”

The Syrian conflict demonstrated how agile and well-trained combat units motivated by money can be a gamechanger. Small units fighting against untrained armed militia and guerrilla forces enabled Moscow to establish influence at a low cost and maintain public deniability in case of failure or blatant human rights violations. Having proved its value in support of the Assad regime and in Libya—where it orchestrated Khalifa Haftar’s successful defense of the oil crescent after he was routed in Tripoli—the Wagner Group expanded its franchise to Africa.

In the continent, however, the Wagner Group is not used only to further the Kremlin’s geopolitical aims but to line the pockets of the Russian elite by establishing a presence in resource-rich countries, where they ally with militias in return for payments in cash or mining concessions. In this regard, Russian PMCs are helping the country work around crippling sanctions.

Moscow’s paramilitary groups are increasing their footprint in Africa. In Sudan, the Wagner Group provided security and logistical support to save former president Omar al-Bashir in exchange for diamond mining concessions. The group supported the Central African Republic government’s struggle against rebel groups. While in Mozambique, the Wagner Group could not provide decisive support to government forces fighting insurgency in the northern part of the country.

Today, Russia relies on distinct armed groups to do its bidding: regular military, mercenaries, special forces operators in disguise, and paramilitaries. Depending on Moscow's needs, a single Russian operator could play each of these roles.

The host government requested the Wagner group’s presence in several African states, while Moscow denies any government involvement. As soon as the boots are on the ground, the Russian disinformation campaign is then ramped up a notch on social media and even with movies supporting Moscow’s presence in Russian and local languages. The propaganda message is straightforward: Russian quasi-PMCs are the last bastions against Islamic terrorists supported by Western mercenaries. Two recent movies distributed in Russia and Africa, Granite and Tourist, which were filmed in the Central African Republic and paid for by a Russian company owned by Wagners’ founder are a case in point.

The case of Mali, where the government officially asked the Wagner Group to support its struggle against terrorist groups, represents this trend. Even Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed reports that Mali contracted the group to fight extremism in the Sahel, asserting that it is a business agreement between a state and a private company without Moscow’s involvement.

Is it not by chance that shortly after an increased Russian presence in Mali, the government of neighboring Burkina Faso was ousted in a January 2022 military coup—the fifth in a year in West and Central Africa, a region known as the continent’s “coup belt.”

Mali is just a tiny piece of a broader geopolitical puzzle Russia is acquiring in the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa. The Syrian playbook, previously tested by the Kremlin during the support of the Assad regime, works like a charm in Africa: moving into a region of interest with a small number of boots on the ground and in a cost-efficient manner while all the attention is centered on Ukraine.

Therefore, the presence of Wagner and similar groups is an early warning indicator that Russia is going to try and alter the political and regional status quo in the short term, months and not years, with any indirect means ranging from deception, active propaganda, and violent actions including political decapitation and supporting military’s coup.

Dr. Alessandro Arduino is an associate at Lau China Institute, King’s College London. His most recent book is China’s Private Army: Protecting the New Silk Road (Palgrave, 2018).

Image: fotoandy/Shutterstock.com.

Since becoming independent in 1991, Georgia has been striving for closer ties with the West and membership in organizations such as the European Union. However, in recent times, particularly in the past eighteen months, the ruling coalition led by oligarch and former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream party has made decisions that seem to push Georgia away from the West and toward Russia’s sphere of influence. The government continues to claim support for integration with the EU and NATO, but it has opted for a policy of non-confrontation with Moscow. This significant change in direction has sparked controversy and debate within the nation.

The Georgian government’s policies have put it at odds with the Georgian population, which prefers closer ties with the West. A 2022 survey by the Center for Insights in Survey Research found that 89 percent of Georgians consider Russia a “political threat,” while 79 percent of Georgians want their country to have a “pro-Western” foreign policy. Likewise, 85 percent of Georgians also “fully” (70 percent) or “somewhat” (15 percent) support their country joining the EU, while 70 percent want their country to join NATO. As Georgia navigates its delicate position between Russia and the European Union, Georgian Dream’s actions are understandable. After all, who could forget Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, an act of aggression that former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev later admitted was motivated by a desire to prevent NATO’s expansion into former Soviet territories.

Since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the relationship between Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics, has significantly deteriorated despite their traditional solidarity. Georgian authorities formally condemned Russia’s “unacceptable“ invasion of Ukraine and provided humanitarian assistance and diplomatic support through organizations such as the United Nations. However, the Georgian government’s refusal to impose sanctions on Russia sparked widespread discontent among the population, as demonstrated by the anti-government protests calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili.

