Diplomacy & Crisis News

Ian Easton, The Final Struggle: Inside China’s Global Strategy (Manchester, UK: Eastbridge Books). 358 pp., $34.99.

For at least the past decade, China has been a topic of intense debate within foreign policy circles in the United States. One perspective holds that China is a rising power with the motive, means, and opportunity to surpass the United States as the world’s preeminent power or hegemon. Supporters of this view generally see China’s ascent as inexorable, and argue that the only way to prevent its global predominance is for the United States and Western democracies to wake up and take appropriate measures to revitalize themselves and counteract China’s increasingly assertive actions. This position often calls for the adoption of a grand strategy equivalent to the Cold War policy of containment, referred to by some as “Containment 2.0.”

In contrast, another perspective posits that China is not a rising power, but rather a faltering or peaking one. Advocates of this view, including authors such as Dan Blumenthal in his book China Nightmare, Hal Brands and Michael Beckley in their book Danger Zone and, most recently, Susan Shirk in her book Overreach, contend that the internal and external challenges facing China make it unlikely to continue its meteoric rise and therefore unlikely to displace the United States as the leader of the international order. Although these authors have varying opinions regarding the implications of peak China for global peace and security, they generally agree that those who emphasize China's rise fail to appreciate the significant obstacles already limiting Beijing's geopolitical aspirations.

In a provocative new book titled The Final Struggle, Ian Easton, Senior Director at the Project 2049 Institute and former China analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, wades into this debate, mounting what amounts to a spirited counter-offensive against the latter perspective, which has gained considerable traction of late. Specifically, Easton argues that a strengthened and emboldened Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is now aggressively embarking on what Xi Jinping sometimes refers to as “the final struggle”—that is, the CCP’s historically inevitable campaign to remake the world in China’s own Marxist-Leninist image. According to Easton, a careful examination of Xi’s speeches, including some previously untranslated ones, reveal that the CCP is committed to imposing China’s communist totalitarian system on the entire world. But, Easton argued, this goal will not be achieved through the use of military force. Contrary to Hollywood portrayals of hordes of tanks and fascist stormtroopers “swarming across the map” and “goose-stepping into fallen capital cities,” or “communist paratroopers descending on sleepy American towns like they did in Red Dawn,” Easton argues that the CCP has adopted a much more sophisticated strategy for global domination. According to this strategy, he argues, the CCP has eschewed the fantasy of world conquest via military means in favor of  “a protracted campaign of silent invasions to replicate on a global system what it sees as its own superior system.”

To achieve this end, Easton argues, the CCP has been quietly advancing its interests through a range of tactics, including economic coercion, technological influence, and propaganda campaigns. These efforts, he contends, are intended to culminate in the reshaping of the global balance of power in China's favor and the creation of a Sino-centric world order reflecting the CCPs vision, values, and interests—unless, that is, we in the Western democracies collectively open our eyes and see clearly the “baleful vista of future possibilities, a totalitarian world order stalking us just over the horizon.”

Easton has written an ambitious book, one that has much to recommend it. Of particular note is the author’s vivid portrayal of the ideological vision motivating the CCP and its leadership and the richness of the primary sources that Easton draws on to substantiate his argument. The methodological foundation of Easton’s argument is that the CCP makes China’s foreign policy, and that therefore the way the top levels of the Party understand the world has a great deal to do with the way Beijing acts in the world. This places an evident premium on understanding how the CCP’s leaders—and Xi Jinping, as head of the Party, in particular—imagine the future of world order. And this, in turn, places a premium on identifying those Party documents that are “authoritative” or that clearly reflect the “common sense” or “conventional wisdom” within the Party. This, Easton does to a fault. The book is informed by an array of primary sources, some never before translated into English, the likes of which have seldom been made available to a non-specialist audience in the West. Indeed, the only book that comes close in this respect is Rush Doshi’s The Long Game, which covers some of the same terrain, even if for slightly different purposes. Like Doshi’s, Easton’s book deftly uses primary sources to paint a picture of China’s global ambitions that is intended to shock Western audiences out of their assumed numbness regarding the CCP’s true ambitions.

That brings us to the book’s shortcomings, two of which stand out in stark relief.

The first is stylistic verging on substantive. Simply put, Easton’s book tends unambiguously—and counterproductively—toward sensationalism. The descriptions of the CCP’s rule and the characterizations of its vision of the future fall somewhere between hysterical and hyperbolic, with lurid being perhaps the word that best reflects the picture developed. This may achieve the shock effect that Easton obviously seeks, but it also threatens to amplify the growing—and increasingly dangerous—tendency to portray China as a kind of monster that the United States must go abroad to destroy.

The second has to do with timing: Easton’s book seems about a decade out of time. The current debate about China’s grand strategy turns not so much on the issue of the CCP’s motives as on its means. The animating question at the heart of the China debate today has little to do with China’s goals or aspirations. Rather, it has to do with the issue of whether China is a rising power or one that is plateauing. Warranted or not, there is—and has been for some time now—a general consensus that China is bent on establishing either regional or global hegemony. The animating question of the current moment is whether Beijing will ever be in a position to realize either of these goals, given the demographic, economic, and geopolitical headwinds the country is facing. The big debate between those who imagined China to be a status quo power gently rising within the liberal international order and those who imagined it to be a more threatening player on the world stage—the debate that Easton seems keen to participate in—has been over since at least the second term of the Obama administration. 2022 seems a strange time to try to throw one’s hat into that particular ring.

If you are seeking the experience of terror, anxiety, and shock typically associated with a good horror story, then The Final Struggle is the book for you. If, however, you are looking for a serious analysis of China’s grand strategy or Sino-American strategic competition, then perhaps you should look elsewhere.

Andrew Latham is Professor of International Relations and Political Theory at Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, a Research Associate with the Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Canada, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy.

Logan Leybold is a research assistant in the Political Science Department at Macalester College.

Image: Shutterstock.

In the past few months, poison attacks have affected hundreds of Iranian schoolgirls, prompting some parents to take their children out of school due to fear of what some have dubbed “biological terrorism.” 

These attacks started in November in Qom, which is the heartland of Shiite extremism and home to Iran’s Shiite seminary and Islamic institutions. This wave of toxic gas attacks has expanded to the rest of the country, but with thirty school attacks, the ultraconservative city of Qom still leads the list of the most-targeted cities. 

Speculation on the perpetrators of such attacks continues but the regime itself and regime-affiliated extremist groups are the main suspects. Some local media have said that it could be the work of religious zealots who want to prevent girls from attending school. Others, including former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, have speculated that the poisonings are the work of hardliners who want to “copy” the Taliban in Afghanistan and the militant Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, which have banned women’s education and terrorized parents to stop sending their girls to school. Abtahi has asked in an Instagram post: “Has Boko Haram come to Iran?”

Several regime officials have highlighted the intentional nature of the serial poisoning of female students in Qom and other cities. Iran’s deputy education minister has admitted these attacks are “intentional” and Iran’s attorney general has acknowledged the poisoning of students in the city of Qom might be a “deliberate criminal act.” 

Yet, as in all other cases when things go wrong, Iran’s senior officials, including its president, Ebrahim Raisi, have blamed foreign enemies for schoolgirl poisonings.

These reportedly intentional biological attacks come at a critical time: the regime in Iran has been challenged by the death of Mahsa Jina Amini at the hands of Iran’s “morality police” on September 16, 2022, which sparked large protests across the nation. Consequently, it appears that the Iranian regime is taking revenge on this women-led movement by indiscriminately targeting schoolgirls.

A race between Sunni and Shiite extremists on misogyny

Iran remains the leading state sponsor of global terrorism. The Islamic regime brutally represses its own people and supports instability, chaos, and terrorist organizations abroad. 

As a predominantly Shiite country, Iran used to have sectarian animosity with such extremist groups like Al Qaeda. However, Iran has occasionally formed an anti-American alliance of convenience with Sunni terrorist organizations, hosting their leaders and providing them with logistical and financial support. The U.S. State Department stated in February that Said al-Adel, an Iran-based Egyptian, has become the head of Al Qaeda following the July 2022 death of Ayman al-Zawahiri. In addition, the former U.S. special representative for the reconciliation in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, recently said that Iran has become a new center of Al Qaeda.

In addition to hosting, funding, and arming Sunni extremists, Iran also competes with these groups to make its Shiite version of Islam a more puritan, brutal, and misogynist brand. What Iran is doing with its schoolgirls is reminiscent of acts of such terrorist organizations as the Taliban, ISIS, Boko Haram, and Al Qaeda who oppose women’s education. Iran’s Shiite fanatics are competing with their Sunni rivals while the mullahs in Tehran deeply fear the progressive women’s movement that has adopted the “Woman, Life, Freedom” slogan, three components that go against the founding principles of this clerical regime. Thus, the government is adamant to clamp down and deter the women’s activism in Iran, even by means of poisoning them.

Silencing, stoning, enslaving, and taking revenge on the women is an inalienable part of Islamist extremist entities that despise women just for being women, especially if those women—like brave girls in Iran—dare to seek freedom from clerical tyranny, Islamist misogyny, and inhumane Sharia law. 

Putin’s mysterious poison game

Russian president Vladimir Putin has, on several occasions, used mysterious poisons and other biological and toxic substances to get rid of his enemies. He has also used these substances against schoolchildren. When Putin came to power in Russia in 1999, he started punishing the independence-seeking Chechen nation by indiscriminately bombing Chechen civilians, leveling the capital, Grozny, and targeting Chechen schoolgirls by collectively poisoning them by potentially using chemical agents or biological weapons.

When she was seventeen years ago, Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent Russian investigative journalist and human rights activist, started probing the poisoning cases of Chechen schoolgirls and began publishing her findings in 2006. She was found dead in her apartment a couple of months later. No one was charged for the murder as impunity reigns for perpetrators who go after anti-Putin activists. 

A similar pattern is repeating itself in Iran as the clerical regime is trying to collectively punish women by means of mass poisoning as there is no will to find and charge the perpetrators. Inspired by Putin’s poison game, Tehran has waged a war against schoolgirls by indiscriminately punishing brave Iranian women for resisting the regime’s efforts to subjugate and indoctrinate them.

Iran, Russia, and China

Iran has shown great interest in importing Russian and Chinese repression technologies, and it is possible that Iran has acquired its poisoning technology from Russia. 

Xi Jinping’s China is another source of inspiration for Iran. China is a dystopian, human rights nightmare as collective punishment can go as far as the mass rape and detention of the Uighur people, especially women in Muslim and Turkic-speaking Xinjiang province.

One can’t help but notice that misogyny is a common trait of all repressive regimes. Putin punished, in mass, Chechen women for giving birth to tough fighters who wanted independence from Russian tyranny. Xi is collectively punishing Uighur women for giving birth to a generation that wants to preserve their culture and tradition and defy the Chinese Communist Party’s indoctrination. Iran is indiscriminately punishing women and schoolgirls because of their leading role in anti-regime protests that started with Amini’s brutal death.

Iran, Russia, China, and other authoritarian regimes fear women the most. To deprive their nation of liberty, Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, and clerical Iran along with Islamist terrorist organizations suppress women’s very existence.

What America can do 

While the women in Iran are putting their lives at risk and fighting for their emancipation and dignity, the democratic world led by the United States must take measures to ensure that they are on the side of the freedom-seeking women in Iran, not the regime. 

The Biden administration needs an effective and coercive strategy to address Iran’s nuclear and human rights dossiers; it cannot remain indifferent to Iran’s proliferation threat and human rights violations. 

Washington must act swiftly as the Iranian regime has enriched uranium to 84 percent purity, becoming closer than ever to weapons-grade material. At the same time, Tehran seeks sophisticated S-400 air defense systems from Russia which would make a potential Israeli airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities harder. The United States must take steps to ensure that Tehran will never access nuclear weapons to initiate an atomic Armageddon.

The free world should also be able to concur that the compulsory hijab is against women’s rights. Unlike what the Iranian regime and other radical Islamists say, the compulsory hijab is not part of the culture and national tradition in Iran or elsewhere in the Muslim world. The compulsory veil is a sign of submission and subjugation of women. That is one reason why Iranian women have symbolically been burning their headscarves during protests. To support Iranian women, Western diplomats must stop complying with this discriminatory and myogenic law when traveling to Iran. Recently, the Iranians were outraged by the Swiss ambassador’s decision to wear a long black veil during a visit to a shrine in Qom, the very city most affected by poisonous attacks against girls and women.

For the United States, devising a comprehensive strategy for targeting human rights abusers is indispensable. Designating those Iranian officials who are responsible for the biological war against women and are involved in the poisoning, killing, harming, denigrating, and subjugation of women in Iran should be a priority. The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control can do a better job of further sanctioning and including Iranian individuals and entities that are connected to women’s rights abuse in the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list.

Ahmad Hashemi is a research fellow at the Hudson Institute. Follow him on Twitter @MrAhmadHashemi.

