Diplomacy & Crisis News

Here's What You Need to Remember: Lockheed’s proposal was for 250 of the upgraded stealth fighters at an estimated unit price of $70 million per airframe. The Seahawk was submitted to the JAST competition—but was turned down because the Navy was looking for a higher-performing fighter plane. 

The F-117 Nighthawk made a definite impression on both Iraqi air defenses and the American public when it demonstrated the capabilities of stealth technology in the 1991 Gulf War. Yet the iconic jet-black attack plane was ultimately left behind by improvements in technology and retired in 2008 in favor of the new F-22 stealth fighter.

But what if the Nighthawk design had been evolved into a carrier-based multi-role fighter capable of flying longer distances at higher speed with a greater weapon load? In fact, Lockheed proposed exactly such a “Seahawk” in the early 90s.

The original F-117’s iconic faceted airframe was limited in performance because it was a product of first-generation stealth technology. Despite being called the “stealth fighter”, the F-117 was incapable of engaging enemy aircraft. It was not particularly fast, could only carry two bombs, relied on in-flight refueling to traverse significant distances, and lacked its own radar. New coats of expensive radar-absorbent paint had to be applied frequently. Such a plane was constrained to the role of infiltrating enemy air defenses to attack strategic installations not too far into enemy airspace.

As a result, the Pentagon procured only 59 operational F-117As and quickly moved onto newer stealth aircraft that evolved into the B-2 bomber, the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter and ultimately the F-35 “joint strike fighter.”

However, the Gulf War had raised the esteem of the Nighthawk in the public’s eye—and more crucially, in the eye of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Perceiving an opportunity, in 1992 Lockheed proposed the F-117N “Seahawk” to the U.S Navy.

The original fairly unambitious proposal would have simply involved an automatic carrier landing system (ACLS) and corrosion-resistant coatings for the F-117.  But the Navy was in the process of phasing outs its pure attack planes (the A-6 and A-7) in favor of additional FA-18 Hornet and upgraded F-14 “Bombcat” multi-role fighters with significant ground attack capabilities. A single-role stealth attack plane was not what the Navy was looking for—it wanted an actual fighter with supersonic speed and air-to-air capability, which led to it pursuing the Joint Advanced Strike Technology program.

After the initial F-117N was rejected, Lockheed sketched out new aircraft that incorporated technologies from various proposed F-117Bs rejected by both the U.S. Air Force and the British Royal Air Force.

The ultimate iteration was the A/F-117X Seahawk, which threw everything but the kitchen sink into Nighthawk airframe. The Seahawk’s wings were lengthened nearly 50% to 64 feet long and adjusted from a 48 to 42 degree slant, while additional horizontal ailerons were added on the tail.  This was done to improve the Nighthawk’s aerodynamics and low-speed handling to enable landing on carrier decks. Visibility was improved through a bubble canopy. Of course, the Seahawk also came with reinforced landing gear, ACLS, arrestor hook and folding wings standard for carrier operation.

More powerful F114 engines with afterburners—the same type used in the Navy’s Super Hornet fighters today—would have increased speed, possibly even enabling supersonic flight.  Likewise, the Sea Hawk’s range would have nearly doubled at up to 970 miles.

The Seahawk also included both a multi-mode air-to-air and air-to-ground radar and an Infrared Search and Tracking System (IRST), and it could carry air-to-air missiles on the interior of the bomb bay doors, including short-range heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinders as well as the long range radar-guided AIM-120 Scorpion. The Scorpion missiles in particular could theoretically have allowed the lower-performing F-117 to be a viable air-superiority fighter, sniping from far away at enemy aircraft unable to detect its presence. A bulge in the Seahawk’s bomb bays would have permitted an increased internal bombload to 10,000 pounds (up from just two 2,000 pounds bombs on the F-117A), and there were even provisions for an additional 8,000 pounds of un-stealthy bombs on underwing hardpoints to be mounted after enemy radars had been neutralized.

Lockheed’s proposal was for 250 of the upgraded stealth fighters at an estimated unit price of $70 million per airframe. The Seahawk was submitted to the JAST competition—but was turned down because the Navy was looking for a higher-performing fighter plane. Lockheed was warned by the Pentagon not to continue promoting the plane to its champions in the Armed Services Committee at the risk of its contract for the F-22 stealth fighter.

And so the F-117 program went quietly into the night. The JAST ultimately developed into the “Joint Strike Fighter,” the F-35. The Navy estimates it will finally have F-35C stealth fighters operational in 2019, twenty-seven years later.

The F-35, billed as cheaper mass-production alternative to the high-performing F-22 stealth fighter, has its share of detractors not only because it is inferior to the F-22 in performance, but because endless delays and cost overruns have failed to make it that much cheaper. However, the F-35 does benefit from far more modern avionics and datalinks than the Raptor, and the Pentagon is counting on a combination of stealth, long-range missiles and networked warfare to minimize the F-35’s shortcomings.

The Seahawk might have been turned out to be a decent multi-role strike plane—and it would have looked quite stunning—but the Pentagon wanted to pursue a more capable next-generation stealth fighter rather than trying to revive a dated design. Investing long-term was probably the right call to make in a decade where serious military challenges to the United States’ post-Cold War hegemony had yet to materialize.

Sébastien Roblin holds a Master’s Degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This article is being republished due to reader interest. 

Image: Reuters.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: While both the Su-47 and the X-29 never made it past the prototype stage, they were important for pushing the limits of what was possible, and some of the technologies they helped prove are in use today.

The Su-47 looks like something from a 1960s science fiction novel but is actually tech from the mid-1980s. While innovative, the prototype failed to ever be serially produced — partly because of a lack of funding, and partly because of one crucial design flaw.

Forward Sweep, Forward Thinking?

Airframes with forward-swept wings have several advantages. They’re highly maneuverable, especially at subsonic speeds. They also have unique lift characteristics that allow for short takeoff distances, among others. One of the early interest groups was the Soviet Navy, which was in need of a capable dogfighter that could take off from the kinds of short runways that typify aircraft carriers.

Unfortunately, forward-swept wings have several serious disadvantages as well. Aircraft with forward-swept wing have seriously unstable flight characteristics. The wings themselves undergo severe stress, especially at higher speeds. Due to high-stress loads, the wings need to be able to bend without breaking — no easy feat of engineering.

Still, the Su-47 is extremely maneuverable. Due to its unstable design, it uses a fly-by-wire system that adjusts and corrects the airframe’s flight path faster than a pilot could, keeping the plane stable during flight. It’s capable of some pretty extreme maneuvers, as seen in this video.

Shortly after the Su-47’s debut, western analysts speculated that the airframe may have been somewhat stealthy. Although difficult to verify, it may indeed have had a radar-absorbent coating, though the aircraft itself was not by any means stealthy.

The project was originally conceived in the early to late 1980s. Unfortunately for both the developing firm, Sukhoi, and for the plane itself, the breakup of the Soviet Union doomed the project. Although the Su-47 pops up now and then at various airshows, only one airframe was ever built. It was a victim of the times.

X-29:

DARPA — that is, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — also explored forward-swept wings, even going so far as making a technology demonstrator that is visually very similar to the Su-47. DARPA claims that their X-29 is the “most aerodynamically unstable aircraft ever built.”

Just like with the Su-47, technologies used in the development of the X-29 pushed the limits of what was possible. Some of the X-29 tech were eventually used in developing future platforms. “Advanced composite materials are now used extensively in military and commercial aircraft,” a DARPA statement explains. “Aeroelastic tailoring to resist twisting under flight loads is now a standard tool for advanced designs with relevant outcomes including the long, thin wings of the Global Hawk, an unmanned surveillance aircraft.”

Flopping off the Drawing Board:

While both the Su-47 and the X-29 never made it past the prototype stage, they were important for pushing the limits of what was possible, and some of the technologies they helped prove are in use today. So, not totally useless after all.

Caleb Larson is a Defense Writer with The National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture.

This article first appeared in 2020 and is being reprinted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

/ États-Unis, Capitalisme, Entreprise, Inégalités, Libéralisme, Logement, Urbanisme, Ville, Géographie - Espace et territoire / États-Unis, Capitalisme, Entreprise, Inégalités, Libéralisme, Logement, Urbanisme, Ville, Géographie - Espace et territoire

Comparisons between the January 8 assault on government buildings in Brasilia and the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol involve a certain amount of speculation unless one has unique insights about the inquiries conducted into the events. What is clear by now, though, is that something has been going on in Brazil, the world’s fifth-largest country by area and sixth-largest by population, which is considered to have been a democracy since its military rule ended in 1985. Recently, however, political and social developments in Brazil have led to concerns—not unlike those elsewhere in the world—about the stability of its democratic system.

Interestingly, those concerns have been voiced from both the right and the left. In the run-up to the January 1 inauguration of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva to his third term as president, it was not surprising to hear supporters of his adversary, Jair Bolsonaro, claim that the situation in the country was getting out of hand. The fact that Brazilians were eager to comment and share their views could be seen as a sign of a healthy democracy. Nevertheless, public and social discourse seemed very polarized—also through amplification by contemporary media platforms—and, in some cases, drove wedges between family members and friends. While certain aspects of this state of affairs may be similar to other countries, it is useful to zoom out from the recent presidential election and look at the bigger picture of Brazil’s past and present.

In a speech to the public following his investiture in the National Congress, Lula repeatedly struck a conciliatory tone, stating that “there are no two Brazils” and that all Brazilians belong to one country. While a seasoned politician like Lula is certainly aware of the responsibilities that come with the highest public office, it is probably also his real intention to improve national consensus during his term. In democratic countries worldwide, it is not unusual to see left- and right-wing governments alternate, especially in states with presidential and/or majority-based systems. As a result, a certain bifurcation of the political landscape is not uncommon. However, Brazil, like most Latin American countries, has always been characterized by sharp socio-economic gaps, often resulting in clear divisions in the political realm.

The cleavage between the Lulistas and Bolsonaristas is indeed nothing new. During its history, Brazil has been split in similar ways—for instance, between monarquistas and republicanos in the nineteenth century and between supporters and opponents of President Getúlio Vargas after 1945.

In truth, Brazil faces a more fundamental problem: a lack of societal cohesion, as well as a clear need to strengthen a sense of shared responsibility among the public. Indeed, while most Brazilians do not appear to lack a sense of national identity, in practice, their belonging to the nation takes forms that can be as different as night and day. Access to education, jobs, and leisure, as well as health and nutrition, can be extremely different from one Brazilian to the other, impacting one’s day-to-day for a lifetime. In such a situation, it is not unsurprising that individuals are less inclined to see themselves and their actions as part of a larger society. It is not uncommon to hear Brazilians refer to the social and political situation in their country by quipping that “in Brazil, laws are Swiss, yet the population is Brazilian.” While this tendency is particularly striking in the light of the usual Brazilian amiability in interpersonal contacts, it affects political and economic powers in their decision-making, as well as people in their daily lives. Many of Brazil’s pains—corruption, violence, and ecological challenges—are linked to it.