According to a survey conducted by Caucasus Research Resource Centers last spring, 66 percent of Georgians believe that their government should take a stand against Moscow and implement some form of action. In addition, a majority of respondents, 61 percent, stated that the government should show greater support for Ukraine. These views contrast the ruling party’s stance, which has refused to impose any sanctions on Russia.

Much like Ukraine, Georgia has been dealing with its own territorial issues with Russia. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia and declared the independence of the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. For over ten years, Russia has been constructing fences along the line of separation between South Ossetia, which is almost completely surrounded by Georgian-controlled territory, and Georgia, in an effort to turn this line into a fully recognized border between the two countries. This process, known as “borderization,” has been a dire problem for Georgia, as it challenges the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Georgia’s strategic neutrality in the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia may be a calculated move to avoid angering Moscow and potentially facing consequences such as economic sanctions and the further “borderization” in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Kornely Kakachia, the head of the Georgian Institute of Politics, suggests that Tbilisi is adopting a cautious “wait and see“ approach in dealing with the volatile and unpredictable nature of Russia’s actions.

And despite claims from members of Georgian Dream, it is clear that Ivanishvili still wields significant power in Georgian politics. With a history of business in Russia and close connections to the Kremlin, Ivanishvili has maintained a tight grip on Georgia’s leading institutions for the past decade. Interestingly, there have been no criticisms of Ivanishvili from Moscow, possibly due to his promise to improve relations between the two countries when his Georgian Dream party came to power in 2012. Ivanishvili’s influence and connections continue to shape the political landscape in Georgia.

Since its inception in 2012, Georgia’s ruling party has faced criticism for its handling of democracy, human and minority rights, media freedoms, and the fight against corruption and political polarization. In 2019, thousands of people took to the streets in protest after a Russian lawmaker was allowed to sit in the parliamentary speaker’s chair during a meeting, an event known as “Gavrilov night“ and viewed as a national indignity given Russia’s ongoing occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

But the protests go beyond this single incident. They also stem from discontent with Georgian Dream’s overall performance, including a struggling economy, perceptions of rigged elections, restrictions on freedom of the press, and selective justice. The European Parliament even passed a resolution calling for the EU to impose sanctions on Ivanishvili, Georgian Dream’s founder, for his “destructive role” in Georgia’s politics and economy, including risks posed to free media and journalists’ safety.

The Georgian government’s deviation from Western-backed democratic reforms has jeopardized the country’s relations with the EU and United States. In September 2021, Georgian Dream declined the EU’s macro-financial assistance package, which included requirements for judicial reforms recommended by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission. Instead, the government sought funding from the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which did not have such conditionality. In June 2022, the European Council further decided to postpone Georgia’s potential EU membership until it implemented reforms and met twelve specific conditions reforms.

As Georgia edges closer to Russia, tensions may escalate if the Georgian people seek to replace their country’s pro-Russian leaders. Russia and President Vladimir Putin have a history of advocating for regime change in Georgia and Ukraine. For example, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov demanded the removal of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in 2008, much like when Putin himself called on the Ukrainian military to overthrow their government in 2022 as a precondition for peace negotiations. It’s possible that Moscow could become more aggressive in the face of any attempts by Georgia to loosen its ties with Russia.

The 2013 Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine was sparked by President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to abandon the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia. However, the underlying factors that fueled the revolution went much deeper and included widespread corruption, economic hardships, undemocratic politics, media censorship, and police brutality that left the Ukrainian people feeling silenced and oppressed. In the face of these challenges, Ukrainians took to the streets to demand change and fight for a better future.

As Georgia struggles with corruption, undemocratic elections, economic challenges, and media censorship, the government’s attempts to move closer to Russia and distance itself from the West have faced strong resistance from the majority of citizens. Ivanishvili’s leadership and actions are reminiscent of those of Yanukovych in Ukraine, which sparked the Euromaidan Revolution. As discontent and frustration among Georgians reach a boiling point, it seems that the country may be headed for a Maidan-style revolution of its own, similar to what Ukraine experienced before it.

David Kirichenko is a freelance journalist covering Eastern Europe and an editor at Euromaidan Press. He tweets @DVKirichenko.

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Aydar Rashidovich Aganin is one of Russia’s best Arabists. He has served in Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, and the United States. From 2007 to 2011, he ran Russia Today’s Arabic edition, which is today one of the most influential news outlets in the entire Arab world. He was one of Vladimir Putin’s close advisors on the Middle East in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Policy Planning Department. As of last month, he is the Russian ambassador to Libya.