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One of the world’s most important elections is scheduled to take place on May 14, with the twenty-year reign of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan facing a rare challenge—a potential final off-ramp for voters to reclaim their country’s democracy.

If rampant inflation and the soaring cost of living were insufficient motivations to drive voters to line up against Erdogan, the government’s ham-fisted and incompetent response to the catastrophic February 6 earthquake leaves no doubt that top-down power vested in a single individual does not serve the public interest.

On the other side of the ballot, a new bloc of six opposition parties, including the IYI Party and CHP, have nominated Kemal Kilicdaroglu to stand as their candidate for president. If they prevail, what should U.S. and European authorities, and other great powers, expect in terms of foreign policy changes?

Relations between Ankara and its Western allies have sunk to historic lows, with mutual antagonism featuring in nearly every area of cooperation—oftentimes worsened by unnecessary and irrational gestures. Much of the discussion of the relationship has been quite narrow, limited to disputes over F-16 sales, NATO expansion, and the conflict in Syria. Nevertheless, there are numerous mutual interests that could be promptly advanced by a new opposition-led government.

A NATO member, Turkey sits at an unusually important global crossroads, bridging West and East—and the country’s geostrategic location has only risen in importance with Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

There are clear indications that, should an opposition alliance sweep to power, the tone of diplomatic relations regarding Ukraine would shift. Meral Aksener, leader of the IYI Party, in addition to being a former interior minister and vice speaker of parliament, was one of the first Turkish politicians to denounce Russia’s rigged referendums in eastern Ukraine. Her staunch position is broadly supported by the Turkish people who have historically empathized with the Crimean Tatars.

Very early on, Aksener argued that Russia’s conduct represented “ a clear violation of the right to sovereignty which is the basis of international law, and that Putin’s adventurist behavior is not only a threat to Ukraine but to the security and territorial integrity of all countries in the region.”

To date, Turkey has not joined Western sanctions against Russia, but it has played an important role in brokering successful agreements, such as the Black Sea Grain Initiative. This is proof of the value of the U.S.-Turkey Strategic Mechanism. With Ankara likely to play a crucial role in future potential peace talks, it is critical that the next administration reflects a stronger rejection of the illegal invasion and occupation of Ukraine.

Most Turkish voters favor productive rather than antagonistic relations with Western allies. The public is historically weary of Russian expansionism, dating back to the Russo-Ottoman wars. Neither did Josef Stalin’s attempts to violate the 1925 Turkish-Soviet Treaty with his demands for military bases near the Bosporus Straits and attempts to annex territories such as Kars, Ardahan, and possibly areas of Erzurum and the Eastern Black Sea endear the Turkish people to Russia. Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory is therefore viewed with skepticism.

Relations with China could also see some changes. Aksener recently hosted a visit with Omer Kanat, the chairman of the World Uyghur Congress, to discuss how Turkey could help to protect this vulnerable community from persecution. Other opposition leaders have similarly expressed interest in protecting the Uyghur population.

Adding to these areas of cooperation, Turkey plays a key role in providing stability to regional energy security and food security since the country sits at the most important transit point between the Black Sea grain economies and serves as a primary conduit for the energy resources of the Central Asian basin. The pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine are evidence that even the slightest disruption in these markets sends shockwaves through the global economy, where shifts in fuel and food prices can result in widespread discontent and even oust governments.

But with closer cooperation, opportunities can multiply. Turkey is close in proximity to more than half the world’s oil and gas reserves, it is well positioned to become a major thoroughfare for energy security and can, potentially, play an important role in the development of eastern Mediterranean natural gas reserves.

The current government has wasted numerous opportunities to develop a more prominent role for Turkey in the region because it has been too focused on appearance over substance, populist slogans over well-thought-out policies, and petty gamesmanship over substantive statecraft. If Turkey actually wants to have “zero problems with neighbors” then it needs a government that will treat neighbors in good faith, not seek to exploit circumstances for domestic political gains and against the interests of its own people.

In their platform, Aksener and the IYI Party have recognized the importance of restoring what used to be a highly functional set of multilateral relationships with Turkey’s allies. This does not mean that all differences and disagreements would dissolve overnight, but it does mean that opportunities for cooperation would expand significantly, contributing to the stability and prosperity of Turkey, the region, and beyond.

For these reasons, this election is one to watch closely. It may be the final opportunity for Turkey’s voters to seek true representation in their leadership.

Prof. Ivan Sascha Sheehan is the associate dean of the College of Public Affairs and past executive director of the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore. Opinions expressed are his own. Follow him on Twitter @ProfSheehan.

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Manufacturing wages are increasing in China, alongside the intensity of the U.S.-China rivalry.

This new problem for Beijing could prove a blessing for the United States and Mexico, especially given Washington’s recent drive to re- and ally-shore manufacting and industry. Perhaps it is time to ask: can these two economies be taken to the next level by increased investment in manufacturing?

Doing so could do more than just provide jobs and support U.S. national security objectives; it could also solve immigration pressures by creating better jobs in Mexico while also expanding U.S. exports to Mexico. In addition, it would strengthen America’s supply chain resiliency

This would also be good news for American manufacturers and, in an odd twist, American workers. After all, about 40 percent of the content of goods assembled in Mexico and shipped out as exports are made in America. For stuff assembled in China, only 4 percent of the content is made in America. Arguably, U.S. imports of Mexican products are ten times better for American workers when compared to Chinese imports.

Let’s take a closer look at the interesting triangle of trade and investment between Mexico, America, and China.

China’s Loss is Mexico’s and America’s Gain 

According to Alix Partners, a consultancy, Mexico has surpassed China as the lowest-cost country in the world for companies looking to manufacture products for North American markets. Mexico’s wages are now about 25 percent lower than in China. When coupled with lower taxes and tariffs, the numbers look even more favorable.

In addition, report demonstrates that across many industries, China’s cost advantage in producing goods and delivering them to Long Beach, California versus an American manufacturer has evaporated. Add to this higher transportation costs and intra North Amerian trade attains a decisive advantage: moving goods by sea from America to Asia takes three to give weeks, while America to Mexico transit time is a mere on to four days.

In addition to the cost factor, flexibility, speed of response, and ease of oversight all supports the movement of production from China to North America. No wonder American bilateral trade with Mexico has been trending up sharply.

Ironically, these very trends have led to Chinese companies moving production to Mexico to avoid trade restrictions and capitalize on the trade advantages that come from geographic proximity.

The Coming North American Boon?

Many U.S. companies are finally realizing that Mexico is a better option than China to manufacture many of the consumer goods for U.S. and Latin American markets. They join an already well-developed and experienced crowd: the United States is already the biggest foreign direct investor in Mexico accounting for about half of all foreign investment, according to State Department sources.

How will all this shake out, and what will American congressmen (and U.S. labor groups) think of U.S. multinationals shifting manufacturing from China to Mexico?

American firms still export three times as much to Mexico as they do to China. And, Mexico, in turn, sends 79 percent of its exports back across U.S. borders. In comparison, Mexico’s exports to its giant neighbor to the south, Brazil, account for only 1 percent of its exports according to World Bank statistics. Mexico has also launched more free-trade agreements that involve more than forty countries—more than any other country and enough to cover more than 90 percent of the country’s foreign trade. Finally, Mexican goods can be exported duty-free to the United States, Canada, the European Union, most of Central and Latin America, and to Japan.

If we can improve safety and security as well as railways, roadways, and ports, we could see a manufacturing boom that lifts both Americans and Mexicans.

Carl Delfeld is a senior fellow at the Hay Seward Economic Security Council, publisher of the Independent Republican, and was U.S. Representative to the Asian Development Bank. His latest book is Power Rivals: America and China’s Superpower Struggle.

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Abbas Ibrahim, the long-running director general of Lebanon’s General Directorate of General Security (GSO), ended his term on March 2 after reaching the mandatory retirement age of sixty-four. Ibrahim, who was elevated to the position amidst the Arab Spring movements of 2011, held the position for twelve years. During that time, he forged cross-cutting relationships that would prove his capacity as a dealmaker in otherwise impossible scenarios. This included impressive efforts to free hostages in Syria and Iran, as well as reportedly passing messages to Hezbollah in the recent Lebanon-Israel gas deal. Yet as he stepped down, the major general made clear that he holds future political ambitions which hold substantial weight in the Lebanese political scene.

“It is my national and professional duty to serve others and their rights,” Ibrahim noted as he stepped down.“ Tomorrow, we will continue the path on several other grounds in order to raise Lebanon.”

Lebanon’s Hezbollah reportedly worked tirelessly to extend Ibrahim’s term, attempting to for Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s hand through the cabinet. Although supposedly on very good terms with Ibrahim, Mikati made publicly clear that he did not view this as a legal option for the cabinet, calling on parliament to do so itself. This proved even more difficult given the state of deadlock in the parliament because of disagreements over Lebanon’s next president.

The Lebanese Parliament has failed to elect a president eleven different times since former president Michel Aoun ended his term in October of last year. There is currently a substantial divide between two establishment camps—one led by the right-wing, Christian Lebanese Forces (LF) and once led by the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah—that has ultimately produced no qualified majority vote (two-thirds of parliament, or 86 of 128 votes) for a candidate.

As a result, dozens of members of parliament (MPs) have boycotted plenary sessions, citing dubious legal grounds for the parliament to do much of anything under the current constitutional crisis (i.e., without a president). This has mainly included MPs from Christian parties—interestingly including the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), a Hezbollah ally. FPM’s support for this stance stems, at least in part, from Hezbollah’s refusal to support FPM leader Gebran Bassil’s candidacy for the presidency. Unfortunately for Ibrahim, such a session was required to amend the law allowing him to remain in his GSO position.

To be sure, however, Ibrahim’s forced retirement is not strictly a coincidental result of adjacent parliamentary politics and Hezbollah expending far too much political capital on other issues. Rather, there are very real political rivalries that likely hurt his chances of staying at the GSO. Namely, this falls to the head of the Shi’ite Amal Party and Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri, who is reported to have negative views of Ibrahim given the former GSO director’s utility to Hezbollah. Given Berri’s good working relationship with Mikati, this likely explains why the latter chose not to unilaterally renew Ibrahim’s term through the cabinet.

Given Ibrahim’s capacity as a problem solver and bridge builder in various security, diplomatic, and political arenas, Berri could view him as a threat to his own relative power and relationship to Hezbollah. While Amal is the natural and historic go-to partner for Hezbollah as the other major Shi’ite party in Lebanon, Berri is regularly crowded out by Ibrahim as Hezbollah’s preferred mediator between the major Lebanese and international political leaders. Of potentially greater importance, however, are rumors that Ibrahim could be next in line to take the parliamentary speakership with Hezbollah’s blessing. Such a move would explain the group’s public admission of failure to renew Ibrahim’s term—an uncommon sentiment rarely expressed by Hezbollah—as it would suggest they possibly received something in return for the retirement.

It is no secret that Berri is likely nearing the final years of his political career at eighty-five years of age. He has served as the parliamentary speaker since 1992 and has ran Amal since 1980. He is one of a withering number of political heavyweights that arose from the Lebanese civil war between 1975–90. Yet while he represents an older age of Lebanese politics, the wrangling that will certainly arise around his position makes Ibrahim’s path to the seat difficult. Indeed, Amal will not give up the position so easily, regardless of Hezbollah pressure. Whether Ibrahim has the political relationships within Amal—all the while holding a rivalry with Berri—remains to be seen.

With parliamentary elections slated for 2026, such a conversation has time to fester. For now, Ibrahim appears to be eyeing a potential cabinet seat. Some reports have highlighted the foreign ministry as a natural landing spot for the adept general, given his strong cross-cutting relationships. However, such a role would be difficult within Lebanon’s highly confessional governance system. The foreign ministry is typically held by a Christian, and is a highly demanded ministry alongside others such as the ministries of finance and the interior. It is thus difficult to see Ibrahim finding his way there, barring a major political deal.

Regardless of Ibrahim’s future in Lebanese governance—and he will have a future in it—his fall from the GSO is notable amidst the broader context of Lebanese politics today. For a figure with as much popularity as the former GSO director, both amongst political elites and the people, to not see his term extended is another marked institutional failure in a long line of shortcomings for the Lebanese government.

This is not to suggest the man is a paragon of virtue—simply observing the GSO’s brutal treatment of Syrians offers enough to reject Ibrahim as an official. However, it does speak to the scale of institutional collapse pervading the country today, in which most would likely have wished to renew his term but viewed other political battles as more important. Unfortunately, this reality has long defined Lebanese politics, even if much more accentuated in recent years, and will continue to do so for quite some time barring major reform or a discovery of conscience amongst the political elites.

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

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The world stands at a paradigm shift; a thunder of meeting, fighting tectonic plates. Vaclav Klaus, in a forthcoming article in The Hungarian Conservative, laments the passing of an old order. The move from one epoch to another is reminiscent of Mathew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach,” where the ebbing of the sea of faith had ceased caressing the shores of the world. Now is “the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating, to the breath of the night-wind.” Likewise, the thunder of change beckons in the dismantling of Westphalia and the end of a unipolar liberal world.