A number of objective circumstances that provide some explanation for this situation have been mentioned above. Brazil has a very large population, which has historically been very mixed. Its geographical area is huge and as diverse as its inhabitants. However, whereas such factors may indeed increase the chance of acute socioeconomic differences, it remains a chicken-or-egg question whether these differences are responsible for the lack of shared responsibility or whether it is the absence of the latter that perpetuates the cleavages. In any case, the current situation is characterized by low intergenerational mobility, usually considered a barrier to economic development that leads to a perpetuation of the state of affairs.

Brazil’s condition is one, in all earnest, that transcends party differences. Accusations that opposing camps launch at each other might indeed tell more about the country’s underlying woes than about the competitors themselves. For instance, while it may be true that poverty rose during Bolsonaro’s term as a president, it would be incorrect to claim that there were not any swathes of the population living in destitute conditions during and after the presidencies of Lula and his heir, Dilma Rousseff. On the other hand, whereas Lula’s and Dilma’s Workers’ Party has been plagued by corruption scandals, allegations of corruption have also been brought against Bolsonaro more than once. Corruption has been a recurrent predicament in Brazil. Corruption contributed to the rise of President Getúlio Vargas in the 1920s, and it also helped bring down the military government in the 1980s. Yet the first democratically elected presidents after 1985, José Sarney and Fernando Collor de Melo, both became immensely unpopular because of the many allegations of corruption they faced.

While Brasilia’s central Ministries Esplanade was the scene of violence unleashed by an angry mob on January 8, it was filled with a gleeful atmosphere a week earlier, with the slogan “Brazil is happy again” floating over Lula’s inauguration. However, it is unlikely that all the promises Lula made in his address to the nation will be fulfilled four years from now. While the official ceremony continued on one end of the Esplanade, men were halting cars at the other end, asking for a little help to feed their children. It will be great if Brazil’s new government proves capable of considerably improving the conditions of those people. If it can do so without antagonizing the other half of the country, even better.

Dr. Alexander Loengarov is a Senior Affiliated Fellow at the Institute for International Law at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium), as well as a former official of the European Economic and Social Committee of the European Union. He studied Brazilian and international law at the University of Brasilia and participated in the Teixeira de Freitas program at the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court. In Brussels, he coordinated the first rounds of the EU’s Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window scheme for academic mobility with Israeli and Palestinian institutions, and he regularly publishes analysis and opinion pieces on the Middle East, notably for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Israel Policy Forum, and the National Interest. His writings reflect solely his own views, and not those of the European Economic and Social Committee or the European Union, which cannot be held responsible for any use made of it.

Image: Shutterstock.

Here's What You Need to Remember: In an interview with the Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik, a Russian defense commentator said that he believed China’s Chengdu J-20 makes use of some of the MiG 1.44’s features.

In response to the United State’s Advanced Tactical Fighter program — which spawned the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor— the Soviet Union initiated a crash project to produce a comparable fighter. What they got was the MiG 1.44.

Jack of All Trades

Like the F-22 Raptor, the MiG 1.44 was supposed to do it all. On paper at least, the MiG combined stealthy characteristics with excellent maneuverability, which designers hoped would result in excellent fighting capabilities. 

In addition to weight-saving materials used in airframe and wing construction, radar-absorbent materials were incorporated on the airframe, with special attention given to the airframe’s radar “hotspots” like the wing edges and engine intakes.

Rather than straight-through engine intakes, the MiG 1.44’s were curved, “serpentine” intakes that could bounce incoming radar inside them, hopefully dissipating or eliminating a return signal.

Despite a few stealthy characteristics the MiG 1.44 may not have been all that stealthy.

Stealthy — or Not?

Though intended as a stealthy jet, a few features call into question the degree to which the MiG 1.44 can be considered a stealthy design. One of these is the MiG’s canards.

Canards are control surfaces — essentially ‘winglets’ usually just aft or below the cockpit that provide additional lift or aid in control during certain flight scenarios. Although not incompatible with stealthy designs, they are not ideal and can amplify an airframe’s radar signature. 

Popular Science explains why airframes with a canard design are difficult to make stealthy. “Designing a stealthy canard is difficult, particularly if the canards are big enough to enable the airplane to recover quickly from an extreme nose-up attitude.” This is due to the extra surfaces that can return a radar signal — more surfaces, more return signal.

The issue is the MiG’s apparent canard-wing (mis)alignment. Stealthy jets, like the F-22 Raptor, minimize the radar reflection of control surfaces like wings and tail assembly. When viewed from a head-on position, the F-22’s tail assemblyis ‘hidden’ behind the wings, reducing the number of surfaces that would be visible to radar.

The MiG 1.44 does not follow this design principle. When viewed from the front, the two canards are not on the same horizontal plane as the wings, creating a “louder” or more reflective radar signature — and possibly compromising its stealth characteristics.

Oddly, the MiG 1.44 had prominent pylons on its wings for attaching weapons or fuel tanks — which would have further decreased the jet’s stealth. The F-35 can optionally carry fuel or ordinance on its wings, but when not in use, the pylons are removed so as not to degrade stealth.

Another Stolen Bird?

In an interview with the Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik, a Russian defense commentator said that he believed China’s Chengdu J-20 makes use of some of the MiG 1.44’s features.

"In my opinion, the machine is based on the Russian MiG 1.44. That plane was created to compete with the PAK FA at the preliminary design stage, and made its maiden flight in 2000. The Chinese plane is very similar," the commentator explained.

“Although it hasn't been announced officially, the J-20 uses our AL-31F engine, developed by Salut, which the Chinese bought for half a billion dollars,” a nod to Russia and China’s budding — if contentious — defense relationship.

All for Naught?

Russia’s stealth ambitions are…grounded. One of their newest heavy fighters/interceptors, the Su-57, has had a number of teething issues. The Su-57 fleet totals only about a dozen airframes. Though certainly a more refined design than the MiG 1.44, stealth appears to be easier to say than to do.

Caleb Larson is a Defense Writer with The National Interest. He holds a Master of Public Policy and covers U.S. and Russian security, European defense issues, and German politics and culture.

Image: Flickr.

Following its stint as the G20 president in November of last year, Indonesia has another opportunity to project its power and pursue its priorities as the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2023. With the theme “ASEAN Matters: Epicentrum of Growth,” Indonesia officially started its term as ASEAN chair on January 1, taking over from Cambodia. Often perceived as the de facto leader of the regional bloc, Indonesia faces high expectations to manage and resolve many significant issues, including the ongoing turmoil in Myanmar and the South China Sea disputes. In August last year, then-Malaysian prime minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob expressed confidence in Jakarta’s ability to better address ASEAN and global issues in its capacity as ASEAN chair. While the ASEAN chairmanship presents an opportunity for Indonesia to regain its regional leadership, it also comes with greater responsibilities for Jakarta to tackle many significant regional challenges.

Myanmar

Almost two years after the February 2021 military coup, there is still no end in sight to Myanmar’s deepening crisis. While ASEAN is expected to act as a peacemaker to resolve the conflict, the bloc has been largely ineffective in restoring peace and stability in the country through its Five-Point Consensus (5PC). The bloc remains divided over how to deal with the Myanmar junta and has often been criticized for making little meaningful progress in the implementation of the 5PC. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines are among the bloc's most vocal critics of the junta.

Tackling the post-coup crisis in Myanmar remains a major headache for Indonesia under its chairmanship, whose success will likely be assessed based on how Jakarta manages the issue that divides the bloc. Dr. Oh Ei Sun, a senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, said it would be very difficult for Jakarta to achieve any significant breakthroughs in the Myanmar issue for two reasons. 

“Firstly, ASEAN works on consensus, and a number of ASEAN countries may not agree with taking a harder line with Myanmar. Secondly, the junta, just as its many predecessors over the last half centuries, had hardened itself against the detrimental effects of the various sanctions,” Oh explained.

However, Policy and Economic Affairs Centre of Malaysia (PEACE) CEO Dr. Zokhri Idris expressed confidence that Indonesia would play a key role in ensuring peace progress in Myanmar but said collective efforts within ASEAN are needed.

“Indonesia has the tendency to work with various parties to solve conflicts. It manages to bring contesting parties [Ukraine and Russia] to a Forum [G20], and I am sure it will replicate the same method to the Myanmar issue,” the Idris said.

“There is no a single winner in solving the issue, but rather a concerted effort of ASEAN members to fill in the gap during the peace process,” he further added.

South China Sea

The South China Sea (SCS) dispute remains a key security flashpoint in the region. The idea of the Code of Conduct (CoC), which aims to manage tensions between claimant states over the SCS, was formally adopted and acknowledged in 2002. However, since then, ASEAN and China have been engaged in negotiations over the CoC agreement without significant progress. Beijing and some ASEAN claimant states have overlapping claims in the SCS, including the nine-dash line. With these fundamental divergent interests at play, the China-ASEAN CoC is unlikely to be concluded during Indonesia’s ASEAN chairmanship.

“The conclusion of CoC negotiation is nowhere to be seen. This is mainly because the enforceability of the code is a sensitive point, in that most of the negotiants would like it to be enforceable on others but not themselves,” Oh explained.

This was echoed by Zokhri, who felt that it would be hard for Indonesia to push forward the CoC negotiations as Indonesia is not one of the claimants in SCS disputes.

“Although we admit the fact that Indonesia, through its foreign policy, would be stern in protecting territorial sovereignty, the SCS sovereignty is very much contested between UNCLOS vs historical perspectives. We have not seen a strong/active response from Indonesia much particularly towards SCS,” he said.

Timor-Leste

In a statement issued in November last year at the annual leaders’ summit in Phnom Penh, the leaders of ASEAN agreed “in principle” to admit Timor-Leste as the group’s eleventh member, with full membership pending. During a visit to Indonesia in July 2022, Timor Leste president Jose Ramos-Horta expressed hope for his young country to join ASEAN under Indonesia’s chairmanship. While Indonesian president Joko Widodo has been a vocal advocate for Timor-Leste’s membership, it remains to be seen if he can continue to exert his leadership to convince his fellow regional leaders to accept Timor-Leste as a full member of the bloc.

“At this rate, we are positive that Timor Leste will be a member of ASEAN in 2023. However, that depends on whether each ASEAN country remains steadfast in building a consensus to accept Timor-Leste’s membership,” Zokhri said.

While Timor-Leste may have the smallest economic size in comparison to those of the other members within ASEAN, its full membership can help ASEAN strengthen its centrality at a time of great global uncertainty. As ASEAN chair, Indonesia can play a vital role in advancing its diplomatic efforts to create a road map for Timor-Leste’s formal membership.