Putin’s man in Tripoli is there for good reason. At a time when Russia needs all hands on deck as it wages its war in Ukraine, the decision to dispatch one of Russia’s best and brightest regional experts to Libya—a country that the West evidently considers to be a backwater—is telling. While Western diplomats continue to chatter kalam fadi, or empty talk, about “elections” or a “constitutional settlement” or other vague promises, Russia has an opportunity. Aganin’s appointment is a sign that Russia plans to take it, and the West had better watch out.

As the world watches the war in Ukraine, Russia is probing the rest of the world for weak spots. While it is true that Russia is somewhat drawing down its presence in Syria, it has not lost its influence in the Middle East. The influence of Russia over OPEC was made clear just one year ago, when Saudi Arabia refused to increase oil production to support the rest of the global economy. Russia’s influence in Syria has sufficed to stop Israel from helping Ukraine with even defensive systems. Russia’s influence over Iran destroyed the resurrection of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in March. And in Libya, too many Libyan politicians owe their lives and careers to Russian weapons and Russian mercenaries for Moscow to be excluded—not that there is any incentive. Now is the perfect time to call in those debts, and Putin knows it.

Today, Libya occasionally appears in Western news. Nine times out of ten, Libyan oil flows need to be disrupted for the West to recall its existence. When NATO intervened in Libya, it baked half a regime change cake but did not succeed in finishing the job. The batter has long turned sour. The myth of Arab dictators—that, in their absence, only chaos can reign—got a new lease on life when Libya’s brief experiment with democracy failed in the absence of support from a non-committal NATO, which was scarred from the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan and clueless about how to handle a country it had long ignored. After a half-hearted attempt at creating a democracy, Libya had a second civil war. The West could not decide on what approach to take. Following another failed attempt to impose a new dictator, Khalifa Haftar, on Libya, the West pushed pause. It has tried to preserve that status quo ever since. But Russia has no interest in calm.

Putin’s only way out of his Ukrainian Vietnam is to force the West into stopping Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy from trying to achieve a total victory. To do that, he can use the West’s greatest advantage against it: democracy. Just as Russian bombs fall on Ukrainian houses, Russia sought to freeze Europeans in their homes this winter and will try to squeeze their pockets throughout 2023, at the gas pump, at the electricity meter, and wherever else they can. In addition to that, Russia has a Trojan Horse in NATO. Turkey’s half-hearted support for Ukraine has helped Russia prolong its bloody campaign while the West’s economic blockade on Russia has created economic opportunities for the Erdoğan government. Furthermore, Turkey’s reluctance to accept Sweden into NATO has been an obvious favor to Putin. Libya is another low-hanging fruit to do this. Without a government, without a constitution, without rule of law, and full of hired-gun militias, Libya can quickly become a headache. While Libya’s warlords are content with their bribes today, a skilled diplomat, with no competition from his Western counterparts, could change that very quickly.

For a political operative looking to make Europe’s life a little more miserable, Libya is a land of opportunity. In Aganin, Putin has sent a skilled pair of hands to pluck ripe fruit. Aganin can easily ask any militia to blockade or sabotage an oil pump, taking hundreds of thousands of barrels away from the West. He could have gas pipelines sabotaged. He could use his obvious flair for the Arabic language and deep familiarity with Arab culture, which his Western counterparts also lack, to charm Libya’s tribes into thinking that they would be better served by Russia. He could work with any number of thugs to try and force migrants from across the Middle East and Africa to Europe en masse. In a more extreme case, he could work with one of Libya’s many political strongmen to try and force the country back into civil war. It also works in Russia’s favor in the rest of Africa, giving Russia an outlet of influence in the Sahel as well as even more leverage over Egypt.

How can the West respond? The truth is, it cannot. To do so would require putting serious thought into how to end Libya’s decade of political misery and sending skilled diplomats of its own who can engage with tribal leaders and build a Libyan consensus. To do so would require a willingness to use just part of its vast economic and political power to threaten Libya’s strongmen. The very least the West could do is threaten no more shopping trips to London, no more holidays in the South of France, no more pizza in Rome unless you can provide a decent life for your own people. But they have not done this for a decade. Why would they start now? When the oil stops flowing again, and it will, they should not blame Aganin. They can blame only themselves.

Burak Bilgehan Özpek is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara. Özpek is also one of the founders of Daktilo1984 Movement in Turkey.

Image: Shutterstock.

Beijing-funded infrastructure projects have slowed, but their longtime partnership remains inevitable.