The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 ended the Thirty Years War, ostensibly between Catholic and Protestant Europe; a war in which approximately eight million people had died. The Peace gave birth to the idea of “Westphalian Sovereignty” from the ruins of the certainty of the Holy Roman Empire. For our purposes, although Westphalia was not tantamount to the birth of nation-states, it did establish a conception of the sacrosanct nature of borders and a right to self-determination. This type of sovereignty has faced challenges from two fronts after 300 years of its principled acceptance, although not “rigorous” application. Firstly there came the tsunami of globalization—and, like its predecessor, the Bretton Woods system, toppled national frontiers with its ebullient energy. This was the self-satisfied 1990s, that sad decade when “The End of [Insert Idea]”  followed one after another; when historians, in true Hegelian hysteria, competed to forecast the end of something or other. The “End of History” was here; it was a triumph of Enlightenment virtues, a liberal democratic mission to be exported, of capitalism and Coca-Cola.

That era of Occidental thinking is drawing to a close. When the “New World” discoveries and Britain’s maritime ascendancy set in motion the modern nomos of the world from the fifteenth century onwards, that also appeared fixed and certain. Each epoch believes in the permanence of its own ideal, its territory and nomos.

Nomos was the Greek phrase Carl Schmitt used to describe these lurching, giant states (or civilizational states) and their remit to conquer the world, from the Roman Empire onwards. Nomos derives from a state’s geographical, cultural, and resource domination. The jus publicum Europaeum which came out of the end of the Holy Roman Empire formed the basis for European hegemony. The curse of progress, its Achilles heel, is to believe in the eternity of the present.

The new nomos of the Earth is not globalization or liberal democracy. It is not Islam. In fact, it is something fed and nurtured by all empires or civilizations once they lose the spirit of their early hegemony and hand over the keys to a competitor; it is a type of complacency. They wave goodbye to the ethos which made them successful in the first place. Homogeneity is key to a successful empire.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi speaks of how Xi Jinping has strived to transform the present structure of international relations. Xi has “made innovations on and transcended the traditional Western theories of international relations for the past 300 years,” with a striking iconoclastic reference to Westphalia. This, again, is at odds with the up-to-now prevalent view of China—the distant, insular, Silk Road repository of Confucian splendid isolation. The Occident, wearing its kulturbrille, only sees what it wants to see: a benevolent world of liberal democratic norms.

As Gloucester warns in King Lear, “Tis the times plague, when madmen lead the blind.” The Faustian pact between Russia and China is not a causal necessity of the Ukraine conflict but an alliance to systemically rewrite the nomos of the world. The Chinese have a phrase: Tianxia, meaning “All Under Heaven,” which places order and conformity above all else. The emperor was always not merely the Emperor of China, but of the world. Chinese thinking equates the existence of one sun to one earthly ruler. The emperor was akin to the divine right of European kings. The Qin Han dynasty, from the third century BC, saw a Confucian legalism that ruled for more than two millennia in Eastern Eurasia, until the end of the nineteenth century.

Modern China is resurrecting this dynasty of tributary taxation, through economic dependence, soft loans, and creating a Chinese diaspora throughout Asia and Africa. The Occident, like Oedipus, has gouged out its eyes of perception—a willing blindfolding for the outsourcing of manufacturing capacity and cheap imports. Yet in China, according to Wang Fei Ling, “foreign policy analysts have presented the rejuvenated Tianxia idea as a legitimate or superior alternative to and powerful critique of the Westphalia world order.”

It is a mythical, easy sell to the Chinese population, with a hereditary view of other Asian states as tributaries. Ideas-based civilizational states, like China and Russia, utilize narratives of historic destiny, like the “conservative revolution” thinkers of Weimar. These states see their goals as long-term and historic, divinely ratified. They see beyond the short-termism of representative democracy. Economic growth is just one aspect of such a destiny. Western notions of “progress” are aligned with a colonial view of globalization. It is a Westphalia 2.0: nation-states and FDI-driven global capital. The winner of this race is able to utilize resources, investment, and labor. China arrived late at the party; but it has arrived.

Not surprising that the pushback by Russia also focuses on this perceived imbalance. The war in Ukraine was not a sudden vision by Vladimir Putin—Russians use planning trajectories for their economy and geopolitical forecasting. It was only last year that, the RAND Corporation published Russian Military Forecasting and Planning, based on research since 2019.

The main weakness of the Occident is short-termism with regard to forecasting and planning. It is endemic to the West’s government and reduces the ability to see long term, beyond the next election. The Western focus on liberal norms, rights, and global democracy only works in a game played by everyone. Once the Westphalian system of nation-states became consumed by empire building and now, globalization, the quid pro quo, the balance, was gone.

The RAND report postulates that Russia sees the geopolitical dynamic as having two possible paths. One is the continuance of a unipolar world of liberal governance and globalization, based on a Western financial system and U.S. dominance in foreign policy. The second alternative is Russia probing and attempting to dismantle this hegemony. This is due to their perceived inability to achieve economic goals, along with access to capital and technology. An axis consisting of China and Russia makes this much more likely. The Ukraine war is not about Ukraine itself—it is this vying for position; it is this intrinsic planning, what the Russians call a “VPO” analysis, which sees its strategy as a long game. Underlying all of this is a military perspective that needs to match adversaries. The Russians forecast that, under existing trajectories of globalization, by 2040, the United States will be 60 percent stronger in military capacity. Globalization is a Janus-faced chalice for Russia; at once a source of oil revenue, yet potentially debilitating. Economic sanctions compound the problem and restrict access to technologies and capital. For the Russians, war is a means to disrupt the flow of geopolitics. The second alternative sees a VPO of a reformed military balance in which China, by 2040, equals the United States in military capability and the Russian deficit is reduced to 20 percent.

This vision, called “Bipolarity 2.0,” now drives Russian and Chinese policy. It aims to create favorable blocs in BRICS group (named after Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Yet, faced with losses of weapons and manpower in Ukraine, the Russian game is spluttering. The technological boycott could be brutal for Russia. Hence the Russian “soft” policy of building alliances with Western dissidence—the parties of a “cultural” diaspora who see the negative dynamic of globalization culture. Hungary, Serbia, Italy, and the United States have a populist groundswell of democratic resistance to liberalism. This may be a fertile ground for Russia, as Western norms deracinate their own societies from the inside. The oft-quoted “liberal democracy” is fraught with contradiction. Representative democracy is a miasma of democracy; it is a system to regulate and administer an international system of capital flows dependent on migratory cheap labor and resources. Elite manipulation is now noticing pushback in liberal democracies as a working class, culturally disenfranchised bloc supports more nationalist, indigenous populism. This may be a bigger threat than the external great power game.

For the Chinese, tianxia is back on the agenda after the hiatus of communism. China, according to Henry Kissinger, “considered itself, in a sense, the sole sovereign government of the world.” For Xi Jinping, China becomes a middle kingdom of tributary vassal states. Tianxia brings order to the chaos of Westphalia.

It is this fusion of idealized myth and realpolitik which drives China and Russia: the borderless tributary empire of the Chinese emperors and the endless steppe of Dostoyevsky’s Russia. The rhetoric of China’s “Global Security Initiative” of April 2022, continued the underlying vogue of expansive dominance, purporting “security for all in the world..and oppose the pursuit of one's own security at the expense of others.” There is also a rebuffing against the internal damage of globalization to core Chinese cultural values—Geliguojia, or “separated country” of the emperors. It is the best of both worlds for Xi and a continuation of Mao’s vision of communism on a world scale.

Therefore, two suns are setting on the world; the Westphalian one of 300 years and the Chinese one of the Qin Han dynasties. Yet for the Chinese, there is only one sun in heaven, and they refuse to play second fiddle to the West. In part “revanchist”—a settling of scores from the days of colonial powers—and an assault on the weakness of Western liberal cultures. It is a sore test for the sons of the Enlightenment and for the architects of Westphalia, who ditched the civilizational state of the Holy Roman Empire for the solace of independent states.

Nevertheless, the weaknesses of authoritarian, top-down states such as Russia and China are their increasing reliance on a type of expansive nationalism. Civilizations are eclipsed not by external threats but by internal incoherence. In this, both the Occident and the Orient are obscured by haze; a lack of a moral teleology hinders both. Resources and geopolitics signify a lack of Plato’s “care for the soul.” Bound to the wall of Plato’s cave, it will take an epoch-shifting Spenglerian change to drag humanity from the cave of its own making and into the blinding sunlight.

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

Image: Shutterstock.

On Monday, U.S. president Joe Biden, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak, and Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese announced the pathway for AUKUS that will deliver nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. Canberra will purchase 3–5 Virginia class SSN submarines from the United States before buying eight newly-designed, UK- and Australian-built SSN-AUKUS subs. The deal outlines new docking, training, and rotation agreements that will provide the United States with a more robust strategic hub in the Indo-Pacific.

The three leaders have promised that the submarine projects (otherwise known as Pillar 1) will create jobs, educational opportunities, and investment for all three countries. While the announcement is welcome in its bold strategic vision, it remains scant on details and does not address the elephant in the room: the current weakness in the combined defense industrial capacity to produce so many boats in so little time with so few resources.

Recent discussions about a lack of industrial capacity to support the AUKUS submarine project highlight the continuing difficulties facing the trilateral technology security agreement. Leaders in Washington, Canberra, and London all express the will to make nuclear attack submarines a reality for the Australian Defence Force in order to deter China in the Indo-Pacific. But the “hard yakka”—hard work—of building submarines doesn’t happen in the national capitals. Regional, state, and local politics and markets—including debates about sourcing for raw materials, and development of skilled labor pools, requires attention. Public pressure is the force necessary to untangle the Byzantine knot of regulations frustrating the sharing of classified and otherwise sensitive know-how, and will make or break the program. While platitudes around “mateship” and the strength and history of the U.S.-Australia alliance sound comforting, the fundamental groundwork to make AUKUS a success will require previously unimagined levels of political and financial investment in the locales where SSNs are designed, constructed, and maintained.

Politics Begins at the Kitchen Table

As expressed by ASPI DC Director Mark Watson in the Australian Financial Review, “regardless of the strongly stated political and military support for AUKUS, members of Congress could begin to take a more ambivalent view [of that support] if it comes at the expense of US operational readiness,” even when the strategic logic is compelling. Moreover, if policymakers don’t provide incentives and benefits—jobs, educational opportunities, or tax breaks—to get rank-and-file voters onboard, the American, British, and Australian publics will be unlikely to make the necessary sacrifices and investments to see the deal through. 

Failure to seek public support among key populations and to explain why AUKUS matters beyond the strategic area of the Indo-Pacific reveals a misunderstanding of what is required. For example, while U.S. Congressional committees and Oval Office staffers make key decisions on the future of nuclear submarines for Australia, American taxpayers will, at some point, demand evidence of a return on their investment.

Without that dividend, Australia’s requirement for a long-range submarine capability will remain unmet. And American interests in linking industrial bases and integrating defense supply chains to share the burden of countering China through “collective efforts over the next decade” will founder. U.S. officials, Australian and British diplomats, and supportive strategists and researchers must make these arguments now.

The “Hard Yakka” of Subnational Engagement

The term “subnational diplomacy” refers to the engagement of non-central governments in international relations and can include the foreign policy efforts of states and cities. We have seen negative publicity regarding subnational diplomacy in Australia in the case of the Victorian state government’s aborted agreement with China on a proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2019. But for countries such as Australia and the United States, these sorts of relations are commonplace and generally constructive. As Washington’s prime characteristics are partisanship and a short attention span, it is no wonder many promising, bipartisan projects falter when campaign seasons begin or when other pressing foreign or domestic issues distract policymakers from following through. A subnational campaign to drive home the importance of AUKUS could help overcome these perennial, structural problems.

For starters, entrenching the U.S.-Australia alliance and particular projects associated with AUKUS at a state level can ensure Australia sells the importance of its interests to America’s voters. Australia has proposed investing $2 billion, mostly in America’s shipyards to expand and expedite production of the Virginia-class submarines. Building submarines means creating an ecosystem for these states and local economies, which is not only about jobs but building interpersonal relationships and stronger communities as well. Australian policymakers will need to visit more than just Washington to discover the people who will be front-and-center for AUKUS and who will help Australia meet its needs. Sending delegations that include officials and industry representatives from Australian states and localities to boat-building cities in Connecticut and Virginia is a necessary next step.

Engaging on the ground means learning about and dealing with local politicians and community leaders. It also means dealing with labor unions, fabrication companies, and the manufacturers of components beyond the nuclear technology that garners so much attention among DC tongue-waggers. State governments hold the purse strings on building new and refurbishing old shipyards or creating tax conditions and tax breaks for AUKUS-related investments. Collaborating with state governments, county officials, and mayors will promote a smoother process of getting submarines quickly into the hands of Australian defense personnel. Moreover, robust subnational outreach opens the door to new investment opportunities for Australian companies in the United States and US companies to invest in Australia.