ASEAN and the Great Powers

In 2023, the increasing U.S.-China geopolitical and geo-economic bifurcation and competition for influence will continue to resonate throughout the ASEAN region. As ASEAN’s largest bilateral trading partner, China represents a trading volume that is 54 percent higher than that of the United States. Meanwhile, the United States is ASEAN’s largest source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), providing $34.7 billion (25.3 percent of total FDI inflows) to ASEAN in 2020, compared with $12 billion from China and Hong Kong (8.7 percent of total inflows). So far, states have generally maintained equidistance between the two great powers.

Yet events such as the Myanmar crisis, the Russo-Ukrainian war, and the increasing pressure on countries to take sides between the United States and China have threatened the equilibrium and exposed divisions within the bloc. Such divisions severely impair the unity and the effectiveness of ASEAN, risking it falling into a region of divergent regimes and endangering ASEAN centrality.

Under Indonesia’s Chairmanship, ASEAN faces the critical challenge of halting this diverging trend. If the bloc’s largest and most populated economy cannot do it, the situation left for the next chairman state will be even more problematic. While Widodo vowed to prevent ASEAN from becoming a “proxy to any powers”, it remains a big challenge for him to lead ASEAN out of the great power dilemma.

Economic Growth

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which is the largest trade agreement in human history, took effect for Indonesia on January 2. RCEP is a remarkable affirmation of multilateralism and openness by Asian countries. The pact is also the first free trade agreement (FTA) that includes China, Japan, and Korea—the three major economies in East Asia.

ASEAN’s economic growth has almost always been higher than the global average, and its GDP was projected to grow by 5.1 percent in 2022, compared to 3.2 percent worldwide. As the largest economy within ASEAN and the fifth largest among RECP parties, hope is high for Indonesia’s leadership to keep the ASEAN economic engine running full steam and achieve even higher levels.

However, this task may not be easy. With the ongoing great power rivalry, a war in Europe, and a looming international financial crisis, the global economic outlook for 2023 is bleak and gloomy. In both 1997 and 2008, ASEAN showed staunch commitments to strengthen its integration efforts when facing regional and international financial turmoil. 2023 may be a bigger test for the bloc’s unity and economic resilience. Other issues also raise high expectations, such as establishing the RCEP Support Unit, a body to coordinate the trade agreement, and Hong Kong’s recent bid to join RCEP.

Energy Cooperation

Energy security is another tough challenge that Indonesia’s chairmanship needs to deal with. The recent seventh ASEAN Energy Outlook (AEO7) released by the ASEAN Center for Energy (ACE) in late 2022 projects continuous high energy demand growth, tripling 2020 level by 2050, with total final energy consumption (TFEC) expected to reach 473.1 Mtoe by 2025 and 1,281.7 Mtoe by 2050. With the current natural resource reserve and production capacity, ASEAN will become a net importer of natural gas by 2025 and coal by 2039.

As the world’s fourth-largest producer of coal, ASEAN’s biggest gas supplier, and the largest biofuel producer globally, Indonesia may not have energy issues itself but will most surely face pressure to coordinate the distribution of energy among ASEAN member states. “Energy should be borderless. The problem with energy is that we limit energy within [the borders of] our member states,” said ACE executive director Nuki Agya Utama at the launch of AEO7.

The AEO7 also calls for Indonesia to connect its electricity system in Sumatra to Peninsular Malaysia by 2025 to enable ASEAN to meet its growing electricity demand while keeping costs in check.

“We already have Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore on the ASEAN Power Grid. I really hope that Indonesia can take the lead in 2023, and be connected [to the ASEAN Power Grid], either through Singapore or Peninsular Malaysia or maybe the Borneo grid to up until The Philippines,” said Nuki.

Coming Storms

The issues for Indonesia’s ASEAN chairmanship to address will not be easy and undoubtedly require support from all other member states. Earlier at the 40th and 41st ASEAN Summits, Widodo called for the bloc’s members to be consistent with the spirit of cooperation and implement the ASEAN Charter completely. As Jakarta tries to maintain the current positive trend to make ASEAN the “epicentrum” of growth and maintain regional stability, it must prepare to weather storms both from outside and within.

Danny Teh Zi Yee is a Li Ka Shing scholar in international affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He was previously the Director of External Affairs for the ASEAN Youth Advocates Network (AYAN) Malaysia. His articles and commentaries have appeared in Cambodianess, Modern Diplomacy, Malaysiakini, New Straits Times, The National Interest, and The Diplomat, among others. Get in touch with him via Twitter, LinkedIn, or email. 

Yuxin Hou is a scholar in international affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He was previously the Manager of China Business at the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT) and until recently the Vice President of Yaqiao Education Group, a leading private education provider which he co-founded in China. Yuxin is a contributor to Caixin Media in China, the US-China Perception Monitor by the Carter Center, and the AsiaGlobal Online Journal, among others. Get in touch with him via LinkedIn or email.

Image: Shutterstock.

BASF, the German chemical products behemoth, made a bet on Russia in recent decades. After Russia invaded Ukraine, that bet failed to pay off. Now it’s making another risky bet on China, just as great power competition is heating up.

In 1990, BASF forged an alliance that would provide the company—and Germany more broadly—with a steady supply of inexpensive Russian natural gas. BASF is Europe’s largest commercial consumer of Russian gas. At its largest factory—a small, self-contained city with its own hospital and wastewater treatment plant—BASF consumed thirty-seven terawatt-hours of Russian natural gas in 2021, nearly 4 percent of Germany's total natural gas consumption that year. The fuel became so essential that the CEO of BASF referred to Russian gas as “the basis of our industry’s competitiveness.”

.Months after Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a unified Europe turned off the tap of Russian oil and gas, starving BASF of much-needed energy and chemical ingredients. BASF tried to weather the restrictions by dialing back production, but with the prospect of the continuing sanctions and a war stretching toward its second year, BASF has cut its losses and moved operations to China, where it is building a €10 billion factory complex in Guangdong.

BASF is not alone. Germany’s economic and industrial might has depended heavily on cheap Russian gas. High energy prices and uncertain supply have impacted German companies large and small. Facing energy uncertainty, a shocking 9 percent of Germany’s small and medium industrial companies are also considering moving operations abroad.

For BASF, the calculus was rather simple. No longer able to rely on that natural gas to power its factories and create its chemical precursors, like ammonia and acetylene, BASF was forced to find a new jurisdiction where energy is plentiful. China checked that box.

For similar reasons, some German politicians now seek to forge new economic ties with China. German chancellor Olaf Scholz visited China in November in order to “further develop” cooperation between the countries—efforts that led to China’s purchase of 140 Airbus airplanes.

By tying itself to China, however, Germany risks making its Russia mistake all over again. It is doing so at a time when tensions are heating up between Beijing and the West. Moreover, Germany should be investing in unprecedented transatlantic cooperation and pan-democratic unity in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, and as fears grow over a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

The reason the Russian gas supply has stopped was predictable but not inevitable. It occurred because Russia is a country that a single person controls—a person capable of horrific and violent blunders. Indeed, reliance on Russian gas was a vulnerability because Russia is non-democratic and capricious. Today, the country is engaged in the megalomaniacal war of one man who has unified much of the democratic world in opposition.

By turning to China, however, BASF and other German companies risk another major miscalculation—allowing the allure of cheaper energy to bind them to another autocratic and capricious regime controlled largely by one man. Germany, which enjoys alliances throughout Europe and North America, should recognize the risks. Xi Jinping’s saber-rattling in the Taiwan Strait could be a sign of things to come. China is capable of making the same mistake as Russia and paying even more significant consequences. China’s economy is entangled with many of its Western trading partners.

On top of that, German engagement with China always carries the substantial risks of technology theft and knowledge transfer—a risk that some scholars have described as Beijing’s “weaponization of cooperation.”

BASF is just one of the many multinational companies that risk being caught flatfooted if Beijing becomes militarily aggressive or if it decides to establish a state-owned competitor to the German companies that it previously cooperated with.

Of course, BASF is also investing heavily in China because, like most multinationals, it values the Chinese market. And it’s not alone here, either. China is Germany’s largest trading partner outside of Europe. German carmaker Volkswagen gets more than 40 percent of its global revenue from China. As BASF’s chief executive explained, “we’ve come to the conclusion that China is an opportunity . . . and it makes sense to expand our position [there].”

BASF is heading in the same direction. While Europe made up 40 percent of BASF’s sales, and North America made up another 27 percent, China’s contribution to global sales is growing. In the third quarter of 2022, China made up 14 percent of BASF’s global sales at just under EUR 3 billion.

BASF currently employs 50,000 workers in Germany. Similarly, small and medium-sized companies in the industrial sectors are major drivers of employment in Germany. If companies and their jobs leave for China, it will be hard for Germans to ignore the economic and social implications of significant job flight. A push toward greater independence is now needed, including boosting energy capacity from existing nuclear power plants and more aggressive renewables infrastructure.

BASF’s calculation to double down on China may backfire on the country in other ways. As the United States and Europe examine their critical supply lines, routing essential industrial chemicals through China seems unappealing. BASF is not alone. Many other countries may find themselves in a similar situation. However, Western countries are increasingly concluding that economic and national security interests require repositioning their critical-component supply lines through friendly, democratic partners.

This is why many multinational companies have recently increased “ally-shoring”—re-routing supply chains to friendly countries for greater economic security, keeping jobs closer to home, and reinforcing democratic norms. Ally-shoring may not work in all markets and for all types of critical industries. But Europe and the United States understand that they must join forces where possible to reduce vulnerabilities. An industrial alliance of democratic countries would be hard to beat—Germany and the United States should be taking the lead in such an alliance.

BASF has taken a great risk. A bet on China might prove even more disastrous than the bet it made on Russia more than thirty years ago.

John Austin directs the Michigan Economic Center and is a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Elaine Dezenski is senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Image: Shutterstock.

More than a year has passed since the formation of AUKUS—a trilateral security pact between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia—and the subsequent diplomatic crisis between France and Australia. After the initial shock provoked by the announcement of AUKUS, France had no choice but to revamp its partnership policy in the Indo-Pacific.

The dispute not only tarnished the bilateral relationship between Paris and Canberra but also complicated France’s plans in the region. Though the media initially read the French discontent as a business dispute over the cancellation of Australia’s multi-billion-dollar order for France’s Naval Group submarines, the deal was just one component of a broader strategy to anchor France into the Indo-Pacific.

Until September 2021, this strategy was supposed to rely on two legs. France’s rapprochement with India provided the “Indo” leg, while the partnership with Australia represented the “Pacific” one. This was all the more crucial because, historically, France has been more involved in the Indian Ocean than in the Pacific, and the partnership with Canberra was partly expected to fix this imbalance.