The demand for full-society cooperation and coordination is even more important for the second pillar of AUKUS. Pillar 2 promises advances and sharing in advanced weaponry and technologies—such as AI, cyber, quantum computing, and undersea capabilities—and for which states such as Arizona, Michigan, and Utah may play prominent roles. In these various fields, private sector actors often are the lead innovators—and the lead investors. Commercial players working in conjunction with state and local governments is the way to fast-track the development of dual-use technologies and avoid ponderous federal bureaucracies and partisan DC politics.

From the Politician to the Welder

Selling governors and mayors on the benefits of AUKUS investment—things they already want—coupled with a national security message is smart. Subnational engagement will pay dividends when the time comes for Australia to develop maintenance facilities for the new SSNs or to create new industrial hubs to support integrated AUKUS shipbuilding that combines the industrial bases of all three partners. Australia, too, will need workers, high-tech fabrication yards, and access to vital materials. Standard setting across shops and opportunities for cross-training workers—including apprenticeships connecting specialists in Groton and Newport News and experts in Barrow-in-Furness with trainees in Perth and Adelaide will be important.

The “all of country” approach needed to meet the strategic challenges facing the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia is an “integrated industrial base” that benefits all three societies. The AUKUS Optimal Pathway is a welcome step in the right direction. However, if the partners are serious about deterring China, then subnational engagement—from the politician to the welder—is an imperative.

Iain MacGillivray is an analyst at ASPI Washington DC. He is a researcher and foreign policy analyst with over thirteen years of experience in Australia and overseas. His research areas and expertise include Middle Eastern politics and security, detailed knowledge of geopolitics and international affairs in the Indo-Pacific, and the QUAD and AUKUS.

Greg Brown is Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Washington, DC, and an Adjunct Professor at the Center for Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific Studies at Georgetown University.

Image: Shutterstock.

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Jacob Heilbrunn: Is there an information race and should America be concerned about China’s attempt to construct its own global media?

Joshua Kurlantzick: There is an information race, to be sure—in terms of state media; Chinese control of Chinese-language media in many countries; control of information “pipes” like 5G networking, etc.; and the growing power of Chinese social media platforms, like WeChat and, most notably, TikTok. However, my book is called Beijing’s Global Media Offensive: China’s Uneven Campaign to Influence Asia and the World, and that subtitle is there for a reason. In many respects, and in particular with much of its big state media (China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily), Beijing has not reached much of an audience—the figures for viewership or listenership to these channels are minimal. Xinhua has been much more effective at reaching a global audience, by signing content-sharing deals with local media in a wide range of countries, and thus getting picked up (translated) in a wide range of news outlets all over the world. China has, however, had great success in gaining control of nearly all of the Chinese language media around the world, whether by having actual Chinese state firms buy into the media or by having local owners, in countries with Chinese language media, who happen to be pro-Beijing (for business reasons, or other reasons), buy up the outlets and basically end any independent reporting on Beijing and China’s actions. So, from Australia to Malaysia to the United States to Canada, there is little independent Chinese-language media left, even in places with large numbers of people who read or watch Chinese-language media as their primary source of news.

Heilbrunn: Are China’s efforts to influence its image abroad effective or are they a waste of money?

Kurlantzick: I think I answered some of this in the first question. They’ve wasted a ton of money on much of their state media, which mostly remains turgid, propagandistic, and little-watched. Xinhua, however, has gained a foothold in many global news outlets, so that hasn’t been a waste of money, and neither has taking control of Chinese language media outlets around the world. In terms of soft power not directed by the state—in the United States that would be Hollywood, the music industry, artists, writers, the Kardashians, baseball, basketball, whatever—China has virtually none of this soft power not directed by the state. It did have the potential to have it: China has in the past boasted great artists, writers, musicians, etc. And it has some soft power via TikTok, Tencent and its games, etc. But its non-state-directed soft power has been limited by the intense crackdown on artists and by Xi’s crackdown on even highly globally successful private sector companies.

Heilbrunn: Is China achieving success in attaining dominance over what you call the “pipes” that information travels through—web browsers, mobile phones, social media platforms, and so on?

Kurlantzick: It is mixed. China has been building out a lot of infrastructure “pipes” that carry information in developing countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and other regions, but it has failed to win such contracts (or been banned from getting such contracts) in much of North America, Europe, Northeast Asia, and some other regions. Interestingly, China has cost itself a fairly warm relationship with Central and Eastern Europe, where it has been building a lot of pipes, over the Ukraine-Russia War. However, TikTok is another story. It is becoming the dominant global app, and every country, including the United States, is going to have to figure out how to deal with it; Its parent company, despite all their claims to the contrary, is based in China, and has a seat on its board held by the Chinese government. Countries like the United States need to make sure that all users’ data on TikTok is held on servers inside the United States, or whatever country is dealing with TikTok. So, China has a powerful weapon in TikTok but at the same time, I don’t think most democracies are going to go along with a situation in which data from TikTok is held outside their borders or can be leaked outside their borders. WeChat is also a powerful Chinese social media platform, particularly in Southeast Asia, and has been valuable for China in that a wide range of pro-Beijing news circulates on WeChat, which is heavily monitored and censored.

Heilbrunn: How do China’s misinformation efforts compare to America’s?

Kurlantzick: Certainly, the United States does use misinformation in countries like Iran, Cuba, and Russia, places with whom the United States has poor relations. And during the Cold War there was no doubt that U.S. state media like Voice of America were to a significant extent propaganda outlets, not too far from the propagandistic nature of China’s state media today. But after the end of the Cold War, limits were placed on U.S. state media, giving them editorial independence—and other state actors like the BBC, etc., also enjoy editorial independence. China’s state media do not, and this is a huge difference. Look at the BBC or Voice of America and they run articles on the problems of America or Britain, etc. The BBC even ran an extensive interview (though I am not defending the methods by which the journalist got the interview) with Princess Diana, the Princess of Wales at the time, slamming the royal family. Nothing like this is imaginable in Chinese state media.

Heilbrunn: To what extent is China trying to meddle in American elections?

Kurlantzick: I think China began by extensively trying to meddle in elections in its near region—Taiwan, Southeast Asia, then Australia, and perhaps New Zealand. It is now expanding. There is considerable discussion in Canada now about the possibility that China intervened extensively in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections in Canada, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently ordered an investigation into the alleged meddling—although his opponents are asking him for a more public inquiry, which I think would make more sense. China has meddled somewhat in U.S. elections—somewhat in a congressional primary in New York in the 2022 midterms, perhaps somewhat in some local elections, and is increasingly trying to become more sophisticated in using disinformation to affect U.S. elections. But its disinformation is still pretty sloppy compared to that of other actors, and it hasn’t been as full bore in influencing U.S. elections as it has in other places. However, that is likely to change, and the FBI director has warned that China is going to be a major player in influencing U.S. elections going forward.

Heilbrunn: Are you worried that China will eventually become a behemoth in the information wars?

Kurlantzick: Well, in some ways—control of Chinese language media everywhere in the world, Xinhua becoming a tool to spread propaganda all over the world, China’s increasingly sophisticated disinformation, etc.—it is becoming more powerful. That said, a lot of Beijing’s actions have led to powerful backlashes in countries where what China has been doing has been exposed, and stepped-up legislative and investigatory efforts to probe Chinese influence efforts. In addition, China’s influence efforts, combined with its overbearing diplomacy in many places, growing authoritarianism at home, and other problems, have led it to have a fairly negative image in a lot of places—not just places one would imagine, like the United States, Japan, or Australia, but even places where China enjoyed relatively warm feelings in the past. So, right now, China hasn’t been super successful in all aspects of information warfare, but it is likely Beijing will adapt, become more skilled, and do better down the road. Beijing has proven adaptable in other realms, so why not in this realm?

Heilbrunn: What course of action, if any, should Washington adopt in response to Chinese efforts?

Kurlantzick: Improve digital literacy among citizens, starting with kids. This is good not just for dealing with Chinese propaganda but good on its own to help kids better understand truth from fiction online.

Apply high scrutiny to foreign investments in media and communications companies in the United States—the same level of scrutiny that might be applied to foreign investments in companies that produce things that could also have defense uses. Not just Chinese investors, but any foreign investors.

Invest in independent media abroad, especially in Asia. Continue investing in Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

Figure out some way to not ban TikTok but to force it to keep all Americans’ data on servers in the United States without any backdoors. It does store data in the United States but that data has also been accessed from China many times.

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of the National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.

The United States has the opportunity to upgrade its food exports to increase revenues for farmers, but for that to happen it needs to negotiate a comprehensive trade deal with Europe. For reference, America exports more food to Japan, a market of 125 million consumers, than to the European Union, which holds (with its associated trade partners) 450 million inhabitants. While both the Obama and Trump administrations failed to conclude an agreement with Europe, South American nations are about to conclude a comprehensive agreement.

Following the return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the Brazilian presidency, the European Union expects to finally conclude its trade deal with the South American common market, Mercosur. It had taken the Europeans two decades of negotiation to reach a political agreement for a free trade deal on food, but the agreement was frozen in 2019, given both Jair Bolsonaro’s unwillingness to reach a compromise on environmental protections in the Amazon as well as French and Irish skepticism on the potential competition by Argentinian beef. With Lula back in office, the deal has a good chance of being approved before the EU elections take place next year.

The time is right for new trade deals with Europe. The old continent experiences a dangerous war in Ukraine that not just threatens the political stability of the region but also re-aligns trade policy away from authoritarian regimes. For too long, Europe’s political leaders have believed that what defines high food standards must be stringent policies on crop protection: phase-out chemicals, reduce livestock, remain skeptical of genetic engineering, and import as little as possible. Now that Ukraine, Europe’s bread basket, is facing a war unprecedented in the twenty-first century, things are changing.

Before February 2022, which marked the beginning of Russia’s aggression, Brussels planned on an ambitious sustainability revamp of its food policy. Now it is confronted with a re-think. Lawmakers have criticized the EU’s planned “Farm to Fork” reform for increasing food prices through reduced productivity. After two years of significant supply chain disruptions during the coronavirus pandemic, it has become clear that even the existing food system lacks resilience, and that the planned reduction in farmland use and livestock capacities will not be beneficial.

This opens the door to a renegotiation of what started in 2012 as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement. TTIP would have liberalized one-third of global trade and have boosted, according to the European Commission, the European and U.S. economy by over $200 billion in GDP. The deal failed to be adopted on the one hand because of Europe's skepticism over American food regulation, as well as the hostility by President Donald Trump toward trade agreements negotiated by the Obama administration. Trump’s protectionist policies weren't just off-putting to Democrats, they should also have repulsed traditionally pro-free trade Republicans.

While the European efforts of tightening the regulatory framework on agriculture look discouraging for future food talks, the White House should instead see the current situation as an opportunity. USDA has suggested a regulatory roadmap, the Agriculture Innovation Agenda, which looks to technological innovation in high-yield farming as a solution to the environmental challenges that face the sector, and there is nothing wrong about both blocs trying to achieve a more sustainable food model at different speeds and with different methods. In fact, food trade would underline to what extent high-yield farming is essential to preserving biodiversity—doing more with less, at better prices for consumers.

There will be hurdles. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack has already had conversations with his European counterparts, in which he explained that the American farm sector does not prescribe to the same level of precautionary regulation as the Europeans. That said, things have changed since the 2010s. Despite there being organizations that still try to scare consumers with American “frankenfood” and farmer groups keen on using protectionism to prevent European consumers from having access to more choices in the supermarket, consumers are now more sensitive than ever to food prices. Food price inflation in the European Union is at a record 18 percent—a situation unlikely to normalize in the coming months.

Even and especially with Republicans controlling the House, growing the U.S farming sector while supporting European allies at a crucial moment through trade should be a bipartisan priority. The Biden administration can do well by the American farm sector by embarking on renewed negotiations with the European Union, setting an example for innovative agriculture, and creating economic opportunities for all.

Bill Wirtz is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Consumer Choice Center. He published No Copy-Paste: What Not to Emulate from Europe’s Agriculture Regulation.

Image: Lourenço Furtado​/Shutterstock.

To many observers’ surprise, Chinese president Xi Jinping’s foreign policy cohort marked the anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian War by proposing a peace plan to end the conflict. The proposal, seemingly a reversal of Beijing’s support for Russia, consists of twelve points calling for “[c]easing hostilities”; “[r]especting the sovereignty of all countries”; and “[r]esolving the humanitarian crisis,” among other things. The Biden administration quickly rejected any immediate China-sponsored peace settlement by stating that it was “not rational.” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg cynically remarked that China “has little credibility because they have not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine.”

However, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed interest in Beijing’s points, stating, “I plan to meet with Xi Jinping, and I think that would be useful to our countries and global security.”

Xi has, therefore, managed to outmaneuver the Biden White House’s total victory posture with China’s twelve-point peace proposal despite Beijing’s support for Russian president Vladimir Putin. The People’s Republic of China attempts to harness discontent over America’s Ukraine policy to paint Washington as recklessly escalating great power tensions. Beijing’s Ukrainian peace plan also appeals to the broader developing world and the European Union, given the various global problems Putin’s invasion has created. 

The rejection of Washington’s liberal internationalism plays into China’s ideological relationships with regimes throughout the developing world, such as African and Latin American states, who have been ambivalent towards Putin’s attacks on Ukraine. China does not have democratic litmus tests for sustained relations with these commodity-dependent economies, a policy Biden’s Washington has expanded in the post-Trump era. A China-brokered peace deal appeals to populist governments like Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa due to the Cold War legacy relationships China has with the leadership of these countries. After Mao Zedong’s death, Beijing became pragmatic in its Third World relationships by prioritizing economic development over the Soviet Union’s instance on ideological commitments from its partners.

In South Africa’s case, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has ties to the African National Congress (ANC) through its support of the anti-Apartheid struggle. Beijing guided activists fighting white-minority rule in the country to the point that Nelson Mandela spoke favorably of China’s revolution. These relationships between the two ruling parties have continued after Apartheid’s demise, with the ANC increasingly modeling itself after the CCP.

The dire global impacts of Putin’s war have created economic incentives for countries like South Africa to support China’s peace proposals. The conflict’s impact on international commodity trading has sent food and energy prices skyrocketing, creating risks for South Africa’s already stagnant economy. The surge in critical commodity prices caused by Russia’s stalled Ukraine invasion endangers fragile South African monetary policy, sending the rand’s high inflation levels even higher. 

China’s Ukraine proposal appeals to the developing world’s economic concerns by promising to end sanctions, reenable grain exports, and secure supply chains. Even emerging economies with strained relations with Beijing, such as India and Vietnam, would welcome the resumption of uninhibited trade relations with Russia.

Key European Union member states such as France, Germany, and Italy could also welcome a Chinese-negotiated settlement to the Ukraine War; like developing countries, the disruption to commodity supply chains has especially hurt European consumers who relied on Russian petroleum and Ukrainian agriculture before Putin’s invasion.

Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and Rome have China lobbies that could advocate for a negotiated settlement. Germany especially wants to see the Ukraine War end, with some commentators predicting billions of euros of damage to the EU’s flagship economy despite a resilient outlook. The disruptions caused by the war disproportionately impacted Germany’s politically-powerful auto industry, which has extensive business interests in China, Russia, and Ukraine. German chancellor Olof Scholz and French president Emmanuel Macron responded to these concerns before the war by attempting to de-escalate with Putin. 

There is a long-established tendency among the French and German governments, dating back to the Suez crisis, to pursue a Russian policy independent of American pressure. Some European policy leaders fear continued brinkmanship toward Russia, like America First conservatives, will result in a broader war, potentially involving nuclear arms. 

As mentioned, Ukrainian elites like Zelenskyy have expressed interest in a Chinese-led peace deal. Incentives from Beijing might encourage Putin to withdraw from Ukrainian territory if he cannot be militarily defeated. It would buy Kyiv time to bolster its national defenses and repair infrastructure damaged by Russian aggression should Putin break any hypothetical Beijing-backed peace agreement. Any reprieve from the fighting would also give Ukraine’s badly stricken population a humanitarian ceasefire after over a year of constant warfare.

Zelenskyy is skeptical of Washington’s long-term promises to Ukraine. Biden is heading into a contested 2024 reelection campaign with low approvals and facing a Republican opposition skeptical of sustained aid to Ukraine. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives wants more oversight of the American dollars going to Kyiv. If voters elect a Republican president in 2024, the ongoing military aid programs to Ukraine could be suspended in favor of a neutral position to ease tensions with Moscow. 

Kyiv’s new Western-oriented elites have further reasons to support a Chinese peace plan for their country. Before Covid-19 and the open war with Russia, Kyiv had strong trade relations with Beijing, and Ukraine serving as a critical piece of the Belt and Road Initiative. Keeping relationships open with China would diversify Ukraine’s partnerships in a postwar world, given that Ukraine is on the fringes of present-day Europe. 

Embracing a Chinese peace deal doesn’t necessarily mean Ukraine is rejecting Washington. Like its Central European sister countries, Kyiv believes it can have good relations with the United States and China to hedge against Russian aggression and unaccountable promises made in Brussels. Turkey, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic once embraced European integration but became skeptical after the 2008 great financial crisis.

Ukraine pursued the same policy before the 2022 war, and Kyiv took extensive Western aid while enjoying a productive role in the Belt and Road Initiative. Zelenskyy believes China can play a constructive role in Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction along with the West, despite the former’s recent aid to Russia.

China can position itself as a broker in the Ukraine crisis as it initially opposed Russia’s invasion, even if it now pledges aid to Putin’s regime. Xi could broker a peace agreement, given that China had close relations with the two belligerents, which would go far in helping Beijing undo the damage caused to its reputation by the Covid-19 pandemic. This would become another example of Beijing’s longstanding policy of strategic ambiguity, adjusting to global circumstances as the CCP’s leadership sees fit. 

The Ukraine War serves as a centerpiece for Washington’s messaging, as a fight to preserve democracy against illiberal authoritarianism. China’s advocacy for “abandoning the Cold War mentality” and being against the expansion of military blocs undercuts the Biden administration’s public foreign policy stance. 

Beijing has read global opinion regarding Ukraine better than Washington. Public polling in Argentina, India, Malaysia, and Turkey shows widespread unenthusiasm, with many preferring a quick end to the Ukraine War and the resumption of normalcy. Support for further involvement in the war within the EU is also polarizing in France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Hungary. Despite being regarded as an autocratic outlier within the EU, the Hungarian government has already backed Beijing’s conflict resolution ideas. China’s Ukraine policy threads a needle, appealing to domestic anxieties outside the Five Eyes countries caused by the ongoing conflict.

Consumed by hyper-partisanship in the post-Trump era, the United States fails to realize that Beijing is playing a long game against Western liberal democracies. The CCP, which rules China as an absolute one-party state, worries much less about day-to-day media talking points and winning a constant political campaign, unlike the United States’ governing machinery. These stark differences allow the Chinese to play a long strategic game against the United States, with the best example being tensions over Taiwan. 

China’s peace proposal for Ukraine is Beijing’s effort to highlight Washington’s unreliability, in that U.S. policy varies from one partisan administration to the next. At the same time, Beijing can play to the common desire for a multipolar world among emerging and established states. 

China ultimately wants to show it can behave responsibly by proposing solutions to international challenges. Beijing hopes to paint Washington as reckless while signaling a perception that it is trying to build a coalition of countries to end the war in Ukraine through diplomacy. In contrast, the Biden administration’s support for unconditional Ukrainian victory is giving Xi an opportunity to label the United States as an aggressor and isolate it on the world stage.

Kevin Brown has an MSc. in International History from the London School of Economics and Political Science and works in Washington, DC. He has previously written for Real Clear World, the Diplomat, and the National Interest, His twitter handle is @KevinBrown778.

Image: Shutterstock.

Proponents of a highly activist U.S. policy in the world keep stumbling upon (and evading) a troubling contradiction. Washington repeatedly emphasizes the need to protect the “rules-based international order that preserves stability worldwide.” The Biden administration and its supporters insist that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine poses a potentially mortal threat to that system, and must, therefore, be defeated. George H. W. Bush’s foreign policy team invoked the same rationale to justify assembling a coalition of countries that used military force to expel Saddam Hussein’s army of occupation from Kuwait in 1991.

Yet the United States and its allies have launched military interventions on multiple occasions throughout the post-Cold War era that clearly violated the purported standards of a rules-based international system. NATO’s meddling in Bosnia’s civil war by bombing Bosnian Serb targets in 1995 certainly seemed inconsistent with such standards. The violation was even more evident in 1999 when NATO launched an air war against Serbia, a recognized member of the United Nations, and then proceeded to amputate Kosovo, one of Serbia’s provinces.

Western military actions since the turn of the century appear to be even more contrary to a rules-based international system. The U.S.-led regime-change wars in Iraq and Libya contradicted the admonitions of America’s policy elites over the decades to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other nations. Washington’s collusion with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni powers to try to unseat Syria’s Bashar al-Assad also is hard to square with those professed standards. The United States still maintains a military presence in northeastern Syria over the explicit objections of the government that represents Syria in the UN.

Such episodes confirm that the supposed commitment of the United States and its closest allies to a rules-based global order is highly selective and self-serving, if not blatantly hypocritical. Proponents of Washington’s various military interventions typically justify the deviations by arguing that principles of justice and human rights sometimes have to overrule normal, recognized standards of state-to-state conduct.

The justice/human rights rationale featured prominently in the case that Bill Clinton’s administration and interventionist advocates in the news media made with respect to the Balkan wars. Proponents of U.S./NATO military action warned that Serb-orchestrated genocide was taking place in Bosnia, even though the fatality totals touted at the time (200,000 to 250,000 mostly Muslim civilians) were consistent with those in a typical civil war. More rigorous and credible post-war calculations put the number of deaths at fewer than 100,000—including Serb fatalities.

Nevertheless, the same “genocide” narrative became a crucial feature of NATO’s intervention in Kosovo. This time, the claims were even less credible. Subsequent analyses confirmed that only 2,000 deaths had taken place prior to the onset of NATO’s bombing campaign. Even some candid supporters of the intervention, such as Brookings Institution scholars Ivo H. Daalder and Michael O’Hanlon, later conceded that what had occurred in Kosovo was not genocide.

Developments elsewhere in the world made that justification for violating the supposed international prohibition against attacking other countries even less credible. Several far bloodier conflicts were taking place in the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially in Africa, most notably in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In addition, there was a genuine case of genocide involving the Hutu mass slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda. Yet American and other Western policymakers did not regard those conflicts as either so threatening the stability of the international system or being so egregious in terms of human suffering that they warranted outside military intervention.

The rationales for the Western military interventions in Iraq and Libya were even weaker than those invoked with respect to Bosnia and Kosovo. Allegations that Saddam Hussein’s government was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks were baseless, as were the dire warnings that Baghdad possessed an arsenal containing weapons of mass destruction. Saddam’s human rights record was indeed awful, a point that pro-intervention types highlighted. However, it was not dramatically worse than the behavior of other autocratic governments, including the abuses Washington’s close ally, Saudi Arabia, routinely committed. Nevertheless, George W. Bush’s administration and its cheerleaders in the media and foreign policy community were willing to see the rules-based international order violated with an invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The Obama administration’s justifications for leading a NATO assault on Libya were weaker still. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had terminated his government’s embryonic nuclear program years earlier, and his relations with the West seemed on the mend. However, the Obama foreign policy team seized on one of the periodic armed rebellions in Libya to launch an air war to achieve forcible regime change—a point that then Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates implicitly conceded. The official justification for the NATO-led intervention was to protect civilians who were facing an imminent bloodbath. Those warnings proved to be exaggerated, if not baseless. Nevertheless, Washington cited the alleged looming tragedy as a sufficient reason to attack another sovereign country, in violation of the supposed international norm against launching a war of aggression.

Even when the humanitarian motives are genuine, there is an inherent tension between following the legal norms against attacking a sovereign state and preventing serious human rights abuses. All of the U.S.-led interventions mentioned above violated the rules of appropriate international conduct. An argument can be made that the outcomes in Bosnia and Kosovo were better than the alternatives if outside restraint had prevailed, but NATO’s actions still amounted to an offensive war. Moreover, the longer-term prognoses in Bosnia and Kosovo are not encouraging.

The results in Iraq, Libya, and Syria indisputably were much worse. Deposing Saddam Hussein and weakening Bashar al-Assad ultimately led to the rise of ISIS and its temporary seizure of vast swaths of both Iraq and Syria. Western meddling also produced the ongoing civil war and led to Russia’s intervention in Syria. The NATO intervention in Libya unleashed total chaos, and the country remains utterly dysfunctional. Hundreds of thousands dead and millions made refugees throughout the Middle East hardly constitute interventionist success stories. The Western powers managed both to disrupt the international system and exacerbate humanitarian tragedies.

In light of that track record, we should treat with great skepticism the current argument that NATO’s involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war by giving military aid to Kyiv is necessary both to end the human suffering and to prevent the Kremlin from fatally undermining the rules-based international system. The United States and its allies have demonstrated repeatedly that they are willing to launch military interventions whenever that move suits their purposes, regardless of the adverse impact on the international order. Humanitarian justifications (sometimes threadbare ones) are deployed whenever needed to rationalize actions that clearly violate Washington’s own purported respect for a rules-based system. The Biden administration’s outrage that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine poses an intolerable challenge to the international order rings very hollow indeed.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The National Interest, is the author of thirteen books and more than 1,100 articles on international affairs. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2023).