Since the AUKUS dispute, France’s Indo-Pacific engagement has taken several forms. At the bilateral level, one of the most significant developments has been France’s rapprochement with Indonesia. Over the last year, exchanges between both sides’ foreign and defense ministers have increased. In July, Indonesia’s defense minister, Prabowo Subianto, called France “Indonesia’s main strategic partner.” A few months later, French minister of the armed forces Sebastien Lecornu followed up by asserting that “a powerful strategic intimacy … is being born with Indonesia and France.” The rapprochement is not only in words: amid Indonesian plans to modernize its armed forces, France secured a deal to sell forty-two Rafale fighters to Indonesia, which may be followed by the sale of two French Scorpene-class attack submarines.

Meanwhile, France has embraced the “minilateral” approach. Back in 2020, France launched a trilateral dialogue with India and Australia, but it came to a halt after the AUKUS crisis. However, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last September, French diplomats met with their counterparts from India and Australia in order to revive that framework.

Seen from Paris, the replacement of Australian prime minister Scott Morrison by Anthony Albanese after the May 2022 election was a precondition for restoring those ties. Then, a July visit by Albanese to Paris helped relaunch French-Australian dialogue at the highest level. French president Emmanuel Macron even suggested that year that the submarine deal was still “on the table” if the new Australian government was open to the idea (it isn’t so far). The sense of “betrayal” around the AUKUS dispute left deep scars in the French foreign policy establishment and the president’s entourage. Although bilateral consultations may go on, there are no expectations for the time being that France will reconsider the partnership with Canberra as a pillar of France’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

Interestingly, another trilateral gathering occurred during the UN General Assembly in New York. On the sidelines of the General Assembly, India, France, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) held their first meeting together. That trilateral partnership truly grew in earnest after the AUKUS debacle, though French officials carefully reject any causation between the two events and emphasize that the rapprochement among the three countries had been in the making for several years.

The UAE has hosted France’s naval command for the Indian Ocean since 2009, along with about 800 French troops. Coincidentally, on September 15, 2021, the day AUKUS was announced, Macron hosted the Emirati leader, Mohammed bin Zayed, who has his own grievances with the United States. Three months later, amid the suspension of contentious F-35 talks between Abu Dhabi and Washington, the UAE announced its intention to purchase eighty French Rafale fighter jets. In the meantime, the Emiratis and the Indians have also turned their relationship into a strategic partnership that now involves counterterrorism cooperation and major Emirati investments in India’s infrastructure. By 2021, the navies of the three countries held joint drills in the Persian Gulf.

It is too early to say how far this nascent trilateral bloc can go. France appears eager to promote talks on joint defense industrial cooperation, especially as the Dassault company produces Rafale fighter jets for both Abu Dhabi and New Delhi. There is also the possibility of greater consultations in the field of maritime security in the Indian Ocean, though the UAE’s limited naval capabilities may constrain such ambitions.

France’s Indo-Pacific strategy has also taken a more ambitious character at the multilateral level. In the past two years, Paris deepened its engagement with regional organizations. In 2020, it became an official member of the Indian Ocean Rim Association, making the case that its territories in the area—La Réunion and Mayotte—made it a sovereign state of the region on par with Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. In November 2022, France also gained the status of observer state in the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meetings Plus, ASEAN’s platform for military consultations with external partners such as Australia, India, and the United States.

Furthermore, in November 2022, Macron was the first European leader to deliver a speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum’s​​ summit in Bangkok, allowing him to highlight the French approach towards the region, often described by the expression “balancing power,” or “puissance d’équilibre,” a concept as vague in English as it is in French.

French officials insist that Paris rejects the notion of “confrontation” between great powers in the region. The goal of France’s Indo-Pacific strategy is not to counter China but to promote partnerships focused on common interests rather than common threats. Such French rhetoric plays as a barely veiled critique of the American posture, perceived in Paris (as well as in some Asian capitals) as too polarizing.

Recent initiatives such as the rapprochement with Indonesia, the launching of the UAE-India dialogue, and the resurrection of the dialogue with India and Australia have built new momentum for France’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Admittedly, the partnership with Abu Dhabi and New Delhi has its own limitations—it can strengthen France’s presence in the Western Indian Ocean but hardly beyond that area. This is again what makes France’s partnership with Canberra so crucial.

As a result, France is still reviewing ways to enlarge its partnership policy. Some observers speculate that Indonesia could join the India-UAE framework. In addition to its recent rapprochement with France, the Southeast Asian country has also cultivated close ties with both India and the UAE. Singapore is also frequently mentioned, especially due to its significant diplomatic and military cooperation with Paris. As it maintains a carefully balanced posture between the United States and China, Singapore may also find France’s rhetoric more appealing than the current stance in Washington.

Eventually, in this search for local partnerships to shore up its Indo-Pacific strategy, France must confront two fundamental questions. The first relates to its ability to shape the local environment. Asian policy circles remain skeptical about the military and economic might a country like France can deploy to the Indo-Pacific when compared to great powers like Washington and Beijing. Paris is well aware of the need to address this credibility gap and announced in the past year new naval deployments to increase its presence in Asian waters. French military expenditures are also expected to rise, but those are driven less by Asia’s security challenges than by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. No one in Paris is under the illusion that France could match American and Chinese capacities. Instead, the goal is to maintain sufficient resources to lead Asian middle powers to consider the French proposal as a true alternative. Defining this level of sufficiency remains unclear, however.

This brings about the second issue facing Paris, which relates to the need to clarify its regional posture. Although French diplomats boast the distinctive nature of the country’s Indo-Pacific strategy vis-à-vis the United States, catchphrases such as “Paris’ third way,” “balancing power,” or France as “a power of initiatives“ are not compelling. They may look like shallow statements hiding an absence of concrete objectives or, worse, could be dismissed as lofty rhetoric disguising the true priority of Paris—i.e., weapons sales.

France’s Indo-Pacific policy is not as different from America’s as its rhetoric suggests. France remains a NATO ally of Washington and has similarly highlighted China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea and its predatory investments in Asia and Africa. Furthermore, when working with an American audience, France tends to tone down the talk of its “third way,” promoting its Indo-Pacific strategy as complementary to Washington’s. It is a difficult enterprise for France to position itself as an alternative foreign policy player to the United States while also persuading Washington that this approach benefits both countries.

Ultimately, the credibility of France’s capabilities and intentions is an interrelated issue, and the key to solving it may lie in its ability to its Indo-Pacific strategy. Under this approach, the EU would provide resources that France cannot offer on its own, possibly supporting the ability of Europe to act as a true alternative to U.S.-China competition. For French diplomats, this means they must keep the EU engaged in Asia at a time it is focused on the war in Ukraine. In other words, the future of France’s Indo-Pacific strategy may be played out in Brussels just as much as in Asian capitals.

Jean-Loup Samaan is a senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore and a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council. A former policy advisor with the French Ministry of Defense and NATO, he is the author, with Frederic Grare, of The Indian Ocean as a New Political and Security Region (Palgrave, 2022).

Image: Shutterstock.

On January 6, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the executive board members of the Qods Aviation and Aerospace Industries Organization (IAIO), an Iranian defense company founded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in 1985. IAIO designs and manufactures Mohajer-6 mid-range reconnaissance and combat drones, which were supposedly transferred to Russia in the summer. In September, Russia reportedly used the Mohajer-6 to coordinate an attack on the Ukrainian port of Odessa, contradicting Tehran’s denials of supplying drones to Moscow after the invasion of Ukraine. IAIO has been sanctioned by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) since December 2013.

The U.S. government may also increase sanctions against officials of the Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industries Corporation (HESA), which produces the Shahed-136 suicide drone that Russia has renamed the Geran-2 and that has featured prominently in the war in Ukraine. Since September, Russia has deployed the Shahed-136/Geran-2 in waves of drone and missile strikes, crippling Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and terrorizing its civilian population. Like IAIO, HESA has been sanctioned by the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom for over a decade.  

For years, the United States has imposed sanctions against Iran’s military-industrial complex and manufacturing base, including entities like IAIO, HESA, Fajr Aviation Composite Industries (FACI), Iran Helicopter Support and Renewal Industries (PAHNA), and Iran Aircraft Industries (IACI), to name a few. Nevertheless, Iran’s aerospace sector and drone industry have continued to expand and thrive. Western sanctions have been unable to prevent Iran from becoming a prominent player in the military drone market and sharing drone technology with partners and proxies inside and outside of the Middle East. 

Iran has manufactured and operated military drones since the Iran-Iraq War in the mid-1980s. With over thirty-three models, Iran’s highly developed, sophisticated military drone complex comprises one of the four pillars of its security strategy and force structure, complementing its missile technology, proxy forces, and cyberwarfare. Drones have increasingly offered an asymmetric advantage to Iran, with the understanding that it cannot compete with more modern air forces in the region—even as it attempts to acquire Su-35 fighter jets from Russia in exchange for drones, missiles, and other military assistance. Iranian drones are cheaper than their Western counterparts and have proven to be effective on the battlefield, whether against domestic and regional insurgents or American and allied assets in and around the Persian Gulf.

Drones have also enabled Iran to project power and earn profits, showcase technology and enhance prestige, strengthen alliances, and influence conflicts in the Middle East and beyond. To this end, Iran has delivered drones and their designs, components, and training to its partners and proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, as well as to foreign governments such as Ethiopia, Russia, Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela—transactions facilitated by the expiration of the UN arms embargo against Iran in October 2020. In May 2022, Iranian Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new Iranian drone factory in Tajikistan, its first offshore drone production facility. On October 18, as Russia continued deploying the Shahed-136/Geran-2 against Ukrainian infrastructure and civilians, Maj. Gen. Yahya Safava, a top military aide to Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, claimed that twenty-two countries wanted to purchase Iranian drones.

So far, Iran has refrained from delivering to Russia longer-range and more lethal drones and missiles, like the Arash-2 suicide drone and the Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar short-range ballistic missile (SRBM). In doing so, Tehran seeks to avoid being subjected to snapback sanctions under UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution 2231 until a key provision expires in October 2023. Meanwhile, in the port city of Bandar Abbas, the IRGC Navy has contracted the Iran Shipbuilding and Offshore Industries Complex to convert the Shahid Mahdavi container ship into a drone aircraft carrier.

In addition to increasing sanctions against Iran, Washington intends to enforce export controls and pressure private companies to disrupt the technological supply chain connected to Tehran’s drone industry. These plans were made public after reports surfaced that the Shahed-136 is manufactured with American and British components. These components not only complicate Iran’s revolutionary narrative of independence and self-sufficiency but also demonstrate its uncanny ability to bypass sanctions.

As with Western sanctions, it is unlikely that more export controls and corporate pressure will significantly reduce Iran’s access to these components. First, as indicated above, foreign components have already been integrated into a robust drone program with an established supply chain. Second, while the United States could perhaps punish companies that sell dual- or multi-use technology to Iran and other so-called rogue states, it cannot fully stop resellers of such technology, like eBay or Alibaba, from doing so.