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

The debate in Washington over U.S. policy toward China appears to have turned a corner in the wake of the first hearing on February 28 of the new House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). One of the benchmarks of the hearing was Chairman Mike Gallagher’s assertion in his opening statement that the threat posed to America by the CCP represents “an existential struggle over what life will look like in the twenty-first century,” a struggle in which “the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.” No one on the committee or among the witnesses at the hearing challenged this assertion, reinforcing the presumption that it reflects a bipartisan consensus on the nature and scope of the threat from China.

Multiple observers, however, have raised alarm about the potential implications of this judgment, questioning not just the committee’s agenda but also the validity of the premises upon which its agenda is based. One prominent commentator characterized the apparent agreement about the “allegedly existential danger posed by the CCP” as “a classic example of groupthink” that was “forged out of paranoia, hysteria and, above all, fears of being branded as soft” on China. Some detractors responded that it was an earlier consensus in support of “engagement” with China that was misguided groupthink—overlooking (and proving) that “groupthink” is largely a pejorative critique of whatever one disagrees with. Another foreign policy writer speculated that the agreement between the Republicans and Democrats on the committee “could mean they are falling prey to a collective delusion.”

Believers in an “existential” threat from China tried to claim validation from public remarks last week by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Qin Gang on the margins of Beijing’s annual legislative session. Xi reportedly said that “Western countries headed by the United States have contained, encircled, and suppressed China”—a rare if not unprecedented direct public criticism of Washington. He then issued what appears to be an aggressive new foreign policy mantra—eclipsing Deng Xiaoping’s perennial guidance for China to “hide its capabilities and bide its time”—that included the phrase “dare to struggle.” This was widely characterized as a Chinese call to arms, as was Qin’s statement that “If the United States does not hit the brake but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there will surely be conflict and confrontation.”

Neither Xi’s nor Qin’s remarks contained much that was substantively new to those familiar with Beijing’s longstanding views. But the public debate was further fueled by Western commentary asserting that Xi and Qin were speaking accurately. A writer in the Financial Times said Xi was “not technically wrong” about a US containment strategy. And an article in the Daily Beast observed that “everything Xi said was true. The US is actively seeking to contain China and impede its ability to develop key technologies.” Regarding Qin’s observation that “there will surely be conflict and confrontation” if Washington does not adjust its China policy, the same article said, “That too, as it happens, is true.”

All of these commentators were widely criticized for either understating or—more seriously—failing to recognize the magnitude and immediacy of the threat from the CCP. One of the emerging counterarguments is that the bipartisan consensus on the nature and extent of that threat is reliably and well-established; where disagreement remains is over what policies should be pursued in responding to it. If this is correct, that bipartisan consensus (on the scope of the threat) needs to be reconsidered because the wrong diagnosis could yield the wrong—or even dangerous—prescriptions.

China does pose a profound and unprecedented strategic challenge to the United States. But this is not an “existential struggle” in which “the most fundamental freedoms are at stake.” A more measured and empirical appraisal of the challenge that China represents was published last week in the Annual Threat Assessment (ATA) of the U.S. intelligence community (IC). The IC’s analysis does not support many of the characterizations of the China threat that have emanated from the select committee and have appeared more broadly in the public discourse about China.

For example, Gallagher stated that “the CCP is laser focused on its vision for the future: a world crowded with totalitarian states.” And Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi said in his opening statement, Xi wants to ensure that China “leads the world in terms of composite national strength and international influence” by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). But this is how the ATA characterizes China’s global ambitions:

China’s Communist Party (CCP) will continue efforts to achieve President Xi Jinping’s vision of making China the preeminent power in East Asia and a major power on the world stage. . . . Beijing will try to expand its influence abroad and its efforts to be viewed as a champion of global development . . . [It will also seek] to promote a China-led alternative to often U.S. and Western-dominated international development and security forums and frameworks . . . [and] modifications to international norms to favor state sovereignty and political stability over individual rights.

This does not reflect the pursuit of “a world crowded with totalitarian states.” Moreover, Krishnamoorthi’s assertion that China seeks to “lead the world” appears to quote from Xi’s speech to the CCP’s 19th Congress in 2017, which scholars have more reliably translated to refer to China aspiring to be “a global leader” rather than “the global leader.” Indeed, the IC assesses that China seeks to be “a major power on the world stage” by maximizing its relative power and influence while working to reshape global multilateralism in directions that are more conducive to and tolerant of Chinese interests, preferences, and values. This does not imply or require the establishment of unipolar Chinese global hegemony, nor of Chinese efforts to dictate how other countries govern themselves.

None of this is meant to minimize the comprehensive and relentless competitive challenge that China poses to the United States. The ATA outlines the many elements of that challenge. The IC judges that Beijing is determined “to erode US influence across military, technological, economic, and diplomatic spheres.” It will seek to “drive wedges between Washington and its partners”; use “whole-of-government tools” to “compel neighbors to acquiesce to its preferences”; and continue “building a world-class military” in a bid to “establish its preeminence in regional affairs, and project power globally while offsetting perceived U.S. military superiority.” At the same time, “China will remain the top threat to US technological competitiveness” and will try to “leverage its dominance [in markets and supply chains] for political or economic gain.” The CCP is also “attempting to sow doubts about US leadership, undermine democracy, and extend Beijing’s influence, particularly in East Asia and the western Pacific.” And it will “continue expanding its global intelligence and covert influence posture to better support the CCP’s political, economic, and security goals.”

Regarding China’s threat to the U.S. homeland, the CCP will use “a sophisticated array of covert, overt, licit, and illicit means to try to soften US criticism, shape US power centers’ views of China, and influence policymakers at all levels of government.” It is also trying to “actively exploit perceived US societal divisions” and is “intensifying efforts to mold US public discourse,” especially on Chinese sovereignty issues like Taiwan and Hong Kong.

This clearly is a formidable and ruthless opponent, and one that requires a comprehensive, whole-of-government competitive U.S. response. But it still does not add up to an “existential” winner-take-all threat to U.S. global power and influence, or to the American way of life, requiring a wholly adversarial cold war U.S. response. Beijing is working across the board globally to score points against Washington and to blunt the United States’ ability to do China harm, and it will use all of its levers and sources of power in pursuit of those goals. But the intelligence community does not assess that Beijing seeks to supplant the United States as global hegemon, or destroy American democracy and the American economy. If the evidence supported such judgments, they would have been included in the ATA.

In this regard, the ATA includes two important caveats to the IC’s assessment of Beijing’s competitive challenge. The first is that China’s leaders, despite their adversarial posture, “will seek opportunities to reduce tensions with Washington when they believe it suits their interests.” The second is that China is responding symmetrically to what to it perceives as a comparable US challenge: “Beijing sees increasingly competitive US–China relations as part of an epochal geopolitical shift and views Washington’s diplomatic, economic, military, and technological measures against Beijing as part of a broader US effort to prevent China’s rise and undermine CCP rule.” In short, Beijing sees the United States as an existential challenge to the PRC. If we reject that notion as an irrational and inflated Chinese threat perception, we must consider the possibility of irrational and inflated US threat perceptions, along with the possibility that the Chinese are no less interested in peaceful coexistence than we are.

Washington’s approach going forward would benefit from greater attention to the IC’s empirical assessment of the China threat than to the exaggerated version presented by Gallagher and others. This is because an accurate assessment of the problem can help avoid misguided policy solutions that would be costly and counterproductive. It would also avoid an exclusively adversarial approach to China that comes at the expense of opportunities for cooperation and mutual understanding. Washington and Beijing need a more accurate appraisal of each other’s strategic goals and intentions—instead of the prevailing U.S. view of a China determined to destroy America’s “fundamental freedoms,” and the Chinese view of a United States determined to obstruct China’s development and overthrow its regime.

This gets to the bipartisan consensus on how to respond to the China threat (once it is correctly assessed). Gallagher’s approach would seemingly proscribe any pursuit of constructive relations with Beijing. In his opening statement at the committee’s first hearing, he renounced “engagement” with China:

We must learn from our mistakes. For much of the past half century, we tried to win the CCP over with honey, with engagement, believing that economic engagement in particular would lead to reforms in China. Both parties made the same bet. The only problem is it didn’t work out. We were wrong. The CCP laughed at our naivete and took advantage of our good faith. But that era of wishful thinking is over. The Select Committee will not allow the CCP to lull us into complacency or maneuver us into submission.

Setting aside Gallagher’s historically inaccurate version of both the goal of engagement and its relative success, his diagnosis of the China threat (that the CCP seeks to “maneuver us into submission”) and his prescription for dealing with it risk even greater “mistakes” than those he attributes to U.S. engagement with Beijing. The mistakes that his approach risks include escalating U.S.-China hostility, inviting another cold war (or worse), and thwarting U.S.-China cooperation on a wide range of global issues—which most of the rest of the world is eager to see.

The Biden administration is risking some of the same mistakes. In his State of the Union speech, Biden said “we seek competition, not conflict” with China. Various administration officials have now incorporated this into the policy mantra. But we need not, and did not, seek competition with China; it has inevitably been thrust upon us. While girding for the competition, what Washington needs to actively seek is cooperation and dialogue: sustained diplomatic interaction with Beijing, whether we choose to call it “engagement” or not. If the bipartisan consensus on China adopts both the select committee’s characterization of the threat and its strictly confrontational approach to dealing with it, U.S.-China relations are going to keep getting worse before there is a chance for them to get better.

Paul Heer is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He served as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia from 2007 to 2015. He is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2018).

Image: Shutterstock.

« Ok, mon gars. C'est parti », lance Annalee Pearse en s'enfuyant du foyer pour jeunes filles où le tribunal l'a placée après qu'elle a tenté de voler un bijou. Elle emporte Daniel, son fils nouveau-né, dont « le père aurait pu être n'importe lequel parmi sept hommes ». Nous sommes vers la fin des années (...) / États-Unis, Criminalité, Drogue, Armement - 2018/01

The excitement with which diplomats and pundits reacted to the news about last week’s China-brokered diplomatic deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, would have led one to conclude that the “handshake heard around the world” wouldn’t only achieve peace between the most powerful Arab-Sunni state, Saudi Arabia, and the Persian-Shiite hegemon, Iran, but would also reshape the regional balance of power if not the entire international system, sidelining the United States and creating the foundations of Pax Sinica in the Middle East.

In a way, it evoked the memories of a historic event: the U.S.-brokered Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement that created the basis for Arab-Israeli peace and, in the process, remade the Middle East, sidelining the Soviet Union from the region and established Washington as hegemon in that part of the world for many years to come.

But that 1979 agreement, facilitated by then-U.S. president Jimmy Carter, was an earth-shattering event. It happened, against the backdrop of the Cold War, following the 1973 Yom Kippur war (which raised the nuclear tensions between the two superpowers) and after the earlier and costly U.S. diplomatic and military interventions in the Middle East that damaged America’s standing in the Arab World and led to a devastating oil embargo.

It was only in the aftermath of that successful 1979 diplomatic triumph that Washington established its dominant role in the Middle East—and it ended up paying higher diplomatic, military, and economic costs for doing so. These include the rise of anti-American terrorism (including 9/11), a series of long and destructive wars in the Middle East, and failed efforts to revive the Arab-Israeli peace process. All of these ended up destabilizing the region, instead of democratizing it, while eroding the U.S. global status, including vis-à-vis rising China.

Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to conclude in the aftermath of the US military interventions in the Middle East that the War on Terror ended—and China won.

While the Americans were fighting and dying in the region, China got busy. It joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) on December 11, 2001, exactly two months after the collapse of the World Trade Center. Facing no serious military challenges, it spent the following two decades strengthening its economy and emerging as a global power ready to compete with the United States. And thanks to the American military interventions in the Middle East, the Chinese benefited from free access to the energy resources in the region. Good deal!

In public discourse, there is now a notion that the Chinese will now replace the United States in a leadership role in the region: mediating between the Saudis and the Iranians, perhaps making peace between the Arabs and Israelis, securing the oil sites in the Persian Gulf, and using its power to stabilize the Middle East, and if necessary, being drawn this war or that war. To some Americans, this may even sound like good news: here are the keys, China; good luck with running this show.

But before Americans start debating “who lost the Middle East,” as Washington DC did so hysterically after the announcement of the deal, they should probably pause to consider a few plain realities. Americans find it difficult to assess the politics of the Middle East and U.S. policy there in binary terms and in a linear fashion: in trying to operate under the assumption that regional alliances are stable and partnerships with outside powers are sustainable, they are always surprised to discover that that isn’t the case.

Hence, in the Middle East, one doesn’t fantasize about remaking the Middle East through wars and regime change, or that a so-called Arab Spring would turn the region into a center of democracy, or that perpetual peace would supposedly flow forth from the Abraham Accords. One can only search for the diplomatic equivalents of one-night stands that may or may not facilitate some long-term changes and more stable relationships.

The United States, not unlike other great powers—including the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France—has discovered that it is impossible for outsiders to impose their agendas on the Middle East. In that region of the world, everything is tied to everything else—the boundaries between local, national, and international issues are blurred. Any attempt by an outside power to impose a solution results in counterforts set up by unsatisfied actors, aimed at forming opposing regional alliances and securing the support of other local players and international actors. As renowned Middle East historian L. Carl Brown suggested, “just as with the tilt of the kaleidoscope, the many tiny pieces of colored glass all move to a new configuration, so any diplomatic initiative in the Middle East sets in motion a realignment of the players.”

One Middle Eastern leader who clearly is familiar with the way things work in the region work is Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who at one point was imagined by Americans to be a progressive reformer, and then turned into the region’s butcher; a pro-American Arab moderate that would help form a regional NATO to contain Iran, make peace with Israel and help lower energy prices, ends up, to everyone’s shock, partnering with Russia’s evil Vladimir Putin, falling in love with China, and making peace with Iran.

But in fact, it is MBS and not the (Shocked! Shocked! Shocked!) Americans who has correctly read the map of the Middle East and perhaps even what is happening in Washington—and from there operates based on what he considers to be Saudi interests.

MBS, not unlike Israel, rejected U.S. pleas to join the pro-Ukraine camp over the Ukraine War. This is not because he opposes America’s alliance of democracies, but because Russia is Saudi Arabia’s key oil partner. Both states have a common interest to keep oil prices high. It is to Russia with love today, but affairs of that kind don’t last forever—as the Russians who were forced out of Egypt by the late President Anwar Sadat discovered.

MBS, like the Israelis, also recognized that, while America continues to maintain a military presence in the Middle East, it isn’t necessary to go to war against Iran to end its nuclear program or to protect Saudi security, regardless of whether the right-wing Donald Trump occupies the White House or the liberal Joe Biden who replaced him.

The evolving Saudi partnership with Israel—green-lighting the signing of the Abraham Accords and raising the possibility of normalizing relations with the Jewish state—was part of a strategy to counter Iran’s threat. The other side of this plan was a series of negotiations—mediated by Iraq and later by China—to reestablish diplomatic ties with the Islamic Republic. Flirting with Israel doesn’t necessarily mean a full-blown divorce with Iran, and ending the civil war in Yemen is a good thing, even if China is the one that brokers the deal.

That the economic ties between Saudi Arabia and China—the latter of which receives 40 percent of its oil imports from the Middle East—have expanded demonstrates the extent to which “soft power” can play a role in the strengthening of the diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Beijing, despite the fact that China has been accused to persecuting its Muslim minority—a policy that also doesn’t seem to affect Tehran’s ties with Beijing.

But didn’t “soft power” attain a bad name after Germany’s ill-fated attempt to co-opt Russia failed when it came to Ukraine? The Saudis know that when push comes to shove and Iran violates any deal it signs with Riyadh or goes nuclear, China won’t save it from Iran’s military aggression.

Without all the drama surrounding the Iranian-Saudi handshake, it can be seen as another Machiavellian move by MBS to press Biden and his cadre of progressive Democrats to recognize that the Saudis can dance in three weddings at the same time: Riyadh can maintain its partnership with the United States while constructing one with China and trying to play nice with Iran. And that if the Americans would like to see normalization with Israel going forward, they need to provide Riyadh with more weapons and security guarantees. And, no less important, stop bashing MBS.

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

Image: Shutterstock.

As Taiwan approaches its next presidential election in 2024, the nation finds itself at a critical juncture, as voters face a choice about Taiwan’s future role in the Indo-Pacific region.

Although both major political parties have yet to decide on their presidential candidate, one emerging area of debate focuses on whether international efforts—particularly those of the U.S.—to support Taiwan's security should be seen as credible and trustworthy. Taiwan’s current Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, led by President Tsai Ing-wen, has worked closely with the United States and international partners to carefully maintain the cross-Strait status quo and bolster Taiwan’s defense capabilities.

On the other hand, narratives that portray U.S. support for Taiwan with skepticism and distrust have also emerged in Taiwan’s public discourse. While it is unsurprising that commentary from Chinese state media would actively seek to discredit international support for Taiwan’s defense, in recent years, politicians from Taiwan’s largest opposition party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), have also adopted similar rhetoric. A closer analysis of these misleading narratives can reveal how shifts in public opinion in Taiwan could bring wide-ranging ramifications for regional security.

The KMT’s ill-timed delegation to Beijing

Amid heightened international criticism toward China, lately exacerbated by the Chinese spy balloon incident, the KMT sent a high-level delegation to Beijing led by Vice Chairman Andrew Hsia last month. At a moment when the international community seeks to firmly support Taiwan’s efforts to defend itself against China, the KMT’s actions to build ties with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) send a contradictory and confusing message.

Although the ill-timed delegation claimed to focus on economic issues, the trip also touched upon political statements, such as reiterating the KMT and CCP’s joint adherence to the so-called “1992 consensus”—a formula which the KMT defines as “One China, different interpretations,” but the CCP simply defines as “One China.”

Hsia’s delegation seems to have dispersed any notion that the KMT is trying to detach itself from its “pro-China” image at home and abroad. However, the delegation can only be seen as one of the several indicators that the KMT continues to face internal pressure to prioritize relations with China, as many prominent voices within the party have consistently expressed staunch opposition towards U.S. policies regarding Taiwan on a wide range of issues.

Misleading narratives on international support for Taiwan

Despite a historic background in anti-communism, the KMT has experienced a drastic realignment in ideology in recent decades. Although the KMT once branded itself as a force of stability in Taiwanese politics, today it risks alienating moderate voters as it increasingly adopts hardline narratives that echo Beijing’s views.

In recent years, leading voices within the KMT have often expressed distrust towards international efforts to support Taiwan’s security. Lazy comparisons with Afghanistan or Ukraine have been employed to question the actions of the U.S. or Western democracies in general – either arguing that the U.S. would “abandon” Taiwan in a potential conflict with China, or that the U.S. will somehow use Taiwan as “cannon fodder” against China to further its own interests.

By glossing over major differences in geography and context, KMT hardliners have used inflammatory slogans such as “Today Afghanistan, Tomorrow Taiwan” to argue that the United States cannot be trusted when it comes to statements about Taiwan. Many comments by KMT legislators have focused on comparisons with Ukraine to argue that the United States would leave Taiwan to fend for itself in the case of war with China.

Some discussions involve the spreading of false information through Chinese or Russian-linked sources. In a recent example, a former KMT legislator shared a translated version of a tweet by Radio Sputnik’s Garland Nixon, provoking media controversy and rebuttals from both Taiwan’s foreign ministry and the American Institute in Taiwan—the de facto U.S. embassy. The original tweet read: “White House insiders leak that, when asked if there could be any greater disaster than the neocon Ukraine project, President Joe Biden responded, wait until you see our plan for the destruction of Taiwan.”

On economic issues, the KMT legislative caucus has strongly expressed its opposition against semiconductor giant TSMC's investments in microchip manufacturing in the United States, accusing that the move would “hollow out” Taiwan’s economy. Research by the Taiwanese non-profit group IORG traces the trajectory of how arguments against TSMC’s investments started on Chinese social media platforms as early as 2021. By early 2022, these views were amplified by KMT-leaning media pundits in Taiwan, citing TSMC’s establishment of production lines in Arizona as a sign of impending American abandonment of Taiwan, while receiving extensive coverage by Chinese state media. Cases like this show how the cross-referencing of sources from both sides of the Taiwan Strait can be used to influence public opinion. 

False equivalence on China could destabilize the region

In other instances, the KMT seems to argue for Taiwan to maintain an equal distance between China and the United States. In a telling example, New Taipei City mayor Hou You-yi, seen as a potential 2024 presidential candidate for the KMT, recently said that “Taiwan should not become a chess piece for any powerful country.” Hou’s language echoes views often expressed by Chinese state media, which characterize Taiwan’s partnership with the United States in a negative light and describe Taiwan as a “pawn” instead of a partner.

Many of these comments essentially attempt to present a false equivalence between the United States and China by refusing to choose sides. However, given that China is not a neutral actor in the Taiwan Strait and continues to increase its assertive behavior, a failure on Taiwan’s part to pursue close cooperation with the United States and like-minded democracies would only enable China to expand its military influence in the Taiwan Strait and beyond, while further destabilizing peace in the Indo-Pacific. 

Views skeptical toward international support for Taiwan could erode public confidence in Taiwan’s security and undermine mutual trust between Taiwan and its international partners. This type of reasoning could also weaken Taiwanese society’s resolve to resist China’s encroachment, leading to greater calls for a policy of appeasement on China—which would drastically alter existing geopolitical conditions in the Taiwan Strait.

In this context, visible gestures of support for Taiwan from like-minded democracies remain crucial in reassuring the public; whereas conflicting messages or predictions about Taiwan’s security could lead to confusion, even inadvertently fueling further distrust.

Strengthening peace through close international cooperation

In contrast with the KMT, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has focused its efforts on building trust with international partners. Over the past seven years, the current DPP administration has relied on several important policy positions which continue to serve as pillars for Taiwan’s security. Among these important guidelines include the preservation of the cross-strait status quo, a firm but cautious approach towards managing relations with China, close alignment with like-minded democracies, promoting a healthy environment for international trade, contributions toward global humanitarian issues, as well as bolstering Taiwan’s defense capabilities through much-needed reforms. 

Remarks by Vice President Lai Ching-te (William Lai), who recently succeeded Tsai as chair of the DPP, indicate that the DPP’s major policy positions on foreign relations and cross-strait issues will remain consistent under Lai’s leadership. The vice president has repeatedly emphasized strong support for Tsai’s “Four Commitments,” a series of principles on managing cross-strait relations announced during the 2021 National Day address. Through remarks following his swearing-in ceremony on January 18 and many other occasions, Lai has made clear his intention to continue Tsai’s stable approach to maintaining the status quo, as well as his willingness to further strengthen Taiwan’s friendship with the international community.

In an era in which autocracies seek to challenge the rules-based international order, Taiwan must not distance itself from longstanding partnerships out of appeasement or cynicism. Countering harmful narratives that seek to discredit Taiwan’s relations with international partners continues to remain an issue of great importance. 

Fei-fan Lin is former Deputy Secretary-General of the Democratic Progressive Party. 

Wen Lii is Director of the Democratic Progressive Party’s local chapter in the Matsu Islands.

Image: Shutterstock.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has threatened an invasion of its neighbor and NATO partner Greece. The disputes between the two countries are numerous but lately have settled on the “militarization” of Greek Islands near the Turkish Aegean coast. Turkey claims that the military buildups in the islands are in reaction to Greek violations of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Article 13 of the 100-year-old treaty states that “No naval base and no fortification will be established in the said islands.” However, the same Article 13 also states that “Turkish aircraft will forbid their military aircraft to fly over the said islands” and that “The Greek military forces in the said island will be limited to the normal contingent called up for military services.” 

Greece’s counterclaim is that Turkey has repeatedly violated its historical treaty obligations through continuous military flyovers and a consistent naval presence in the region. Greece has said that this threatens not only the territorial sovereignty of the islands but also the economic sovereignty of Greece’s continental shelf. While this source of friction brought the neighbors close to war in the 1970s, the two countries largely agreed to try to develop a framework for drilling rights and natural resource extraction in the eastern Aegean.

Over the past year, Turkey has applied increasing pressure on Greece and has adopted aggressive rhetoric. Erdoğan has threatened to strike Athens with ballistic missiles if it insists on “occupying” islands in the Aegean. At the 2023 World Economic Forum, Erdoğan warned the current Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis that Türkiye “may come suddenly one night if they keep acting out” and that “[Mitsotakis] behave smartly or you will see the march of crazy Turks.” These bellicose statements follow other more ominous comments by Erdoğan: “We have only one word to tell Greece: Do not forget Izmir [Smyrna in Greek]” referring to the 1922 bloodletting that occurred when Turkish forces entered the Greek-occupied city of Smyrna. An estimated 100,000 people died in what Greeks have labeled as the “Catastrophe of Smyrna.” It is no surprise that such language alarms not only the Greek public, but also other NATO members.

It is difficult to assess whether Turkey will take the final plunge amid what will surely be a vitriolic reaction within NATO and elsewhere in the international community. But as Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute has made clear, Erdoğan’s government could find it irresistible to use the recent flareup of the islands dispute as a pretext for an invasion. Looming elections potentially furnish Erdoğan with ample material to drum up nationalistic sentiment. Moreover, now that the Turkish courts appear to have prevented Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu from running as a presidential candidate, Erdoğan may feel liberated from the constraints that may have heretofore stayed his hand.

Implications for NATO 

Another conflict between Turkey and Greece would confront NATO with difficult decisions. Turkey’s geopolitical significance cannot be overlooked. Beyond its control of the Black Sea straits, the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, it has historically been a platform from which to block Russian penetration of the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and from which America has been able to radiate its own influence. Over the last twenty years, Turkey simultaneously adopted a more populist and, given the pathologies of much of the Turkish public, anti-American approach. Since entering office, Erdoğan has empowered grassroots Islamism at the expense of the secular, pro-Western military elite. Similarly, Erdoğan’s adoption of Neo-Ottomanism and the Mavi Vatan sea strategy are at odds with American policy in the Eastern Mediterranean. Neo-Ottomanism attempts to build a coalition of nationalists and Islamists in Turkey, through the lens of Ottoman grandeur. In this way, a neo-Ottoman outlook offers both domestic groups something upon which they can agree. 