The Iranian leadership embraces a whole-of-government approach and uses all available tools, from regime elites attending universities abroad to cyber espionage, to access the latest technologies. Iran may have difficulty accessing or creating complex communication technology. Yet it could still easily purchase a Texas Instruments electronic signal receiver chip of the type that Ukrainian forces discovered inside a downed Shahed-136, particularly from China’s large and unregulated technology market.

Turkey, for example, successfully circumvented a U.S. export ban on drone components—engines, optoelectronics, and bomb racks—by importing them from the British subsidiary of an American company. A similar ban by the Canadian government incentivized Turkey to manufacture more components locally in the long term. Access to hardware and components aside, Iran’s high human capital could allow it to accelerate localized production of drone components. Such an outcome could be made possible by the first-rate scientists, technicians, engineers, and mathematicians produced by the Sharif University of Technology and other top-notch Iranian educational institutions, even as they have become epicenters of heightened unrest and repression during Iran’s latest protests.

Considering the difficulty, if not impossibility, of disrupting Iran’s drone program through economic sanctions and export controls, the United States would do well to adopt a new strategy. Such a strategy would endeavor to use an innovative, holistic approach to break the endless cycle of American sanctions imposition and Iranian sanctions avoidance. Under this strategy, punitive economic and financial measures would be part of a broader policy toolkit to achieve a whole-of-government support effect.

As a counterfactual, one cannot help but wonder whether Iranian-Russian military cooperation would be as strong had Washington remained in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or rejoined it and rejected the route of maximum pressure. Somewhere between extreme coercion (military action and economic sanctions) and cooperation (diplomatic engagement and sanctions relief) may exist the right combination of sticks and carrots to change Iran’s behavior. Doing so could possibly prevent Washington, Tehran, and their respective allies from continuing down the destructive, irreversible path of intensified conflict and instability.

Eric Lob is a non-resident scholar with the Middle East Institute’s Iran Program and an associate professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University.

Col. Edward Riehle, USA, Ret. works on advanced technologies, sensors, and sensor processing in Northern California.

Image: Shutterstock.

Much to the chagrin of traditional Georgia watchers in the West, an undeniable return of great power competition has compelled the current political leadership in Tbilisi to pursue a more pragmatic foreign policy. However, this has not spared the current ruling party, Georgian Dream (GD), from Western criticism. Tbilisi stands being accused of deviating from Georgia’s traditional pro-Western course.

This criticism is astonishing, mainly because recent excoriations of the ruling GD government inaccurately reflect the collective spirit of Georgian society. Georgia’s storied history is embedded in its pro-Western strategic culture. Even the ultranationalist but democratically elected first president, Zviad Gamsakurdia, attempted to use his “strategic idealism” with Washington, but to no avail. Georgia, in other words, has been offering itself to the collective West on a silver platter throughout its early and modern history without any takers. Still, Tbilisi is openly being accused, for all the wrong reasons, of deviating from its traditional Western-oriented foreign policy.

So, what is lurking behind this tactical change in Tbilisi? The gist of it seems to center around the fact that Georgian society has started to awaken from Tbilisi’s strategic slumber from the previous decades. And while the country remains overwhelmingly pro-Western, the overall anti-Russian hysteria that defined the presidency of the now-jailed Mikhail Saakashvili—the boisterous golden boy of the Bush administration—has subsided. In turn, Washington’s foreign policy community has expressed explicit irritation with Tbilisi for being out of tune with Washington’s drumbeat, which in the past has kept Georgia firmly in line with the high pitch of Moscow-bashing. 

Consider the accusations from former U.S. ambassador to Georgia, Ian Kelly. The ambassador blames Tbilisi for straying from the West and not showing enough solidarity with Ukraine. Such commentary is suggestive of political spin, if not of an intentional omission of facts. Kelly’s meaning following his peculiar statement that “…this is a very bad time for all this when there is a real discussion about NATO enlargement,” is also unclear. It is precisely because of the unfettered promotion of Georgia for NATO membership that Russia felt threatened and invaded it in 2008. Were it not for Saakashvili’s recklessness, Georgia could have kept Moscow not only from invading it, but also from recognizing the two regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali as independent states—something that Eduard Shevardnadze had achieved by balancing with Moscow. In other words, Georgia’s strategic stance went from bad to worse in a matter of five days. And yet, judging from these comments, this existential threat to Georgia seems to matter little to the ambassador, as long as the NATO expansionism talk continues unfazed.

In yet another instance, Luke Coffey suggested that Georgia should be pushed into NATO, but without the Article V guarantees for the two separatist regions. But again, such fantastical innovations augment the existential threat Georgia faces from Russia. The reason Moscow supports separatist movements in these regions is to ensure that not a sliver of Georgian territory joins NATO. Therefore, it is far from clear how Russia will ever accept what would amount to a separate peace with Abkhazia and Tskhinvali while the rest of Georgia receives Article V protection. Even the most ardent proponents of liberal internationalism must suspect that such a policy would further weaken Georgia’s sovereignty by once again enraging Moscow. 

Needless to say, the gradual accumulation of such views created a toxic political climate. Most recently, pushback came from Georgia Dream, the party of Georgia’s own prime minister. It claimed that “certain forces” in Ukraine close to the United National Movement (UNM) were engaged in machinations to push Georgia into opening the second front against Russia. Even U.S. ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan had to explicitly deny such rumors to calm political waters. Degnan also had to face her own audience in Washington, when members of U.S. Congress became interested. However, the damage had already been done; four former members of the current government wrote an open letter claiming that the European Union (EU) would not grant Georgia its candidate status if it “does not join the war or join the sanctions against Russia.”

And of course, the current context of political petulance would not be complete without the ominous shadow of the UNM that continues to loom large in Georgian politics. The criminality of Saakashvili’s regime has deeply stigmatized the population and made it wary of UNM’s return. So far, a good indication of this shift in public perspective is that Saakashvili’s arrest has not generated the level of support among his electorate that he had hoped. Bereft of political and moral legitimacy, it is unlikely that he will return to politics in Georgia any time soon. 

To be sure, GD has been far from innocent in this political quagmire. Having skillfully used this uncertainty, it has dangled the prospect of UNM’s return as the resumption of state terror. Having won an unprecedented third term, GD has managed to keep the population at bay even with its consistent failure to improve the economy and its blatant withdrawal from EU-brokered agreements. Ironically, this failure has not prevented it from exploiting the existing public perception that the UNM is being egged on against GD by Georgia’s Western partners. 

In order to diffuse tensions, the West must take the high road and de-escalate the political climate in Tbilisi. The current political duel is shabby theatrics and only deepens polarization. The West exerts much more influence over Tbilisi, but political officials in Washington must understand how to properly take advantage of it. One aspect of the relationship they must leverage is Georgia’s long-held tradition of using personal relations as a way to engage in robust diplomacy behind the scenes. Further, Washington must forego its infatuation with Saakashvili, recognize harsh realities on the ground, and treat the GD as an equal player.

Lastly and most importantly, geopolitics is part and parcel of the region. Western officials must consider this vital fact, prior to equating Tbilisi’s pragmatism with an anti-Western shift. Georgia has bandwagoned before with its northern neighbor. This geopolitical consideration should not come as a surprise to Washington, given that it cannot guarantee Georgia’s security in either the short- or long-term. Georgians have started to pay closer attention to this dynamic, if only because the historic visit of the American president to their country frustrated their hopes for NATO membership. 

Ironically, the United States and Georgia are tied together. Even though Georgia does not represent a “vital” security interest for the United States, Washington has made enormous political, financial, and military investments to strengthen Georgia’s legitimacy and sovereignty. If Washington wants to strengthen this tie with Georgia, American policymakers must show strategic flexibility by reducing pressure on the leadership in Tbilisi. No great decisions can be made while Georgian policymakers are constantly squeezed between a rock and a hard place.

Giorgi Lasha Kasradze is an academic liaison and strategic business development officer at Sokhumi State University and a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Image: Shutterstock.

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In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there has been much speculation about Taiwanese citizens’ willingness to defend themselves against a Chinese attack. A poll in March 2022 revealed that the Taiwanese public, rather than chickening out, has actually become much more willing than in the past to support the country’s self-defense. Since then, more than half a year has elapsed. With the threat of a war with China continuing to loom large and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s significant setback in Taiwan’s local elections, there is renewed interest in gauging the pulse of the public on this critical national security issue. 

We draw insights from the results of the most recent Taiwan National Security Survey (TNSS), conducted in mid-December 2022 with over 1,0000 respondents. The TNSS is one of the most consistent sources of national security research on Taiwan, as it has conducted annual surveys since 2002. TNSS survey results are often seen as representative of the entire voting population in Taiwan. We feel reassured that, overall, attitudes toward self-defense continued to stay at a high level. In an open-ended response setting, 31 percent of respondents gave responses that could be seen as defending Taiwan when asked, “If Taiwan and China were to fight a war, what action would you take?” Their answers ranged from joining the military to joining local defense groups to donating money. Owing to the complexity of this open-ended question, 15 percent answered, “Don’t know,” and another 15 percent answered, “Follow whatever the government decided.” Comparing this result to previous versions of the TNSS reveals that support for self-defense has grown. Support for self-defense from the past eleven waves hovered around 15 to 27 percent and never surpassed the threshold of 30 percent.

Such attitudes have been channeled into support for various proposals to boost Taiwan’s security. Since April, the Ministry of National Defense has increased the duration of military leave from five days to two weeks. Moreover, the government just announced it is extending the duration of conscription from four months to one year. Both proposals enjoy widespread support, and the recent TNSS showed that such support has not dropped. When citizens were asked if they would support the government bringing back a one-year conscription period, 33 percent indicated support, with another 46 percent saying they “strongly support” such a measure. On a related question, a majority of respondents said they would back the government if it decided to enlist all males between eighteen and sixty years old to fight against a Chinese invasion, with 31 percent supporting and 29 percent strongly supporting it.

Despite the promising signs, two worrying trends could overshadow this positive development. First, the Taiwanese generally do not believe their military can protect the country, with  66 percent answering “no” when asked, “If Mainland China attacks Taiwan, but the U.S. decides not to help, do you think our military is powerful enough to defend Taiwan?” In addition, the public is divided over whether the Tsai administration is prepared for such a contingency. About 50 percent of respondents thought the government had not “taken the necessary steps to safeguard Taiwan’s survival if a war breaks out with China.” Only 40 percent of respondents said that the government is prepared.

Another worrying trend is the weakening of the belief that the United States would send troops to help Taiwan if a war broke out. Weeks after the invasion of Ukraine began, multiple polls in Taiwan showed that the long-standing belief among most citizens that the U.S. government would send troops to help Taiwan had been shattered. Only a minority now holds such a belief. The results from the TNSS did not deviate from this new reality. In the TNSS survey, in a scenario in which Taiwan does not declare independence, only about 34 percent of citizens believed that the United States would send troops; another 35 percent thought it would only send weapons. Moreover, only 19 percent believed the United States would send troops if a conflict arose due to Taiwan declaring independence. Taiwanese citizens might draw an unfortunate lesson after seeing the United States refuse to intervene in Ukraine.