In contrast to souring relations between Washington and Ankara, the United States has vastly improved its relationship with Greece—the other half of NATO’s vital southern flank—since the election of Mitsotakis’ center-right government in 2019. This apparent shift in alliance relations multiplies the incentives for the United States to lean in Greece’s direction should hostilities occur, especially if Turkey is determined to be the aggressor. This appears to have shaped Erdoğan’s perception, with his blunt criticism of a new NATO base in Alexandroupoli, a Greek port sitting astride the Turkish border. This dynamic is further shaped by the diametrically-opposed trajectories of each ally’s domestic institutions, with Greece steadily liberalizing and Turkey moving in a more authoritarian direction. The Biden administration has positioned America to be one of the rallying democracies to oppose authoritarianism globally. A conflict between Turkey and Greece would provide this stance with a severe acid test. 

Geopolitical Impact 

The immediate implications of a Turkish invasion of the Greek islands are unclear. There are no provisions in the North Atlantic Treaty for sanctioning, expelling, or otherwise punishing a member state of NATO. In addition, NATO is constrained by procedure. NATO operates on the principle of unanimity is required, and unity amongst the twenty-nine member states requires compromise. For NATO to take any punitive action against one of its own would require the alliance to improvize its response to a Turkish invasion of the Greek islands. No real precedent exists. The closest analogy is the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. In this instance, NATO was helmed by leaders with clear priorities and strategic concepts which governed their actions—namely, holding NATO’s southern flank together and preventing Soviet penetration of the Eastern Mediterranean. Neither quality is present in NATO’s current leadership, as evidenced by the West’s essentially ad hoc reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in which no political objective has been set forth in spite of substantial efforts to tip the balance of forces in Ukraine’s direction. In the event of a conflict between two member states, NATO’s reaction is more likely to be paralysis than decisive action. 

The inherent ambiguity of the situation is unlikely to quell what will likely be intense international pressure to bring Turkey to heel, not only from within the alliance, but from the European Union as well. European leaders have maneuvered themselves into a position where they are bound to oppose aggression as a matter of principle irrespective of the context in which it occurs. 

Regardless of what NATO might do in reaction to a Turkish offensive, Ankara’s relationship with the alliance is bound to become more estranged, leaving Ankara with few good options. Turkey could potentially even leave the NATO alliance of its own volition, especially if Ankara finds American and European sanctions to be unbearable. Such an eventuality is unlikely, however, as there is no clear incentive for Turkey to make a demonstrative display of its departure from NATO, unless domestic politics demand it. Additionally, Turkey could withdraw from NATO’s command structure, similar to Charles de Gaulle’s symbolic display of defiance in the 1960s. The lack of any formal mechanism for the expulsion of a NATO member and the fact that “leaving” NATO’s command structure is more symbolic than tangible means that a more probable outcome would be Turkey retaining its official position while doing what it pleases, which is hardly a drastic change from its current posture. Turkey’s relationship with NATO is thus more likely to face slow erosion than a clean break. 

The most concerning implication of any diplomatic confrontation between NATO and Turkey is the threat of a deepening bilateral relationship between Ankara and Moscow effectively driving a wedge within NATO’s southern flank, essentially vitiating the purpose of Turkey’s presence in the alliance. Among the permutations such a new relationship could take is the increased sale of Russian weapons to Turkey, including the S-400 missile batteries that have been the source of so much consternation from Washington and Brussels. Ankara has slowly drifted toward Moscow under Erdoğan’s leadership, and the two countries already have close economic and investment ties. Hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens and businesses have invested in Turkey. Indeed, Antalya on Turkey’s southern coast is referred to as “Moscow on the Med.” Caleb Larson has previously covered the dangers posed by Moscow’s increasing presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is this that has the greatest geopolitical implications for the regional balance of power, and which American foreign policy in the region for the last seventy years has been designed to prevent. 

These trends are in part a reflection of Europe’s—and by extension NATO’s—receding coherence as a strategic entity, which the galvanizing impact of the war in Ukraine has partially obscured, but not absolved. Europe’s map is becoming more medieval in its complexion, with regions and subregions forming within NATO. Even the unifying effect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has proven somewhat conditional, as each member of the alliance appears to be moving at a different pace in rushing to the ramparts of European defense. Turkey, for its part, is beginning to reckon with its newfound geopolitical weight given the recent instability in the Middle East and Caucasus regions and is willing to exploit it at the expense of the alliance to an extent not seen in previous decades. The looming confrontation between Turkey and Greece drives home the need for NATO to regain its bearings and focus on fundamentals. 

A Longer Perspective 

These trends in part reflect the relative decline of American power. Heretofore, the United States has been able to treat NATO as if it were the board of directors of a limited liability company wherein one’s contributions were proportional to one’s influence. Now, ever-greater American arm-twisting is needed to move the alliance in a given direction, while its most powerful members, feeling least in need of the alliance’s protection, feel at liberty to chart their own course when the alliance does not meet their immediate needs. Such is the case with Turkey offering its good offices to broker agreements regarding grain shipments from embattled Ukraine, and even an abortive effort to negotiate an end to the conflict. In other words, the United States can expect more demonstrations of defiance within NATO as its fissures, left latent under the nimbus of two superpowers, become explicit as power relationships across Eurasia begin to shift. 

A Russo-Turkish axis is unlikely to last. They may be tactical allies, but it is difficult to envisage Moscow and Ankara as strategic allies. They are historic foes in the Caucasus, most recently expressed in a massive victory for Turkish arms over Russian ally Armenia in late 2020 (a situation in which Russia was humiliated). A similar pattern was repeated in the early weeks of the Ukrainian conflict. Thus, inherent geopolitical tensions will likely overcome any temporary affinity between the two authoritarian leaders over time. By the same token, Turkey, whatever headaches it may provide American leaders in the region, remains a natural rival of Iran and thus a potential counterweight to Iranian influence in the contest, particularly regarding greater Syria. Even if Turkey is no longer a treaty ally of the United States, this does not mean that the geopolitical basis for their alignment will have simply evaporated.  

A good example is in the nineteenth century, when Britain, a liberal sea power and sympathetic to independence movements throughout the Balkans, nevertheless understood the geopolitical threat posed by Russian expansion at the expense of the decaying Ottoman Empire. Thus, however iniquitous they believed it to be, British leaders concluded that a relatively intact Turkish empire was vital to holding back a Russian drive toward the straits, and ultimately the Middle East. Liberalism was forced to compromise given the geopolitical realities. Britain’s defense of Turkey did not imply any degree of ideological approbation or compatibility of domestic institutions, nor did it require an alliance—the arrangement was pragmatic and conditional. The United States will be obliged to make similar calculations moving forward, wherein Turkey is neither entirely adversarial nor an ally, but something in between.

Brandon Patterson is a national security professional and recent graduate of the University of California, San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy. He is a military analyst with a focus on risk consulting.

Dino Bozonelos, Ph.D. is a lecturer in the Departments of Political Science and Global Studies at California State University, San Marcos, and in the Department of International Business at Kedge Business School. His research interests mainly revolve around global issues, including geopolitics, religion and politics, and comparative political economy.

Image: vaalaa / Shutterstock.com

March 19 will represent the 20th anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, and already, many complicit in its bloodshed are attempting to rewrite history. From comfortable positions at the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, and more, senior Bush administration officials have laundered testimony through mainstream media outlets on how they could not have predicted their project’s failure, or that it was never a failure at all.

For all the attention these efforts to revise the war’s legacy have gotten, they pale in comparison to the precise and concerted effort to mold the perceptions of the American people that occurred before the war. And Iraq War mania can happen again. If we don’t learn from it, a reprise of the febrile atmosphere of 2002–2003 could bring us into crisis with nuclear powers like Russia and China.

A decade of violence set the stage for the invasion. Following the heavy bombardment of Iraqi civilian infrastructure in the 1991 war, American policy toward Iraq in the 1990s focused on aggressive sanctions which immiserated the Iraqi people. Throughout the decade, the threat of American firepower loomed with ongoing combat operations like the no-fly zones and Operation Desert Fox.

Oceans away, the American public soaked in an entertainment-driven narrative through the twenty-four-hour war coverage of the 1991 Gulf War. Playing off this excitement, media baron Rupert Murdoch financed neoconservative Reagan/Bush official Bill Kristol in the creation of The Weekly Standard in 1995. This magazine would provide a loud public voice to the political movement to invade Iraq.

Under Kristol’s leadership, The Weekly Standard would publish cover stories like “Saddam Must Go: A How-To Guide” in 1997 and articles like “Saddam’s Impending Victory” in 1998, all comparing the isolated Iraqi regime to Hitler’s Third Reich. All this well-coordinated political pressure led to the 1998 passage of the Iraq Liberation Act, which declared America’s ultimate intention to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

The catalyst for the invasion was the September 2001 terrorist attack. While George W. Bush was officially focused on combating Al Qaeda directly through the Global War on Terror and subsequent toppling of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, by September 14, just three days after the attack, Bush was rumored to have spoken about “hitting” Iraq. The facts did not support a connection between the 9/11 terrorist attack and Iraq. Nevertheless, with its monopoly on sensitive military intelligence, the federal government worked relentlessly to manufacture new facts.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans dealt in an effort to collect and circulate intelligence purporting to link Saddam to Al Qaeda, earning him the title of “Architect of the Iraq War.” The administration tasked the TV darling of the Gulf War, Secretary of State Colin Powell, with advocating for an invasion at the United Nations. Mainstream media outlets relished this straightforward path to war in the wake of 9/11.

Neoconservative Max Boot wrote an article in The Weekly Standard called “The Case for American Empire,” in which he compared the American interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan to the Allied triumph over Nazi Germany. Reporting from The New York Times leaned heavily on the inaccurate testimony of Iraqi exiles who strongly supported regime change. The Washington Post editorial board penned a piece entitled “Irrefutable,” referring to the administration’s claims of an Iraq-Al-Qaeda axis and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Former Bush speechwriter David Frum branded right-wing opponents of the war “Unpatriotic Conservatives” in a feature for National Review. All opposition to the war was systemically marginalized.

With print media covered, “talking heads” populated the airwaves in pushing for, and later defending, the invasion of Iraq. Founding fathers of the Iraq effort like Kristol and Stephen F. Hayes appeared frequently on channels like Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. Neoconservative pundits and Bush administration officials were even sought by MTV.

Powerful Democrats and center-left public intellectuals also share complicity in the push to war. Left-wing media institutions like The New Republic backed the invasion. Ahmed Chalabi ally Entifadh Qanbar appeared on both NPR and Oprah. Then Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Joe Biden ignored concerns from fellow Democrats about the war. MSNBC host Phil Donahue was fired over concerns over his resistance to the war, as the network prepared for “24/7 war coverage.” Powerful figures did not merely endorse being pro-war—they mandated it.

Contemporary media continues to credential the Iraq War’s loudest cheerleaders as respected voices in U.S. foreign policy, and they employ many of the same suggestions that failed so clearly two decades earlier. Anne Applebaum brands anything short of regime change in nuclear power Russia “appeasement.” Those who led us into conflict in 2003 over nonexistent WMDs now lecture a more cautious public that if they fear nuclear war with Russia, they are apologists for Vladimir Putin.

Perhaps the most dangerous opinion-shaping regards China. Prominent public intellectuals and elected officials are attempting to define a war with China over Taiwan as an inevitability and an obligation. But more Americans are projected to die per day in the first three weeks of a Taiwan conflict than in any prior conflict save World War II. That figure is even optimistic given that it assumes the war won’t go nuclear. Such grim prospects demand a more sober debate than we had before Iraq.

And twenty years after Biden’s role in the Iraq mythology, his team has presented its own “axis of evil”—an existential struggle between democracies and autocracies. While many have addressed the hypocrisy in this, given our reliance on autocracies like Saudi Arabia, the dangerous reality is that these overheated narratives can make democracies behave like autocracies: stifling the open debate that helps democracies avoid disaster.

While autocracies kill or jail dissenting voices, democracies can quietly humiliate and marginalize the opposition, intimidating them into silence and creating a false sense of consensus. The resulting war fever can be widespread—some 76 percent of Americans backed the Iraq invasion. But when the fever broke and the delirium faded, we found ourselves standing in Iraq’s wreckage with no clear way forward. Two decades later, we’re still picking up the pieces.

As a new generation rises, one with no memory of the race to war in Iraq, we must not forget the madness that preceded this terrible blunder. It happened before, and it can happen again.

Patrick Fox is a Program Assistant at the John Quincy Adams Society and the Assistant Editor for Realist Review.

A.J. Manuzzi is a Program Assistant at the John Quincy Adams Society.

Image: U.S. Army Flickr.