In sum, both Taipei and Washington should feel confident that the Taiwanese people would stand up for themselves should China invade. The Tsai administration’s recently announced conscription extension—and the public’s support for it—signals that the country is moving in the right direction regarding self-defense. However, other existing concerns persist. Low trust in the Taiwanese military and doubts about U.S. military assistance need to be dealt with urgently, as they might chip away at the hard-earned efforts by the Taiwanese government to strengthen the country’s security against a Chinese invasion.

Charles K. S. Wu is an assistant professor of political science at the University of South Alabama. Find him on Twitter @wupolisciusa.

Fang-Yu Chen is an assistant professor of political science at Soochow University, Taiwan. Find him on Twitter @FangYu_80168.

Yao-Yuan Yeh is the Fayez Sarofim – Cullen Trust for Higher Education Endowed Chair in International Studies, chair of the International Studies & Modern Languages Department, and chair of the Political Science Department at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. Find him on Twitter @yeh2sctw.

Austin Horng-En Wang is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Find him on Twitter @wearytolove.

Image: Shutterstock.

Indonesia has long been an up-and-coming country on the world stage, leading the way among its developing peers. As the world’s third-largest democracy, it continues to play an important role in balancing and harmonizing Southeast Asia, and its G20 leadership this year has brought long-deserved international recognition. Indonesia’s constant efforts to participate in and support international initiatives, work with the United Nations, and move forward the quest for global peace, have earned the country praise.

Apart from its role as a regional peacekeeper, Indonesia has historically tended to focus its policy efforts domestically. While President Joko Widodo is embracing the trust and responsibility the international community has given the country, from tackling global issues with the Global Crisis Response Group to its G20 leadership, the government more often than not has preferred to work only to improve the domestic state of Indonesia.

As a nation of hundreds of islands, however, harmony is part of Indonesia’s culture. Uniting across different languages and ethnicities to share a common identity as Indonesians is something people in this diverse country do every day. This harmonizing nature is something the world needs, and the spotlight of G20 leadership has given Indonesia an opportunity to show off this “soft power.” This soft power can further be seen in an analysis of the Indonesian school curriculum, conducted by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), a research and policy institute that analyzes school curricula and produces policy recommendations.

The study in question refers to Indonesia’s education system and exemplifies how this system reflects the country’s national values of self-confidence, humility, and unity in harmony. Radicalism, racism, and colonial history are all addressed; tolerance is the overall message. The country teaches the values its people believe in and holds at the core of its identity, and this is not lost on the major players of the international system. Indonesia’s harmonizing nature is an essential part of its political power, and it is what has helped the country step forward as an important geopolitical player.

The G20 summit in Bali this year, as well as the ASEAN chairmanship in 2023, are opportunities for Indonesia to wield this power in a way that benefits global peace and stability. With growing recognition for his country’s international contributions, President Widodo hopes to also attract international investment and support for his own domestic agenda, especially the intensive green transition, and the infrastructure and economic transition needed to accompany it. The United States, Japan, and other partners have already promised $20 billion in financing toward shutting down coal plants and reducing energy emissions by 2030, a tangible result of the country’s growing status.

The current need for a global peacemaker such as Indonesia is especially evident with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War. From harmonizing relations to addressing the resulting food crisis, Indonesia has already begun to show how suited it is to play the role of mediator. With Widodo’s visits to Kyiv and Moscow in June of this year, he set out to urge a ceasefire, ensure the creation of a grain corridor from Ukraine, and resume Russia’s fertilizer exports. He also chose to invite Russia to the G20 while extending an invite to Ukraine, in a bid to bring Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy together with other world leaders.

Indonesia’s approach to democracy and harmony has made it a natural leader of the world’s emerging powers, and has given it this opportunity for global leadership. These same approaches are essential to addressing the Russia-Ukraine War and are an important aspect of why now is Indonesia’s time to act. Playing a role in brokering an agreement between Ukraine and Russia would, for example, prove to both the global community as well as to Indonesians that they are ready for this mantle of responsibility.

This new role would also allow Indonesia to move forward on other geopolitical issues of importance, such as normalizing relations with the State of Israel. Not only would this be an incredible show of leadership on the part of Indonesia, but, as is clear from history, doing so would bring a formidable boost to its economy. When the United Arab Emirates signed the Abraham Accords only two years ago to normalize relations with Israel, its trade increased by 500 percent, bringing $1.2 billion in one year. Such a level of trade influx would be incredible for the Indonesian economy, bringing in opportunities for investment, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Indonesia lacks high-tech and digital industries, and a partnership with Israel would allow the country to expand into these sectors.

The economic benefits and expansion of Indonesian industries would be welcome, especially as its transition toward a green economy and normalized relations with Israel would set the nation apart from its neighboring countries. Indeed, the IMPACT-se study in question shows why, at least through an investigation of its educational curriculum, Indonesia is ready to play an even greater leading role on the international stage.

As Indonesia moves into this position of international leadership, there are many aspects of that status that the country must keep in mind. Its harmonizing nature as well as ideals of peace and stability continue to be praised, and its education system will impart these values to the next generation. Its focus on sustainable growth deserves to be emulated, and the preservation of democracy is admirable. With this role, however, also comes the responsibility of applying these values beyond its own borders. By playing a role in important international events, such as hosting the G20 and mediating the Russia-Ukraine War, Indonesia is slowly and surely proving that it is ready for this new challenge.

Jay Ruderman is the President of the Ruderman Family Foundation.

Image: Shutterstock.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Temple Mount has served as a narrative that Palestinians and extremists from the Arab-Israeli community have used to institutionalize the culture of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. This is a culture that arouses the masses, is emotional, and can mobilize the Arab-Israeli street and the Palestinians, as well as the Arab street in other Sunni countries.

Events surrounding the Temple Mount can pour fuel on the fire of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and ignite an inferno, literally, within hours.

On the Israeli-Jewish side, the issue also serves as a detonator for extremist radical elements, who preach incessantly for the establishment of a Jewish foothold on the Temple Mount and wish to fly a red flag in front of the bull. Activities of this nature can upend Israeli government policies and the State of Israel’s ability to maintain law and order in Jerusalem.

In Benjamin Netanyahu’s new cabinet, several parties have full-fledged right-wing lawmakers coming to power for the first time. The Temple Mount is part of the political hardcore environment that they grew up in.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s ascension to the Temple Mount on January 3 has far-reaching implications as it threatens the delicate security balance in Jerusalem, in the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority, and in Gaza. His decision to ascend the Temple Mount in one of his first acts as a minister was a deliberate provocation against Arab citizens of the State of Israel, Palestinians, and the Arab states of the region. It is clear that from now on, every move and every statement made by Ben Gvir and some of his colleagues will come under scrutiny and in the near future will trigger a response, perhaps in words but also possibly in actions.

Before ascending to the Temple Mount, Ben Gvir should have adopted the maxim, “think first, act later.” Still, it is important to clarify that the status quo on the Temple Mount has not changed, and there is no plan to change it.

Netanyahu had the option—one that he has adopted in the past—to instruct his ministers to refrain from visiting the Temple Mount and allow only rank-and-file ministers of the Knesset to do so. So far, he has yet to implement such a policy this time around.

At the same time, Hamas has good reasons to avoid going to war over this issue. The current situation (where Gaza is quiet, but the West Bank is witnessing an increase in terrorist attacks and clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces), together with the declining status of the Palestinian Authority, serves Hamas’s strategy well. This has been the case since May 2021 when Hamas initiated a conflict with Israel to portray itself as the protector of Al Aqsa.

Hamas is currently hard at work rehabilitating its military force in Gaza, while at the same time exploiting opportunities to improve the strip’s economy and alleviate some of the pressure on it.

Israel has granted some 20,000 work visas for Gazans, who bring much-needed cash into the Gazan economy. Meanwhile, Hamas is strengthening its collaboration with Hezbollah, Iran, and regional terror elements to optimize its position on the day the ceasefire is called off.

In the near future, the Islamic holiday of Ramadan, which begins on March 26, could have game-changing potential in the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. And the Temple Mount’s role could be critical here.

The month preceding Ramadan is historically associated with an increase in hatred and religious agitation. This is when it will be easiest to spark an explosion among Palestinians and Arab Israelis on the streets of East Jerusalem and in Israel. Israel’s strategy, particularly that of this new government, must be aimed at preventing this scenario wherever possible. 

Major General Eitan Dangot is a publishing Expert at The MirYam Institute. He concluded his extensive career as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (C.O.G.A.T.) in 2014.

Image: Shutterstock.

Despite the Air Force’s intention to retire the Raptor within the coming decade, the aircraft is expected to remain in service until its replacement—the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter—comes online. As a result, updates, and upgrades are still underway for America’s F-22 fleet—some of which are intended to offer a bridge between the Raptor and the NGAD fighter to come.

In April 2022, we got a glimpse at what some of these upgrades will entail, thanks to social media posts from U.S. Air Force’s Air Combat Command’s General Mark Kelly, and the branch’s 2023 budget request. Among them were new stealthy underwing fuel tanks and associated pylons, missiles, and what could be new electronic warfare or infrared search-and-track (IRST) pods.

Stealth fighters like the Raptor are designed to fly without any external munitions or fuel tanks when maintaining a stealth profile. Yet, fighting over the sprawling expanses of the Pacific (for example) would demand that the Raptor carry more fuel than its internal stores allow. Today, the Raptor has 600-gallon fuel tanks it can carry underwing, but these tanks reduce its observability to a degree. The new fuel tanks intended for the F-22 are meant to offset some of that reduction.

The Warzone posted excerpts from the budget request that provide more details:

“Due to the advancement of adversary technologies in detection and emergence of fighter, cargo, and refueling platforms increasing engagement ranges, it is critical to future mission execution and success to provide the Raptor with an increased range capability while maintaining own-ship survivability.“

The upgraded fuel tanks, listed in the Air Force’s budget request as the F-22 Low Drag Tank and Pylon (LDTP) capability, aim to replace the previous tanks and the pylons with a new, stealthier design. This will allow the Raptor to fly further without giving itself away. Importantly, they’re designed to eject from the wing and leave a smooth surface behind, which is vital for maintaining stealth.

“The pylons are equipped with smart rack pneumatic technology to accurately control ejection performance and smooth wind swept surface for minimum drag without store,” the Warzone adds.

The sun rises over a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor during the Sheppard Air Force Base Guardians of Freedom Air Show, Oct. 28, 2019. The Raptors were in town to perform during the two-day air show in Wichita Falls, Texas. (U.S. Air Force photo by 1st Lt. Sam Eckholm)

A separate set of underwing pods were also featured in the image shared by Gen. Kelly that many have asserted may house a new electronic warfare suite or perhaps the Raptor’s long-awaited IRST capability.

Infrared Search and Track, or IRST, is a passive means of detecting and targeting enemy aircraft and is among the most effective ways of engaging radar-wicking stealth fighters. As the name suggests, IRST systems identify heat signatures, which allows a stealth fighter like the Raptor to hunt for enemy jets without broadcasting radar waves that would announce its presence. It also allows a fighter to lock onto stealth targets via the heat of their exhaust.

These pods could also house updated electronic warfare capabilities meant to improve upon the F-22’s stealth by jamming enemy radar arrays.

Finally, a new missile that could represent the forthcoming (and quite secretive) AIM-260 long-range radar-guided air-to-air missile is also shown, demonstrating the Raptor’s ever-growing suite of Beyond Visual Range (BVR) weapon systems.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran who specializes in foreign policy and defense technology analysis. He holds a master’s degree in Communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: DVIDS.

In episode 18 of the Israel Defense and Diplomacy Forum (IDDF), Prof. Chuck Freilich, former Israeli deputy national security advisor, and Danny Ayalon, former deputy foreign minister and ambassador to Washington, discuss two very different issues: the dramatic changes that Israel’s new government has already begun making to its judicial and democratic processes and China’s rising influence in the Middle East, following the recent visit of President Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia.

The new government is moving rapidly to pass legislation that will dramatically alter the role of Israel’s judiciary and the balance of powers. If, as appears likely, the legislation goes through, Chuck believes that Israel will have become an illiberal democracy, akin to Turkey and Hungry, within a matter of weeks. In effect, Israel will have only one branch of government, the executive, which will control both the legislative and judicial branches and in which those under indictment, including the premier, appoint their own judges. Danny agrees regarding the primary reform, the so-called “override law,” but sees merit to at least some of the other changes. He is particularly concerned by the proposed reforms’ impact on Israel’s international standing, including the danger of Israel being referred to the International Court of Justice. Both are deeply concerned by the politicization of Israel’s civil service and breakup of ministries for purely political purposes.

China is rapidly becoming a major player in the Middle East; no longer just in terms of oil imports, but in regional security affairs, as well. Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia was designed at least partly as a counterbalance to China’s ties with Iran. Chuck emphasizes that one of the reasons for the Gulf countries’ interest in expanded ties with China is their decreasing confidence in the U.S. security commitment to them and the understanding that Israel, especially under the new government, cannot constitute even a substitute for the United States. Danny starts a discussion of the impact of U.S.-Chinese ties on U.S. ties with Israel, including the Phalcon case, one of the worst crises in U.S.-Israeli relations.

Join us as they agree and disagree, in detail and in-depth, always respectfully, on the critical issues Israel faces.

 

Benjamin Anthony is Co-Founder & CEO of The MirYam Institute. Twitter: @BenAnthony1948

Chuck Freilich is a former deputy national security adviser in Israel. He is a senior fellow at The Miryam Institute and the author of “Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change” and the forthcoming “Israel and the Cyber Threat: How the Startup Nation Became a Global Superpower.” Twitter: @chuck_freilich

Danny Ayalon is a publishing expert with The MirYam Institute. He served as Israel’s Ambassador to the United States from July 2002 to November 2006, during which time, relations between the two countries reached an all-time high.

Image: Shutterstock.

 

Less than a week after the swearing-in of Israel’s new government, Itamar Ben-Gvir, now the minister of national security, paid another contentious visit to the Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem. When still a regular Knesset member, Ben-Gvir paid periodic visits to the site, which is holy to Jews and Muslims, as well as to other disputed areas in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. Ben-Gvir’s visit on January 3 immediately reignited controversy within Israel and sparked outspoken condemnations and clear warnings from across the world. At the request of the United Arab Emirates, a recent Israeli ally, the matter was swiftly referred to a separate meeting of the UN Security Council.

While the Israeli-Palestinian question is, of course, not new, the attention on a single geographical focal point may lead observers to lose sight of the larger picture. The bigger picture, however, is crucial to understanding the intricate web of perspectives on the Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif issue, as well as its explosiveness.

As far as the complex itself is concerned, the current “status quo” implies, in a nutshell, that while Israel considers itself the sovereign over all of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif is administered through the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, or endowment, appointed and financed by Jordan. Muslims have unrestricted access—though Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza need an Israeli permit to reach Jerusalem—whereas non-Muslims are allowed at certain times, without a right to pray at the site. Israeli police present at the spot have variably enforced the latter prohibition.

Interestingly, Ben-Gvir defends his visit, which was short and featured no public praying, as an action to counter the “discrimination of Jews on Temple Mount,” casting the debate as a freedom of religion issue. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, was also quick to emphasize that Jewish visits to the site do not constitute a violation of the status quo.

While both statements do not seem outrageous at face value, the Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif question can not be seen as disconnected from the fact that there is no stable, agreed solution for the territories that came under Israeli control in 1967 and that are home to a large Palestinian population—namely the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. The lack of such a solution means that Palestinians cannot build a vision for a political future (whatever that future will be), nor see any substantive improvement in terms of mobility and economic opportunities. For Israel, the absence of a solution entails the persistence of security issues in territories both within its control and beyond (Lebanon, Syria, Iran), as well as restricted or risky access to sites considered holy in Judaism, such as the Temple Mount and Joseph’s Tomb in the Palestinian city of Nablus. Crucially, the lack of a solution, combined with internal political instability and crises—between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA), within the PA, and within Israeli politics—has led to frustration and extremism on both sides. This is reflected in the Israeli government Ben-Gvir is a member of, in the radicalization amongst Palestinian youth, and in a general loss of belief in the two-state outcome traditionally proposed as a solution to the issues.

In this context, it is not surprising that Ben-Gvir’s thirteen minutes on the site in question sparked such outrage. To him and his followers, the “status quo” in the place where two Jewish temples are believed to have stood, illustrates that the “Jewish sovereignty” they aspire to is not complete yet. For Palestinians, the status quo is one of the last straws they clutch to after coming to feel that they have lost their historic homeland. In the wider Muslim world, although Haram Al-Sharif is considered Islam’s third-holiest place after Mecca and Medina, upholding the status quo is considered the minimum that Israel can do in the context of a protracted conundrum. It is not without reason that during the Israel-Gaza conflict in May 2021, one of Hamas’ main propaganda lines was that it was “defending” Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is located at the Temple Mount.

More generally, the largely non-overlapping, even mutually exclusive, narratives of the Israelis and Palestinians go so far as to ignore or deny outright the other group’s historical, cultural and religious ties to the land and its sites. This phenomenon affects not only the city of Jerusalem but also Israeli areas where the Arab presence prior to 1948 has been erased, as well as West Bank sites, where the importance of Jewish historical and religious sites is either disregarded or exalted. When only half of a story is told, it should not come as a surprise that words or actions revealing the other half are seen as disconcerting and threatening.

It is clear that any path toward a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue must include arrangements regarding Jerusalem, including its places of worship. However, the Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif fallacy consists of thinking that this particular site is the main question at stake or that it can be treated as a separate issue. While the site is certainly important for many, the opposite is actually true. If the Israelis and Palestinians can make progress on their opposing security, economic, and political issues, a compromise on the highly symbolic site will be much more likely.

Dr. Alexander Loengarov is a senior affiliated fellow at the Institute for International Law at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium) and a former official of the European Economic and Social Committee of the European Union. He coordinated the first rounds of the EU’s Erasmus Mundus External Cooperation Window scheme for academic mobility with Israeli and Palestinian institutions. In addition to his thesis on the entanglement of politics and law in the issue of recognition of Palestinian statehood, he has published analysis for think tanks like the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Israel Policy Forum, as well as opinion pieces on Middle East and Israeli politics for the Brussels Times.

His writings reflect solely his own views, and not those of the European Economic and Social Committee or the European Union, which cannot be held responsible for any use made of it.

Image: Shutterstock.

With plans now underway to equip Ukraine’s armed forces with America’s Patriot Air Defense System, the internet is aflutter with debate about just how effective it really is, and whether or not it stacks up against its Russian competition.

The MIM-104 Patriot Air Defense System first entered service in the early 1980s as a replacement for both Nike Hercules high-to-medium air defense and MIM-23 Hawk medium tactical air defense systems. Today, the Patriot is operated by 18 nations, with the United States operating the largest fleet of systems, with 16 Patriot battalions operating upwards of 50 Patriot batteries that have more than 1,200 interceptors in the field.

In comment sections and forums around the world, you’ll find no shortage of self-appointed air warfare experts citing seemingly imagined statistics about American, Russian, and other air defense platforms to justify their hyperbole… But the complicated truth about air defenses at large comes in the form of two equally hard-to-swallow pills for those waging war in the comment section:

1. Publicly-released details about most air defense systems tend to be as rare as they are dated.

2. Air defenses at large are simply not as effective as they’re often perceived to be.

However, with those two points in mind, the evidence seems clear that the MIM-104 Patriot is among and potentially even the most effective air defense system in the world. But if that’s the case, why is it so often dismissed, while Russia’s S-400 is so frequently touted as practically invincible?

The truth is, understanding how perceptions of the Patriot system relate to the platform’s actual performance requires a pretty thorough understanding of not only the complexity of the air defense enterprise… but also the marketing tactics leveraged by nations fielding different systems.

Related: It’s a myth that hypersonic missiles can’t be stopped because of their speed

The world’s first air defense system to shoot down a missile…

Patriot air defense system (DoD photo)

On January 18, 1991, a CNN crew recorded from Saudi Arabia as an American Patriot system was used for the first time to engage a reported incoming Scud missile. The SS-1 Scud was a post-World War II tactical ballistic missile developed by the Soviet Union and based on Germany’s V-2. Iraq operated a modified iteration of the upgraded Scud-B during the Gulf War.

“There’s a streak of light,” Charles Jaco, of CNN, said describing the intercept, “The [Patriot] missile goes North, cants slightly to the East, goes North again, disappears into the clouds, and then there’s an illuminating flash…”

It wasn’t until later that the Department of Defense would admit that the internationally lauded Patriot intercept caught on camera hadn’t actually occurred at all. Iraq had never fired a Scud missile into Saudi Arabia that day, and instead, the Patriot system had fallen prey to a false alarm and gone after it. Because of the cloud cover obscuring everyone’s view, the assumption when no Scud found a target was that “the Patriot did its job perfectly” — which is a direct quote from ABC News correspondent Forrest Sawyer at the time.

While this may have been nothing more than an honest mistake, analysts would continue to question the claimed efficacy of the Patriot system throughout and well beyond the conflict. The Patriot did eventually become the first system to ever intercept an inbound ballistic missile, but as the war went on, the Army claimed the Patriot had an 80% success rate in Saudi Arabia and 50% in Israel. Not long after, the Army reduced those figures to 70% and 40%, but many within the United States still weren’t buying it.

After a 10-month investigation by the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Legislation and National Security also seemingly questioned the Army’s claims in 1992, the General Accounting Office also started looking into the Patriot’s efficacy. Before long, these investigations prompted a flood of negative press coverage, and as a result, the Patriot system soon became known as an ineffective system.

Related: A Patriot missile battery from the US could create new headaches for Russia in Ukraine

Did the Patriot system really only intercept 9% of Scuds during the Gulf War?

(Image created by Alex Hollings using U.S. Army photos)

These investigations and the media’s depiction of their findings continue to define the Patriot system in the minds of many to this day, but like stories we’ve covered in the past about the F-35 or F-22 failing to live up to expectations, it’s important that we recognize the media value a story about touted American systems failing has in terms of viewers, readers, and clicks.

Painting a dire picture of the Patriot’s performance in Iraq is sure to drive much more engagement than one about the system’s mediocre performance. But, it’s also important to sift through the context-less hyperbole to acknowledge the very real limitations the Patriot system demonstrated throughout this conflict.

The House Government Operations Subcommittee report on the Patriot’s performance during the Gulf War ultimately concluded that evidence of successful intercepts of inbound Scud missiles was rather limited, though that report itself was subject to a great deal of internal debate resulting in only a draft written by one staffer finding its way to the media and no formal report ever manifesting.

But it was the GAO investigation that gave the Patriot’s critics their most damning talking point.

According to their findings, only about 9 percent of Scud intercepts by the Patriot system during the conflict “are supported by the strongest evidence that an engagement resulted in a warhead kill.”

This 9 percent figure seems really bad — even worse when compared to the Defense Department’s claims of 70% and 40% success rates in Saudi Arabia and Israel respectively. Raytheon, however, had a valid rebuttal that tends to be glossed over by critics of the system.

U.S. Army Patriot air defense system during a test fire (U.S. Army photo)

“The General Accounting Office (GAO) report did not state that Patriot had only a 9% success rate and did not dispute the U.S. Army’s overall 60% success rate,” Raytheon clarified. “The GAO report never voiced any disagreement with the Army’s overall assessment that Patriot was successful in over 70 percent of the SCUD engagements in Saudi Arabia and over 40 percent in Israel. In its assessment of Patriot performance, the Army analysis subdivided Patriot intercept successes into ‘warhead kills’ and ‘mission kills.’ It then further subdivided each of these categories into ‘confidence levels’ based upon how much supporting data was available.”

Put simply, within the GAO’s investigation, they sorted intercepts into multiple categories, with the “highest confidence” category reserved for “the strongest evidence that an engagement resulted in a warhead kill” — requiring either the recovery of Scud debris showing clear Patriot damage or a saved radar record that clearly showed Scud debris on radar following an intercept. Amid the fog of war, this sort of evidence is obviously difficult to come by, which is why the GAO didn’t claim only 9% of intercepts were successful, but rather that they were able to secure this sort of conclusive data from only 9% of attempts.

Related: How one F-16 dodged 6 surface-to-air missiles in an airstrike gone wrong

The truth about the Patriot system in Iraq is simple: A crappy beginning followed by a triumphant return

Patriot air defense system live-fire testing (U.S. Army photo)

Of course, if we’re willing to acknowledge the media’s preference for an exciting (if damning) story, we certainly need to consider Raytheon’s obvious bias when defending a multi-billion dollar system of their own creation. And while their rebuttal did poke holes in the media narrative surrounding the Patriot’s failure, it still painted a rosier picture of the system’s performance than was probably warranted.

To that end, we reached out to a popular TikTok content creator and U.S. Patriot Fire Control Enhanced Operator-Maintainer, who asked to simply be identified as Sergeant First Class (SFC) Long. Long is an active-duty subject matter expert tasked with the placement, operation, and maintenance of the Patriot Fire Control system.

“In the first Gulf War Patriot was right around 25%. It was doing something it wasn’t necessarily designed for. It was actually built for planes but they decided to throw it at missiles and it sometimes hit. Since then, we have vastly improved the system — like hundreds of upgrades.”

Long’s claim of a 25% success rate is in keeping with the Government Accounting Office’s own conclusions about the Gulf War. And his assertions about the system’s progress since are also substantiated in the data. While the Patriot system did struggle against Iraq’s “Al Hussein” model Scud-Bs during the Gulf War, things were quite different when the Patriot returned to Iraq a bit more than a decade later.

“In contrast with the experience of Desert Storm, Patriot interceptors defeated every ballistic missile they engaged during the 2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom. Since 2015, Patriot has successfully engaged scores of missiles and drones in the Yemen Missile War. Israel has likewise used it on a number of occasions to defeat drones, aircraft, and other threats.”

“Patriot to Ukraine: What Does It Mean?” by Mark Cancian and Tom Karako for the Center for Stratgic & International Studies, Dec. 16, 2022

And while CNN may have missed the mark in their 1991 coverage of what they believed to be the first Patriot intercept, another CNN crew found itself present for what really was a successful intercept in March of 2003… but they weren’t able to report on it.

“Had anyone reported this – had we reported it, or had it gotten out,” CNN national security analyst Ken Robinson later explained, “it would have enabled [Iraq] to know that they had the exact grid coordinate they needed” to target the headquarters of coalition ground forces. 

How governmental transparency affects perceptions of the Patriot air defense system, as well as its Russian peers

S-400 live fire testing (Russian Ministry of Defence)

When discussing the Patriot air defense system online, it’s impossible to avoid comparisons with its Soviet and Russian counterparts, systems like the S-300, S-400, and the latest S-500. Unlike the Patriot system, which tends to have a tarnished reputation in the minds of many, Russian systems are often highly touted as the best in the world. Of course, since the onset of fighting in Ukraine in February of 2022, Russia’s longstanding approach to conveying an unwarranted image of military prowess has finally become broadly recognized — and as we’ve discussed at length in our deep dive into the S-400, the air defense enterprise is no exception.

Russia’s air defense systems, like so many of the nation’s military endeavors, benefit from a very intentional perception-management campaign enacted by the Russian government and bolstered by countless Russian-state-backed media outlets operating all around the world. The myth of Russia’s impenetrable air defenses, it’s important to understand, is vital to Russia’s efforts to court foreign buyers for these systems, as the Russian military is reliant on foreign investment to fund its own advanced developmental weapons programs.

So why, then, is there such a disparity between popular perceptions of America’s Patriot air defense system and Russia’s S-400? A great deal of that comes down to something as simple as American transparency juxtaposed against Russian information operations, as well as the overall level of secrecy surrounding all air defense platforms regardless of national origin.

This point was made succinctly in a broader piece about the overall effectiveness of air defense systems published by the Nuclear Threat Initiative in September 2020:

“The United States is by far the most transparent of countries when it comes to missile defense tests, yet even reports from the United States provide only superficial details about most tests,” the report explains.

“The Global Missile Defense Race: Strong Test Records and Poor Operational Performance” by Shae Cotton and Jeffrey Lewis for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Sept. 16, 2020

Americans are accustomed to a level of governmental transparency in which governmental bodies themselves will hold other governmental organizations accountable.

As the report states, American air defense systems of all kinds have consistently demonstrated a high degree of efficacy over time, despite some rocky starts. Between 1963 and 2020, the U.S. conducted a total of 121 disclosed test intercepts with various systems, with an overall success rate of a respectable 72 percent and generally high success rates once a program reaches maturity.

It goes on to compare American transparency to Israel and Japan, before questioning the transparency of Indian efforts, and finally highlighting Russia’s apparent tomfoolery. Americans, by and large, tend to assume all governments are similarly transparent about the successes and failures of their defense programs, but that’s far from the truth.

“Perhaps most questionable of all are Russian missile defense claims. Although it is not alone in so doing, Russia has made spectacular claims about the success of the S-400, yet there are few public reports about individual tests of the system.”

“The Global Missile Defense Race: Strong Test Records and Poor Operational Performance” by Shae Cotton and Jeffrey Lewis for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Sept. 16, 2020

S-400 launchers (Russian Ministry of Defence)

According to NTI’s findings, Russia has only disclosed successful tests of the S-400 system, effectively suggesting that it required no development whatsoever and emerged fully formed and infallible. Russia has not disclosed the circumstances of the tests, the number of interceptors launched, the types of targets, or their level of capability… they’ve simply claimed 100% success rates and offered little more.

Of course, in real weapons development, that’s an extremely unlikely scenario — and following Russia’s performance in Ukraine, it seems even less likely.

“To date we have not been able to identify any reports of failed intercept tests involving the S-400. Like our hypothesis involving India, this suggests Russia is concealing most of its developmental tests or other failed intercepts. “

“The Global Missile Defense Race: Strong Test Records and Poor Operational Performance” by Shae Cotton and Jeffrey Lewis for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Sept. 16, 2020

But while Russia’s claims of success with the S-400 (which have been clearly called into question by actual combat data) may not be trustworthy, it is nonetheless important to understand that the S-400, like most Russian air defenses, is likely a pretty capable system, as evidenced by the laundry list of foreign buyers.

The actual efficacy of the S-400 has been called into question many times, despite Russia’s claims of 100% success rates.

The plain fact of the matter is, however, no system is as good as Russia tells the world their systems are — but while many take their claims at face value, few recognize the disclosed progress made by the Patriot system since its rocky start.

“Now days, Patriot has right around a 95% hit ratio,” Long explained.

Related: The S-400 myth: Why Russia’s air defense prowess is exaggerated

The Patriot system isn’t meant to operate on its own (and neither is the S-400)

The U.S. Army’s “Defense in Depth” approach to air and missile defense (AMD). (U.S. Army)

Perhaps most important of all, directly comparing these systems is, in itself, a missed intercept. The Patriot air defense system, like Russia’s S-400, isn’t intended to serve as a stand-alone system. Both of these platforms are meant to play a role in a broader networked integrated air defense apparatus, and both can only see their best performance as a part of that larger network.

The United States, for example, leverages overlapping air defense systems of different sorts (an approach Long and the Army refer to as “defense in depth“). This approach means that as an inbound missile gets closer to your defended asset, it faces an increasing amount of defensive firepower.

In other words, directly comparing the Patriot system to the S-400 is sort of like comparing the transmissions in two different race cars. We can debate all day about which is better, and there is some value to that discussion, but what really matters is how well the whole car performs when assembled and in a race.

Today, the available data seems to suggest that America’s THAAD and Patriot air defense systems may be the most successful of any systems in actual combat environments — but importantly, that success is, in itself, relative.

Intercepting a wide variety of inbound missiles is an extremely difficult job, and the fact of the matter is, in a saturation attack, especially involving low-flying cruise missiles in contested airspace without AWACS support, just about any modern system is likely to fail.

Air defense intercepts are an unforgiving science, which lends itself to a lack of transparency even within more open governments like the United States. But it’s important to consider how America’s broader transparency can affect perceptions when juxtaposed against the objectively untrustworthy claims of the Russian government.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran who specializes in foreign policy and defense technology analysis. He holds a master’s degree in Communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.